Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26163676-20160313055526/@comment-24101790-20160323015031

You have a tendency to shift from past tense to present tense throughout the story. They should be uniform so past tense sentences like this: "At the age of ten, I was living in a house in the middle of a small neighborhood." and present tense: "I hear the pitter-patter of footsteps behind me." and "I freeze, not daring to move a muscle." are in agreement. As you are telling the story in past tense, you need to keep it uniform throughout.

Capitalization issues: If starting a sentence with a number, you have to write it out so it can be properly capitalized. "room. 12, 11, 10.", "pace. 9, 8, 7.", "feet. 4, 3, 2.". You also happen to skip over five and six and it feels odd that the protagonist randomly starts counting at 12.

There are some pretty large issues with the story as well. Mainly being, why doesn't the protagonist turn on the light if they're so frightened of the dark? Most rooms/hallways are set up so a person can turn on the switches at an easy to access point. It feels odd that they would go into describing their dread when there's a readily available solution. "A sense of dread began to grow within me. Was there something following me? Was it going to hurt me?" The story also bears a lot of similarities to We're All Alone with the premise and ending. The main difference seems to be in the execution. The other builds up the tension and feeling that the protagonist is being watched whereas this one starts out with the protagonist acting paranoid without much reason.

Finally the ending feels out of place. ""Or is it," speaks a voice behind me." The protagonist is telling the story in past tense so it feels pretty awkward that the story would end there. (especially with the framing at the beginning setting this up as a recollection of events. "At the age of ten, I was living in a house in the middle of a small neighborhood.") Additionally, is the voice telepathic, how does it know what the protagonist is thinking? I'm sorry but there is quite a lot of work needed to be done for this story to work and its similarities to other stories really damages the premise.