Holydodo

So, here it is:

It was the kind of one horse town you would never get on a postcard, the roads dusty and the paint chipped from weather. It was a town left behind my time’s cruel march, a fact the inhabitants were proudly ignorant of. Into this town he drove up, wide car growling down a dark, empty road, the headlights disturbing a foraging cat, sending it yowling into the night. He stopped, at what was ostensibly at least a bed and breakfast, uncertain if this was the place to find either. He stepped through the faded front door and into a reception, which in contrast to the dusty country seemed scrubbed to within an inch of its existence. He could almost smell the bleach. He stepped forward to the gleaming front desk, only a little guilty of the prints his shoes left on the polished flooring. He rang the bell and presently a short severe woman bustled through, distrust etched into her gait. This distrust became outright contempt when he explained he was travelling and just passing. He wondered who else would stay in a god-forsaken place like this, and whether this was just a result of his turning up past the proper hour, something she was careful to point out with pointed references to the hour. Her contempt quickly became fury when the severe woman saw the footprints left on her floor, he wondered whether it would be wise to sleep in the same building as someone who had clearly just declared herself his nemesis but before he could consider it further he was hurried into his room by an exasperated grey man he had not noticed before, after having removed his shoes.
He awoke not two hours after having drifted into sleep, and found himself staring at a ceiling fan that steadfastly refused to do anything to alleviate the crushing heat that occupied his room. As he felt sleep was slipping away he decided to go for a walk. He took a torch from his hurriedly packed bag, disentangling it from several creased pieces of clothing. Slipping sockless feet into his shoes he carefully let himself into the stale night. Walking away from the silent town, he jumped a crooked fence into a field. The torch, for which he had fought so hard, had quickly become rendered obsolete by a gibbous moon, which seemed to bear oppressively close to the earth. He left the torch by the fence and used the ethereal light to for guidance, thinking that the place looked far better in monochrome than it ever did when the nuances of colour and hue were present to point out its faults. He came upon a dried up stream, whose bed cut a deep furrow into the land, the water scar was the only sign that this place had seen water in living memory. Although, he conceded, living memory was a vastly over-rated thing. He followed the stream, wondering what it would be like when the rains came, he followed it until he came upon a small dark bridge which cast the stream bed beneath it into inky blackness that the moonlight shied away from. Ignoring the shudder that rattled his bones he stepped onto the small bridge, it was cool to the touch and filled with tiny shining crystals that glittered in the faint light when he leant close. He smiled when the he saw his reflection staring up from the dark surface: he needed a shave and a haircut too. All with a sudden he looked up, as a troll pulled its gnarled form out from the darkness under the bridge and with a rolling gait found its way to the centre of the bridge. He knew it was a troll, he knew it for sure, he knew from the grey skin, the long hair and the nakedness which it wore with no trace of embarrassment. The troll smiled, “I’ve been waiting, for you, and now I’m going to eat your life”. He said nothing, the breath had caught in his throat, and he could not shake the feeling that the roll reminded him of someone whose identity his memory had left behind alongside algebra equations and Greek theorems. The troll smiled, his teeth glistening with a thousand unsaid secrets, and leapt onto the man, pinning his arms with bony knees. The greyed face reared up, and fell down, to eat the mans life. He ate quickly and greedily, he ate the memories of childhood adventures, of imaginary worlds saved, of imaginary friends reunited. He ate the angst of growing, the half-forgotten memories of moonlight-fumbles.
When he finished I was left staring back up at a face I thought was mine. He stood and smiled at me with my mouth and I could see my white teeth glinting through the darkness at me. It was then I realized the moon had hidden itself behind a passing cloud, covering the land in a darkness that seemed to roll on forever. He said not one more word as he walked away from me, but he hopped lightly into the stream bed and was careful never to look back. I retreated under my bridge.
It was almost three months, by most normal measures, since I looked at my reflection. By that time the rains had come, they had turned the dust into mud and brought birds back to the stream, it had been many years since I had seen them there last; of this I was sure. I slept under my bridge, watching the small town struggle against the pull of cosmopolitan promises. I slept and I waited for the rains.


Be honest, but not too honest.

Argo of Amphipolis

There's kind of a monotony in the sentences:

"He stopped", "He stepped", "He stepped forward", "He rang", "He wondered" - there isn't really a break between sentences that start off like this, so it was starting to sound kind of robotic when I was reading it. Another point is that you should probably start a new paragraph for a new character's dialogue. But other than those two comments on style, I thought it was just fine.