Whilst in India I have started to write a book.  I’m calling the book Red Moon and here’s an early excerpt.  The book centres around disappearances of young people in Goa.  The initial inspiration was supplied by some spooky events in Pondicherry.   This is the second post related to the book.  You can read the other by clicking the link at the end. Enjoy!  Or not as the case may be…

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The smell is harmful. Ammonia. Sweet, fetid wound. Male odour. Human waste.
The prisoner whimpers under the strip-light which casts dark shadows between his jutting bones. Handcuffed to the back corner of the steel cage his body hangs forward. Exhausted. Desperate. Resigned. Without the means to bring his own end. Life only to know his torture. Befouled in stages of his own expulsions. Emaciated. Ghostly pale behind the dirt. His long, cadaverous head made alien-like by missing ears replaced with iodine and petroleum jelly like some bizarre golem. His legs chained apart. To the left thigh, a drip. The right thigh dressed in gauze. Yurik has removed sections of skin over time.

Inside the white light of the fridge, six maravattai lie dormant in a vented tub. Six vials of red-brown liquid are marked in date order inside the door. An ear lies in a shallow petri-dish with a chemical pink liquid. Stooping, Yurik takes a drip-feed pouch of a beige, fatty liquid from the lower chamber. Closing the fridge he places the pouch onto a small, table-top UV bed. Sets the timer. Closes the lid.

“Kill me.” The prisoner bubbles. “Kill me.” Yurik lopes towards the stone stairs. “Please.” Below ground, the sorry plea is lost to the earth.

“Tishina.” Yurik utters, as he makes the laboured incline once-more from his basement. He turns off the light. Locks the door.

Read Yurik’s introduction into Red Moon, here.

Thanks for reading.
Pete x

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