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 Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 1:59 am
Okay, first off, let me start by saying that this is my first story, or at least first one that I've actually taken this far. Second, Almost all characters, events, and places (even the title) CAN and most likely WILL be subject to name change in the later and final products. Third, any and all criticism is appreciated, as long as it is decently explained and justified (such as grammatically incorrect, spelling errors, or misplaced sentences). Fourth, no, I repeat, NO flaming of any kind.
If you have any questions, please PM me with the title: High Strung?
Note: My posts will be lengthy and in chapter form, if this is too much, I will break it up into segments.
2nd Note: I am NOT a professional writer, this is my 1st actual novel experience, so if I'm trying to establish a certain flow to the story, certain paragraphs may seem out of place. If you still don't think it flows well, even considering that, just tell me.
3rd Note: This is a slightly mature story. Nothing R rated, but recommended for those over 15. Also, there may be minor swearing. Nothing too over the top. Just try to keep your sensitive attitudes intact.
Now that the rules and notes have been laid out, I present, for your approval or denial: High Strung!
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Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 2:02 am
PROLOGUE
It was night, Mark was sweating, he was tired, and he was afraid. He stood in a clearing surrounded on all sides by dark dense forest. Mark couldn’t believe what was happening to him; just a few weeks ago he had been enjoying a nice vacation in Washington State. Now he was in the middle of the woods somewhere in Oregon, or was he still in Washington, he didn’t know. Something rustled in the bushes behind him, “Hello? Is anyone there?” He realized his mistake too late; in these woods, after what had just happened, nothing here could be friendly. A man stepped out of the bush, he looked... wrong somehow, but Mark couldn’t place it. The man was dragging something behind him; it was unclear what though, as it was hidden inside the bushes behind him. The first man looked at the other, wondering how to approach this situation. He was unsure if the man was one of the things he had just encountered, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He raised his gun, a simple 6-shot revolver, took aim at the new man, and prepared to fire.
CHAPTER 1
Up until around 3 weeks ago, no one had ever heard of Maxwell D. Scales. Now, almost everyone knew his name; not because he was a famous movie star, or an author that made The New York Times bestseller list, but he was featured in it. He wasn’t a famous artist, or some scientist who discovered a cure for some disease, no, he wasn’t known for anything good. Maxwell D. Scales was, for lack of a better word, a murderer; he had, according to police reports, slaughtered his entire family of 4 and proceeded to make his way through the small town he lived in, killing anyone who drew breath. He had a full page photo in The Washington Post, warning people of what he looked like, and what to do if they saw him. He had made the FBI’s most wanted list; killing over 1000 people will do that for you. What all the police reports and newspaper articles didn’t say, and rightly so; because if he told them the reason he did it, they wouldn’t have believed him anyways. What the articles and reports didn’t say was that he was forced to kill all those people, not in the sense that someone put a gun to his head and told him to do it, but because circumstances demanded it. According to all professional psychiatrists, newspaper writers, police officers, government officials, and average Joe citizen, he was crazy; certifiably, undeniably, unequivocally crazy. But all of these average people didn’t know what he knew, didn’t see what he saw, and didn’t experience what he did.
Maxwell D. Scales had just seen the forefront, the beginning, of a terribly long nightmare. He killed his entire small town, no easy feat, considering his profession as a teacher. He did this because they were inherently evil. He moved to the small town of Dusk Pond only a few years earlier with his wife and 2 kids in tow. He was a nature lover at the time, wanting to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. He had visited the town on many occasions before; he liked the small town atmosphere, the kind of unexplored territory the local forests held. His wife was an understanding woman; she agreed with Maxwell that moving out of the city was a good idea. His kids were in the 7th and 9th grade; Maxwell Jr. being the older and Yumiko being the younger. He loved his family, and would never dream of hurting them, ever.
Maxwell was a professor of High level data logging and analysis at the nearby school when he lived in the city. He taught the class daily after lunch, firmly believing that people learned better on a full stomach. The class was an elective, and a rather unusual subject. Maxwell taught it because of his problem; he had a high level of obsessive compulsive disorder, which made him document everything he saw in a small notebook he always kept on him, he couldn’t function otherwise. When he married his wife Victoria Watanabe; a British-Japanese born psychiatrist who moved to America when she was a little girl, she suggested he go to counseling for his problem. With her help, Maxwell managed to suppress his OCD so that now he only has to write down things of interest in his notebook. The couple had two children, Maxwell Jr. and Yumiko Saeki. Maxwell had always been a good father to his children, and a good husband to his wife, he was always there for them; never letting his problem or his work overshadow them. Every once in a while, Maxwell would have a particularly bad episode; as his OCD would make him prone to slight psychosis, and because of this, his mind was always in a very fragile state. He would always come close to hurting himself, but never his family, always himself. With his wife’s help, he would be able to suppress the psychosis, and allow him to carry on his life as normal.
While Victoria was working, Maxwell had a bad episode while he was at school, almost jumping off the roof of the building. His wife rushed to his aid, and was only able to talk him out of after a half an hour of talking with him. This incident spurred Maxwell to suggest that they move away from the city; partly because he felt he needed to get away, but also because he was afraid that he may leave his children fatherless. His wife agreed with him, and they made preparations to move to the small town of Dusk Pond. Maxwell bought a nice house with 3 bedrooms and an acre of land behind it, intending to make a vegetable garden in the back. After they moved in, Maxwell found himself experiencing fewer and fewer episodes, and the ones he did have, were less violent. His episodes now consisted of him venting his feelings, telling his wife everything he felt, often through tears. He often thought that the only reason that he felt comfortable talking to her was because of her profession as a psychiatrist. He never really believed this though, always knowing that it was because she was his wife, and very special to him. He was happy in Dusk Pond, his vegetable garden was growing, his family was with him; for a while he thought life couldn’t be better.
He and his family loved living in Dusk Pond; they would always celebrate the local gatherings, the holidays, and birthdays of people in town. His son and daughter made plenty of new friends in school, and his wife was a member of the local Neighborhood Watch Committee. Everything was normal for a few years. He slowly noticed a change in his family, as well as the local population of Dusk Pond; they changed ever so slowly into... something else. He really started worrying after he noticed that the locals were no longer as festive around the time of their local holiday; Elk-fest. During Elk-fest, the locals would get so rowdy that the sheriff had to intervene; it was like Christmas, but in the spring. The festival was comprised of a local gathering, parade, and street fair. It was always a party, with everyone knowing everyone; no one could really get into too much trouble. The peace was kept, with a few rowdy, overzealous partiers put in the sheriff’s station, until they calmed down a little; they were then released back into the festivities. But two years ago, when Maxwell first noticed, Elk-fest fast approached, but no one showed any sign of enthusiasm, no preparations were made. When Elk-fest finally rolled around that year, there was no festival, no parties, no parade, no pie-eating contest, no Elk-fest. After that, Maxwell decided to document everything; he wrote it all down, down to the last shred of detail. Slowly but surely, a plan started forming in his head; he would continue documenting everything he saw.
He continued documenting everything of interest, and tried a few experiments on the people. One of his tests had a particularly strong effect on his train of thought. He was walking home from the monthly town meeting, when he saw his two neighbors, Duncan and Sarah standing on the sidewalk looking at each other, not talking; just blankly staring at one another. He walked between them, and turned to look at them when he heard them move. They were now staring at him, with cold black eyes that looked like whirlpools of darkness. They didn’t say anything to him; they just stood there with blank expressions on their faces, staring at him, almost into him. He documented the incident thoroughly, describing in detail the events leading up to and following the event. He observed a more large scale incident one month later, when he arrived at the town meeting, with everyone sitting down, and the mayor standing up at the podium. He expected the meeting to start after he arrived, but no one said anything for the entire meeting. The entire town sat in their seats, looking at the mayor, and he stared back into the crowd. This incident was when Maxwell started to think of his final plan; to eliminate the anomaly. There was another incident a few days later, when he watched a group of townspeople drag a tourist couple into an alleyway, and beat them to death with wrenches and pipes. Maxwell was powerless to stop them, and he knew it, there was around 20 of the townspeople doing this, even if he tried, Maxwell knew he couldn’t help them. He had tried to leave the town on his own of course, thinking if he reported this to the authorities they would listen and help him. He sped down the main road in his car, alone, towards the only exit in town, the Dusk Bridge. When he got there, he knew what he had to do. The bridge was occupied; there were around 100 people all standing on the bridge, which was only wide enough for 2 cars side by side. He knew he couldn’t force his way past them, he would just wind up like the tourist couple. He went home, and plotted out his final plan, his last resort, he would kill all of them.
He decided to put his final plan into action one year later, when for the second time Elk-fest had passed by unnoticed by anyone but him. He had built himself a fortress in his backyard; it was a huge undertaking, he made a bunker out of concrete, with a huge two foot thick steel plated door on the front. He built it two stories high, with sheer walls, no windows of footholds to grab onto, and no way in unless opened by him from the inside. He went to the local gun store, and bought every weapon, every attachment, and every single bullet they sold, and stored it all inside his base. He went to the supermarket, and bought enough canned foods and bottled water to last a single man two years. In carrying out these last stages of his plan, if there was any shred of proof that something was wrong, this took the cake. No one had protested when he loaded up a van full of guns and food; they just continued on with their day, as if nothing was wrong, asking about the weather, commenting on the shows on TV last night. It was all the proof Maxwell needed, he couldn’t trust anyone in the town, he couldn’t call the police, or the FBI, and they would have all thought he was crazy. He did the only thing he thought he could; kill everything and everyone involved with the anomaly.
Criticism is welcome for chapter one now.
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Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:49 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 22, 2010 10:52 pm
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Posted: Mon Aug 23, 2010 8:22 pm
All righty... since nothing has happened and no one has said anything, I'll post chapter 2 up now.
CHAPTER 2
On the night of the third Elk-fest gone by, without so much as a woohoo from any of the locals, Maxwell put his plan into action. He walked down to the sheriff’s station, for the annual town meeting. He was dressed in army combat fatigues, had on sunglasses, and had an M16 slung over his shoulder. He pushed open the double doors into the gigantic town hall, big enough to fit all 1000 people inside it comfortably. The mayor was giving a speech about the upcoming election and how he felt that he was the best choice for the next mayor of Dusk Pond. Considering he was the only candidate for mayor for the last 30 years, he had nothing to worry about.
Maxwell unslung his rifle, flicked the safety off, took aim and blew the mayor’s head apart. It would have been the perfect time for him to spout some witty one-liner about bubblegum and kicking a**, but he couldn’t, as he just had every single eye in the town hall shift to him at once; looking into his eyes, even though he was wearing sunglasses, he knew they could see through them. He hadn’t noticed it before, probably because they were hiding it, but their eyes were wrong; they had no whites, they were just black, total black, so dark and deep he felt entranced by every one of them. He snapped out of his trance, turned and ran to his house, he didn’t see it, as he was running away, but he could hear it perfectly; every single person in the town hall got up, turned and marched after him, in unison. The sound alone could be heard from halfway down Main Street. He turned his head, looking back, and the entire town, marching in rows of 10 followed him.
He made it to his house just as night began to fall, the entire town stopped dead outside his home; every resident of the town of Dusk Pond bathed in the twilight glow of the sun shining over the side of the outlying mountains. He fired up a flare from inside his stronghold, and as one, the town marched to greet him. The battle was harsh and difficult but easy at the same time. It was easy to gun down his former friends and neighbors, knowing that they were no longer their former selves; what made it difficult was the scratching. The entire town surrounded his fort, and tried to get inside, with their bare hands; this feat was impossible, and even 1000 people couldn’t scratch through 4 feet of concrete with their bare hands, not even in 100 years. But still they tried, scratching endlessly at the walls, running their nails down until they were bloody; it must have been beyond painful, but they made no sound. There was no sound at all, other than the incessant scratching, the people made no sound, the animals made no sound, even the weather remained still and silent, not even a hint of wind or leaves rustling. The scratching nagged at his skull, Maxwell wore earplugs by the third day, by the fifth day, he decided that there was no alternative; he had hoped that he could wait them out, but it just wasn’t possible. By the sixth day he stood on top of his stronghold, he shot the townspeople as they tried to scratch through his walls. Each time he would shoot one, four of them would drag them out and bring them away; he saw them bringing the dead down the street, and he followed them until trees blocked his view. It wasn’t until he shot his neighbor Duncan in the face did he realize what they were doing with the dead; the four carried Duncan to the street, and he expected them to turn towards the town, like all the others before. They turned the opposite direction, he followed them intently, documenting this in his notebook, making sure to catalogue and detail every bit of information about these things. He finally saw what they were doing with the dead; he saw them march to Duncan’s house, the left side of the house obscured slightly by trees, they brought him inside the house and after a minute or two, they exited, no Duncan in tow. Maxwell finally realized they weren’t bringing the dead to the town clinic or town hall; they brought them back to their houses, and left them there to decay and rot.
By the twelfth day, Maxwell had depleted their ranks greatly; only about 200 remained, he had been busy the past 6 days. He also noticed that they carried the dead out with fewer people now, when he had reached approximately 500 left, they used only 3 people to carry the dead, then when he hit what he assumed was 250, they used only two people. Still the scratching continued, Maxwell wasn’t sure he could take much more of it; the earplugs helped, but the scratching was now digging inside his head, it was as though the walls to his fort were the inside walls of his skull, with hundreds of tiny people each scratching to get out. By the fifteenth day, he had removed almost all of their ranks, only around 20 people remained, and they only used one person to remove the dead. When he killed the second to last one, and the final one moved to remove his fallen comrade, Maxwell waited until they got to the road to shoot him dead, falling limp on top of the man he was dragging. After a few hours, Maxwell convinced himself that they were all gone, all the dead bringers were gone, as well as those who stayed and scratched.
When he opened the door to his castle, he felt relieved, that the ordeal was over, that he could finally return to his family; but then the realization hit him, his family hadn’t been involved in the attack, though they were afflicted just the same as the others, why hadn’t they attacked with the rest? He slowly approached the back door to his now foreign seeming house, and slowly opened it. He walked slowly into the back hall, which they used for storage, then into the hallway that connected it to the rest of the house. He walked to the end of the hallway, to the door that connected to their kitchen/dining room; he slowly opened the door, afraid of what he might find. What he saw terrified him much more than anything he had seen before; his family, sitting at the table, having dinner, eating as if nothing was wrong. He looked at all of them and said “Hi guys, I’m home. How was school kids? How did that report go Maxie? How is history class Yumie?” His family turned and looked at him with cold dead black eyes and said “Hi Dad, how was your trip? Did you have a nice time?” in complete unison. With tears streaking down his face, he unslung is rifle, and pointed it at his wife, his hands shaking slightly, “Honey, how was your day?” His wife looked up at him unblinking, looking as though she had pitch black marbles for eyes, and said, “Oh fine honey, I made peach cobbler for desert, your favorite.” She smiled at him as he fired his gun and her head flew back over the chair and lay limp behind her body, her neck seemingly broken, but oddly devoid of boniness. His children sat eating, as if nothing had happened, Maxwell turned to look at them, tears now streaming down his face like rivers. He looked at them eating and pointed the gun at Yumiko and said, “Honey, did you take out the trash?” “No Dad, it’s Maxie’s turn to this week.” He fired again, his former daughter’s head nearly blowing apart because of the force and distance. “Dad did you buy that book I told you about, you know, the one with the alien abductions?” He didn’t even blink when the blood from his son’s head splattered all over the front of him. He walked slowly to the bathroom, cleaned his face off, and left the house. He got into his car; rifle and ammo loaded in the trunk, and took off down the road, trying to get as far away from the place as fast as he could.
Critcism... please?
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