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Attention Deficit Disorder

Ava threw herself behind the rotted dumpster, pressed her back up against the slimy prefab extruded surface and tried to suck air into her lungs. She couldn't get enough oxygen, the pounding of her heart filled the spaces that were supposed to bring in air. It throbbed in her neck, her wrists, her gut. It was all she could hear.

It fought in her brain with the need to run farther, to get away.

Or hide.

She reached up to wipe a drip that was making it's way down her chin but her sleeve was worse than her face, she glanced down at her arm and a sob pushed its way past her beating heart.

She was soaked, not with blood, but with everything. Everything that had been her guardian and teacher, everything that had been Maklun Burr. His skin, his flesh, his bones. His brain... she thought his brain had gone the other direction.

Yet somehow it was almost easier to look at what was, now, to focus on it, the bit of cloth stuck in the goo, the part that was a fragment of bone, forcing the details to push out the larger picture burned into her retinas, the glowing muzzle of a shoulder cannon and flash of fire, a sound so loud it approached silence, and the impact, body heat and moisture, as she stood next to her guardian in the main room of their apartment facing Jennat. A woman she'd known her whole life.

Known and trusted.

That she had run at all rather than freeze in confusion and terror was because of something Jennat had once said. It's human nature to freeze. Condition yourself to act in that moment, to attack or to flee. These bits of wisdom would be delivered while her guardian's attention was elsewhere. Jennat was someone that he'd tolerated only poorly.

And now he was dead.

She'd killed him. The shot had ripped through him such that no doctor or regrowth chamber could ever restore his body or mind.



Yeah, I'm supposed to be doing NaNoWriMo... No this isn't my NaNo story for this year... No I didn't write this today, but I found it in my stuff... it goes on for about 10 pages and I'm thinking... no... THIS is what I'm supposed to be working on.


One freaking month... all I have to do is keep my mind focused on one project for ONE month.


The other thing is what needs to be written... and only then I get go back to Ava and how she saves her world and unbalances the universe.

Comments

Big Mike said…
Puh-leeze. No more women with male mentors. Don't you women ever get female mentors???

Has Marion Zimmer Bradley stopped doing her "Swords and Sorceress" series? Back in the early days of the series she used to have good advice for authors in her forewards.
3:59 PM
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