Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6113792-20130125114314

so i'm going to do my best to make a definitive list of everything that i can think of that's wrong with this...

1. lets start with the story. if something like this would have happened in real life, then there would be an exact date, or actual names. one would be able to find this in a newspaper or police report. this also would have been a famous story being talked about for quite a long time, like the philadelphia project, not something we are all just hearing about now.

2. how would you be able to tell how tight the jaws are clamped down unless she was biting the person writing? by the not seeing the teeth? that happens every time I have cereal, because I don't snarl my lips. "well maybe they meant that it was so buried in the kittens flesh that you couldn't see the teeth." you say? well, that wouldn't be too far considering how much of a fluffball kittens are.

3. she then proceeds to tear the part of the kitten that isn't in her mouth away and toss it to the side. which would be an incredible feat if she has normal teeth. but she doesn't, as we find out later in the story. but why do we find out later? wouldn't you be able to see these horrific spikes right then? or was no one paying attention to the face of a person that just ripped apart a kitten? (personally i'd be looking at the face to see if it was going to bite me in a second or two.)

4. and now we get to some very subtle but major flaws showing that this is just a story. i propose to you, the reader, a thought experiment. imagine that you just bit the head off a chicken in the waiting room of a hospital and then collapsed. they take you to a room and tie you down, being that you are a mental case. but you don't have a problem with this. now that they have you tied up and you haven't lifted a finger against anyone this entire time (including but not limited to: being lifted off the ground [probably by more than one person], taken to a room in the back, made to be partially or fully naked, re-clothed, and made to lay down in a bed, and have your hands, waist, and ankles bound), the doctor thinks it would be a good idea to sedate you... after he had you tied down... with medicine that cost money... that they probably won't get paid back... because you're a freak.

5. so now she smiles at the male doc, who i'm left to assume was on the left in the picture because i was given no hint as to where he was standing. and now, you being the doctor on the right sees her smiling... even though her head is turned away from you... and you are working hard to keep her in the bed, so you'd be looking in front of you to make sure you don't hurt yourself on anything restraining the patient. but you instead stare at a horrifying face that you can barely comprehend and freak out when it moves.

on to the issues with the picture that shows up with every re-iteration of the story.

6. the two people holding the manikin are wearing patient gowns. nurses and doctors don't wear those. and if they are surgical gowns, then they wouldn’t be handling the patient.

7. who would put a blanket on the scary lady that no one could stand to look at and didn't say she was cold?

8. when there is a struggle going on clothes tend to get pulled taught, causing sharper creases. not one shirt has a sharp crease.

9. i understand that her face didn't move, but why didn't her hair move in the struggle?

10. speaking of movement, why was there no motion blur in the middle of the struggle? a feat that modern cameras were only able to manage with in the past few years.

11. the right hand of the person on the left is open. it wouldn't be if there was a struggle going on.

the only piece of evidence that hints of this being a real story is found in the picture and is pretty weak to be honest. now i could be wrong here but it appears as though the left shoulder socket is out of place. something that could happen in a struggle. or in a broken manikin.

i only had two issues with the actual writing. and they are as follows:

1. this is more of a continuity and descriptive issue than anything else but "She then pulled [the kitten] out of her mouth, tossed it aside and collapsed. From the moment she stepped through the entrance..." is still confusing. did she collapse and then walked through the door? cause that's what it sounds like. i'm really confused here. more so than when " She then pulled [the kitten] out of her mouth, tossed it aside..." did she pull out the chunk that she bit off, like a piece of meat in the teeth? did she pull the cat off minus the chunk, as one might eat a chicken leg? to be honest, these kinds of errors (like not mentioning that she bit the cat while she was standing in the hospital) remind me of how i would write when I was younger, and seem to hint toward the writer being a bit younger than a person on staff at this hospital would be. my guess would be in the 12 to 17 range, depending on intelligence.

2. "and letting him fall to the floor... She stood up and leaned over him... She leaned closer and whispered in his ear..." how do you whisper in someones ear while they're on the ground and you're standing? for that matter if this was real how would anyone but the doctor be able to know what was whispered? i would imagine that the sound of someone trying to scream, while gargling on their own blood would be louder than a whisper.

but other than these things i found it to be a great short story. it actually had me creeped right the hell out for a minute or two, and i truly wanted to believe that this could have happened. so this was a fantastic story and i look forward to the next one you write. 