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For Fear of Company -- Prologue
Hello everyone!
I've been working on the story for quite awhile and I feel good enough about putting up the prologue. I'm flattering myself that it's brief enough that you won't be bored to tears in reading it. I am particularly interested in your individual interpretations regarding the effectiveness of this style of writing, whether or not your collective interests are spiked, and what initial opinion you'd have about making a further investment in reading more of the story.
Thanks in advance for all of your comments and criticisms.
Chris
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I am in a room with a clock at the edge of my field of vision, and the sound of its ticking is the apparition of my every failure, its living and embodied consequence. I understand now that in working up the nerve to pull the trigger, the distracted coward within me impeded a deep intuition that I was about to make some terrible mistake, allowing me to pursue this end. I was entering into readiness, becoming steadily overwhelmed by an anxiety that only finishing could relieve. So desperate was I for the bullet to call to account this final judgment, that I delayed forever in life the contrary sense of understanding that I attained immediately in death. To behold this husk of man slumped forward in this chair is not the result of judgment executed on the shortcomings of my ancestors, but a final manifestation of my defeat personified.
I didn't hear the shot, but I witness its result. How long have I been lying there in that pool of blood? The clock knows, but I do not. At first, I didn't recognize the horror before me. It is nothing like looking at a picture of yourself you never knew was taken, or listening to a recording of your voice at some remove. It is not like anything at all. As I watch this scene disconnected, the realization of my mistake comes to me wrapped in instinct, hot like hunger. And then a spasm of a dying nervous system flickers through my carcass and I watch as it shifts slowly and falls to the floor. I am still here and so must everyone else be. An awesome mistake has been made.
The things you recounted to me, Lillian, prove out. We offer little deference for the beating of our hearts until it ceases to measure the cadence for the evensongs of our being. Startling above all is the absence of atmospheric compression, how you can feel something move near you while your back is turned or someone waiting around a corner you've yet to take. I fully expected the loss of the senses, but I am unhinged by the reality of the aggregate. I am merely a candle flame that will never bend to the opening of a door or the measured breath of a child with a wish on her mind. And there are other losses than these. But I recognize at least one terrible sensation that has followed me here. I think of them, and oh Lillian, I am so very frightened, for they are near and aware, and considering the recent, curious absence of the talisman from the neck of my corpse, they are presently unhindered as well. Please God.
Bad times are on horseback.
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