This is... fanfiction, I guess. It's an attempted novelisation of a screnplay written by a friend, taking various necessary liberties with dialogue to try and get the flow right for the medium. Hence, characters and storyline do not belong to me. That's less of a disclaimer than an acknowledgement though. Everything else about it is my fault.
Also, before anyone asks: no, it's not about vampires.
Anyway, please feed back. This is basically the prologue to what will be the novel, if I keep up with the exercise, so I would very much like to know what people believe to have been wrong and right with it.
PRLOGUE
The back-street was deserted and the industrial buildings sat silhouetted against the dull night that spread purple as a bruise over the sky, squatting like square concrete toads. The London smog hid the stars and left the moon a formless smudge of pearl.
Footsteps echoed through the still night as the man walked the pavement down the ugly concrete road, moving briskly but warily. A country boy by birth, his work often brought him to into cities, but he had spent little time in the capital, and so far, he did not care for it. He pulled his long coat around him, staving off the cool nip of the March air. A long and fruitless day on the job had left him tired and vaguely annoyed. He had been brought to London on a promise of work that had so far yielded no real results, and his thoughts were turned towards his B & B room and a cup of hot tea, when the brief patter of running footsteps behind him sent a chill down his spine and set his senses tingling.
He turned quickly, but there was no one behind him. Only a nearby row of skips and empty road could be seen in the pools of weak light that spilled from the streetlamps, the toadlike buildings rendered eyeless by their darkened windows. He frowned for a second, then shrugged it off and continued on his way past a row of skips.
A second later, however, the patter sounded again, closer this time. He halted purposefully and turned on his heel, sweeping the area with his gaze. The street sat just as quietly as his gaze had left it moments ago, but his senses were tingling with the unmistakeable feeling of being watched. Noting the skips he had just passed, he stepped back towards them hesitantly, with the intention of peering behind them to uncover his pursuer. Probably the hoodies he’d heard so much about.
I knew I didn’t like London, he thought ruefully.
Before he had taken three steps, a figure emerged with a suddenness that slammed through him. He stopped quickly with a jolt, but it was only a girl, small and slight. He expelled the breath he had been holding, shaking his head as though berating his own skittishness as she stepped out into a weak pool of light that fell beside the skip.
She was young – perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old – and wearing only a thin white dress, at odds with his own heavy coat and fingerless gloves. Uncanny gunmetal-grey eyes streaked with violet glittered beneath the streetlamp in her pale, thin face, reflecting the dull glow like a cat’s as she regarded him, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips. She did not speak; only stood quietly, looking at him.
Eventually, the man spoke. “Are you all right?”
She shook her head vaguely. Her voice was as small and sweet as the rest of her: “No. I’m hungry.”
...
Fair enough.
Looking down, he noticed that she was barefoot, and his brow furrowed in concern. “Are you lost?”
She shook her head slowly, violet and gunmetal eyes never leaving his face. “Not lost. I’m a long way from home, though.”
The frown deepened. Those eyes... He’d never seen their likeness. They were wrong, somehow; too much violet in them, streaked in among the grey. He’d never seen violet eyes before, assuming them to be the invention of poets and romantics. Who knew. “There’s a taxi rank out on the main street.” He pointed at the road he’d been heading towards. “Where do you live?” She didn’t answer, continuing to smile her strange unsettling smile at him.
Undeterred, he tried again. “Do you have enough money for your fare?”
She beamed then, her face animating like a child’s. “I don’t need a
fare to get home.”
“So you live close by?” He looked around doubtfully at the deserted street. “I’d still get a taxi, if I were you. It’s very late for a girl your age to be walking the streets. And I see you lost your shoes.” Nodding towards her feet, he smiled, attempting to put her at her ease. “I’m certain there’s a story there... but we should still get you home. You’re liable to step on a needle wandering around like that.”
The smile was now cat-like. “I’m so hungry.”
She was a strange one. He shrugged, nonplussed. “Well, there’s a café just across the road from the rank.” He looked around at the dark streets. “Why don’t you let me walk you there? This isn’t the best neighbourhood to be wandering around in at night.”
The girl broke into an impish grin and raised one hand to grip the side of the skip, swinging herself towards him like a child on both tiptoes. “I like this neighbourhood.” She reached the end of her arm’s leverage paused for a moment, hanging towards him, before stepping out onto the pavement.
“There are a lot of stabbings around here”, he persisted gently.
Crossing the short distance between them with a dancer’s grace in an unnerving flash of sudden speed, she came to a halt in front of him. He resisted the urge to recoil, but could not hide the almost imperceptible tensing of his muscles as she took her stance in his personal space, though she barely reached his shoulders in height. She smiled up at him, eyes glittering and bright as a bird’s. “Yes. It’s very convenient.”
He sighed. “Have you been smoking something you shouldn’t have, by any chance?” No reply – he nodded slightly, as though his suspicions had been confirmed, and gathered himself firmly. “Right, let me show you where the cafe is. You can get something to eat, then go home. I’ll get the fare. Just... be more careful next time you decide to go on a bender.”
She shook her head. “Hungry now.”
“It’s only five minutes away”, he told her, pointing back towards the street in the middle distance.
She stepped closer, insistently. “Hungry
now...”
As she came to a stop directly in front of him, her face suddenly changed. Her eyes scorched black, her jaw elongated slightly, and right before his eyes, long, thin teeth suddenly grew from her mouth, curving downwards.
The midnight pools of her eyes sparkled with malice.
The man stood motionless, seemingly frozen shock – at least, until she lunged at him. Pulling a ten-inch iron dagger from inside his jacket with a speed that would have left his hand a silvery blur to an onlooker, her attempt to topple him with a bodyslam was stopped when he hammered it into her heart.
“That’s a shame”, he told her as she teetered on the end of the blade. “I hear they do a killer cherry pie.” His own gunmetal grey eyes flashed silver as he pulled out the dagger, dislodging it forcefully from her breastbone.
She stared at him in child-like shock, her eyes now gunmetal and violet again, catching an unnatural amount of light from the dim lamps. “...You’re real”, she gasped, dazed as her organs began to die, turning to dust inside her. He watched impassively as death erupted from her core, turning all her flesh to thick dark soil in its marbling wake. He spoke before its journey was complete.
“I’m real”, he told her as it began to spread over her face. “Most things are. We just call them by the wrong names.” She gasped her death rattle as the soil took her eyes. There was a soft thud as her heart turned to dust inside her and exploded, bringing the whole structure cascading to the floor in streams of soil and dirt.
The man pocketed the dagger calmly, then turned on his heel and walked away under the dull streetlamps. The pearly smudge of moon did not cast enough light to make the pile of soil on the ground visible. It was as though the girl had never been there.
