BrigitsFlame, September - Week 1

[amused4ever]

Here we go again! :) Original fic forbrigits_flame.

Title: Parasite (yeah, not much for originality this time)
Prompt: Parasite
Word Count: 1098
Rating: PG
Summary: Sometimes, it's only a matter of...time.
Author's Notes: Ehhh, not sure what I think about this one. Cookie if you guess what the "parasite" is? :D?

Comments

[hardassonance]

As she swung the bathroom door open, the musty scent of mildew rushed at her blank face-usually enough to make her flinch violently in disgust, but today…her senses were blocked, the world muffled.

The effect you're going for at the end of this sentence might be better if you used a semicolon or another piece of information squeezed between two commas. This is instead of the ellipsis.

Example: “in disgust but today, there was no reaction, her senses were blocked, the world muffled.”
Example: “in disgust, but not today; her senses were blocked, the world muffled.”

You keep the same intended pause you want after “today” in these examples, without the ellipsis.

the small, pointless window most bathrooms seem to have for one reason or another.

Good observation. :)

knowing she could look that lividly insane and ready to care of all that threatened her.

ready to care? Kill, maybe?

Then she went to the side-toilet room and took a crap. Pulling up her pants and flushing, she went back over to the tub. It was almost full.

This seems out of place. It's very abrupt and quick imagery that goes against the slow build-up that you have kept going up until now. I don't really know how you could describe someone taking a crap with slow build-up and lose the intensity of the scene, haha, but you might want to consider taking it out altogether and replacing it with something else that provides the break in time for the bathroom to be full.

one body-bag sipped up tight

zipped.

Those were all the errors I could find in spelling, grammar, and the like. There could probably be a few more if I wanted to be very technical and strict, but some of them I think are artistic choices and add to the piece. Repeated use of hyphens, capital letters, speech in the middle of narration, and the like. I like using that last one myself.

As I said a little above, you have a very good gradual build up to the reveal that is only marred in one spot. You have smaller climbs as well with the phrase "Needed to disappear." getting more and more italicized, longer, and looking crazier as the story goes on. The character's reactions and thoughts also reflect that and it works.

At the end of the story you disconnect with the main character as she dies in a very subtle, cool way. You don't make it obvious what just happened and you take a step back, have a paragraph explaining what just happened, what brought the character to this point in the story, and bring it back to the character's death. That paragraph is a perfect length and meshes really well with everything you have before and after it. Good job. The end is an easy place to stumble and you didn't let that happen.

If I was to suggest changes, I would probably add another "Needed to disappear." near the end to wrap it up nicely with the beginning. You also have a very good image of her body moving, without resistance, to the force of the running water which you don't want to ruin. You'd have to be sneaky.

I think you stretched the concept of parasite a little bit but that's okay. As long as the prompt got something out of you. I have to admit when you started out with the bathroom I thought the parasite was going to be that the character was pregnant. Then you started describing mud and leaves and the snarl in the mirror and I thought maybe you were going with a werewolf story. The parasite is insanity, and I think you could have played that up a little bit more but it still works.

I enjoyed this. Good start to my editing duties here. Thank you. :)

[amused4ever]

Thank you! :)