Vampire Bats
Little Donnie got his first pair of glasses at age four. It changed his whole outlook on the world. Now he saw that he had only one right hand instead of three or four. His whole world became smaller and less blurry but not a lot smaller and not a lot less blurry. It was to be a mixed blessing.
The other kids loved play tag in those “this is fun despite being aggressive and destructive to the ego” days. The kids loved to tag Donnie and watch him being “it”.He’d go to tag someone and tag air. The other kids wouldn’t even run. They knew, even at that age, the odds were four or five to one in their favor. It was a sucker bet.
None of this has much to do with this story except the vision part. Little Donnie also saw thirty bats swooping down from the ridge when it was just a couple. He’d run screaming into the house. His siblings would make fun of him.
As he grew older his vision corrected itself fairly well. He hated wearing glasses and the “old eye patch over his one decent eye to help strengthen his weaker eye.” He felt blinded so he'd take it off as soon as he was out of sight. One day, his friend, Pukie, reminded him that he was afraid of bats.
“No, Pukie, I used to be. I’m not anymore, except for the vampire bats. They worry me. They can suck you dry in a flash.”
“There’s no such thing as vampire bats, you twit.”
“Now, Pukie, that’s not true. You’ve seen all the Bela Legosi movies. There he stands in the dark, foggy courtyard staring up at the second story bedroom window. He’s a vampire; they like dark, foggy nights. There’s a beautiful virgin up there wearing a sheer nightie. He’s looking up and then starts looking around for a ladder. Then he smacks himself in the head. He can turn into a bat and fly up there. So, he does. Then he turns back into Bela. He’s a vampire. You trying to tell me that he’s not a vampire when he turns into a bat?”
“I’m not telling you anything except you’re a senseless twit.”
Comments
AlexScribe
This site has a peculiarity in that tabs and initial spaces in the original are sometimes omitted from the posted version others see. Check the difference between 'edit' and 'read' versions of your story on your 'manage writings' list. The result is that paragraphs run together which makes reading tedious at times and can often cause confusion as to the speaker of an unattributed quote. We usually handle this by leaving a blank line between paragraphs. Crude but it works.
Dialog from separate speakers should almost always be in separate paragraphs.
In S.E. the punctuation at closing " should be before the " and there shouldn't be one before and one after. In P.E. the rules are different and also seem to vary with which flavor of P.E. you write for. In S.E. the 'bible' of syntax for many is the Chicago Manual of Style -- there is probably an authoritative source for whatever dialect you use (maybe the Oxford Manual of Style or something similar): you should study the rules there for punctuating dialog.
My phone is out of reach here. {We'd say "My phone has no service here" or "I've got no phone service here" or the like.}
It started to drip lightly. {"drip" could be light rain or tree sap; "sprinkle" or "drizzle" would more likely be used for light rain.}
He didnt't know, he was still too young and too stupid he thought by himself. {only one "t" in "didn't" and this is a comma splice: a comma should almost never join two complete sentences -- use ; instead & should be , after stupid & "thought to himself" & generally thoughts indicated by '...' or italics}
They didn't look at each other, it wasn't necessary. {comma splice}
They didn't had to. {"have to" }
and for a moment it was... moments of their lives. {change one "moment" to another word (style) }
Branx
kt6550
Branx
Thank you!