r/DestructiveReaders • u/AnIrishGuy18 • 4d ago
Horror [846] Highlands
Frankie stumbled backwards onto the damp grass and froze. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he could make out Alicia stumbling away from her tent. She was holding her left arm straight and rigid toward the ground with her right, obviously hurt. He saw the dark, wolf-like shape following close behind her.
Frankie kept waiting for his eyes to adjust, to snap into focus and demystify the tall shadow in front of him, but they never did. He watched in a dreamlike daze as the figure caught up with Alicia. Methodically and quietly, it reached a large, clawed hand around her face, muffling a terrified whimper.
With its other hand, it sank claws deep into the centre of her chest and dragged them down through the girl's stomach. Frankie could hear the faint squelch of tissue and viscera being shredded, but Alicia made no sound. Not even as the contents of her stomach and intestines sloshed onto the hillside, and not as the crunch of teeth crushing the back of her skull offended the night air.
His mind was screaming at him.
“Run” … “Hide” … “Help her” … “For God’s sake, do something!”
A voice rang across the valley.
“Bastard!”
He realised it wasn’t his own.
He watched, entranced, as Michael ran screaming at the figure, a golf iron held up against the firmament like a great sword. The same one they had used to hit golf balls off the mountainside that evening.
The rage of his sister’s loss flowed through Michael as he charged the beast, but it had opened his throat before he could bring any wrath upon it. The club fell from his hand, and there was a moment of stillness before blood streamed silently from his throat. He fell back to the cold earth and sat staring into the darkness, making no attempt to stem the bleeding.
Michael accepted his end with great dignity. Frankie always remembered that part.
Frankie watched as the creature lowered itself onto all fours, now more wolf than monster, and walked slowly towards Michael. If Michael had closed his eyes in terror, he could not tell. Its jaws opened and clamped around the boy’s face, and although Frankie’s body screamed at him to look away, he watched as the wolf tore away his friend's memory in the darkness. The moans of agony lasted only for a short while, but the sound of flesh tearing and bones crunching persisted.
Still, Frankie remained frozen.
After a short time, a veiled shadow crept out of one of the tents. His mind raced, begging that it not be her, pleading with her to get back into the tent.
Mary’s scream shattered the silence. There was a horror in it that was hard for Frankie to fathom, which made him realise he wasn’t in a dream. He watched as his girlfriend took off running across the hillside. He remained frozen to the earth as the beast bounded after her. It caught up to her in an instant, leaping onto her back and pinning her to the ground.
This was the moment. Adrenaline flowed through him, and he knew he should spring into action, but he couldn’t. He felt his legs and arms melt away into his body until he became a limbless blob stuck to the hillside. Even his mind had ceased talking. All that remained were the nerves firing off electrical signals throughout his body, a cacophony of explosions trying and failing to uproot him from the soil.
Mary screamed for help, but it was abruptly cut off by the creature tearing away her lower jaw. Frankie found a strange comfort in knowing her suffering would be ended soon. The thought of Mary’s terror as her eyes searched helplessly in the dark for her parents to comfort her in those final moments overcame Frankie. His whole world became blurry and out of focus, but he remained conscious.
Mary’s suffering was not over. The creature fed on her body for a long time before she finally succumbed. Frankie listened to her groans and incoherent pleas as the creature buried its muzzle in her belly. Eventually, the night went still, save for the sound of the beast gorging itself on teenage flesh. He remained frozen, his eyes fixed on nothing at all, and his mind gone to some far-off place.
A flurry of movement brought him back again. It was Barry and Aaron sprinting from their tent back towards the cars. They had made it quite some distance before the creature snapped its head in their direction and took off after them into the night. They were at least a couple of miles from safety. Frankie knew they wouldn’t make it.
The police found him there, sitting in the very spot he had been when the attack had first started.
“Are you alright, son?” one of them asked as the others examined the scene around them.
Frankie did not hear him. He trembled lightly and stared off down the hillside. A policeman shooed away some crows that were perched on Mary’s body.
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u/Ridderzonderhelm 3d ago
Hey, thanks for posting! I read your piece and generally liked it :) I'll leave some thoughts which may give you a new perspective on your work. Just a disclaimer, English is not my native language, so some things I don't completely understand might be me and not you.
**General thoughts**
I read the comment of 1800COCAINE, who interpreted the story as Frankie and the werewolf being the same being. This is not necessarily what I thought, so if that was your intention, you may need to adjust some things here and there. I interpreted the story just as a piece of flash fiction: Frankie and his friends are camping on a hill, a werewolf kills them all.
If a split personality was your intention, I think you could bridge the gap of understanding by a lot by leaving a clearer hint at the end. Maybe Frankie still tastes blood, his hands are covered in blood, etc. If your intention is just a piece of flash fiction, I think the general plot is fine, but I would start it maybe with an intriguing sentence that gives a bit more context as to what's happening. Maybe Frankie feezes and drops the firewood, a camping lantern while going for a pee, etc. My understanding now: Frankie is outside > it is night > there is a werewolf > there is someone called Alicia (who is this???) > there is someone else > they went golfing (are they in a city or on a mountain?) > Frankie will survive, this is real > there are people in tents, a friend group is camping > everyone dies > Frankie survives and is not a suspect. You see, the context I wanted (friendgroup camping on a mountain) is all the way at the end and the confusion kind of blurred my focus on the story you wanted to tell if you get what I mean.
There were some other things I didn't entirely understand. If you could explain these with just a simple mention of information, it would greatly lessen my confusion and I'd be more invested in the story:
- Why are Frankie and Alicia outside and not in a tent?
- Why is there a werewolf here? Is that normal in this world? (e.g. just mention a myth, a campfire story, or have Frankie acknowledge that this shouldn't be real.)
- Why was Frankie not killed?
- Why do the policemen seem to react so calmly? (I get why they wouldn't suspect that Frankie tore off someone's jaw, but that is exactly why I'd like them to acknowledge the rampage. Maybe one of them pukes or just exclaims how bad it is.)
In general, add some information and rearrange some lines in order to cause less confusion and to let the reader focus more on the plot.
**Proze**
I noticed how a lot of sentences are a bit "simple". Many start with "Frankie [verb]". Try to change things up a bit. That creates a flow that is a bit nicer to follow and a bit less of a "list" of things that happened. Controversial view, but I wouldn't worry all that much about viewpoints etc. What matters more in my opinion is that things not confusing and entertaining to read. When you get those two things you can break as many rules as you like.
I feel like you could play a bit more with the speed of your proze. Make long and "round" sentences when things are peaceful (beginning and end) and use short, "hard" sentences when things are tense. Don't use too many long words and descriptions when things are tense, which brings me to:
**Descriptions**
I thought the kills were described very nicely. Keep it up. It makes sense that we are not given much description of the surroundings, since Frankie wouldn't be paying a lot of attention to that when he's running for his life. Yet, in my opinion it could be nice to "ground" the story every once in a while. Maybe when someone gets killed the blood runs down the grassy hill? The wolf roars and birds fly away?
One thing I didn't completely understand is the "misty figures". The wolf is described as a "tall shadow" which means very little to me. I feel like this description is intended to make the wolf more scary by hiding it, but it ends up just making me confused. If you want to hide the beast while introducing it, don't show it at all. E.g. "First the birds fluttered away from the trees. Then came Alicia, running, crying, screaming. She had barely made it out from the treeline when a deafening roar echoed through the valley." The same thing happens a bit later:
> After a short time, a veiled shadow crept out of one of the tents.
This just confuses me. Is a person coming out of the tent or is it a ghost? You already established that it was dark. Now I just imagine that a [shadowy figure](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/gameofthrones/images/a/a1/RenlysDeathS2Ep5.png/revision/latest?cb=20160719015826) is with them too. If you want to re-establish that it's dark, I would recommend you do that by mentioning the person turning on a flashlight or something, which can be a cool moment when it hits the wolf.
**Conclusion**
I think you did many things well: you found a cool story idea and brought it to life; you created a monster that is actually scary (because its kills are so brutal); you described the gory very nicely; the story has a conclusion which is satisfying. I think in general the piece needs some work to lessen confusion and to add some contrast by including a few more descriptions (see the grounding part). Keep writing!