[The Gate Master]

Originally Posted by bwind22

Coleman, the Gothic Teen, is really rocking out to his IPod. An especially heavy song begins. He cranks the volume to max and begins to headbang silently in his seat. His head throbs dangerously close to the large picture frame behind him with each motion.

Cheryl, the Receptionist, glances over her computer screen and scowls, annoyed at the amount of noise escaping his headphones.

Ethel, the Elderly Woman, continues reading her magazine, oblivious.

Cheryl, too distracted to work, decides to speak up. "Would you mind turning that down?" Coleman keeps headbanging without responding. She speaks up. "HELLO?" No response. Cheryl looks to Ethel for sympathy to her plight, but Ethel is still engrossed in her magazine, completely oblivious to her surroundings.

Cheryl lets out a heavy sigh, then a tube of toothpaste nearby catches her attention. She reaches for it. Her sleeve brushes a cup of coffee next to her keyboard. The cup teeters, but does not fall. She snatches the tube of toothpaste from the shelf and hurls it across the room. It narrowly misses Coleman's head and bounces off the large picture frame behind before falling harmlessly to the floor. Coleman looks up at Cheryl in shock just in time to see her gasp as the massive picture frame comes crashing off the wall and smashes into his head.

Coleman hits the floor, a bloody mess, surrounded by glass shards and tattered finger paintings remnants. Cheryl springs in to action. She hops over the desk to help, but lands on the tube of toothpaste. The cap and a stream of toothpaste erupt from the tube and plaster the back and cover of Ethel's magazine. Ethel remains oblivious to anything going on around her. Cheryl's ankle rolls on the tube of toothpaste and snaps with a sickening crack as she falls facefirst in to the shards of broken glass.

Cheryl, her face a bloodied mess and her ankle at a 90 degree angle, looks up to see a large shard of broken glass embedded in to Coleman's neck and a pool of blood growing quickly around his head. She looks the other way to see Ethel still reading her magazine. She gasps. "Please... Call an ambulance! I'm a hemophiliac!" Ethel continues reading with no response. Cheryl, losing more blood from her cuts than the average person would, begins to claw her way across the floor towards Ethel.

Just as she within an arm's length of Ethel's ankle, her body goes limp and she loses consciousness.

The clock on the wall spins quickly, signifying the passage of time. Twenty three minutes go by. The door to the back of dentist's area opens up and the dentist, Dr. Anderson, appears. Without looking up from the file he's got his nose buried in, he speaks in a loud, booming voice. "Mrs. Garrett!"

Ethel looks up and smiles sweetly at the dentist from behind very thick glasses. She folds her magazine and sets it down. She stands up, nearly stepping on Cheryl's pale frame. She makes her way across the waiting room, still completely oblivious to her surroundings, and follows Dr. Anderson in to the back.

The End.

You went for the safer option of still presenting it as a story but a series of events. This shifted the focus from characters to the deaths themselves. There was also a large amount of creativity in there. I enjoyed the final destination-esque scene. The deaths were gruesome enough and you met the task well.

Your characters did act in strange ways though. For one, the receptionist shouting at the teen twice then resorting to throwing toothpaste at him. It didn't come across as realistic. Why didn't she stand up and go over to him. They weren't exactly busy. Also, the older woman at the end and the dentist not noticing the bloody scene. And just like Scouse Mac you opted for a final scene which did not need to be there. These are you marks.

Creativity: 3/3
Logic: 1.5/3
Perception: 2/3

It was a very entertaining read and even though I didn't feel the receptionist would have thrown the toothpaste, when fitted into the death scenes it put things together nicely. The deaths were maybe not as gruesome as they could have been and even though the focus was the deaths, I feel most of that was the lead up. Still, you got good marks.

6.5/9