Outlawes

I really liked this--it's very vivid and the characters were believable. Here's just a grammatical thing, a very tiny point. This sentence is perfectly grammatical:

Pete would have never guessed Mikey would have been so successful.

It's just a bit clunky, though. I think you can get away with fiddling around with the sequence of tenses. I think you can say, "Pete would have never guessed Mikey would be so successful," and it would still work out, still be grammatical, yet come across a bit less clunky. As I say, though, this is a tiny point. It just stood out for me because it seemed to be such an easy fix.

I thought for a short story the plot was neatly complex and it made everything move so fast. For me its tough to write more integrated plots with varying characters in a short fragment of time. For example, the way you brought in Mikey and his wife and her past and what may have been the cause of his sudden heart attack as only a tipping point into the real dilemma. It was all well thought out which made the suspense fantastic. Moreover, the suspense was multiplied because the whole story is predicated from something that happened 25 years ago, yet we are waiting to see the effect of this hidden character. And because there was a root to this creature, it made everything believeable, which to me is great horror. I gave this a thumbs up.

PS. Kudos on Let the Right One In   

Hey Bob, cool story you got here. I think this is the longest thing I've read from you. Your monster is pretty interesting and weird. I didn't see anything to critisize really. If I did it would only be a few typos here and there with some missing words in sentences. Otherwise a nice tight story. Thanks for sharing.

Dug it! Reminds me of those old half-hour TV shows in the 80s like Tales from The Darkside or Monsters. I loved those shows. Just a good old fashioned revenge story. Good work with the limited amount of space. Good job setting up the reunion and the problem (Jerry's back). Even though the reader knows we're going to get to a final scene meeting with Jerry, you do a good job unfolding the story and creating tension. I loved the dead minnows and Outlawes. Nice touch.

Thanks for sharing. See you around the boards.

Jason

You have a good plot here, and the monster is interesting. I'm curious about what happened after they drowned him, though, and would like it spelled out a little bit more (did he walk away? did they actually kill him? unclear). I'd also like to know why it took so long for him to take his revenge: did something trigger it, and if so, what?

Needs some work on mechanics (punctuation, missing words), and in a few instances you use the same word over and over (thick, eyes). I found some of the lines to be awkwardly worded, and some inconsistencies both in the character descriptions and dialogue, which made for clumsy reading and detracted from the plot, which I liked. Here are just a few of my notes:

Mikey with the hot wife and the college degree selling used cars and a millionaire and now he was dead. Is Mikey selling a millionaire, too?

Derek hopped in, rain pouring from his head and shoulders all over Pete’s cloth seats. Oh well, they’ll dry. Mixing tenses here, and the "oh well..." line feels more like a first person narration.

Pete would have never guessed Mikey would have been so successful. This was the guy who drinks his weight in beer with one hand tied behind his back. The guy who got Marla Gaines stoned and nailed her in the backseat of Derek’s old Camaro... “Think about it, Pete. Mikey didn’t smoke, didn’t drink. Not that I know of. First you say Mikey drank his weight in beer, then a few paragraphs later you say he didn't drink. 

The scene on page 5 that explains what happened to Jerry and the Outlawes is a tad confusing, I think due to the use of pronouns. He spray painted on "his own house" (Jerry's? Why?), being underwater "sure scared them". And how did the boys make life a living hell prior to the incident? I'd like to see more detail here.

Page 9: was Jerry dunked in a bath tub, as on page 5, or in a tub of minnows, as it states here?

Really enjoyed the story.  You're style flows naturally and I liked the way the story kept giving small clues to the past, explaining it the events from the childhood across the whole of the text without feeling to rush an explanation to set up the finale.  The characters were well drawn and believable and Jerry was a strange, quite grim, creation that felt that he had a story all of his own somewhere in the past.

Only quibble was there were a couple of typos - not normally a problem as we all make them, but with a story with such a natural flow, it forced me to stop and think and the pace (which was very well written) faltered whilst I worked out what you intended.

Very minor criticism though, as on the whole a very good read.

Hi there! Really enjoyed the atmosphere you created--all that water and mud. Very true to life, too, the way old school relationships reassert themselves among adults--Pete slightly contemptuous of Derek, still jealous of Mike who got the hot cheerleader, Marla. The whole minnow thing--vivid pictures of those little buggers. (Could milk that more: folks have physical reactions to the "nastiest odor" -- and that might hit Pete's nose the moment he goes in his house so we know something's not right and you don't have to tell us that when he goes in the kitchen.

Only substantive comment is that the internal logic to the story isn't clear, and I think this kind of story, which hints from the start at a mystery in the past driving current events, needs some, albeit twisted. That is, what's up with Jerry and Tommy and their proclivity to really nasty skin diseases? Their house was "nasty ass"--was it also near a polluted pond? Is that where they fished for their minnows and catfish? Was the older brother Tommy also a little fishy/creaturely when he was found?  Is it possible that Michael wasn't just beautifying Groves but that his current activity had something to do with the source of what transformed Jerry? 

The story indicates Jerry was already transforming ("things on his skin" that react to water) when Derek, Mike and Pete held him under water. So the three buddies aren't responsible for his monster state...or are they?  If their bullying episode was the catalyst, why didn't Creature Jerry just go to town on them right away?

Not trying to get you to write a different story--just think you have angles to mine to make what you have more textured, layered and even creepier. I'll admit, my horror reading is largely limited to Dan Simmons and Stephen King and each of them is pretty strong on having some kind of internal logic/rules to their stuff.

So last point: Pete strikes me as pretty angry at the world (might be good to make it clear higher up his divorce is recent, if that's correct) and that he'd give old Jerry-Creature a hard time. I didn't quite buy it that he'd just stand there and get tentacled. For what that's worth...

Enjoyed the reading and thank you for sharing!

New here to the site and this was my first read.  I must say I'm excited for things to come!  This was a pretty good story to get introduced to the site with.  It was sufficiently creepy and I was not expecting a creature at all.  The majority of the story felt like "I Know What You Did Last Summer," up until we realize Jerry is a monster.  The rain, mud, minnows...it all felt just like that movie.  I imagined Jerry at first walking around in some waterproof coveralls slingin' fish around everywhere he went.  One thing I think that could make this story even more vivid is maybe sprucing up the dialogue a bit.  I mean, give the dialogue some dialect.  People speak differently in all parts of the country.  If a setting was established early on then forget what I'm about to propose, but maybe you could place the story in the deep south, or the northeast, or somewhere where people speak with a way that defines where they come from.  I think this could help the imagery of the story even more.  Like I said, the images that first came to mind for me were from I Know What You Did Last Summer but that could have easily been changed with some local dialect.  Just a thought.  Great read and I can't wait to read more!