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*Sneak Peek* Verve (NaNoWriMo)


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This is a sneak peek into my NaNoWriMo project. Don't mind me, just passing through! :)

 

 

We very nearly expected to find another round of police tape when we reached the next address, but the streets were unusually quiet and peaceful. A slight mist was hanging in the morning air, fed by streams of moist vapours fuming from the gutters, and a young girl walked her cocker spaniel on the other side of the peaceful Victorian-style street. The scenery creeped me out and I didn’t know why.

Quentin was walking along the beautiful houses, counting the numbers as we closed in on Mr. Ezechial Goldsmitt’s home, and I followed him slowly. Something was in the air, and it tasted faintly like that strange flavour copy machine rooms get after a busy day. If ozone had a taste, it would be like that. But ozone is tasteless and just leaves a diffuse fruity reminder on the sides of your tongue. The fog had a note just like that to it.

“Do you smell that?” I whispered, and Quentin looked back with spooked eyes.

“What?” he asked, but I could see it in the way he walked, that hunch in his back. He knew what I meant.

I looked up. I had never seen a lightning strike up close, but I heard that a lot of ozone built up where a lightning hit, and I honestly didn’t want to be at that one in a million place at the wrong time.

Quentin hissed. “Look, there!” His hand pointed up to the top of one of the houses further up the street.

I looked to where he pointed and stumbled back three steps with sheer shock at the sight of strange, silent lights dancing along the gables of the houses. They glowed like a ghost, moved slowly and languidly and had no sharp edges or contours, just a soft, pale cloud of light. It jumped over to another house, and for a moment there was a sharp, loud bang as a discharge of electricity licked from the house over to one of the power lines.

It looked so beautiful, but I knew it was deadly. The whole sidewalk was a big death trap.

“Quentin! Get away from there! Get behind the power lines right now!” I called as I jumped to the other side of the road to get some distance between me and the houses.

I yelled loud enough to frighten off the little girl with her dog, but it was better than waiting for her to get fried.

Quentin ran over just as fast, shaken by the intensity of that one bang. “What is that? What the heck just happened?” he breathed, walking sideways just like I did to keep track of that creeping line of misty light. I had seen it once before in a documentary about an air plane flying though volcanic ash after a volcanic eruption, but never in real life, and never like this.

“I think that’s St. Elmo’s fire, but that’s impossible. There’s no friction here, and that light is produced by tiny particles rubbing against a surface until they are so electrically charged they start to glow,” I answered, and grabbed his arm when he made an attempt to go back to the other side.

“I’ve never heard of St. Elmo’s fire producing lightnings,” he murmured, half in shock and half amazed, wanting to get closer but still afraid to actually do it.

“I’ve never heard of it outside of a very heavy thunderstorm,” I growled, and grabbed his arm harder.

The door to one of the houses opened, and an older man in fitness gear attempted to go outside. Right beneath the glowing death trap.

We both ran, but I didn’t have to stop Quentin from going across the street again, he seemed to get the danger. Waving our arms we screamed, “go back! Go back inside right now! Back!”, but it was too late.

I had one last view of that slightly weathered, sun-tanned face, the immaculate beard and the styled gray hair, then his foot touched the concrete below his door step and with another harsh bang a second discharge roared out of the roof, into his head and out of his knee to jump into the wet ground. His whole body twitched for about three seconds, and his blue polo shirt caught fire, then he fell into a smoking heap.

For one second everything was quiet, then there was sound without sound, a small blast wave pressing against my chest and making me stumble, and I saw the contours of a shadow rush out of the dead man’s chest and disappear into the ground with a silent, ear-ringing scream that was not a scream.

A demon, robbed of his fleshy outfit.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if Quentin had felt the demon in front of us die like I had, if he had caught a glimpse of that ethereal hell shadow fleeing the bodily world, but I dearly hoped not. I felt shocky and confused, and it took me another minute to realize Quentin was already talking to 911 on the phone, trying to assure the operator that he wasn’t making a prank call and that she really, truly needed to send an ambulance over.

My eyes wandered up to the roof, only to find the last traces of the St. Elmo’s fire gone, vanished into the heights it had come from. Looking lower I stared at the number plate at the house front, letting the realization slowly dawn on me.

“Quentin, you said Mr. Goldsmitt lives in 145 Willow Road, right?” I said, slowly pointing at the numbers crowning the old house. The one was a bit bigger than the four and the five, all of them looked hand painted.

Quentin followed the path of my finger, looked at the sign for a few seconds, then back at me. There was dread in his eyes, and I truly could understand it.

“This is the second dead contact we’ve had today. That’s no coincidence,” he said hoarsely, and his eyes flitted upwards ever so often, checking for cottony lights creeping up on him.

I pulled my coat closer around my body, huddling against his side as I watched the other direction just as intently. “No, it’s not. But who or what could be able to control… weather? That’s serious power, and I’ve never even heard of such magic.”

Quentin didn’t shy away. He pressed his back closer against mine and took a deep, hard breath in. “This is not good. Let’s hope the last two people on my list aren’t dead already.”

And there we stood, waiting for the ambulance, the fire truck, someone, anyone to take our place in that cold, creepy street, with a very dead, very smoking corpse at our backs.

Edited by metajinx
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