writers_loft | Lonely Fic looking for Constructive Criticism (Reply)

Our darling Morph from Laundry Hell somehow managed to spawn his own universe.

A/N: I'm desperate for critiques. I keep vacillating between thinking this is one of the best things I've ever written, and thinking it's utter crap. Please heap on the constructive criticism! I'm posting one short, fairly stand alone excerpt. If it catches your interest, the beginning of the Long Time Gone saga is here. Please leave me feedback so I can improve my writing! Thank you.
Summary: In which we catch a glimpse of Liam's infamous blog.
Rating: R for language

Trippy Sci-Fi Ravings

MORPH
I heard Joshua yelp from across the apartment, and the familiar clatter that always came when the door to the hall closet was opened. “What are you doing in my closet?” I yelled the question, not bothering to get up from the couch where I was sprawled with my book.

“Dude…” I heard him gasp in awe.

I groaned.

“You’ve got a fucking shrine in there, man!” he exclaimed, reentering the living room with his arms piled high. I shrugged and went back to my book, hoping he’d drop the subject, if not the skateboards. It didn’t happen. “Oh, no, you don’t get to ignore this. Do you even still know how to use these beauties anymore?”

“It would seem reasonable, wouldn’t it?” I replied half under my breath, rolling my eyes at my book. Despite my minimalist lifestyle, I couldn’t seem to let go of my skateboards. But that didn’t mean that I wanted to break them out and play skater kid whenever someone found them. I started racking my brain for something, anything to get him to drop the subject. “Hey, Mars has a kid.”

Joshua scoffed at me. “Yeah, sure. I think I would have noticed your skinny sister blowing up all preggo.”

“I didn’t say my brother knocked her up. And, please, sister-in-law. I said she has a kid, present tense. Liam said she went to enroll him today” I smirked into my book.

After a lot of back and forth, Joshua still refused to believe me. I ended the argument by logging on to my brother’s blog of paranoid ramblings, and found my proof in the middle of a crazed monologue about cats.

I’ve heard many plausible explanations for what cats are really doing, when they stare off into middle-space with that inscrutable look. None of them are true, though some of them make me laugh. They’re not seeing ghosts, or manipulating the energies of the universe, thinking about a tasty mouse (well, sometimes), or solving quantum equations. Cats are mammals. Pets, sometimes. Creatures of playful ferocity. But they are also eyes. The silent, watching presence. Cameras, if you will. The same as we all are. Self repairing, self replicating cameras. Everything we see, sense, is being watched by other eyes, recorded, manipulated. The difference is, cats know. And that absent, inscrutable look? That’s when they’re fighting back.

Today my wife brought home a kid. A street wanderer, a drifter, a runaway. He doesn’t seem to be an agent for the watchers, a repairman, but you never know. Maybe they’ve found out I know. Or maybe he is only what he seems.

“Duuude…” Joshua breathed. “Your brother is fucking nuts. And he pulls off normal so well.”

“Yeah,” I agreed smugly, “But I’m still right about the kid thing.” The subject of skateboards was definitely dropped. Leaving him rooted in front of my laptop, I quietly left the room and stashed the skateboards away, so the subject of me riding wouldn’t come up again anytime soon. Joshua either knew what I was doing and didn’t care, or was too absorbed in the frightening insight into my brother’s twisted head he was receiving via the blog to notice. Either way worked for me.

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