Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28963682-20160711021212/@comment-24101790-20160716014031

"she appeared to be enveloped in a bright halo." A halo typically refers to only the head where it seems like you're talking about their entire body, maybe aura or corona would work a bit better.

"It continued to pulse under my hands. I did my best to ignore the pulsing." I would try to avoid reusing the same words in rapid succession like you did with "pulse". Maybe squirming or writhing so it would still match with the physical description and avoid redundancy. Same as with here: "All the while, the creature swayed from left to right with the swaying motion oscillating the head from side to side, like a lure on an angler fish."

"The creature was about eight foot (feet) tall."

"It's (Its) legs curved—almost like a scythe", "However, it's (its) arms never seemed to become thin enough to become blades.", "It had two black eyes, no ears, no nose, and a thin, straight, black line where it's (its) lips should be.", "It's thin mouth began to vibrate; parts of its mouth moved up and down like a visual representation of music", etc. It's= it is, its=possession.

"The creature seemed to rely on sound." You might want to clarify that its sense of surrounding is based on sound as the phrase relying on sound could imply a number of things. (It could rely on sound to sense its surroundings. It could use sound/sonic waves to attack prey, etc.)

"I tried to move the latch, but it was locked. I felt a sense of desperation." As the protagonist finds a key a sentence later, you really need to go into detail why this they feel this way or describe how their desperation is impacting them as it otherwise feels abrupt. ("I was angry with my friends and knew I would never fully trust them again. Later when I forgave them and began trusting them again..."

"Also, the creatures in their dream was (were) different than mine."

Story: While I do like the environment and general focus on the story, I feel like you need to focus more on connecting these people together if you're going to mention them specifically. I was wondering what events could bring a geisha, a knight, and a modern person together to experience similar events. At first I thought it was the anesthetic, but since the earliest use of anesthetics can be traced back to Japan (1760–1835) with its usage becoming prominent in the late 1930's, that seems like an incorrect assumption.

This line: "In the end, I decided that the place must have been some sort of purgatory or some sort of waiting area for people who were unconscious through unnatural means. Maybe it's where we go when we lose consciousness. It's where all timelines meet as one." sheds a little light but muddles other areas. How come there's only the mention of one other case when the reasoning seems to indicate that losing consciousness through unnatural means would seem to be a lot more common (how many people have gone under for surgery in the United States alone? The CDC estimates about 51.4 million, so it seems odd that this wouldn't some forum discussing this.

On a final note: For the impending surgery terror ending ("There's a Bible in my hand; I am terrified.") to be effective, I would add some explanation of what happens to people who fall victim to the monsters in that realm. Maybe discussing what happens to someone's consciousness when they are captured in that realm (at first I thought the inclusion of Lana was going to reveal that the sister had died and that the entities assimilated them and were luring people with the faces of their dead loved ones.) Or maybe allude to the fact that anesthesia death rates have begun to rise recently to suggest that they are becoming more aggressive/killing more people in this dream state. Leaving it as is feels pretty anticlimactic.