17 November 2010

Mokkameth and the Wight

Hmm. It would be fair to say that the three deleted drabbles I've posted so far to trail my forthcoming City of the Saved short story in Faction Paradox: A Romance in Twelve Parts have been a bit abstract and static. This hasn't really been giving an accurate picture of what the story's like. So here's an action sequence:
     The wight stares at its severed arm. ‘You’ll pay for that, sonny,’ it promises.
     It grabs Mokkameth’s wrist, twisting his sword away, pressing his palm against the livid stump of its shoulder.
     Mokkameth’s fingertips sink into the wight’s flesh. His arm begins to lose sensation as its skin blanches, the pallor of the wight’s hide seeping quickly across his own brown pigment.
     The paleness reaches Mokkameth’s shoulder, a hold loosens within – and the wight withdraws new-built fingers, leaving behind a clean and puckered wound.
     ‘You’re so lucky that wasn’t my head, sunshine,’ it growls, shaking its stolen biceps into place.
These will all be going on the website eventually, naturally. In the meantime, I've updated the microfiction page.

2 comments:

  1. Rebecca1:06 pm

    An eye for an eye, I suppose.

    But I'm afraid the overwhelming impression I am left with by this story is that the wight is left with an arm attached the wrong way, i.e. with the hand end of the arm attached to the shoulder. It rather detracts from the horror of the wight stealing somebody's arm.

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  2. Ah. Well, the drabble form's only sufficient to sketch this kind of thing impressionistically, but the last sentence is supposed to suggest that it reshapes the arm as well. Sorry it doesn't quite work for you.

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