Goodnight Moon
an excerpt

It was a dark and stormy night, but where he was now, this fact escaped him completely. It was unfortunate though because he rather missed those nights when the rain was pounding so hard outside that he could scarcely tell that he was safe indoors, if he was even safe indoors. He missed the snarling thunder and angry flashes of lightning and the constant rattling of the wooden walls of abandoned shacks and farms, piles of logs in the middle of the forest. He missed the smell of the world being wet – the smell of soaked dirt and waterlogged pine. Silly things like that, not that he would ever admit it to anyone, least of all himself.

Where he was now was a weatherless place: cold, smooth, dry. Three walls made of concrete who knows how many feet thick and the fourth was covered with silver bars. Or at least, they were iron bars coated with silver because they felt more secure with the extra strength and it was less expensive that way anyhow. There was no noise except for quiet breathing and the air conditioning vent on the ceiling that smelt like dust and rusted metal. He could also smell a soggy wetness that was very different from the smell of rain – this was a damp and rotting scent, like molding cheese or bread that had been left out long enough to feed a culture of a few billion bacteria. It smelt like mildew, basements and sewer drains, all of which he had become far too familiar with at one point or another.