Capital Furs

So I was on my way home from class when I realized I felt like writing something. I haven't written a proper story since High School so it may start out a little choppy. My main issue has always been pacing, so I'm hoping creating a serial story will help me with that by allowing me to cut the story down into chunks, and not feel the need to rush towards the end of the story. I came up with the concept for this story on the way home from school, and I've tried hard to keep it from seeming derivative... can be tough though given that everything has been done by this point, so you're almost guaranteed to make something that resembles something else.

I'm more than happy to get feedback, so please let me know what you think... ESPECIALLY what you think I'm doing wrong/needs improvement/etc. Constructive Criticism is the only way anyone can get better at something, and comments like "I like it." while good for the ego, don't make a better writer. I've never tried a first-person perspective story before so this could get rough. Bear with me!

This is also in part to work on my grammar/paragraph structure... I've always had a hard time with dialogue requiring its own paragraph, I dunno, it always looks so disorganized to me whenever I try.

I'm not a writer. I don't claim to be one, it's just something I do for fun. xD

Oh. And feel free to think the characters are furry. I haven't decided yet if they will be or not, so I'm gonna avoid saying they are/aren't for now xD

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I couldn't believe I was out in these woods again. The moonlight filtering down through the leaf-bare talons of the trees around me made sure I couldn't forget it either. The cool autumn wind bit at my skin despite the precautions I'd taken to prevent just that, the Herringbone military jacket I'd grabbed on my way out of the house keeping the frost out but not that damn wind. At least I wasn't alone though, the darkness that closed in around me made bearable by the fat slob I'd been paired up with for this little task, no darkness as unpleasant as that oaf.

"'ey Dennis, when were YOU in the military?" asked by that very oaf, the guffaw lurking behind his words enough to make me want to empty the Walther P99 tucked into my jeans, into his face. Nobody would notice a few more holes in him, would they?

"Shut the fuck up and dig." the only reply I figured he deserved, tossing a shovel his way before grabbing one for myself. A grin threatened to crease my lips as my 'partner', a sweaty man by the name of Harry, dropped the bundle he'd been carrying across his shoulders in order to grab the shovel. "We don't have all night and I have better things to be doing than spending it with you." added.

"Oh yeah, like that hot little wife of yours?" Another chortle of self-indulgent laughter threatening to bubble out of Harry, another urge to pop that zit of a man threatening to bubble out of me. "I'd ratha' be doin' that too."

Anger. It seemed to be my main disposition these days, and with co-workers like this could you blame me? Silence followed my squat counterpart's comments, though it was soon broken by the sound of shovels tearing into frost-bitten dirt. There was a reason we were in these woods again and I wanted to get it over with and get back to my wife, Joanna, before Harry decided I needed to hear another of his witty play on words. The work was tough, but it was quick, and thankfully it was quiet.

"Well, this is it for ya, Johnny." said Harry
"Just dump him and lets get out of here" I replied curtly, my partner in this little endeavor dumping the bundle into the hole we'd dug.
"Fuck, I'm out of shape." Harry looking like he was about to join our unfortunate cargo in that darkened hole.
"Then get some exercise and start filling this shit up." my hand flipping towards the pile of dirt we'd left beside the hole. Pulling a pack of smokes from the front of my jacket I just watched the fat man's response, daring him to try and refuse.
"Fuck that, man." the words coming between out of breath wheezes, "Why don't you do it?" the red faced buffoon looking at me like he thought that was a great idea.
"Because..." all he got from me before that gun was out, left hand grabbing the other guy's orange hunting jacket as the barrel of my Walther came up under his throat. "I was in the fucking military, remember?" giving him the benefit of a mocking titter of laughter, as if his joke had actually been remotely funny. "Hilarious, isn't it? Now start filling, Harry. Or I'll just fill it with YOU." too harsh? I didn't care, I was tired of this shit, I wanted out.

The look of terror that had appeared on ol' Harry's face was priceless, it was worth the risk of his father, my boss, taking offense to me making his precious boy shit his precious pants. It lasted only a few seconds but they were the best few seconds I'd had this evening so far. Stepping back as Harry began doing something useful for once, my mind drifted, cigarette butt finding my lips and eyes only half watching my partner fill that hole. How had it gotten this far? It was just supposed to be a few quick jobs for the Boss, you know? Make some money, buy a nice house, give Joanna some nice rings and then have some kids and forget all about this shit. It'd been ten years since I'd left the military, the 101st patch on my jacket fading faster than the memories of my time in the Corps. It'd been good, but it'd been dangerous, and Joanna gave me a reason to care about that. It wasn't easy finding work when all you knew how to do was not care about dying, about killing or about telling others how to kill or in some cases how to die. We'd moved to the small town I was on the outskirts of at this very moment, Carpenter, it was nice. Three or four schools, a little library and about six thousand people spread out through a picturesque New England landscape. What most of them didn't realize is that it also served as a summer hub for one of the crime families from New York, a quaint little place for them to dirty up with their gangland politics and profiteering bullshit... and somehow I'd found myself employed by that very family. The money was good but money wasn't everything, and as I stood there in those woods burying one of my former co-workers, I realized this.

"Fucking lazy bum, I'm gonna 'ave my dad put YOU in a hole." muttered by my up 'til then silent counterpart.
"Shut up, Harry." replied casually, my hand lifting to find it'd been longer than I thought since he'd started. The cigarette hanging from my mouth was already half-ashed, threatening to break off with or without my help. The hole was almost full and I was almost free to head home and see her.

Then it came. Maybe it was just the surprise of it but my stomach dropped as the ground gave a jolt beneath my feet, Harry letting out a cowardly scream as if the walls of the shallow grave were going to collapse in on him, what a loss that would be. The first jolt wasn't the last though, the shaking growing more intense, trees shivering against the night sky. What was this? Fuck Harry, he could deal with this on his own. Something was up and Joanna was back in town, the world shaking around me like a dog trying to rid its fur of water after a swim.

Smoke greeted me as I broke through the edge of the forest, Harry's protests and demands to wait up ignored as I looked down the steep hill we'd climbed to get up here, our car still idling on the mountain road that wound down into the town below, or at least where the town should have been. A wall of dust, smoke and dirt had risen as if a gritty fog had swallowed up the entire village. A good ten minutes had passed and while the shaking had stopped before I reached the edge of those woods, something else had started. Screaming. Lots of it. It seemed like the entire town had erupted into a cacophony of horror driven screams somewhere within that dust cloud. Terror froze my body, if only I'd known what was down in that cloud I'd probably have gone in the other direction! But all I knew then was that Joanna was down there, somewhere amidst those horrible sounds.

If only I'd known that those screams were ushering me into a new world, like a newborn infant's screams after emerging from their mother.

TO BE CONTINUED! ... Hopefully!

Well I'm hooked, I want to know what's happening to the town!

I demand maor! Also, kinda hard to imagine them being furry, if no hints at species are given. So made up species for them. The fat one is a house cat, and the main character is a cougar.

The dead dude is a Chihuahua and the lovely fae back at home is a curvy dwarf zebra.

Reading it again with this is mind is delightfully furry.

Thanks man, people don't usually give me feedback on my stuff so I appreciate it xD

I'm really excited to get writing on the next part, will probably write it this weekend. And while I won't say what's happening to the town, I will say there aren't any zombies involved... a few people seemed to claim that when they read it, and no, no zombies. Sorry. xD

Zombies + Vampires = MASSIVELY overdone.

No one seems to be feebacking any of the AWESOME work here, so I'm doing my best to fix that. I'm no writing connesuir, but I do want to support the authors who are for the moment going unloved.

Well, I'll do my best to keep it up. If you haven't I think IK could use some love too over on Pulse, he's doing a much better job than me as Cyberpunk is generally a much harder genre to write.

Bah, save it for when Chapter 4 is done. It's been hard going. The atmosphere in the 4th chapter is a lot lighter, so I've been having a tougher time of it.

I just imagined them being all human. Maybe my imagination is so bland, it can't even think of non-human mafia.

Giving criticism for text at this level is really beyond my expertise. So I'll just say capital letters might be not that sight-y, when you have proper emphasis at your control...

I like it.

It's hard giving criticism of just a first chapter because I don't know exactly where the story is going--something that may not make much sense to me right now may make perfect sense later. But I can say I like it. It's interesting, and that's always the most important thing (my golden rule of writing: "A reader will forgive anything except boredom").

I like your description of things: it's precise while being sparse, giving me a perfect image of the scene while not bogging me down in details that slow down the story. Example: "The moonlight filtering down through the leaf-bare talons of the trees." It's a perfect description--it gives me an exact sense of the mood and the scene. Great stuff.

The one thing that stood out to me as a problem was the mechanics around dialogue, but that may be a stylistic choice. I taught grammar for two years, and looking for grammatical mistakes in people's writing is now a subconscious habit, so I am much too oversensitive to stylistic uses of sentence fragments and capitalisation.

Grammar is my main failing, so given that you're an ex-grammar teacher... I'm sorry xD

I have a bad habit of over-using commas. I can usually avoid run-on sentences and sentence fragments, but I wasn't paying attention in grade school when they taught this shit and it just never stuck.

Second chapter up later today!

Correction: I'm not feeling 100% today, so I don't wanna try and force this. Sorry, another day or two delay XD

Hope it isn't swine flu! *coughs on everyone*