A lot of my criticisms from Spec's page apply here, because this is very similar to that one — though, that's not exactly your fault since it was you who wrote this first… But you should give my review of that one a read. You did develop some things — like the mental health angle with Kat (to an extent) and the meeting itself better.
“How could she have survived a fall that high?! Unscathed?” another shouted. With confusion, Kat felt around her body inspecting for any injuries whatsoever. Unbelievably, she had not even a scratch present on her. Suddenly, Overseer A burst from within the crowd ran forward towards Kat. Without even saying a word, he descended onto his knees and hugged her tightly. Kat froze.
Unscathed?? You kind of forgot about the stab wounds. Are they just healed? Was she bleeding earlier while suspended? Even if she doesn't remember meeting Icarus, surely she remembers skewering her hand like a kebab before using a knife like an epi-pen in her thigh. So like does she just think Wow, I miraculously survived killing myself — oh, and my stab wounds are gone. This is the Backrooms, so surely that doesn't really mean anything, there's no catch or nefarious element to this at all, I am now completely emotionally regulated and fine!
And tbh, the self harm is pretty gratuitous and I don't think she'd survive that long or be like, that lucid for that long with how much blood she must be losing with her hand literally pierced all the way through to the other side. Which, by the way, not an easy thing to do. Like, your hand is pretty strong, and you'll probably pull it out on reflex before it gets to the other side.
I get the idea that she was trying to quell her hallucinations by cutting herself — which I guess seems realistic, I don't really know much about hallucinations. Good that she has some reason to do it though rather than it being injected purely as an extra edgy thing for her to do à la Ebony Dark'ness.
The message here is a slight bit better than in Spec's but still pretty bad. This isn't a great exploration of suicide. You're doing two pages, one of them is where she doesn't die of suicide and the other is where she does… but instead of her not killing herself in one and her yes killing herself in the other — maybe you could show that she copes better in one vs. the other, or she has better support from friends in one vs. the other, something that could leave the audience with some actual applicable message about mental health they could carry into their own lives — she kills herself in both pages. The only thing that changes, the only reason both universes don't end up with a hearty helping of Kat soup on the sidewalk, is because your very edgy character either has mercy on her, or doesn't.
So, listen up kids: if a spooky scary skeleton stops you momentarily while you're killing yourself, hope to God he has mercy on you. Y'know, cause you don't actually have any agency in this plotline.
I got a glock in my 'rari
~ alba
