Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.
1.1
August 2017
Great job, Rev. Fucking pat yourself on the back. You fucking deserve it.
‘You know I can hear you, right?’
No shit.
‘Sarcasm now, huh, Nails?’ I laughed, kicking an empty can of Red Bull down the path in front of us. ‘Didn’t think you’d be one for sarcasm, Mister my mum still tucks me into bed at night.’
That was one time! I was ill! And I’m just mad.
‘If you’re mad, say it to my face, not my head.’
Nails stopped and sighed. ‘I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to get arrested at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning! My mum thought I’d gone to do the paper round! I had to explain to her why we-’
‘No, Nails, I’m sorry.’ I gave the can an almighty whack with the side of my foot and watched it skid along the concrete. ‘I’m sorry that the mayor of this town decided to fuck up everyone’s summer by building a huge fucking supermarket right on top of my favourite place in the entire world that’s inevitably going to bring traffic into the street and block everyone’s driveways and get in all of our ways and just generally fuck with our lives.’
‘You didn’t need to throw a rock at that builder’s ass, though. What did that achieve? An ASBO?’
I let out a laugh. ‘ASBOs aren’t even a thing anymore, dumbass. No, I just got a telling off. I don’t think they’re actually allowed to arrest teenagers, are they?’
I think the age of criminal responsibility is actually–
‘To my face!’ I gave him a shove.
‘Sorry. The age of criminal responsibility is ten years old.’
I considered this for a while, shoved my hands into the pockets of my trench coat, and swaggered forward. ‘It was fucking funny though.’
‘Yeah,’ Nails agreed, with an almost reluctant giggle. ‘It was kinda funny.’
Nails was a simple kid. Not dumb, just pleased by the smallest things in life, and rarely angered by anything. I did feel bad about getting him arrested like that, but I also got him out without any trouble. So I figured we were kind of equal now. Not that he’d ever admit that he was actually angry at me, not out loud. Annoyed maybe, but ever since he’d figured out that telepathy shit, he’d been much quieter. I just hoped he would never get on to mind reading, because hearing his voice in my head is one thing; having him rooting around in there is another. My head is my business - Rev’s only private place in the world.
We were halfway down the river path, heading away from the town centre towards the woods, where our second ‘back-up’ base was hidden. The Nest was where we usually hung out, but that was now overrun with fat, sweaty builders and their arse cracks. The Shack just wasn't the same - there was a kind of run-down, junkie’s den feeling to it, whereas The Nest always felt like some secret war bunker.
‘I hope Spike isn’t in any actual trouble,’ Nails said as we continued down the path ‘He’s a step closer than you to juvy.’
‘Several steps, actually. That was my first arrest. And, yeah, well, that’s what Spike gets for being a bona fide pyromaniac.’
The path twisted round the corner, leading us over a bridge and into the dense woods. Nails was slightly ahead of me, his hands in his pockets, head hanging low. His hair was greasy and unwashed and, frankly, needed a good chop. It wasn’t too sunny today, but it was hot, and I was glad for the shade that the trees provided us. It meant I could take off my sunglasses and actually appreciate the colours of the world for once.
‘He’s not a pyromaniac, you know,’ Nails stated quietly.
I practically snorted. ‘Dude, how many times has he intentionally set fire to something?’
‘He just gets bored.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s what he told me. His brain has lots of train tracks, but no trains, is what he said.’
‘Okay, then mine has hundreds of trains going in all different directions and constantly crashing; I'd love to be bored sometime. And I wasn’t dissing him, calling him a pyromaniac. I quite admire the way he sets things alight. It’s a right laugh - when the time is right.’
The Shack was hidden behind a log pile we’d built up over the years, the word ‘FUCK’ spray-painted in red across it, because that seemed funny at the time. Fuck, it was still funny. To me, anyway. The Shack was just an old shed we’d dragged from the dump and rebuilt against a tree. It was just about big enough for all four of us to fit in along with some chairs and a handy upside-down map of the UK on the far wall to cover up a hole in the wood. The Nest was much better, but that wasn’t an option now. Maybe we needed to expand The Shack, rebuild our bunker aesthetic.
Nails unlocked the door and collapsed onto one of the rickety wooden chairs, looking defeated. I took a seat opposite him, closing the door behind me and pulling the sunglasses off my head and leaving them on the small table that separated us.
‘You good? What are you thinking about?’ I asked him, a little confused at what the expression on his face meant. He wasn’t really one for expressions; he went more for an empty-headed look.
Shrugging, he replied, ‘I just - I just don’t want The Nest to be gone. Or a supermarket to be built. I don’t want to shop in a big supermarket. I like the corner shop.’ He pulled off his sunglasses too, and fiddled with them in his hands. ‘Okay, I mean, I like stealing from the corner shop. But apparently these big supermarkets have security guards with tazers.’
‘We’re not gonna shop there, Nails. No one will. Just wait till I tell Dahlia and William about this, if they don’t know already.’ They definitely already knew; they knew everything about this goddamn town. I scrunched up my face. ‘They’ll be fucking fuming and won't let it happen. Not in a million years.’
Inside my chest was this deep-set anger, slowly working its way out through fricative swear words and low, animal-like growls. I clenched my fists and put my head between my knees, taking a deep breath.
Are you okay, Rev?
‘Stay the fuck out of my head.’
Sorry.
‘Nails, I swear to god-’
‘Sorry, sometimes I can’t tell if I’m talking out loud or in your head. It’s not really under my control, not yet anyway.’ He did look sorry, and I believed him, but the anger wasn’t going away.
‘Yeah, well, at least you can actually fucking do it,’ I snapped. ‘I wish I could, but when I try, my nose just bleeds.’
Nails smiled apologetically at me as I straightened back up, exhaling. I kind of wanted to slap him for even daring to feel sorry for me. I didn’t need fucking pity - I would be able to master telepathy; I just needed more practice. It came easy to him because his head was quiet anyway. Mine was always so loud, always so full, that trying to concentrate on one thought enough to put it in someone else’s head was almost impossible.
‘WHAT’S UP BITCHES!’
The door burst open, and a wild Spike appeared before us, with Rusty hanging back behind him. Both of them were wearing the same sunglasses Nails and I had been wearing - gifts from Dahlia.
‘Dude, we were worried you were gonna get charged and sent away or something!’ Nails leapt up, and the two slapped hands and pulled each other in for a hug.
I leapt up too. ‘Which sob story did you use this time?’
‘Dead dad. Works every time. PC Rader is just a big baby when it comes to my old man, so I just put on the sad orphan face and whimpered about how I had no one to guide me anymore. And that new PC Burke is such a wet sock. They just had to wait for the social worker to come up. I’m meant to be seeing her right now but–’ He shrugged, winking at me. ‘I’d much rather be here. Planning revenge, right?’
‘Fuck yeah, man!’ I briefly smiled at Rusty, who was leaning in the doorway. He didn’t say much; in fact, he rarely spoke at all. But that was Rusty; he didn’t need to speak. He was just there, a participant in all this. A viewer, like Nails. It was me and Spike who did everything that needed doing around here.
‘Fuckin’ pricks, those builders, and the mayor, fuck the lot of 'em.’ Spike fumbled in the jacket of his leather coat, which was almost identical to mine, and found his lighter and a box of cigarettes. He flicked one out, stuck it between his lips and lit it.
None of us minded the smell of tobacco. It clung to our clothes and never went away, no matter how many times you washed them or showered. We’d grown used to it. Tobacco was this homely, nostalgic smell that we liked to follow us around. Spike and I smoked. Rusty and Nails took it in secondhand. Which was just as bad, but they didn’t care. We had all of eternity to live; a few cigarettes were never going to hurt.
‘Still buying them by the packet? Fucking hell?’ I laughed. ‘Did I not teach you how to roll the perfect cig with your own hands?’
He blew a cloud of smoke into the room and coughed. ‘Shit, these are just more convenient, you know? I don’t got time for no fuckin’ rizlas. Marlboro's all the way!’
‘You’re wasting your money, man.’
Nails laughed. ‘He’s not wasting any money. He nicked a bunch from behind the till in the corner shop when Mr Bill was distracted!’
I sat back down, and Spike joined me. Rusty closed the door and remained standing, looking at his phone.
‘So, you guys got any of your genius ideas?’ I asked, as Spike spread himself out in the chair. His hair had been freshly bleached. I could still smell it on him. I knew he nicked that too, from the chemist.
‘Well,’ he began, unable to keep the huge grin off his face. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
End of chapter
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Ah and here I thought “1.0” stood for Vers. 1.0, foreshadowing the eventual rewrite =D
this makes it almost seem as if Nails didn’t get arrested after all. Especially because he sighed beforehand. Like “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help” but then the rest of the convo is as if he WAS present and.. I am just very confused.Flashback time, here we go!
Ohaaaa and casual display of telepathy. I like it!
Tho the line abt tucking someone into bed is super low, vampire Rev ☹
Ok I am having a little trouble parsing the point of their convo. Is this because Nails got arrested for Rev throwing the rock? I have read the first chapter yesterday and still I feel like I needed a more blatant reminder of this @.@
Like here:
Might also want to throw in what ASBO stands for, for all the foreigners clamouring to read your stories =D
I wonder who is the telepath in this relationship? And wouldn’t telepathy be more convenient to communicate? I… I think I might need to continue writing my “A telepathic cat and her pet human have to do the Plot of Zelda Breath of the Wild, only they have no memories and also, it’s 10 years before the Events of Breath of the Wild” story because I really like what I did with Telepathy there.
Moooving on.
In any case, not a fan of the dialogue in this one, even if the telepathy is cool.
Oh I like that the “simple” character is the one with telepathy. I already love him <3
Oh man, that sounds like her parents are awfully nosy and don’t even let her have a private room ☹
I like how you describe the difference between Nest and Shack. Especially the latter.
I do wonder if all of these kids have powers… Now that we have a pyromaniac mention…
Hmmm makes me wonder if she already is a vampire…
Hmmm I am trying to untangle the metaphor here. So a lot of potential? No trains = no thought put into it?
Hmm I think this is where the teenage edge comes into play? Idk it sounds… trite that ofc the MC would love a little bit of arson.
I love this detail =D
Tho I wish you would have gone a little into detail what makes the Nest different here.
I also think Nails looking defeated needs a bit more to it since we’ve been talking about how the different bases look like so far, so a reminder of why he is in this emotional state is necessary.
I love that description!!
Interesting that the whole clique has such grungy names and then there’s …Rev XD
(Which I will forever see as Rêve from French)
Ah okay, we already are vampires gotcha. I like how you are not really explaining anything. It works well for the story.
I do feel like this chapter was more a holding pattern. I didn’t really feel like much of significance happened?
yeah i realised this is not explained that well as i kinda jump right into it. Rev's friends alert her this building is being built over their vampire den, she cycles to the scene, finds it already attracting a crowd, and trying to use her vamp persuasion powers but it doesnt work so she starts throwing rocks. she's kinda the leader of the friends, so they all join in, and they are all arrested by the police. I know i skipped over it a lot (i used to hate backstory and just threw the reader into it lol)
good idea. Anti-social behaviour order; it's not a thing anymore but was big in 2000s where essentially if you wore a hoodie you'd be seen as being anti-social, a lot of fear mongering around these orders etc.
okay i love the idea of that story! Yeah, in mine, Nails can communicate telepathically but he cant read minds, and rev can do neither. So he can speak to them, but i should have touched more on the fact they are recent vampires so he hasn't quite mastered it yet and isn't always aware he's doing it and he thinks he's speaking out loud
the plan was they all had one main power each but would be able to access other powers the more they 'feed' but i never got to that point
at this point, they are already vampires. i should have clarified that for sure oops
if i did plan to rewrite this, 1.1 and 2.1 would be combined into one chapter for sure, and the flashbacks would be much more in depth. I might even start this with the supermarket being built scene.
Oooh they seem like good friends! I like that. What business do those builders have anyway to build a shop over the other shop? I have a good feeling about Rev and her friends. I really do hope that whatever they do works and doesn’t send them all to jail. I will check the other chapters to see what goes on. I liked this chapter.
I wish you a great day/night.
Hey there! @Thediffident here to review the next part of your story:
I adore the direction and the flow this story is moving with! Usually, most of the stories have an amazing prologue but the plot sometimes becomes a bit greesy. But that's definitely not the case with this one! The way you carried this part of the story and explained the character's personalities, their criteria as well as their abilities and that too with an awesome writing style was phenomenal! Amazing work.
I loved the way you opened the story with Nails reading Rev's mind giving a subtle hint to Nails being supernatural just as you did with Rev in the prologue.
That was really clever of you!
The idea for the opening was really creative however as a reader, I found it a bit confusing to understand the mind reading part in the beginning. The explanation for it in the later parts certainly brought clarity but I would suggest maybe explaining it more clearly from the very beginning.
I really liked how you subtly indicated that the mayor may be involved here in some way since the supermarket randomly appeared that too on top of THEIR (the supernaturals) favourite place/ base. It got me curious to think that maybe we'd actually see the mayor's interaction with Rev and the others/ see some major activity regarding him soon. The way you left out loose ends here and there without stressing too much on it was magnificent!
Rev's friends seem so sweet! I love each one of them (the wild spikey part got me cackling like a maniac) and genuinely hope that you're not planning to kill any one of them :''''''')
(P.S- I'm loving the matching dress code omg eagerly waiting for the merch XD)
Overall, I absolutely loved reading this part! Can't wait to hear Spikey's idea. His mischievous grin tells me that it must be something really good!!
(P.S Please keep in mind that my suggestions are just what I think will make this piece better and feel free to not use them if you feel like they won't work. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this review or would like another one.)
So excited to read and review the next part!!
Love, Andy
aw thank you so much for the review!
i'm super glad you're enjoying it!
Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!
First Impression: Overall this is looking like a solid start here. Follows up from that prologue really nicely and it sets the scene for what appears to be the main issue pushing this whole story forward and I believe starting at where things probably took on a more serious note leading to Rev having to do this thing with the detective.
Anyway let's get right to it,
Well this is quite the start here. Certainly looks like we're starting things off right with them in the midst of all this trouble. Love how we're already seeing some strong connections between these two and we get a solid idea of their relationship just from this little snippet of conversation alone. Loving this introduction so far.
Ooooh I think that's a decent way to recap these events. Its a bit on the nose with how its narrating to us what happened, but I think its short enough and interesting enough with how it fits in pretty seamlessly to the flow of things that it slides through in this instance and it actually ends up working quite well.
Ooooh more fun details about characters. Love that. The description for this location that this person appears to be heading towards is really nice too. I think its painting quite a vivid picture already from this and we're just generally learning quite a lot quite quickly here and I love the approach so far.
Hmm that's an interesting little argument here. Its a nice little detail to show that these two aren't absolutely always getting along with each other. Its a great way to develop relationships like this just that one extra step to make them just that little bit more realistic to see.
Some more lovely description here. I think this goes really well with the previous bit to really cement in exactly what sort of place this is and what the general atmosphere surrounding it is like. I think you've done a great making this place feel a little lived in and real as well rather than just be a place.
Well it looks we've reached the crux of this whole inciting incident here. It ties up all back nicely to the very first part as well and established what appears like its going to end up being the reason most of this story will unfold here. Having this established quite this clearly and powerfully is great for a first chapter.
Hmm well these little details are always fun. I love how many little things you end up letting us know about just through these random conversations. It a really nice way to add a bit of extra depth and backstory to these things without making it seem too obvious that that's what's happening and breaking the flow of everything.
Okay...well it looks like we've got the whole crew coming together there. That's a nice little moment. Things just all sort of assembling together there. I can't wait to see what more we can make of all of their friendships here. Nails and Craily already we've learnt a decent bit about but the other two we've yet to see properly, especially this new Rusty who we've never seen before. So far this introduction does already confirm a few a few things about Spikey though.
Okayy... well that tells us a lot about Spikey once again. That's all being settled in nicely, and this is making me think that out of all the loud and very vocal group we've got here Rusty is the quiet one given Rusty has managed to say absolutely nothing throughout this whole exchange.
Ooooh I suppose that confirms that Rusty is in fact the quiet one and now suddenly we also have a lot to think about with the sort of attitude this group tends to have towards life in general. I suppose the whole idea of vampires comes properly into play here to showcase how they tend to approach life in general a little differently there from a group of humans trying to live this way. Definitely adds a really interesting extra dimension onto the whole thing here.
Oooooh well that's a textbook cliffhanger there and I love it. You can't exactly complain about it. Its not the most unique of things to see, but it works and it works well and I love the little bit of random conversation there before we circle to the task at hand and get this little ending with the tension rising. I especially love the couple of lines of randomness, its short enough not to just be padding the chapter, but its long enough to make this whole meet up more realistic to see these are just four people having a regular meeting where they inevitably go off on the occasional tangent.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, a pretty strong piece. I already can glean so much about the characters and we can see a clear direction at least for Rev here and for the others to some extent as well. There's a good little hint of what's going on with the plot as well and all in all it comes together to be a pretty complete package of a first chapter.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Kate
thank you so much! I love how detailed your reviews are!