The Unsightly Treatment of One, Benjamin Schatz.

Wow. I never would have imagined so much content could be packed into so few words. But this doesn't make the story too intense (although I'm not saying that it isn't), or too brief.

From the very first page you're thrown into the deep end, and I LOVE this. Well, from the name of the competition, it doesn't seem like you had much room to manoeuvre any way. And your choice of words was excellent. Their lilting creepiness really contributed to the flow of the story. And as for the italics, they helped me to work out which part of the story I was in, so thumbs up for that.

The one thing I thought could have been better was the bit about the End Codex. I agree with jster02 on how the description was a bit "lackluster". And maybe this was intentionally left out to add to the mystery of this story, but it seemed a little odd how Kauffman (apologies if I spelt that wrong) obtained the Codex. Maybe it would have made a bit more sense if she was part of a secret rebellion, or something, and was trying to defeat the system from the inside out.

But apart from that, this story was perfect! There was little enough info to have you guessing at what happened for days after. It was way better than anything I could ever write, and your other stories have now been moved right to the top of my 'to read' list. Great story!

This was a really interesting story, and one that demands time in thought about it way out of proportion to the amount of words. The narrative is often (intentionally) vague, and leans really heavily on wildly-swinging emotional beats. The timing of the story is totally perplexing, to the point where I wondered for a moment if the story got mostly accidentally italicized by accident, but it creates an offpointing, time-is-out-of-joint effect that I think works well here. I read it thinking--wait, *when* am I?--and anything that creates that sort of uneasy, dislocated effect is already halfway to getting reader buy in for such a creepy story.

Do I know exactly what happened here? Not...really. I read this a few times with a month between then and came up with a rather different interpretation each time. This is Good.

And it is creepy, and poetic. It's got some purple prose, especially at the start, but it didn't bother me, because it was well done, and it knew when to end. Yes, it doesn't have much branching or super intense cave of timing or anything like that. But there's enough for what is after all a mini-story. And the atmosophere has been nailed. It didn't need any more words. This is the right number of words for this story.

My internal scales are obviously wholly out of whack because of many of the stories I've seen around here lately, but when I see a story that is well written, you know, with things spelled right and punctuation used effectively, I want to rave about it ever before I read it. Add a decent story onto that, and I'm sold.

Excellent work here, you managed to pack quite a lot into less than 3000 words. This feels like a snapshot of a greater story. There are some things that go unexplained, but that's okay because they didn't really need to be. The main point of the story still shines through clearly without having to explain absolutely everything. If anything, this added to the story, as trying to piece everything together while reading is half the fun.

I only have two small gripes. The first is that it took me awhile to figure out whether the italicized text was a flashback, a hallucination, or something else entirely. I'm not saying you should've stated the fact that it was a flashback outright, but it might have made a little more sense to put those scenes in the past tense as opposed to the present. The second is that the scene where the protagonist opens the end codex feels a little lackluster. You just kinda told us that all the knowledge in the world got poured into him, without really going into what that would actually feel like. I imagine it wouldn't exactly have been pleasant, to say the least.

But aside from that, this was a great story. If I could give you a round of applause over the internet, I would, but for the time being I guess my words alone will have to suffice.

Great story told with a conciseness of words that make it difficult to be so good. Characterization is sparse, but sufficient for the needs of the story. I only noticed two weird word choices/minor misspellings.

As mentioned by others the confusion and disorientation caused by the time jumps helps build a rapport with Schatz, which I think is critical for the success of the story. There are questions aplenty that are unanswered, although the one that jumps out at me most is why the End Codex would have been where it was found.

This proves to me that length doesn't necessarily correlate to quality. Brilliant work and an efficient usage of words. "Innocuous outside, homey inside." Might be my favourite description.
And the ending? It just works, leaving me with an empty feeling afterwards. Good work, good work.

I liked how vivid the imagery is in this story. The choices were a bit limited though

this was really well written and enjoyable, would recommend

Incredibly interesting for a short story. Fascinating concept. Wish there was a way to get a little more information, but what's here is more than enough to really make you think.

Reminds me a lot of Captured! by tsmpaul.

This accomplishes one of the best things you can get out of a story, which is to get a reader involved enough to wonder about it, and contemplate before clicking a choice. At the end of it, the mystery of the end codex and what kind of organization is involved here still lingers in my mind. Kudos for a lovely short story.