[Ziggy455]

The fist collided with my face, shattering my jaw with rapid succession. The two apes that had dragged me outside both laid into me as hard as possible. One of them was a well known Gym instructor, and so he was packing experience with his punches. The other one was just a town lay-around. Both of them stunk of scotch or some other type of intoxicant. I blacked out for a moment, my eyes both black, blurred, and filled up with sensory tears. My two front teeth hit the concrete about the third punch in. I knew I was going to die, but somehow that didn't spur me on to fight. I just collapsed. Nothing really pulled me out it. I tried to think of a decent reason. My sister? My sister who was paralyzed from the f*cking waist down and only had me to rely on. I didn’t feel regret at myself when the final blow of a fat foot came crushing down my chest. I was bleeding from everywhere. My future! That could be a good reason to live on! Nope, just lost my job and my Night College class due to my behaviour.

Both of the apes looked down at me, both of them laughing. Most of my teeth were next to me. For a moment I could hear them chanting. Fight, fight, fight! f*ck them up! All in unison. f*ck, f*ck, f*ck em up! f*ck, f*ck, f*ck em up!

The Gym instructor heard a voice, something collided with him. In my hazy vision I saw a shape crash into him which sent him off like Clark Kent across the alleyway. A snap was heard and then a faint scream, the layabout turned to run but the blurry shape was already upon him. A quick shove and he flew upwards and slapped the wall with a gasp of air. I didn’t see what happened next, the last view I saw was of the man splatting onto the wall. To me, from my eyes he very well could have just stuck to the wall like a fly on duct tape.

“Hey.” Somebody tapped me. My eyes still closed.

“Hmrph?” My teeth are quiet.

I opened my eyes. The man had not stayed on the wall like a fly. My cousin Daryl stared down at me. In my state I grabbed his hand and let him pull me up. He dusted me off and looked at me with a stern look; his hands resting on my shoulders.

“Don’t be so selfish,” he was wearing his baggy jeans and stripy jumper. I didn’t know what to say to him so I just nodded like a bad puppy and lowered my head. I felt disgusted in myself. “Julia is worried about you, go and see her and sort yourself out.” He said with a strong, agitated voice. The start of the rain lightly kissed my arms, and as it began to lightly rain I couldn’t feel the water splash on my swollen face.

“Oh..Okay.” I nodded and took in the cold air, coughing like a forty year old smoker in the process. I stumbled out of the alleyway and down the street. I couldn’t believe how close I’d come to bleeding to death. I needed to go to the hospital. My teeth and vision was completely FUBAR and I was surprised I could speak coherently.

What was more of a shock was that Daryl had been dead since 1997.

[Mokrie Dela]

I dunno if it was intentional but i liked the similie about Clark Kent - how you referred to clark and not superman. It's as if you're saying this man's not superman. Anyway i might be talking bullsh*t but that's what i thought

Not bad though, i like the attention to detail, albeit repeated, about the teeth for example. Something i suffer from is when writing anything with action in, i try to write it so the readers would read it at a speed close to how it happened.

"He punches. He ducks" that sorta thing - you've read some of my stuff, you'll know what i mean.
But in this i like how you're not rushing to push the scene forward. Time slows, and details are conveyed without losing the scene's momentum - something i struggle with. It's not perfect of course (what is) but I enjoyed reading it.

[Eminence]

The first thing that struck me about this is that you have some pretty odd word choices, to my eyes... like you're trying to stretch the sentence out with words that don't really fit. Take the first line, 'The fist collided with my face, shattering my jaw with rapid succession'. What does the 'rapid succession' mean here? It doesn't make sense. How does a jaw shatter 'with rapid succession'? I'd argue the same for the title - what does 'pivotal solidification' mean? It's such a strange, abstract phrase, I'm not sure what to make of it. It strikes me as an instance of swapping out a word with a thesaurus, without actually contemplating the meaning of the new word. I don't know.

The other thing is that there's a hell of a lot of passive construction. 'The two apes that had dragged me'; 'A snap was heard'. It really slows the read down, makes it pretty clunky. On the same note, when you say that 'The Gym instructor heard a voice', it's disrupting the POV - the protagonist shouldn't know that he heard a voice, he should just witness the gym instructor's reaction to it.

Two great things, though, really carry momentum through it. The first is that you squeeze in exposition and backstory, without having it seem like exposition and backstory. The way you layer it in really casually is great; it adds a level of depth to the character, without coming off as forced or deliberate. The other is that there's some great visceral description that makes you wince, and the similes do a lot to enhance the entertainment value.

I'd have to question the ending, though. To make it seem like a little less of a cheap, tacked on twist, I think it'd need counterbalancing with something extra early on - something that makes it a little more plausible.