✘ S ʜ ᴀ ᴛ ᴛ ᴇ ʀ ᴅ T ʜ ᴏ ᴜ ɢ ʜ ᴛ s ✘ >>Harsh Critique Wanted

[Paradise;]

Harsh Critique is Welcome and Encouraged. Feel free to tear it apart. c:

[Paradise;]

These thoughts inside my head seem to give me no rest.
That moment when everything goes silent is always the loudest.
The voices scream inside my mind.
One day, the voices will win.

The silence is what really gets you. The silence is what makes them stronger; it gives them more control. I've tried fighting them. Battles of the mind that took hours, sometimes days to have a winner emerge from the shadows.
The air around me was still; the forest asleep. Beneath my paws was the frozen ground; winter had returned. I was just a pup, and the way the snowflakes tumbled through the air captivated me, my eyes only drifting from them for breif moments. I had believed I was alone. Never again have I ever believed such a thing. I am never alone.

All around me the snowflakes seemed to speak. Their tiny voices filling my mind with strange thoughts. My head spun in a million different directions, attempting to discover the ones that wished to speak with me. Dread flooded my mind as they fell to the ground and disappeared, but the voices continued.

They argued with each other and demanded my attention. My head spun from all the noise and my feet collapsed from under me. "I-I don't understand," my voice trembled in fear. Whimpers passed through my teeth and shivers ran through my body. The voices kept coming and wouldn't stop. Most of them were yelling at me, some were trying to comfort me. I wanted to hide, to cower beneath the warm soft belly fur of my mother; but she had gone hunting, leaving me along with all these voices.
One of the voices started shrieking in my ear, calling me weak and pathetic. A waste of space and energy. Something inside me snapped and I lept to my paws. I snapped my jaws, only to have them close down on thin air. I howled and screeched; the voices only mimicking me and mocking me for my feeble attempts at bravery.

"Stop. Please, stop. Who are you? Leave me alone!" I cried out as tears slid down my muzzle. The air was so cold that the tears froze to my fur and a sheet of tiny snowflakes coated them. From behind me I could make out pawsteps, heavy pawsteps that thudded on the frozen ground, making me crouch low to the ground in terror. I glanced up to see my mother standing before me in dismay.

"My pup. My beloved pup. Who were you speaking with?" she demanded, her voice rough and showing none of the affection her words implied.

"The voices, mother. The voices that are speaking to me. They scream and tease me as we speak." The voice that sounded from my jaw was tiny, barely audible.

"There is no one here." My mother's voice grew into anger and frustration.

"They speak to me now, mother. How can you not hear them?" I asked, confusion etched onto my petite face.

"Liar!" A paw grazed my shoulder and pain seared through my body. My mother's lips were curled into a snarl. "No pup of mine could be as weak as you. You are useless. You miserable excuse for a wolf. There is no one here; no voices to be heard but our own." Her voice was a whisper but it was as sharp as thorns.

"She doesn't want you. You are nothing to her." They murmered in my ear. The sadness raked through my body. I bowed my head in shame and whimpered. There was no use in trying to speak with my mother; she would have nothing of it. There was nothing I wanted more than for my mother to comfort me; to care for me and help wash away my sorrows. However, my mother was too proud, too proud to admit that a pup of hers was crazy. The voices were right. She didn't want me; atleast not enough to keep me.

In a haste to abandon me, she ran from the very spot I sat. A cloud of snow drifted in the air where my mothers hind paws had disturbed them from their rest. I was useless. I was weak. Nothing more than a pitiful pup. A pup who heard voices. Voices that encouraged revenge. Voices that knew just what nerve to strick to turn me into the horrible beast I was more than capable of becoming.

[Paradise;]

In 7 days my schizophrenia breaks
my brain cavity waves, distorted, decayed!
These faces of insane originated this pain,
and invented these demented ways to break me!
Intoxicated, I'm faded inside my dreams.
Motivated on defeating these haters in everything.
It's the only thing that keeps me alive.

My lungs struggled to intake enough air. The throbbing of my head caused me moments of distraction and only let the rabbit get farther and farther ahead of me. The trees and undergrowth were all a blur passing by in the corner of my eyes. My determination to catch the rabbit let me forget about the pain my legs. My muscles strained to gain speed, my paws numb from all the distance I had covered. My sense of direction was fading and I soon forgot where I was. The only thing on my mind was the image of a limp rabbit dangling from my jaws. I could taste the warm metalic blood on my tungue and the warm smell travelled into my nostrils causing a string drool to fall out of my mouth.

"What makes you think you could actually catch that rabbit? It's already won. It's den is only a few tail lengths away, in a few seconds its bushy little tail will be disappearing down a hole."

I would not listen to them today. They would not control my thoughts on this hunt. They were the reason I had gone to sleep three nights in a row with an empty stomach. All my hunting trips had gone bad the minute I started to believe the voices.

"Liars," I spat out in anger. Putting on one last burst of speed I nearly caught up to the rabbit. Almost. However, as per usual, the voices got the better of me. While I wasted time forcing my self to ignore their snickering, the rabbit had diverted off the path it had been following and darted into a hole. The hole wasn't its den I could tell but it was still an escape route from my deadly jaws. In frustration I snarled and dug at the hole with my front paws. Underneath me I could hear the scuttling of little feet and the rabbits fear scent filled the air. The scent clogged my nostrils and I recoiled in disgust. Once again, the rabbit used my momentairy distraction to bolt. Before I could even blink the rabbit was off again.

"We can only warn you so many times." The snickers filled my head and I lashed out at thin air with my front paw. It never did any good but sometimes it felt good to imagine it was the voices themselves I was slicing.

I hesitated and almost took off after the rabbit but I knew what the outcome would be no matter what. Wasted energy and a stomach that growled in hunger. Defeat overpowered me and I headed for my section of territory. Luckily for me this forest was small enough and didn't hold enough prey for any packs to bother trying to take over. The forest was only begin enough to sustain the life of two or three loners and the forest critters.

My den was an old hollowed out tree located near the edge of the forest. The location allowed me to stay isolated from other forms of life. Of all the years I had lived in this forest I had encoutered only one other wolf and it had been a brief incounter. A fleeting glare and that was all. Neither of us wanting to stop and bother disputing over territory and prey.

"Another night of going to sleep with an empty stomach." One of the voices so kindly pointed out to me. "Maybe if you weren't such a pathetic excuse for a wolf..." Another stated, all of them trying to provoke a response from me. I was so hungry and tired all I could manage to muster up was a growl before lying down just outside my den. The crisp air relaxed me and I had no desire to curl up in my den filled with warm, musty air.

The voices poked at my thoughts, but their attempts were weak. That or my empty stomach distracted me from their tauntings. For once it was my own thoughts that flooded my mind. Not those of some other thing or things. I thought about my mother and my siblings. The siblings I had never had the chance to truly get to know. They had died the same winter my mother had abandoned me. It was one of the things that puzzled and frustrated me the most. Most wolves felt the need to protect their pups with their lives, yet mine had left me without a second thought. My mother had no other pups she could go to, she only had me. It only made her abandonment sting worse.

The memories haunted me and were almost as bad as the voices some days. In an attempt to distract myself from my own mind I began to groom my fur. My once eye-catching pelt was matted and clumped together with mud. Twigs stuck out everywhere, my tail covered with burrs. My once soft belly fur, shaggy and tangled from lack of grooming. A thin layer of dust coated every single spot on my thick coat. Tufts of fur had been ripped out and left forgotten on thorn bushes. A wolf normally took pride in their appearance and how well groomed their pelt was. On good days my coat would shine, the sleekness of my dark brown fur something to behold. However, the more bad days I had the more my pelt suffered the consequences.

The sound of paws scuttling in front of me distracted me from my grooming. I glanced up, my lips curled back in a snarl ready to attack if needed. Instead I was met by the terrified squirrel. The squirrel was petrified, just staring wide-eyed at me. My gleamed and I lept. The squirrel darted towards a tree but I was too quick. Underneath my paws I could feel the swirm of its little body. Pressing my paw down harder I felt the snap of it's spine. For a moment I was far too shocked to even move my paws. The only thing that managed to snap me out of my trance was the smell slowly sneaking into my nose. My jaws parted and I couldn't wait to taste the warm blood on my tungue, even though it would be only momentairy considering how small the squirrel was.

Lifting my paw I lept back as I saw snowflakes land on the squirrels bushy red tail. The white contrasted with the red and reminded me of blood blending into the snow. The thought connected with another leading me back to when I was just barely a year old. It was a cold night, I could remember the feeling of the freezing air on my wet nose, the way the hard ground felt on my paws. That year had been one of the coldest winters the forest had seen. Prey had been scarce, the creeks completly frozen and the ground was covered in snow, making it almost impossible to get anywhere at a decent pace. I hadn't eaten in days, my stomach hollow and suken in. My pelt was tangled and matted. I looked like a mutt. For days I hadn't seen any other sign of life. I started to wonder if I was the last breathing thing to be living in the forest.

Atleast, that's what I thought until the day I stumbled upon another lone wolf like myself. This wolf was tiny and had little to no meat on its bones. It was worse off then me, however, it had food. They had caught a rabbit. The rabbit itself appeared to be skin and bones but it was still something. My eyes filled with hunger, I approached the wolf only to be growled at. The wolf snarled and snapped at me but the smell of the still partially warm rabbit overpowered all my other senses. I lept at the wolf, my teeth bared and paws outstretched. It was over in minutes. Blood seemed into my fur and the warm red liquid slid down my jaw. The limp body of the wolf lay mangled on a pile of snow. The snow around its body was stained red. Looking away from the wolf my teeth tore into the rabbit. My mouth was filled with fur but the bit of meat that I got was enough to keep me going. The wolf that had died to feed me lay forgotten and growing colder, never to cross my mind again. Until now.

"Monster. You're a monster." The voices snarled at me and I cringed at their words. "You killed him." They stated coldly.

"I had to!" I screamed. I lashed out with my paws. My claws meeting flesh. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I dug into the flesh. Blood pooled around my paws and I ripped at the fur with my teeth. Warm liquid spaltered my muzzle. The moment my teeth grazed bone I remembered where I was. Reality flooded back into my mind and I looked at the ground. The dirt had blood smeared into it and all the dead leaves that lay near me was stained red. Below me lay a mangeled carcass. The now ruined squirrel, with no meat left that would edible. I took a step back and shook my head.

"Who am I? What have I become?" I whimpered, tucking my tail between my legs, I took off not even knowing where I was heading. I just wanted to get away.

[Paradise;]

I feel my nails rip my flesh;
I feel I've gone insane.
I never wanted to hurt you,
but you made me this way.
So now I know I'm crazy,
I feel there's no more pain.
These voices call out to me,
they're screaming out my name.

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ

[Paradise;]

R ᴇ s ᴇ ʀ ᴠ ᴇ ᴅ