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part one of a rough draft (my NaNoWriMo goal is to finish up the rough draft this week):
Sam Harris smelled the mineral scent of blood and the overpowering stench of voided bowels. No - not voided, he corrected his thought. Ripped apart, spilled and shredded across the floor and walls of the alley. It had taken a moment to recognize the remains of a human being, a fellow man, strewn about and covered with a thick blanket of buzzing flies. It was something worse than any nightmare.
In all of his years in the military, and helping the police investigate violent crimes he had never imagined anything so bad; had never thought a human body could be shredded into little scraps, like a bit of newspaper ripped up for kindling - that those bits of human remains could be strewn about like the food and drink at a sangria party, staining the floor and walls of the cul-de-sac.For a long moment he thought he would vomit. He could feel a scalding sensation in the back of this throat and could taste the bile in his mouth. He could not help but give out a quiet moan of horror.
What could have done this? Who could have done this? How and why could this even happen?And then he snapped awake, as someone shook him. He found himself looking into the bright blue eyes of his wife, Viola. In her soft voice she quietly said, "It is time for you to tell me what you saw on your mission."
Hands shaking, he reached for a match and a cigar. He had seen that look in his wife's eyes before; he knew the quiet determination in her heart. He must tell her the story he had not entirely told anyone, but he needed a few moments to calm himself before he could even begin.
Finally, with a deep sigh, he began to tell Viola his story. He told her of the communication from the command, requesting his aid, even though he had been retired for some three years. Viola knew all of this, she had read the communiques herself, and advised him when they has arrived. But she waited patiently as he gathered this thoughts to continue his account.
He told her of the shipboard journey to the port between the mouths of the two great desert rivers, upon a distant sea. He told her of the boat that took him up one of the rivers to the ancient capitol, newly conquered by the Empire, and very uneasy. He told her of the chill of the desert night, the villages upon the shores, and the smell of the cooking fires of the heavily gowned and veiled women. He explained how the old temples to gods and goddesses unknown in the Empire shone in the moonlight upon the banks.
With a deeper sigh Sam told Viola of arriving at the city late at night, of being escorted to the officers' quarters, of being awoken at dawn with the news of another murder of an Empire soldier. Without even eating a meal in the city or being debriefed by the command, he was on his way to a native quarter of the city, where he found hell in an alley.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
  
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