McMongrel's blog

Iceangel. I posted a critique of your novel.

I posted a critique of your novel. Another good reason for posting on Rorshachs is that when someone posts a response there, your initial posting springs to the top. That way it doesn't get buried.
If people never see your postings because others have buried it beneath theirs, then its harder to get responses. But if you are on Rorshachs, since people post there less AND responses push you back to the front, other people are more likely to see your stuff and comment upon it.

"Ishmael's Journey": Chapter Two, continued

The rancid smell of sulfur filled the air as Luis tossed another crooked limb onto the fire. He could feel the weight of the pistol deep in his pocket as if it were a hidden hoard of sin. When he moved he heard the clink of bullets against its scratched metal, for he had unloaded the weapon when he realized what place he was in. Glancing around at the ring of faces that surrounded the fire, he wondered if any of the others had realized the true nature of this forest. He suspected that they had not because none of them had run screaming into the dark in an effort to escape the place.

Ishmael's Journey: Chapter 2 continued. "Strange Fruit"

The shot that exploded through the darkened forest sent Ishmael leaping from sleep. The fire had died and he found himself surrounded by blackness, the only light the low, red coals of the dying fire glowing like Satan’s heart. He scrambled to Walt and began to shake the old man’s body in an effort to rouse him. A second shot cracked the night and Ishmael heard a sound like the rising of countless birds from sleep to panicked flight.

"It’s this way!" he shouted as he bolted into the darkness.

Ishmael's Journey #4, Chapter Two: "From Shepherds to Wolves".

The men of the settlement had been tracking the three for days; across fields and valleys, through forest and marshland. Fernando knew that now they were close. All of the signs pointed to it. In his mind he could already hear the crack of their necks as they reached the rope’s end
Nando was not a vengeful man. Slights did not cut him deeply. He was not the kind to come out with a knife in the face of some insult. But his children had been stolen; his and the children of the other men. They were all so blind with hate, sorrow, and fear that they could not have seen the angels now even if they were to appear again and sing their song of love and salvation once more.

Ishmael's Journey #3

Ishmael saw a wide knoll covered in green grass and lighted from above by moon and starshine. The thick night that surrounded him in the pasture did not seem to reign here. A softer darkness covered the knoll, a darkness of rest and safety rather than of fear and threat.
“This is where the angels came.” said the old man. “Damndest thing I ever saw.”

Ishmael's Journey (#2)

“ ‘A gray discouraged sky overhead,'” the old man said, looking up through the trees. "’The short last daylight of December.’"
He led Ishmael along the twisting trail that ran among the dwellings. As they passed, women emerged from the gaping, black mouths of each, faces wet with tears, hands empty of children and raised towards heaven. The pathways of the village filled and Ishmael saw that there was not a man to be seen. He turned to the old man to ask him why, but his question had been anticipated.
“The men have gone to find the three. I expect they are going to kill them.”

“The three?”

Ishmael's Journey

He slept that night with his head against a tarred telephone pole that stabbed into the night sky like a knife searching a breast for the heart. Every vibration; moan of wind, subterranean rustle of burrowing things, cries of night birds and the squeal of prey; all fed into him and entered Ishmael’s dreams where he lay sleeping by the fire. But most of all it was the murmurings and deliriums and dreams of the silent one who hung between two dead thieves on a pole strung with rusted wire, wire which ran across the miles to where Ishmael lay.
He awoke to a leaden dawn and a dead fire, his hair stuck to the pole so tightly that he left a piece of bloody scalp hanging there when he wrenched himself free. Not a single dream was remembered, though they all remained within him.

Ishmael and the Dead Men

One day, Ishmael came upon three telephone poles.
They stood along the railroad tracks in line with countless others that ran away into the distance as far as the eye could see.
Ishmael had taken little notice of them as he had traveled on. They had been part of the landscape, rising like crucified trees, bent and splintered, some leaning crazily to one side or the other, black with tar, oil, and smoke, scarred by the wind, sun. rain, and ice, some strung with useless rusting wire, some not, some with cross beams, some without. They rose in the midst of the winterdead weeds that stabbed into the air like spears.