An Excerpt

In case you didn't get the idea from the last post, I'm writing a novel. Here's an excerpt thats from my Nanowrimo page (because I love Nanowrimo and anticipate it's coming each year with an eagerness that I can hardly conceal but that's a story for later.)

Excerpt:

It was the beginning of the end. At some level in her tortured mind, Angelene knew that. As she stood there and stared down at the woman she’d just killed, she found herself… second guessing. In a moment where her mind had always been clean and clear and wonderful, this thing, this doubt was casting a blight upon her ease.

She was just lying there. It wasn’t like she could do anything else, not with that hole in her chest made by Angelene’s knife. You would have thought that over the years she would have learned to take someone out neater, to make it look as if nature had done the deed and not her- but no. Poison wasn’t an option because it took too long, had the potential hurt others who were not her intended targets. A while back, she used to stage suicides, but Angelene couldn’t muster the will to stage the elaborate set-up for it- she just wanted to get it done.

'This is not discreet.' Her mind said, always the one to bring these things up when she had something else to do. It had been doing that a lot lately, especially now that the doubt was seeking sanctuary in it. 'And this was discreet? I don’t think so...'
'It’s the way it’s always been done.' Angelene took refuge in this thought; there was something calming about being in familiar waters, something comforting about being in her same ‘groove.’ In ‘It’s the way that it’s always been done,’ Angelene found all the comfort and warmth that her body couldn’t supply anymore.

She reached down and methodically cleaned the blade of her knife on the woman’s skirt, for the purposes of hygene obviously. It wasn’t hygenic to just leave blood on a blade like that, moldering away- someone could get sick. The blood was hard to get off- she had to scrub the cold metal hard with her thumb until the red smeared to a yellowish stain and then was gone. She pushed so hard her thumb slipped and the blade bit deeply into her skin. The knife scraped against the bone and pushed a section of flesh on her finger in agony.

Angelene yelped, and then turned fast to see if anyone was alerted by the sound of her voice. There were footsteps in the hall outside. She swore in her head and quickly pressed herself up against the wall where she couldn’t be immidiately seen from anyone entering the door clutching her thumb to her.

“Phaela? Are you alright?”

Angelene tried to pinpoint where the voice had come from in the outside hall. The shadows hid her, but the body was displayed prominantly in the room like there was nothing else to look at. She wondered if she had time enough to drag it somewhere that would buy her some time, but even then she would have to clean up the blood. The window at the end of the room beckoned to her, but she didn’t know if she could get to it in time. Her hand twinged at her, but she knew enough to keep quiet. God, the window was so far away, but why was she hesitating? The only option there had ever been from this point was flight. She didn’t need to kill the others because they didn’t concern her.

How had she ended up here? How had she submersed herself this far into madness? How had she… How?

The dagger felt good in her hands. She didn’t have one before, or couldn’t get to it. He’d taken it off her after he’d tied her up. That was why.
Her hands were shaking.
She closed her eyes.

--

It had all started… with an innocent experiment. She’d decided to see the enemy, and find out for herself if they were truly so terrible after such a long time, if they could be so terrible as they had been so long ago.
She’d tied her hair up, but that was acceptable. Every woman tied her hair up here, and she didn’t look out of place- as long as you didn’t count the fact that her pale skin was bright in the hot air. And though her clothes were almost outlandish to the natives, they didn’t question her- she slipped in and out of the public consciousness.

A hand reached out from behind a building, and took her by surprise. It pulled her back and pushed her up heavily against the wall, and another clapped over her mouth to stifle her scream of surprise.

“I know what you are.” The man said, his lips barely distinguishable from underneath the great mess of hair that grew from the lower half of his face. “You can’t hide it from me.”

Angelene tried to say something, and put her hands up in a desperate, useless attempt to placate the man. She tried to say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ but was silenced when he beat her heavily across the cheek.

She fell to the side with a cry, blood in her mouth. She tried to call out for help, but there was no one around.

There was a hand in front of her mouth, but his hand was so big that the misshapen, knobby thumb blocked any air from getting into her nose. Her fingers clawed madly at his arm, but he was wearing something thick and she couldn’t tear herself free to breathe- she quite wanted, quite needed to breathe; the feeling of his rancid breath scalding her ear, the horrible pressure of his lips just barely brushing against her skin when he spoke to make sure she heard him, made her sick. Angelene could feel her stomach wanting to heave, but she knew she couldn’t act on anything because she didn’t want to drown herself.

‘You think… I would never figure it out? I know your kind, they always think they can get away with anything, always think they can take advantage of anyone-’ The voice of the man was getting agitated now as he became more enraged at his own words.

Angelene felt the grey darkness eat at her vision before she felt herself droop and her body slump over in his grasp. For a moment, she tried to drag herself back, determined now to use what she had been determined before not to use because she would do anything to get out of this alive, anything to get back to…

--

But then there was darkness, almost like what she was sitting in now, in the slow, split seconds between the footfalls outside the door that swallowed her up.

She leapt across the room, but as she did she could already hear the door opening behind her- maybe if she was lucky, she could get out the window before she was noticed, but she heard the scream before she had her hands on the window sill and knew she had been spotted.

--
Please please please tell me what you think. Even if you think it's horrible. Especially if you think it's horrible.