I ignore Mum's call. My new Lego Power Miners Crystal Sweeper is busy collecting crystals and Rock Monsters. I wish my Crystal Sweeper would sweep up Mum. She calls again. We are having stuffed marrow for dinner. But I still run down the stairs.
I wolf down my dinner, because I want to go trick or treating. I transform myself and exit my house.
At last I snuggle into the burrow of my comforting covers. Glancing at my clock, it says 10:39 pm. I hear a quiet purring noise. It seems to be coming from under my bed. Peering into the dark expanse under my bed, I notice a werewolf mask next to my football. I reassure myself that it is probably just my Halloween mask. But I remember that I was a vampire today, not a werewolf. I check under my bed again; this time the eyes are shining rubies.
Staring at me, it growls. Pushing my head out of the way, it emerges from underneath the bed. A brown, furry beast towers above me. It shrieks again.
I race like a Bugatti towards my Mum's bedroom, barricading the door. Mum is not there.
So I throw myself out of the window, landing in a bush. Scrambling out of the ditch, I kick the front door open. I enter the living room, switching on every light. I grab my iPod and put on the headphones.
I jerk awake and see that the DVD player now says 7:29 am. I creep upstairs and check under my bed. No werewolf. "Did you sleep okay?" asks Mum. "I slept fine," I answer a bit too quickly. I scoff down my breakfast.
When I go to bed that night, I swear I hear a faint, yet recognisable purr.
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3 comments:
I like your work, very entertaining
Hey Allspark,
You sure have proven yourself to be a master suspense in this piece! Being quite a big vampire and werewolf fanatic, I cannot help but say that your story is showing absolutely great potential.
There is no doubting the fact that you went back and looked over the requirements for Task 5 in great detail. From this piece you’ve been able to show that you’ve looked deeper into creating a more complex and detailed atmosphere of tension and suspense, and you had already demonstrated the ability to plummet straight into the core of the action without the predictable fairytale beginnings. Your beginning is extremely admirable. At your age I found it extremely difficult to remove all tedious and unnecessary introductions to a prose piece, so I’m extremely glad to see that you’re able to capture a reader’s attention and drag them into and amongst your writing with only four words.
Your personality really shines through your writing. Every task that you do you’re able to just leak just a little drop of who you are, and it’s absolutely great to see the child within you in your writing. It gives this piece especially a strange innocence and naivety in regard to the twist on the werewolf tale. The kicker of a twist in your story was totally unexpected – I absolutely adored the shift and realisation that hit me when I read: “But I remember that I was a vampire today, not a werewolf.” So very cleverly done, I can’t wait to see what you produce in your future tasks. Your growing from strength to strength each week, so try to keep these imaginative ideas afloat as much as possible. You imaginatively fooled us into automatically thinking that you had “transformed” into a wolf because (I’m suspecting) you knew of the reflex reference that we’d make to the species. That really was fantastic.
What made me laugh was how you landed in a ditch after throwing yourself out of a window. Good job on lightening that quite intense fear of being captured. Next time you write a thriller story, however, it would be nice if you could just drag out that suspense for just a bit longer (although I’m aware that you had a word limit).
If there’s one thing that I think you could improve, it would be the time shift towards the end of the piece. After “I grab my iPod and put on the headphones”, I expect something further to happen. Perhaps it was the assumption I made that after the headphones had been put on music would have started playing that confused me the most. The lack of the link to when after/if the music stopped and when you actually fell asleep just made the following line seem slightly ‘off’.
To end on a good note though, your last line is great. The “recognisable purr” just opens up another chance to continue the story and leaves us anxious to know if will be ok.
I was very impressed with this, keep up all that you’re doing.
Who needs the Twilight saga when we’ve got Allspark? :)
E.
Dear Allspark
You've got a superb moderator in Eternity Forever. I'll just add a few more thoughts.
Your imagery and language is only getting better:
"At last I snuggle into the burrow of my comforting covers."
The warm sounds at the beginning of the sentence and the shell of 'c' alliteration ("comforting covers") create an aural mirror of your image. I don't know if you intended the pun of 'burrrow' and "borough" but that's the type of serendipity your talent makes room for.
"I race like a Bugatti" and the thematic reinvention of the tired "wolf down my dinner" are strong and clever.
As for the story itself, it's strongest when you write in short sentences: "I ignore Mum's call" somehow creates an ominous atmosphre on its own.
However the pacing of the story which I believe you intend to be fast and frightening is sometimes undermined by what I think are superflous words.
Be especially careful with indications of time. For instance, "at last", 'this time", "so" and "when". Read through this again and look at these types of phrases and see if, by using fewer of them, the pace of the story improves for you.
Overall I don't think this theme plays to your strengths. As a horror story it is beautifully written but, for a task of this length, you'd be better off concentrating on one moment, for instance, peering under the bed. I believe that you could create a very frightening story with your subtle and clever descriptions, but it would have to be a much longer piece. You've got a few years to work on that though. ;-)
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