Over the River: DJay's review

For reference, Over the River was written by RedRockingHood and can be found here.

RedRockingHood has been a member of the Fear Mythos community for quite some time, though she hasn't written many stories, so when I saw she'd written a short blogpasta, I jumped at the chance to get to review it.

Over the River consists of 15 posts from the perspective of Ash, an abused and jaded son who tries his best to take care of his little sister Crystal. Throughout the first half of the story, Ash details his oppressive life under his abusive mother who takes every opportunity to restrict and belittle her children. The story is kept realistic, with the abuse not going too far to blatantly warrant police intervention though with Ash often talking of wanting to buy a tape recorder to catch his mother saying something particularly questionable. Honestly, I can say from personal experience that that's.. definitely realistic!

But Crystal is clearly where the story's focus shines. She remains quiet, being picked up from school by her older brother every day, getting the brunt of her mother's emotional abuse, saying very little but frequently crying. Throughout the course of the story, she makes a friend (eventually nicknamed "the blue fairy") and starts to progress into various stages of hypothermia, much to her brother's surprise and horror. At the climax of the story, Ash takes Crystal and runs off, hoping to make it through the local woods to their grandmother's house.

From here, the story undergoes a quick descent into its conclusion. The blue fairy finds Crystal and peels her skin off, revealing a wooden girl who reveals strings forcing Ash to continue writing as the two surreal monsters run off into the newly-formed forest snow. Admittedly, when I finished reading this ending, I got goosebumps. This was an altogether unexpected and chilling ending that put the entire story under a far more tragic light. From this, we can see that Crystal had been the one pulling the strings and manipulating Ash from the start, remaining silent until she needed something. Ash would do anything for his little sister, and this was bitterly exploited. This even calls into question the legitimacy of their mother's abuse.

The story had been setting up a focus on the Fear known as The Cold Boy, but it brilliantly subverted it with a reveal of The Wooden Girl, and this is truly commendable. It makes sense thematically, and it provides an excellent reason to read the story a second time. Even ignoring this story's basis in the Fear Mythos, Over the River feels like a classic grim fairy tale, the mental image of a cold blue fairy and a girl made of wood running off into a snowy forest as the abused protagonist types to his death being one that will probably stay fresh in my mind for a while now.

But there's one area where Over the River falls short, and that is that of the subplot of the tape recorder. Throughout the first half of the story, Ash makes a number of mentions of saving up money to purchase a recording device to catch his mother in the act of verbal abuse. Shortly before the climax, Ash posts a link to an audio recording of his mother (voiced by tgecko). Now, this was set up very well, and there being only one recording was perfect considering the story's short length. But the actual recording left a lot to be desired. The dialogue was fairly tame, almost something I'd expect even a functional mother to say in anger, and since by this point in the story the focus was more and more on Crystal and the blue fairy, to be pulled out of that to hear a bit of a tame (though well acted on tgecko's part) audio sequence that was supposed to serve as the conclusion to a significant subplot is.. well, it didn't feel effective.

Finally, on the matter of the blog's appearance, RedRockingHood certainly picked an appropriate and simple design. The background is that of a snowy forest, which seems simply aesthetically pleasing at first but is, of course, definitely an appropriate background to see as the story progresses. But the blog's gadgets (the Blog Archive and the About Me boxes) take up so much of the space that the actual posts feel squished. This isn't a serious problem or anything, but I feel like it made the reading experience a little more annoying.

So Over the River is a short and very effective horror story, appropriate in many aspects. It has a few lesser points to the delivery and the layout, but the story stands so well on its own and the ending leaves such an impression that these can be easily forgiven.

RedRockingHood really outdid herself.