Prologue

Lyssa struggles to keep her younger sister Grace safe in a changed world that is everything but safe.

The sound of breaking glass woke me.  It came from the guest room directly across the hall.  The guest room was nearly devoid of furniture and unoccupied; or at least it was supposed to be. But glass doesn’t break by itself.

 

My heart leapt in my chest and began pounding wildly behind my ribcage.  I froze and listened closely to the darkness.  Nothing but white noise and silence now.

 

Had I really heard that?  Or had I dreamt it?  

 

Suddenly a crunching noise reached my ears and it was unmistakable - the sound of glass being stepped on.  It too was coming from the room across the hall. 

 

Not a dream. 

 

Alarm surged through me, sending adrenaline coursing through my veins.  My mind immediately attempted to connect the sound with a possible source.  It must have been the window.  But how did it break? My parents and younger sister were asleep in their rooms at the other end of the hall, so they couldn’t have been responsible.  And even if they had been awake, they had no reason to be in the spare bedroom.  

 

Then who made the noise?

 

Alarm quickly turned to panic, as my brain took a deductive leap and bridged the gap.

 

There was someone in our house.  Someone that didn’t belong there.

 

Fear seized me, and pulled me into a paralyzing embrace.  The child in me wanted to pull the covers up to my eyeballs and hide.  But I knew what my father would have to say about that, “You are not a child anymore Lyssa. You are thirteen years old now - a teenager. Start acting like one.”  I was too old to believe in monsters.  And too old to be afraid of things that go bump (or crash) in the night.  So I threw my covers off instead and stood at the edge of my bed.  

 

My bare feet met the cold hardwood and I suddenly felt extremely vulnerable and small.  Standing there in my pink pajamas, I desperately wanted to spring back in to bed and whip the covers up over my head.  But a voice of reason, that sounded remarkably like my father’s, told me that I should investigate the sound, rather than assume the worst.  So I forced myself to take a step forward instead. Then my parents’ whispers filtered in from the hall and this gave me the extra courage I needed to tip toe out into the hallway.

 

They were at the other end of the hall, and were slowly walking in my direction.  My mother, in her white nightgown, was glowing in the moonlight like an angelic specter.  She was clinging to my father’s arm, her face as pale as her nightgown.  In my father’s unsteady hand was a metal object that glinted in the moonlight as it shook. 

 

I knew my father owned a gun, but I had never seen it before.  The sight of the gun in my father’s hand, suddenly made the situation very real. 

 

His fearful eyes met mine, and a chill spread through my body like an icy wave.  My bare feet suddenly felt as if they had become frozen to the wood beneath them.  He put a finger to his lips to instruct me to remain quiet.    

 

Then, without warning, a loud bang in the spare room shook the room’s door forcefully within its frame. 

 

I jumped back reflexively, as if I had received an electric shock to the chest. My parents stopped in mid-stride, and my mother’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, stifling a cry of surprise.  My father motioned frantically for me to move towards them and away from the spare bedroom.  But my feet remained frozen to the floor.  My thoughts slowed, as if they were traveling through thick mud instead of the synapses in my brain. 

 

Then a much louder sound came from behind the closed door in front of me, and it sent a sliver of ice down my spine.  The sound was a strange mixture of the screech of metal scraping against metal and the roar of a large predatory cat.  It was like nothing I had ever heard before.  And I didn’t want to know what had made it, or ever hear it again.

 

Sheer terror completely replaced the fear that had frozen my feet to the floor, and I sprinted down the hallway towards my parents. 

 

When I reached them, there was a look in my father’s eyes that I had never seen there before.  It was a wild look, full of fear and disbelief; the same look that likely appears in an animal’s eyes the moment it is cornered by a predator.  The sound had been loud enough to wake my sister, and she could be heard crying from her bedroom behind my parents. 

 

My mother and I exchanged terrified glances. My father looked at us, and with a quick nod of his head, motioned towards my sister’s room.  The motion wasn’t necessary though, his eyes spoke to us.  They told us to go to my sister and protect her from whoever or whatever was behind the closed door at the other end of the hall.

 

“No, Rich, I won’t leave you alone.” my mother argued in a whisper, “I won’t do it.”

 

“Sarah.” He replied firmly in a quiet voice, “You have to.”

 

“No, I don’t.” she said defiantly, “I am going to stay with you.  Lyssa can go to Grace.”

 

My father knew, as I did, that arguing with my mother was pointless.  He looked at me, then quickly to my mother and nodded his head.  My mother hugged me fiercely and I returned her embrace with equal fervor. She slipped her cell phone into my hand as she whispered into my ear.

 

“Lock the door, call 911, and don’t open the door until help is here, Ok?” she said in a trembling voice.

 

I nodded my head in agreement, tears welling in my eyes.  The fear was indescribable.

 

“Keep Grace Safe.” my father said, pulling me towards him and kissing the top of my head. “Now. Go quickly!”

 

I didn’t want to let go of my father, or leave my parents, but I knew Grace needed me. So, without hesitation, I rushed to her room.  With the door closed and locked behind me, I went to her. She was a small shadowy form sitting up in her bed, crying.  When she saw that it was me, she put her hands up in the air, asking to be picked up and comforted.  I quickly scooped her up and held her close.  She quieted some once she was in my arms. 

 

Panic buzzed in my mind. 

 

I fumbled with the cell phone, quickly dialed 911, and put it to my ear.  It rang a couple of times and then there was just silence on the other end.  I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it in confusion.  The display screen showed that it was still dialing, but there was no dial tone.  I pressed the disconnect button and then tried again.  Still nothing.  A third try provided the same results.  I threw the phone down onto Grace’s bed in defeat and tears spilled from my eyes.

 

No 911, meant help wasn’t coming.  I was on my own.

 

I turned frantically about in the room several times, desperately looking around and trying to decide what to do next.  We couldn’t run.  The stairway was at the other end of the hallway, past the spare bedroom.  And the second story window was out of the question, it would only result in broken bones.  It was a last resort.  All we could do was hide, but my sister needed to stop crying and be quiet if we were to have any success at hiding.

 

“Shhhhh, it’s ok Gracie”, I whispered into her little ear, “I’m here.  You’re ok.”

 

“Mommy”, she cried, “I want Mommy!”  I could feel her soft blonde hair against my neck and it was slick with sweat.  The familiar sweet smell of her perspiration filled my nose.

 

“I know you do Gracie, but right now you need to be quiet, ok?”  I said quietly as I rubbed her back.  But she kept crying and calling for Mommy. 

 

Another loud bang on the spare bedroom door echoed down the hallway.  I flinched and held Grace tight.  She was crying hard now, and her small frame was hitching as she gasped for air

 

I need to do something!  Think, think… Think d****t!

 

Then an idea hit me and it was like a gift from above.

 

“Hey Gracie”, I said softly, “Wanna play a game?”

 

 This got Grace’s attention.  Her crying slowed, and she rubbed the tears from her eyes with little fists.  She nodded her head, and drew in a sniffle. 

 

 “Want to play hide and seek?” I asked.

 

Grace perked up some, and nodded her head enthusiastically.  What five year old doesn’t like to play hide and seek?

 

“Ok.  You and I are going to hide and Mommy and Daddy are going to find us, ok?”

 

Grace’s head bobbed up and down with agreement, and a small smile formed on her sweet face. 

 

Yes, success!  But now what?  Where could we hide?

 

The closet would be too obvious.  We needed a place where we would be less likely to be found.  Somewhere someone might not think to look.  There was only one real option, but I didn’t like it much.

 

Setting Grace down for a moment, I hurried to the corner of the room and grabbed the chair that was sitting there.  I quickly dragged it towards the closet, opened the closet door, and shoved it inside. 

 

Out in the hallway, there was a loud cracking sound of splintering wood, and my mother let out a cry of surprise.  Then the same terrifying sound of metal on metal combined with the roar of a lion filled the hallway again, only louder this time. 

 

It was an unearthly sound and it chilled me to my core, sending me into a flurry of action. 

 

I picked Grace back up and swiftly climbed up and stood on the chair inside the closet.   Reaching up quickly with one hand, I pushed up on a small square panel in the ceiling.  The panel lifted easily and I slid it up and to the side within the dark opening above me.  The noise outside of the bedroom intensified and Grace’s body tensed against mine.

 

“It’s ok Gracie,” I said softly, “It’s just Mommy and Daddy making noise to scare us so they can find us.  But they won’t find us. We will be too quiet, won’t we?”

 

Grace nodded assuredly, sending her flaxen curls bouncing around her face. “Yep.” She said, and put her little finger up to her lips, and added “Shhhhhhh.”  There was a small conspiratory smile on her proud face, but concern still lingered in her eyes. 

 

God I hated lying to her.

 

“Ok, now, I’m going to lift you up and you’re going to climb up through this hole.” I explained quickly, pointing up towards the opening in the ceiling.  

 

There was a look of alarm and hesitation from Grace when she saw where I was pointing, so I added, “Don’t worry, I will be right up after you.  It will be the best hiding place ever.  They will never find us up there.”

 

This seemed to work, for the concern on Grace’s face dissipated some.  I lifted her up and into the square of blackness above us.  She crawled away from the opening and was swallowed up by the darkness.  Watching her disappear above me was utterly terrifying.  But not as frightening as the sounds that suddenly erupted from the hallway.  There was more splintering of wood, and the unearthly roars.  But worse than either of these was a new sound; the sound of my mother screaming.  

 

Reality began falling apart and tumbling down around me.  Her screams were terrifying in a way that could not be described.  I hadn’t truly known fear until then.  It was in that moment that I came to know fear intimately, and it suddenly became my entire world.

 

“Lyssa?” Grace whimpered quietly above me, “Lyssa I’m scared.”

 

I quickly reached up into the hole with both hands, grabbed onto the frame, and hoisted myself up through the opening and into the dark space above.  It was a black hole devoid of light. 

 

My heart beat wildly against my ribs like a caged animal.  On my hands and knees, I ran my hand frantically over the dusty and cobwebbed floor, looking for Grace.  My hand brushed what felt like the remains of an insect, and I had to fight the urge to pull it away in disgust.  Finally it connected with Grace’s foot, and I pulled her close to me, holding on to her tightly.  I whispered into her ear to comfort her. 

 

Things were getting even louder below, and my mother’s screams had become intense. 

 

I could feel the bass drum beat of my pulse as it pounded in my ears. Feeling the floor with my hand again, I hurriedly searched around the attic opening for the square panel.  My fingers touched the edge of it, and I swiftly slid it back over the opening.  When the square section fell into place like a piece of a puzzle, it extinguished the little amount of light that had reached us before.  It felt like sliding the lid of a coffin closed, from the inside. It felt final.   

 

In the dark void only sound and scents existed, and neither were pleasant. 

 

The scent of dust, stale air, and mildew filled the space, along with an even more offensive smell of decay.  The frightening cacophony of sounds below us became slightly muffled once the access door was closed.  But it still reached us, and it filled my head. 

 

My mother’s disturbing screams continued and they tore at my heart.   They ripped out a little piece of my soul; chewed it up, lit it on fire, and stomped on it. I would never get it back, no matter what happened.  My mind was being stretched beyond its breaking point.  Torn between an overwhelming urge to leave the attic and protect my parents, and an intense desire to keep Grace safe, I was being pulled apart at the seams.

 

Keep Grace safe. Keep Grace safe.  Keep. Grace. Safe.

 

My father’s words kept repeating over and over again in my head. I knew this was my purpose now.  Whatever it took, I would make sure she was safe.

 

Suddenly an alarming thought occurred to me, and I was filled with the realization that I might have already failed.

 

The Chair.

 

After climbing up into the attic I hadn’t been able to return it to its original position in the corner of the room.  It remained in the closet directly beneath us, blatantly out of place. 

 

It was an elephant in the room. 

 

Would it betray our hiding spot?  Maybe it would go unnoticed? Please don’t let it be noticed.

 

  Suddenly the sound of gunfire cut through the rest of the disturbing sounds below.  I flinched and hugged Grace tightly.  She started bawling and clung to me urgently.  I held her so that she was crying into my chest, hoping it would muffle her cries. 

 

Please dear God don’t let us be found.  Please God let my parents be ok.  Please let us ALL be ok… Please God!  Please!

 

The firing stopped, and my father was yelling, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.  My mother screamed again and gunfire erupted once more.  There was a pause, and then the gun went off one more time. Now my father was screaming instead of my mother.  She had gone silent. But my father’s screams continued and they were full of anguish and terror.

 

It was all just too much.  Something inside of me snapped.  I could almost physically feel it happen, and I knew that something inside of me was broken now.  I was broken now. Probably beyond repair.  

 

All sound became distant and tinny, as if it was playing on a radio faraway.   I knew that Grace was crying uncontrollably now, but somehow I was barely aware.  I had come unhinged, like an old worn out door let loose from its frame, no longer able to cling to the rotted casing. I embraced Grace desperately as if she was a life preserver preventing me from floating away; preventing my mind from leaving my body.

 

Part of me wanted that though; to float away from this place, from this moment in time. To escape. 

 

But one thought kept me rooted in that moment.

 

Grace… I have to do this for Grace.

 

It was this one thought that kept me moving that night.  The one thing that kept me strong in the days to come.  And the only thing that kept me hoping against all hope during the years that followed.

Reviews

[JayG]

First thing that hit me was the need to squeeze, because you're over-explaining.

• But those of us who survived soon understood and realized...

Why both?

• ...and also the end. The end of everything as we knew it.
If the reader could see your performance, and hear the way you change the emotional tone between the end of the first and second sentence this would work. But since they can't, you repeat yourself for no gain in impact.

• It didn’t happen the way that any of us believed that it would.

"It?" Which "it?" The world ending or the realization that it had? But forget that. unless we know how most people thought it would happen the statement is meaningless. And. why make the reader plow through what didn't happen when you could tell them what did? Story happens, it's not talked about. The reader is seeking entertainment, not someone they can't see, who is neither on the scene nor in the story, settling in for a nice lecture on the situation.

• At least not for those of us who had ever imagined that it could happen.

You're talking to the reader as if they know the situation, and care. The reader comes to you with mild curiosity, seeking entertainment. That curiosity quickly faces unless we replace it with active interest. As Sol Stein put it:“A novel is like a car—it won’t go anywhere until you turn on the engine. The “engine” of both fiction and nonfiction is the point at which the reader makes the decision not to put the book down. The engine should start in the first three pages, the closer to the top of page one the better.” Read your first 600 words, which would be a little more than the first three standard manuscript pages, and ask yourself where the reader would sit back and say, "Cool...tell me more."

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the event happen, and then have someone say, "We sure didn't see that coming."? Better yet, why not present it in a way that makes the reader says that?

In short, dump the prologue. It serves only yo delay the arrival of the actual story.

• A sharp, crisp sound of shattering glass jerked me from the depths of sleep and sent my heart racing.

Why are you explaining what breaking glass sounds like. Your reader knows. Why say "the depths of sleep when it doesn't matter if the protagonist was half-asleep or deep into it. Why do we care that the heart is racing when we don't know what the character thinks the problem is? Your intent was probably that the breaking glass represented a window braking. But the reader doesn't know where we are. And we don't learn of the bed till the next line, so the sound could be a bottle dropping in the kitchen, a mirror in the bathroom shattering as someone tosses something, or a vase being knocked over. Our protagonist could be asleep in a chair in front of the TV, or on guard duty. And clarifying in the next sentence cannot retroactively remove confusion.

What matters story-wise, is that the sound alerted that character. Every word you can remove speeds the read and adds impact. Spend time on what the protagonist's analysis and reaction is, not niggling detail, because that matters. Padding the lines with words to sound more literary simply gets in the way of the story.

• I laid still in my bed and held my breath, so I could listen to the darkness.

The character "listened to the darkness" to figure out what's happening. Does a reader care if the character was sitting up, and breathing or laying and holding their breath while listening? No. What matters is what they do next, and why. You need to stop thinking in visual and cinematic terms. Knowing that the character is holding their breath is NOT the same as seeing it.

Look at it this way: If it takes longer to read about the character crossing the room than to do it in life the story is in slow motion. As an exercise. Take the word count of a section. Then make a copy and set yourself a goal of reducing the number of words by 10% without changing the meaning, making it less understandable or readable.

If you can do that it will read 10% faster and have 10% more impact on the reader. Squeeze, combine, and rephrase till you can't remove another word. I think you'll like the result.

The second thing that hit me was that from start to finish this is a transcription of you telling the story aloud—explaining it, in the form: I heard this...I did that...I heard that...I thought...and after that..."

That's a chronicle of events, dispassionately reported by an uninfected voice because we're with the narrator, not on the scene living it.

Yes, you're using first person pronouns, so the narrator is supposed to be personally explaining the story. But since we can't see anything, and don't know the situation as the one living the scene does it's no different from having a narrator say, "John heard this...he did that." In fact, given that we'd know the gender and name of the protagonist the reader will feel a connection faster. As it stands, unless I missed it, at the end of the section I don't know the protagonist's name, gender, or age. Why didn't you have Gracie use their name? Why don't we know if the protagonist is a teenager, child, or adult? It's their story, and the reader wants them as an avatar, not someone talked about in the abstract.

It's not a matter of writing well or badly, or even talent. It's that you're missing the specialized knowledge and tricks of the trade of writing fiction that will help you seize the reader by the throat on page one, and not let go. It's not part of the nonfiction writing skills we're given during out public education years. There, they give us the skills employers want us to have. Professional skills are learned after that.

I know this isn't great news. I certainly wasn't happy when I learned that writing fiction requires an entirely different approach from what we learned in school—different, too, from writing for stage or screen. And this certainly wasn't something you were hoping to hear. But the good news is that the learning can be fun, and the information you need can be found in the fiction writing section of the local library, and online. And since pretty much everyone comes to storytelling on the page with the same misconceptions, you have LOTS of company.

And in the end, doesn't it make sense that if we want readers to find our writing as interesting as that of the pros we need to know what the pro knows?

So hit the library's fiction writing section. And while you're there, seek the names Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon on the cover. They're gold.

You might dig around in the articles in my writing blog for an idea of the issues you need to address. They were written with the hopeful writer in mind.

Was this good news? Hell no. But here's the trick: if you write just a little better every day, and live long enough...

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein.
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[D.M. Knight]

Wow... OK, so basically the entire thing should be scrapped... Got it... Thanks...

[JayG]

It's not a matter of scrapping the story. There's nothing wrong with that story—or any—story. It's that through no fault of your own, and like me, you left your school days believing that we learned to write there.

We do, but not as a publisher sees that act. And since all our classmates, and our teachers, learned their writing skills in the same classrooms, who's to tell us? In fact, we leave school knowing we're not ready to write for film, stage, or journalism without more training. But we never apply that idea to fiction.

You like writing, and you worked hard on this. And it probably gave you pleasure to live the story as you read it back. And that's good.

But your stories deserve the best telling. So taking some time to learn the tricks of the trade is a good idea, not a chore. If you are meant to be a writer the learning will be like going backstage at the theater, and fun. And if not? Well, you've learned something important.

We all leave our public education years exactly as well qualified to pilot a fighter plane as to write fiction. The difference is that we know we're not ready to fly missions, but figure that to write fiction we only need a knack for words, a good story idea, and some luck.

If only.

For all we know you have talent oozing from every pore, and will be a huge success when that talent is trained. So, isn't it worth investing a few dollars and some time in your writers education to find out if you are?

[D.M. Knight]

I must admit that your critique of my work was quite devastating at first. But it was not something I haven’t heard before, and I have worked through the disappointment before. Every time I have tried to take from the experience something that I need to work on. I have understood for a long time that public education does not prepare one for writing in the fiction genre, but I have never heard it explained quite as well as you have. That I believe has been the most frustrating thing for me as a writer. The knowledge that I am at point A on a literary map, and I want to get to point B, but I can’t get from point A to point B because the part of the map between the two points has been torn out and is missing. I lack the directions for how to get from point A to B. I visited your sight and read your articles as well as some of the articles you recommended. I found Randy Ingermanson’s aricle VERY HELPFUL and I plan to purchase Dwight Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer. I greatly appreciate your advice and the time you took to review my work. I have made some major revisions to my first chapter or prologue after reading these articles, and I think it has much improved. I still struggle with whether or not the first few paragraphs (or the narrative part) of the prologue works or not, but I think the changes I made overall have helped. Thank you again!