Thin Walls by Jerome Gilden - Short, Drama, Romance - A man who searches for a reason behind his incarceration develops a friendship with a mysterious prisoner on the other side of his wall.  21 pages - pdf, format 8)

Jerome,

A few  notes on this one.

I don't know why you want to keep the reader uninformed as to names.  It would be much simpler to name the characters even though they won't trade names till later.  While the audience can guess, the reader shouldn't.  Changing names at midstream doesn't work for me.

I know you're trying for a reversal at the end.  Johnny becomes the captor not the captive, but for me, it doesn't work.  If I'm Johnny, while I might fake some injuries, I'm not going to go through hell unless Alex can see me.  I like that you led Alex to believe that he was milking Johnny and not the other way around.  I'm disappointed that you didn't reverse the reverse.  Alex gets the last laugh because he fed Johnny a load of BS.  In fact, if I were Johnny would certainly verify the info before I got rid of Alex.  But that's me.

The writing is OK, but it's a bit too long.  Set this up more quickly and then do the reversals.  See if you can cut it in half.

Best
Richard

Thanks for the notes Richard :)