Please anyone who reads this make comments on how to improve on this initial stab.
What a terrible day.
Flashes and screams in the gloom. Clouds of smoke, uplit with pretty little orange-grey flashes and thuds and screams. Shadows and tangled blurs and the desperate moans of the doomed and the dying all wrapped up in pretty little orange-grey flashes. I am crumpled, pinned, shellshocked and horrified, bleeding my life into the dirt as I look down through the half-light into hell.
And all I can think about is what a terrible birthday it’s turned out to be.
Up until a brief moment ago I might have been less certain. The year I’d had a wrathful contagion that had called for a vigorous course of bloodworms and solitary confinement had always been a strong contender for that title, and the time I’d broken a finger with Master Tunng then my favourite dormon shuffled gently on, I had made my displeasure emphatically known.
My cousin Merynka, arrogant, insular Merynka, once told me that a man re-lives his last day when he dies, every taste and itch, every action and choice, and in doing so his spirit learns from its mistakes.
What can be learned from such a rotten stinking horrible day I challenge anyone to know.
Belated commenting... I really like it - an interesting sounding premise that intrigues me enough that I'd want to read on. It's well written too - my only comment would be to be wary of too many hefty words (I had to look up contagion and I'm pretty well read) - you don't want to dumb down as such but you want to be wary of alienating your readers, and if you make it too rich with such words it can be hard work to read even for the most dedicated of readers... (she says remembering struggling through Gormenghast)!
ReplyDeleteGood on you though - I'm not brave enough to post any of my stuff yet. And keep the momentum going...