text: Just looking for critique on anything really . The story is by no means finished but I'm finding getting feedback rather difficult. Anything would be gratefull be it structure, naration, bloody grammar ..... anything would be welcome. &#x200B; &#x200B; **Augur** We all have that little voice inside our heads. That running commentary, a play by play of what could be and what could have been. The constant drone that just keeps playing scene after scene, never ending, keeping you awake till the small hours of the morning. Getting up for work the next day after only 3 hours of sleep, feeling exhausted but that little bastard voice just starts right up again. Playing out how shit your day is going to be. How you are so tired you have no idea how you will manage to even get through this day never mind this week, this month, this year, this life.... The incessant replay of that time you were flirting with the girl you’ve been crushing on. Her joking, you laughing, then her silence. The look of shock and utter disgust on her face, some strange green slime totally covering her face and hair. You wondering where the hell this vile shit came from, only then to realise it was you. You laughed so hard trying to impress her, you blew your whole fucking nose worth of snot all over her. You now never leave the house without at least two packs of travel tissues. Forever blowing your nose, people have started calling you Rudolph behind your back. How about the upcoming work appraisal, imagining and reimagining every moment in your head. Telling your boss exactly how much you are undervalued. How you are such an important member of the team, and you are not receiving both the recognition, and the compensation of somebody so vital to the operation. Imagining every possible scenario in your head, creating every argument and counter argument. Seeing exactly how this scene will play out, your boss finally overcome by your reason, admits defeat and agrees to all your terms. You are victorious, supreme, and master of your destiny. While in reality you agree to more work and less pay, furthering your degradation. But every now and then that little voice inside your head gets it right, fills you with hope. That maybe this time things will change, things will be different. You might start living the life you always knew you were meant to live. That maybe you can make a difference, maybe you can *be* the difference. It was at the age of thirteen, lying in bed getting ready to go to sleep when my first vision of what was to come happened. The scene that kept replaying in my head was about my baby brother. He had just started walking, you know what they are like at that age; stumbling around like a drunk who’s been trying their hardest to forget the miserable existence that is the cycle of their waking lives, while they slowly kill themselves with booze. Up steady on their feet one minute, the next thing they are face planting the pavement. Except the pavement for my baby brother was a Boerboel, our guard dog. It stood 72cm high at its shoulders, 92Kgs of pure muscle with a bite force of 800psi it was an absolute monster of a dog. In slow motion time and again watching my baby brother falling face first into this beast of nature, hitting it square in the head. The dog, startling awake, lashing out in defence, biting my baby brother in the head. Red velvet streaks flying across the air, wails of excruciating pain come from what is left of my brother’s head and face. This felt so real, this was going to happen. Running to my mother in floods of tears telling her what my mind’s eye had conjured up, she soothed and hugged me, reassuring me that it was just a nightmare. “Everything is all ok. Look, there is your baby brother right there”. He was stumbling around the living room coffee table, and then in a flash it happened. The exact same scene played out, cut for cut just like it did in my head. It wasn’t the dog’s fault to be fair, it was trained to kill, that was its job, to protect the household. He was just frightened and did what comes naturally to all animals’ instinct of self-protection. That didn’t stop my father taking it out back and shooting it. My brother never fully recovered from the attack. His head permanently looking like a dented in ping pong ball. Brain damaged, paralysed down the right side of his body and missing his left eye. Later on that year a few days before Christmas it was visions of my younger cousin. Her cheeks started becoming mottled red with the capillaries turning a purplish-blue. Her nose transforming into a two tone Blueberry Vanilla ice lolly. Lips turning a blue black as the cyanosis took hold. Tears started to stream out of her bulging eyes. Mouth gagging open and closed but no sound came out. Her hands frantically tearing at her throat. Her father rushing to her side. Grabbing and leaning her over his leg. Pounding her on the back so hard I swore I could hear the vertebrae in her back cracking with every hit. Every year the family spent Christmas day at my grandparents’ house. My mother’s brother and sister would bring their families along, which added up to nine kids running around. It didn’t take long for an opportunity for me to try and warn my younger cousin of her impending doom. Needless to say she ran off crying to her mother screaming that she was going to die. It was during the fallout when it happened. She always had liked the taste of metallic things. Forever sucking on old coins, metal buttons, badges... This time it was a beer twist off cap. The doctor says the serrated edge embedded itself between the back of her throat and the epiglottis. The only way to save her would have been a tracheotomy. None of the family were medically trained and it took the paramedics twenty minutes to get there, so in reality there was no chance of saving her.