I keep meaning to come back and comment when I feel more articulate and less kind of mad flailing, but I don't think I'm actually going to reach that point. So. This is rambling, but well meant rambling.
The suspense is amazing. First the progression from "monster" to "thing with Eames's body" then finally "Eames" - I certainly didn't imagine it was anything other than a monster for the first few mentions - and all of that spliced in with Arthur's bleak journey across the desolated country.
The idea of "the world ended and I found I only wanted you" is ridiculously romantic but my god you completely sold it. I guess because everything else about the story is so bleak, and it's a slow and devastating revelation for Arthur mixed up with the horror of his journey, the love story is kind of stealthy, but everywhere.
That last scene is also profoundly romantic, and so sparely written. It reads like happily ever after, even though their future realistically consists of slow death by starvation and strictly no fellatio :)
Without shying away from the most horrific aspects - Ariadne's demise, or Arthur sending Eames a live victim - you described all these moments vividly without ever seeming to over-indulge in the horror. Even the table saw reads like a matter-of-fact description of what a man has to do when threatened by an undead former colleague.
Also fascinating how you really didn't need to do more than sketch out that absolutely pivotal moment of Eames knocking on Arthur's door. Even seen through Arthur's retrospective dismissal and shame at having been conned, the enormity of the moment still comes through.
Thanks for a story that satisfied my love of romance, and my love of horror, and kept shifting in my mind after I'd finished. It was only much later that I thought - hey, Eames can't have been fighting that hard if Arthur managed to get him in the basement, where he was going to starve to death if he'd overestimated Arthur's compassion or his own powers of persuasion.
no subject
The suspense is amazing. First the progression from "monster" to "thing with Eames's body" then finally "Eames" - I certainly didn't imagine it was anything other than a monster for the first few mentions - and all of that spliced in with Arthur's bleak journey across the desolated country.
The idea of "the world ended and I found I only wanted you" is ridiculously romantic but my god you completely sold it. I guess because everything else about the story is so bleak, and it's a slow and devastating revelation for Arthur mixed up with the horror of his journey, the love story is kind of stealthy, but everywhere.
That last scene is also profoundly romantic, and so sparely written. It reads like happily ever after, even though their future realistically consists of slow death by starvation and strictly no fellatio :)
Without shying away from the most horrific aspects - Ariadne's demise, or Arthur sending Eames a live victim - you described all these moments vividly without ever seeming to over-indulge in the horror. Even the table saw reads like a matter-of-fact description of what a man has to do when threatened by an undead former colleague.
Also fascinating how you really didn't need to do more than sketch out that absolutely pivotal moment of Eames knocking on Arthur's door. Even seen through Arthur's retrospective dismissal and shame at having been conned, the enormity of the moment still comes through.
Thanks for a story that satisfied my love of romance, and my love of horror, and kept shifting in my mind after I'd finished. It was only much later that I thought - hey, Eames can't have been fighting that hard if Arthur managed to get him in the basement, where he was going to starve to death if he'd overestimated Arthur's compassion or his own powers of persuasion.