When every cell in your body starts thinking for itself. You become a hive. The burn of it swells red, wet and vicious from your chassis.
That kind of fear has its own uberlogic, beyond mind and doubt.
You are left just a vestigial lizard clinging to the top of your spinal cord.

It’s not why I hit him.
But it’s why I kept hitting him.
I didn’t think about it before I did it. It was biological. I had to show them I was crazier than all the rest of them put together.

Then maybe they would leave me alone.

Though I'm totally confused as to what's going on, besides the narrator is beating someone to a pulp....

I think you are trying to use too many metaphors in the first paragraph though: First he's a hive, then a chassis, and finally a vestigial lizard. Stick to one and develop it more.

quote:

---

I had to show them I was crazier than all the rest of them put together.

---

It is a quickening terror.
When every cell in your body starts thinking for itself. You become a hive. The burn of it swells red, wet and vicious from the kundalini.

That kind of fear has its own uberlogic, beyond mind and doubt. Conciousness barely clinging to the knot at the top of your spinal cord.

It’s not why I hit him. But it’s why I kept hitting him.
I didn’t think about it before I did it. It was biological. I had to show the other detainees that I was crazier than all of them put together.

Then they would leave me alone.

The transport hulk had been in orbit for more than a year and food was running out. There was some sort of fungus infection spreading through the berths. The biodegradable underclothes issued on embarkation had biodegraded, and we were conserving water. The air was bad, but the smell was worse in the women’s section. All the hormone inhibitors were gone.

The cameras were smashed in the exercise yard. That’s where I found Semler, with his wives. That’s where I hit him and kept hitting him and then I ran.

I didn’t intend to kill him. I’m a god-fearing man.

Wow, this sounds like something awfully interesting. Novel or Short?

But I'll tell you where you drew me in--it was AFTER the first thirteen lines. It was the paragraph beginning with "The tranport hulk had been..."

Before that I'm seeing a mish-mash of POV and tense and images that don't bring images to mind that draw me in. Someone once got after me for waxing overly poetic in first person. You kind of have to pull back a bit on that, or the narrator becomes aloof, distant, out of reach of the reader. We want to see him as one of us in order to properly sympathize with him. I'd start with the situation and explain why he did it (or kept doing it) afterward.

You sucked me in with this idea that every cell in this guy's body is literally thinking for itself and acting independantly. Bizar, but quite interesting. It made me speculate maybe you were heading along the lines of violence is the way he can "quiet" his cells back into being one body he can control when they start "going individual". I am also assuming at least some of the other people may be experienceing this too. So, who does this guy feel more danger from: his own cells or those of others? I hope you don't just abandon this concept, is what I'm saying. Unless you didn't mean it in the literal way I interpreted. Then I just feel cheated.

Energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine until it is activated and channeled upward through the chakras.

[Sanskrit kualin, from feminine of kualin-, coiled, spiral, from kualam, ring, coil, perhaps of Dravidian origin.]

www.dictionary.com

I am not great with POV.
Tell me how it is a mish mash and I will fix it.
I thought it was clearly the narrator's point of view.

(My copy of 'Character and Viewpoint' is literally in the mail, arrives Nov 11 -- thankyou Amazon.com!)

The second paragraph introduces the story as 2nd person. The 'you's. Using some 'you's (she waves her hand in the air, in that motion that says 'iffy')is not necessarily a violation of the first person POV, but sticking to a single technical POV will go a long way toward developing your character if you make us feel these things through his own experiences ("I felt like..."), rather than trying to relate them to his audience's experiences (You know how it feels when...). So, instead of saying, "When every cell in your body starts thinking for itself. etc etc" He might say, "My body became a hive, every cell thinking for itself, burning, swelling red, wet, vicious. Like it left a vestigial lizard clinging to the top of my spinal cord."

Essentially the same information, solidly first person POV. I am able to have much greater sympathy for him KNOWING without any doubt that this is the way he felt.

In omniscient POV, the reader sits on the shoulder of the author because the reader is supposed to see everything (relevant to the story) that the author knows. Essentially, it means that the author tells the reader what everyone is thinking (puts the reader inside of everyone's heads).

In first person POV, the author creates a narrator who tells the story from an "I" point of view. I saw this, I did that, I heard thus and such. The reader sits inside the head of "I" (the narrator).

In second person POV, the author tells the reader what the reader is seeing, doing, etc, with "you" (and it doesn't work very well for very long).

It's so hard to tell what people mean online because all we have are the words on the screen. No tone of voice, no expressions.

I don't think you're rubbing people the wrong way, dpatridge, and I hope you aren't feeling rubbed the wrong way either.

Please feel assured that if you were doing something wrong, at the very least you would get an email about it, and at the most, someone would try to straighten you out here on Hatrack (gently, I hope).

But I am worried about the POV stuff, honestly can't see where I have shifted POV.

But will fix it when I do.

I was reading a book written by an 1830s bushranger. He was explaining and justifying himself the whole way through, saying things like: if it happened to you... you would have done it too. When something like that happens to you... you feel rage welling up... etcetera

So I have adopted that sort of, self-justifying persona, if it does not work, I will change it. If it is a genuine POV problem, I will fix it.

BTW: DJVDakota: its a short story.

But I agree with the others that what really hooked me was the stuff that came after the first 13 lines.