I wake to find that I can't move and can't see. It's either very dark or I'm blind folded, I can't really tell. It's cold, extremely cold. There is no noise, only the rapid thumping of my own panicked heart. I settle my breathing, trying not to hyperventilate, and attempt to wriggle free from whatever has been used to restrain me.
"This is weird," I said aloud. I hear my voice echoing in the empty room. "Is anyone here?"
No reply.
"HELP!!"
No reply.
Now I'm utterly paralyzed in fear. My pulse races again and I begin rapidly flailing my arms trying to get out of the restraints.
I hear a door opening to my left, and moments later a large hand is pressed on my chest. "Awake are we?" A male voice. I feel something sharp go into my arm, and then I slowly lose the ablitly to fight my restraints.
The door opens again, "What happened to him?" A female voice.
"He was trying to fight out of his restraints, Doctor." The man replied, I could feel him tightening the restraints on my arms.
"Well don't go trying to escape yet," the doctor said to me. "You haven't had your special procedure yet."
"Why are you keeping me here?" I yelled. "What did I do?"
"We should be asking you why you came to this place at all." The man answered.
"I was looking for the bathroom." I explained.
"With a camera and notepad in your backpack?" The doctor asked.
"They were for a school project."
"And I'm the Queen of England." The man sarcastically replied.
"When you can tell us the truth about why you were in the Mental Ward, we'll undo your restraints." The woman said. I hear the door open and footsteps leaving the room, I'm alone again.
I found myself at a loss for words. Fear crept deep into my mind, I don't believe I'm leaving here.
FOCUS!!!
A voice screamed at me from seemingly a thousand places at once. "Who are you?" I replied.
CONCENTRATE!!!
"Concentrate on what?" I struggled to try and focus on the source of the voice.
YOU CAN GET OUT OF HERE!!!
"How?" I was now worried I might be losing my mind.
THE DOCTOR!!!
"WHAT?!"
CALL THE DOCTOR BACK!!!
I screamed several times until the doctor came back into the room.
"Are we ready to talk now?" She asked.
Whatever had been screaming at me now possessed my voice. "Yes."
"OK, good! Why were you poking around in the mental ward?"
"The school sent me to investigate why nobody is ever released from this place."
"Really, that's hard to belive."
"My teacher told me that his sister was sent here and never left until she mysteriously died." A whole slew of incredibly horrible thoughts raced through my mind.
"Suprising, all of the teachers at your school have been bribed by myself so I could run tests on the students."
I screamed, overpowering the Voice's urge to continue speaking. "What are you going to do to me?" I yelled.
"Well, I guess we can start with a lobotomy to get rid of your free will." I can hear tools clattering onto a table at the foot of my bed. "Or maybe we cut out those eyes."
My pulse pounded and I began uncontrollably screaming. A gag is placed in my mouth, and I feel the scalpel dig into my chest.
"I've never performed open heart surgery on an awake patient before." The doctor laughed. "But I guess I can try."
I continue screaming, muffled by the gag. and try to struggle loose of my restraints again as the scalpel cuts me down the entire front of my chest. I can feel my blood pooling next to me as it runs down my sides, the pain is incredible.
IF YOU WOULD HAVE LEFT ME SPEAK I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN YOU OUT OF HERE!!!
The voice returned, and coninued repeating the same line until everything faded away.
IT'S TOO LATE NOW! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!!!

I'm going to star this. Because of the originality and the harsh and staccato voice and the tremendous energy in the story.

However, it was practically impossible for me to read ...you need to either indent your paragraphs or leave a blank line between paragraphs.

In other words, I felt your story by reading a few key lines by skimming through it. And the architectonic -- the priority of ideas behind it -- is overwhelming. With a very highly concentrated psychic energy that got your point across despite the formatting being, as I said, practically unreadable.

So, congratulations on your vision and expression, but PLEASE either indent your paragraphs -- or -- leave a space between your paragraphs.

There are certain basic rules you need to follow if you want your work to be read ... one of them, is that is has to look readable.

You have a great facility with vision and expression and timing, but you'd be better served by slowing down enough to format your work.

Not everyone can write a single draft and get away with it. At least a subsequent draft would've either indented the paragraphs or left an empty line between paragraphs.

So all and all, the concept is striking and original and has great integrity. And I was able to share the experience like some kind of psychic ray was shooting out of the words to explode out your meaning (despite the unreadable formatting). Please either indent your paragraphs or leave a blank line between them.

I find it hard to believe that you can be at once so talented but in such a hurry you didn't either indent ... or leave a blank line.

If you find me being repetitive, that's exactly what it felt like to me to want to get more deeply into the material, but was unable to because of the lack of formatting.

Great work, great originality, great concentration, great force, great authority, great passion wins the day in my book.

[edit on 21-10-2008 by counterterrorist]

Originally posted by counterterrorist

There are certain basic rules you need to follow if you want your work to be read ... one of them, is that is has to look readable.

you wrote that the story was hardly readable for you, and you claimed that the author needs to paragaph or lleave a blank line between the paragraphs.

this depends on the typesettind- and layout standards of your country.
for german standards this story was perfectly readable and very well paragraphed.

people usually don.t even follow the typesetting standards of their home country, which i have to learn every day since it is my profession as a media and graphic designer, so i don.t think that we can expect that they are used to foreign standards.

so let us please be patient with each other.


very well written story. loved it!

as a reply to counterterrorist,

I was indenting my paragraphs, but when i clicked "Post", it moved my indentations back to the side of the column, leaving the hard to read look there. I've since begun double returning to separate my paragraphs.

Thanks for the nod to the writing though, considering this is my first crack at horror.

This story makes me sick.

But -- I loved it!

Fantastic idea. Really well executed. Great work!