Thread: [CLAIMED] Reflection

Pokemon attempting to catch: Magikarp (Easiest)
Character Count: 3796
Notes: I'm Australian so I have words like "colour" and "Mum" instead of "color" and "Mom"

Dusk. The doors will be locked soon. I wait, concealed in the bushes. Click, Click, Click. Peace at last. I stand on the artificial island, pushing my knotted hair to one side. I glance out at the pond, waiting, watching. I glance at the water beneath me. No ripples. I see my face in the reflection. It brings back memories. Memories...

I see myself as a young man. I look happy. I'm with someone. A girl. Who is she? She turns. I see her face. Caitlin? The word just appears in my head. Who is Caitlin? She must be the girl. Wait, Caitlin was...
A Magikarp darts past, destroying my memories, creating ripples. My hand shoots out and grabs it. Its slimy texture is making me even hungrier. I drag it further inland, and devour it ravenously. I have heard people who visit this place say that Magikarp is useless, but it is the tastiest meal I have ever eaten. I throw its bones into the lake, where the Goldeen nibble at the small chunks of meat I couldn't get out. I don't have dessert. I never do. The only other food I can reach from this island is Goldeen flesh, and it is slimy and disgusting. Intrigued, I return to the lake and gaze at my reflection. The memories come flooding back...

I'm with the girl, Caitlin, again. We are eating together. The food looks delicious. My mouth waters. It looks like Magikarp meat wrapped in white grubs and leaves. We are feeding it to each other using small sticks. I drop one and we both laugh. We look like we are having a great time.

Another fish darts through the water. I am hungry again, after seeing so much food. I reach out to grab it, and a Goldeen's horn impales my arm. I yell in agony and scramble back into the bushes. There is a huge hole through my left hand. Blood is spurting everywhere. There is only one thing I can do. I dig desperately at a patch of soil. The stone knife I use if anyone comes to the island is lying there, bloodstained. I grab it, aim, and chop. My left hand falls to the floor. I yell louder than ever, and quickly grab some leaves and vines. I tie as many leaves as I can to the amputated stump and try to sleep off the pain.

Dawn. The doors open and people rush in, wanting to get a look at the wildlife. Nobody seems to pay attention to the Magikarp or Goldeen, and I get reckless. My stomach is grumbling so loudly, and my belly feels completely empty. One hand won't hurt, just one little hand...

"Mum!" a boy yells, "A hand just came out of the island and grabbed a Magikarp!"

"You were probably just imagining it," says his mother.

"No," he says, "it was a person's hand!"

"It must've just been a zookeeper, cleaning the fish," she says.

The boy argues, but his mother manages to find excuses. I was lucky only an insignificant young boy saw me. If a trustworthy person saw me I would be discovered and thrown in prison. I have to be more careful. I lie in the bushes and sleep.

When I awaken, the moon is shining on my face. I crawl down to the water, not for food, but because I want to remember. About Caitlin. My eyes look dreary as I drop into the world of memories...
Caitlin and I are sitting on a hill. She looks at me, a grim stare on her face.

"Jordan, I need to tell you something. Something important."

"Yes?" I say.

"I'm psychic." she says sadly.

"What, so you can read my mind?" I say jokingly.

"No, it's not that," she says, "I can move things with my mind, but I can't control it. It only happens when I feel great emotions, like anger, or sadness, or..."

"Love," I finish for her. Tears stream down her face.

"I'm sorry, but I have to leave you," she cries.

I see my face. I look heartbroken. I collapse, and she walks away.

I rock back with a jolt. Then it hits me. I've got nothing left to live for. I grab the stone knife and plunge it straight through my heart.

THE END.

Claimed for Grading

@Deity ;

Plot

You didn't have much plot, as this was a pretty short story. The whole story moves pretty slowly, with the main character, Jordan, finding out more about himself. He seems to be going insane, I thought, and you portray this well in the story, only using concious thought in the flashbacks.

One thing that really shines through in your plot are the mysteries that remain unsolved. How did Jordan end up on the island? Where is this place, if the characters are mentioning zookeepers? Will Caitlin ever return? You keep the grim plot going well, interspersed with the odd bit of gore. You couldn't have had a good plot in this but what you did was very good. I was surprised at your ending but it wasn't a bad way for the story to finish, but it was just a bit sudden. Maybe you could have started the story with Jordan about to commit suicide, and slowly convince himself throughout the story to do that.

Description

As this was a 3K story you didn't have much space to put description into this story, which is the problem with these small lengths. However, you were only 1.3K away from a Simple Pokémon, and a large amount of that CC could have been filled with description. Remember, Jordan loves Caitlin, and often the best way to show love is to put in really romantic descriptions. Like, when you're describing the last time that Jordan sees Caitlin, where his emotions are strongest, rather that just saying.

I see my face. I look heartbroken. I collapse, and she walks away

You could say:

I see my face. I look heartbroken. I collapse and she walks away, her beautiful blonde her swaying in the gentle breeze, those lips that I had kissed so often murmuring a few words. She walked down the slope and I smelt her perfume for the last time.

If you just did this once in a while then your story would stretch out a lot and you would easily manage a Simple capture, especially with how well you wrote this story.

Grammar

One thing that you did particularly well on the Grammar front was that you always used the present tense. People love to write in the perfect and it's difficult to write in the present without lapsing into the past. Depressingly, outside of your Dialogue I can't find any errors with your Grammar, so well done! You have used the correct punctuation, Pokémon-related terms start with a capital, you have correct spacing. This is a really well written story in terms of Grammar.

Dialogue

This side of your story wasn't quite as well done as the Grammar, but it was still pretty good. The dialogue is not very important in stories such as this, but here you utilised it well. The conversation between the boy and his mother was very good and worked in the story, the short speech between Caitlin and Jordan worked too. There were a couple of mistakes that I would like to rectify.

Here, you wrote:

"I'm psychic[.]" she says.

There is a rule that I only learnt pretty recently about this. If you have "he says" or "they asked" your dialogue ends in a comma, unless you want to put in a question mark or an exclamation mark. If it doesn't you have to end it with a full stop (with the same exceptions applying). One grammatical trap which you didn't fall into by not putting capital letters at the start of words after dialogue. This is the correct thing to do, after a "he says" sort of dialogue, lower case letters are always used directly afterwards unless you are writing a name.

I had one problem with the dialogue, before we move on. You put to many of the word "said" in. It is much nicer to vary what you use, as it creates a better visual effect, and prevents the reader from going into a trance with the repetition and ignoring what you wrote. For instance, you have this big block of dialogue here where you say:

You were probably just imagining it," says his mother.

"No," he says, "it was a person's hand!"

"It must've just been a zookeeper, cleaning the fish," she says.

It would have been better if you had written:

You were probably just imagining it," his mother explains

"No," he insists, "it was a person's hand!"

"It must've just been a zookeeper, cleaning the fish," she says.

The Battle

There wasn't one, but that's fine. You don't need a battle in any story if you don't want one.

Length

Your story is long enough for Magikarp.

Other

You didn't switch between past and present very well. I got halfway through a paragraph and suddenly realised that we were in a flashback. This is a difficult thing for writers to do, and there are a couple of ways to solve the problem. You can either explicitly write tags like "Two years ago" or "Three weeks later", or you can put in words like "he remembered" which implies that it is in the past. You might also have put the words in italics, which would probably have worked best here. Also, I'm British, so I love to see words like "colour" and "Mum", so keep up the good work.

Verdict

This was a really good story, so Magikarp Captured! Just remember what I said, put in more description where you can. If you have any questions about writing, just ask me or one of the other graders. I look forward to seeing more of your writing in the future.