Both made creative use of the prompt, which always fascinates me, seeing the direction those take. While the Arnold Layne one had perhaps the more unexpected trajectory, and some effective, well-written paranoia, the character namings instantly pulled me out the story—as such a technique always does—because then I start wondering how many of its other elements are derivative, and then I can no longer focus on the story for its own merits, so distracted am I by the homage … meaning I couldn't vote for it.
The panther story, I struggled to grasp what was going on in the opening scene, who was where and why they were acting that way, etc. But once we moved beyond that, I dug the rest. Like Grig, I thought I knew how it might end (in the "Chekhov's gun" sense), but it took enough of a turn to satisfy me, and I shared their terror when shots rang out.
When you talk about derivative character namings, I'm unclear what you mean. Is there a cultural reference there?
And at what point were you able to grasp scene and setting in the panther story? Somewhere in the middle of the first scene, or did it take all the way to the second scene for you to get your footing?
They're all named after Pink Floyd-isms, and you've got Syd's well-documented descent into madness, etc.
The other story, I thought the truck was delivering the fencing itself, and couldn't understand some of the lingo and why all the tension around that. Reading it for a second time, it's much clearer. I couldn't tell if the driver and his ladyfriend were still inside the cab or where, people were looking up/down at one another, etc. confused me. It started getting clearer around the time the blood poured.
