Dead on the doorsteps

I liked the idea, and I loved the setting. The plot could have used some more attention. There were whole sections that weren’t really necessary, such as the failed time-traveling scientist, the band’s pool party, and the dart-throwers. The inconsistency between the two manners of dying (poisoning/stabbing) really threw me off.
I would also like to comment that sometimes the phrasing is slightly awkward, particularly in dialogue; yet, other times it flows quite well. I would suggest reading the whole thing out loud, so as to make sure you have the inflections you really want.

It seems to me you need a few thousand more words to really flesh out the idea. I’d love to read a longer, more detailed version of this.

Nice idea, I like the idea of gently unravelling of the future world as the story progresses, but as a whole this felt clunky to me. I was waiting for some amazing explanation that would blow me away, but it never came, sorry. Maybe your concept was a little ambitious in scope for the word count.

There is a nice concept here, but I think the execution could do with a little work. I didn’t expect to see any sci-fi takes on the crime genre in the contest, and this was certainly different from a lot of the submissions. I have to give you props for taking on time travel, because frankly the whole area is a mess to get right, without any paradoxes sneaking in.

The story is at times hard to follow, and very disjointed. You move to explore tangents and characters that go nowhere and add nothing. There is the scientist husband of Marissa who thinks he’s going to be fired. I assumed the character would be back and would have a part to play, but that section is the only one in which he appears. Marissa is briefly introduced but not in a meaningful way, and then she disappears again for 7 pages. The band members get a very short section as well, which again adds nothing to the story. Then there are the scientist guys flinging darts, that are there to provide a very weak motive, but it uncovers another hole – is Marissa working with them? Which of them made the first approach? Where is the revenge on sending the body his sometime lover has killed just to get back at him for making fun of Einstein?

I’m making the presumption that you were going for a light story with some darkly wry comedy mixed in. Other than a certain ridiculousness though, there is very little comedy here. You don’t do your concept justice. You have an unrepentant protagonist, who is so lacking in layers that he is not a particularly interesting character. The most interesting character on display is Marissa, and then only at the very end. She has very conflicting emotions which are barely noted. This is a woman who feels intense love for Ray… so much that it leads to her kill him, not once but twice. The section with her scientist partner just muddies the waters and lessens the impact of that strong emotion.

I don’t understand why the first murder is never really covered off after he gets off on the suicide verdict. How does that murder get eradicated for Marissa to be able to carry out the second one? It may be time travel involved, but Ray is still dead. He was out of the police station within three days, yet we have no idea how he manages to avoid being given the fatal overdose. Why does Marissa wait so long before just deciding to slice and dice? Why was the body even sent back in time in the first place? My head is spinning with all the unanswered questions.

There is gold in these hills, but it’s going to take some time and effort to extract it. I think you show enough craft here to have confidence that you are going to pull this off. Best of luck with it.