Continuation of a very very old story I wrote.

Short Story: Horror

Todd tried to dissuade Will at first.  For days he talked of how hard it was, how stressful.  It appeared that he was terribly sorry he had ever gone to see Will in the hospital room in the first place, and Will was soon sick of Todd’s eyes giving him that pitying, downcast look every time they spoke.  Will was sure Todd was wary of how he would act once in an ambulance again, and on seeing a freshly dead person.  Will was wary too.  He wasn’t certain if he could handle it, but he knew he had to try.  His life was at stake, and he couldn’t let his old fears hold him back.

He had expected training, and lots of it, and he was prepared to wait and work through whatever he needed to learn, but to his surprise all that was required of him was to fill out a pile of paperwork, very little of which he bothered to read.  Will was joining them the next night, Todd told him.  When Will asked whether he didn’t have to train for the job, Todd only replied, “It’s on-site training here.  They’re already dead when we get them.  What’s the worst you could do if you messed up?”  Will found the idea of “experimenting” on unwilling subjects a bit unsettling, but said nothing.

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At some point in college I took a creative writing course, where I had an amazing professor and learned that writing is awesome.  I hadn’t written since middle school, when I wrote a short story about a cat that could go through walls and other materials and was out for revenge on the man who had tried to kill it.  Sirens was the first story I wrote seriously for that creative writing class; it was based on a dream I had!  I’m not going to reread it, just gonna post it here in all its early writing crumminess.  It’s going to be posted in two parts.

Short Story: Horror

He was too young, and he shouldn’t have seen the wreckage.  But he had run away from his mother and she was at that moment on the other side of the crowd, screaming his name.  He paid her no mind and slipped between the onlookers, the gawkers flown to the scene to stare at the wonder.  He wanted to see what they were staring at, what they were standing on their toes to witness, peering over and between each others’ heads.  He could smell smoke and hear sirens, but he couldn’t see.  He had to see.  The sirens grew closer and he pushed his way in, muscling his way between the people as best he could until he finally broke out at the edge of the crowd.

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