Fleeting Memory...

[Elwen]

Notes: First thing posted in a long time. This is the prologue to my novel, "Breaking the Spiral", which will NOT be posted here (thematic reasons, not the least of which is a lot of swearing).

 

 

 

He shivered quietly in the gray mist, trying to draw his jacket closer to him to provide some kind of extra warmth, but his hands were too stiff, the fingers too inflexible, to even bend enough to grasp the sturdy material. Inch by agonizing inch, numbness crawled up his body, from the very tips of his toes: the young man’s slender body was feeling, with every passing moment, more and more like lead, it was becoming harder and harder to move. He could barely breathe-hell, he wondered why it was even possible for him to still breathe-as the mist pressed down upon him, lay on him like ten thousand soaked quilts, blinding him, deafening him. He was helpless here, and he knew it, and he hated being helpless.

 

The young man had seen, known, and considered many nightmares in his short life, but he was seriously starting to consider that this gray nothingness was the worst of them all. By now, the numbness was past his chest and almost to his shoulders, and the one time he managed to slap his hands together, in order to prove to himself that he could still feel something, that this void wasn’t all there was, he had barely felt it. However, the sensory numbness wasn’t the worst part of this whole ordeal, though he was half-tempted to describe it as such.

 

Silently, the gray numbness flowed into his mind…slowly, inexorably, it seeped into his memories, leeching them out and washing them away, leaving nothing behind but the void. Sitting in the vast emptiness, his knees drawn up to his chin, Karin recited his memories, one after the other, one by one, desperately trying not to forget, but knowing all the while it was hopeless.

 

Even though he was moving his lips, he wasn’t sure if he was making any noise at all-he couldn’t tell, not in this gray mist. Still, he didn’t care…his lips silently moving, Karin whispered his memories to the mist, everything, anything, everything, he couldn’t forget…everything, everything, he wanted to hold on to, for as long as he could…

[Wyvern]

I found this an intriguing prologue, Elwen. :-) The surreal image of mists engulfing Karin's memories was vivid, and the choice to begin the story with a nightmare was also very interesting.

 

While I enjoyed this, I felt that the extensive uses of commas may have diluted some of the tension that this intro was aiming to evoke. You may want to consider breaking the paragraphs into shorter sentences, as the commas can be distracting at times. I'm also guilty of relying on dependent clauses too much, so I definitely sympathize with this issue.

 

It's a shame that you won't be sharing the story itself... I'd be very interested in reading it. Perhaps you could consider posting it in the Scarlett Pen forum? :-)

 

Nice prologue, once again.