MY SUGGESTIONS:
Description:
My first suggestion would be that you change the description.
Explanation ▼
As of right now, your description reads:
A man is dogged by a gastly nocturnal voice from the tombs only to meet unexpected ending.
I could nitpick a lot over this description, but honestly it's not terrible. It's pretty clever in retrospect and it doesn't deter readers from wanting to read the story too much (though there is one word misspelled and a small grammatical error - which isn't always a good sign going into a short story) but what really bothered me was the "unexpected ending" part.
Your ending, on its own, I think is unexpected and clever - or rather I think it might have been had I not been thinking of what the twist could be. Based off that description I knew something like that would be coming, and it made me guess the ending fairly early on into the action. I think surprise endings to pieces are the best when they are the most surprising - so you might not want to top readers off to the fact there's going to be a twist.
Of course, that's just my opinion. If you feel like the "unexpected ending" is drawing readers in more than tipping them off - that's totally your call. I would still change the description slightly however:
A man is dogged by a gastly nocturnal voice from the tombs only to meet unexpected ending.
To something more like this:
A man is dogged by a ghastly voice from the tombs only to meet unexpected ending.
(I personally feel like the word "nocturnal" didn't add a lot to the description of the voice - though if you liked it you could keep it in, just add a comma.)
A man is dogged by a ghastly, nocturnal voice from the tombs only to meet unexpected ending.
Basic Editing:
This is something that I say a lot, and advice that I give in nearly every Writing.Com review - the more you edit a piece the better. Overall this was very clean, I didn't notice a ton of typos or misspelled words, but it never hurts to double and triple check. There are pieces I've had on my portfolio for years that I find new errors in every time I go back to look them over. Even if there aren't technical errors, there are usually a few things that could use smoothing over.
Examples ▼
There were two things here that caught my eye that I would bring your attention to as examples of what to look for when editing.
His farmhouse was across the section ‘cattywampus’ from the cemetery about a mile.
First of all, congratulations on working the word 'cattywampus' into this piece. That's a word that I definitely don't see enough on here. I do think it would seem more natural if you either let the word stand for itself as such:
His farmhouse was across the section cattywampus from the cemetery about a mile.
or perhaps explained why you wanted to call attention to that word specifically.
The other thing I noticed was the following:
A sound that made him stop in his tracks in ghastly dis-belief.
This might look better if written like this:
A sound that made him stop in his tracks in ghastly disbelief.
Pacing:
Normally I'm all about more character depth and developing a rich setting for your story because it makes it more believable and gets the reader invested before the action starts. However in this case, I think there was a lot of content that didn't add a whole lot to the story. For shorter pieces like this it's sometimes better to leave out some of the details. There's a lot of details about Ray's job, the history of Ray's car, the exact difficulties he has with the car, etc. If this were a slightly longer piece or even a more serious horror story, that could all go a long way toward adding a believable atmosphere - but since this is intended to be a rather amusing tale, I'm not sure that all the details were necessary.
Even including the year I think was a bit much - but that's mostly personal preference. I prefer my comedic horror to have more of a timeless feel to it, which I feel like this would had you not opened the story by revealing the exact year and then reinforcing it with the dates on the graves.
Explanation:
My biggest issue was trying to figure out why Ray got so scared. He doesn't seem like the sort of man who is easily freaked out or prone to frights, but he runs away very quickly and I feel like the explanation offered wasn't quite satisfying.
Example ▼
“Mark!”
“Oh my gawd!!” He heard himself cry as he struggled to gain his feet. He felt strength returning to his legs, only to find them useless as his feet spun against the icy buffalo grass, and falling forward, he slammed his face down onto a familiar tombstone; that of his mother. Lucille Baker, 1888 – 1959. Stunned, he arose against a dizzying canopy of stars under his eyelids.
I'm assuming that at this point we're supposed to think that the hellish and unnamed creature is calling for a person named Mark, since the actual reason for the sound hasn't yet been explained to the reader at this point. I think explaining why the name "Mark" might be significant to Ray would help keep up that illusion, and further explain why he panics as much as he does - which might stop your readers from later questioning why a farmer wouldn't be familiar with the sound of a dog.
I personally might not have guessed the end at all if Ray's name had been "Mark" rather than "Ray." That really might have thrown your reader's off the scent, but I think tying that name in any way into Ray's history would help sell the illusion and make the end more surprising.
CONCLUSION:
All in all it was a fun read and I'm glad to have come across it. There were a couple areas that I think could use improvement, but it was a cute idea and I think you're off to a great start with it. I hope that this review was at least a little helpful in giving you some of the feedback you were after.
All the best,
-Cat
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