The following passage strives to capture that special feeling when you go to your room on the 15th floor and realize you’re watching the sun go down on a completely different world than the one you woke up to this morning. From Chapter 7 of my novel Bleeding Kansas, “In the Night Kitchen”:
Mardi Gras of the dead. I like the sound of that. Not sure I'd like the smell, taste, or feel so much, but it sure sounds like fun!
On my way down the hall to my room I’m startled by the whump! of a body throwing itself at the other side of a door, roaring and snarling like a frustrated predator behind the glass at the zoo. Thank God that thing hasn’t figured out how to work the latch. Thanks again for being many doors down from mine. I don’t want to have to try and sleep with that thing’s angry, hungry yowling in my ears.
I open the door to my room, this same room I woke up in this morning. The same room on another planet, where the hotel staff is dead or food for the same. I close the door behind me and secure the latch.
The sun edges below the horizon, its orange-yellow beams blazing like a silent scream through the window. I look down onto streets that were completely empty this morning. Still no cars or trucks rolling about. Just…people? It’s like Mardi Gras, wall-to-wall bodies and not one of them walks a straight line. I see no cars or trucks, armored or otherwise. No muzzle flashes of rifles or sidearms. All you see are these erratic, atomized little blotches, every one a stone killer.
Mardi Gras of the dead. I like the sound of that. Not sure I'd like the smell, taste, or feel so much, but it sure sounds like fun!
Bleeding Kansas Copyright © 2013, 2014, 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken
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