Exercise #21: DOOMed

[Creole Ned]

The idea for Exercise 21 came to me after seeing the title of a short story.

Exercise 21: DOOMed

Write a story using one of the level names from Doom or Doom II. Note that the story does not have to be related to the Doom games at all, it merely has to use one of the level names as a title. Due Monday, July 13th. <-- new date

Trivia: Except for "Fear" all of the titles for Doom's 4th episode (E4M1-E4M8) are phrases taken from the Bible.

Alternate exercise: Complete an original short story of your choosing.

Entries:
The Slough of Despair (http://rimbosity.com/img/slough.pdf) - Rimbo
Perfect Hatred (http://creolened.com/fiction/perfect_hatred.pdf) - russellmz

The level names are:

Doom:

* E1M1: Hangar
* E1M2: Nuclear Plant
* E1M3: Toxin Refinery
* E1M4: Command Control
* E1M5: Phobos Lab
* E1M6: Central Processing
* E1M7: Computer Station
* E1M8: Phobos Anomaly
* E1M9: Military Base
* E2M1: Deimos Anomaly
* E2M2: Containment Area
* E2M3: Refinery
* E2M4: Deimos Lab
* E2M5: Command Center
* E2M6: Halls of the Damned
* E2M7: Spawning Vats
* E2M8: Tower of Babel
* E2M9: Fortress of Mystery
* E3M1: Hell Keep
* E3M2: Slough of Despair
* E3M3: Pandemonium
* E3M4: House of Pain
* E3M5: Unholy Cathedral
* E3M6: Mt. Erebus
* E3M7: Limbo
* E3M8: Dis
* E3M9: Warrens
* E4M1: Hell Beneath
* E4M2: Perfect Hatred
* E4M3: Sever the Wicked
* E4M4: Unruly Evil
* E4M5: They Will Repent
* E4M6: Against Thee Wickedly
* E4M7: And Hell Followed
* E4M8: Unto the Cruel
* E4M9: Fear

Doom II:

* Level 1: Entryway
* Level 2: Underhalls
* Level 3: The Gantlet
* Level 4: The Focus
* Level 5: The Waste Tunnels
* Level 6: The Crusher
* Level 7: Dead Simple
* Level 8: Tricks and Traps
* Level 9: The Pit
* Level 10: Refueling Base
* Level 11: 'O' of Destruction!
* Level 12: The Factory
* Level 13: Downtown
* Level 14: The Inmost Dens
* Level 15: Industrial Zone
* Level 16: Suburbs
* Level 17: Tenements
* Level 18: The Courtyard
* Level 19: The Citadel
* Level 20: Gotcha!
* Level 21: Nirvana
* Level 22: The Catacombs
* Level 23: Barrels o' Fun
* Level 24: The Chasm
* Level 25: Bloodfalls
* Level 26: The Abandoned Mines
* Level 27: Monster Condo
* Level 28: The Spirit World
* Level 29: The Living End
* Level 30: Icon of Sin
* Level 31: Wolfenstein
* Level 32: Grosse

[Creole Ned]

I am extending the deadline for this by two weeks, to July 13th. Yes, four stinkin' weeks. Here's hoping it prompts something. Anything. :P

Original post updated.

[Rimbo]

The Slough of Despair (http://rimbosity.com/img/slough.pdf)

As mentioned on QT3, this can be viewed as the response not only to this exercise, but also #20 and #16. :)

[Creole Ned]

Good title choice. I will offer me feedback soon. :)

[Rimbo]

Warning... this story may be a good idea spoiled by some bad writing. It probably is worth a 2nd draft. Of course... I'm the type of writer who never does such things. :P

[russellmz]

heh, this story reminds me of that qt3 thread where we were arguing about humanity's survival chances if 99.99% were killed off. you were one of the ones with a more bleak outlook and i was one of the optimists. (putting seeds into the ground isn't that hard! 100% fatality rates are unrealistic at our current level of knowledge and the abundant supplies still remaining after the magic superflu!)

that's fucked up rimbo. i liked it. the fates of the singers seemed like a realistic reaction. i don't get how they knew the songs though.

maybe needs to have the trill's point of view as it meets it's end, since we were with it when it lost control the other times.

why is the leader called a mayor-lieutenant instead of plain mayor? is it an old thymey title?

[Rimbo]

Thanks, russelmz! I glad you liked it. I love getting feedback like that. :)

This is what happens when you are recovering from surgery and using serious prescription medication to kill germs and pain. A certain Bill Hicks line comes to mind... In retrospect it seems to me that this may be a kind of twisted parable based VERY VERY loosely on events and (somewhat less loosely) on emotions I've felt while being far too involved with my HOA over the past couple of years. But mostly, drugs. Very powerful prescription drugs.

The leader is mayor-lieutenant, because the Trill is the real mayor/leader/god.

The songs themselves are essentially corrupted versions of Psalms 118 (but with the right idea). It's a popular Psalm, and one that even 19th-century villagers would've been familiar with. The unstated assumption is that some kind of God exists, or else the song would've just been a song, and that He intervened to some extent by keeping the predominant religious beliefs of the village alive through the centuries and generations.

We don't hear the Trill's thoughts on the 3rd day because at the point where I would describe its reaction, it is already dead. Scissors cut through a stem VERY quickly, and there's no time for it to know what is happening before it's all over. I tried to give the impression that it just lives moment-to-moment. While it's a product of evil deeds and its actions are certainly what we would consider harmful to the people of Columbus, it's not something that can choose to act differently.

[Creole Ned]

I'll have my own entry for this exercise and will offer feedback on Rimbo's story once mine is completed.

[Creole Ned]

russell has his entry in: Perfect Hatred (http://creolened.com/fiction/perfect_hatred.pdf)

[Paladin]

I have a couple of pages done, but it's not ready to hand in yet. Hopefully by tomorrow night.

[Creole Ned]

I think I am in an official writing funk again. Bad Ned. :(

I will offer feedback to the submitted stories in the next day or so. Exercise #22 will be posted before the end of the week.

[Rimbo]

all righty russelmz00

Not only did I finish reading, but I took notes as I read.

The executive summary is: First off, this is a top-rate mystery. You did a good job of laying out the evidence first, throwing in some plausible red herrings (including one you never really explicitly mention) and making sure the results tied from the evidence. I also did some googling on your facts and they all checked out, at least on a Wikipedia level, which is really cool; it's nice to read an author who actually knows what he's talking about. :)

I also see you trying some things with sentence structure. I'd like to encourage you to keep experimenting, because it works really well in some cases, so don't get discouraged as I go through and point out areas where it didn't work so well for me. :)

OK, at the beginning when they first walk through the back door: Short sentences are good for building up tension, but if they're used too often they lose their effect and can wear out the reader. The paragraph with them walking through the back door also isn't a particularly tense moment. So here, rather than a bunch of short, choppy sentences, tie them together with conjunctions and semicolons to break up the pace. The short choppy sentences in the paragraph before this one works well. Cleaning up this paragraph will emphasize that one, and also help improve the impact of the shorter sentences in the one that follows.

You do a great job of establishing right from the get-go that this is a military operation (for someone unfamiliar with your writing) with details such as MPs, the Hummer, etc.

Shari 144? How gross. I realized, "Oh yeah, the clone universe thingy" the second time I read her name.

OK, the first sentence fragment that I had problems with was when you were naming off the Mills clones. I thought "1942" was referring to the year; "Mills 1942" and the presence of a verb would be good here.

Novichok is worth a little informative footnote. Heck, a brief glossary or footnotes for some of the military terms (e.g. CID, Battle Dress Uniform) could use footnotes for any civilians who might be reading this (e.g. yours truly).

The bad reviews and impending retirement of the 3rd clone is added to her introduction and gives her both motive to murder and motive not to murder, something that isn't done in the introductions for the first two. It needs to be mentioned, but if you're going to mention something like this in her intro, you should give a similar pair of conflicting motives for the other two in their introductions, too. Otherwise, I feel it should be revealed as part of the investigation, as part of the misdirection that begins there. I feel like a mystery should start with an even playing field and move from there. This is really a structural issue more than anything.

I love the dead boss' "clone porn" thing. It really gives the impression of a last-rate, unwanted duty. It also foreshadows the potential boss-employee relationships... and a great red herring that (in my mind, at least) suggests that all 3 may have conspired.

I love the added details in the lockers. I also found myself trying to find this section again as I read other parts of the mystery. Here's a random thought -- maybe do your readers a favor and indent and bullet-point this section, so that they can go back and reference it as they read through the mystery?

I like the "like to interview together" paragraph; it shows knowledge of interrogation techniques without going out and bluntly saying "good cop/bad cop." I also like how this is demonstrated by actions throughout the story. Really well done!

"Clone or twin prints might be similar, but still unique." I didn't know that...fascinating stuff.

About halfway through the story, I was convinced that the 3 girls had conspired together. Based on the pr0n on the guy's computer and the fact that he had effectively 3 hawt clones together, his anger at 1771's tattoo and the makeup (to hide it), and finally the agreement in all of their stories, it seemed to me that they all had been hit on by the scummy boss, maybe he'd abused his position to get into some multiple-clone fantasies, and they'd all banded together. I stuck to my conclusions pretty much until the narrator dropped the line about warning the two "innocents" near the end. Then I read back through and realized, "Oh, that theory didn't quite fit the evidence after all." Which is a GOOD thing. :)

Top of p.5... That first little sentence fragment should really be a real, live sentence.

"Back to 883 again" This time, the pacing of a fragment works really well.

We're getting just short snippets of the interviews but it's also seeming like the interviews themselves are short; some quick mention of the passage of time would help show that this is taking alllllll day (e.g. "1630 hrs" for one interview, then "1815 hours" for the next). And some hints suggesting the increasing exhaustion (yawns, coffee, etc) would be nice.

"1942 never realized 'every Mills clones always carries a knife' would never be accepted by any court, even a military one, as evidence." This is a hell of a bluff that the narrator pulled off. I'd give it a bigger mention than just to bury it in the middle of a paragraph :)

I love the detail given by the last sentence, but ugh, the structure and flow of it is horrid. I'm guessing you were getting tired at this point and wanted to wrap things up, but that information deserves better. And just as a rule, you should never, ever end a story weak. Also, there's a little thing called attorney-client privilege that makes having this be a rumor particularly weak. Let's leave no doubt. If I were writing that last paragraph, I'd do something like this:

1942 fired her attorney on the spot when he attempted to raise the issue of 1771's and 883's relationship in court. She represented herself the rest of the way.

She got the needle.

Anyway.... COOOOOOL STORY. I love mysteries!

[Creole Ned]

Feedback, finally.

Rimbo:
The Slough of Despair, as mentioned above, is a great title. This story reminded me a bit of some of the original Twilight Zone episodes where a community is bound together by some invariably evil belief/spell or charismatic leader. Obviously a dark trill can't be too charismatic but it has the whole evil spell thing covered nicely.

I like how the daily routine of the villagers alters a little more each day as their world gets pulled apart piece by piece by the expanding chorus of voices singing the hymns. I agree with russell on the appropriateness of the responsible family being turned on by the others. A confused mob is not a happy mob.

While it is perhaps not necessary to reveal how or why the hymns came to be sung and the Trill's spell broken, it might be nice if there was some kind of hint to at least suggest why things were suddenly changing after 200 years.

The main criticism I'd level at this story is that it very much reads like a first draft. There are a couple of clunky phrases and word choices that don't quite click.

Here you've used "both" to describe three things:
The action is both perfunctory, regular and superfluous.

The paragraph describing how Columbus is 200 years old yet never changes is a bit muddled -- while I understood what was being said just by the context, it almost reads as if Columbus is both suspended in time and yet not.

This is awkward:
During the harvest, meat is salted and slaughtered for the Winter.

Maybe instead:
During the harvest, animals are slaughtered and their meat is salted for the Winter.

I won't nitpick anymore than that. This is stuff that is easily fixed through a second draft or a mean editor with a blue pen. :)

Overall, this story is a good illustration of how a doped-up hospital visit can yield fruit beyond an unwanted organ bobbing in a jar of fluid. Thumbs up!

russell:
Just read Rimbo's feedback again. He nailed pretty much everything I'd have said and did so better because I suck at figuring out murder mysteries. My brain just doesn't grok the style at all. I'm more likely to read and not absorb any of the clues or details then go back and re-read the relevant bits that make me go "A-ha!"

This is mostly going to be "what Rimbo said" but nonetheless...

Some of the military abbreviations are common enough that they need no explanation but a few could probably be written out full the first time then abbreviated afterward (eg. CID).

Minor nitpick: Right near the beginning you write "If it was a murder, that limited the suspects" but the same paragraph otherwise make it clear that it is a murder, so I'd rewrite the line to say as much.

You may want to better indicate how the security cam is hanging in relation to the overhang as my first thought on re-reading was the camera could have caught 1942 tossing the murder weapon up there depending on which way the camera faced.

Like Rimbo, I think the name 1942 may initially confuse as it looks like a year and given that the story is set against the backdrop of war and the year 1942 is a war year, it can start the reader off on a tangent that is interesting but probably confusing. Maybe the effect is intentional, though!

I would probably change references to "Internet search" to something that sounds a bit more official. Imagining the investigators sitting at a browser and typing keywords on the Google site doesn't quite convey the image of seasoned professionals I'd expect (or maybe the problem is mine, since that's what I see, even if that wasn't your intent). Perhaps make a reference to tapping into the government or military's online research/database.

Structurally the one thing that didn't scan well for me was the use of "____ said". There's a kind of unspoken rule to use the word "said" as little as possible when writing dialogue and I think it's a good one but if you do use it, I think it reads much better to do the reverse and write is as "said ____". Quick example:

Shari said, "Worst case I ever did had 5 Carrera clone suspects."

becomes:

"Worst case I ever did had 5 Carrera clone suspects," said Shari.

It's small but for me it makes "said" blend in better.

I'm not going to offer a real critique on the plot or its details as such because Rimbo covered it and I'm terrible with mysteries to the point I'm not sure my feedback would be that useful.

I do like the details of military life presented in an effortless manner and how the character of Fawkes comes to life through the story even though he starts out dead. Again I think you do a good job of presenting another piece of this future world you've created, showing flexibility in taking the setting off the battlefield and bringing it into an entirely different genre.

Also, again with Rimbo, he nailed the ending. If you keep the last paragraph, you absolutely must end it with the line about the needle. The way it's written currently almost feels like there is supposed to be something more that's missing.

My apologies for the feedback being a bit scattered and vague. I'm not a murder mystery kind of guy but I still recognize that you did some good work here. I could quibble more about word choices and phrasing here and there but for now I'll just say this was a good read.

[Kael]

Rimbo,

I really like your style, your sentence level writing is excellent. Thats a nice short story and definitely worth a 2nd draft. If I have to be critical I would say that the death of the Trill comes to suddenly. After setting up the environment so well finding out the Trill has been killed seems like to significant a point to have skipped.

[russellmz]

thanks for the kind remarks and feedback! it was very helpful.

rimbo, i've stolen your version of the ending and ended with the needle line.

Novichok is worth a little informative footnote. Heck, a brief glossary or footnotes for some of the military terms (e.g. CID, Battle Dress Uniform) could use footnotes for any civilians who might be reading this (e.g. yours truly).

i needed the name of a nerve gas and newcomer sounded cool when i saw it on wiki so i added that. newcomer is sort of neat in a scary way but i don't know if the reader really needs to know its history. a little breadcrumb for someone who gets the namedrop.

how unknown is mre? bdu i replaced with battle dress uniform since i only used the abbreviation once.

CID stands for...
USACIDC, which stands for...
United States Army Criminal Investigation Command

i left it out since the acronym is both mismatched and long.


About halfway through the story, I was convinced that the 3 girls had conspired together. Based on the pr0n on the guy's computer and the fact that he had effectively 3 hawt clones together, his anger at 1771's tattoo and the makeup (to hide it), and finally the agreement in all of their stories, it seemed to me that they all had been hit on by the scummy boss, maybe he'd abused his position to get into some multiple-clone fantasies, and they'd all banded together. I stuck to my conclusions pretty much until the narrator dropped the line about warning the two "innocents" near the end. Then I read back through and realized, "Oh, that theory didn't quite fit the evidence after all." Which is a GOOD thing.


funny thing, i was thinking about whether to add dialogue explaining why all of them didn't do it but decided that, "no one's going to care after the detective explains his solution" and left it out. i decided to add a couple lines in there about how if they planned it they wouldn't have done it at their workplace(making them the prime suspects), they would have done it in a civilian area and then alibi'ed for each other about an all night parcheesi game.


fixed the sentence fragment. and in fact, i did flick through historical event years and added 2 or 3 to get semi random numbers. i'll probably switch 1942's name.


I like the "like to interview together" paragraph; it shows knowledge of interrogation techniques without going out and bluntly saying "good cop/bad cop." I also like how this is demonstrated by actions throughout the story. Really well done!


it's like the only interrogation technique i know. everything else i was channeling law and order, homicide, and the wire.


The executive summary is: First off, this is a top-rate mystery. You did a good job of laying out the evidence first, throwing in some plausible red herrings (including one you never really explicitly mention) and making sure the results tied from the evidence. I also did some googling on your facts and they all checked out, at least on a Wikipedia level, which is really cool; it's nice to read an author who actually knows what he's talking about.

I'm not a murder mystery kind of guy but I still recognize that you did some good work here.

thanks again for the feedback guys. it made me happy :)

i'm glad my investment in all those mammoth book of ______ whodunits/impossible crimes/locked room mysteries paid off.



I would probably change references to "Internet search" to something that sounds a bit more official. Imagining the investigators sitting at a browser and typing keywords on the Google site doesn't quite convey the image of seasoned professionals I'd expect (or maybe the problem is mine, since that's what I see, even if that wasn't your intent). Perhaps make a reference to tapping into the government or military's online research/database.


i also fixed the saids and reduced their number.

[Rimbo]

I'm not opposed to a large number of "saids." I think the greater crime is for the reader to have trouble figuring out who said what.

Thanks for the feedback, Ned. It WAS very much a first draft; I wrote it when I was very tired, and I despise going back through things after the fact. I'm having a lot of trouble with the novel I've been working on for this very reason; I wrote a draft intending for it to be just a draft, and now can't figure out how I'm going to turn it into something that makes sense.

Actually, pretty much everything I've submitted so far has been a first draft. I just wasn't nearly as tired when I worked on the others as I was on this one.

[Rimbo]

but shit, I guess this one is going to get a second draft. first time for everything, eh?

[Creole Ned]

It's better to use a "said" if the reader would otherwise be confused about who is speaking, I agree, but I still prefer to use the word sparingly. My main point was frontloading them makes them stand out more conspicuously, at least to my eye.

Pretty much everything I submit for exercises is first draft material. When I finish the draft I'll read it over and fix any obvious errors I can find and maybe nip and tuck a sentence or two but what gets put down on the first pass is pretty much what stays. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing with my writing, to be honest. I don't like rewriting my stories so I do make an effort to get things as close to "right" on my initial take. The feedback on the exercises is helping me to see how much work I may need to put into revisions.

I just need to start submitting again.

[Rimbo]

OK, I just re-did it. My concern is, of course, that I wrecked the rhythm or tone of the piece over the original... but let me know if it resolves some of the issues raised.

[Creole Ned]

Same link? I will have a look on the 'morrow when I am fresh as the proverbial daisy.

[Rimbo]

Same link.

[Creole Ned]

The rewrite clarifies (for me, at least) that the people and not just the town itself are caught out of time, that there are no continuing generations held in thrall to the Dark Trill, just enough bred to replace those lost each season.

Overall, the revisions add more polish to the story, so thumbs up. You've addressed the question of the hymn without explaining it and I think that's fine. There seems to be some deliberate re-use of exact phrases that I am not sure happened in the original version and I'm undecided on the effect. But just the clean-up has improved the story without altering its tone at all. Second drafts -- not evil! :)

[Rimbo]

Yaaay! Thanks.

[Arioch]

Halls of the Damned

"Hey. Hey! Pill Time."

Gordie's voice brought me back to reality. I looked around, not entirely sure where I was. That happened more and more often these days. Gordie threw me a concerned look across the table, his bearded face fraught with pity. He knew what was happening to me.

I looked at the miniature plastic cup the nurse had placed in front of me. Two reds one blue, my daily dosage. They would make me sleep, make the terrible memories go away for another day. Were it really memories, though? I wasn't sure anymore.

Gordie swallowed his pills, and I did the same. He wasn't here as long as I was, but sometimes I thought that he was way worse off. He was very quiet, had an intense fear of men in suits and, as he had told me a few weeks ago, felt always naked, despite the white hospital gowns all of us were wearing.

I looked down, ignoring the near-permanent silence between us, and saw once again my fingers digging into the table leg. We had no cigarettes here, and the urge to hold something in my hands was overpowering. I knew Gordie felt the same. We all did. The doctors said we were all here because of a rare mental disorder. I was here because I have seen hell.

6 p.m. Dinner time. I swapped my cheese for Gordies salami and was just squishing the packet of ersatz butter onto my bun when Max sat down with us. He was different than most patients here: You could go for hours without anyone saying a word, but Max was talking almost non-stop. He had a menacing aura, too, and we all knew why: Max was the only one of us who really killed somebody. My dreadful journey from Mars to hell was just a delusion, Gordies bizarre story of aliens, secret government labs and conspiracies was less grounded in reality than an X-Files episode, but Max really had shot dozens of people, hopped up to the gills with painkillers. I never knew why he was here with us and not on the electric chair. Sometimes I wished I would be fried myself. At least then the nightmares would stop.

Max was talking again in his convoluted way, about his wife, his daughter, the conspiracy. All bullshit, of course. But no one here admitted that their stories weren't true, and maybe they didn't know it better. Even if there had been a colony on mars, my story would sound far-fetched. The lone hero fighting off the legions of hell? At least I wasn't as far out as Garner, who thought of himself as being on a mission for the Lord. I had asked him: His hell looked totally different from mine.

9 p.m. Bed time. I waved Gordie good night and went to my room. I washed my face in the flush-mounted basin - there was taken much care so that not one us would get his hands on any kind of weapon. We were all potentially suicidal, and since Doug Nugent somehow succeeded in suffocating himself with rolled up toilet paper, there wasn't even that anymore, just an extra-installed bidet. Doug was a bigmouthed asshole, but sometimes I missed his dry demeanor and his cheesy oneliners.

I laid down in bed and turned off the light. And before I fell asleep, I wished I was back in hell again.

[Creole Ned]

Holy necro!

Will read and offer feedback soon, Arioch. This is...unexpected, but in a good way. :)

[Creole Ned]

Arioch:

An interesting and clever vignette, mostly in how you took the theme of the exercise -- a story based on a level name from Doom -- and integrated it literally into the story but then stepped back and made it the delusion of the protagonist.

There are some terrific little details, like the urge to hold something. I am reminded again of one of your great strengths as a writer: the effortless way you are able to slip into the mind of a character. You draw the reader in immediately and the voice of the character never wavers.

A few quibbles: if items like toilet paper had been taken away due to safety concerns, it seems unlikely the patients would be allowed to use plastic butter knives. 'Rare mental disorder' might read better than 'rare psychic disorder' as the word psychic suggests having the ability to read minds or see the future, instead of just being crazy (unless that is the implied but unspoken 'twist' to the story).

Good stuff overall. Here's hoping you write more!

[Arioch]

Thanks for the feedback, Ned. Will read the other two stories soon and offer what I can give.

It's interesting that you speak of the headline, as I was just about to stealthily edit it into "And Hell followed". But I will definitely work on the mentioned quibbles.

"Here's hoping you write more!"

Yeah, me too!

[Arioch]

I am horrible at giving feedback on writing, most has been already said and I don't even know if Rimbo and Russel still check this forum. That said:

Russel: I was pleasantly surprised to find a classical whodunit mixed with your clones vs zombies universe, and I am in awe of the tenacity you show in building this world. It fit well, too, although I had trouble remembering which number had which motive, was where, etc. - but that comes with clone territory, I guess. As Rimbo, I thought it was all three of them, but was pleasantly surprised that you managed to avoid a contrived twist endig (which you theoretically made possible by not naming "the two innocent clones" explicitly). I had trouble figuring out the significance of the make up, was it a red herring? The only other thing is a pet peeve of mine - I get really irritated by unnamed first person narrators.

I liked the military jargon and abbreviations, although I didn't get all of it - but in my opinion by not explaining any of it you create a more compelling, more real world, without giving me the feeling of being led around by the hand.

Rimbo: Your story had to me a very lovecraftian feel, especially reminding me of his non-mythos stuff. I liked the passing mention of the origin of the Trill, and I always find the use of religion in stories interesting.

What the hell is a Trill, anyway?

"a blossom which no bee or hummingbird shall ever visit. In fact, the entire area is free of all insects"

I think the hummingbird should either come first or be excised, since it doesn't really gel with the next sentence.

"It began one morning. The sun rose again. It was a morning like any other. "

This is the only part I really don't like. The first sentence is thoroughly undescriptive and superfluous, the second one should be taken as granted and the third one is a blatant lie, as it clearly wasn't (since the boy starts singing "in the thickness of the morning"). Maybe a simple "One day, the mayor-lieutenant..." would suffice.