Hey stranger, thank you very much for your insight! I will be re-working on this soon!
Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / Novikova Project: chapter 1 part 1
-CHAPTER ONE
The chapel was empty except for the napping attendant and the stoic lady in black. Her hands were folded, ankles crossed and her brown eyes stared at her black boots, rather than at the open casket. The man she hadn’t seen in ten years lay in front of her. She had caught a glimpse of his face when entering the room but had sat down a few rows back, afraid. Her brow twitched and her nostrils flared with the reminiscence of what happened to cause this hard luck. Lucy wasn’t the type to elicit her emotions and quickly right herself. But she couldn’t forget her mother’s response, couldn’t comprehend how her mother could be so calloused and repulsive.
“Он мертв,” Yuliya said. Her mother had never quite mastered the English language since her arrival in America twenty-four years ago.
“Who?” The plate in Lucy’s hand didn’t slip, so inured to her mother’s acerbic lies.
“Ваш отец.”
The plate slipped this time. It clanked and chipped on the rusty edge of the sink. Lucy closed her eyes in instant defeat.
“На хуй ты блюдъ расхуячил? Кто?”
Her words stung but Lucy’s mind was already numbed. It was the only attack Yuliya possessed at this distance. A hideous case of MS restricted Yuliya’s mobility, and Lucy hated the chains it inflicted on both her and her mother.
Lucy heard her mother arranging herself and pick up the television remote beside her. She was preparing. Lucy turned quickly before it began, but it was too late.
“You break dishes, you break everything You not my daughter!”
“Papa just died, and you care more about the dishes? And we won’t have any more money, we’ll be out in the street in a month, forget about the dishes!”
The television remote flew by her head and exploded on the cabinets behind Lucy. She didn’t flinch.
“Don’t you dare, you jinx! You waste of life! You let me sit here and rot, disgraceful bitch! You find job!” Yuliya’s hands searched for new objects to hurl at her daughter.
“You fell down yesterday, I can’t leave you alone!”
“You don’t care for me, не пизди—” Yuliya’s poisonous maw continued to spit up bile and hatred, but Lucy’s mind had shut off just then, like it always did, and now it was all just a distant memory.
The welfare of her father had been the farthest thing from her mind since his leaving ten years ago. Lucy knew, as well as her sister and brothers, that he had left for his mistress. It was the last time she had seen his face, storming out of their apartment building. He hadn’t even noticed his children sitting on the opposite curb, listening to Mama and Papa quarrelling violently and watching their silhouettes shift heatedly in the windows. Lucy’s siblings were impassive of the event, but Lucy had always felt a special connection with Stanislav Novikov. She was heartbroken, and Yuliya Novikova made sure Lucy paid the price for her daughter’s disconsolation.
Not a month later, an odd-looking man appeared on their steps with an envelope in hand. It was a stipend from Stanislav Novikov. Yuliya refused to take the money, but ultimately, there was no other way.
The oldest sibling, Stas, left shortly after Papa did. Elizaveta, the second oldest, married as soon as was possible, and the youngest, Timofey, went away to college. Lucy couldn’t blame them for leaving when they did. Yuliya beat them all on the slightest impulse, her capriciousness making it impossible for them to avoid her hasty blows.
By the time Timofey announced his escape, their mother began having seizures. They couldn’t afford a doctor and her condition progressed for the worst. There wasn’t an alternative for Lucy’s future other than to be her mother’s caretaker.
Lucy watched the world pass by from their fourth floor window as her skin became more and more indurate to Yuliya’s thrashing temper. And now Yuliya’s condition debilitated her to the frayed olive Victorian armchair beside the yellow rotary phone, waiting for that call from Sergey to pick up their monthly stipend from any random corner in Brighton Beach. And that was the only time Lucy was allowed to venture outside of their home. With the five hundred dollars in her pocket, she would have to haul a laundry bag, pick up a month’s supply of vitals and leave their rent’s due with the sordid attendant at the building next door. By the time Lucy returned on those days, she would receive a grand beating for taking too long. That money would come and go in those three hours.
And their only source of capital now lay dead in front of her, and Sergey’s phone call as a week overdue.
Lucy brushed aside some lint on her black skirt and sighed. The clock on the wall told her that three hours had come and gone. She had been hoping to see her father’s acquaintances, to learn about his whereabouts and doings for the past ten years, but most importantly how this tragedy had ensued. But she was the only one to enter this chapel since six of the evening.
The floor lamp in the corner flickered. The casket stared back at her. He suddenly seemed to be calling for her. Feeling like she was thirteen years old again, she impulsively stood up and glided quietly across the cheaply carpeted floor to her father’s coffin.
He had always been a calm, refined and intelligent man. In Lucy’s mind, her mother’s sharp tongue and irrational behaviors justified his wrath—Yuliya would beat Stanislav Novikov just as much as he beat her. But he never ever laid a hand on his offspring. Those yellow-green eyes were closed forever now, those eyes that Lucy adored to look into, to watch the flames of the lion within darting to and fro, studying, analyzing, dissecting. And when those eyes settled on Lucy, the lion disappeared and a gentle lamb appeared. Lucy was his favourite, and perhaps that were the reason why Yuliya Novikova hated her so. Stas’ rebelliousness was uncomely, Elizaveta was deadpan, and Timofey was too soft and worldly.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, gazing at his face, trying to find the answer to why he abandoned them. She didn’t know if she loved him anymore, and a grudging tear slipped down her face.
The chapel’s door let in a freezing draft and Lucy turned quickly. She wiped the salty liquid from her face and recognized Sergey’s lowered black cap, red locks and shifty eyes. He hurriedly approached her and absently glanced at the man in the coffin.
A thick envelope pushed into her hands.
“A final advance,” he said monotonously.
She took it hungrily and promptly opened her mouth. “How did he die?”
Sergey looked at her—a rare gesture. He blinked, then turned around and began for the exit.
“How?” She exclaimed, irate at his placidity.
“Bullet to the head. Ask Sasha.”
“Someone killed him?!” It felt like someone threw a rock at her chest. “And who—”
But Sergey was already out the door.
Her mouth hung agape.
The drunken attendant leaned in not a moment after Sergey left: “Time,” and he retracted quickly.
Lucy stared after him, then turned to her father.
Her dark eyes glittered with retribution. There were no visible marks, no evidence of such an atrocity.
Her throat clogged with shock, her eyes welled with angry tears. She ran from her father’s corpse, she thrust the door open and saw the attendant sitting on the benches.
“Are you Sasha?”
He looked at her as if she were mad. “No.”
“How did this man—” she pointed towards her father. “How did he die?”
The man frowned as if not wanting to be bothered. “He was shot in the back of the head,” he tapped his bald head. “It must have been something small, people shot in the head usually don’t have an open casket—or a memorial, for that matter.”
Lucy was stunned at the man’s blunt retort.
“You look sick,” he went on. “Here, have a cigarette.”
“N-no!” Appalled and feeling ill, she hastily exited the chapel.
Her heart raced, twisted images filled her imagination. She wanted to tell someone, wanted the world to know that someone killed her father, she wanted to run down 13th Avenue back down to her apartment, scream at her mother for driving him out, for letting him die.
She commenced a quick pace south, determined on releasing all her pent-up sentiments once and for all. The fact that Yuliya Novikov’s only concern was the money sickened her only more. Never mind the dreadful beating that would ensue; seeing her father’s forever closed eyes made her blood boil with rage, rage directed at her mothers contemptuous animosity, but also at the stinking mechanism of the clandestine and filthy culture of the mob.
At that moment, she wished that she had taken the offered cigarette. There were ten more blocks to march down and patience wasn’t on her side tonight.
A gloved hand suddenly wrapped around her face. Before she could react, her malefactor had pulled her into a dead-end alley. Lucy thrashed violently, desperately.
A thin metal cylinder thrust into her ribs as he backed her into the mesh fence.
Lucy instantly ceased movement. She couldn’t see the man’s face under his black hood. He lightened his grip and lowered his hand from her face, knowing that she understood her dire situation.
“Please don’t hurt me! I have no money!” Lucy gasped, shivering.
She could feel her overtaker’s eyes twinkle in mockery.
“Bobrovich gave you your due, did he not?” His thick Russian accent was tainted with the stench of vodka.
“Eh-n-no!” She stuttered back, second guessing her lie. The envelope in her sweater pocket felt like a hundred tons.
“You lie!”
A quick hand produced a biting clap on her ear and she winced bitterly.
“The money.”
Lucy retracted, ignoring the cold metal of the supposed pistol to her heart.
“No,” she said stubbornly.
Without a word, he struck her ear again, and this time a whining pitch deafened her hearing, but she only hugged herself the tighter. Suddenly he grappled her by the arms and she wrestled back in vain.
A quick blow to her temple stunned her for a moment, then it all went black as the butt of the Smith & Wesson smashed her from above.
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jeremycage reviewed Version 1 -
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I think you should keep writing. And keep on. You have a talent for setting up a story. I would like to know more about the story. I would definitely keep reading. This needs a lot of help, and multiple rewrites, but the core is strong. You have a lot of problems with word choice and punctuation, but your sentence structure and overall organization are quite good.
The most significant flaw you have is the classic novice writer’s telling me, rather than showing me, what happened. Think about how much more effective and natural it would be if there were, next to the casket, a big framed photo of the family long ago in happier days. Then, while Lucy is meditating on her father’s death, she can look at the photo and think about her siblings. You can give us a brief physical description of each of them, talk about what their body language shows about their character and how they react to their abusive mother, give us a real feel for them as people rather than just names.
But like I said, keep writing. A few specific observations:
1. I am a huge geek and love foreign languages and alphabets, but it totally throws the flow off to have the mother’s dialogue in the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s like… if it were in transliteration, I would feel like I was in on the secret, but in Cyrillic, I feel like I’m being shut out. I realize that that may be what you’re going for, to indicate the mother’s isolation, but I want to be able to pronounce what she says so I can get a sense for what she sounds like.
2. The first paragraph doesn’t work. Get rid of the pluperfect. Work out the comma usage. “Elicit” is completely the wrong word. Either give just the bare facts and then shift to the conversation so I know that the conversation is more important, or give me some detail about the chapel and its decor or lighting or odor so that I get a feel for the circumstances in which Papa might have lived. But whatever the case, give me a clear transition so that I know when the dialogue starts up that I’ve shifted backward in time. It’s unclear the way you’ve written it and I had to puzzle it out. A first paragraph should draw me right in.
3. Is English your native language? You use a lot of 50-cent words in not quite the right way. This piece would be much better if you got rid of words like “disconsolation.” Please note that wondering whether English isn’t your native language isn’t meant to say that you’re a bad writer: I’m really just curious.
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00_Curious reviewed Version 1 -
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I very much liked the opening line of this. The contrast between the napping attendant and the ‘stoic’ lady is good. The entire opening is, in fact, done very well. The tension between Lucy and her mother is brought out well and explained in an effective manner. In only a short space of time I feel that i am beginning to learn about the family, and want to know even more.
It then takes a bit of a turn into the thriller/crime world as the death is discovered not to be an accident, but a murder (we assume). This is fine for pushing along the plot and getting us somewhere, but I think the change of pace from an introduction to the family to sudden knowledge and abrupt violence is just too much of a quick transition for me.
That is really the only gripe I have with the piece at all. I think you’ve got a lot of talent as a writer, and this is publishable work in my opinion, but I might work a little on the movement from the family vignette to the ‘mob’ attack.
Keep up the good work!
ckbailey reviewed Version 1 -
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i have a problem with the very beginning, where you switch abruptly from a funeral in a chapel to what i gather is an earlier scene in a kitchen. there needs to be a sentence or two to demarcate the transition; as a flashback in her head it runs on too long.
on pg. 2: ”...watching their silhouettes shift heatedly…” i understand what you’re trying to convey, but this in’t the best way to put it. somehow silhouettes and heat just don’t go together.
”...Yuliya…made sure Lucy paid the price for her daughter’s disconsolation.” this doesn’t make sense to me, plus i don’t think “disconsolation” is an actual word.
pg. 3: ”...as her skin became more & more indurate to Yulia’s thrashing temper.” why her skin? seems like it should be her psyche becoming inurred to the attacks. also, the next two sentences begin with “and”; you should probably eliminate one of those. then there is another abrupt switch back to the chapel.
Lucy’s reminiscing about her father as she looks at his corpse is the first time the writing really hits its stride. the writing up to that point seems disjointed and awkward, but the last part works pretty well. by the end of the piece i was curious to read more.
i would suggest you go over the first part to edit & tighten it up.
metaphoricalsimile reviewed Version 1 -
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I found it to be an interesting idea that you used a different alphabet for a different language (cyrillic maybe) but it made it harder for me to imagine the scene, since I couldn’t “hear” what the woman was saying.
Rather than saying her condition “debilitated” her to the chair, say that it “confined” her, it’s a better word for the concept you’re communicating.
axelk reviewed Version 1 -
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I definitely would see this published. I think you have great talent. The dialogs are very well constructed and I enjoyed reading it. You should develop it more and I look forward to reading the next chapters. The only thing that might need some work is the beginning because I think it starts a bit sudden. You should have an introduction, a descriptive passage regarding the setting.
clele75 reviewed Version 1 -
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I think you have an interesting piece here. You set the stage with the family members pretty well. What I find distracting though is you often use too many words to express an idea that could be expressed in a far more straightforward manner. As a result, I find myself having to go back and try to reconnect the relevant parts.
Another distraction pertaining to grammar (esp. at the beginning) his your use of ambiguous pronouns. You will be talking about two females and then have the following sentence simply say “her.” Though the reader can sometimes pick this up from context, it is a little confusing and interrupts the flow of the read.
Lastly, and this is similar to the cumbersome expressions I mentioned earlier, you choose archaic, multisyllabic words. The instance of ‘malefactor’ sticks out in my mind. I’m liking the flow of the sentences that build up the suspense and then all of sudden a malefactor grabs (see specific notes below.)
Definitely try and say things in a more succinct fashion; it will really free up the flow of your story and allow the plot to come alive.
Here are some specific notes:
Page 1- “elicit her emotions…” Elicit mean to draw forth from someone else. In this case it should be “express her emotions… quickly righted herself.”
“Lucy turned quickly before it began, but it was too late.” Here the “it” is ambiguous in that it refers to two separate things.
Page 2
“The welfare of her father” -“Her father’s welfare” (much more succinct.)
Page 3
“daughter’s disconsolation.” Here is an example where you want to avoid a long word like disconsolation and choose a more common one (that is, less rooted in Latin.)
Page 4- “That were” – “that was”
Word-choice “uncomely”. I’m not sure if this is a word. But try to avoid expression such as “rebelliousness was [another multi-syllable word] Sounds a little like 19th century style. On the same page, “irate at his placidity” also has the same problem.
Page 5
“commenced a quick pace south” another example where a phrase uses too many words to say something simple- “she quickly walked south.”
“contemptuous animosity”- is a redundancy. It’s like saying “hateful hate.”
Page 6
The use of ‘malefactor” is also a bit distracting. “Someone grabbed her by the neck and pulled her into an alley.” That is enough. The reader obviously tell that this person has sinister intent. (though depending on the plot they could actually be someone trying to help her.)
“deafened her hearing”- another redundancy: if a sound is defeaning it is to the hearing.
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