Response to "Mountain Blood" by Cary Bayless

This story was about a guy whose girlfriend was attacked and later died and his recovery from that traumatic event.  The story is about this man's struggle to leave his past behind and get on with his future. More than that, though, it was about friendship and relationships and the connection between past and future. It's appropriate that past and future are opposites, as this story deals with a lot of opposites and seeming opposites. Blood is contrasted with beauty, light with darkness, good with evil, life with death. What we find is that the lines dividing these themes are not as sharp as we might have first thought.
      I thought this was a fantastic story. It was well written from a stylistic standpoint. There were a few nuts and bolts technical issues, but they are quick fixes. Both Chad and Beau are very believable and very likable. The story line is well developed and interesting. The writing manages to convey a wide range of emotions and states of mind and a broad spectrum of themes without going over the top. Places where this stood out to me were the bits about being jello and the effects of the alcohol on the characters. In both places, the descriptions were very real and the writing style seemed appropriate to what was going on. This story was very powerful and moving and it does this, like I said, without going over the top. I think it would be easy to become hung up on the themes themselves when writing about such big themes as these, but this story doesn't do that. It stays grounded in the characters and their specific, individual experiences.
      I have a few suggestions for improvements. There are a few places where there are minor issues with words or punctuation and I think I've marked most of those. There are some places where the descriptions get confusing. These are usually minor. An example is on page 8 at the start of the third to last paragraph. For clarity's sake I think the sentence should begin with "After a few hours of chatter and thought." Another issue is that at the beginning as I was reading I was more worried about what was in his pocket than what was going on. I would say to not withhold the information for so long or to at least give the readers some solid clues. An additional issue is that Chad's reaction when he arrives to the house and finds the police outside seemed too calm and collected to me, or at least what he said seemed too collected. I think it would have been more believable were it more frantic and disjointed.The last suggestion I have is that at some points the police seem to be TV police and not real police. This was especially true with the line, "He couldn't stand happiness so he stole it from others." True as it may be, I feel like it could be put more subtly.