The Sickening Thud at the End of it All

In the beginning. That seems like a pretty good start, if you're a bible. This is not a bible. I don't know what this is yet, it isn't finished.

So how will it begin? Let's start in an alley, the tarmac still wet from the rain. Occasional drips from the fire escape above disturbing the surface of the puddles, or splashes from cars as they glance past the entrance on their route down the streets. Despite the rain, the alley is hot and humid and stinks of garbage.

This beginning sucks. What's next? Mike Hammer talking about how the rats have more integrity than the people who live around them?

So let's start in a bar! A smoky, dingy bar with grime on the windows and the smell of stale beer, peanuts and urine. Fresh urine maybe, that's a nice contrast to the stale beer. And the stale freaking description of the bar. Somehow I have to get away from the oh-so-subtle pulp fiction film noir vocabulary that shrouds this text in wisps of fog, deceit and ambiguity.

Chapter 1

That's pretty good, isn't it? Looks like we're getting somewhere now. Ok, now it's for real.

The morning was peaceful. The kind of peace you only find deep in the woods, when you dive into a pool or when you lay awake at night in the dark in a tent. It's not that it's quiet, it's that all of the noises have their place, their own quality, and they all belong.

That's how it was on this day, in a forest at the base of a cliff. And that's probably why the scream as a body came hurtling down through the air, like a human-cannonball gone terribly, terribly awry, stood out so spectacularly.

The long sentence with one sound was punctuated with an exclamation point of breaking branches and a sickly thud.

There followed a certain amount of gentle denouement, the rustle of bushes as scavengers came for a buffet, the flies for fresh blood.

Not one of them thought, "That's better than the stupid alleyway." although maybe they should have, but they were pretty happy about the meat.