# General Impressions

This is a pretty interesting little story. It has a mystery about it that captivated me at the start and the surrealist element kept me through to the end. I like the story, though I feel that the story may not beg enough questions. My interpretation is that this is an allegory for keeping secrets--perhaps about one's self or from one's family. I can see how this would relate to someone with something they feel that they need to hide, but perhaps the metaphor in this story is a bit too direct. 

# Formatting

This is an interest way to format a story with the dialogue being like headers that separate the story into chunks. I think this works in this story since it's so short. Though, is there a reason for this? With the dialogue looking like headers for a new section, I'd expect the subsequent chunk of text to be somewhat related to it's header, or at least being something of a departure from the previously established route of the narrative. "Did you eat too muc

Hi there,

This is my first time looking at the story, so I can’t really compare or comment on any past improvements. I’m also not really going to focus on grammar, verbiage, or phrasing. I’m happy to discuss, though!

# The Abstract

`A dissociating dinner guest throws up a (metaphorical?) demon onto the table`

I would summarize the story like so above. We have our dinner guest with a loud silence sitting, detached from it. Within them, a quivering demon soul—their \*literal\* inner demon. This demon, for the most part, appears to be harmless. It eats anything with a crunchy outside, sulks a lot, but the narrator eventually spits them out, leaving them—our narrator—as an empty shell.

I wrote “metaphorical” because I can’t exactly tell. For me, it feels like this is a metaphoric demon and that the narrator does in fact throw up, for they “can’t see \[the\] demon soul.” I think a lot of evidence points this way, but the way the demon soul acts, its passive nature, sort of makes me won

lol — about the pregnant pause idiom being reworked into obese silence, I meant to add how I enjoyed the shifting of the idiom while still containing the distended stomach/uterus.

Thank you for posting. I am surprised by how little traction this piece is getting and was torn on writing a response. It’s hard to be extremely destructive of some of your works because at times I feel like yours are better versions of my own subset of stories. This particular piece resonates with me quite a lot so I was quickly pulled into it and “accepted” (is that the right word?) its premise.

**Metaphor** I often wonder what is the best way to describe or personify the social-emotional dissonance of the internal world versus the external world coupled with the existential feeling that the internal world and sense of self is all a sham. Here we have the demon soul and the shell meeting those elements within the juxtaposition of the rather blank dinner party. This is all about the internal world and each time the host/waitress/helper breaches, its voice is loud and visually large. The elements of this whole do come together and work in generating that visceral (ba dum dum) dissonan

Hello everybody,


STORY


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W4guUNiGt1RjbJPPP2CuKoqofrHDIfVaye1pfvYtoYE/edit


&gt;!About dissociating at a dinner party. I tried to fix some errors pointed out to me last time. Was there at least some hint of tension or momentum?!&lt;


CRITIQUE


https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/u83sg5/1985_the_library_of_the_golden_dragon/i5l6mt4/


Thanks in advance!

[513] The Escape of a Fearful Demon Soul at Dinner