Excerpt: Nightclub

Music shimmered over crystalline blue and drew him beyond the sapphire veil. The song…Jupiter, although he could not recall the composer's name…

unimportant

…reached a crescendo as Steve crossed the room, the slight squeak of his tennis shoes against the wood floor drowned by the orchestra and the soft hum of air conditioning. He knew that when he threw aside the curtain Clyde was going to freak out. And he didn't want to go there.

go

Although he tried to keep his arm firmly by his side, struggled to turn…

go on

…he stretched out his hand to the curtain as the change of air pressure sucked it into the back room. Over the music he heard the back door latch click and the squeak of its hinges. His stomach cramped and his muscles quivered with wanting to turn around and run away…

keep going

…but his feet remained stuck to the floor, his body immobile until he swept the curtain aside just in time to catch a glimpse, a silhouette, of someone going out the door into the cloud-shadowed dawn. Oh, God, he thought, not again.

not again

Now he struggled in earnest. He did not want to smell, to see…

you don't have to

…the dim light danced and black shadows crawled over scattered pawns, a rook, dice, backgammon pieces. Crawled toward the doorway. Crawled to him, dragging the black stain from the carpet, thrashing through trails of white powder and torn plastic, raising a fine, blood tinged dust…

stop

…dulling the blue jewel haze. Inexorably, his eyes followed the writhing shadow trail back to the broken, gape mouthed mannequin that struggled to reach him, hooking gnarled fingers into the black-stained shadows that hitched it across the carpet. In the mannequin's slack face he met Clyde's eyes, blindly staring…

I'm sorry

…and its hands reached for Steve's toes, scrabbled over his feet to clutch his ankles, to drag him into the spreading black pool of blood AND HE COULDN'T MOVE!

wake up!