The line of people seemed to get no closer the more he walked, but Johnny continued to do so anyway out of fear of the Fare-keeper. The only thing that got any closer was the clanking sound. Again and again the same sound.
Clank,,clank, clank...clank,,clank ,clank...clank, clank, clank.
The sound was terrible and, for reasons unknown, foreboding. There was a certain dread inspired by it. A singularly oppressive quality that put a damper on the soul.
Johnny stumbled out of these thoughts and into the path of a short, skinny women that had the look of emaciation hung about her as though it was sewn into the rags she wore. Her eyes were white with cataracts and her lips as cracked as the ground Johnny lay on. She walked over him without noticing his obvious presence directly in her path.
Johnny still scrambled to his feet apologizing the entire time, in spite of the women's indifference. The women was not alone in her complacent walking. There were people all around Johnny. Every way he faced there were the same dead faces. Johnny stepped backward, in an attempt to remove himself from the walkers. He was tripped and once more painfully on the ground. The moment his body hit the ground the line stopped in unison. At that moment, every ragged, decaying body within Johnny’s range of vision turned and faced him. Thousands of rotting fingers pointed. A myriad of faces contorted with rage.
Johnny scrambled away from the crowd as frightened as he had ever been. He didn’t know what to do or what he had done in the first place. At any rate, he managed to get himself off the ground and on his feet. As he took his first step away from the crowd, they broke into a frenzied run. Charging at Johnny.
Johnny ran. It was all he could do and It seemed like the only plausible idea. He certainly wasn’t going to let them catch up any more than they were and do whatever it is they wanted to do. He sprinted in the direction he came from, but the single house disappeared. It was replaced by a set of steps that looked like the entrance to a subway. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to run down them or if he should run around and see if their inclination to run lessened with the distance he gained. The ten or so seconds he had to choose elapsed without a decision. Instead, Johnny made a half-hearted attempt at dodging the stairs, hit the rail, spun around and fell backwards down them. He rolled three times and hit is head on the concrete. The world exploded inside his head and went black.
The ground was cold and rough against Johnny’s arms as he moved them towards his pulsing head. He shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights above him. Everything from his lower back to his feet moved but only with a lot of effort and pain. He lifted his head off the ground and grunted as his hair was pulled out of his head. He sat himself up against the wall and looked at the ground. Blood had coagulated where it ran from the gash on the back of his head. Little hairs and pieces of dirt were visible on the shiny surface. His gaze drifted from the blood to his surroundings. He couldn’t see much. To his left is was dark and he couldn’t see past three or four feet. To his right he could see for a long way. Lights similar to the one above Johnny lit what appeared to be a deserted subway. Near the end of the area visible he could see movement. People in a line. Walking through a turnstile. Walking through the source of that sound Johnny just realized he could hear very well now. That was what Charlie was talking about. That’s where he paid his fare. Johnny leaned against the wall and clumsily stood up. He walked in a similar fashion towards the line. Nothing would stay still or in focus. Johnny had to stop twice and regain orientation before reaching the line. This one was different than the last. The people all looked just as confused as Johnny. Although none of them seemed aware of each other they all look people that had yet to begin to rot. Not at all like the walkers. They walked down steps similar to the ones Johnny fell down, turned and walked through the turnstile on at a time. Johnny reluctantly stepped into the line. All of the new walkers disappeared. All that remained was the turnstile. Charlie Was there. In the small windowed building attached to the turnstile. There to collect the fare Johnny supposed.
He stood there slightly bewildered. A thought came to him. That’s why no one seemed to be aware of one another. There was more to this thought, but it was cut short by Charlie. He was leaning out of the small window yelling at Johnny. “Get your ass over here soul. You have a fare to pay. Unless you don’t want to go to hell.” This was followed by slow chuckle.
Johnny listened and walked the five or so feet past the stairs to Charlie.
“Put your fare on the counter and go soul” Charlie said in an almost playful voice.
“What fare? Am I supposed to have one by this point?” Johnny responded.
“Just put your damn hand up here and I’ll show you something” Charlie said while obviously holding back more chuckling. Johnny did as he was told. His palm flat against the polished steel counter. In the second it took for Johnny to think of something to say the Fare keeper’s arm jerked. Johnny saw a flash of steel and felt immense pain emanating from his hand. He instinctively grabbed his wrist and his head snapped toward his hand. When he saw what happened he screamed. Almost as loudly as Charlie was laughing.
The pinky finger on his right hand was severed where it used to connect to his knuckle. Blood flowed freely out of his hand and down his forearm. It collected on his elbow and dripped on the concrete floor. Charlie reached over the bloody counter and pushed a sobbing Johnny through the turnstile. Johnny stumbled through and immediately dropped to his knees. He crawled to the wall and propped himself against it. Tears ran down his face and he couldn’t stop shaking. He held his wrist, stared at it blankly, and tried to think. He didn’t know what to do. Johnny had never had a pinky cut off. He felt dizzy and little spots of darkness invaded his world. Johnny was still losing blood at a rate that alarmed him. He tore a piece of fabric from the bottom portion of his pajama shirt, and wrapped it around the stump. It felt as though some one was holding his entire arm in a pot of boiling water and steel nails. He pulled it around the stump and the other side of his hand twice before managing to tie it. Tears blurred his already impaired vision and his throat hurt from screaming.
A distorted Charlie stood directly in front of Johnny. He reached down and grabbed Johnny’s wrist. Johnny was too disoriented to know what was happening. It hurt, but not bad enough for him to resist. It looked to Johnny like Charlie was simply examining his make shift bandage. In a movement as fluid as the one that took his pinky, Charlie ripped the fabric off and proceeded to mash his thumb into the wound. A scream erupted from Johnny as he flailed. Throwing his body around, trying to escape the impossibly formidable grip Charlie had on his wrist. The pain became more intense the longer Charlie mauled his missing digit. He screamed until his voice was gone. He couldn’t see anything through the pain, and he became unconscious once again.
* * *
It was dark this time Johnny woke up. He could only see faint silhouettes of the things around him. A small dresser. A chair in the corner.
“Oh, thank god.”, Johnny thought as he sat up. He did so painfully. His body was sore and his head felt like it was going to explode. He sat on the edge of the bed. He assumed he had been walking in his sleep. The lower portion of his shirt was ripped and he was dirty. He hated to think that he had been outside; he had at least one neighbor that would have seen him bumbling around like an idiot at two in the morning.
This elicited a chuckle that quickly turned into a laugh. Johnny raised his hands to his face to brush off the laughter when he noticed something. His right hand kind of hurt.
Dreadful anxiety instantly tore at his stomach. He closed his eyes as he pulled his hand away from his face. He didn’t want to see. He opened his eyes and looked at his hand. The figure in front of him was normal save for the pinky finger. It was missing. It wasn’t bloodied like it was in the subway station. It had healed and now formed an unsightly heap of discolored flesh. Johnny got up from his bed, or the bed, as he didn’t know where he was exactly. It looked like home, and felt just as lonely as his home, but it wasn’t. He was still there. Still in hell.
He walked to the place he assumed the light switch was. He found it immediately for the first time ever. Although, he wished he hadn’t. The switch wasn’t the normal plastic nub mist switches were. It was a finger. Severed at the knuckled nearest the hand. As soon as Johnny touched it he jumped back in disgust. The finger pointed towards the ceiling, and it turned on.
The room was a nightmare. The walls were a dingy gray with smears of mud and blood all over them. The roof was terrifying. Dismembered forearms jutted from it, leaving no space in between. The all jerked back and forth. The palm of each one was parallel to the floor and in each palm a light bulb was inserted into a gaping hole. Johnny continued to survey the room.
Oh my god, he thought to himself. A disembodied voice answered this thought.
“God, eh? What about this makes you think of God, soul?” It was Charlie. Johnny couldn’t see him but he felt him. Felt his unrelenting malevolence fill the room with chilly air.
“God isn’t here, and you’d do well to remember that. Hear me, soul?” asked Charlie.
“Yes I hear you. What the hell do you want from me?” a whimpering Johnny replied.
“Ah, hell. Much more appropriate Mr. Wells. As, for what I want from you. You’ll know in time. I’m going to go now, but first I want you to give you a helpful hint. Watch yourself. You’re worse than anything you’ll find outside of this room. I promise you that. You’ll kill yourself more easily than even I will…Bye, soul.”
The chilly air seemed to get warmer and the arms on the ceiling stopped moving. Johnny was confused but he looked around nonetheless. He hadn’t the slightest idea as to what he should be doing, what he could be doing, why he was here, where here was, or what here was. He determined the only way to figure out anything was to play Charlie’s game. He walked to different areas of the room. They all corresponded to places in his actual home, except they were all disturbingly morbid. Johnny explored, walking around the main bedroom and finally to the small hallway that led to the bathroom.
Johnny walked into the bathroom. It looked completely normal. The tile on the wall was white and so clean he could see thousands of little versions of himself looking back at him. The glass door to the shower was free of fingerprints and soap scum. He walked farther into the room and looked into the mirror. The mirror showed the room for what it was. Bloodied and disgusting as the rest of Johnny’s pseudo-room. The one detail that Johnny couldn’t shake was the man in the middle of the floor. Half of a man actually. Gored from the waist down, the man moved by sliding his torso around on his arms. He dragged himself around in circles. His neck convulsing the entire time. He made three complete revolution, leaving an ‘O’ of tissue and bodily fluids as he went, before sighting the man looking in the mirror at him. The half-man let his torso drop to the floor facing Johnny. Making a loud splat as he did. He rolled his head around on his neck, place a hand on his face. Nails dug into his pasty skin and ripped. Skin fell from his skull to reveal something quit disgusting. Johnny’s face was beneath the half-man’s face, and it was laughing. The half-man threw his face towards the mirror Johnny stared in and laughed hysterically as he picked himself up and lunged himself at Johnny. Johnny was scared out of his staring. He turned and ran out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. To his horror he heard a dull thud and the door vibrated seconds after he did so. He ran until he reached the door of his room. It led to the hallway, which he was sure he didn’t want to see. However, what was stopping him from getting out of his hellish room was not what may be on the other side of the door. It was the door knob. It was yet another dismembered body part. It seemed as though Charlie had a thing for hands as well, because it was a fist. Tightly bound with small blue veins networked across it’s graying knuckles. Johnny was hesitant. He didn't want to touch the fist. It could grab him or in some other way molest his hand. Even if it was not animate, he was disgusted by the thought of contacting an amputated hand. He looked to his left at the bathroom door. The thought of the half-man proved to be enough motivation. He grabbed the fist and turned. It's skin was loose. It slid slightly before the rest of the knob followed. Johnny pushed the door, gagging the entire time. The door opened with little effort and swung open the rest of the way on its own.
Then dicks happened! Dicks everywhere! OH NOOOO!

I thought it was going to be about mario...

Suggestion: If you're going to post on the internet, use line breaks.

If you break everything down into small, easily digestible bits it makes it easier to wade through your writing.

This is true especially for long stories.

But when it's just a giant mountain of text like this, it becomes a chore to read.

It might not be trouble for you to read it, but no one ever has problems reading their own posts.

Also, I know it's not grammatically correct to do it that way, but it's a courtesy to your readers. If this was in a book or magazine, then of course it would follow the normal format.

On the internet, however, people have little patience.


Anyway, I read some of your story, and from what I've read it's very good, you really know how to bring readers into the story with your descriptions. The twist ending was especially well thought out. You're a regular M. Knight Shamalan.

>>163
>On the internet, however, people have little patience.

This is not "internet writing," this is creative writing. Dostoyevsky had long paragraphs that would take up several pages, as did Remarque, DFW; the paragraph is a structural denotation that can lend artistic expression into the story. Don't sacrifice your work for readability or some such nonsense when it can be effectively disregarded.

>>166

>This is not "internet writing,"

No, actually it is. OP posted this on the internet, for stupid, lazy internet people with short attention spans to read. If he wants more responses, he should use line breaks more often.

That said, people who wouldn't read this whole thing as it is are probably not the kind of people who would give the best advice or criticism.

THAT said, he is asking us to read this for him, and we are doing this on our own spare time for no reason other than whim. So it would... behoove him to make the reading a little easier.

Even the smarty-pants glasses-wearing types who would be more likely read this whole thing without proper line-breaks are probably going to give up and go back to /b/ or wherever once they realize how minute the fuck they give actually is.

That's no reflection on the OP, that's just how it's done here.

Now, if OP went to a site solely dedicated to creative writing, it might be a different story.