Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 55

"Light was bright all throughout the kitchen" Then "He stood in the arch of the kitchen doorway" So why is "His face, though, was hidden in shadow"? This is more confusing when the bright light from the kitchen doesn't out-shine the light from the television that was not even bright enough to brighten "the darkened living room" behind him when it "lit his salt-colored hair so that it shone like a halo of white gold."

Victor must have swung the axe at Elise from across the table. He would have been right up against the table, so who saw the bunny slipper wearing feet leave the floor? Then why did she slump forward instead of sideways with the blow?

"straight to the bone" The rest of the descriptions make me feel like you meant "straight through the bone".

"sheared messily through his throat." Cutting a throat does not severe a head. Maybe you meant 'neck'?

Grammar:

kitchen *were* cacophonous

"on the opposite side that his parents sat on," 'Opposite from his parents' would suffice.

"illustrious" is an adjective normally applied to people, not cutlery.

"applied" Didn't work for me when describing someone sitting in a chair.

Your use of Perfect Past tense to convey that the scene of backstory abuse had happened previously was great. Even so, I was thrown with the beginning sentence using 'would say' making it seem like a collection of events, not a specific event. Then to start the following paragraph that is now in Simple Past tense, you use the word 'had' which is the indicator for the recently escaped Perfect Past. This also caused me a little confusion.

"scary calm." I would have preferred no inverted commas. Maybe scary-calm. To follow it with "a bit frightening" was redundant and diminished the effect. In fact, the following sentence feels like a let down. Just because a facial expression is not typical of someone who feels good-intended emotions, does not make it scary.

"like *spilt* tea" Maybe choose a red liquid?

Comments:

It was a brave and curious thing to start off your story by introducing the narrator first. Not sure if it worked for me or not. But it was interesting.

I don't feel that referring to his parents by their full names works for me, even if he is remote and detached. Then "wedded Bennett's" really threw me and took a moment to accept that you meant his parents again.

Was I meant to not believe the abuse as claimed by the narrator? If it is a ploy to make us feel like Victor was making up the situation for justification, it works. But if it really happened, I'd much prefer to just see the action take place then jump forward to Wednesday. When you then go on to drop us into the backstory, I wondered why you had told us about it earlier instead of leaving it until your excellent reveal.

When I'm told about a 'mute' character after I've already heard them speak, I know it is being used as a simily, Abut when I'm still being introduced to the character, I thought he was genuinely mute. Especially because that might explain his abuse.

"propping up a wall by lazily leaning against it." There are a lot of unusual terms and phrases used in this piece. When they don't evoke a clear picture for me, they don't work. Often I feel thrown out of the story instead, while I spend time figuring out why that form of description was used. I know hard-boiled crime fiction extracts humour by propping walls up with people, but I didn't think that was the tone you were going for.

"clutched almost possessively" You can increase the effect by removing 'almost' if you like.

"stumbled *backwards* toward the door at the back of the kitchen." By adding backwards, the following scene would make more sense. I'd initially pictured him heading forwards towards the door with a good chance of escaping.