Short but vivid. I like it :-)
The theme reminds me somewhat of the Terry Pratchet book "Guards! Guards!" which was dedicated to "They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men."
Some great historical opening paragraphs:
“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary.”
“The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.”
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is in Southern California, and that is where he is going to stay, unless something really weird happens. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest.”
“Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.”
“The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime and commercial world, the fact is that a thing, a something, a moving object, was sighted by many ships—an object which moved with such speed and in such a way that it defied all hitherto known laws of mechanics.”
“I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.”
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
These openings excel because they establish tone, introduce compelling characters or mysteries, and hint at the thrilling journeys ahead.
Keep going! I was never any good at short stories in HS and college. It was always an intense labor with little to show for it.
I was expecting a little more John Wick with your henchmen all getting shot in the head by some obscure boogyman who lost his dog.
The Henchmen were a South Jersey bike gang in the 1970s. I knew some of those guys and always got along with them.
I liked the opening, led me down the path of learning about the character, and wanting to know more about the time and place the story was occurring in.
Great job.
As long as you don’t chew gum in line..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcokL59jeqU
Unless you brought enough for everybody.
Another technical writer here. Once a decade or so, I’ll write an excellent, fast-paced short story. Here’s one:
https://lite.evernote.com/note/7e459d75-22fc-8671-ff5c-a49682321240
Ok. This is going to be brutal. However, you and I are dear friends, so you know this is intended not to bring you down, but to build you up.
Below 70 IQ: "Us henchmen get killed off all the time..."In any of those cases, proper punctuation is required, even when speaking in a character's voice. Example: "Us henchmen get killed off all the time and nobody really notices, let alone cares." Only use improper punctuation if it makes a plot point (as in the example of a treasure map) lest you -- the author, look illiterate.
70-100 IQ:"We henchmen get killed all the time...
100+ IQ:"We henchmen are expendable...."
I have much more to offer, but this is a good start. Let me know if this is too brutal, or the honest feedback that will improve you as a writer. 😊
If I have time, later, I may be giving out as many as ten to twelve more pointers. Some of these may appear picky, but failure to follow some of these guidelines makes for a jarring, distracting read.
Now, one “must be precise” about one’s role before serving as a Henchman. A Minion. The Sidekick. (Qualifications for a Comedic Sidekick are different.) And, highest of all, The Evil Assistant.
(Ref: John Moore, Heroics For Beginnners, pg 182.)
The best example I have seen of the role of Henchmen was when the Penguin tricked his way into the Batcave in Batman 1966, and he reconstituted his dehydrated Henchmen using the special water Batman stored in his atomic pile.
They were chemically unstable, and just popped into nothingness. They were the only ones to lose their lives in the movie. Poor henchmen.