Myers slogged through the mud, between the toppled walls and timbers of the abandoned village. "This place looks like it was a real shithole," he thought as he paused to scrape off some of the thick, tarry muck that clung to his boots and continually threatened to turn them into platform soles.
When they were as clean as he could get them, he pulled a scrap of yellowed paper from his pocket. The creases where it had been folded were so thin they almost represented more of a concept of coherence than any actual physical bond. He opened the note gingerly, then looked around to get his bearings. He squinted at the paper, trying to make out the faded pencil lines and make some connection to the decrepitude around him.
Finally it clicked. A hillside fell into place, then a tree (much larger now than in the spidery illustration on the paper) and suddenly all the wreckage lined up with the image, and he knew where to go. Around the remains of a few houses and through a surprisingly-intact wall, and he was at his destination: a section of wall built into a low embankment. A thick carpet of grass stretched before the base of the wall, sheltered from the worst of the downpours that had turned the rest of the area into a vast mudbowl. And in the middle of the wall stood the weathered remains of a door, one side broken and gone. Where it had been an opening yawned.
Myers stood uncertain. He felt no apprehension about crossing into the dark hole - hell, that's what he'd come thousands of miles to do! But he was pretty sure something was supposed to happen before he could go in. Something he was supposed to do before he was ALLOWED in.
As he hovered at the door, a small cat suddenly emerged from the darkness. It glided into the light and rubbed itself sensuously against the battered doorpost, then sat down and began to groom itself. Myers stood watching the cat for a long moment, until at last the cat looked up at him through half-lidded eyes and said,
"You gonna stand there all day, asshole, or you gonna give me the stuff?"
3 comments:
That was a great ending and definately an outline worthy piece. I stumbled a little over the flow between the first and second paragraphs, but that is about all.
Which part did you stumble on? There's some confusion on "they" were. I wonder if just joining the first two paragraphs might make it better...
I've reread it about five times and don't feel a problem between the first two any more. At this point I'm not sure why I had a problem with it in the first place.
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