An Eye on Every Street Corner

[OP No.1491229]

Going to post something I wrote a while back - around 15 pages, single spaced. I'm thinking about cleaning it up and sending it in. This may not be the best place, but I can't think of any other that is as convenient and open.

[OP No.1491233]

The Program. Since time immemorial it had existed. Not as one continuous succession, an unbroken entity, but as an idea- a reaction- as long as the human instinct towards the supernatural remained the same, it would continue on, in some shape or form. It and its many counterpoints, it competitors, it's adversaries, with varied opinions and differing interests, would never disappear, as they could never be fully defeated, being archetypes, born from the subconscious at the first contact with something beyond the normal. What it embodied was not the reaction of fear and awe-Neanderthals huddled around fires whimpering, eyes squeezed shut as things prowled just beyond the light, or refusing to go into certain caves, where the shadows were deeper, and things squeezed through holes and passages or the current day cults, compounds in the middle of the dessert, near gigantic holes in the earth, that allowed the echoes into their mind, strange foggy towns on seacoasts that still worshipped fish headed idols- or pure greed and manipulation for only an individual's benefit: deals of power under moonlit skies for growing muscles and sharpening teeth, sacrifices of firstborn so the paths in the mountains would open, tight cracks appearing, and tittering voices and rough hands would lead one to mounds of treasure, collections of business men in towers built just right surveying their land around them with a faint smile as the last structure across the block were completed and the design finished- but the reaction of logical investigation and curiosity.

[OP No.1491236]

Some say this specific iteration was born after the horrors of the second World War, a strictly government organization, founded to send man and equipment into Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first haunting on a city scale, where the flash burn shadows of people on the walls moved and twitched and traveled along paths of brick, and walking skeletons glowed green- or when Europe went dark, momentarily, as the secret experiments of the Nazis finally left the tunnels underneath the earth, connecting the concentration camps together, hungry, desperately hungry for anything to eat. Some say it was as old as the Templers, guardians of a shattered god, once divided into three parts, now splitting more and more every day into multiple insane comportments, uncontrollably breaking, each one hidden in some holy temple, terrible and wrathful, glowing eyes on top blocks of lighting. Others, citing the programs decidedly rationalist bent, spoke of Galileo or one of the other countless scientists persecuted by the Church, creating something they believed to be its direct precursor, The Collegiate of Light and Reason, an organization designed to fight against a mad world, filled with priests receiving visions of bleeding saints and glowing wheels of fire imploring purification, and maidens allowing winged visitors to enter in the night, imparting them with with a zeal that could destroy entire towns- an organization whose first course of action was to learn how to contain dreams, to steal them and box them, frothing and glowing into massive glass vials, as round bubble-like faces, a sickly floating green, stretching against the glass, demanding judgment and retribution, and if one got to close, wounds appeared on hands and feet.

[OP No.1491241]

feet.
Whatever its origin, whatever its true purpose, even, it was powerful and practically omniscient. The Program had influence everywhere and it was after the things that went bump into the night...
*
Its bases were hallways, thousands and thousands of hallways connected together, in a square maze, clean and anti-septic, well lit, doors with keypads or hand locks entering into row upon row of rooms, small, perfectly square, white, each the same regulation size. Inside them were the boogiemen. The monsters. The personal nightmares. Some cells contained blocks or overhangs, or one of the massive overhead lights were turned off to create the minimal amount needed for a hiding place, obscured corners so the pile of coats on a chair could become what it truly wished. Some cells held beds. Some of these beds had people, mostly children, in them, hocked up to monitors and electrodes, as the room slowly darkened, completely, and doctors behind plane glass observed. Some held murky pools, where things swam at the depths, transplanted closets, whispers, sinks and drains, and pictures with sly winks. But none were empty, even though some appeared deceptively so, as a trap or a disguise.

[OP No.1491248]

The Program, following legends and rumors, reports of sudden infant death syndrome, and the screams of children, listened for television shows after hours of static on dead channels where once friendly characters shoved the stuffing in their costumes down their throats and terrified their playmates with empty eye sockets and mad giggles, searched for drawings, dark scribbles of madness collected by worried teachers, and especially paid attention to the stories of frenzied, half insane parents who spoke of trying to fight of the things that pulled their children away, that gradually, through the weeks, had crept up the side of the bed with long lizard fingers. They followed these things to the sources, and captured them, going to the swamps, the haunted houses, the dark forests, the long stretches of roads, to the bottom of lakes were the mud grabbed and would not let go- most of the time, these things, the inhabitants of the obscure, lonely sites(demons with lion faces on mountain tops in Japanese shrines, hitchhikers with baseball caps hiding bullet wounds) could not survive the light of day, The Program's fearless gaze, the numbers of men in HAZ-MAT suits, and dissipated, never appearing again except in imagination and sleep, but rarely, they were strong, and they resisted, roaring and screaming as they were carried away.

[OP No.1491249]

So, then, The Program found itself warden, captor, property owner and curator of many things that should not be. And so they watched, through hidden portholes, cameras, and sensory machines, as clowns paced the confines of their cages, hissing softly, clowns from deranged circuses that as they left town let them stay to capture small boys and girls and force white paint of their scared tear slicked faces- watched liquid shadows undulate across the floor, once gigantic and massive, like a shroud, in the tombs of Venice, and other places, the bone cathedrals, filling the empty skulls and mouths of the catacomb copses- watched mansions with walls and a roof over them, an artificial environment of fake grass, moan as if wind was blowing- watched, and observed continuously.

[OP No.1491254]

And so this lead to the belief that they were invincible- there were no escapes and no unsanctioned deaths- and the monsters had lost their power, their glamour's, were pinned down and controlled- (the mirrors no longer showed grotesque reflections, how could they when the trembling midnight visitor had a camera beyond them and a team of scientists, the goats no longer sat upright, with folded legs, in the middle of pentagrams, and bleated for blood, and the statues no longer moved) that there was a final solution, that this threat to humanity, whether it be the last manifestation of the predators of men, evolved to their final perfect form, no longer tigers or bears or even slobbering beasts, but an intangible non physical force of hunger, or some kind of evil created by the mind itself, it's dark places, that needed myths, could be defeated, once and for all. That a golden age could be achieved. It was a relatively new thing, this arrogance.

[Anonymous No.1491255]

it's = it is
its = that which belongs to it.

Also you write like a dick.

[OP No.1491256]

*
They had their theories, their movements, their factions with pet beliefs- it was a scientific organization after all. There were the popular ideas of the week. Powerful paradigms and ways of looking at things came and went, sweeping over them- their long held beliefs and supposedly unquestionable facts, clichés, and "perfect" explanations, changing like fads. Some thought the monsters were powered by the collective unconscious; others saw them as invaders from alternate dimensions, or glitches fueled by incomprehensible beings. Many put them down to a mass hysteria happening in a pliant, moldable universe. Some thought they could be banished forever by wishing them away, others suggesting neutralizing certain parts of the brain, while many pondered the answer was in the laws of physics, a set of numbers, an accident, a error the allowed things in that weren't suppose to to exist seep in. There were plenty of ideas, and none taken seriously, as none were truly needed before- it was not their true purpose to create one unified theory, but a groundswell was developing spontaneously, across the board, with no interaction, as scientific ideas often do, and one man put the whole thing into focus, becoming its leader.
*

[Anonymous No.1491271]

Stop writing everything in multiple different ways:

>Not as one continuous succession, an unbroken entity
>it would continue on, in some shape or form
>It and its many counterpoints, it competitors, it's adversaries
>etc.

[Kimmo Alm !!TAPh5M5QXV0 No.1491272]

>>1491255
so much jelly and autism in one post

damn

[Anonymous No.1491282]

>>1491272
>Implying I want to write like a dick and be ignorant of grammatical rules.

[Anonymous No.1491297]

>>1491255
nice dubs /lit/tle /b/ro

[Anonymous No.1491298]

I'm always a fan of less is more, but that's just me.

[Anonymous No.1491410]

I generally hate really reductive advice like "show, don't tell" but it does seem to apply here. Instead of walls of text explaining exactly what The Program is, tell an actual story about it and let a general picture of its history, reach, and etc. become apparent (or at least suggested).

With the same amount of words, you could introduce The Program by presenting a character within it, or opposed to it, or witnessing it going about its work, whatever. I don't need the backstory before I get the story itself.

To take an example from the same field (sorta), imagine if the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had started with a twenty-minute monologue about the history of Slayers and the Watcher's Council before introducing Buffy and her friends.

In retrospect, that might be interesting to a *fan* - backstory is awesome, but until you're already invested in the mythology, an info-dump like this is about as engaging as your average Wikipedia article.

[Anonymous No.1491769]

>>1491410

This. You shouldnt start with the backstory. Start within the story. Thats what I do. One of my subplots starts in the middle of a battle. All the background stuff is put in later and only a few pieces at a time.
A nice way to introduce some backstory is for example a dialogue. Instead of just writing what was going on, you have two characters talking about it. Maybe one is scholar who is telling the other guy some backstory. The other guy can be a total dick, saying it is bullshit, telling him that this cant be possible and stuff like that. And later on you reveal to that same guy that the other one was telling the truth.
If you take a dialogue you can also show some traits of you charakters. The ignorant little prick who doesnt believe it, the emotional unstable girl who starts to cry in the middle of it or the fanatic guy who is sitting there whis glowing eyes and wants to know more!

Huge walls of text, describing background isnt really good, because most people tend to get bored and want to get into the story, they want to know about the characters and not read a long introduction.

Hope that helps a little