The whole chapter, so far, has been laced with the narrator’s dark humor, and it’s been great. But this last bit lands a little too far on the serious side... How about you get Adam to recite the ’rule’ absolutely incorrectly, then realize that whatever he THINKS is right MUST be totally wrong, and so come to the correct ’rule’ entirely by a planned accident... Ah, anyhow... Just saying that the kind of thought process you got here right now sticks out. Adding just a dash more craziness instead would make it fit the flavor of the rest of the chapter. Still loving all this, by the way.
Sitting up I surveyed the area around me trying to call back anything I could from that one scout camping trip I went on. “If the sun is directly above me and the moss on the tree is away from me that means this direction is… ahead of me. I am a shitty scout.”
Oh, man... Let me point something out here. This is either a mistake that winds up being genius, or genius disguised as a mistake, which winds up appearing genius anyway... (I’m not making sense.) Basically, I love this sentence because of its ambiguity - it fits the feeling of the story you’re going for. Is this saying the walk was 4 hours and twenty five minutes total? Or is it saying that a normally 25-minute walk took 4 hours? Frikkin’ brilliant, Brien. I don’t know if you wrote like this on purpose, but I think it’s awesome.
I fell through the door to my apartment after the four hour long twenty-five minute walk.
Hey so where was his pile of ... uh... vomit? ((I wonder if Inkshares will post this on the Buzzing page, and everybody’s like ’what the he...?!’. Hi, everybody!)) Anyway... Did he ’leave it behind’ in the other time/dimension? On the dirt path? Man, this is disorienting! I love this paragraph.
Back on my feet I headed into the men’s room where my stomach tried to empty out anything that could possibly been still in there.
Man... You’re setting up one of my FAVORITE narrative techniques of all time - The Unreliable Narrator. This chapter’s barely started and already I’m squinting at the words on the page, as if hearing Adam’s words are making me wince with doubt. He’s not even sure if he can believe what he’s saying, so I’m not sure, but I’m DAMN sure that I want to know why! So you’ve hooked me, Brien. You’ve hooked me deep, man! Good opener!
True or not it’s more of an explanation than I was able to come up with. It did make sense though at the time. Probably how he even knew I could do this too is from the disorienting sensation I felt and I guess he did too when he was within an arm’s reach. The same dizzying feeling you get when you start to get pulled. I think back and wonder if I hadn’t been as wasted if I’d have more answers or at least someone to talk to about all this.
I get the sense that this would make a perfect back-jacket quote, Brien. :D The whole paragraph, actually.
Good dialogue here! You’ve nailed how natural their back-and-forth ought to feel, considering how close they are. Even though she’s tired, though... Hmmm... I dunno, this seems a little rushed. Shouldn’t there be a trillion questions Keleir (awesome name, btw) wants to ask her? Like "gee, you just saved our army’s ass back there." Or even just spend a little more time scolding her not to push herself so hard. I dunno. Just seems over too early.