Hello J
My first thought of your story was that it might be better if the title words were in reverse order ('Hero Unsung'). More rhythmic?
Congratulations, I liked your work! Your dark room idea was interesting enough to keep me wondering what you were going to do next all the time. Satire is nicely done, especially the moment when your character (or 'you') becomes almost happy to be stuck in a creepy exit-less room because he was disappointed by the people outside anyways. Nice, non-pretentious humor: the 'This room sucks' sentence was great, then eating the light bulb shred (unexpected! nice), your hero's celibacy...
Style: you might wanna cut down on sentences beginning with 'I...'. Just a simple word rearrangement should do.
At first I thought it was careless and unrealistic to 'skip' that normally expected panic attack, but then again, your character behaving sort of rationally gave the story a more relaxed atmosphere (yes, relaxed – despite the eerie intro). To me, it made the character more likable, I could even say more heroic in the obviously intended anti-hero way.
I may have missed it, but in case I didn't, you should have described the size of the room. Obviously, it's not a tiny tiny closet since you can walk in it, but is it small, huge, canyon-sized or what?
You have a couple of typos you might want to fix, extra 'the's' (that's nothing terrible, but in my experience there is some kind of link between the quality of a written piece and the amount of writing mistakes in it – so fix them and don't fool your readers – you have a story worth reading!).
It's a little strange that you keep comparing the character with one from a horror movie, since to me the story doesn't have a horror atmosphere at all, if anything the pressure here is on the psychological. Were you trying to make a satire of horror movies or? In that case, I'd expect zombies or severed heads popping out of somewhere. This way the genre would sooner be mystery of sci-fi.
Addressing the reader is great, since it makes the reader feel more important (and whoever says they don't like it is a dirty, dirty liar). Being rude to the reader is always a nice move, too. Though I didn't wonder why you knew that caped man was a man at all. Figured if you could see the cape was brown, then the question was unnecessary, and since you didn't say exactly how far away he was, I didn't assume it was a matter of miles.
One thing: the part where your man talks about being a lousy hero might need a little more introduction. You have to show the readers that he's a no good hairy loser, not just make him say it in a very obvious way. Insert some body motion. Describe his attitude, the way he moves, his appearance, give him some kicks... don't make the readers have to imagine everything by themselves. You rely on his thoughts too much (I know this is 1st person narrative but it's not that impossible to input more auditory, olfactory and other details whose fancy names I can't remember right now). Why exactly does the character get so pissed off by Mura's request? You need to show that before the 1st contact in the story.
What kind of look did Mura (nice name, btw) give the character when he was touching his face? Angry? Scornful? Surprised? Excited? I don't understand how you could miss that part, when you had such a great simile for old gray-beard (''Sparky McDips*** stared at me like a dad stares at his son who just snuck into his porn collection'').
Why does Mura transform from Badass to Pussy since it was the Theocracy, not him, that gave the sky a 'beautiful' orange shade? Now he's a sissy, but a couple of paragraphs down the character suddenly likes him?
Also, from the initial impact I'd expect your character wouldn't shut up just cause someone told him to, I thought he'd keep talking, asking about the light bulb and actually turn quite annoying (which is not negative in my mind, only more interesting).
I think you have potential for even better satire. Give us more! Unless you’ve fainted from all the flattering.
Here’s an unusually great sentence: ‘’Here comes the straw that broke the planet Earth’’. I say unusually because it’s not something you’d expect in a satire, it’s cool in a different way. Can’t put my finger on it. Just had to tap you on the back for it.
Is ‘desolace’ a word?
I can’t decide whether you lack a motive for Michael’s eating a piece of the light bulb (hunger?), or if that’s the best part of your character’s… idiosyncrasy (sorry about the geeky word, I couldn’t resist the sinister urge). Which one is it now?
Why isn’t it strange to Michael that all he has to do is shake hands? And why the punch? I’m a little dumb myself and can’t read between the lines. For me, you have to literally write down why he punched the old guy. And I don’t understand what shaking hands had to do with the Gentaks feeling ‘tricked’ by humans.
The ending is satisfactory. Begs for a sequel, even though one isn’t really optional in Hell!
I’ve enjoyed reading this, and writing my miles-long nazi-comment more than I expected, so thank you for writing. This is my first review here, by the way.
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