In summary

It’s a great start to a story, but it runs almost immediately into problems. Whose is the voice offering us comical asides? Is this a serious thriller or a wry comedy? Should we focus on the dead girl’s body or on her waking up twelve hours earlier? In what tense is the story being told?

This kind of opening often occurs when a writer begins without a plan of where the scene is going. It jumps from place to place, focus to focus, before finally settling down. But will the reader stay with it that long? I can’t say for sure if lack of planning is the case here, but the effect is the same. The reader is looking for a consistent thread to follow but is offered a series of loose ends.

There’s nothing wrong with providing additional description. However, it’s something that’s lacking here. The description we do have is vague and seemingly irrelevant. For example, the utility area gets more words that the dead body. How old is she? What’s her posture or skin tone? What else does the garage have apart from two steps and a cold floor? We discover later that there’s a load of tools in there but they don’t feature in the initial description.

The character himself seems interestingly obsessive. It would be good to get more insights into this thinking and how he perceives the world. One of the best ways to portray slightly insane characters is to be inside their thoughts, creating a narrative dissonance for the reader. They expect us to understand and agree with their ideas, but we instinctively fight against such strangeness. With consistency and persistence, a killer’s perspective may eventually convince us to empathise and even secretly like them. Achieving this will require solving the fourth wall elements so we know who we’re supposed to follow and how.