So, the writer in my attic, K Orion Fray, sends out a weekly writing inspiration e-mail, which includes a writing prompt.

This story comes after
A Scene Description and
A Place Description

The Mayflower scene had been horrible on the projection scene. In real life, it was nauseating.

The glass eye in the front of the building should not exist; the pac-man style bite out of the back of it was physically impossible.

The impossibility, of course, stopped neither those nor any of the other horrors from existing – the stench of flesh already rotting, the more terrifying smell of cooking meat. Kara put a handkerchief up over her nose and breathed in deeply, once, twice, three times.

“I used to live here.” It wasn’t the first time Ket Vasquez had said that. It wasn’t even the first time since they’d arrived on scene, and they’d barely been there long enough to pull out the equipment. “Right up there.” His hand pointed, shaky.

Kara did what she was supposed to. She shouldered the piece of equipment that most closely resembled an expensive camera, attached the item that mostly looked like a telephoto lens, and plugged in the attachment that looked mostly like a USB drive. She pulled out the small, flat, shiny piece that could be mistaken for a smart phone, and tucked it where the lens would show, out of her jacket pocket. And she began taking… “pictures.”

Her movements seemed to fascinate Ket. He stared at her hands as she shifted the pieces around, finally falling silent. “Is that…”

“It’s the ‘C.A.M.E.R.A.'” She didn’t so much cut him of as preempt any suggestion of a question. “Could you hold up the ‘light meter?’ please?”

“I… the.” She could hear his swallow, although he wasn’t that close to her. “Kira, do you…”

“I need the light meter, Ket.” Where was Sergeant Allise? Kira wasn’t paid enough to deal with… “Ket! Tentacle under the sewers, Ket, what are you doing?”

What he was doing was running into the building. Kira bit her lip and took ‘pictures,’ her finger moving as fast on the shutter release as the button would push.

She saw him move in flashes of otherworldly-octarine-on-black: Running towards the door. Stepping inside the door, itself a portal of acid blue and blood dripping-red. His colors shifting from green to yellow to purple as he hit the few stairs that still worked.

She saw the moment his colors vanished: a tentacle of shadow ripped out of the seared edges of the hole and wrapped around Ket’s shining beacon of violet. The shadows squeezed, and then he was gone.

She kept taking ‘pictures’ until the screaming stopped.

A Scene Description and
A Place Description
A Deletion
A Conversation

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