It was, of course, a dark and stormy night. Daniel Logeais hunched deeper into his leather raincoat, turning up the collars in a vain attempt to keep from getting wetter. Not that it was doing him any good. He had been out in the rain for hours before he had found the coat, or rather, the dead man whose coat this had been.
A shiver ran down Daniel’s spine at the memory of finding the cold, wet corpse in the garbage bin he favored for diving. It wasn’t the first time he had ever found a body during his many excursions into other peoples’ leftovers, but they had all be nameless strangers. This man Daniel had seen before.
Daniel snuffled in the cold rain and put his back more firmly against the bricks of the abandoned storefront he was using for temporary cover. Pulling the coat closer to himself, he remembered that, in fact, it was yesterday that he had seen corpse alive.
He had found himself uptown, picking the pockets of people leaving automated tellers. It was strictly small change work, but it was easy. He had bough himself a coffee au lait -- the kind in the big cup, just for the sheer extravagance -- when he noticed the coat.
Even uptown, long coats were the cutting edge of fashion, especially ones of real leather. That an animal had actually died to make a coat meant that somewhere there had been an animal still in captivity. Or wilder yet, some fool had traveled past the zone to bad some bull just to tan its hide. Either way, it made a powerful fashion statement and Daniel was suitably impressed as it glided past him. His gaze followed it until it settled itself with a group of men nearest the street. He would have continued to stare at it but the men it had stationed itself among were ricelords and was never good business to store at the ricelords for very long.
[Curious, eh? Seems kind of cyberpunky. I wonder where this one was going.]
5 comments:
Wordiness aside, the tone and initial image are good, and there's a nice hook. You can see where your writing was going long-term with this one.
I got an omnibus in for review around this time last year - two novels. The second one started out, "It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. It was a dark and stormy night." I pitched it across the room.
Interesting. Could like it.. except for the dark and stormy night bit. hee.
Yeah, I agree with Doug. This one shows definite promise. Despite its flaws, I wanted to keep reading, and not because it was making me snicker.
This is all Bladerunnery.
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