Blinded by Haze

[Sahaqiel 1232]

This is for Page One, a literary magazine at our school. It's apparently been praised as the best writer site 2001 and 2009, and I dunno, I haven't researched it that much.

Anyways, this is my rough draft for my submission for it. It's kinda' long as a short story for a literary magazine, but it's actually a pretty big magazine. Criticize it any (constructive) way you want.

It's attached.

Hope you don't mind, I'm pressed for time.

As an added note, I recently changed a bunch of stuff and corrected a bunch of random inconsistencies and errors.

Sahaqiel

[pheonix561 2080]

DRAMATIC FINISH.

I read it and decided it was good before all of you. That makes me great.

[Max 10]

But I read it second and decided that it was better. What does that make me?

[Hiro Protagonist 0]

A mite confusing at first, but when everything is revealed, it is a good story. So why was she beating people up with a half-shredded baseball bat?

[Sahaqiel 1232]

She's hallucinating from emotional damage, lack of sleep, and hunger. I thought of ways to foreshadow this more, but they don't work too well. So I just stated it plainly at the end.

One of the symptoms of prolonged sleep deprivation is hallucinations. This could also be related to the I-function since it is the system that integrates the input from all other areas of the brain. If the neurons composing the I-function become too taxed then the picture in the head that the I-function produces may be more dissimilar from reality than usual. The neurons, under pressure to continue functioning but unable to perform optimally, create an image useful enough for a person to see most of his or her surroundings. Metabolic activity in the prefrontal cortex can drop as much as eleven percent after a person has missed sleep for only twenty four hours (8). As a person loses more sleep or continues to receive less-than-adequate amounts of sleep the neurons become even more taxed and the I-function may begin to generate even less coherent images possibly resulting in temporary insanity.

Her logic isn't working too well because of this stuff, so when her plan of dying was threatened, she snapped and went after the silhouettes of mailboxes outside because they were Smoke's 'friends', who were throwing a wrench in her plan by existing, and therefore, worrying about her so she can't die. Due to her insanity and emotional damage, they appeared like the actual people she hadn't noticed who cared in the first place, like the civil servants that attended James' funeral (mailman, policeman) who tried to console her, and literally cried with her, respectively.

I'm going to be changing stuff around so it's more clear, but I thought I'd lay a foundation first and stuff. ):

Unrelated sort of, people are known to hallucinate before they sleep, and this one time, right, I was getting to sleep and I started hallucinating, kinda' and I saw some crazy stuff. It pulled up a bunch of memories from when I was like five-seven or so, which included memories of Disney movies, which my hallucinations were in the style of. And I was like wtf. I mistook the images for dreams so when I thought with my own conscience, "OK, I'll go back to sleep. Why am I dreaming these freaky images?" and they started back up again shortly afterwards. Then I went through sleep paralysis for the first time, which was actually pretty cool, though I panicked since I couldn't move and figured I should just stop trying to move and I'll wake up eventually, which I did. The hallucination was replaced with a third person view of me in my room, which was actually pretty accurate so I was kinda' freaked out when I woke up and saw everything in my room just like it had been in my head. The door was even open at the right angle.

Sahaqiel

[DocHobo 0]

The plot reminded me a lot about Tales of the Black Freighter, but it's pretty good and different in it's own right. Elaborate on what is causing her hallucinations and... well I have no other complaints about it. It's very well done, enjoyed it much

[pheonix561 2080]

I understood it perfectly the first read through. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing.

so, how long were you awake until you started to hallucinate?

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Went to bed like regular.

Claire was awake for a week, and the record for staying awake before dying is eleven days.

Which is what she was going for, probably.

Sahaqiel

[pheonix561 2080]

I think I've had sleep paralysis before, when I was young. Hearing the description is bringing back weird memories from my subconscious that I can't explain.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

Updated.

Check first post.

Sahaqiel

[Ops 2]

Hope this makes it into the magazine, it's very well written.

[Sahaqiel 1232]

98% satisfied with this story.

I've updated the first post.