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Lightning in a Jar · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
The Eyes Behind Old Southern Charm
Buddhist monks should drive on the Arkansas Interstate. For hundreds of miles, it is two lanes of pavement and sun-scorched grass. No stimuli whatsoever, the perfect place to achieve that spiritual sense of deindividuation—that sort of mind-death that makes you forget you’re a living person and supposedly achieve oneness with the universe or something. Serenity, peace, that sort of hogwash.

I got half of that down. The mind-death part. Not like I need the Arkansas Interstate’s help on that front, though. Maybe one day I’ll get to that second part. Not today, however. Probably not tomorrow either. Probably never.

There ain’t no rest for the wicked.

I white-knuckle the faded leather grip on my steering while I peek into my rear-view mirror for what must have been the fortieth time today. Nobody’s there. No police. Good. Great. Wonderful.

Perspiration has collected uncomfortably in the small of my back, awkwardly sticking me to leather interior. I let out an exhale and jam my hand into the elastic band of my skirt, wiping away the moisture. If father could see me, he’d be hopping and hollering right now. This is not behavior befitting a proper lady.

I wonder just how long my little excursion through the Arkansian countryside would last. Would I make it to Texas? What would I even do if I did? What even was there to do at all?

The rattling of the engine on the ‘91 Mustang distracts me from all those questions I knew I couldn’t answer. It’s a beat-up old sports car that hasn’t seen maintenance in years. Lot of things just plain don’t work: the A/C, the radio, and the 8-track cassette player have been busted for years. The windshield is cracked, and there’s a thick layer of rust that runs along the underside of the grille, just beneath the paneling.

If the previous owner cared at all to maintain it, it would have been worth a pretty penny as a collector’s model. As is, it’s more a junker than anything. But a Mustang is still a Mustang at heart, no matter how old and battered it gets.

I think it suits me just fine. Never saw myself driving a fancy new car anyhow.

Never envisioned myself fleeing from the police to Texas in a car stolen from a priest either. Life has a way of surprising you sometimes, though. You never know to what depths you’ll sink if the circumstances are right.

And I have certainly sunk to the bottom. I’ve sunk to the deepest, darkest depths where no light dare shine: a veritable tar pit of sin and depravity from where there is no salvation and no choice but to drown in its bleakness.

I don’t mind going to Hell. I just don’t want to go to prison.

The dashboard tells me that the Mustang is running low on fuel. The fuel light isn’t on yet, so I have at least a couple gallons left, but that’s no relief. Like a typical car from the 90s, the Mustang guzzles gas like frat boy guzzles booze at a tailgate. At best I have another 24 miles left in the tank.

I kick myself for not stopping sooner. Who knows if I would reach a gas station before I ran out of gas.With the Arkansas Interstate, you never knew if the next gas station was in five miles or fifty.

The prospect of breaking down in BFE Arkansas does not appeal to me, but I can’t help but weigh my options. Maybe I could just ditch the car, run to the woods, and live like Chris McCandless or something.

No, stupid.

The police would find me for sure. There aren’t even any trees on this godforsaken road. Not a winning plan.

Not like I had a winning plan though. As providence would have it, however, within ten minutes, I see signs for Benton.

The city of Benton is a microcosm of every rural town across the Bible Belt. It's a shambling corpse of a city that died with its factories in the 70s. Those who could afford to leave, did, with only the poorest and most destitute people remaining. Fast food, gas, and low-rent motel chains propped Benton up like a marionette, giving it the mocking façade of life, but the rusted-out rooftops, busted concrete, and dilapidated buildings betray the illusion.

Benton felt like home. Most cities hid their ugliness, under a veneer of glitz and glamour. But not places like Benton. Or my home of Vanndale. Their ugliness was plain as day, unable to be hidden.

I don’t want to stop, but I have to. The less I have to think of home, the better. Before pulling off into the exit for Benton, I check for police officers. Thankfully, there are none. I pull into an Exxon station and kill the engine. The pumps look like they hadn’t been changed out since the 80s, but if they supply gas, I’m not complaining.

There’s still blood on the keychain as I take it out of the ignition. The priest’s blood, not mine. That won’t do. I dunk the keys in the tub meant for the windshield squeegee in a makeshift baptism.

“I now baptize you in the name of the father, son, and holy spirit, for the forgiveness of your sins, and the gift of the holy spirit,” I mockingly recite to myself, procuring a paper towel from the dispenser to wipe down the keys.

I notice there is a crucifix charm on the keyring. I remove it and toss it in the garbage.

“Amen.”

I walk in the store to pay for my pump in cash. Using the priest’s credit card would certainly ping the authorities to my location, and I couldn’t have that.

There is a teenaged girl behind the counter, and her back is to me. She has the full figure of a woman, filling out her jeans and blouse in all the right places with that sort of smooth roundness that men can’t resist. She wears her braided brunette hair long, reaching almost all the way down her back, like a true Southerner.

She hasn’t noticed I’ve entered the store yet.

Laying an elbow on the counter, I don’t alert her to my presence, and instead take time to appreciate the view. I wonder if this will be the last person I ever see before I am caught. I wouldn’t be terribly upset if she was. At least I would have gone out on a high note.

Finally, she turns around, and I’m immediately aware of two things:

She is beautiful. She has that special kind of beauty that only grows in a select few people that have won the genetics lottery. The kind of look that celebrities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in surgery trying to imitate.

She has a black eye. The purple, red, and orange mark surrounding her right eye is no doubt the size of a man’s curled fist. The swollen skin forces her eye partially shut, making it seem as if she were constantly squinting at me.

Despite this, she smiles the brightest smile I’d seen in years.

“Hello,” she says in a backwater accent you only find in these sorts of podunk towns. Her voice is thick like honey and equally sweet.

I hesitate to respond. There are a million thoughts running about in my mind.

I want to grab her by the hand right now and tell her I know how it feels to be hurt by someone you love. I wonder if she had been raped. I wonder how many people have asked her about it before. Had something been done about the person who gave her a black eye? Was this the first time? Who hurt her? Could it have been an accident? Would it be improper of me to ask?

I feel sadness, pity, and comradery swirl into a single tidal wave of emotion.

But more than anything I’m furious. I can feel my whole body shaking. I’m aware at this point I’m taking far too long to respond to this girl, but I can’t stop myself. I want to kill the man responsible for this, and every man like him. I want to watch him die.

Here you have a beautiful bluebonnet, grown from a town of weeds. One has to marvel that such a thing can even exist in this place. The single bright spot in a gloomy town of poverty and methamphetamine, and here it lies crushed before me. Crushed for being beautiful, crushed for having an iridescent glow of life.

I can think of no greater tragedy.

Her smile drops. She can sense my reaction.

I can’t look at her. It’s too painful. She reminds me so much of myself when I was her age.

“20 bucks for pump 3, please,” I mutter.

“Coming right up,” she says. The sweetness in her voice has faded to a more business-like demeanor, but it’s still there.

I muster the courage to meet her eyes, and I see something I’ve lacked for years. Call it what you want: a spark, a glint, a glimmer, whatever. The look of a person who hasn’t given up yet, hasn’t yet been squashed beneath the weight of the world. It’s the ray of hope and optimism for the future unclouded by the past.

I feel closer to this girl than anyone in my entire life. Maybe I could take her with me. Away from this hellhole called Benton.

Maybe then she wouldn’t end up like me.

“I...” I try to say something.

She braces herself, no doubt anticipating some sort of inquiry about her eye or the circumstances that lead to it. I can tell she’s dreading discussing the topic.

That knocks the wind out of me. The words I want fail to escape my lips.

“Nevermind.”

It was a pipe dream anyways. Perhaps if I was someone else, someone better, I could have said something. I could have helped. But I’m not that person. I can’t even help myself.

The memories are coming back now. Little flashes of my childhood are screaming from the back of my mind. Images, thoughts, feelings, sounds, all barrage me at once. I can feel my chest tightening as if there is a fist clenched around my heart, squeezing me like a stress ball. I know it’s not a heart attack, but it sure feels like one. I can’t breathe, the air suddenly absent from my lungs. I can’t stay here. Not like this.

I run out the door and break down sobbing in the priest’s car, head pressed against the steering wheel. I don’t want to think about this. I just want to get in the car and drive, drive away from this place of disease and death.




I’m six again. It’s Christmas. We’re at the Church. Mom is still alive.

The decorations are nothing special, not like anyone in Vanndale had a great sum of money to spend on them anyways, but to a child, it was a wonderland. I remember being awestruck by the lights and tinsels, all those bright, shiny things that seemed bring life to the deadness of Vanndale.

The priest has set up a makeshift Santa’s workshop and is dressed the part. He’s not quite as fat as Santa, not quite old enough, and his beard is a pretty obvious fake, but the other kids and I don’t care. It’s Santa Claus.

We all eagerly wait to tell Santa our Christmas wishes and after what seems like an eternity, it’s finally my turn.

“Come on up, little Ms. Megan,” Santa pats his lap with a chuckle. The priest is master of his craft and his laugh sounds just how I always imagined Santa’s would be.

I’m nervous, this is the Santa Claus after all, but my father ushers me forward. I have my request prepped: a race car driver Barbie—hopefully a modest request for Santa.

Santa pulls me up onto his lap. “So what do you want for Christmas, little girl?”

“I want…” I’m about halfway through my response when I notice it.

That lump. Next to his rolls of fat, underneath his britches, Santa has a hard, uncomfortable little bump. I’m I can feel it pressing, pressing into my backside, as Santa gently holds me in place on his lap. I don’t know what it means, not yet at least. If only—




I’m eight again. Mom is dead. Cancer. No money to pay for treatments. Wasn’t a pretty death.

It’s right after Sunday Mass, and Father has left me by myself at church. Told me to get a ride from someone back home.

Father is around less and less. I don’t know where he goes, but he always comes back irritable. He has spider bites along the underside his arms that seem to just get bigger and more plentiful. His face seems to slowly be cracking—the disease is taking him, but of course I don’t know that yet.

“C-can someone take me home?” I sputter out, nervous as all hell. I’m afraid I’m gonna half to walk home, which is five miles away, in the hot Arkansian sun. I’m dressed in my prettiest Sunday Best, and I’d hate to sweat in it.

Of course the priest answers. He smiles with that practiced warmth and assurance that only a man of God can manage.

“Sure can, little Ms. Megan.” His voice is smooth as silk, carefully tempered like a man speaking to a spooked doe. He takes me by the hand, gentle as can be, and guides me to the Mustang.

It’s in pristine condition. It’s still an old car, of course, but there isn’t a spot on it, the red paint sparkling with a fresh coat of wax.

I’m excited now. The priest has the coolest car in Vanndale, and I always loved hearing the v8 engine turnover with its thunderous roar. The Mustang has the power to go anywhere you wanted and look good while doing it.

He helps me open the door. It’s the long, heavy type of door found only old two-seaters. He shuts the door behind me as I gingerly make myself comfortable on the white leather interior, grateful that it is not burning hot like black leather would be.

“Ready for a ride, little Ms. Megan?” The priest sits himself down and cranks the car up.

The Mustang’s engine roars out.

“Yessir,” I respond earnestly.

“Good.” He smiles that priestly smile. “But I have to stop somewhere first before we get to your house, is that okay?”

“Yessir,” I say.

He drives out just a little bit along down the road away from the town and into the Arkansian countryside, where the road was no longer pavement, and there isn’t anything but sun-scorched grass for miles. He stops at no place in particular and kills the engine.

“Father, why are we stopping here?” I ask.

“We’re going to play a game.” He presses the lock on the car door. He reaches his hand across the seat and cups my inner thigh. Then he—




I’m fourteen now. I don’t wear my Sunday Best anymore. I don’t go to church. I wear my clothes black now and dyed my hair to match. Gothic. It’s the smallest bit of freedom I have in this godforsaken place.

People think I’m a rebel, maybe even a satanist. I can hear the whispers they speak under their breath, the rumors that float around—I can see the frown in their faces hiding disapproving thoughts.

“She was such a good girl when she was little. What happened?”

“I wouldn’t let my daughter dress like that.”

“Megan needs a good whopping to put her back into shape.”

I’d like to see them lay hands on me now. I hide a kitchen knife alongside my thigh, underneath my skirt, in a makeshift holster. The priest hasn’t touched me since my first period, but I don’t put it above him to try at it again.

I wish he would. I could kill him then.

I feel nothing. There is no life left in me. I am a zombie, a dead girl who refuses to embrace the stillness of death because I simply don’t know how to die.

Father is useless. He’s another walking corpse, just like me, but of a different variety. The meth use caused his mind to whittle away until he was capable of doing only two things: watching television and getting more meth.

I told him once about the priest did. He slapped me, told me I better not to bring cops around the house.

I hate him.

I hate the priest.

I hate this town.

I hate myself.

I can feel the rage is that percolating in the depths of my soul. The desire to burn away the disease of this place is always on my mind. It’s the only thing that keeps me moving. Without it, I would wither and die.

One night, I sneak out to the priest’s home. It’s comparatively nice place when stacked up against the hovel I live in, of the few two-story buildings in the town. Like the priest himself, it seems to look over the town, staring downwards with perverted fascination. The lights are off.

His Mustang is parked outside, starting to show the signs of its age: rust is starting to accumulate in the undercarriage, the bright red paint fading away.

From the curb, I pick up a sizable rock. I hurl it with all my strength at the Mustang’s windshield. It doesn’t break through, but it leaves a rather large crack.

Then the alarm went off. I didn’t expect there to be one on a car so old, or at least, one that still worked.

I book it as fast as my legs will take me, away from the car, back to my home, laughing all the way. I imagined the pain, the frustration on the priest's face when he ventured out into the night after being awoken from his comfortable sleep, only to find his beloved sportscar vandalized. I’m glad to have hurt him for once.

For the first time in years, I feel alive.




I’m seventeen. It’s night time. I’m dressed in all black, a ski mask over my face. There’s an old Smith & Wesson .38 special jammed loosely in the waistband of my pants. I’m carrying a specially prepared backpack.

After months and months of preparation, I’m ready for what I’m about to do. I’ve watched the priest’s movements, his habits, his routines. I’ve examined every inch of his house and yard, and looked in his windows to examine the layout of the interior. I’ve left nothing to chance.

I have only one chance at this, after all.

I’m tingling with excitement. I fear it might betray my silent approach. I steady myself as I cautiously approach the house, the weight of the gun awkwardly offsetting my balance.

The priest keeps a spare key underneath a ceramic effigy of Jesus—but the front door is loud and creaky. If the priest wakes up as I enter, it could be messy.

I take another moment to calm myself to fully concentrate on the task at hand. My heart is pounding so loud I can barely hear the sounds of the crickets chirping.

I insert the key ever so slowly and turn. The lock’s tumblers release with a thunk not loud enough to hear unless you were listening for them. I pause a moment, just in case, listening for any sounds of movement within the house. There are none.

Gently, I press against the weight of the door. It refuses to budge from the tender push I give it, so I push again, harder this time. The door mewls and complains under the force, but quietly. I can just barely see into the interior with the tiny gap I’ve produced. I press again, even harder, and the door cries out with a dreadful screech.

I freeze. All the blood vessels in my body contract in one single moment of sheer terror. I again listen for the sounds of the priest stirring. There are none.

There’s enough room for me to squeeze an arm through, but not enough to enter. I have to push again.

I take a deep breath. If I drew this out, it would only increase the likelihood of the door creaking further and awakening the priest. The next push had to be decisive, one fluid motion.

As quickly as I possibly can, I force the door open. It hisses with another screech, but I’m beyond caring, I slide into the threshold and into the house and let it close shut behind me with a loud click.

I can hear the priest stirring; a light turns on upstairs. In a split second, I weigh my options: flee, hide, or confront.

I won’t back down. Whipping the revolver out of my waistband, I rush up the stairs as fast as I can, my body running on pure adrenaline. There is no time to think anymore.

“What in sam hell?” His voice barely registers to me.

I kick open the door to his room, revolver out, just like in those cop shows I liked to watch.

It’s obvious I caught him off guard. He trips over himself, one leg in the pants he was attempting to put on, and crashes to the ground with a wet thud.

“Don’t move!” I yell, brandishing my gun at him menacingly. I don’t want to fire it, not yet. “This is a robbery!”

The priest seems to believe this boldfaced lie. He doesn’t appear to be considering who I might be. He lays prone on the floor, quivering.

“Stand up,” I say, in the gruffest voice I can manage.

“Miss, I don’t know what you want from me, but I am just a priest, I don’t—”

“Shut up, or I’ll blow your brains out.” There’s no emotion in my voice. Just a statement of fact.

But I feel so alive right now. More in control than I’ve ever been. It’s a beautiful experience.

“Give me your wallet, and your keys,” I tell him.

He complies, dredging both from the depths of his pants he was attempting to wear.

“That car out there, she got gas?” I ask.

He nods. His face is contorted into a visage of pure terror.

It’s like sex to me. I can feel my body trembling with purest ecstasy. But I want more. I need more.

I carefully out from underneath my backpack, making sure not to give him an opening to attack me. I don’t take my eyes off the beautiful, agonized, expression of his while I unzip the backpack. I produce a pair of handcuffs and a ball-gag.

“Put these on,” I order him, sliding the handcuffs along the length of the hardwood floor.

“But why?” he stammers. “I’ve given—”

I cock back the hammer on my revolver. That shuts him up, and his eyes widen to the size of dinner plates. It feels so good to see him like that: helpless and afraid.

“We’re going to play a game.” I produce a ball peen hammer from my back pack and then I—




I’ve been having more fun these last few hours than I’ve had in years. Every muffled scream is rhapsody that sends me to a new level of euphoria. But all good things must come to an end, and an end for the priest has been long overdue. I only regret I do not have an eternity to torture this man who killed me long ago and left me a shell of a women.

The priest lies before me a broken man. Even if I let him live, he would never recover from what I’ve done to him. He is a mess of oozing cuts, shattered bones, and bashed genitals. He is more beautiful to me in that moment that he has ever been before in my entire life.

I produce from my backpack the final instrument of suffering I had planned: a bright orange cannister of gasoline, and a pink zippo lighter.

The priest sees this and gives out another muffled scream.

I make sure the gasoline makes as much contact with his open wounds as possible as I douse him. His body is writhing delightfully from the pain—I can tell how much it burns.

“You know, father, I don’t really consider myself too religious anymore.” I comment between the screams. “But I do hope there is a Hell. I’m sure I’ll see you there.”

I flick open the lighter, it opens with that trademark zippo click. “But just in case there isn’t one…”

I light the zippo and toss it onto the doused priest. He immediately ignites in a torrent of flames, so hot I have to back away. I can see his flesh begin to sear and blacken, like a marshmallow dipped too deep into a campfire.

At a distance, the heat is pleasant, like the warmth of God’s grace. I sit there, basking in the glory for what feels like forever. Time seems to crawl to a stop as I watch the priest burn. I’ve never felt so alive as I have in this moment and likely never will again.

It’s perfect.

The fire begins to spread along the floorboards and furniture in the house, and I’m snapped out of my reverie. Time to leave.

I run outside to the Mustang, crank the engine, and—




I’m sitting in a dead man’s car at the Exxon station without a plan. I feel empty. I have no past, present, or future. I’m just waiting to be killed at this point.

I’m fucked. I might as well be dead.

But I remember the girl in store. Maybe I could help her. Maybe I could save her from becoming like me.

No! Escape! Every second you waste here is a second closer to being put in a cage.

But escape to where? And to do what? I didn’t know. Was I to spend the rest of my life on the run, looking over my shoulder? That could hardly be called living.

I could just end it here. The thought had crossed my mind several times. I became a monster to slay one—did I really deserve to live after what I did? How gleefully I embraced sin? I didn’t know.

All I know was that I want to stop this feeling of emptiness, this gash in my soul that bleeds like an open wound. I want to feel the way I felt when I burned the priest more than anything, that warmth of feeling alive.

I will do anything for it.

Again, I think of the girl in the gas station and the glimmer of life she has. I want it.

I throw open the door of the Mustang and trudge back out over to the gas station. I can feel the revolver sagging in my pants. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I’m running on autopilot. I just know that I need to find out this girl’s story.

Fuck prison. Fuck the gas. Fuck Benton. Fuck Vanndale. And fuck the Arkansas Interstate. I need to know if I can help her.

At that moment, I feel just the slightest bit more alive.


« Prev   14   Next »
#1 · 4
· · >>Monokeras >>horizon >>Cassius >>Cassius
I like where this one goes:

But it feels like it took a long time to kick in. I'd recommend getting our narrator to that gas station as quickly as possible 'cause that's where the story starts. You want some of that intro material to show us that she's not your stereotypical troubled Arkansas seventeen-year-old, but a little judicious editing would do wonders.

As for small points, when she refers to her own father as "Father," I got confused, thinking she was talking about the priest. And while I like what you do with the Mustang as a symbol, I'll float the idea of having it be absolutely pristine and shiny on the outside but a rusted out, poorly running heap under the surface. Just a thought...

Mike
#2 · 1
· · >>Cassius >>Cassius
I agree somewhat with what >>Baal Bunny pointed out. I’d say that presenting the facts as a long flashback triggered by the vision of the molested child is probably not the best way to get the reader involved in the story. The hook is too weak. I would’ve begun with the scene between the priest and the girl in the Mustang, and only then switched to the flight, with flashbacks occurring maybe as the girl drives, since the road is so inviting to reverie.

I’m not sure the sentence It’s like sex to me. I can feel my body trembling with purest ecstasy. is particularly accurate in the context you’re painting.

Some usage of the tenses, especially at the beginning, felt a bit jarring to me, but that may be an ESL blip.

Otherwise the story reads fine. It is debatable if a girl that age would react the way she reacts, i.e. kill his abuser years after, but let us not enter into that sort of debate which is unlikely to be decidable.

The end feels rushed, and in a way is not very satisfactory. The character doesn’t seem to have evolved, and the last line comes too late to contradict this feeling. That’s probably the main problem here: nothing really happens, and what does feels a bit like breading around the meat.
#3 · 4
· · >>Xepher >>Cassius >>Cassius >>Cassius >>Cassius
Gonna start with the first thing you need to fix in editing:

It’s like sex to me.


This is a really unfortunate analogy considering that all of Megan's onscreen sexual experience is her childhood rape.

I want to say that this is part of a wider issue with giving us tight narration from Megan's viewpoint, but not actually narrating it with the perspective that someone in her position would have. She refers to the cashier's "backwater accent you only find in these sorts of podunk towns", except that she's from a nearby backwater podunk town and the cashier's accent would be the same as hers and thus the one she sees as default normal. (There are several other knocks against rural Arkansas which are more forgivable given her self-loathing, but still seemed a little out of place to me.) As she's "taking time to appreciate the view" of the cashier's assets, she notes "that sort of smooth roundness that men can’t resist". Also, I think you switched gears on her age halfway through:

She reminds me so much of myself when I was her age.


The back half of the story establishes Megan's present age as 17.

Much nitpickier: Consider moving this to a Great Plains state like Kansas or Nebraska, if you're looking for giant open fields off the interstates. Arkansas (and much of the south) is basically forest.

Minor narrative and factual slips aside, I liked this one! Though (edit: as >>Baal Bunny says) it only really kicked into gear at the gas station, and I'm not certain why it plays so coy about the situation until then. (The car's "previous owner"? Hit us with that dead-priest hook!) But the cutaway at the end of the first scene is strong, the decision to walk through backstory is well-paced and pushes the story forward, and the story nicely connects everything together at the end.

You do have to tread lightly when dealing with sexual assault for drama — and there's major dissonance you should address, having Megan looking at her world through a sexual frame when she's experienced such trauma from it — but I think this makes a smart choice ultimately framing the central conflict around the cashier and using that to dangle a note of redemption in. It elevates this from the revenge porn.

Tier: Strong
#4 · 3
· · >>Cassius >>Cassius >>Cassius
First sentences are always a favorite to me, and this has a great one.

'91 Mustang is "old"? I was about to take offense, but then it's described with an 8-track player, so I have to assume this is an '81 or a '71. Let's go with '71, as that looks like a beast of a car, the '81 and '91 are hideous. NVM, it double's down on "90s cars."

Also, not to nitpick, but I spent a lot of my childhood in Arkansas, and I can't recall anywhere that didn't have trees in easy sight. Are you not thinking of just "Kansas" (without the AR)? Now that's a grassland with no trees. Sorry, I'm diverging, because this idea/image of "arkansas" doesn't line up with where I spent so much of my childhood. It's a big enough state for both, I'm sure, and it's written with conviction here.

This bit about the girl "filling out her clothes" is... we're going lesbian here, okay, that's a direction I guess, though a bit overplayed. Wait, now Santa has a boner? Now Mom is dead from cancer? "That escalated quickly!"

And... wait, church, priest? We're going there, aren't we? Wait, daddy has trackmarks first, then... Yup. *sigh*

This story really his hitting every cliche and trope I can think of, down to "throwing away a perfectly good/pricey zippo to light a gasoline fire." Why does no one just light a random piece of wood or cloth, and toss that? Zippos are collectables, mementos. No one throws them away so casually.

Overall, this leans heavy, heavy into the revenge-fantasy tropes we've seen too many times in show's like Preacher or True Blood. It IS well written for the most part, at least in terms of language and pacing, though a lot of technical details (most noted above) make me think the author hasn't actually spent much time driving through Arkansas or traipsing around it's endless forests (not grasslands.) If one had NOT been to Arkansas though, the conviction with which these details were written is almost enough to convince me I've forgotten my own childhood. :-)

On a deeper level, this story is about rape, which is a #SeriousIssue and thus falls under a slightly different type of criticism than most other fiction. As >>horizon noted, the viewpoint has some problems here. The comparison of revenge to "like sex" doesn't make sense as, for many rape victims, especially ones that have fixated on the event (like the protagonist here) sex is an AWFUL thing. Having her lust after the cashier girl is also strange. I get "not liking men" is a reasonable (if cliche) outcome, but it's played to no good effect here. Have her FEEL for the other girl and her black eye, sure, that's sympathy for a fellow victim or some such, but don't have her sexual the girl, especially when it's her own age (likely by mistake, per Horizon.)

On the same topic, I'd say having this be a catholic priest that raped her takes this from "podunk-but-realistic" problem to "the-butt-of-every-joke-for-a-decade." It's even weirder set in Arkansas, which is only like 7% Catholic, yet 78% Protestant. Again, another minor "sounds fine unless you've been there" sort of mistake in this tale.

Overall, this is well written in terms of flow and evocative description. But the overall events feel very, very cliche and mostly occur without any comment or motivation for any character other than the protagonist. It also doesn't seem to match up with actual cars, or the state of arkansas as I think I know it.
#5 · 3
· · >>Xepher
I may come back to review this story later, but I wanted to interject on something being put forth here. I was somewhat uncommitted towards making this an issue. But after seeing that it is being brought up repeatedly and having a discussion with Ranmilia and Monokeras that has bolstered my confidence enough that I feel comfortable speaking on it without feeling I am being overly politically correct or confronting this issue in a judgmental manner towards the reviewers who posted their opinion. I respect these reviewers' opinions, but I feel what they are suggesting is contrary to fact.

>>horizon

and there's major dissonance you should address, having Megan looking at her world through a sexual frame when she's experienced such trauma from it


>>Xepher

The comparison of revenge to "like sex" doesn't make sense as, for many rape victims, especially ones that have fixated on the event (like the protagonist here) sex is an AWFUL thing.


Now I am not someone who is claiming to be an expert. I have but a Bachelor's on Arts in Psychology and I have not written extensively on sexual trauma—I am not a professional. I have done some piecemeal things here and there, however, I have written a few academic papers on sexual trauma and volunteered at RAINN as part of my coursework.

But the ways you're talking about rape trauma is plain incorrect. There are indeed "many" people who become hyper-avoidant and fearful of sex in response to trauma, but there are also "many" people who respond in the opposite manner: becoming hyper-sexual, or act out in sexually inappropriate ways. This is particularly common in child victims. People conceptualize trauma differently and sexual trauma in particular can manifest itself in a multitude of different ways, not all of which are not obvious. The idea that all victims respond similarly, that being with avoidance, is simply a stereotype.

Again, I don't want to appear as if I'm slapping the hands of our gracious reviewers here as being untoward, but I do feel it necessary to address and dispel these stereotypes, particularly if they're being used as the basis of a critique. If you want to put forth the argument that the narrative needed justify this apparent discrepancy to the audience so they could understand, like >>horizon seems to do, that is fair. I just want to challenge the notion that it is unrealistic for people to respond in the manner described in the story.
#6 ·
· · >>Monokeras >>Cassius >>Cassius
>>Cassius
Horizon said it clearer than I did, but the case is that we're being presented with a 17-year-old girl that (in story) has only been shown abuse and bad things as they relate to sex. Other descriptions show her hating (in general) men because of the very concept of that priest's actions. If she IS a young girl in this fictional bible-belt Arkansas, it's very unlikely that she found some more pleasant, enjoyable, (and importantly) regular/normalizing/healthy sex life in the time between her abuse and now. We're shown only her trauma, so when she compares that trauma to something good, it feels out of character for her. By literary convention, if it's not important, then it's not shown. A good girlfriend (or boyfriend) would've shown an alternative, and would've been important to this story, but it's not there, so, by story rules, "didn't happen." So, in the same way I'm saying it's very unlikely that a 1991 Mustang had an 8-track, it feels unlikely that THIS character had a massively positive ("purest ecstasy") view of sex as she's literally torturing a man to death with hammers and gasoline.

That does not mean, in any way, that there aren't a myriad of reactions and survival mechanisms that real victims go through after something traumatic. From Stockholm syndrome through to simple acceptance, anger, avoidance, and the rest of the very, very long alphabet; all are real, and differ with the individual. So I'm not critiquing real world victims here, I'm saying this fictional CHARACTER is shown only experiencing awful and traumatic sexual events, so (by literary convention, not the real world) she shouldn't use sex as a euphemism for ecstasy.
#7 ·
·
>>Xepher
In defence of Cassius, and though I’m not an expert either, one of the ways people can react to child molestation involves distanciation and desire of revenge. I can envision a girl being raped in her childhood becoming a sort of sexual predator and maybe even using promiscuous sex as a means to mess up random men’s family life, the concept being here: you (i.e. men) did that to me once, now let me now return the favour. This proceeds from the desire for revenge, as aforementioned, doubled up by total numbness w/r to sex which the victim, because of what happened, cannot associate w/any form of fondness or love anymore (defence mechanism), and which in this case becomes a weapon.

The question remains open, though, if such a person would also become murderous in the way the fiction describes it.
#8 · 1
· · >>Xepher
>>Xepher

If she IS a young girl in this fictional bible-belt Arkansas, it's very unlikely that she found some more pleasant, enjoyable, (and importantly) regular/normalizing/healthy sex life in the time between her abuse and now. We're shown only her trauma, so when she compares that trauma to something good


I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't want this to be an whole separate debate, but, you're conflating what I mean—and to some extent you seem at odds with yourself. On the one hand, you've mentioned that the heightened sexuality of the girl in the gas station scene seems out of place retroactively, but at the same time, want to state that her sexual nature isn't an established character trait because it wasn't observed in the backstory if viewed linearly.

But, I want to cut to the core of the issue which is this: a person who suffers rape trauma may or may not have the connotations with sex you're trying express as a platitude, and that trauma doesn't necessarily inform their perspective on sex in one direction or the other—it's about how the individual copes with that trauma that informs their perspective.

she compares that trauma to something good


No, the comparison is sex to something good. Now again, you can raise the question of whether or not she's actually had sex at this point or really is speaking from experience, the plausibility of that, or just speaking on what she thinks sex is like. But I think it's incorrect to infer that her sexual trauma is wholly informative of a negative opinion on sex.

I think it is not unreasonable to infer that despite having sexual trauma, one can also experience or at least know that sexual gratification is something that feels good, and seek that gratification out. Additionally, I don't think it is out of the question that a person who hasn't had sex understands what sex is supposed to be like.

I would find myself agreeing with your commentary if she was established to have avoidant characteristics (didn't like to be touched, anxious around men, frightened by intimacy), and suddenly in that scene she's remarking how great sex feels, but that's not what happens. There's really no read in this story as far as I can tell that gives in the suggestion that she's experiencing those sorts of emotions, and a plethora of information supporting the idea that her experiences have warped her sexuality into a sadistic weapon. >>horizon uses the term "revenge porn", and to me that unintentionally is a perfect descriptor of her sexuality is portrayed.
#9 ·
·
>>Cassius
It's more direct than that. The story (near) opens with:

And I have certainly sunk to the bottom. I’ve sunk to the deepest, darkest depths where no light dare shine: a veritable tar pit of sin and depravity from where there is no salvation and no choice but to drown in its bleakness. I don’t mind going to Hell.


She's obviously talking about her crime, but she isn't describing ecstasy or good things. She isn't connecting her actions with positive feelings or anything of the sort. All her connections to her recent actions seem to suggest she views them as bad. So, it feels out of character for her to later say they were "purest ecstasy" when they've already been described by her as "a veritable tar pit of sin and depravity."

I'm not saying a person can't have two minds about an event at different times, I'm saying that CHANGE of mind in how she views the event isn't explained.

In other words, I'm not saying "rape victims (must) always think this way." I'm saying a character (in a story) thinking and describing things one way, needs to, at the very least, explain herself and her reasons for changing her mind, if she later describes the exact same event as engendering the absolute opposite emotions/viewpoint.


Again, not speaking for all victims, just criticizing this particular story for not giving enough reasoning to a character's seeming change of feeling/emotion regarding a key event.
#10 ·
· · >>Cassius >>Cassius
Hm, hm.

Writing quality is high, with solidly realized voicing and everything. Story pacing is generally solid. Horizon is correct that you should hit the dead priest hook earlier to set up a mystery with some teeth that you can fill in later. The beginning is far too ambiguous to be really engaging, leaving us quite a while before we get to any sort of meat, but it still flows very smoothly.

Speaking of meat, the meat here is... a bit on the melodramatic side, even for me. This is a very Kill Bill revenge fantasy take on the concept. I largely disagree with Horizon and end up feeling that this stays firmly rooted in its revenge porn/exploitation structure. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing (though if it was unintentional, do note it, obviously), but it ends up making the whole thing bounce off on me on the whole. It is just so loud, and big, and bombastic that I end up having trouble taking the real tragedy as seriously as I should.

I do get it. Emotions are big sometimes. Real life is melodramatic. But the combination of all present factors just ends up being far too much for me to deal with the weightier emotions on the back end of the story.

Also, I think this came up in chat maybe, but while I get the obvious implications, boy does it deflate the triumph of that ending imagining her going in there and it being something like "Oh, I got hit by a baseball."
#11 · 2
· · >>Monokeras >>horizon >>Cassius
I said I would come back to this, so I have come back to this. Very rare for me to actually do what I say I was going to do, but here I am.

This is an inconsistent entry, with peaks and valleys. In many ways, it is similar to Chode Mustard, where it is lacking in something substantial, but accommodates through other aspects. Like Chode Mustard, this story is about something, has good characterization, and isn't paced well (fight me >>AndrewRogue, Chode is not well paced).

This story is brimming with EMOTION, and I think the author hasn't quite figured out how to communicate EMOTION without devolving into melodrama. Everything is just a bit too SUPERCHARGED. The protagonist doesn't just kill the priest, SHE BURNS HIM ALIVE. The protagonist just doesn't feel regret she is IN A BOTTOMLESS PIT OF SIN. She unhooked a crucifix from a dead priest key-chain because SHE DOESN'T LIKE RELIGION.

One might say that these sorts of aspects are supposed to be perspectival, but the voice isn't consistent enough to be 100% certain. Particularly because of the first scene, which for the most part seems to be narrated by an older protagonist, as >>horizon notes. It seems that around the time of the gas station scene, the author decided his story was going in a different direction and forgot to change the preceding scene. I think this sort of melodramatic hypercharging of emotions could definitely work within the context of a teenaged girl protagonist, but the nature of the melodrama needs to be clearly communicated and demonstrated to the reader before it is observed, not after.

There are a couple of continuity errors that other people have pointed out. Although I wanted to bring up one that >>Xepher mentioned, about an "8-track cassette."

There's no such thing. There's an 8-track tape (or cartridge) or a compact cassette. It's highly likely that a compact cassette deck would be in a '91 Mustang, and is probably what the author intended, but the author should really have done his homework to make sure he was going to get the technical detail right if he was going to bother mentioning it.

>>Baal Bunny

I like this suggestion with the car. Obviously the car is supposed to be a metaphor for the priest himself, initially pristine and awe-inspiring, that decays over time. Communicating that through the car decaying internally rather than externally I think better solidifies the overall message—that the priest is someone who appears nice on the outside, but is rotten internally.

This is a revenge story, and I think all the components for it being a success are already in the story, but it just doesn't quite execute them in a clear manner. As far as I can tell, the overall story is supposed to be something in the veins of a movie like Blue Ruin, where an emotionally disturbed person who had been the victim of a traumatic event decides to get revenge on the person who victimized them, only to realize that getting revenge hasn't fixed their life, only made it worse.

The problem comes when these events are viewed out of order, and there's leaps in logic that the reader has to make in order to connect all these points together, particularly when we see the protagonist at the beginning (the chronological end) from her torturing the priest.

>>horizon
>>Monokeras
>>Xepher

It’s like sex to me.


Here we go again. I'll cut the debate short and just say that I will die on the hill defending the inclusion of this line, and I think it's important to the story as a whole. I don't think this line was accidental in its invocation of sexual imagery, either. The line just needs more context to establish the sentiment before directly making this comparison, or just make it less blatant that this is comparison being drawn. It is a particularly horrific statement and character moment, or at least, I think that's supposed to be read.

Tone is an important tightrope here, and I don't think the story quite balances along it. It's just a little too indulgent for the more quiet moments to be fully realized. It does not help that the final moment is rushed and not well paced, so it can't quite simmer down from the fiery death of the priest.

As others >>horizon, >>Baal Bunny, and >>Monokeras, have mentioned, there really is no reason to keep the fact that the priest is dead secret from the reader. The mystery of what happened with the priest and why the protagonist is running is really less interesting than sharing the head-space with a priest murderer planning to escape the police.

But this story has been discussed pretty extensively both in Discord and on here, so I don't really have much else to say other than I sort of liked it.
#12 ·
·
>>Cassius
Very rare for me to actually do what I say I was going to do, but here I am.

How perceptive :P :P :P
#13 · 1
·
>>Cassius
I'm sorry I haven't had a chance yet to return myself, since I feel like I should clarify my original thoughts on the protagonist's sexuality that sparked the debate.

I do agree that it would be possible, perhaps even effective, to have Megan be a sexual person and "It's like sex to me" be a commentary on how she approaches it. I don't think the story is doing so as written, hence my comments about editing.

I'll point out that, aside from her commentary on the attractiveness-to-males of the attendant, the most relevant current evidence of her approach to sex is in her teenage flashback:

I’d like to see them lay hands on me now. I hide a kitchen knife alongside my thigh, underneath my skirt, in a makeshift holster. The priest hasn’t touched me since my first period, but I don’t put it above him to try at it again.


She carries around a knife to avoid not just the priest — but also others, the "them" talking about her behind her back — initiating any sexual contact against her. I'm reading that as pretty severely at odds with her appreciating sex.

And, again, the specific context of "It's like sex to me" is when she is literally face to face with her rapist, which prompts the question: sex with who? Are we supposed to believe she is thinking about sex in the abstract in this situation, rather than the specific sexual acts we're all but shown on-screen?

So, yeah, author, if you want to have Megan use that as a moment of reclaiming her sexuality, or even use it (as Cassius suggests) to illustrate her existing interest in sex, or whatever, go wild. But it's gonna require more lampshading, because right now the text as written is pointing in some very scattered and somewhat unfortunate directions.

tl;dr
> The line just needs more context to establish the sentiment before directly making this comparison
I don't think we're disagreeing as much as it sounds.
#14 · 3
·
Aha it was me all along!

RECAP: I FUCKING HATE ARKANSAS, THE STORY


But anyone who knows anything about me could have easily guessed that. I wrote this story after driving around 24 hours from Texas to Michigan, and one of the places I went through was Arkansas. I found myself somewhat perplexed by >>horizon and >>Xepher's criticism that Arkansas doesn't resemble what I wrote, because, at least for a long stretch of I-40, it does. Now I do take some dramatic license, and there certainly are trees along I-40 (particularly after you pass Benton towards Little Rock, where I spent one awful night—I seriously undersell how terrible that town is), but the important part to me is that it certainly was how I described going from Texarkana. What is even more amusing to me, personally, is that is not the first time I've done that drive. I have trekked from Texas to Michigan approximately 9 times by car in my life.

I neglected to mention how shitty the roads are in Arkansas. They're abominations.

I fucking hate Arkansas.

>>Xepher

'91 Mustang is "old"? I was about to take offense, but then it's described with an 8-track player, so I have to assume this is an '81 or a '71. Let's go with '71, as that looks like a beast of a car, the '81 and '91 are hideous. NVM, it double's down on "90s cars."


This error is embarrassing because the '91 Mustang GT 5.0 Convertible with blue body and silver trim is a car I actually own. As I've stated in my own fake review >>Cassius, the error was the result of me conflating two different terms I was unfamiliar with, and I actually meant that it was a compact cassette deck.

I also take offense to your comment that it is an ugly model.

Also, as I note in my fake review, the story sort of hiccups at the point past the gas station. That is because the narrative was initially written to be from a male, twenty something, perspective, but I decided that a female perspective would be more interesting. I tried my best to realign the perspective, but obviously there were some oversights.

BUT WHAT WAS THIS STORY ABOUT?

>>Cassius

As far as I can tell, the overall story is supposed to be something in the veins of a movie like Blue Ruin, where an emotionally disturbed person who had been the victim of a traumatic event decides to get revenge on the person who victimized them, only to realize that getting revenge hasn't fixed their life, only made it worse.


Basically this. I often write stories with the initial premise of "Broken People Adjusting Poorly" as the premise. The narrative outline is supposed to be as such:

-We see the aftermath of the event, demonstrate to the audience that the person in question is not happy as the result of her life choices
-Detail the event
-Protagonist chooses to either take steps to resolve or not resolve problem
-End

There are some errors in communicating this framework, but the most important bit I think I failed to communicate is this dynamic:

Megan doesn't regret killing and torturing the priest. She feels good about doing it. She understands that this is a bad thing that she did and bad that she enjoyed it so much, but feels no regret for doing so—but ultimately she understands that killing the priest hasn't fixed any aspect of her life, and she is still miserable.

It's a complex feeling that really even as I've typed that up, I found difficult to adequately explain. I guess I was too distracted by making cute metaphors and utilizing reincorporation to get the more fundamental aspects of the story down pat.

Anyways, thanks for the reviews everyone.

>>Baal Bunny
>>Monokeras
>>horizon
>>Xepher
>>AndrewRogue