Stumpies

[Quincunx]

Stumpies

 

Cutting and pasting an indented word-processing-program story directly into a post usually doesn't look good; board software ignores most formatting. Above the reply box, the odd symbol to the right of the Size drop-down box inserts an indent tag into your post, but that cannot properly indent an entire paragraph: it shifts every line over by one tab, not just the initial one. People in the poets' area, the Banquet Room, have figured out how to place indented lines within a post with board code (see the list of sticky topics in that forum). However, for situations where code is too unwieldy, try web-formatting with a single blank line in between paragraphs, as this review has. After awhile, it will become instinctive when typing posts or stories which will eventually be posted; I even add the bracketed tags for board formatting while typing in a word-processing program.

 

Queen of the Dream World is a common enough plot hook, but I don't believe I've ever seen the legend of headless people dragged into it previously. That was unique enough that I was disappointed when it was revealed to be another dreamwalking story. Your skill with the absurd description (with any description, and the characterization) is very solid. Why not hearken back to Kafka and not bother inserting an explanation for the absurd world? Just say that your narrator is "one of us", and never mention a title or a purpose--if he's that sick of explaining himself, couldn't he have clammed up and left the narrator standing there with no answers? Make the second post, and perhaps other installments after that, into a pursuit of answers.

 

There are very few proofreading-level problems with the story. The beginning jars slightly with you revealing that you would never again tell anyone about the stumpies, then plunging back into telling us about them--why? It jars. (By the end of this first installment, you still haven't declared that you are writing a journal or anything like that, which is the simplest possible explanation.) "I sensed the familiar, vibe that I get whenever I’m in close proximity to a Stumpy" does not need a comma; pluck it out and move it to after 'head' in "So many thoughts raced through my head my mind was numb by the time I got home." In "Then, a deep breathe", you wanted 'breath' instead. There's many fragmented sentences here, which are necessary, but the need for them has gone by the end of the piece--please make sure they don't bleed over into the first part of the next installment.