Dark Ellen
05-15-2004, 06:51 PM
Guess what? I'm doing Keeper of the Cremidel Staff all over again. The whole prologue will be 8 pages long in MS Word and in 3rd person, rather than 1 page long in 1st person. 1st person helps me get in the main character's head more. The entire rest of the book will be 1st person. No one seems to read my chapters which were the 8-page size, so I'll just post this, which has been revised twice.
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“Code Alpha Black, U3-9! Code Alpha Black, U3-9! ” boomed the wooden intercom over the high-pitched alarms drowning the entire building in a wave of noise. “Arm yourselves and proceed to Corridor Seven!”
I stared down at the open, empty, metal cage, set on the table with my mouth agape. The cremidel had chewed through one of the rusty bars and formed a hole for its escape. Puddles of black goop formed a trail, leading to the hallway where it was now running rampantly. I had only taken my eyes off of the experiment for only one minute. How could it have gotten away during only a minute?
I ran around the other tables in the lab and stumbled over a cage that had been pushed over the edge. I placed my hands on the solid, white wall and used it to regain my balance while I pulled myself up. Shattered glass from test tubes and beakers was scattered upon the uncarpeted linoleum floor. Luckily, my knees weren’t sc*****. Some tables had been even broken in half. Among the other wreckage in the room were several broken tables, chairs, and missing ceiling fan paddles.
I stopped running, kneeled down, and placed my hand on the bronze knob of the oak cabinet door. My heart pounded violently as I pulled it open. Then I wrapped my fingers around the cold steel of the tranquilizing gun. I withdrew it and held it diagonally as I slid the ammunition inside. My hands, tense with self-loathing, had nearly broken the first pellet from squeezing it too much.
I rushed over to the hallway entrance, which had been scratched by the fugitive beast. Its claws had deposited a bubbling, purple acid in the iron door, which had been left ajar. Five minutes earlier I had gone over to the microwave at the edge of the room for my morning coffee and breakfast break. In the middle of doing that I had looked up and found the cremidel wrecking the equipment. I didn’t hear it before because I’ve learned to drown out its incessant whining and growling. Immediately, it hissed at me and ran on all fours out of the room.
I opened the door all the way to find a mob of fleeting bright yellow lab coats, neon green pants, and faces masked with protection goggles. Apparently, the other scientists thought it was all a test. They were all chatting with each other, as if it was a school fire drill. They were completely unaware of the danger in which they could have been.
I was the only one who knew it was the real thing. I quickly closed the door so they wouldn’t know it was I who did it. I wiped the perspiration away from my sweaty forehead and tried unsuccessfully to erase all signs of guilt as I merged into the crowd. Patches of the blue marble floor and plain, brick walls materialized and disappeared as other scientists walked by.
The cremidel had not only escaped, but it had released more of its kind as well. Somewhere, those creatures were causing chaos and destroying everything in front of them. That was their primary function. I was an employee by the Sevrenian government. My job was to raise these animals with proper training for the militia they would be put in as adults. They spent months instructing me on proper care, but all that had been wasted now.
They were the perfect creatures for mass destruction. They were packed with the power of an atomic bomb and the energy of five hundred tons of sugar. Sevrenia had decided to harness that and save it the trouble of having an army some time before I was born. The irony of having them maul the entire place in which they were created was unbearable, but not more than thinking about having the damage they could do.
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“Code Alpha Black, U3-9! Code Alpha Black, U3-9! ” boomed the wooden intercom over the high-pitched alarms drowning the entire building in a wave of noise. “Arm yourselves and proceed to Corridor Seven!”
I stared down at the open, empty, metal cage, set on the table with my mouth agape. The cremidel had chewed through one of the rusty bars and formed a hole for its escape. Puddles of black goop formed a trail, leading to the hallway where it was now running rampantly. I had only taken my eyes off of the experiment for only one minute. How could it have gotten away during only a minute?
I ran around the other tables in the lab and stumbled over a cage that had been pushed over the edge. I placed my hands on the solid, white wall and used it to regain my balance while I pulled myself up. Shattered glass from test tubes and beakers was scattered upon the uncarpeted linoleum floor. Luckily, my knees weren’t sc*****. Some tables had been even broken in half. Among the other wreckage in the room were several broken tables, chairs, and missing ceiling fan paddles.
I stopped running, kneeled down, and placed my hand on the bronze knob of the oak cabinet door. My heart pounded violently as I pulled it open. Then I wrapped my fingers around the cold steel of the tranquilizing gun. I withdrew it and held it diagonally as I slid the ammunition inside. My hands, tense with self-loathing, had nearly broken the first pellet from squeezing it too much.
I rushed over to the hallway entrance, which had been scratched by the fugitive beast. Its claws had deposited a bubbling, purple acid in the iron door, which had been left ajar. Five minutes earlier I had gone over to the microwave at the edge of the room for my morning coffee and breakfast break. In the middle of doing that I had looked up and found the cremidel wrecking the equipment. I didn’t hear it before because I’ve learned to drown out its incessant whining and growling. Immediately, it hissed at me and ran on all fours out of the room.
I opened the door all the way to find a mob of fleeting bright yellow lab coats, neon green pants, and faces masked with protection goggles. Apparently, the other scientists thought it was all a test. They were all chatting with each other, as if it was a school fire drill. They were completely unaware of the danger in which they could have been.
I was the only one who knew it was the real thing. I quickly closed the door so they wouldn’t know it was I who did it. I wiped the perspiration away from my sweaty forehead and tried unsuccessfully to erase all signs of guilt as I merged into the crowd. Patches of the blue marble floor and plain, brick walls materialized and disappeared as other scientists walked by.
The cremidel had not only escaped, but it had released more of its kind as well. Somewhere, those creatures were causing chaos and destroying everything in front of them. That was their primary function. I was an employee by the Sevrenian government. My job was to raise these animals with proper training for the militia they would be put in as adults. They spent months instructing me on proper care, but all that had been wasted now.
They were the perfect creatures for mass destruction. They were packed with the power of an atomic bomb and the energy of five hundred tons of sugar. Sevrenia had decided to harness that and save it the trouble of having an army some time before I was born. The irony of having them maul the entire place in which they were created was unbearable, but not more than thinking about having the damage they could do.