Author's Note

This is a short story I've been working on and retooling off and on for about a year now. It's general fiction, and it gets somewhat dark in its tone and subject matter, so if it's not your thing, you've been forewarned. There are a lot of themes I play with ... the depths of friendship, how a single event can reveal the true self, inner morality. The good old stuff. Some of its overt, some of its subtle I feel.

Basically, I'm just looking for some feedback and criticism. Basically:

Overall thoughts as to the set-up, conflict, and resolution
How the characters were developed
How well the story flows ... there were a couple paragraphs that were perfect on their own, but were a trial to segue into one another.
Dialogue, if it seemed realistic
If you noticed any symbolism and, if so, what it was, and was it too obvious/overplayed
And of course, the normal stuff: Voice, etc.

This ended up being about 20 pages in Word, 1.5 spacing, 10 pt font, so it's a biggun. I'll post it in chunks to better aid your reading. And my bank *cough*

"The Odds"

by

Victor Von Doom


From above, the small desk looked like a relief map of textbooks, travel guides, and apartment listings, with scarcely room enough left to house the notebook centered at its sea level. Rick crouched over this, brow knotted, a few sections of his meticulously moussed and parted hair falling out of line. The pen wielded in his right hand scanned over the landscape of paper, as if tracking a crafty quarrel, occasionally pausing to select and consult one of the many periodicals. A morsel of information from this was transcribed at an interval into the notebook and the volume was then replaced.

There was a method behind this, if no apparent pattern. It was nothing more than his tested and tailored way of consolidating his workload into a mountain and sanding it down a spire at a time. Simply, he worked with what felt right at the moment, letting instinct guide his hand. He dared not concentrate the whole of himself of one task, lest the enormity of it dwarf his thinking and overwhelm his rationale, paralyzing him with the equation of the amount of work versus the time in which he had to undertake it. So he did not think of it in whole, only in portions. He had at one point attempted to explain his method to Louis, who had laughed, perplexed.

A smile appeared on Rick’s face at this thought, slowly and inexorably, carved almost as if by the beginnings of a healthy laugh, a trickle before a flood. He fought it down, redirecting the desire as a cough; the smile remained. After three years together, his roommate’s influence was inescapable, even when away on the rare errand.

Rick leaned back in his chair and stretched, his vertebrae popping, and his focus redirecting from the cluttered desk to the window above it. It was a divine day out beyond the glass, the sky a cloudless, beckoning blue, the sun’s womb-like warmth apparent even though the shaded surface of the window. The young oak down in the lawn twitched with a breeze that Rick knew to be a sweet salve to the summer heat. As if sensing leverage, his back muscles groaned in protest, pleading for a sabbatical, for Rick to snatch up his headphones and lay himself out under the protection of the branches for an hour. Just an hour.

He stood and leaned over the desk, whisking the curtains shut with an almost resentful flick of his fingers. No distractions, no rest until his work was finished. He was not Louis. Louis who had, the night before a mid-term, stayed up into the cold, private hours that blur night and morning for the sole purpose of “utterly destroying” the final boss of a video game; he had still managed to conjure a rather respectable “B” from fifteen minutes of cramming over a dry bagel. Louis, whose notebooks contained only intermittent pieces of information, the majority of the pages home to a thousand doodles. Louis, so cultivated in his methods that he was either a prodigy or a sterling slacker, had never understood Rick’s need for rigid routine, but bore it with the air of a parent allowing its child to make an important mistake.

Rick suffered the chiding with an agreeable smile. Gestapo kidnappings that transported him from his work desk to the common room, password changes on his computer, mandatory midnight excursions to bars, presents of pocket protectors and pens – all the jokes and efforts to “unwind” him had been borne in the interest of fraternity. Yet the efforts had not wholly been in vain – after all, he wasn’t only studying now. Granted, apartment searching was not the most transcendent of experiences, but at least it was not economics. The vacation planning, however, had surprised Rick by becoming fascinatingly addictive.

After commencement, he and Louis were to embark on a six-week road-trip across the country. “Finances Be Damned” was Louis’s maxim for the journey, his attempt at their own “Manifest Destiny”; the phrase sat none too well with Rick, but he let Louis have his fun. There was a Reggae music festival in New York come August and that was their eventual destination. For every day prior, he and Louis were to each compose a list of cities, places, and people they wished to visit and their itinerary would be accordingly planned.

Rick’s personal duty in the matter was to arrange for them a suitable apartment once they returned. Soon they would be graduated, and in exchange for their diplomas, they would relinquish their home for the past several years. Their room would be emptied, sanitized, and presented to the next pair of students with the desire to live on campus. Their building neighbors would become pen pals, acquaintances or simply forgotten. Current hangouts would become old haunts. Their daily routines would be evicted along with themselves and would have to be reevaluated.

They would not, they decided, be forced to leave everything behind. They were good friends and even better roommates. After three years together, they had adapted to and adopted one another. They shared enough interests to bond and enough differences to ensure separate lives. What was the point in parting ways and finding someone unfamiliar with whom to split the rent? Neither he nor Louis could see any, and so they would room together off campus once their vacation has ended.

Louis’s task in the matter was to find a vehicle with which to facilitate their journey. Louis’s own Chevy truck had pulled over to the shoulder for the last time the previous winter, the whole engine more or less unraveling itself at once. He had been more than content with the two hundred dollars the junkyard offered to take it off his hands, less towing expenses of course. Rick’s current mode of transportation was questionable enough for city driving, much less anything cross-country. Its problems were mostly minor, but numerous and expensive, enough as to where it was more sensible to simply cut his losses and trade up. So Rick had relinquished his keys to Louis and charged him with finding them something modest and healthy that would do well to serve them in the years to come. Louis was ecstatic with his mission and had not, as expected, fallen for the first thing gleaming and leathered, actually displaying an unheard-of awareness to the concept of a budget. That was where he was currently, having left earlier in the morning, assuring Rick that he was close to unearthing the perfect conveyance.

Outside in the parking lot, a guttural rumbling rose, audible even through the wall and closed window, a low and even sound, the casual growl of a fearless, peerless predator. A few shards of light reflected from a windshield slipped their way through the curtains, but lost in his musings, this went largely unnoticed by Rick.

The hellish shriek of a horn nearly threw him from his chair. He leapt to his feet as if stuck and another wave of sound pounded its way into the room. Leaning over the desk once again, mindful not to upset his papers, he cast aside the curtains and peered out.

Parked in the stall underneath his window was a brashly red sports car. Even under the shadow of the oak, its encasement managed to gleam brilliantly with caught sun, forcing Rick to squint. The driver’s side window was rolled down and leaning out of it, his left arm draped casually down the side, was Louis. Seeing his friend staring down at him, Louis grinned and proceeded to put the whole of his weight on the horn.
Rick’s pen fell from his hand. He trod on it without thought as he launched himself out of his seat and out of the room. He did not bother to shut the door to their room, despite the usual glut of term-ending pranks and thefts on unattended rooms. He propelled himself down the hallway toward the stairwell, sneakers biting into the carpet with a hiss. The stairwell was claustrophobic, a slim spiral of stairs descending downward. Rick rushed down these, his footfalls echoing back as if he were leading a cavalcade in a charge, his shirttails fluttering behind him like a tattered banner. At ground level, he met the heavy door barricading the parking lot and threw his weight into it, shuddering it open against its hinges as he stepped into the afternoon.

The weather was indeed as wonderful as he had imagined from his room, but Rick was too preoccupied to take notice, fear and fury waltzing up his spine. Louis had now removed himself from the vehicle, but left the engine idling, snoring in the shade. Louis himself was leaning nonchalantly on the hood, arms folded, his grin so broad that it was almost threatening. It was a blind and bold smile, one that assumed there was nothing possibly wrong with the source of its joy. It was a woefully ignorant smile, that of a child proudly displaying its scribbles on a freshly painted wall. Even shaded by the bill of his baseball cap, Louis’s eyes twinkled.

The hat. It was ubiquitous with the idea of Louis. Blue and faded long beyond any hope of clues as to its origins, the cap had never in Rick’s memory left Louis’s head. It clung to his kinky hair as he lay down for the night and was there again as he awoke the next morning. It went into the bathroom with him as he showered, and was the only covering he wore, save a towel, when he reemerged. It was a part of him, not so much accessory as appendage. He had told Rick once with a wink that he had worn it to prom. It was a wink very much the same as the one he now gave Rick from the hood of the car.

“What d’you think of her?” Louis asked, running his fingers lightly over the unblemished metal.

Rick looked over his friend, saw his bright and earnest face, eager for praise, and felt his anger cool from a roaring fire into winking embers. Not extinguished by any means, but tempered, ready to flare again with provocation. He took a moment to choose his words and when he spoke, his voice was low and hard. “I think,” he said, “that this doesn’t look within our price range.”

Louis’s smile waned, but did not wholly leave his face. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Yes and no.”

Rick maintained his gaze. “More yes or more no?”

“It’s not expensive as you think.”

“How much?” Rick pressed, stressing both syllables.

“Just take a good look at it first,” Louis pleaded. “Give her a good look over and then I’ll tell you.”

Rick hesitated, but it was pointless. What Louis had to offer would not change, no matter when he asked. For his friend’s sake, he closed his eyes and tried to eliminate the bias behind them. Breath flowed in his nose and wafted back out through his mouth. When he opened his eyes once more, he was more centered, calmer, if only a little.

And the car was beautiful. It was red, a hyper-natural shade of the color one found only in children’s books and dreams. It had been waxed and buffed to a mirror’s clarity, its outline etched not in shadow, but in light. It sat in the stall, beckoning almost in an almost coquettish manner. His doubt drew back and Rick moved toward it, helpless but to tour around it.

“It’s a Firebird, Ricky-boy,” Louis prodded from his station at the hood. “About five years old.”

It was a two-door body type and the widows were smoked black, totally opaque. It rode low to the ground, incredibly low, almost crouching as if ready to pounce. Its engine slowly churned, vibrating the body, making it seem eager to move, incapable of remaining still for any long stretches of time. The modest swoop of the spoiler on its tail was majestic, regal. The interior, despite the whole vehicle being relative tiny, appeared plush, almost hedonistic – soft bucket seats and plenty of legroom.

“I wasn’t out looking for a sports car, you know,” Louis said, sounding almost offended by what he assumed Rick was thinking. “I went down to have a look at a sedan.”

Rick said nothing. He touched the surface of passenger side door, ever so lightly as not to leave any fingerprints, and beheld his reflection, contoured to the Firebird’s sleek curves. In it cast in a sunset’s fiery hues was himself, but it was not the same wan and wound doppelganger to which he was accustomed. This Rick was wide in the shoulders and grin, healthier in his skin, livelier in the eyes. This was not a Rick who would be content driving a boxy, boring sedan.

A pneumatic sigh broke the spell. Rick looked up and saw the hood rising up in a salute further up the length of the car.
“The dealer was showing me the sedan,” Louis continued, reemerging out of the driver’s side, “and what rolls out of the maintenance bay behind us, but this beauty. Freshly traded in, not a mark on her, damn near mint condition. She hasn’t even broken a seventy thou’ on the odometer.”

He motioned Rick over to the hood and together they gazed into its depths. The plugs, wires, and hoses were smooth and faultless. It reminded Rick of a completed dissection, everything vital attached, but arranged delicately. It was free of dust, clean of fluid stains, and the components whirred together harmoniously. Perfectly spotless, expertly maintained, it was more an apotheosis of an engine than an example.

Louis gestured at the display with his right hand. “You know what this means, Ricky?”

In an effort to humor him, Rick scrutinized the balmy collection of belts and fans, but could find nothing unordinary. “Should I?” he asked.

Louis groaned as if struck. “It’s a V-8. Eight cylinders.”

“And that means what, exactly?”

Louis shook his head and sighed, rubbing his forehead. Yet despite his apparent exasperation, there was a small smile on his lips and a note of amusement to his tone. “Okay, you used to drive a four-cylinder, right?”

“I did?”

“You did. Trust me. Now, you had to ride it pretty hard to get it up to speed, right?”

“I guess.”

“Imagine getting up to speed by just barely tapping the pedal. Hell, I bet I could get up to 90 in twenty, twenty-five seconds. Less, if I manually shift.”

Rick said nothing in response to this, swilling the information in his head as an oenophile might an unfamiliar blend of wine. The Firebird was indeed tempting, something he would never have granted himself, would have dismissed it as an egotistical luxury. Staring it in the face, he could not deny the appeal. And yet …

He looked at his roommate levelly. “How much?”

“About four-thousand more than we agreed,” Louis admitted, dropping his eyes.

Rick sighed heavily, but there were no theatrics behind it. “We can’t keep it.”

Louis groaned, exasperated, and slammed his hand onto the Firebird’s front bumper. Rick did not flinch.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t. It’s just too much.”

“Don’t do this,” Louis said, shaking his head under the shadow of the hood. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Rick snapped. “Fix your mistake? This is out of our league, Louis! You should’ve called me before you made a decision like this!”

“You would’ve said no.” It was barely audible over the whirring of the engine.

“Damn right I would have! Damn right!” Rick looked down upon the still-hunched form of Louis, who would not meet his eye. “Do you have any idea how much rent four thousand dollars is?”

Louis remained silent and Rick joined him, falling inward into his thoughts. The coming months displayed themselves before him in a vision he desperately hoped was not a premonition: meals skipped, days gone hungry, belongings parted with and pawned off, bills left unpaid, begging for handouts from family, and finally, and eviction notice. All because of one impulsive, imbecilic purchase.

Seeing his friend calmed, Louis stepped beside Rick and dropped a tentative hand on his shoulder. “It’s more expensive, yes,” he admitted, no plea, no trace of coercion in his voice. “But it’s worth it. Besides, you and I aren’t exactly headed for the homeless shelter even with the extra I shelled out for the down payment. There won’t even be any further payments for a few months yet and the interest is relatively good compared to the other dealers I went to. I may be a slackass, but I’m not a complete dumbass.”

He saw the corners of Rick’s lips curl upwards into the beginnings of a smile. It was by no means a victory, but it was a start.

“You looked at the car and you liked it. Maybe not as much as me, but you do like it. Since it’s more your thing, why don’t you take a look at the agreement I signed and see if it’s up to your standards?”

Louis paused. Some part of his phrasing registered important, flashing in his mind like a beacon toward magical, talismanic words that would end the argument immediately, and end it in his favor. He ran his tongue over his lips and repeated: “The agreement I signed … Ricky, your name isn’t on the contract. I got so excited when I saw her, I bought the car all by myself instead of bringing you down to co-sign. You’re not liable for it.”

Rick shrugged away the comment. “Legally? No. But we had a gentleman’s agreement.”

“Then we’ll add on to it. We take the trip as planned and in the Firebird. If you don’t fall for it, then you don’t have to be responsible for the payments. I’ll even pay you back what I got in trade for your Ford. With interest, if you want.” He grinned lopsidedly. “I mean, not right away, but you know I’m good for it.”

Rick sized up the sincerity in his friend’s words and found nothing dark behind the bright sparkles in his eyes. “You promise?”

Louis placed his hand over his heart, a burlesque solemnity overtaking his features. “I promise. Cross my heart, bake a pie; all that jazz.”

Rick inhaled deeply, his chest rising, straining against his shirt as he considered. Then he released it in one burst, chasing two words from his mouth: “All right.”

Louis’s grin resumed, stronger than ever. “You won’t regret this.”

Rick refrained from comment.

“So you wanna take her out for a spin?” Louis asked, already climbing inside the driver’s seat.

“I suppose I can afford a quick ride,” Rick mused. He did not, in fact, feel that his studies could afford a recess, but in deference to camaraderie he set his feelings aside. He pulled himself into the passenger’s seat and drew the seatbelt taut across his body.

“What say we find the highway and stretch our legs?” Louis said, settling into the driver’s seat. He took a moment to double-check the mirrors.

Rick glanced about the interior, no longer hidden behind a sultry, smoky tint and perfectly clear to his eyes. The glove compartment, when opened, looked plenty big enough to house their maps and travel guides. The wide windshield showcased the scenery with an almost patrician flair; it left him feeling relaxed, comfortable instead of confined, even though the interior was smaller than his old four-door. He stretched his legs, pleased to find a surplus of legroom, even for his abnormally long pair. He reclined the seat and folded he hands behind his head, staring up at the roof as Louis waited for a white pickup truck behind them to move.

“What’s wrong with the roof?” Rick asked, somewhat annoyed that there was no sunroof.

Confused, Louis followed his friend’s line of sight. The ceiling of the

Firebird was constructed of thick smoked glass, bisected into passenger- and driver-halves by a strip of metal that connected the encasement for the front and rear windshields. Above both of the side windows was a handle and a key-lock.

“Oh. This is a T-top model.”

“And that means …?”

“We can pull the panels off if we unlatch them,” Louis grunted, more concerned with backing out. “They store in the trunk. It’s kind of halfway between a sunroof and a convertible top.” He gave his friend an odd look as they backed out of the shade. “They’re not all that uncommon. I’m surprised you’ve never seen one before.”

Rick absorbed the information and examined the mechanism as Louis navigated them out of the parking lot. “I don’t like them,” he decreed. “It seems needlessly complicated.”

Louis merged into the oncoming traffic and herded them toward the abandon of the highway.

* * *


One day after commencement and twelve hours into the worst hangovers over their lives, Louis and Rick slipped over the interstate, the dark tires churning smoothly over a darker swatch of pavement. Rick slumped in the passenger seat, limply clutching a soda and wishing the weight of the previous, harried week would lift itself from his body and mind. Beside him, Louis was erect and alert behind the wheel, having earlier unearthed another cache of energy with a prolonged nap during Rick’s stint as driver.

Those hours had been a peaceful few for Rick, almost reverent. The sun had hovered in the background, apparent but not invasive, like a parent at a playground. The landscape had parted around him welcomingly, ushering him along. He forewent air-conditioning, opting instead to vent in the outside air directly and the thick, rich smell of dirt and dust and dung elevated him. The last several years of college – all of the fretting over his major, every bowel-churning anxiety attack while anticipating his test results, the mornings his alarm hadn’t crowed properly making him miss a lecture – was but a memory, as distant and receding from his thoughts as the physical college was from their backs. Every knot accumulated in his muscles unraveled some with each successive mile. With Louis as his copilot, Rick was excited about their trip, relishing his lack of control; it was a return to his grade-school days, vacationing with his parents, only vaguely aware of the destination but secure in the knowledge that everything was taken care of. With the splendor of the unmarred lands around him, a rough and raw blues album and the snores of his friend in his ear, and that robust scent of life filtering to his nose, he was for once at peace with the moment, no mind for the shadows of the future.

Louis had soon awakened – far too quickly, Rick felt, although the respite must have lasted at least three hours. His friend had yawned mightily, sat up, adjusted his cap and, spying a rest stop ahead, requested that Rick pull over for a piss. Rick complied and as the sun softened in the sky, they emptied their bladders inside of an old, but well-kept bricked facility. Outside in cool embrace of a grove of trees, Rick ritualistically popped his joints, snapping the stiffness from them while Louis stretched with the aid of a picnic table, ending his exercises with a series of impromptu cartwheels. Despite that it would set them off their schedule, the harmony Rick had touched in the driver’s seat was now amplified within him, and the urge to stay a while longer was almost insurmountable. His only reservation was that he could not properly communicate to Louis why he needed to stay nor what he would; even were he to find the appropriate words, there was a surety that Louis wouldn’t understand and would instead convince Rick otherwise with his usual prescription of affable chiding. And so, he said nothing.

As they recalled themselves to the car, Louis took the driver’s seat once more, despite Rick’s protests. Louis had smiled that condescending smile of his and cited that Rick’s conservative driving – enough over the speed limit to shave a few minutes off their travel time, but not enough to attract any highway patrol – was a “disgrace to such a fine machine.” With that, Louis lowered himself behind the wheel and Rick resigned himself to the passenger seat. They merged back onto the road and drove into the deepening purple of dusk.

It was long past that now, the waning moon somehow victorious in its coup d’etat for the heavens. Low-altitude sheets of clouds patrolled over the ground, bandaging over a majority of the sky. They cast a hood over the stars, deriving the companions of both their beauty and their brilliance. The grasslands around them were no longer cheery storybook glades, but mere shadowy suggestions, dark waters plowed and parted by the nose of the Firebird.

“I was thinking,” Louis rambled, half-shouting over the music, “that once we move into the apartment and get all settled, we get a pool table. Full sized, none of this sawed-off barroom crap like they had back at campus.”

Rick snorted. “I don’t think the building super would be too fond of that. Besides, we won’t have room for one. Not unless you want to sacrifice most of the living room.”

“We couldn’t just cover it with some plywood and a tablecloth when we’re not playing and use it as a kitchen table?” He took his eyes from the road and looked over at Rick, wiggling his eyebrows overzealously.

Rick couldn’t help but laugh. “How much further now?”

“Oh, just another couple hours. Sleep, if you want.”

Rick shook his head. Though his body ached for rest, the caffeine burning a blitzkrieg through his veins would not have it. He gazed at the illuminated displays unfocused, unwilling now to look out upon the scenery, no matter how futile of an attempt it might have been. As pouring past the landscapes during the bright afternoon had brought a chain of memories, so now did the night. These were not as nostalgic.

When he was young – in elementary school, but not long into – he had been plagued by a nightmare. It was a simple, almost absurd dream: he would be on a narrow slate-colored pathway that stretched levelly beyond him out into infinity. Before him as his destination was blackness and on each side of the platform was nothingness; or rather, there appeared to be nothing to his sides, but there was a nauseating sense of bottomlessness emanating therefrom. Behind him were his parents, blocking his way, urging him onward. It was a dull dream when compared to his usual nightmares, yet it had terrified him far more. Occasionally now, the night before a test or some similar situation, it would revisit him. It no longer elicited the same paramount horror, but it was unsettling nevertheless. And the road outside reminded him of it.

There were no guardrails, only the occasional reflective mile-marker. The lane dashes had faded into obsolescence. Their headlights did little more than enhance the few feet in front of them, making Rick feel that Louis was navigating not by sight, but by instinct and reflex. Worst of all, traffic was nonexistent. Nothing had passed them – in any direction – for the past hour, not a fellow traveler, a long-haul trucker, or any law-enforcement. There hadn’t even been a carcass to be seen – neither animal remains or the husk of a broken-down vehicle, it did not matter. There was nothing outside, it seemed, save for themselves and the stretch of road toed by their headlights.

The CD in the player reached its end, a final guitar chord reverberating in the speakers like a fading memory. For a long minute, there was only the hypnotic drone of the engine, and the gloom and silence outside seemed to pass between them and behind them like a constant gale. Louis mercifully took notice and clicked on the cruise control, setting it at a moderate – for him – 85 miles an hour. He reached between their seats and opened the storage compartment there, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and one eye out the windshield. The display clock on the dash snapped a minute over to read thirty-four minutes past midnight.

“Any preferences?” Louis asked, shaking a faux-leather CD case. Rick shook his head. “Then I’m going with something loud and fast, so …” he trailed off, the word spilling to the floor, the sentence lost under their seats. Louis’s face split into a dumbstruck grin Rick had come to both love and fear.

“I’ll be damned. I’ll be god damned!”

Rick stumbled out of his soporific daze and followed Louis’s gaze out onto the road beyond. At first, he could divine nothing but the phantom lane markers, but his weary eyes slowly focused and he understood.

Rising out of the tenebrosity like its namesake was the figure of an avian, wings fully spread, head cocked to profile, its outline etched in divine flame. It was the effigy of a phoenix; Rick recognized it almost immediately. It was the Firebird emblem. This new vehicle was not, they saw as they drew closer, exactly the same as theirs. Certainly the model and make matched, but this Firebird was a cool jade green instead of vibrant red. It was a color that reminded Rick of the sprawling freedom of the grasslands from hours before and he found it oddly soothing.

Beside him, Louis’s face contorted into something tottering between curiosity and reproof. “What do you think he’s running in there? V-6 orV-8?”

“What makes you think I could tell the difference?”

Long deaf to Rick's sarcasm, Louis ignored him. “Whatever he’s got in there, he’s not using it. Guy’s barely keeping with the speed limit.”

“What blasphemy.”

Louis tugged the brim of his hat down, securing it on his head. He grinned wide and bright. “Should we show him how to really handle an engine? What d’you say?”

“Would it dissuade you if I said no?”

“Not at all!” Louis crowed and thrust his foot firmly on the accelerator. The speedometer needle lurched violently and leapt almost directly from the 85 notch to the 90. They overtook the small stretch of road separating the two vehicles. Their front bumper was soon a mere foot from the other’s rear. Louis toggled between the normal headlights and the highway-brights; it forced an eerie, haunted-house strobe-light effect on their field of vision. Louis trumpeted the horn in short, sharp bursts. Suddenly and without signaling, Louis shot them into the left lane. They drew immediately alongside and then ahead of their counterpart. Louis swung their car back into the right-hand lane as quickly as before. They missed introducing bumpers again, although only by scant inches. Louis planted the pedal into the floor and they drew away from the brother vehicle. Accompanied by Louis’s howls of laughter, the green apparition shrunk in the mirror. Its color and form melted behind its headlights. Rick glanced in the passenger-side mirror, watching the receding image, hoping they hadn’t frightened its driver too terribly –

There came a horrible sound – a wrenching, sucking noise, a rubbery pop like a plunger ripped from a tile floor. A gale surrounded the interior of their car, tearing ravenously at their hair, pawing lecherously at their clothes, and shrinking Rick’s stomach to a tight mass of ice. There was only the enraged bellow of the wind, no other sounds possible of overcoming it, and for a moment in the alien atmosphere, Rick felt his sanity unsure of its foothold.

Louis stamped the brake and the Firebird bucked roughly, its tail swerving precariously. Their speed dropped and the wind died as Louis ducked them into the breakdown lane. As he killed the engine, there came from behind them a flat, factual sound, a thick crunching like the breaking of a dry bone. Louis swore softly and hurled open his door. Rick followed.

The wind struck him cruelly, coldly antipodean to the muggy summer air. Despite its bite, it was not without benefit; the mist of clouds that had been masking the stars had been swept away. It was by no means a substitute for daylight, lamplight, or even flashlight. It did, however, cast a slight blue tinge to the landscape, and the road no longer looked like a bridgeway across an abyss. The land around them stretched out into something foreign and massive in the absence of true light.

“Don’t you want to turn on the emergency lights?” Rick asked.

“Don’t know if it’s an emergency yet.”

“What happened?” Rick stammered. He tried to focus on their car, but his pulse throbbed in his eyes, making it difficult.

“We lost a T-top,” Louis said through gritted teeth. He pushed his way past Rick and stepped out onto the shoulder. Rick followed, his footsteps snapping on the loose gravel that constituted the shoulder. The shadows beyond the road were oppressive and confining. Rick had no desire to step past the distinction of the man-made boundary. Thankfully, Louis was confining his search only to its edge, although his “search” consisted mostly of an enraged pacing and series of hissed curses trailing around him like cigarette smoke.

Rick shuddered. In the empty vastness, he felt as helpless and vulnerable as a blind whelp. If they died out here, he thought, if it weren’t for their discarded vehicle, no one would ever look for them, no one would ever find them, even if they were a mere thirty feet from the road. If the operator of the other Firebird was upset, all he’d have to do now would be to ease his steering wheel a little to the right and … petty revenge for a stupid prank.

The thought shocked Rick enough to turn his attentions away from his distressed companion. He peered down the dim expanse of road, looking for a set of familiar headlights. He saw none. The road was flat and the night was clear. Unless the other Firebird had been powering along at Mach-2, there ought to be some sign of him and yet there was nothing, not even the sound of an engine. Rick turned and examined ahead of them. Still nothing, only a suggestion of the road ahead. Surely they hadn’t been passed.

“Louis…”

“It might not be broken,” Louis was muttering obliviously, half to himself. “If we get lucky and it landed in the grass or just skidded on the pavement, it might be all right.”

“Louis.”

“I know I locked it. It was at least latched. You can’t even get in without cracking your skull on the damn handle if it’s not latched.”

“Louis.”

“If it’s busted or just plain gone, that’s going to eat up a couple day and a couple hundred once we hit town.” He made a noise that was both a sigh and a growl. “Damn it!”

“Louis!”

“What?” Louis snapped, annoyed to have been wrenched from his wallowing.

“Where’s the other car?”

Louis’s feet anchored themselves to the ground. He scrutinized both directions of the highway, running a finger over the fraying brim of his cap. “He passed us,” he concluded. There was no conviction behind the words.

“I didn’t see him,” Rick said, his tone leaden, echoing the doubt he saw in his friend’s face.

Louis folded his arms and looked at the ground, meditating on the possibilities. As his friend withdrew into himself, the pervasive sense of exposure Rick felt worsened. Beyond the road, there no longer seemed to be even a possibility of the benevolent landscape from before. What he thought lay beyond, Rick could not say, only that he was sure it had eyes; and was watching them. There was a brief gust of wind that snarled as it passed through them, nearly pulling Louis’s cap from his head. Then, Louis’s head rose slowly, almost gently, as if careful not to jostle the idea contained within. “Do you hear that?”

Rick closed his eyes and listened, but there was nothing extraordinary that he could detect. A slight and steady breeze played in the wild, unkempt grass off the shoulder. Crickets chirped in time to the heavy beat of his heart. The scrape of nervous soles against gravel. The shifting of a powerful engine somewhere in the inky distance. Louis’s muttering, no longer of a private fury, but now a rising panic. Nothing extraordinary.

Then, with all the exhilaration of deciphering a puzzle, he heard it. A phlegmatic wheezing, a bronchial rumble, a pneumatic snore. And it was coming from somewhere up ahead.

As his eyes adjusted to the midnight gloom, he saw that what separated the idyllic, picture-book prairie from earlier in the day was not only the dark but the distance of miles. What lay beyond was not healthy, flourishing grass, thick and fat and content; rather, it was gnarled and warped, the blades brittle and brown, mottled by barren patches. It reminded Rick of the fur of a manged dog. The ground dipped down gently but resolutely from the breakdown lane into a ditch, littered here and there with a drifting plastic bag or rusted beer can, but otherwise clean of debris.

They moved forward as one and the sputtering sound grew closer, definitely originating from the ditch. Coming from the direction of a soft red glow, just visible in the distance over the closest crest of the road. There was something unearthly in both the light and the noise, but the sum of the two was far worse.

On the road, an eighteen-wheeler barreled by, all musky scent and roaring sound. Its wake swept the air over them, and despite its warm, moist – almost organic – quality, it cut through Rick like a winter wind.

“Let’s get off the road,” Louis said. He removed his cap to momentarily wipe at – if what Rick felt was any indication – a clammy sweat. That done, he replaced the hat, but absentmindedly. It lay askew on his skull.

They clambered into the ditch, fingers of grass brushing the cuffs of their jeans as they stepped off the road. The slope was trickier to traverse than it first appeared and Rick stumbled over his own feet, skidding the ten feet to the bottom. Louis marched dazedly onward without so much as a cursory glance back.

Off the shoulder, the vulnerability Rick felt on the unlit road was now amplified into a feeling of stark nakedness. So much more numerous than in the city, the stars glared accusingly downward, twinkling with malicious humor. The invisible crickets hummed a dirge. A grove of trees on the outskirts of the field stood as stalwart mourners.

They saw it. Its nose was crushed into the rise of the far bank, tail end resting awkwardly on the opposite slope. Though thusly pinned, it twitched and rocked in a futile play for freedom. Rendered almost colorless by the soft red of its taillights, the green Firebird lay infirm in the ditch, hidden from all but the most stubborn of searchers.

“Maybe we just startled him off the road,” Louis rasped.

They appraised the vehicle. Seeds of safety glass sprinkled the ground, looking like spatters of blood. Yet from their angle, the Firebird appeared undamaged and the source of the glass was an enigma. Slowly, anxiously, they circled behind the vehicle, stepping into and beyond the ghoulish red glow. The car shivered a single time, startling Rick, then settled.

The silence sickening, Rick could not fight the urge to call out a meek, “Hello?”

Louis reached aside and pressed a warding hand on Rick’s chest before he could call again.

They drew abreast the hood. Amidst the chaotic scattering of glass, the windshield had been warped. It was built resilient and had not wholly shattered, instead leaving a gaping maw of a hole in the driver’s side of the pane. The puncture was not circular or ovoid, but banana-shaped, ends turned down toward the hood, looking like a grimace of pain. The edges of the hole had buckled and turned milky, the jagged jewels of glass clinging tenaciously and delicately to the cavity like droplets of dew.

Inside the vehicle, the dash lights were enough to make out the form of the driver. He was still mostly upright in his seat, slumped over slightly onto the tinted window. His suit looked of typical business attire – charcoal jacket, white dress-shirt, and a loosely fashioned red tie. The split carcass of a briefcase and the entrails of documents strewn about the interior seemed to confirm his occupation. He looked utterly unremarkable, one of a million similar drones, save for one pertinent detail.

“Louis,” Rick wheezed. “Where’s his head?”

Louis made a sound between a choke and a cough, but answered in a surprisingly normal tone. “On the passenger seat, I think.”

The ground became as unstable as warm rubber, unwilling to support, and Rick swayed. Color became a memory. “Did we …” he swallowed hard, his throat tight. “Did our T-top do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Rick lolled and let gravity take him. He met the ground hard, jarring his spine, evicting the wind from his lungs. For five minutes, his existence was predicated toward not vomiting. He concentrated on his hand, lying limp in the infertile dirt – pale, feeble, anemic. His lips twinged in silent prayer, wishing for it all to be a nightmare, for Louis to resolve and absolve, that he could simply faint and relinquish his responsibility in the matter. No such relief came. His stomach stopped its panicking, calmed, and his breathing returned to normal. His world broadened once more outside of himself and a noise drew his attention, clutched at his heart.

No. He cocked his head, examining his environment aurally. No, it was a lack of a noise that had startled him. The Firebird’s engine had stopped. He turned his head to it, expecting to find that it had succumbed to its injuries and gone to join its owner. Instead, he found the driver’s side door wide open, almost perpendicular to the body. Louis was no longer statuesque and contemplating, now halfway inside the vehicle.

With his left hand braced on the roof, the rest of his torso explored the interior, suspending himself inward instead of leaning so that he would not have to brush against anything unpalatable. The arm flexed and Louis extracted himself, taking a grateful gulp of fresh air. Dangling from his now-visible right hand was an unfamiliar keychain; he had looped the metal around his finger like it was a class ring, a memento to be treasured.

Rick watched, the display too foreign for him to do anything but. Louis sifted through the keys in his palm and selected one. Then, turning back to face the car, he again clamped his left hand on the smoked-glass roof and ducked inside, now working upside down. There came a jingling of keys and the snap of a lock. Louis hoisted himself out once more, dropping the keys into his pocket. He then placed both hands palm-up under the lid of the roof and lifted. With a clatter, a section of the roof came free. A T-top.

Louis removed it gingerly and swung its bulk around behind him, setting it carefully on the ground. He adjusted his grip and lifted again, holding it before him like a majestic serving platter. He began to walk, moving quickly despite the certainty he established in his steps.

Rick stirred, sick with sudden insight. His voice cracked and split mid-sentence as he called: “What are you doing?”

Carried by the breeze, snatches of mutterings fluttered back to Rick’s ears, but no answer. He scrambled to his feet on the dry dirt and went after Louis.

“What are you doing?” he yelled again, but a gust of wind whisked away his words. Louis was keeping to the belly of the ditch, walking hunched and discreetly, almost skulking in its shadows. Rick kept pace, gaining without expending much energy, and then he slipped, his sneaker caught on something decidedly not dirt. He glanced down, expecting litter, and beheld something cloth and crumpled, a faded blue.

Louis’s hat.

For a fleeting moment, Rick meant to pause and retrieve the article. He dismissed it as an absurdly unimportant detail. Yet as he continued on, he could not prevent the forlorn glance he left behind with it. By the time Rick finally caught up to Louis, the man was sliding his newly acquisitioned part into their roof.

“Stop it,” Rick snarled, rounding their Firebird’s spoiler.

Louis ignored him, giving the T-top a final, securing smack with the heels of his palms. Rick meant to say something else, but his mouth refused to form the words. Instead, a blind, single-minded fury overtook him and an inarticulate cry issued forth. He bowed his head and flung all of his lank form into Louis. Louis was caught completely off guard and, with no chance to steel himself, was hurled sideways. The blow actually lifted him fully off his feet. He twisted futilely for purchase and glanced off the bulk of the vehicle, clipping off the side-mirror. After what felt to be an eternity of treading uselessly in a sea of bewilderment, he landed on his back with a burst of stolen breath. The mirror skittered to a stop next to his ear.

Rick watched his companion’s journey, feeling as if he were spectating from a theatre balcony; the events were startling to him, uncontrollable, and yet he was somehow involved. And fascinated. With this detached interest, he observed as Louis caught his breath and began to move. Louis began to pick himself up with a grunt, taking his time, almost savoring the experience. He scooped up the mirror and stood gingerly, clawing at the Firebird for support. His hair was gnarled and matted; sans hat, he appeared to Rick as both awkward, yet somehow natural, almost eerily so.

Taking stock of his injures and deciding they were painful, but harmless, Louis looked upon Rick with a frightened awe. The normally nervous – neurotic, even – man with slumped shoulders and absentminded eyes was gone. That face was as missing as the head of the other unfortunate Firebird pilot. The Rick he knew could be uptight, but that which stood before him was taut, quivering, with some unidentifiable emotion. Rick’s arms were drawn up at the elbow, hands clenched into whitening balls – an unmistakable fighting stance.

For the first time in the tenure of their relationship, Louis was intimidated. Not that he doubted his ability to handle a scrap with Rick – even now, with his arms and back a wasteland of pain, he noted several exploitable openings in Rick’s awkward, if admirable, position. Louis privately wagered that Rick could be put down in five quick moves, if it came to blows. If it had to come to blows at all.

“You broke the mirror,” said Louis. It was not an accusation, merely a statement of fact, meant for Rick to respond, in hopes to properly gauge his mood.

Rick didn’t answer. He only glared.

Louis frowned and switched tactics. He spread his arms into a large, confused shrug and asked, doing his best to force the fire from his voice, “What’s going on, man?”

“What’s going on?” Rick parroted. His accompanying laugh was a tad hysterical. “We’ve just killed a man and you’re more concerned with the car than anything!”

“No,” Louis said, not dropping his eyes. “A man is dead, but we weren’t involved.”

The disconcerting, unstable laugh came again.

“Not involved?” Rick spat. “Our car cut off his head!” The last few syllables echoed outward, broadcasting the thought to all of the open air before expiring.

“Keep your damn voice down,” Louis snarled. “All right. We accidentally killed a man. So what do you want me to do?”

“First I want that,” he stabbed a finger at the restored T-top, “put back.”

“And then what? Call the cops?”

The question hung in the air as Rick hesitated.

“Yes,” he replied, but without his prior fervor.

“Want the old highway patrol to come on down and haul us in, do you?”
Rick didn’t answer; but his shoulders relaxed a little, losing some of their tension.

“A man is dead and that sucks,” Louis prodded. “But despite what you think, we didn’t do anything. Our car had a freak accident and that poor bastard happened to be in the line of our bad luck.”

There was still no contribution from Rick’s end, but Louis could see that the fire in his eyes had lost its fuel.

“If we call this in, we’re cooked. I don’t know what exactly the penalties for vehicular manslaughter are, but they can’t be good. Even though I know – and Ricky, I goddamn well do know – I bolted down the ‘top, we’ll be charged with negligence or some other B.S. term just so they can pin the blame on someone. Not to mention, this guy had a family – I didn’t see a ring, but I wasn’t looking too hard, y’know? – this guy had a family and word gets back to them, they’ll try and sue us. One of them whaddya-callem trials.”

“Civil,” Rick whispered.

“Yeah, a civil trial.” Louis nodded encouragingly, sensing Rick beginning to understand. “And even if nothing comes out of any of it, we’re still screwed. The next year of our life is,” he smacked his free hand against the car’s black window, “gone. We’ll be in debt because of court costs probably. And think about ‘manslaughter’ coming up during an interview. Think they’d hire you with that monkey on your back?”

The blood shrank from Rick’s face, rendering him as white as if he were caught in the sights of a highbeam. “Are you sure?”

“I watch a lot of legal-type shows,” Louis said grimly.

Under ordinary circumstances, Rick would have recognized this as neither a yes nor a no; in his present distress, he nearly choked.

Another car – some sort of white sedan – streaked by them like a comet.

“Hope he didn’t see us,” Louis remarked. They followed the vehicle with their eyes until its taillights had faded to nothing. It hadn’t even slowed.

“What do you propose we do?” Rick asked as soon as the panic had passed. His voice was still tremulous, but there was no longer a not of feebleness to it.

“I say that I lock the new ‘top in place. I won’t be able to remove it again without his key, but I’ll worry about that later.”

“Why don’t you just run down to the nearest hardware store and make a spare?” Rick sneered.

“Then we take the keys back,” Louis continued, ignoring Rick’s acerbity. “We start up the car again like it was never off. Any luck, when they find the wreck, they’ll just write it off as a freak accident – his T-top came off, swung around like a boomerang, and … well, you know the rest.”

“You think anyone will believe that?”

Louis shrugged. “They’re busy guys. It’s much easier to let it go as a freak occurrence and give our guy a closed casket than to assume another Firebird was in front of him, lost its ‘top, killed the guy, and the other driver stopped to switch out ‘tops. What do you think the odds of that are?”

“Pretty good from where I’m standing.”

Again, though with much more effort, Louis ignored the remark. “It’s the whole ‘easiest solution is the right one’ thing. Bachman’s Razor.”

“Occam’s Razor. And you’ve completely misinterpreted and misapplied it.” Yet they were already trekking back toward the jade dragon in the ditch.

The journey back was not quite so terrible as the first. No matter what manner of taboo lay before them, it was at least a certainty now, not some exponentially amorphous entity of Rick’s imagination. These terrors, realizing now that the car and the body within no longer held as much leverage, regrouped their shapeless assault in the form of thoughts of discovery, of a passing police officer or motorist noticing their forsaken Firebird and stopping to aid, noticing the men in the ditch and the wreck. What then? Probably Louis would be able to craft a convincing enough tale to waylay any suspicion. Yes, that would almost certainly be the case. His mind’s eye, however, saw Louis attacking this faceless witness, dropping them in the ditch and then running the new vehicle off the road. He shuddered.

They had almost reached the green Firebird again. With its lights and engine lifeless, it was no longer a symbol of immediate dread, but more of a husk, a souvenir of something past. The shed skin of a snake, perhaps. Louis approached it with none of Rick’s reservations. In fact, there was a distinct spring to his step, if compared to his associate’s churlish shuffle. He even jingled the keys as he sauntered up to the vehicle.

A trinket on the keychain drew Rick’s eye – a small plastic eight-ball, the size of a jawbreaker. It was plastic and scuffed with wear, no longer any luster of finish on it. This bauble seemed like the definitive period to the absurd occurrence, instead of the comforting ellipsis of a dream. It was confirmation instead of ambiguity.

As Rick reflected, Louis ducked himself into the car once more. As before, he found a grip and allowed himself to dangle inward. A moment of careful positioning passed, then the engine shook its slumber and the lights that were its eyes rolled open. Louis swung out as before with the same, almost practiced grace, but did not immediately start back to their waiting vehicle. Instead, he circled the area of the accident, scraping his foot on any bare patches of dirt or trampled sections of grass.

“Getting rid of our tracks,” he answered to Rick’s unvocalized inquiry. “Better safe than sorry, eh?”

Once the ditch was clean enough of their involvement, they marched back to the shoulder, shuffling their feet as they did, so as not to leave any further evidence. The first half-hour back on the road was devoid of any noise, save for the relentless chug of the engine. Neither spoke, only gazed out to the road beyond. There was nothing either could find to say, no words to express that were proper. It was as awkward as when they first met, arranging their dorm room in a similar, tentative silence.

Finally, as the corona on the horizon revealed itself to be a cityscape, Louis spoke. He was not his usual, ebullient self, neither was he exceptionally meek; his voice was flat, but firm, as if issuing an edict to which he anticipated no challenge.

“I say, once we get checked in, we find the nearest store, raid their liquor aisle, and get completely wasted.”

Rick grunted something noncommittal. Louis risked a glance over with a naked, wounded face. He took a hand from the wheel and clapped it tightly on Rick’s nearest shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be okay, buddy.”

Rick tore away from his touch and curled up facing the window, pretending to sleep.

They completed the rest of the trip without another syllable. They arrived at the hotel just past three o’clock in the morning. Louis took care of the check-in process, flirting one-sidedly with the indifferent counter woman, regaling her of a delicious all-night roadside eatery that he and Rick had not, in fact, dined at and had only seen blur by.

Luggage stowed in the room, necessities unpacked, Rick took to brushing his teeth mechanically, methodically. Louis somewhere behind him in the shadows of the ill-lit room, fiddled noisily with his suitcase.

“Ah. Shit.”

“What?” Rick sputtered through a mouthful of foam. Forgotten, a torrent of toothpaste dripped down his chin unchecked.

“Nothing,” Louis sighed, dropping back on the meticulous comforter. “I guess I lost my hat out there. Didn’t notice ‘til now.”

“Oh,” Rick said and resumed preening.

“Hey, show a little respect, man!” Louis snapped. “I loved that hat. I’m really going to miss it.”

Rick studied the form of his familiar in the mirror and spat into the sink. “So am I.”

The shallow notes:
I fully support your use of chunks when posting this piece ^.~

It’s highly appreciated that you have worked on this piece prior to posting it. It’s clear that you have analyzed it well.

I like how you know your characters’ movements and quirks so well.
Nice variation of vocabulary. You’re never too repetitive, but still have clear meanings.

When discussing/describing an academic setting, the voice fits it. Being exact, but descriptive. - Nice balance. This helps to develop your nerdy, scholarly character who under many circumstances would not be expressive.


Some spelling, grammar, and punctuation changes:
Rick rushed down these; his footfalls echoing back as if he were leading a cavalcade in a charge, his shirttails fluttering behind him like a tattered banner.
The Firebird was indeed tempting; something he would never have granted himself, would have dismissed it as an egotistical luxury.
There hadn’t even been a carcass to be seen – neither animal remains, nor the husk of a broken-down vehicle, it did not matter.
There was nothing outside, it seemed, save for them and the stretch of road toed by their headlights.
Louis’s Chevy truck had pulled over to the shoulder for the last time the previous winter, the whole engine more or less unraveling itself at once.
It was a two-door body type and the windows were smoked black, totally opaque.
One day after commencement and twelve hours into the worst hangovers of their lives, Louis and Rick slipped over the interstate, the dark tires churning smoothly over a darker swatch of pavement.
It was long past that now, the waning moon somehow victorious in its coup d’etats for the heavens.

Overall thoughts as to the set-up, conflict, and resolution: You develop the characters and setting well enough with the first arc to make later parts run smoothly, but not so far as to be over dominating. The conflict is not what you would consider it if you were told the basic premise. This is a nice change. You finish the story that is important, and leave the expected details open. If you had had the pair get caught, it would have drawn attention away from the primary conflict. This conflict as I interpreted it was about change. In the beginning the only thing that would stay the same come graduation is their relationship. With the accident and Louis’s and Rick’s separate reactions it is clear that the relationship has already changed, and will never be what it once was.

How the characters were developed: I’m sticking with my previous statement. The only thing I would doubt is Rick’s inability to decipher the T-top. I do admit that the only other probable way of explaining it to an unknowing reader because of the terminology would be a footnote. However a footnote would break up the story, and make the experience less smooth for the reader.

How well the story flows ... there were a couple paragraphs that were perfect on their own, but were a trial to segue into one another.: All is paced, and flows well.

Dialogue, if it seemed realistic: Fairly realistic. However, I somehow doubt Louis would be concerned with the term “civil trial”

If you noticed any symbolism and, if so, what it was, and was it too obvious/overplayed: I also included foreshadowing because you use it a lot.
Dream- His dream relates both to the story as it will unfold: Having no control over the events as they happen, and with life. In life one cannot go back, ultimately we walk it alone, and all we have an abyss in front of us. Well executed. If one simply reads the story without noticing (one would have to be skimming as enough time is spent on it) this part would still get a sense of the story being about the ultimate change of the relationship between the two characters.
Cap- Is a nice representation of how Rick views Louis. Initially the Louis he always knew would always be there, once it is left behind and forgotten, it is the Louis that Rick knew that is left behind to fade away. Yet again, well executed.
Grasslands and the green firebird- This one was more veiled but still noticeable, and became a part of the descriptive setting. As one changed in appearance, so did the other.
Cold wind- Nice representation of apprehension.
Dulled 8 ball- A good link of owner to possession. Death causes a being to be dulled. Because the being is dulled, so is his possession.
Tear away from touch- A nice way to show a torn association.
Animalistic noises of car- Showing the car will do damage. I would say overplayed, but it’s a cliché enough role of a car to not be a dead give-away.
Hesitancy of car- Rick’s hesitancy Leads the reader to be weary- nice foreshadowing
Preference of sun roof- Same as above really.

And of course, the normal stuff: Voice, etc.: The voice is on the passive side, but it fits Rick, who’s view you mostly see from, so I consider it an acceptable amount of passivity.

Thank you for your criticism! It's difficult to get a decent response out of my friends, whom, while I love ... they kind of just blindly praise what I do and aren't really serious readers. You basically analyzed it how I wanted it to be read and extrapolated a couple things I didn't necessarily intend/realize while I was writing, so either you and I are on the same wavelength or there's at least some sort of audience out there for me. Maybe both xD

So, responses. My critique of your critique, if you will xD:

Punctuation/grammar changes: I'll take those to heart. It's tough to catch everything when there's so much you're looking for, you know? I'll insert them into the next (and hopefully final) draft and see how they read to my inner ear in the whole. Sentence to sentence though, I agree with the changes you suggested.

Setup/conflict/resolution: Again, right on the nose. The story is less about the accident and more about their changing relationship, how a single event can strip a relationship to its bare bones.

Character development: Well, Rick's attitude with car's is basically my own. Once I'm shown how to do something with it, I can do it like a pro, but if it's something I've never seen done, I'm like a monkey with a stick. I felt Rick sees cars and just things to cart him from point A to point B and never really took an active interest in anything other than his vehicle ran. His actual dialogue with Louis on the subject was taken from when I had to explain the subject to someone in one of my English classes who hadn't seen a T-top before. (The actual having a T-top ripped off the car actually happened to me; it didn't kill anyone, thankfully, but I swear to whichever deity pleases you that I had it latched and locked).


Dialogue: What did you mean by "I somehow doubt Louis would be concerned with the term 'civil trial'"? When they were discussing the legal aspects of their situation I had a sudden vision of Louis being an OJ Simpson Trial junkie and I remembered that after OJ was cleared of the felony, he was sued for civil damages, and I remembered that everyone I knew that had followed the trial were shocked to learn that you could be sued even if found innocent of the crime.

If you meant that you didn't think Louis would CARE about a civil trial, you're probably right. Louis thinks he's in control on any situation. He's only using the civil trial as another method of bringing Rick back to his side.

Or maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what you're trying to point out Let me know.

Symbolism/foreshadowing:

Dream: You're not far off from what I was driving at, but I like your interpretation. I meant more that Rick had always been pushed into things without much choice. I get the sense that his parents probably pushed him towards a degree he has no real feeling for and that Louis is the "man" of the relationship.

Cap: Same idea, different words. The cap is the face Louis puts on for the world and when it comes down to brass tacks in the story, we see his true self without any filters. And, as you say, the Louis that Rick knew is now a memory.

The 8-ball: Actually, I meant nothing more about it other than to sum up their reactions to the incident: Louis's nonchalance and Rick's sick desperation that it was a dream. I do enjoy your insight though, it does make perfect sense in the context of the story.

Animal noises of car: In the initial description, I meant it less as an attempt to personify the Firebird and more to show a few things about the characters: I was trying to show with the descriptions that Rick wasn't a total wet blanket and that he was alive in his own way. Also that Louis knew Rick and knew what Rick was yearning for deep down. I'll try toning down the animalistic personification and playing up the feeling the car elicits in Rick.

There were a few other minor points of symbolism and foreshadowing I used, but they were mostly in the environmental and emotional descriptions and the POINT was that they blend in xD

Again, thank you for your in depth critique. It's been a great help and I'll take what you've suggested to heart when I get around to polishing the story up again. I probably won't post it here, since the changes will be minor and inconsequential to the story as a whole, but I'll probably post some other stuff down the road.

I really enjoyed critiquing this- no offense intended to the other writers, but this time I was looking more in depth- something I don’t generally feel qualified to do (I’m a lowly graphic design major). So this was a nice change of pace. I can see this being a hard piece to get criticism for if only because its genre is not one with a catch. It is simply a fictional story (thank deities abound that it didn’t happen to you).
I actually didn’t catch half of the spelling and grammar until I was reading it a second time, so I can see it being missed before.
I’m still amazed that there can be someone unfamiliar with what a T-top is.
I pretty much doubted that Louis would care. OJ fanatic works too though.
>.< Louis is most definitely “The Man” of the relationship.
Please write in here again. I like depth, and critiquing for gold/ amusement(wow I’m a loser) is more enjoyable when I’m not ripping a piece to shreds on spelling and grammar alone, and can concentrate on what the story is.