Reviews.

These are not gentle. Though they are not cruel.

[hider=Latum Alterum]There is not much for me to comment on here in terms of grammar or structure. What is present could have been easily overlooked as no spell check could have picked it up and even have been missed upon multiple rereadings, but for lack of anything else to focus on it shall be presented. That said: Excellent work. This entry is very nearly technically perfect.

[quote=Paragraph 17]Instead he found ahead of him a vast desert. The sky was an endless dark blue, not a trace of a cloud in sight. The sand shifted endlessly, no form it assumed lasting [u][b]no[/b][/u]longer than a fleeting moment before a dry, desert gust swept it into another shape. The only thing that didn’t change were the few rocky plateaus that dotted the landscape randomly, but Theo knew even they would be weathered away to nothing with time.[/quote]
Grammatically awkward due to repetition of a superfluous word. Easily fixed either by inserting the word 'for' before the second no, or else by replacing the word before after the second no with a comma.

There is also a continuity error in the beginning. Theo is described as running towards a pair of [i]headlights[/i] as they came on ahead of him, but he then immediately drives in the same direction as he had been running without performing a turn. An eldritch feat of maneuvering.

Overall, while there is enough substance here to qualify as a story, and while there is a narrative that can be interpreted, it starts, leads, and goes exactly nowhere. There is a conflict, a mystery - what is Theo running from? Who is the woman? How come Theo does not remember things? Why does he keep transitioning from place to place whenever he seems to die? Who even is Theo? The narrative is good for setting up questions, and while it is not a bad thing for a narrative to leave a reader without answers yours expressly leaves us without even the [i]possibility[/i] of answers for even the most basic of questions. For all the clear care and attention to detail you put into the story, there is a complete absence of anything meaningful at any juncture. The story is pretty on the surface, but ultimately one-dimensional and boring.[/hider][hider=Alternate Dimension][@vesuvius00] Since you were one of the only two posters who had the courage to include their name with their entry, I would like to give you the option of seeing my critique via private PM as opposed to be posted here publicly. Do let me know.[/hider][hider=The Unknown Heroes][@WiseDragonGirl] Since you were one of the only two posters who had the courage to include their name with their entry, I would like to give you the option of seeing my critique via private PM as opposed to be posted here publicly. Do let me know.

[i]I see what you did there.[/i][/hider][hider=Shattered Realities]The most common error is a repetitive failure to capitalize letters at the beginning of sentences, which is curious given how clean the remainder of the text is. It cannot have been on purpose even when read in reverse, since even the the capitalization remains inconsistent. I am at a loss to think of how the rest of the entry can be so finely hewn despite the profundity of such an error.

The reversed order of reading seen herein is a well-performed classic, done neatly and tastefully enough so as not to be trite. The First and final line is, as was intended, of some faintly - if unimpressive - profound quality. However, as a continuity error, it is noted that the author deleted the first cheeky poem in its entirety, and so the only impetus to read the story in the order presented is because that happened to be the order you presented it in, requiring a direction of attention in the form of battering the reader about the head rather than trying to inspire a more natural, curious form of discovery.

Had the entry been one that invited a reversed reading on implication alone, [i]that[/i] would have been profound - and markedly more so than the artificial kind of brilliance you have nailed in your glass case here like some kind of dead insect, with its tidy little label. I would recommend a better selection of muses - the fingers are surely spry enough, though they might develop a better familiarity with yonder shift key or mayhaps capslock.[/hider][hider=The Six Truths]Once again, a nearly pristine entry. I had to comb for these crumbs.

[quote=Paragraph 26]Adrian whispered a prayer and turned her revolver to the door when hooves had changed to footsteps.[/quote]
[i]Technically[/i] correct. Grammatically awkward. The arrangement here should be reversed, "When the hoovebeats had turned to footsteps Adrian turned her revolver to the door and whispered a prayer."

[quote=Paragraph 31]He grunted painfully down each wooden step from the force of impact, rolling in the dirt until he [b][u]lied[/u][/b] on his back with his badge glinting up at the woman’s face above him.[/quote]
Lie here is improper since it implies an active verb, which it is not since it was not volitional. Proper usage would have been lay.

[quote=Paragraph 210]“The bracelet, I know. The eye as well, I assume. It is no matter, I will start over with six new souls[u][b]==> <==[/b][/u]” He sighed. “I really wish you would have worked out better. You were so good at listening, too!”[/quote]
Forgot a period. 

Like other entries in this contest, you have presented the readers with questions that have no answers. However, in this specific context, the answers not being part of the story either emphatically do not matter or else enhance the overall narrative. Why did The Father need six souls? Who knows, not (necessarily) important with him dead and the souls in Heaven. Who is the Watcher really and why did he intervene? We can make guesses, but given the events of the story there is a good chance we will be seeing more of him in a future segue of questionable ontological potential, and the same goes as to the truth of what precisely Adrian is.

If I have any criticism for this story, it would be that Adrian discovering the truth is entirely too straightforward, and is a discovery made alone. The reader themselves already has plenty of reason to [i]strongly[/i] suspect the truth even without the benefit of hindsight, which is telling of the greatest lack in the story. We are not shown Adrian's life up until her first kills. We are not told the surely convincing manipulative efforts of The Father as he raised her. We are not shown how what she saw with the black eye was so convincing. The manner in which Adrian is glamoured, compelled to kill for The Father is one-dimensional. It gets the point of cross but has no deep nuance to it - which is to say, it cannot fool the attentive reader. If you intended for readers to know from the outset that is one thing, but if you had really wanted to go the extra mile and added a layer of extra shine to the story, perhaps what you could have done was write the narrative both so the readers could fully comprehend Adrian's warped point of view and think it reasonable, while littering it with subtle hints only properly revealed explicitly upon review.

If you had done that, I would have been impressed. As the story is, it is merely adequate.[/hider][hider=In-Between-Box]I could not find anything. 

[i]I know who you are.[/i]

I must say though that, for all the build-up and the mystery of the In-Between-Box, I was actually more enticed by the story towards the beginning when it was all still describing the Loch and Lachlan to us. Your visual prose is stunningly, lovingly descriptive. Your portrayal of a young Scottish boy having a grand o' time exploring the Loch had both a profound charm to it while also investing us in the nature and character of the figure. Then you throw him into a featureless dark black room with a Samsung and a [i]literal[/i] metaphysical cliffhanger out of nowhere to polarize the detail and quite frankly astonishing quality that proceeded it. I get that is part of the point of the present contest's theme, but it is nonetheless both disappointing and disheartening.[/hider]

My [@vote] is for The Sixth Truths. Which could have been better, but was nonetheless well-written.