7/24/2006 c1 With Rhyme and Reason
Whoa. That's pretty damn intense. This is really, really good. And I'm not just saying that to be nice. The first half or so was bordering on satire, with your little quips about school being hell, etc. The swearing was biting, but it wasn't used distastefully. A lot of the first part made me laugh out loud. Such as:

"...hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders again, and trudged out of Hell—I mean school. Oh, wait, they’re the same thing. Never mind." -Funny.

"...because my teachers are homicidal maniacs who take joy in their students’ misery..." -Again, funny.

But there was a transition, I think during the jogging scene, where you start to succumb to the darker side of your character and your story. This is where it gets less funny and more just really good. It's intense, yeah, but you've already given the reader a sense of the lightness you're capable of. So we know that there's something seriously different happening with the narrator. Something darker. His dislike of snow confused me at first, but it makes perfect sense, too. The red spreading over the white can be a universal metaphor for the loss or taint of innocence. That, I felt, was done very nicely.

"But I do remember my music box being crushed under a car after I dropped it while were crossing the street." -There's a beautiful, childish feel to that sentence. It's so tragic. I can almost see a kid glancing over his shoulder at the sound of the metallic and wooden crash-a music box breaking. But he knows, in his child's heart, that the music box does not-cannot-matter right now.

I wonder what they did with the body?

Great story, by the way. I was worried when it was classified as "angst/humor" but I get it now. Very well done.

J