The Dead (excerpt, draft)

Setting up this piece (scenes that haven't been written yet): our glad-sashed Heroine had been battling a gang called The Assembly for months. Some battles were won, some lost, as she thwarted their escalating criminal activities.

The Assembly eventually constructs a device that unleashes massive destruction upon our world. Our glad-sashed Heroine stops the destructive force, but in doing so must take drastic actions with terrible consequences.

She strains, tears seep from the corners of her eyes, then blood, then bile. Something breaks inside her. People suffer horribly throughout the city even as complete annihilation is averted. This piece, not yet completed, is an accounting of the unthinkable cost of saving the world.

from The Dead

North Ring
Orville Allen (hemorrhage)
Ursula Carroll (heart failure)
Raphael Curtis (stroke)
Gary Davis (stroke)
Lea Espinosa (heart failure)
Anton Eutsler (asphyxiation suffered during seizures)
Danny Gallagher (stroke)
Son Hawkins (heart failure)
Amos Kennedy (massive exsanguination)
Shelton Kraft (internal hemorrhage)
Harold Loeffelholz (organ failure)
Earnest Lujan (unexplained asphyxiation)
Deloris Magee (heart failure)
Haley Mays (heart failure)
Eileen McClure (shock)
Ruth Mendez (hypothermia)
Odetta Morgan (stroke)
Ida Morris (stroke)
Nettie Page (heart failure)
Edward Parker (organ failure)
Will Pruitt (excessive fever)
Ian Ramos (kidney failure)
Lelia Stickland (asphyxiation)
Leonard Tackett (heart failure)

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Note to my fellow Horsemen and others... I have a big reading next week in Baltimore (on Saturday, 7/18) and so I'm sure a few of my posts in the coming week will be more leading up to that -- working out bits that need working out -- and less in response to the other Horseman. Though, I'm hoping the Horsemen help lift me over stumbling blocks with their own work.

This piece is certainly one of those "prep pieces."