Critique: '30 Seconds over Vladivostok'

Short story by Matt Ryan

This week’s piece for feedback comes from Matt Ryan, our first brave soul to put his work out for us to read and critique. With any feedback we all provide here, always remember to keep it honest, constructive, and supportive. What did you like best? What did you not like or not understand?

Format: short story excerpt (2,000 words of an 8,000-word piece)

Genre: alt-history (counterfactual, no SF or Fantasy)

Summary: The tale takes place 20 years after a point of divergence in history, in which the viewpoint character is volun-told for a bomber mission on a Russian port after the Russians attacked the US five years into WW2.

Issue/feedback: I realize my problem with the alt-history tropes, but I'm very concerned with description and pacing (paragraph construction). I'm happy to hear of any other flaws.

30 Seconds over Vladivostok

by Matt Ryan

Photo by Random Thinking on Unsplash

We all die alone in the end.

***

An off-key rendition of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” floated down the hall. Deputy Dempsey—I never learned his name, so I called him ‘Dempsey’ after the boxer—thought he was as good a singer as he was a boxer. He’d worked me over every day I was in the Cook County cells right up until I tucked my chin in, taking that last punch on my forehead.

I came to with Dempsey kicking the crap out of me and clutching his broken hand.

“Gillespie.”

I opened my swollen eyes and turned my head to face the cell door.

“Frank Gillespie.” A JAG major, posing like something off a recruiting poster, and two MPs stood on the other side of the bars.

I nodded and sat up. If I tried to answer, it would have come out in a low whisper because of my broken nose and split lip. The Cook County sheriff’s deputies know how to work a man over better than Joe Louis.

“You’re out of uniform, Lieutenant.” The major tossed collar insignia, a golden bar, into the cell.

Busted down to ‘butterbar’ from Captain. I bent down and picked up my new rank. It could have been worse. The army could have left me here as a punching bag for Deputy Dempsey, with his sledgehammer fists.

I removed my captain’s bars, struggling with my manacled wrists, and dropped them in the toilet to show the major my indifference. After I fumbled my new rank onto my collar, I swayed to my feet.

Dempsey unlocked the cell, grinning all the while. “Have a safe trip. Hero.”