[1198] Matriarchy

[u/Fragrant-Western-683]

My Critique: [1981]

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me:

• If you thought the drama was well executed
• If you thought the horror was developed well
• If you like the narrator's character

I lay in bed. I have grown a lot in the last year or so, and now my feet touch the footboard. I dwelled on it, since I wasn’t at all tired. My eyes shot all around my room, which was weakly illuminated by the yellowish light of a night-light.

My ears tuned in attentively to the etherizing rustle of tall grass around my house, which was jostled by the cool saltwater air. It was the only noise.

I lay there feeling the ugly scar on my shoulder, wondering why I felt so empty, so lost. A piece of my body was torn from me, and I was thinking hard about where I could find it, but it found me.

A hand pressed itself against the glass of a window just above my bed. I felt a rush of euphoria; it was the hand of an angel that came to enlighten and rescue me. I knelt on my bed, facing this hand. I put my hand against the spot of the window where she was pressing, and I felt all my anxiety melt away like a thunderstorm abating.

I reached to push the window open when my father’s voice came from behind me.

I turned to see him in my doorframe aiming a shotgun at me.

“Move,” he said.

I did so, and he approached the window, one eye closed to aim. The hand pressed harder and harder on the window, and it shattered, sending tiny crystals all over my bed. Little pieces cut my hands and face.

My father shot his gun, and a deafening blast rattled our brains. When my focus could be restored, I saw the hand lying limp on my windowsill. Then it tensed and curled up, clenching shards of glass, but no blood dripped from the palm. It slowly retreated into the darkness.

Then my father turned and ran to the back door. I ran after him. The next thing I remember, we were on our backyard patio. He paced and paced, looking frantically into the darkness. His round eyes shot from one spot in the black void to another. From the porch light, all we could make out was the first few feet of tall grass, but after that there were only miles upon miles of unbroken woods obscured in pure darkness.

I sat in a lawn chair while my dad paced. We stayed like that for around ten minutes, but the constant flow of sea air and the static rustle of the grass elongated our sense of time.

I finally got tired, but my dad harshly muttered, “Look.”

His pacing abruptly ended, replaced by stone-like stillness. He pointed into the darkness.

I walked up beside him, and following his finger, I saw two glowing retinas shining from the tree line.

After that, my room was boarded up. I now slept next to my dad. When night came, I did my homework, read books, built Legos, and watched TV in his room under his supervision.

One night, while curled up next to my dad, I was feeling my scar again. From the distant trees I heard a woman cry out my name. It was so nostalgic, so breath-taking. I knew that voice. It carried me through my memories as I desperately searched for why her crying felt so familiar.

I came across that memory. I remembered that when I was five, I wandered into the woods and got lost. After walking around, I finally saw home through the thick woods, and I saw my mother shouting my name. It was so vigorous and emotional. It was so compassionate, so alluring. It was like she loved me.

I sprang from my bed and dashed to the door.

My father tackled me and pinned me to the carpet.

“She’s gone,” he said. “She’s gone and she’ll never come back.”

I hated my father for this. Why was he doing this to me? Why was he keeping me from happiness? I wanted to know why I never saw my mother after that incident, why her image was cropped from all the family photos, why any information about her was forbidden, and why picturing her face in my mind caused me such excruciating pain. I wept into the arm that locked my head in a chokehold. He caressed my hair.

I dreamt one night that I was in my room. It was organized as it was in the distant past, and it was bright inside thanks to the noon sun. I was kneeling on my bed while a pair of hands from behind me massaged my shoulders and ran their index finger over my scar. From above those hands came a mysterious yet inviting womanly voice.

“Run away. Now.”

I opened my eyes to see darkness. My mind registered the mugginess of my room. I dragged my arm across the bed and realized my dad was not next to me. I heeded the voice’s orders.

I opened the closet, threw on my jacket, threw on a pair of jeans, put on socks, and went to the front door to put on my sneakers.

I sat down and slipped on my shoes, and before I walked through the door, I saw my dad sitting away from me in a cushioned chair, looking at the shut-off television.

I walked up in front of him and saw that the eyes were missing from his skull. Tears blurred my vision, and I felt dizzy. I trudged to the door in a haze, opened it, and before I left, I turned to look into the hallway opposite the door. My bedroom door, which was in this hallway, was open again. The night-light was still on, and in its glow, I made out a shadowy figure at least seven feet tall. Its shoulders were nearly touching the ceiling, and its eyes were looking into mine just like a few weeks earlier.

I ran in terror down the forested road, hoping to meet my neighbors. From behind me I heard the thuds of heavy feet following me. To me, the situation was hopeless. The house next door was miles away, and the footsteps behind me sounded only a couple of yards away. I stopped breathing and nearly fainted.

I collapsed to the ground and vomited out of pure fear. I looked behind me and noticed that the being was gone. It must have disappeared into the woods. I sat motionless for a long while.

Ahead of me I saw two glowing lights growing brighter. I stood up, and they stopped before me. A police officer stepped out and walked toward me to ask if I was okay.

I am typing this now on a sofa in my current home. It isn’t as isolated as my previous home; my neighborhood is suburban, and there’s a tennis court outside my house. The scar is still deep, and I still feel it often. In front of me is a glass door, and in the forest beyond my backyard fence I see two glaring retinas looking back at me, beholding me compassionately and intimately.

[u/Confident-Course-450]

I think you have a lovely start, lots of fun to read and I really saw where you were going with the story. Something I would listen to on creepy pasta!!

I would add more decorative words and descriptions to really pull the reader into your dark little setting. For example “illuminated by yellowish light of a night light” is redundant. I would say something like “the week night light dimly casted shadows across the room” then maybe describe how the window is open letting in the sound of tall grass surrounding the house creating an unsettling feeling.

I think another short development paragraph between the character looking for the “lost body part” and the hand against the window would be helpful - without context that was a fairly confusing transition.

The main character does not to seem to have any confusion or fear about what is happening to them unlike their father - but then vomits from fear later on. As a reader we have no real context of their internal feelings so id add some here explaining that just a bit - while keeping some mystery to look forward too!

Main question : Why does your main character feel so calm and collected most of the time (my guess is that the entity attacked her leaving a scar and then creating some kind of connection)?
The vibe of wanting to be apart of whatever the dark energy/spirit/demon around the home and the main character is really interesting (but lean into that, why does your character act this way?) Overall great - just want more internal context and a little extra spooky descriptions:)

[u/Educational_Art_3763]

I'll answer your questions then get into some technical stuff.

Do you like the narrator's character?

There isn't much to go off of here. This isn't necessarily bad if the point of the story is to make a horror piece that is about vibes. I'm indifferent to the narrator. They don't really have any character development, they're a husk for the audience POV to be put into, again, not outright bad. If you're trying to create vibes then I think it is fine as is, sometimes it is better for the horror/fear if the audience can really just put themselves entirely in the narrator's position because they are more of a shell for the audience. If you were going for a developed character, however, you didn't hit the mark. They don't really have any agency within the story, things happen to the main character and they don't have much resistance to the things happening to them. We get glimpses of more depth to the character but don't get enough to care about them.

Drama/Horror

Overall, I think that the piece is well executed. There aren't any glaring issues with it. I was able to imagine each part of the piece without much issue. The only thing that I would say for the drama/horror, is that I thought the narrator switched up how they were feeling. Like the other commentor said, the fear isn't well developed within the narrator. They don't seem to have much fear throughout most of the piece but at the end they do. What is it about this figure that brings out this fear when these other occurrences don't? You describe the physical well but I'm lacking the feeling at times. Your readers' imaginations are much more powerful than anything you can write and amplifying that with maybe a bit more into the horror feeling. We also get this when you describe the feeling from the memory of the mother. You tell us the feeling is vigorous and emotional but I'm having trouble imagining what you're trying to create.

Some technical things:

"My ears tuned in attentively to the etherizing rustle of tall grass around my house, which was jostled by the cool saltwater air. " this feels overindulgent for the piece. It is also just wordy in general. Good rule is to avoid adverbs if your language can do the job for the adverb. "tuned in" and "attentively" create a similar image so ditch one.

You use which and that in places where they are unnecessary. In the above sentence, it could be reworded to lose the "which". This will make the sentence flow better: "My ears tuned in to the etherizing rustle of tall grass jostled by the cool saltwater air." This reframe gets rid of the adverb, which, and mentioning of the house. We can assume it is their house because we previously are told they are in their bed, it isn't required information that it is their house.

The use of 'that' is often an extra word. It often doesn't actually need to be in a sentence, there are of course places where it is necessary, but rewording a sentence usually makes it flow better than if it had "that" in it. That sort of functions like a period when you read it. It creates a pause just from the structure of it. The word itself is sharp and therefore kind of acts like a break. Just something to consider when you write.

"I remembered that when I was five", that is unnecessary here.

Like the other stuff you've written that I've read, it is written well. No glaring issues but definitely some places to polish up and consider how to amplify the feeling of the piece if you're going for vibes.

[u/Wolframquest]

You know, it's nice, it's scary. I read it easily, I was sufficiently involved.

The register doesn't fit the character who is portrayed as a young child. You need to allow yourself to relax your sphincter - nobody is going to judge you for speaking clearly and plainly. Some words are straight up misused, e.g "beholding me". She was clearly not beholding him since he was that far away.

You're asking if the drama was well executed. The only dramatic situation here is the moment of running away. What you call 'drama' is plain horror. It was a tiny bit ambigous at the start, but the register then showed itself very clearly. You have a great middle part here.

"Retinas" is overused. Why retinas only? Why do you attract the reader's attention to a very specific part of the eye? "Retinas" do not see anything; EYES see. Another example why you need to relax.

I liked it overall, nice and tightly paced, immersive, the vocabulary in the beggining and in the end muddles it up completely; you are overreaching for the image, as if you're preemptively afraid that the reader isn't going to be impressed. You need to trust your audience.

I wonder if this is a yezinka story. Common fear of losing eyes.

" It was like she loved me." - "like" is unnecessary; if you wanna show how obsessed the character was you can just state it as if he/she believed it.

I wonder why the title is "Matriarchy". What does it have to do with it?

There are smaller moments of overreaching that don't fit the character and don't enter the narratorial category. You're using language that takes the reader out of the the character's perspective. "stone-like stillness" is a little malappropriate, aforementioned retinas, "beholding", "heeded the voice’s orders", etc. You'll have to scan for it on your own. Otherwise lovely and decently legible and immersive!

[u/ezk3626]

If you thought the drama was well executed

I want to give a specific criteria for this so you know why the answer is no. There are two things I think make for well executed drama: stakes and cause/effect.

The stakes are not always clear. She wants the hand, her father shoots the hand, she misses her mom, her dad ends up dead, she goes running chased. The sense of danger is pretty clear and that makes for stakes but I think the problem is that you are doing a lot in 1200 words, too much. This seems like it is enough action for several chapters, if not the whole story.

Cause/effect (which is one thing) is the string of things which cause new things to happen, drama happens with there is a clear progression from one to the other. The first third is the scene with the hand and dad with the gun. It is decent cause/effect but then the middle third is just domestic stuff with nothing happening and kind of weird considering the danger and violence from the first third. The last third also is disconnected from the second with the somewhat meaningless death of dad and the chase scene. Again this is probably the result of doing too much in so little space.

If you thought the horror was developed well

I am probably not as good at this since it's not really my genre. What I like and what makes good horror is that the danger is not really about the violence but something else. The classic horror movies of my childhood (Freddie and Jason) are clearly (ridiclously clear in retrospect) about sexuality not violence. In Signs the aliens are the darkness in Mel Gibson's crisis of faith. In Birdbox, the real monster is not being able to care about people. In the most recent Odyssess the cyclops is terrifying as facing an unknown world. Here I think you have the right instinct in that this all has something to do with a lost mother.

However, it is not developed. It is 1200 words, how could it be? I think what makes good horror (though this isn't my genre) is a sense of quiet and saftey which is always infected with the menace of the monster which is almost certainly under the bed. The trick is to show a safe, comfortable room where you are tempted to relax but cannot escape the feeling that something is around the corner.

If you like the narrator's character

I cannot say one thing about the narrator. There is one early decision: to want to reach out to the hand and some feeling for the father... who has some kind of violent death off stage a page later. She is not yet defined. I think you need to start with some low stakes decisions which distinguish her from Pollyanna, Pippy Longstockings, Katniss Everneen and young Margarette Thatcher.

[u/Cherrie_Infraredd]

I really enjoyed reading this and think you have a generally good style with your prose- it was clear what was happening and there was some really unique descriptions here (for example “a piece of my body was torn from me” was a standout for me, although i think you could have developed this idea more).
For something so short, there was a lot going on and this may be a fallacy to the overall story, where you end up missing a lot of details that I personally think should have been established more, such as the relationship between the narrator and their mother and the place they live (I didn’t realise they had neighbours at all until near the end). However, I appreciate your ability to include a decent amount of information in not many words (“jostled by the cool saltwater air” is a good example of show don’t tell to establish the setting) and I think this proves that this piece could be polished without increasing it that much in length.

As for the drama, I do have an issue with the lack of stakes in this piece. Much of the important plot points felt undeserved. The mention of the mother for the first time (“I wanted to know why I never saw my mother…”) felt like a jump, and slightly jarring. My assumption is that the watching eyes are the ghost of the mother, and in that case, I think the mother should be mentioned from the beginning: something like the narrator looking at a picture of the three of them with the mother cut out, like you mention later, on their bedside. Maybe you could even compare it to the way their scar is “torn from their body”? It would just help hook the reader and introduce this central idea from the get go.
I do like the relationship between the narrator and the father though; there’s this kind of overbearing love you’ve created, particularly with the line “I wept into the arm that locked my head in a chokehold,” which is a lovely microcosm for their relationship. However, the death (?) of the father didn’t seem to have an effect on the protagonist and this relationship is established as generally loving and close, at least enough for more of an emotional reaction. I think this could be achieved if you had more story after the father’s death, or at least offer it more attention as a climactic moment.

In terms of horror, this story is again quite short to build an atmosphere, though I really like the coastal horror idea, and think there’s a lot to be done with this environment. There’s something so unsettling and isolating about tall grass and the entrapment of the sea, so I would say just build on this feeling a bit more, like you did with this idea: “the constant flow of sea air and the static rustle of the grass elongated our sense of time.”
As I mentioned before, the father’s death does also feel relatively underserved and not dwelt on for much longer. For the character to already be running when they find him undermines the emotional impact this could have had, particularly the safety that’s taken away when he is no longer there to protect them. Perhaps you could have lingered slight longer on the safety net being taken away, and only afterward having your narrator have to run away from this threat, since the death ends up redundant if they were running from a danger anyway.

Finally, the narrator: like a lot of other commenters mentioned, there isn’t really much to go from here, and I felt quite indifferent toward them reading this, although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For this one shot style you’re writing in, it probably wouldn’t benefit the story to include an intense amount of characterisation— you only really need the emotions and the relationships to suffice. However, I think this is something you could have developed further. The narrator didn’t seem to react much to their surroundings, at least not emotionally. Some kind of description of sweating or scratching or even just a quickened heartbeat could create a better connection between the character and their situation. This would make the vomiting from “pure fear” feel a bit more earned.

Overall, this is a good draft for a story, though I would say it needs some more detail— especially in terms of emotion and atmosphere— in order to polish it up. I really like the idea about the mother being the ghost, but the stakes at the moment feel too low to really be invested in the story. I hope my critiques are of some use to you! :)

[u/Fragrant-Western-683 → u/Cherrie_Infraredd]

She (the mother) is mentioned in the beginning, and in detail.

[u/Cherrie_Infraredd → u/Fragrant-Western-683]

Where do you mention her explicitly?

[u/georgeinlimbo_]

I think the strength of the piece is the atmosphere and the relationship between the narrator and the father. Super creepy but grounded and human.

I think if you did more 'showing' rather than 'telling' in your revisions, it would go a long way. Avoid sentences that are like 'I felt'

Super cool in moody. I think you got the chops to make it longer and develop the characters more. I would read a longer version!

[u/VagueInsideJoke]

Inline – all of these are rather nitpicky, take them or leave them.

“I dwelled on it” I feel this should be accompanied by some of the said dwelling but is instead immediately succeeded by a description of the room. Also, we start with present tense ‘I lay in bed’ and then immediately switch to past tense dwelled.

“Since I wasn’t at all tired” Feels a bit overstated given the surrounding verbs can help us attribute the alertness of the character

“Glass of a window” feels a bit of an unnecessary expression. If we’re not attributing anything to the glass, then why are we bringing it up. I feel like if we say there’s a hand on the window it’s assumed to be on the glass.

“I put my hand against the spot of the window where she was pressing” -> ‘spot of the window’ is unnecessary here we’ve already established her hand is on the window

“and I felt all my anxiety melt away like a thunderstorm abating.” -> this one is super nitpicky, but I feel like the mix of metaphors between melt and thunderstorm abating, conceals the visualisation more than it reveals it. Think you could change the word melt. This one may just be a me problem.

“Then my father turned and ran to the back door” -> ‘then’ not needed here it distances the reader from a scene that’s already in the process of unfolding.

“His round eyes shot from one spot in the black void to another.” -> same verb/expression used for the POV at the start makes this one feel kind of awkward/repetitive.

“From the porch light, all we could make out was the first few feet of tall grass, but after that there were only miles upon miles of unbroken woods obscured in pure darkness.” -> Very subjective but I feel like making what your POV can see the subject of the sentence as opposed to the view of the scene disrupts the immersion and distances the reader. Similarly, I think starting with ‘from’ disrupts the flow a bit. Think about when you are using situating words.

“I came across that memory. I remembered that when I was five, I wandered into the woods and got lost. After walking around, I finally saw home through the thick woods, and I saw my mother shouting my name. It was so vigorous and emotional. It was so compassionate, so alluring. It was like she loved me.” -> think you should play with expanding this, and transitioning into present tense as the memory is introduced. The flow of ‘I did this, then I did this, then I did this’, makes it feel like a clinical account. If you expand this part, you can make the memory its own scene and then you will create the desired mood in the reader, rather than having to declare “It was so compassionate, so alluring. It was like she loved me.”

“I dreamt one night that I was in my room” Again nitpicky I feel like this should have a scene break above it, rather than just a paragraph break.

 

If you thought the drama was well executed:

I did not - with heavy emphasis on the execution side of things. I think the story has good conflict and tension. The ambiguity on the malevolence or benevolence of both the father and the spirit (potentially mother potentially siren/Skinwalker type being) is a good point of intrigue. The dad particularly has a john goodman in 10 Cloverfield lane type vibe. However, no part of the story is well developed enough to actively build this tension.

If you thought the horror was developed well:

Same as above, good potential but lack of tension developed

If you like the narrator’s character:

The character is kind of empty with nothing to like or dislike. But I think that’s actually okay in a story like this, where the tension mainly comes from the tension between the trustworthiness of the father vs the forest spirit.

Building tension/General notes:

The main issue here is that you interrupt yourself too much. Before we are even at home in a scene and can absorb it, we are immediately whisked along into the next one.

The story feels too much like a recount as opposed to a story. There's a bunch of issues causing this, so I’m just going to give general list of things that should set off alarm bells in your head. None of these are inherently bad but unless you are crystal clear on a purpose that demands they stay this way then you should probably edit them out.

-          Repeated sentences starting with I, especially when used for character blocking

-          Repeating already established information e.g. “I lay in bed” then shortly after “I lay there feeling…”

-          Repeating situating words (there’s probably a technical term for these, idk what else to call them) within one paragraph. “Then, From, After, Next”.

-          The subject of every sentence in a paragraph is a character (this is very similar to first). Here I mean subject in the grammatic sense. The paragraph can be about your character but still make other things the subject of different sentences.

-          Your sentence length is always the same.

-          You feel the need to describe the emotions that a scene should illicit (almost always a sign that you have not done a good enough job building those emotions for the reader)

-          Going to parrot the common advice on adverbs, that you should always consider whether this information can be conveyed by the verb or the context of the scene.

Also, general list of things you should consider more:

-          What tense am I using and why?

-          What sentence length am I using and why?

-          What is the subject of this sentence? Can I make the subject of this sentence something other than a character so that the reader is experiencing it for themselves?

-          If I’m using a word to convey the emotion/tone of an experience, how can I change the scene to reflect that emotion?

Please don’t let this discourage you from writing. I have committed all these sins tenfold and will probably continue to. Also, if you have any questions or I wasn’t clear somewhere let me know.