Talk:Ixodida/@comment-26475800-20160703162310

This was a pretty good read. The story was interesting enough to keep me hooked throughout and kept me guessing. There are a few things that I noticed, and, if you don't mind, I'll list some of them below.

"'They put heroin in your drink. Can you believe it? Someone slipped you that horrible, nasty, drug.'”

As someone who had done damn near every drug under the sun, I can tell you that heroin wouldn't make someone trip. It would be if you had a red herring thrown in here, because Skit will tell the truth to her on the bus anyway. Maybe have someone put something else in the drink, or just don't identify which drug it was. If you say that someone had spiked the drink, it will go unquestioned and make the story a little better. Later Skit could tell that he swapped the pill with some kind of opiate, maybe even morphine. Morphine is an opiate as well, so it could have the same kind of an effect.

"It refocused once more Toni, and from somewhere within itself a thunderous, alien rumble droned outwards"

This sentience is a little awkward, mainly because of the Toni before the comma. I'm not really sure what is happening with that, or if it was supposed to have on Toni or what. But that should be an easy fix.

"'No,' Toni answered, shaking her head. 'Andrew’s asleep. What do you want?' Skit continued to fidget nervously, and bit his nails as he seemed to mull over what he wanted to say. Just as Toni began to find herself without patience, he spoke."

This is a little clunky, I would just split up the speech from the rest of the paragraph. It would just make the story flow a little better.

That was about all the grammar things I caught, there was one more but I deleted it from my notepad, but it was just something along the lines of "he looked he," which it would be easy to fix.

The characters were very well developed and fleshed out. The story flowed smoothly, except for the Starbucks section. That was a little strange because everyone froze when they walked in, which I know is explained later, but it seemed to be just so out of the blue. And the girl started to lose chunks of flesh, well that wasn't ever really resolved. Also, how was Skit able to see what was happening but no one else was. He also swapped the bag when everyone was supposed to be frozen, including him. So that part was a little strange.

I liked the ending, but maybe you shouldn't start by saying the girl rubbed Skit's leg and have it be Toni. The girl seems to appear from thin air and it is a little confusing.

Okay, sorry for putting all of that here, but I would forget if I didn't. Overall, for how long the story was there isn't that much that caught my eye. It was pretty well written and a good concept. The monsters were really vague, it's clear that they are some kind of spider thing, but it doesn't really say how they had gotten the powers they have. Which is understandable, because no one really knows what they are. It give a good mystery to them.

Overall I'd give this story about a 7/10. It's going to be a fun contest, there seem to be a lot of good stories coming out now. Good luck.