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Prose critique:  excerpt from my novel (DARK)

Madbuttonhatter
Ryan R Morgan
Twisted Dreamer
United States 1awards
Joined 19th Apr 2018
Forum Posts: 44

After lumbering through the gargantuan gates, and uncovering the ominous room before him, Franklin was mortified by a stark revelation. He had been shepherded into a hall, far more significant than the claustrophobic chambers and cavernous sewers of his prior experiences, both in reality and lucid dreams.  The anxious FBI operative had encroached upon the cult’s inner sanctum, the sacred heart of their bastardized interpretation of puritanism.  A cacophony of incense and musty odors clogged Franklin’s nostrils further upon his ingress into the interior of this massive church, or more accurately, cathedral.  The illustrious temple was besmirched with insidious nostalgia that threatened to disassemble the artificial memories Franklin had crafted to obfuscate the trauma of his youth.  The symbols of the cult proliferated his vision and glowed with the same intensity as the eyes of the perverse priest who violated him in his youth.  The very same perverse priest who also gifted him with painful mementos, scars both physical and psychological.
         
The Gothic arches spiraled to dizzying heights and grazed the heavens with a stone cold touch. The ceiling was lined with frescoes that glorified the town’s seedy past, painting it’s tyrants, bigots and sharpshooters as bona-fide saints and martyrs.  At the pinnacle of the flying buttresses was a tacky yet finely detailed fresco of Sparrow Cove founder, staunch puritan, and utter psychopath, Benedict Sparrow shaking hands with Jesus Christ himself.  Both figures were awash with a burning celestial glow and adorned with angelic wingspans. The scene was delicately painted, as if the artist had made a bodacious attempt to eclipse the skimpy depiction of halos above revered figures in other Christian denominations while simultaneously parodying a famous Pink Floyd album cover.
     
Franklin’s gaze transitioned from the immense ceiling to the floor level, were he could see oak pews lined with commendable symmetry, such as most churches typically would contain.  There was a slight, albeit perturbing addition however. Nailed into each set of the otherwise innocuous staples of Abrahamic carpentry were a pair of long rusty chains that slithered across the floor.  They were hardly perceptible amongst ghastly shades, both literal and incarnate that flickered over the massive burgundy stone walls. These shadows danced across the dimly lit cathedral, like a macabre gathering of cavorting ghouls wandering through eternal purgatory.  Their dance was archaic, almost paganistic in its stylings. The shadows manifested into a physical form, transmuting into men cloaked in obsidian robes, men who gathered in a ritualistic mass and recited ancient prayers through songs in an ominous pre-latin, pre-germanic, nameless language that Franklin heard countlessly in his stay at Sparrow Cove. The archaic language beguiled the FBI operative during his lucid dreams and real-world nightmares.  The hooded figures shuffled their feet, raised their cadaverous hands above their hooded visages, and spread rusty needles across the tiled floor from wicker baskets held in their right hands, like a demented interpretation of the Easter bunny on Sunday morning. Needles rained from their pale hands, and burgeoned into tangled clumps of thorns that the hooded devotees trampled over gingerly. Tiny scrapes and cuts clustered on their bare feet, despite the reveling cultists hardly emoting a single wince as they conducted their foreboding waltz.

Justafan18
Justafan
Thought Provoker
United States
Joined 13th Apr 2018
Forum Posts: 9

Before I comment, I think you should know I have no degree of any kind. I just know what I like.

This is very descriptive and pulls you in until the word “obfuscate”. Then the trip you were taking me on broke away because my mind left the story to wonder what in the world that meant!

I’ve always been told to try to keep the reader in the story with you.

Again, I’m no expert!

I read 3 times and the first time the thread broke. The second time it was more cohesive and the third time I stayed in the spell you had created!

I like very much what I read.

Always
Justafan

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