Genocide Tryst is now Chapter One of a three-chaptered short story/flash fiction trilogy entitled The Anchorites of Armageddon. This is chapter/story two.

I would be particularly interested to know everyone's interpretation of the first half of the first line. I'm exploring a bit of a difficult concept there, and I'm not sure if it's something that can be gleaned from that brief a statement or if I'll need to devote an entire paragraph to it.

[This message has been edited by Brant Danay (edited February 12, 2009).]

Here we go:

Seated high atop the invisible throne of bodily orifices that overlooked the utopian necropolis,Throne of bodily orifices??? Invisible??? My first thought was, why does it need to be made of bodily orifices if its invisible? Could be made of popsicle sticks for all I care if no one can see it. This line is confusing and off putting, and unless the throne is central to the story, I would make 2nd half of this sentence the beginning of your story.

the Eschaphiliac maneuvered the ropes of human hair to which his flesh-puppets and necro-dolls were bound.Cool and creepy and gross. But interesting.

His clawed fingers danced and directed the decomposing marionettes to leap and pirouette, fly and fall, battle and fornicate. Gangrenous extremities and pieces of maggot-laced rot [were shaking]-I would prefer just "shook" here. free of the bodies as he played, [forming compost heaps and piles of death in the city streets below.]-Can it really form compost (waste and vegetable matter usually) AND piles of death?? I would just stick with one or the other, or some combo like "forming human compost heaps in (on?) the city streets below.

Inside the Westpalace, Innocence looked on from the window of their bedchamber as her soulmate performed his [grotesque comedies and merry tragedies.]-I like this turn of phrase. The Eschaphiliac had been playing with his dead toys for over [three hundred hours.]-I undertand you're going for something impressively long here, but would she really have counted all the way up to 300? Is she a necroaccountant or something? How about convert it to days, or moons, or weeks or something. It seemed [as though]-cut this she had been replaced by the utopian necropolis.

As far as a hook: I guess if you're into this stuff, the hook is the grossness and grandness. For me though, there's nothing here to drive my curiosity. The conflict seems like it could be that Innocence is feeling unloved, but we don't hear much about her plight, so I have a hard time feeling bad for her.

Yeah, that first half of the first sentence is a tricky one. I'll be interested to see if anyone comprehends it, although my gut feeling is that it's going to require its own descriptive paragraph.

Human compost heaps-Nice! Duly noted and assimilated.

Necroaccountant There's got to be a place for that in a comedic piece somewhere.

Thanks for the feedback. Talk to you later,

Brant