LJ Idol, Week 30: "A Cataract of Voices" [fiction]

[dslartoo]

The room was painted a soothing pink; the furniture was softly padded at the edges and anything remotely harmful had been removed from the place. There was a window to the outside world, opening to a colorful, flaring garden with a soft gravel walking path, but she could only look at it through the glass. They rarely took her outside anymore; she

Comments

[n3m3sis42]

Oh my god. This is perfect.

[dslartoo]

Wonderful to hear, but a bit nonspecific. What about it rang so strongly for you?

Regardless, thanks so much for coming by all the same!

cheers,
Phil

[n3m3sis42]

The characters were real. Sometimes (not often enough) when I write, I can feel the characters speaking to me and it's the best thing ever because it's like I'm not even writing them. I felt like that about the characters in this story. :)

(Oh, and also the concept was cool, but I'm into that sort of thing anyway.)

[dslartoo]

Excellent. It could easily have been just a faceless doctor, a faceless set of interns, with Mary the only real character in the tale, but I did try hard to invest the doctor (and the interns, particularly the Evil One) with personalities of their own. I'm happy it came through.

Thanks for clarifying for me! :)

cheers,
Phil

[halfshellvenus]

I'll pile on. The ending really made the story for me, even though creepy isn't usually my thing. It really slammed the prompt home, because it showed the prompt in a way that gave you as much a visceral sense of it as Mary. *shudders*

It was also, independent of the prompt, a really good and complete story. And one of the things I liked about it was that you weren't sure whether the doctor was more upset about what the "cesspool mind" did to Mary as a person or as scientific marvel... and neither was he. There's such humanity in that portrayal of him, and proof of why those gray areas are sometimes much more vivid and perfect than hard-lined characters where there are no doubts ever as to their motivations/feelings. I mean, you could say much the same about a robot, which really isn't what you want people thinking about a human character at all!