To Counteract The Sunshine
Normally I only jot down scenes to stories that I think would make excellent starts. In this case, I am recording a scene that occurs in the middle of a story. How do I come up with a scene for the middle of the story, knowing nothing of each character’s back story, motivations, or anything at all, really? Fuck off. Read it, it’s good for you. This scene flashed through my head as I was reading another story, and I realized that it would make an excellent addition to my collection, gruesome and dismal though it is.
Enjoy.
Hunger temporarily satiated, Sarah looked down the alleyway. There was no one there to see her, no one to condemn her for gnawing on the arm of a fellow street urchin, no one to take her to task for the clouds of smoke erupting out of the small censer near her feet. No one to punish her at all.
She was free.
Clouds of the pungent purple smoke floated around her head, muddling her thoughts until she felt as though someone had taken a hook through her stomach and pulled it back about fifty feet away from the rest of her body. A chuckle erupted unbidden from her throat, spluttering blood against the opposing wall of the alley. All that she felt were urges. Kill. Stab. Fuck. Maim. Smoke. They swirled around in her head until she moaned with the pain of it. Blackness. Nothing.
Sarah awoke during the night. When she had passed out was anyone’s guess. The smoke was gone, the arm had decayed until the odor was enough to turn even her stomach. A sour taste filled her mouth. She had to flee. Run away to anywhere else. A memory flashed before her eyes, of white coats and doves and clean plates filled with foods that made her sweat with longing. Nothing had ever been that pure. It was a fantasy.
The rain started again. Black, fetid drops that thickened into mud as soon as they hit the streets. It would make travel difficult. She had to take that chance. She couldn’t linger around that arm. No one took kindly to a cannibal, even when everyone knew things had gotten that bad.
