Hello! I was wondering if people could read this. Do you think I've shown the character's pain enough here? Someone also said the beginning paragraph wasn't as good as the rest. Any ideas on how I could improve that? It's very short, but it's for a collection of vignettes I will write.

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Laboured breathing. Shuffling footsteps on cold flagstone, sliding sound of a hand pressed to a wall for balance. The spidery fingers were grey against the white paint, shuddering like the breath of the man slowly making his way down the corridor. He had conquered the stairs earlier, clinging to the bannister like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. He was still trembling from the effort, brow sweat stained yet freezing cold. A cough rattled his chest. The ribs protruded, all gross edges, sharp as knives, the skin pulled ghoulishly taut over them.

A step, a step. One at a time. Oh, it burned, his bones ached. Another skinny hand grasped at his jeans and pulled them up over cliff-jutting hips, the hollow of his stomach empty, dry and barren and itchy. Patches of cracked skin crawled over his body, weeping pus and plasma behind his knees. Staggerstumbletrip. He whined, clawed the wall. Bruises were already forming on his swollen knees as he lay, a pile of angles. Legs trembling with effort, he stood once more and his tongue rasped at those chapped lips.

Again – step, step, step. He took a moment to stop and rest. The inside of his left elbow was swollen and bruised with pinpricks, the upper layer of skin eaten at in places. It wept at the edges, blackening and stinking with the smell of meat left in a warm place and uneaten. A couple more steps and – almost there! He fumbled with the brass door handle, set into mahogany sent from what remained of Vietnam, the deep red-brown lustre strange in such a cold house, filled with paperwork and a small, cold man

It swung open at last, and a smile cracked his face when he saw that Olli had filled the French press with ground coffee before he left. He mumbled quietly to himself, tongue rolling around the words a little due to the tooth that had come free. Damned if that stupid psychiatrist would tell him what to do. Hands still shuddering, he lifted the kettle to the sink with some difficulty. The tendons in his hands stood out, what little muscle left groaned with effort. His bones cried. Finally, his fingers unwound from the handle, and he turned the tap, wrists strained, until water flowed out and into the kettle.

Once again that struggle to carry it back, even moreso now that it was filled with water. At last he reached his destination and boiled it, pulling a chair – scratching the parquet flooring, father would have been displeased – and sitting down to slump with his body on the table. It dug deep into his cracking, mottled grey-purple-blue skin and pushed against his shrivelled stomach, but he just grunted and shifted. His knees complained as he straightened his legs, and he considered it a miracle they remained unbroken from the fall. Just several months back he'd fractured a rib from collapsing in the shower, having fainted from hunger.

I did not see any problem or difference in quality with your first paragraph compared to any of the others. It did seem a little graphic if you were trying to describe a sickly old man because the image I got was of a ghoulish creature almost like a gaunt zombie. As far as quality however I did not find it necessarily lacking in comparison to the rest.

You did an excellent job at showing the character's pain and I emphasise 'showing'. You showed his pain rather than just telling us he was in pain. The only part that I would point out that I think could be tweaked is the first sentence of the last paragraph. That far in to it I feel that it should become obvious to the reader that the man is so weak that the added water would actually make it that much heavier for him. The way the next sentence begins with, "At last..." really shows this as well so I think it would be best if just left out. (As an after thought, not to sound nit-picky but I noticed that after "At last" you used 'reached' rather than 'reaches' as the rest of the story is written in present tense).

The only other thing I can possibly point out is the way you begin the third paragraph. You say, "Again - step, step, step." even though at no time since the start of the second paragraph do you describe him as stopping (only stumbling) and so the reader does not need to be reminded as it is not likely that they have forgotten he is still walking. Starting the third paragraph with the man stopping and resting I think would make more sense.

Overall, your descriptive writing is excellent and you should be very proud. Was this just a writing project (whether devised by yourself or another party) or is this part of something larger? If it is part of something more then I would most definitely like to see some more. I know that he is a Vietnam vet but I don't know who Olli is (his wife, his nurse, etc.). I even have a brief reflection of the kind of person his father was; that is he was a man who took pride in his home but that doesn't tell me in what way he was proud. Would he be disappointed about the scratches in the floor in the sense that he would be angry and stern with his son or would he shake his head in sad disappointment?

None of that takes away from your writing however but it does hint at something more. It is not always a bad thing to leave your reader with questions but those questions should not be about characters only briefly mentioned (IMO) unless you plan on elaborating on them further than just their name.

Someone might mention why he is hungry but I think you have done a good job by subtly mentioning Vietnam well-after you described his struggle and his health. There was a lot of struggle among veterans of that particular war both physical and mental. This might not have been the particular message you were trying to convey but the wonderful thing about writing is the different sort of interpretations and inspirations it can leave on readers.

Well, that's all. I hope I've answered all your questions and definitely hope to see more of your work in the Creative Realm (even if it is not more of this particular piece).

-Mins

Oops! I should have posted a bit of background information about the piece of writing first. Firstly, it's set in the future (around 2146). Oh god, I feel really bad because you saw the main character (Sergei, a drug addict) as a Vietnam vet. He's a military man, yes, but a dictator at the end of his days. Oddly enough, he doesn't die of starvation or any complications of it; rather, he's shot. He's only 48 or so when he dies. He wasn't in power for a long time at all in comparison with those before him. He does have post traumatic stress disorder, however, but I didn't really touch on it heavily here. It influences his eating, though, as does his drug abuse (which is a result of the PTSD).

In answer to your question, there'll be more. Just more short pieces. I wrote a novel on the world before and it was somewhat exhausting (to be fair, it was for NaNoWriMo, so I did it in a month. No wonder why I was knackered!), and I find I can cover smaller things like this.

Thank you for the suggestions, especially the second! I'll change that around when I can (I'm pretty busy at the moment). I'm very grateful, and it made me really happy to see them and such a long comment (:

Olli is his assistant and is a young man, ahahah.

Thank you very much once again! If I write more, I'll post it here. I'm just too busy to at the moment, really. However, this comment kind of encouraged me to (:

...Wow. My interpretation was a little off, huh? LOL That's okay, though. It's not such a bad thing however that my interpretation was so far off as it really does go to show just how many different ways something can be interpreted. Considering the amount of information I had on it beforehand I am not too distraught that my interpretation was so far off. lol

Based from what you did tell me though and now that I am skimming over it a bit more I am starting to get a Pink Floyd feeling out of it. If you have never seen The Wall then it is a movie that you should definitely check out. I also laughed when you told me Olli is a young man because now that I think I about it I knew a man named Ollie. For some reason when I hear a name that ends with the long E sound I assume it is a woman. You might want to consider changing that to an 'ie' however as I believe Olli is the female spelling. Then again it doesn't really matter because I could be thinking of American spelling and there are usually three different ways to spell every name out there so yeah.

Poor Olli. He may forever be a curly-haired blonde girl wearing a white polka-dot blue dress in my mind. LOL

Also since you indulged a little bit more in to the overall story I find myself getting a bit of a Fallout sort of feeling as well (a video game series in case you are unaware).

Anyways! Regardless of the interpretation or meaning behind the story, it is a wonderfully written piece and is even better now that I have a clearer picture of what it is all about.

-Mins