How?
Easy! Read the excerpt at the bottom (speculative fiction) and write 500-700 word constructive criticism. Stick to the rules.
Prizes
1st Prize: 5SP + upvote + resteem + opportunity to have your own fiction savaged for the next contest :D
Runners up: 100% upvotes + honourable shoutouts in the next contest
The Rules
- Critique must be 500-700 words and written in English.
- Post your critique as a separate blog, linking this post.
- Use the title 'Critique-writing contest'.
- Use the tags #writing, #critique and #contest in your post.
- Paste the link to your critique in the comments section below.
- Upvote and resteem this post.
The contest closes 7 days after posting.
If you don't read/critique fiction but think this contest could benefit the Steemit community, please consider upvoting and resteeming to help it reach a wider audience.
For this contest, I'm offering up a sacrificial piece of fiction.
If you want to learn how to critique, take a look at this: How to write a critique.
Are you ready to get savaging? Let's begin...
Excerpt from Kill the Cow by Anj Kara
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire
Luxury en-suite bathroom
Libertine Commune, Badlands
Spring: END TIMES
‘Wa-oh-aah-ooww,’ said Maddock through gritted teeth, turning on the tap. His leather eyepatch was digging into the side of his nose but he felt momentarily relieved to see his reflection. He was in pain, but glowing with The Spirit.
He peeled off his oversized cheesecloth shirt, careful to avoid the fresh cuts on his knuckles. His body had seen better days. His once muscular body was softer now and his sagging skin held together by snaking scars. He looked like a melted church candle.
‘Are you okay, Father Maddock?’ said a trembling voice through the bathroom door. The door handle jiggled.
Maddock stretched, blocking the door with his sandalled foot. ‘Fine,’ he said. He cradled his injured hand, like a baby bird, turning it ever so slowly, wincing each time he discovered a new cut.
‘Well if you need anything, Father, I’m right here.’
‘You can wait somewhere else, Conley,’ he said. ‘I am.’ He took a deep breath. ‘In need of seclusion.’
‘Oh, I…,’ said Conley. ‘Sorry. I’ll... Sorry.’
Maddock listened to Conley’s retreating footsteps, but turned the lock to ensure his privacy.
He mustered courage then thrust his hand into the freezing water. Blood swirled red and then pink in the basin. Then there was numbness. Amen.
When it looked more or less clean, he dabbed his fist into a bunched-up flannel, turning it this way and that, as he usually did in these circumstances. Satisfied, he spread out the flannel to examine the red Rorschach blotch.
‘And Moses shall... Mary shalt smile in thine… no... on thine.’ He tilted his head, squinted a bit then dabbed a little more blood on the flannel. He stared at it, willing some sort of resolution. There, before his very eyes was a divine image similar to the shroud of Turin: a disembodied beard with a halo.
‘That'll do,’ he said, ignoring the rabbit shape which was clearly an artefact on an otherwise blemish-free sign from God.
On top of his bed, splayed wide, was his first-aid kit. Maddock plucked out a bandage and began twining it between his fingers like a boxer taping up before a fight. He soon reached the end which he tore down lengthways, holding one edge between his teeth and pulling hard with his other hand. This, he wound around his wrist a few times, made a couple of knots, then tucked the edges underneath for a neat finish. Perfect. He resolved to never ever punch anyone in the mouth again, especially if they had teeth.
Chapel
Libertine Commune, Badlands
Spring: END TIMES
45 minutes earlier
It was the same sermon, the one he gave the week before, and many of the weeks before that. Left-overs. Maddock stood at the lectern on the oak-panelled almemar wearing his long cheesecloth preaching shirt and matching elasticated trousers. Behind, on the altar wall was his magnificent, oversized portrait in a gilt frame. In it, he wore the same cheesecloth suit with a black leather eye patch. His white hair was swooped into a high ponytail and his beard trimmed to a perfect white goatee. His pictorial self radiated love and acceptance, arms outstretched as though inviting a warm hug into his medallioned chest. His actual self had not benefited from the same airbrushing.
The church was an old barn converted to look like a church. It had rustic beams decorated with Sunday School projects, horseshoe rows of mostly-matching chairs and a plush red carpet, held fast by brass edgings, which ran down the centre aisle.
His inner circle, the lieutenants, sat near the front. The rest of the congregation took what was left or stood at the back. Children ran around, occasionally trapped and held still by an embarrassed parent.
Maddock cleared his throat. The congregation stopped their fidgeting and inconsequential conversations and they waited.
‘They reap harvests where they have planted nothing!’ Maddock gave the congregation a dramatic nod. They mumbled their agreement. ‘And they gather crops where they have … NOT … sown … seed!’ His voice reverberated around the echoey chapel. It was affected, a mash-up of all the soap-boxing preachers he’d ever heard, loud and musical with a slight American twang. Anybody hearing him for the first time would never guess he hailed from the Welsh seaside resort of Talacre.
His congregation was the usual mix of commune members ranging from evangelical weirdos hanging off the front of their seats to bored apathetics lolling at the back, picking scum from under a fingernail with the edge of a hymn pamphlet.
‘Behold!’ Maddock spread open his cheesecloth shirt and held the sides like a pair of wings. His stomach apron escaped from the top of his elasticated trousers and dangled like a raw pizza-base sporran. His patchy skin was fused with tracks of lumpy scars across inflamed, putrid sections that hadn't healed.
‘Amen,’ said a few.
‘Ew,’ squealed a small boy. He was quickly muffled.
Maddock stood a-la Christ, arms held out on his imaginary cross, turning slowly this way and that, as though on a mechanic turntable for display purposes. He made sure everyone could see, could appreciate, the extent of his suffering. He was like a patchwork messiah that had been through many incarnations and amateur assassination attempts.
‘Yes,’ he thundered. ‘Yes, brothers, sisters, siblings. Behold.’ He again flashed his horrible flesh. ‘They harvest where they DO NOT plant.’ He pointed to a sickle-shaped scar beneath his ribs. ‘A lung.’
‘Amen,’ said the guys at the front, giving each other sad looks.
‘And here,’ he pointed to the other flank, ‘is where most of my liver used to be.’ Maddock toed the edge of the platform. ‘You remember, friends, how the devils turned me orange?’
The congregation nodded. They had witnessed his near-fatal brush with jaundice.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You remember. But, thanks be to God, and my special relationship with Him, and with the good love of you, my friends, I fought those devils and have earned back my normal hue.’ He continued exposing himself.
‘Praise be,’ they said.
The pianist improvised a little riff, a joyful arpeggio.
Maddock ignored the distracting noise and turned to show his lower back, also a patchwork of skin and scarring. ‘My kidney.’ He fell silent and let down his arms, which slapped against his sides.
He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. ‘Be warned, friends. They gather crops where they do not sow.’ A tear formed in the corner of his working eye. The eye beneath the patch was like that of a dead fish, a damp greyish blue, infected after they’d removed his cornea.
‘I tell you, I beseech you, pray…’ His voice built to a giant crescendo. ‘Let them rue the day they harvested here!’ He banged his foot on the floor, slowly, repeatedly, growing louder with each blow until the pain caused him to stop.
‘Amen,’ shouted the flock, standing, clapping.
‘We will take back what is ours, we will—’
‘How?’ asked a gangly-looking youth whose facial hair suggested someone only recently finished with puberty. The hall fell silent.
Maddock held open his mouth but could not find a word to fill the void.
‘It’s just, well,’ continued the gangly fellow. ‘Omniscia was – nay, is – behind the whole organ-stealing shenanigans, so how are we going to take back any organs? Omniscia doesn’t have any.’ He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and looked around the congregation. ‘It’s a machine – nay, a ghost in a machine.’ Maybe he was expecting a nod or a murmur of agreement, but what he got was silence as the congregation turned to Maddock and then nervously back to each other.
‘Metaphor, boyo, metaphor,’ boomed Maddock, resuming his Welsh accent. He readied himself to continue with his sermon.
‘Sorry, Father Maddock,’ said Boyo, both his palms splayed, his fingers stretching. ‘It's just, you said we need to take back what's ours. What exactly will we be taking back then? Just to clarify, please.’
Maddock flung back his head and let out a mighty groan. He was not a patient man. ‘It’s about taking back our dignity, our honour—’
‘I see. So we’re not going to take anyone’s organs. Yes, I see because…’
Maddock reached deep inside himself and mentally unplugged Boyo. Bye. But the noise from Boyo’s face was still happening and he could not find, within, a means of making it stop. This is when he leapt from the stage – the way rock stars of old would – and landed on top of Boyo, punching him repeatedly in the mouth.
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