I like the subtle twist at the end that leaves you wondering, "Wait? What? Lover?" which gives the whole story a different angle. That was pretty cool.
Upon re-reading it I find it well structured. I notice that you've framed the two stories by changing tense. He speaks in the present tense when he's talking to the police and in the past tense when relating the story about the men in the field. I think that works pretty well.
I feel like you set up a certain mood in the beginning with respect to the interrogation that never really happened. The initial mood is that he's going to get worked over by these 3rd-world law enforcement officials and in the end they're just really nice about all this business. It makes me wonder why you set that up in the first place?
As a suggestion for how to crank it up a notch, instead of just changing tense when you move between frames of the story, might I suggest you move into a more immediate kind of story-telling, maybe communicate the apparent panic and disjointed nature of a telling that would go along with a lion attack (whether invented on the spot or truthful account.) By this I mean you interleave sections of live conversation into the story showing little vignettes of the lawyers' trip that communicates some of the themes you want to express, i.e. John is a winner, he takes charge, he's better at everything. This also gives you an opportunity to drop subtle hints that maybe something else is going on under the surface of their relationship that might give the reader a reason to back and look for clues that suggested the narrator was not sad to see his friend eaten by a lion.
Upon re-reading it I find it well structured. I notice that you've framed the two stories by changing tense. He speaks in the present tense when he's talking to the police and in the past tense when relating the story about the men in the field. I think that works pretty well.
I feel like you set up a certain mood in the beginning with respect to the interrogation that never really happened. The initial mood is that he's going to get worked over by these 3rd-world law enforcement officials and in the end they're just really nice about all this business. It makes me wonder why you set that up in the first place?
As a suggestion for how to crank it up a notch, instead of just changing tense when you move between frames of the story, might I suggest you move into a more immediate kind of story-telling, maybe communicate the apparent panic and disjointed nature of a telling that would go along with a lion attack (whether invented on the spot or truthful account.) By this I mean you interleave sections of live conversation into the story showing little vignettes of the lawyers' trip that communicates some of the themes you want to express, i.e. John is a winner, he takes charge, he's better at everything. This also gives you an opportunity to drop subtle hints that maybe something else is going on under the surface of their relationship that might give the reader a reason to back and look for clues that suggested the narrator was not sad to see his friend eaten by a lion.
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