The overall feel:
It was a creepy little story and you managed to scare me to a certain extent. I braced myself for it since the very first line and I would like to think that I wasn’t disappointed. The story was crisp and the ploy of using a cleaner’s perspective on it was a good idea, I feel. The narrative style added gloss to the story and I think elevated the story from good to very good. The title was very apt too.

Plot:
Set in a cursed or a haunted house which has seen many murders over the past few months/years. A cleaner who has heard whisperings about it before too and infact has been there before, has to do the cleanup once again.
The plot was chilling, no second thoughts there. I could imagine myself as the one listening to the ramblings of this cleaner, and visualizing the state of the house.

Dialogues:
Although there were no dialogues but the narrative style never let it feel so. The word choice was really good and that place where you talked about the boots in the blood puddle and say “just like what you’re wearing” was a clever and a scary trick. It almost transported me to the haunted place. Loved it!

Characters:
Joe’s character was essential so as to introduce a second person’s view of the proceedings and to build suspense and I think you succeeded to do so. The narrator’s character was well shaped to creep out the reader. The cops played their part too by being ignorant :P

Things I liked the most :
As I said before too, that boot trick I talked about above was the favourite part of mine. Part from that, I liked the way you reduced the story to bare essentials for example, you could have rambled on about cleaning the safe places first and so on, but no you dove directly into the creepiest place and I think that it did work.

The alternative suggestions:
Not many, but if I were you, I would have placed this story in a bar, with the bartender listening on.(I got this idea when your character talks about beers) At present, although I can imagine all what is happening, I cant see a place where you are narrating story from so maybe that.
Also, a little bit of more gory detail in the “wolverine” paragraph, where you are trying to actually creep out the reader would have been great. Please don’t take it otherwise, it scares a hell lot in its current state too, but adding another level of ghastliness would have upped the feel of the story even more, I believe.

Score:
This is a great plot and setting which you have at hand and if tweaked a little, I believe you will have an even gem of a story here. I would give you 8 out of 10 for it.
You have all the good things working in your writing I believe and though I am by far still a learner of this craft too, I think you have the vision of a storyteller.

If you plan to edit this story, do ask me to review it and I would be glad to review it again.

It was a pleasure reading to it. Thanks for sharing :)


My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .