Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25428589-20140916200543/@comment-17758905-20140918162050

Let's get into this: "Hi! I'm new to the CreepyPasta wiki and I would really appreciate it if someone would critique this so far. I feel like it might be too long but. I don't know what to edit out. Be as harsh as you want, I want honest opinions. Thanks :)"

Well for one I took a cursory glance and it's only six paragraphs, so I wouldn't worry about length there, buddy.

"I was a nurse at Stockfield General Hospital for a couple of months. The pay was shit, but it kept food on my plate and I felt valued, even though I'd only just joined. It seemed pretty normal to start with, you got the occasional patient who'd be absolutely raving who'd terrify me, but it wasn't as if I was going to quit my job over a couple of schizos. Then, in the middle of August, I came across an inconsistency. A patient, "James Brookson" in his early 20s and suffering from cancer, just disappeared. There was no record of him being signed out. He simply vanished. I'd spoken to him just the day before. I spoke to a couple of the other nurses but they didn't remember him. The only reason I remembered this guy is because he'd asked me to contact his wife, who he divorced some time ago, to apologise and to say that he still loved her."

Well now this is an interesting set-up. Mysterious person no one remembers except the protagonist.

"I checked the digital records to see if he had just been moved to another ward. However, his file didn't appear. It was as if he had never existed. The computer couldn't have accidentally done that, there were too many safeguards. Someone deliberately deleted this guy from our system. So, I searched the backup of the records. I found him. And yet, there was barely any information about the guy. There was just a tag "HF" and a record saying he had been moved to the Oxley ward. I had no idea what HF meant, the only time I ever hear it used is when the caterers refer to the hospital food. And as for the Oxley ward, I had never heard of it. There was no record of it on the plans and the other staff had no clue as to what it was. That night, when I got home, I looked up the hospital's blueprints online. There it was! In the basement, just down from the catering area."

Now this is getting really interesting. We're quickly getting deeper into the mystery instead of just her incessantly going "I need to figure it all out before... something!"

"I got in to work the next morning, with a much brighter mood. I had found him! I must have forgotten that he had been moved. I completed my normal rounds before having some lunch. I planned to use the rest of my lunch break to check on him in the Oxley ward when I was interrupted by the hospital's director. He seemed to have almost deliberately crossed paths with me, although he acted surprised when he saw me. His voice sounded on edge as he spoke. "Ah, Scott! Good to see you! How's your day going?" "Good thank-you sir," I replied. The way he spoke was odd, strained and slightly hurried as if he wanted to skip over the small talk and get to a more pressing subject. "I've been meaning to speak to you, it's a happy coincidence that we met." he said, eyes darting up and down my face as if he was trying to see if I suspected him of wrongdoing. "Oh?" I responded, wondering whether it was a coincidence. "You see, I've been hearing from the other staff that you have been inquiring about some, uh, 'Oxley' ward? Is that right, because I've never heard of it." Our meeting definitely wasn't a coincidence. His voice had taken a very controlled, practised tone. "Um, yeah," I said, "I lost track of a patient and the records said he was moved their." "If you want I could help, although I'm sure that we don't have a ward of that name." My brain went haywire. He had to be lying, but why? There was definitely an Oxley ward on the plans. "I was just going to use my break to try and find it," I said ambiguously, not mentioning the basement. "Oh, didn't you hear? Janice called in sick. You're going to have to sacrifice your break.""

Yep, something's up with the hospital director. And it's linked to hospital food apparently. Got me speculating (personally I'm guessing amnesia-causing hospital food or something related, but that's just me).

"I walked back to the Curie ward, damning the manager to hell. I grudgingly continued with my rounds, not fully concentrating and thinking about the mystery of the Oxley ward. A woman caught me muttering to myself about it and asked me if I was OK. I got angry and told her to piss off, which I think shut her up quite well. Suddenly, my shift was over and I almost ran to the basement. I wasn't going to let some fucking director interrupt me this time. As I got down there, I was horrified by the stench. The dank smell of rotting meat burrowed in to my nose causing me to gag. My eyes started watering and I stumbled over to a large pair of double doors. "Oxley Ward" said the sign and I frantically threw open the doors. I wish I hadn't. Bodies littered the floor, with arms, eyes and stomachs missing. A huge oven seemed to be cooking their severed limbs and organs. I threw up. Some were still conscious, groaning, calling to me to help them. And then I realised what the HF meant - what I thought laughable when I first saw it. Hospital Food. This was where James was taken. He was taken here and cut up and cooked and fed to the other patients. Oh fuck. I had eaten hospital food just that day, for lunch. Had I eaten my patient? Twisted catering staff stood their, meat cleavers in hand, staring at me. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" one asked me angrily. I knew exactly what I was doing. I grabbed my scalpel from my pocket and stabbed them to death, one by one, the sick bastards. And then I ran, laughing from the exhilaration of saving those patients and the joy of being free of that place."

Oh god, you went the cliche route. You ruined it all.

I sort of expected from the title "BOOM! PLOT TWIST! Soylent Green- ahem, erm, hospital food - is people. Plus you went blood cliche 101. I really expected it with that rotting meat thing too. Plus, a nurse with a scalpel versus god knows how many staff members with meat cleavers?

I mean, this had SO MUCH potential that I could paint streets with it, but you suddenly went "plot twist, this is it". It doesn't help that it really doesn't explain the whole everyone forgetting him thing either.

Also, someone would notice this soon enough. People go into the hospital, and they don't come out. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes or Phoenix Wright to figure that out.

" === Patient suffers from extreme paranoid schizophrenia and constructs intricate plots to explain his delusions. Patient justifies murdering a room full of catering staff by claiming they were using patients to make food. Patient still believes that he is living in London, even though he has been moved to this asylum. He has so far made 6 attempts to kill doctors who he believes are government agents sent to stop him from spreading the truth."

Alright, looks like you're trying to salvage it.

"We cannot allow the public to know the truth. Patient must be kept in this institution until he can be exterminated."

Oh, no, you didn't. Now you're just throwing us in circles of "is this real or was it all in his head?"