8 Comments

This was such a fraught and horrifying chapter, but I'm so impressed by your restraint in depicting the events and emotions in these scenes. For me, it lends them even more gravity.

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Wow, thank you so much for this comment, Jacquie!

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Oct 22, 2023Liked by Daniel W. Davison

Hard to carry such prose, Daniel, but expressed with great skill.

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Thank you so much, Adrian.

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The problem with a lot of modern horror is that it relies on jump scares and ghostly apparitions that don’t really seem to do much of anything. This story is much different, much more terrifying. Bravo 👏

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Oct 20, 2023Liked by Daniel W. Davison

Daniel I really liked the way this chapter developed. The family enjoying the celebration, completely happy. I didn't see the tragedy coming until his son was sent into the alley, and then still didn't anticipate the extent of the impact. It's a powerful but horrific scene, juxtaposed against the peace of Easter!

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Thank you so much, Frank. I’m really happy that you commented on how the chapter developed, because this was a hard one to write because I was trying to decide how to end it. I didn’t want it end on the horror, but on something more on the human level.

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Oct 22, 2023Liked by Daniel W. Davison

Well Daniel, you certainly did end on the overwhelming human loss that was laid out for Hermann when he awoke. All of his children gone along with his in-laws, not even to be able to grieve, and only the impossible task remaining to console Henrietta on the loss of their entire extended family and Henrietta butchered so as to not conceive ever again. More than most human beings could bear and live! But the intensity of the horror tends to put it in the forefront as it did for me obviously. Nothing hopeful remains, it seems.

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