automatonrevolution Storm in an Ale Mug

First Line Friday

Am totally stealing this idea from a friends blog. The idea being to take the first line of a story idea from an online generator and "flash" write whatever comes to mind. She's been doing ten minute posts, but since I'm a slower writer I decided to make it 30 minutes for me. I'm not used to sprint writing. The other excuse I have is a collie who wants to play. Either way this is the what I came up with this time. Its unedited, except for spelling, and I stuck to my time limit.

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First Line Friday: The Sound Of Breaking Glass Stopped Her

               The sound of breaking glass stopped her. It meant they were coming.

               She skidded and stumbled, kicking up dust on the road, almost going down on her hands and knees as she moved, scrambling into the shade beside an upturned truck. It was too open and she knew she’d have to move. Get to cover. Hide.

               The sound came again. It was a painful, cracking, tearing, clinking noise. The sound of splintered glass, like a fist through a window. She flinched, peering out round the ruined cab of the truck. They could be anywhere. She couldn’t tell how close they were, all she knew was that they were coming, because she could hear the glass.

               She pulled herself up and ran towards a building, dodging past the corpse of a car and trying not to look at the remains inside. Her footsteps seemed so loud, echoing round the street. She vaulted the the hole in the wall were the window had been and hunkered down. She needed to think and there wasn’t much time to do so.

               None of the buildings had windows anymore. There wasn’t a scrap of glass left untouched in the whole city, as far as she knew. They liked the glass, it was all angles and reflections, somehow perfect in their strange, unknowable minds. She’d seen what they left once they were done with it, just grains, glass rendered to sand or dust. They used it until it was too broken and ground up to still have whatever they considered as value, then they’d leave it and go seeking some other source. That was the only chance she had. She had to keep moving and avoiding them until they had to leave their glass bodies. Not much chance, but enough.

               The noises were coming closer, she could hear them over the wind that moaned through the skeletons of the buildings. She stayed low, and crawled further into the building, away from the street.

                                                            ****

               No one knew where the hounds had come from. None of the survivors she’d met had any idea what had really happened, and as their numbers dwindled the chances of anyone realising got smaller and smaller. She was glad of that, in some way. Bad enough to know the truth and be the only one who knew, but it would have been worse for others to know when they looked at her. Bad enough to know..bad enough to be responsible.

               She should have smashed the crystal when she’d had the chance. The Shining Trapezahedron. She’d been so stupid, so convinced of what she thought she knew that by the time she learned the final, awful truth it was too late. She knew nothing, understood less. Some doors should not be opened, some windows should not be looked beyond. When your reflection looks back at you from the time yet to come, its already too late.

               For a long time she’d wondered why they hadn’t just killed her or dragged her back to whatever far flung epoch that they hunted from. Their first steps into the world had been shocking and brutal and intensely violent. Humankind did so like to use glass. Windows, roofs, ornaments, mirrors. The hounds liked to use it even more, and had shown their victims what they liked to do with it.

               Even then, the hounds hadn’t touched her. At first it had seemed like chance, simple dumb luck. Then, as the dying continued and the stragglers of humanity had dwindled, picked off one by one, she realised what they were actually doing. Playing.

               The hounds were going to take her only when there was no-one else left.

                                                            ****

               She scrambled up the stairwell. Running almost on all fours, she moved fast and hard. For a brief, horrible moment she was reminded of how the hounds moved, but she was also reminded of when she’d been a girl, so desperate to get up the stairs in her parent’s house that she’d used her hands as well as her feet. Just walking up, like everyone else, had seemed to take too long. Now she didn’t have time to walk. The hounds weren’t slowed by stairs, when they bothered to use them. Sometimes they just used the walls.

               The screech of tortured glass echoed somewhere below her, which meant they were following her up. She quickened her pace, panting in fear. Her hands were slicked with sweat and she slipped on the dirt streaked floor. They barked and howled below her, brittle noises like shattering windows.

               She got to the top floor and kept going, heading to the roof. She clambered past the shreds of a person, gagging at the smell and the way they’d been…spread. Whoever they’d been, they must have been trying to get to the roof too. A hand was still attached to the handle of the access door. She kicked the door open rather than touch it, and as she moved past she thought she eyes of that skull followed her. You did this, they accused. She got out onto the roof, wind tugging at what remained of her clothes. It was then she realised her mistake. They weren’t just following her.

               They were waiting for her.

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I'm seeing a ton of stuff I'd like to change here. Foremost being theres a lack of description. I'd like to put in more visual stuff to let the reader get the scene in their minds eye. It also seems unfinished to me, but there WAS a time limit and I stuck to it. I would love to describe what one of these hounds looks like. All in all, im happy with the idea as it developed though.