Prologue

The prologue to my book, Last Light. The story actually takes place farther down the road, chronologically speaking, with occasional flashbacks as needed. Enjoy!

As a general rule, I don't care for loud noises, like screaming. Ditto for crowds. I often wonder to myself, then, how I keep ending up in situations where there are precisely those two things. Now would be a perfect example. As I feel the wind rushing by my face, whipping my coat behind me, I ponder the situation I threw myself into yet again. I listen to the screaming with an almost clinical detachment as I watch the taxi  on the crowded street below me grow larger and larger as my package and I hurtle toward a somewhat unpleasant death. For the hundredth time, I consider how much more peaceful my life would be if I didn't try to save myself. Granted, I would be dead, but sometimes that doesn't seem like such a bad place to be. I could let someone else worry about the chaos for once. I can hear sirens even now, no doubt alerted to the spot by a wall of glass suddenly spewing forth a man outward like so much spit. I shift the bundle awkwardly under my arm and it starts squirming. The blanket I had protecting it catches in the wind and whips away, nearly causing me to lose my grip on my precious cargo. I clamp down and the baby in my arms squeals in discomfort, adding to my own screams. He suddenly sees where we are and redoubles his cries right into my ear.

Sometimes, I just do not get paid enough. I flip him to my right arm and frantically free my left hand, pointing it down towards the now almost life-size taxi below us. I tried to focus. Tune out screaming baby, check. Tune out growing taxi, check. Tune out my own damn screaming, check. I prepare a burst in my palm and scream out an incoherent shout just before we crash into the luckless cabbie. I know he's luckless, because I'm close enough to see the multiple dents covering the hood of his car, the cracked window in the back, webbing away from the point where a bullet had tried to punch its way through. I can even see through his sunroof that he has greasy, black hair combed back in a rough ponytail. Of course, I also know he's unlucky because he was my ride around town. Anyone who associates with me is guaranteed to have more than their fair share of bad mojo. I can see his surprised look as he stares up at me, only just beginning to realize his fare is about to get in through a rather unconventional means. I almost do, at that. Instead of crashing into his car, though, a flash of light, purple and black, bursts out of my left palm, stopping my suicidal momentum. Well, ok, almost stopping my momentum. Instead of suicidal it was now closer to only bonejarring. I feel my hand hit something hard and entirely too unyielding as junior and I tumble onto the car. Pain screams through my body as my wrist makes an squishy snapping sound. Junior seems to have gotten the wind knocked out of him too, at least, as his squeals finally cut out mercifully. All I want to do is lay there, curled up, holding onto the pain raging through my system. I can feel the little demon child beginning to squirm in the nook of my shoulder again, probably only seconds away from resuming his protest to the world. I can feel a groan building up as I lay there, trying desperately to remember why in the hell I would throw myself off a building. Ah yes, I remember now. The Big Bad was after me. That probably meant I should get moving now. Sigh. No rest for the wicked. I bang on the roof with my good hand and wait for Mike to answer. It didn't take him long.

"What the f**k, man! What the bloody f**k! My car! You f*****g trashed my car!" I can feel the car shake as he gets out of the taxi, the door groaning sickly as he slams it shut. "S**t, dude, look at the f*****g roof. D****t, man!" He appeared to be building a head of steam aimed at yours truly. Well, truth be told, it had been building for a while now. This was just the man-sized straw that broke the camels back.

"Look, Mike, I can explain."

Author's Note

Please point out any grammatical errors. Thank you! Also, please tell me how you like it!

Reviews

[~Logic of the Valar~]

well, I was looking over this and I had no real intention of putting any more of this story up on this site, as I hadn't touched it in several months and the story is not really my best work. However, I was surprised to see that people actually want to read more of it, so I suppose I will try to complete it. I'll begin work on revising it on paper so that you guys can see a bit more of this world.

[NCPanthersgurl]

I agree with "No one"s review completely. I have nothing to add to it, haha. Nice work and good luck getting it published!

[No one]

camels back.- Camel's
an squishy snapping sound- A squishy
as I lay there- Lay instead of lie.
All I want to do is lay there,- Lay instead of lie.

I liked the pace of the story but it should be regulated more with a greater number of paragraph breaks. There were a few grammatical errors but nothing that can't be fixed with a little more editing. Overall I liked it very much.
I see echoes in this story, however, from the work of an author I admire, Chuck Palahniuk. I'm referring to this part: Tune out screaming baby, check. Tune out growing taxi, check. Tune out my own damn screaming, check.

Your style seems similar to his and, with that said, I believe he used sentences very close to those in his book Invisible Monsters.

Bravo! I can't wait to read more!

[joshua rainbird]

The first thing that struck me (no pun intended) was that there were two long paragraphs for a relatively short prologue, but having read it, it makes sense.

I like the originality of this piece, the concept of a man falling seemingly to his death with a child and then the unusual reveals at the end. You have some very good hooks that will intrigue the reader - a prologue needs to be a morsel of a cracking read ahead and in most respects you've achieved that with flying colours.

But I didn't find the bit about the baby gaining insight into the danger that credible - firstly it would be a novel situation for the kid and I'm not sure it's visual comprehension would be sufficiently developed.

There were a couple of words and phrases that sounded misplaced - ' squishy ' has a younger voice for this piece's narration and subject matter; and, sometimes it's written too much like it's being spoken to a friend: ' an almost clinical detachment' - the ' almost ' is the word that bugs really me here; and ' for the hundredth time '.

Additionally, there's a wooliness that dampens the mood with ambiguity as if the voice is afraid to make a definite statement: ' probably '; ' appeared to be ', ' almost ', etc. The question is whether a reader wants to spend a book-time reading about a character who has a ' maybe death's not such a bad idea ' attitude rather than a ' I have to make sacrifices that hurt ' kind of character. I'd want the more pro-active protagonist who finds the risk-taking challenging and rewarding rather than someone who will fling himself out of a window to find a quick and easy solution and let's see what happens.

Now this may seem unfair, as you know the backstory about the character and that he's probably not that flippant and that he's come to this stage after much trial and tribulation (I assume), but the reader doesn't because this is the prologue. So I'm wondering if you've come too soon with that aspect of the protagonist's personality to make it a fair representation of him.

So a reader is left with this dilemma: there's an intriguing story with a good twist and a main character who wants to kill a demon child but doesn't care if he dies himself. My money is on the kid surviving longer than the man who's trying to kill him.

But, and it's a big but, you have a good, original story here that, with a couple of tweaks, will be great.

Best wishes
josh

[Cassya77]

Wow! this is really funny at the end, I like it a lot, though i couldn't really tell till the end that the main character was a guy. Hope you post more.