Talk:One Night Stand/@comment-9041013-20190301110246

First and foremost, I don't think this story should be considered NSFW, simply because you mention "sex" does not make it contain any sexually explicit content. In fact, you've done a great job on keeping the whole thing PG.

Anyways, we start the story off with a presentation of what is supposed to be average joe who was sleeping in the bed of a woman he had slept with. Cool. We quickly learn that this man has a heart problem, however, as his blood does not flow to his nether regions during sleep as it should (it's some sort of regulatory system the male body has installed to see if the heart is functioning properly). Instead, he has to think about the woman he had slept with a few hours before to do what his heart should've been doing in the first place.

I have no idea why this man has any assumptions about a woman he has never met before and her sleeping habits. It strikes me as odd that the sentence, "But something wasn't right." Is there. As we learn later in the story this man does not care the slightest about the women he beds.

It's actually a reoccurring theme in some of your stories, how male sexuality is this bad, disgusting carnal sort of thing. On the contrary, female sexuality seems to be very empowering in the same stories to a degree where a virgin is not even nervous during her first time.

We'll get to that later.

I know the atmosphere is supposed to be somewhat alarming by the of the second paragraph, but I was broken out of the story by the first sentence of the third paragraph, thus the atmosphere was not established properly.

"Odd, he thought." The word "Odd" should be either italicized or in quotes, because it's internal speech.

This paragraph does not keep on the trend of alarming atmosphere building because the protagonist (I guess he is that) makes random assumptions about his lover for the night. Especially since she isn't doing anything that is actually unheard of or uncommon. Why did he become so bothered by her looking out of the window that it kept him from going to sleep? The fact that she stood still isn't really weird, considering that in anyone's mind she should've been at least still somewhat groggy from her sleep, thus not making too many expenditures of energy.

Also, your register keeps fluctuating around this story, you start with slightly above colloquial English, increase your register and then drop it down again by the point "It was not the most bizarre thing he'd ever encountered after a night's romp with a stranger…" You should try to stick as much as possible to a certain register and keep it throughout the story.

The story then proceeds to make your unnamed male character appear as if he is some sexual deviant who does not really care about anything other than sex, which is again a reoccurring theme in some of your stories, it's a really weird pattern.

"He was puzzled. He'd been in almost exactly this position more times than he could count, but never once had he been asked to leave." – Lucky guy… I mean with his endless experience, someone at least once should've told him to leave.

"What if she suddenly felt that things had not been consensual? Even without evidence, something like that could ruin a man." – In lieu of things revealed later in the story, it shouldn't have crossed his mind, I mean, she was so into it she performed just like a person with a ton of experience.

To your credit, the dialogue starts wooden but improves gradually over time, into what appears to be a genuine conversation. Its filled with fake emotions, or rather unfitting to the setting and even uncharacteristic of the characters you've presented, but emotions nonetheless.

He blinked the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. Had she really said that? Intellectually, it seem absurd, like she was playing some kind of game, and yet a chill still ran up his spine. "Who?" he asked." – this whole section is out of character for your lad, at first you establish him as a person with a single goal in these encounters of his, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer and now he's analyzing what seems like an odd expression to him. Also, the word "seem" is in the wrong tense. Should have been in the past tense, like the rest of the sentence.

You should also tweak this, "and he hoped against hope to be wrong about what she could mean by speaking in past tense." Should be, "in the past tense".

The following part does not really establish a creepy, or rather scare oriented atmosphere as it throws any and all logic out of the window. Your female character is revealed to have been a virgin before this encounter, however, it is also revealed your male character never noticed it. I'm talking about a first-time nervousness as a must for the female and possible discomfort with perhaps a minor blood loss. Here we are, however, in a world where this woman isn't nervous at all about having sex for the first time, doesn't hurt even a bit, nor does she ever bleed. If only the real world was this perfect.

<p dir="LTR">Also, I don't think virginity is such a novelty, considering that during the first time the more experienced partner would have to try and calm (and possibly kind of guide) the virgin partner.

<p dir="LTR">Anyways, it is revealed in the same breath that the female's partner was a deeply religious man who wanted her to stay a virgin forever. This, it makes absolutely no sense, because reproduction is a virtue in Christianity, so, how does this work? Had her father been only deeply religious without being a minister in the church I could've bought into his need for his daughter to be a virgin for life. Ed Gein's mother was a deeply religious woman, a terrible one that had led her son to a dark path, but she wasn't part of the church. This parent is, so he can't tell his daughter "don't have sex", however, he could have told her that if she was sin out of wedlock, then…

<p dir="LTR">Then again, his being able to curse people with actual results does not seem to align with him being a minister. As far as I remember, the church doesn't think anyone but God and other celestial beings has these abilities nowadays, there aren't any saints running around anymore like in the first millennium AD. The church also really abhors witchcraft, so my guess is the father should have never been a minister, only a religious man.

<p dir="LTR">I can't really seem to understand why would the male feel dreaded upon hearing that the father was, in the past, a minister. If I were in his shoes, my first thought would've been "Well he does sound like crazy, maybe the church kicked him out." I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that he died somehow.

<p dir="LTR">"My bones know it." As a person who occasionally feels the knowledge surging through his bones, I must say this phrase should never be used unless the character has actual health issues regarding their bones or the tissue surrounding them. It's a bad feeling.

<p dir="LTR">The following part sounds really-really ridiculous "“Well,” the man began, “why don’t you run?”

<p dir="LTR">She shook her head. “It won’t stop him. He’ll find me no matter what.” – Why would she know if she didn't even believe her father was alive?

<p dir="LTR">Also, the male, didn't care for the female enough to remember her name, why would he try to be heroic and save her all of the sudden? It's a weird inconsistency in his character, a second one for such a short story.

<p dir="LTR">As for zombie daddy, why did his curse work in such a way? It seems like there is a lot of details you didn't think about. If the father was a member of the church, he wouldn't believe in such things. He'd believe in hell and what not, the Christian doctrine. Not in some sort of voodoo-like magic that could make his curse actually work using his corpse.

<p dir="LTR">On the subject of his corpse though, seeing as how she mentioned her age at the time of his death, the father should've died what a decade before the story takes place or so… that would've left him with only bones by the time of the story. Unless he did some grave digging before tracking down his "dirty" daughter to collect some muscle tissue. Him being made of only bones means he couldn't do much. I think a better curse would've been something akin to final fantasy scenarios where a certain force makes sure that the woman dies. It doesn't have to be any seen force. Just an accident or something, but more so than a simple accident, it should've been something very unlikely or a few events in the sequence of which she dies. You could've gone with the simple ghost path, as well.

<p dir="LTR">All in all, this story could use a bunch of work in order to actually be scary.