It's incredible. Disturbing, but you captured raw emotion in a way that few authors can ever hope to do.

Holy shoot, that's intense. I don't usually go for horror, but this is captivating. It's starts out a normal college story, and then descends into something dark and twisted and wonderful A picture speaks a thousand words, and apparently it can also steal your soul, or part of it anyway. (It's a pity Cynthia never got a chance to, I don't know, break Jon's window; maybe that could've saved him. Very emotional at that part; I got all teared up.) I like your characterization, especially. Zachary was delightfully, ambiguously creepy (which is, of course the best kind) and Cynthia was someone that it was easy for me to relate to. And you handled suspense very well; the reader gets cold, and the air seems to get thick until one feels like one could reach out and poke it. Great job!

(As an aside, my copy of "The God Eaters" arrived last week. I haven't finished it yet, but thought you should know I think it's excellent so far.)

This story was truly exceptional. At different points, it made me think, question my own personality and motivations, question the truthfulness of any human social interaction, and question the truthfulness of anything, period. "Normality is counterfeit"- is it really? Who's to say? Perhaps things are made valid and meaningful simply because of their importance to us, divorced from logic. After all, even if everything we do and say to eachother is fake, ultimately everything is objective, too. There's no ultimate standard to go by. It's impossible to say that something is 'truly' fake or stupid, because there is no 'truth'. Everything means something to some one out there.

Ok, my little thinking-outloud type monologue is over and I apologize. I really got distracted by my own thought processes (which your story inspired, so again, props to you!). But actually, I did have a question: Sorry if this takes away from the mystery and tone of the story, but I am a bit confused. Zachary took emotions from people and embodied them in his paintings, yes? So, he took sorrow from Jon and anger from Cynthia. But Jon was overwhelmed by sorrow *after* Zachary painted him, yet Cynthia felt her anger rushing *back* into her from her painting after she broke it. So the emotion was enhanced in Jon but stolen from Cynthia??

I have to say, this was an intensely creepy read. You've left it open enough for readers to speculate their own ending and opinions, but in the end I know enough to understand.

A little.

Enough.

The boy Zachary was very intruiging, and very well-written and developed. Simply amazing.

I believe that Cynthia killed him, or...a part of her did at least.

I have nothing to say other than that this is absolutely brilliant. Horror is rarely done well but this was done exceedingly well. I'm still shivering after reading it. Thank you for posting such an amazing story.

Favorited.
This is beautiful, creepy, terrifying, and absolute GENIUS. Your characters are amazingly 3-dimensional, and their emotions are terrifying and so tragically real. I could almost feel the anger in the painting Zachary did of Cynthia. He really was a monster, and he was too much of one to see it... The idea of the stain-glass windows holding the emotions was really disturbing, in the most wonderful way, and you pulled it off beautifully. Thank you for putting this up for us to read. :)

WOOHO!! YEA! Sorry, it was really interesting! Thank you for writing it! WOOT

You really write amazingly when it's from this perspective. Not that your other stuff is bad, but this is a level clearly above, say, The God Eaters. You seem to have a tendency to make characters larger than life or overly powerful or just plain awesome, which is fine, but when you don't do it, like in here, your writing improves tenfold. All the characters are human with lovely flaws (Cynthia is so cold, Zarchary is damaged, Miranda and Jon are a mess) and yet the reader doesn't hate them. They don't need sarcasm and witty catchphrases and pop-culture references (which are fun to read, don't get me wrong, I love sarcasm, but you risk overdoing in other works, like The God Eaters, and to a lesser extent, Metanoia) to be memorable, powerful and moving. This is probably my favorite story of yours. I hope the illustrated version gets finished, some day; I love watercolors.

Sweet fricking zombie Jesus. This story is absolutely amazing. It almost made me cry, which is an almost impossible feat.

You write amazingly well. The prose flows easily, and I found no grammatical errors whatsoever. You ought to send some of your stuff to a publisher. If anything got published, I'd buy it.