Friday, March 28, 2014

Emergency lights

Happy Friday to you all.

It's been a typical west-coast spring this week. Blazing sunshine abruptly covered by grey cloud, occasionally broken by light drizzles or torrential downpours.

But all the forsythia is in bloom, the lilac trees have inch-long green leaves, and the early ornamental plum trees are on the verge of blossoming.

So, I thought I'd take you far away from the spring weather with today's prompt. Enjoy!


On the other side of my eyelids buzzed the yellow glow of emergency lights, but it was not yet time to wake up.


14 comments:

  1. Got an idea; will post after work. Good luck with the rib cracking...

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  2. On the other side of my eyelids buzzed the yellow glow of emergency lights, but it was not yet time to wake up. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I knew it the same way I knew I wasn’t dead, my thoughts as sluggish as the rest of me. Nothing was coming together. Breathing hurt, the lights hurt even though it was dark and the hole inside my head had a twin – oh. That.

    There was a hole where my heart had been, where the police officer had cut it out knife-sharp, quick as death as if he’d done it a thousand times before. He probably had. I had the scent of his bone in me, rolling through me. Knowing that helped somehow, sped the healing. It hurt, like healing never had before and I knew deep in the bone of me that something was broken that would never heal, not even with his power behind it.

    You don’t come to this close to death and escape without wounds. You just don’t. The town was safe. I hoped the town was safe, the spell broken, but I didn’t know. A voice reached me somehow, pushing through pain and earth and memories I was trying to forget – me, trying to forget – and I heard Bryce saying my name over and over in a hoarse tone. And he was somewhere in the lights, beyond them.

    I pushed up. It took all I had. More.

    I opened my eyes. He was a blur before me, breath catching, his scent driving out the rest of Christensen’s from me. I tried to speak, made a sound.

    “What the fuck do you think you were doing?” Bryce screamed as he shook me. “You almost died, you idiot!”

    It had been more than almost. Saying that wouldn’t help. I settled for, “Hi?”

    He gasped, then hugged me. I whimpered as bones cracked, his scent rolling through me. The hunger for bones and eating them rose and I fell unconscious before he had to stop me from attacking him.

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    Replies
    1. ...oh, this definitely seems like a snippet from something bigger... how cruel of you, Alcar, to taunt me with just a nibble, a bite, a finger bone.

      :D

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    2. It's one take in the climax of Ghoulish Happenings :). Wherein Wray agrees to be killed to save people. In theory.

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    3. ...which will be ready for me to read... when?????

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    4. Done about 12K in 6 days, so ... eventually? :) I hope to finish this draft by the end of April or so. A few niggling problems of the plot are creeping up, but nothing the story can't work around.

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    5. So, what version are you on now... 3?

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    6. Uhm. I think it's 4. I kind of lost track of them at one point. The first (nano) version doesn't really count since it was set in an alternate world that, in the end, did nothing for the story. Or so I thought. It is, probably, best I do not go back and reread it at this point.

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    7. ...I kinda feel the same way about that first long story of mine you read... don't know, if I EVER plan to work on it again, if I should even glance at the earlier versions... or just re-write from scratch.

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    8. I do wish we'd been able to find out what became of Roan; it ended in an evil cliffhanger :) But yeah: there is one scene from all previous drafts I'm salvaging (I think) for this one; other than that it's pure 'I know the plot, now to get the story to work'. I find looking at older drafts of stuff is mostly: "Wait, I thought this was even passable?! Damn....."

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    9. ...didn't I keep threatening to kill her off since I hated her so much? or just have her go insane... yeah, that'd work too. I honestly don't remember how I ended the story in the third book.

      Ah, yes, the 'one scene' to keep. I would keep the library description... maybe only that ;) and maybe pieces of the bloody desert fight scene, since that's the scene that 'started' the story for me.

      But, from the pieces I've read, I just love the 'voice' in Wray's story. I really want to read it when it's written, and through one round of self-editing ;)

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