Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20190326080033/@comment-9041013-20190327111742

Well I hope you're doing better now, Doctor. (That does make one wonder, when a doctor gets sick does he treat himself or see a colleague?)

As for the story, some of your more subtle horror pieces I'm not a fan of, this is one of them. The trope of a dystopian society works better for morale stories and/or dramas in my book. Unless the focus of the story is on clearly horrifying things like a zombie apocalypse in less realistic scenarios and Gulags in more realistic scenarios. These are merely two examples from the top of my head. The idea of a state controlled country where everything is strictly regulated, even at the cost of human life, to a certain standart isn't exactly scary, not to me, at least partially because we live in a reality where people are actively trying to push on us an agenda that is a mix of Stalinism and Nazism.

Now my biggest issue with this story is Bob's personality, he can't be an awesome dad and a good citizen with no issues if his line of work is basically a state sponsored mob man kind of job. It was either natural to him, which would mean he has to have some flaws. Even if he's not abusive to his family, he might be a bit hedonistic, or something. There is a neuroscientist who points out that Psychopaths are born but they are made into "evil" by their environment. So even if Bob isn't a psychopath but is to have any other condition that enables him to kill people with a poker face and no consequences it should come through somehow. The other route is that he conditioned himself to be what he is, but it still takes a toll and it takes a massive toll, sometimes it takes you years to notice but eventually it comes out and with more than just some mental fatigue. This, to me could be a real turning point for the story. If you had made him into a John Wick kind of character (if you haven't seen the movies, they're nice); he is obviously a somewhat cynical and stoic in the classical sense of the terms which is safe to assume was brought about by him being the best hitman ever in his movie universe. I would've loved seeing his internal conflict as a driving factor in this story (in terms of both horror factor and plot points).

Also, do people really retain their origin culture in the US at around the third generation?

And, in his line of job, he should be payed enough to pay for a whole destroyed building and still have a nice cheque at the end of the month.

It's just a matter of my own taste though. The story itself is working nice enough, it's smooth and doesn't jump. The plot progresses nicely and the language is pretty good. I haven't spotten anything abnormal on the technical side, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to these details, so you might want to have another proof reading. Overall, not my cup of tea but I think it would work for others.