darkSpyro

This is a small story I'm working on, it's not really a school project, just something I want to share with you guys

So far, I have 3 chapters done, so I will copy and paste them on here, since Google Docs are more faulty than my sex life

1
There was the sound of thunder.
A sound people in Richburgs had become all too familiar with. Not just because it’s a sound that fills people with dread whenever they hear it, but because of what happens when the thunder bangs and the lightning cracks.
Although there is only 1 thunderstorm every year, something terrible happens whenever it comes. The night of the thunder, someone will die, and no one can do anything about it. No matter what, even if everybody stayed up the entire night, even if everybody went on a manhunt for what was happening, even if everybody was in the same place. Someone, will always die. I’ve only known the victims for the past 6 years, but people say it’s been going on since Richburgs was founded in the 1800’s. Sometimes they are found, usually in graphic horrific ways. Some were found mutilated, some were found with missing limbs, and some weren’t found at all.
This place is a somewhat popular tourist attraction because of this, because people like to challenge each other to survive the murder. But they never do, you can never survive, no matter what. There have been people who have attempted to defend themselves, evidence includes bloody shotguns, and people’s bodies with weapons nearby. No matter what, someone will die, it’s something that you must accept. No matter what, someone is going to gamble with the Devil, and lose. It’s something sad, something horrifying, but strangely, also normal. When you accept death, it becomes something that doesn’t feel sudden, and you realize that new people die everyday.
I sat there, straight up in my bed, watching out the window. Every couple of seconds a big flash of purple appears, showing anything in the sky, but there is nothing. Usually, my mom would immediately take my family to some kind of safe room, but tonight, she had fallen into a deep sleep, way too deep to wake up now.
So I just sat, watching and waiting, with nothing happening. One would think I’d be horrified, knowing that there is the possibility that on one of these flashes, I would see a giant monster covered in scales, with teeth sharper than knives, that wants to tear my head off. But, considering what my friends and I have been through, I don’t think any kind of childish monster would scare me.
But thunderstorms are something more than a noise, they are a sound of terror, and I’ve studied human emotions enough to know why. Not knowing something is about to happen is scary.
But knowing something is going to happen, is truly a horrifying thought.

I’m tired of these thunderstorms.
The rain, the noise, the scared animals, I hate it all. The rain makes it hard for me to do any work the next day, the noise, makes it hard for me to sleep, and it just makes my animals scared, and then there is the scared animals. I love animals, and I hate it when they are harmed, or when they get scared. My heart sinks down, as far as it could possibly go, when I see a animal being harmed.
It’s why I started a farm, I love the animals, so I don’t feed them things like corn or steroids. I feed them normal stuff, like grass and hay, and other plants. In total, I have 12 Cows, 7 Pigs, 10 Sheep, 3 Horses, 3 Dogs, and 2 Cats. All of them live in my small barn, and they love it. I don’t think they could ask for a better place to live, they get all the food they need, all the refreshments they need, all the outdoor time they need, and all the relaxation time they need.
It would’ve been perfect, if it weren’t for the fact that every year during the thunderstorm, one of my animals disappears. I mean, someone already dies every thunderstorm, and that’s huge news here, but nobody mentions how my animals go missing every time. I try to tell people that my animals go missing to, but no, it’s all about the human lives. When there are animals being killed for money out there, and almost no humans. So tell me, which is worse?
This night, I decided to lock myself, and all of my animals, inside the barn. It was for their own good, the animals all crowded inside are either moving around, obviously confused and scared by their current situation, or just staring at something like a wall or picture, unfazed by the loud booms outside. I took a quick look at the clock, and saw that it was 3:45.
“Only around an hour left until morning,” I said quietly to myself.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang on the front door, the one that I commonly used to let the animals out. At first I was startled by the sudden bang on the door, but then I became calm, when I realized it was probably just one of my acquaintances, looking for a place to stay, or for help. I went to open up the door, but then I realized, if they were an acquaintance of mine, they would announce their name, then it slowly came to me that they all had their own homes, and I know that they wouldn’t go out in this weather. Quickly, I rushed to my gun gallery, I looked through all of them, and found a shotgun, I couldn’t tell you what model it was, but I took it off and marched towards the door. Aiming it at where the bangs on the door seemed to be coming from.
“Go away now, or I won’t hesitate to shoot you,” I called out. Silence, and then suddenly.
“Hah, I’m sure, open this door now, so we can talk,” The voice sounded raspy and suspicious, I know that doesn’t make sense but if you were there you would understand.
“I’m not kidding,” I replied, “If you don’t leave I will open this door and shoot you.”
“You don’t have a gun, I know you don’t,” the voice said, I loaded my shotgun.
“Listen, I know this trick, you pull up a video on Youtube, and you play it,” the voice said, “just open the door and we can talk.
I decided enough was enough, I carefully unlocked the door, with my shotgun still aimed at the door. I waited for him to open the door. Eventually, I heard a slight crack through the door, and I fired. Suddenly, a person fell to the ground, clutching his chest, probably where I shot him. My animals were going crazy, trying to get as far away from the shot as they could, thankfully, none of them left the barn. I went outside and stared down at the intruder, He was wearing a black mask, I didn’t dare take it off, as I felt time was of the essence out here, I didn’t want to die and leave the fate of my animals to some psycho. I pulled the guy’s b
ody inside, and tried to think of a place to hide him. I settled with some hay that had gone bad. I buried him under a pile of it, and thought that I would settle who he was the next day. I closed and locked the barn door, making sure all of my animals where there. Yep, they were, I wandered onto a pile of hay, and layed down, knowing I caught the person who had been taking my animals. But I thought to myself as I was falling asleep, why did he want my animals in the first place?

2
The storm ceased, no more flashes of purple, no more bangs, no more anything. I looked at my clock, 5:00, it was always 5, the storm always ended at 5, never sooner, never later. I decided to get ready for school, it took me a total of 20 minutes to get dressed, eat breakfast, and brush my teeth. I put my homework from the previous night, along with my chromebook into my backpack, and walked outside. I knew my mom wouldn’t really mind me walking to school, as long as she didn’t know about the thunderstorm last night. I began to walk along this lonely street, here in Richburgs, the population was very small, only around 43 people, most of them were kids. We had about 3 streets with 5 houses on each street, we also had a school, a movie theatre, a police station(despite the lack of crime), a store that was a combination of a bookstore, a movie store, and a video game rental service, a grocery store, and two restaurants. It was a small town, and everybody knew everyone, heck, because of the small population, we had to have people from other towns work in our schools, and stores. As I walked down the quiet road, my shoes occasionally squeaking at the water on the ground. I realized something, there was no crying. There were no screams, there were no cries of a mix of terror and sadness.
At first, I thought the rest of the town had finally gotten over the fact that there was going to be a death every single year. But then I remembered that there were also tourists daily, sure, small amounts of tourists, but tourists nonetheless. I would’ve heard the screams of something like, “oh my god, my boy/girlfriend is dead.” Something like that, but I heard nothing. Was it possible that someone had survived the attacks.
“No,” I told myself, as my shoes squeaked on the wet pavement, “nobody survives, they never have, and they never will.” Which makes me surprised of how I have lived so long, so many years of me, trying to sneak off out of the room at night, only to be caught by my mom, who would take me back in. And even this year, I was sitting in my room, waiting for my fate, I’m not suicidal, I just feel guilty.
Okay, so if you really, really want to know what happened that fateful day, I’ll tell you, but you’re not gonna like it. So it was the day before my sister’s graduation from High School, and she had the perfect life, she had a boyfriend, she had a great job, she had a lot of friends, and she was very nice and very helpful. I think about her life sometimes, anywho, my parents were preparing this great big dinner party for her graduation. While we played in the front yard, when a car drove up. I couldn’t tell you what type it was, but it was rusty, broken down, and a dead green. Stupid little me, who was 10 at the time, decided to walk up to it, because I was curious. There were 3 guys inside, they all looked like meth heads, but at my age, I never thought something was wrong. And they smelt like alcohol. There told me to hop in, that they had candy, so I asked them if they could open the door. Now I know what you are thinking, Pedophiles, but actually they were more of rapists, not like they planned on doing that to me. Anyway, my sister walked over to the car, just as I was about to get in, she yelled for me to get away from them. When one of the guys, who wore a beaten and ripped brewers hat, walked out and smacked her in the face with a baseball bat, which knocked her out. The guys told me she was going to be fine. To make a long story short, they ended up raping and beating my sister to death, and forced me to watch. They let me go back to my house, and told me not to say anything, which I promised to do, until my parents asked where she was. I didn’t want to lie to my parents, so I told her where she was, and they freaked out, Mom called the police, sobbing into the phone. While my dad ran out with a shotgun, and got in his car, from what are heard, he searched the entire neighborhood, knocking on people’s doors with the shotgun in his hand, demanding to find out who did it, which got him arrested for 3 months. The sheriff, Christian, searched for weeks, but couldn’t find the men. Soon everyone heard of our loss, and people began hunting for any trace of the men, the only thing they found, was my sister’s dead body, bruised and beaten, and a whip.
Every since, I’ve felt very guilty, always feeling like it was my fault my sister endured that pain, and I’ve vowed that if I see those men again, I will strangle them with my bare hands. Now that I think about, my entire group of friends has dark and depressing backstories as well. One of them, Sarah, had an abusive mother, who was emotionally, and physically abusive towards Sarah’s dad. So her dad divorced her, unfortunately for Sarah and her dad, the court ruling gave her mother custody of Sarah, because apparently, women are more likely to get custody of a child than men, even if the woman is an abusive craphead. Both Sarah’s mom, and stepdad were abusive towards her, and when she was only 7 years old, her mother stabbed her in the eye with a broken alcohol bottle because she asked for a quick snack. Luckily, the neighbors heard the commotion and called 911, which eventually led to her getting a bandaged eye, and her father getting custody of her. The Mother and Stepfather got jail time for life for threatening the life of a child.
My best friend, Mason, has a father who used to be a 911 operator in New York City. One day, when his father was off talking with some friends in a separate room. A call came in, and Mason answered the phone, this was usual, as his father would take him to work, and would let him answer the less dangerous calls. He answered this one, thinking nothing was wrong, only for the call to be about a guy, who was stuck inside a burning building. He listened, for about 20 minutes, a man scream for his life, for him to answer, and send the police, before listening to this man burn to death. He says he still hears the man’s voice, screaming in pain as he burns to death. Strangely enough, this might be the reason for his extremely dark sense of humor. Not Cards Against Humanity humor, but just, dark humor in general.
My last friend, Tina, has a pretty tame, yet still dark story. She was once kidnapped for 5 days, her kidnappers claimed to be her parents. And eventually, the police found her and took her back to her real parents. Funnily enough, her kidnappers treated her better than her actual parents. Tina’s parents aren’t abusive, but they treat her more of a gift than a human.
I kept walking to the school, I was wondering who would be biting the dust this year. Maybe it was ‘ol’ Farmer Jacob, he loved his animals, and he was a pretty cool guy, I didn’t want him to die, but things were destined to happen. With my shoes crushing the flooded, dead leaves that scattered the ground, I really put some thought into why the screams, were missing. It wasn’t normal, but is something abnormal really bad. That’s what we are told in school, but not everything is perfect.

3
It’s been 15 minutes since the lightning stopped, not that the danger has passed, but what I’m confused about is the fact that nobody has come to my door screaming, “oh my god, so-and-so has died.” Something that usually happens on days like these. I had just been sitting on my bed, just waiting for the frantic knocks on my wooden door, for the, screams and cries of citizens. But nothing came, did something happen, maybe everyone thought I was dead from the gunshot from last night.
Speaking of which, I still had the guy covered by the hay, with the metallic smell of blood filling the air. I just sat there, not thinking of letting my animals leave, not thinking about anything or anyone in particular. Just kind of waiting, for nothing. Last night was weird, I mean, people going missing, and then sometimes showing up days later with massive injuries, like massive tooth marks all over, and stabs in the throat, limbs missing, sometimes the injuries are so massive, the victim can’t be identified. But this was a whole different ball-field.
I decided now was the time to open the barn doors, I walked over, and pulled open the door, with the creak that old houses usually have. And went on outside, I heard the smells of my animals running out of the barn, looking around, free-roaming the area, eating the grass, and doing all those other things that animals do. But the smell, I understand to most normal people, the smell of pigs rubbing themselves in muck, is not the smell of freshly baked cookies. But it was the fact that there was a strange smell, one that I hadn’t exactly known before. It smelled almost like, melting flesh, I know that doesn’t make sense, but still, the smell stuck me off-guard, I didn’t know what it was really.
Suddenly, I heard a sound, all of the other sounds I heard became blank, almost as if I had tunnel vision, and I could only hear the sound of someone sprinting through the trees. I looked on in the direction of the sound, from the smell I heard, I expected some fleshy blob of human mass coming to tear me to pieces and add me to it’s own mass. What came running out instead, was Ronald Fuchs.
I had known Ronald for a long time, we weren’t exactly friends, more or less acquaintances, and we would help each other out from time to time, he always seemed to be a more logical person, always finding explanations for everything, I sometimes think he would be a good college professor, as he seems really good at dragging on information, sometimes he does in an interesting way, but mostly in a way of just, explaining things in the most boring way possible, just rambling on about politics, global warming, and pufferfish. It really just makes me want to go to sleep.
But right now, he is running at me, with great speed, bloody claw marks across his chest, his face covered with small holes, with blood soaking out of them, he runs towards me screaming “Help!”
I run toward him, “Ronald, Ronald,” I scream as I catch up to him, “what the heck is wrong with you man, running around in your state.
“They’re after me,” he says, he sounds horrified, as if he just watched someone get murdered, “they’re after me.” He repeats the same thing 3 more times in quick succession before I say, “Who the hell is “they”.”
“I-I have to go,” he says, before quickly sprinting away.
“What the heck has gotten into him,” I say to myself. That was very odd, and definitely not like Ronald.
As soon as I turn around, I hear another noise, it sounds like trucks, and vans, why would trucks and vans be coming this way, in the middle of east bumble-****. The answer, I couldn’t tell ya, but soon afterward, a group of at least 5-6 White vans, with the name “Richburg Scientific Discovery Facility” printed on them in red print, with at least 3 trucks pulled up behind them.
One of the vans pulls up close to me, and a man in a black suit gets out. His suit is almost entirely black, with his blue tie and his white undershirt being the only thing he’s wearing that is not black. He clearly strikes me as a businessman. Along with him, two heavily armed people in similar suits and sunglasses pop out. I assume they are bodyguards. The man pulls out a cigarette, lites it, and then sets it in his mouth.
“We would like to have a word with you,” the man says, his cigar bobbing up and down in his mouth, “Greenwood.”
“Yeah, what do you need,” I reply
The man simply shakes his head and states, “Your brother wants a word with you.”

Sorry for the bump

I just really want some critique on this

I will read it in a little while, and I will tell you what I think, okay? ^_^

Quote: BlackNight12

I will read it in a little while, and I will tell you what I think, okay?

K, thanks BTW

Okay, so this is what my honest thoughts are after reading it.

It started off pretty interesting, actually. In my head I was trying to think of an answer to the mystery before much was even explained. I like mystery stories in general, so that is just normal for me.

I have a question. I think I might have been missing something, but you never claified the age of the main character or his/her friends or if the main character is a boy or a girl. He/She says he/she started a farm, but if he/she is only a teenager, then how did he/she start the farm? Also, one of the friends were a dispatcher, right?

One part that interested me was the fact that not only did someone die, but the main character's animals would disappear. That doesn't line up with the "rumour/story" or anything, so it portrays it as if the main character has a seemingly random piece of information, that will later be woven into the plot. It is interesting in that way.

The story did seem to lose focus at times, maybe explaining some things too quickly, but I think it was overall a good premise. I couldn't make a strict judgement on the whole thing, because I haven't read the full story, especially not with a mystery, the ending is always the key.

Overall, I would like to see where this story winds up, and I think that you are fairly good, you just need to work on some things with the pacing of your story telling. I have read much worse, so your looking so far so good, but I would like to see a more organized and linear narrative.

Quote: BlackNight12

Okay, so this is what my honest thoughts are after reading it.

It started off pretty interesting, actually. In my head I was trying to think of an answer to the mystery before much was even explained. I like mystery stories in general, so that is just normal for me.

I have a question. I think I might have been missing something, but you never claified the age of the main character or his/her friends or if the main character is a boy or a girl. He/She says he/she started a farm, but if he/she is only a teenager, then how did he/she start the farm? Also, one of the friends were a dispatcher, right?

One part that interested me was the fact that not only did someone die, but the main character's animals would disappear. That doesn't line up with the "rumour/story" or anything, so it portrays it as if the main character has a seemingly random piece of information, that will later be woven into the plot. It is interesting in that way.

The story did seem to lose focus at times, maybe explaining some things too quickly, but I think it was overall a good premise. I couldn't make a strict judgement on the whole thing, because I haven't read the full story, especially not with a mystery, the ending is always the key.

Overall, I would like to see where this story winds up, and I think that you are fairly good, you just need to work on some things with the pacing of your story telling. I have read much worse, so your looking so far so good, but I would like to see a more organized and linear narrative.

Thanks for the thoughts, I'll clarify a few things

First off, there are 2 main characters. One I haven't named yet, the other is Jacob(who is mentioned in Chapter 2) The story continues to switch between those character's point of view, also the friend you are referring to(Mason) his father was a dispatcher who would bring him to work and let him answer calls that were confirmed tame(The backstory is more of an accident on the father's part)

John is the farmer btw

Thanks for stating that things might be explained to fast, I'll try and slow it down

I was kind of surprised you didn't say anything about my young characters extremely depressing and dark backstories.

Quote: King-Pen Krazy

Quote: BlackNight12

Okay, so this is what my honest thoughts are after reading it.

It started off pretty interesting, actually. In my head I was trying to think of an answer to the mystery before much was even explained. I like mystery stories in general, so that is just normal for me.

I have a question. I think I might have been missing something, but you never claified the age of the main character or his/her friends or if the main character is a boy or a girl. He/She says he/she started a farm, but if he/she is only a teenager, then how did he/she start the farm? Also, one of the friends were a dispatcher, right?

One part that interested me was the fact that not only did someone die, but the main character's animals would disappear. That doesn't line up with the "rumour/story" or anything, so it portrays it as if the main character has a seemingly random piece of information, that will later be woven into the plot. It is interesting in that way.

The story did seem to lose focus at times, maybe explaining some things too quickly, but I think it was overall a good premise. I couldn't make a strict judgement on the whole thing, because I haven't read the full story, especially not with a mystery, the ending is always the key.

Overall, I would like to see where this story winds up, and I think that you are fairly good, you just need to work on some things with the pacing of your story telling. I have read much worse, so your looking so far so good, but I would like to see a more organized and linear narrative.

Thanks for the thoughts, I'll clarify a few things

First off, there are 2 main characters. One I haven't named yet, the other is Jacob(who is mentioned in Chapter 2) The story continues to switch between those character's point of view, also the friend you are referring to(Mason) his father was a dispatcher who would bring him to work and let him answer calls that were confirmed tame(The backstory is more of an accident on the father's part)

John is the farmer btw

Thanks for stating that things might be explained to fast, I'll try and slow it down

I was kind of surprised you didn't say anything about my young characters extremely depressing and dark backstories.

Ok, thank you for clearing that up. There are no problems there. Like I said, I was just confused.

Yeah, I like more detailed writing. Not painfully slow, but enough to where the pacing feels more engaging.

lol, they were depressing. I've watched a lot of anime and soap operas so the dark backstories are kind of a natural thing for me. I liked the stories though.

The main characters sister's story was interesting. I'm interested to see where it comes into play in the grand scheme of things. If you play on the backstories of the characters while keeping it relevant to the main story, then it will help further engage your readers, and form attachments to the characters. Especially if your targeting an audience who are into dramas.