****

After a long pause Sam spoke again, "Tonight is your last night." Jakob looked at Sam in confusion. "You have just retired." Sam rose the JD bottle and struck Jakob's gray brow with a thundering force. He fell to his knees. Blood trickled down his cheek onto the ground only to be washed away by the dark rain descending from the sky.

Sam kicked Jakob in the square of his back. He fell with his belly to the ground hoping the kicks would cease so he could sleep. Death wouldn't be hard to except.

****

"Sam rose the JD bottle..." Incorrect. Maybe he grabbed the bottle - or simplify it - "Sam grabbed a bottle and slammed it into..." also, "thundering force" here could be deleted, this description just does not "feel" right.

I can understand the sky being dark, by why is the rain dark?

"He fell with his belly to the ground..." This is confusing as it seems to say that (while in the act of falling) his belly was to the ground.

"Death wouln't be hard to except." (accept)

There is some contradictions in the last few lines. If he can accept death, why is he hoping the kicks would cease - so he can sleep? But that is not the same as death.

Also, can't comment on line 9 as on my computer I show only a total of 6 written lines of the story.

Death wouldn't be hard to except, which I think you mean accept?

quote:

---

After a long pause Sam spoke again,[omit again. As this is the start of the story, we don't know he spoke before.] "Tonight is your last night." Jakob looked at Sam in confusion.[who is confused?] "You have just retired." Sam rose the JD bottle and struck Jakob's gray brow with [omit a]a thundering force. He fell to his knees. Blood trickled down his cheek onto the ground onlyomit only] to be washed away by the dark rain [descending from the sky don't need this - its implied].[who is the he? I assume its Jakob but it's not clear]

Sam kicked Jakob in the square of his back. He fell with his belly to the ground hoping the kicks would cease so he could sleep.[again, need to clarify who is doing what] Death wouldn't be hard to except.

---

I assume your POV character is Jakob. I would like to think that we find out quite soon why Sam is doing this. We have been placed in the middle of a situation with no idea of its context or of the setting for this. I'd like to at least have a line telling us a little about these people/place.

Also, you used only nine of the thirteen lines allowed.

The HTML formatting doesn't preserve the lines you see in your word processor, so we have to put your fragment into a word processor, format and count. That reveals that you're referring to the last sentence ... and that you only posted 9 lines.

On that, it usually takes long suffering, loss of vital body parts or emotional despair to make someone wish for death. Pronouns in the last paragraph and the point of view for the last sentence are taken as the last-named character - Jakob. Jakob has had a sudden, quick trauma. He may be drunk depending on how much of the JD he had. His reason for accepting death is what I would want to find by reading past this point. It's your hook. If it's incidental to the story, it should be explained soon. If it's primary to your plot or characterization, you can spend the whole story on it.

As warned, I'm going farther than that.

"Jakob looked at Sam in confusion." This is where you might indicate whether Jakob is drunk.

"Sam rose the " raised

" JD bottle" most of the adults here have a good reference to Jack Daniels, but it's not universal. Perhaps 'whiskey bottle' or spell out the brand.

"gray brow" fits with "just retired" to tell us that Jakob is older - that's good.

"thundering force" Thunder is a sound rather than a felt sensation. The one struck by a bottle would hear the impact on his skull and it could be described as thundering. That goes in the story only if the story is from Jakob's point of view. Nobody else heard the thunder. If the story is from Sam's POV, perhaps he heard Jakob's skull crack.

"square of his back" seemed strange to this reader. Just "in the back" gets Jakob onto his face.

"hoping the kicks would cease" implies a series of kicks, but you have shown only one.

"so he could sleep" is this a euphemism for the death mentioned in the next sentence? If not, it's a contradiction.

"hard to except." accept

I mentioned above that I would read on to find out why Jakob is ready for death. That's the point of a hook and that in turn is the point of the first 13 lines. Can you interest us, and an editor, with as much of the story as fits on the first page of a manuscript? This one has the reference to death in context of an (attempted) murder, but nothing of fantasy or scifi. Perhaps there's a stronger hook of that sort in the next 4 lines.

-You have just retired -- from what? The army, a gang, or what?
-gray brow -- I was thinking that his skin was gray and that maybe he was an alien.
-thundering force -- I guess you mean 'hit him hard'...? Otherwise, I can't picture it unless Sam is a weather-god.
-dark rain -- they're outside? I thought they were in a bar because of the JD bottle. And is the rain dirty or is something making it dark?
-descending from the sky --does the rain usually ascend? This phrase could be cut unless you are telling us this so that we know descending rain is not the norm.
-square of his back -- I'm not sure where the "square of the back" is. Did you mean "squarely in his back"?
-so he could sleep -- was he sleeping before and that's why he was confused by Sam's remark (which maybe woke him up)?