Well, here's chapter one of a new novel I'm working on. I decided I would try different waters and wade into the fantasy end of the YWS pool. Hello there. Never seen me? I come bearing tidings from the Action/Adventure forum.

Regardless, this is only a portion of chapter one, seeing as the chapter is roughly 3500 words. With the sudden inflation of the YWS economy, I'm finding my self somewhat short of points, so I'll post part two as soon as I scrounge up a few critiques.

Enjoy.

Sarajevo, Bosnia

1992

“They're getting closer, kid,” Dmitry whispered, trying twice to light the cigarette shivering between his lips; the spent matches – one after the other – stumbling to the ground with withered heads, charred and bowed in penitence. Looking out of the shattered department store window, he lit a third match and – his hands trembling violently – and touched the nodding flame to the tip of his last cigarette. The rest of his Marlboro pack was strewn across the concrete floor like dead soldiers; leftover earth colored tobacco spilling from their ends like gutted entrails.

Dmitry lit the cigarette and hunched over it, puffing five or six times. His breath was ragged. Nervous. Laced with terror and fear and hopelessness.

Hopelessness.

Nikola hoped to God that there was still hope in the situation. That the shells and the bombs and the machine guns – singing with deadly harmony – had not drained the walls of the dying department store of any trace of resolve. He looked around at the hunched and ragged war refugees clustered together behind counters and twisted racks of clothing and behind cardboard displays.

Outside, it was snowing ash.

And there were distant explosions like the sound of falling fruit.

Thump, thump, thump.

And gunshots. The constant, unending serenade of little shards of death leaving chambers. The wind chime sound of spent shells clattering to the ground. The smell of screams. The smell of dying men and women and children.

Nikola looked away from Dmitry as the older teenager took a long drag on the cigarette and tapped in gently against his knee, and held the AK-47 in his hands a little tighter. There was something about a gun – a loaded gun – that brought an indescribable comfort to Nikola. The feel of its potency against his chest. Its slender neck, cool and harsh and rigid under his palm. The contours. The curves. Like a woman's hips. Full and sensual. And it seemed to whisper. It whispered feelings of confidence and assurance and collectivity. It whispered an end. It whispered relief.

Outside: thump, thump, thump. And distant screams like metal grinding against metal.

He glanced over at the old couple crouching behind the check-out counter, holding hands desperately. Skin the color of smoke stained walls and the texture of burnt paper. Trembling slightly. Twitching each time a faraway bomb ruptured. Squeezing hands at every gunshot.

But looking forward blankly. Silently. Nikola wondered if they were communicating through touch. If they were whispering words of comfort through bony fingers – scoliotic twigs – and singing softly through wrinkled palms. Conduits. Flesh radios: scratchy broadcasts hissing through perforated speakers.

Someone whimpered.

Nikola clutched his gun a little tighter and watched the snowfall outside.

They're getting closer, kid.

“Ever been with a girl?” Dmitry whispered, smoke tripping from his lips and spilling into the air. The high-tension, trillion volt air.

Nikola shook his head.

“Didn't think so. Pity to die a virgin. I'd be out of my mind if I was you.”

“Not dead yet,” Nikola said. His voice sounded like it had been piped through a tunnel a couple miles long. It was so small. Juxtaposed nicely against the high caliber gun against his chest. Stealing warmth from his chest.

Dmitry laughed. A staccato, machine-gun laugh. “Hell, I wish I had your optimism. No, they're gonna get us. Those dirty whores'll find us eventually. They'll kill us. Rape the women. And then kill them.”

He tapped his cigarette again, drifts of ashes pirouetting to the ground. With smoldering grace. Nikola supposed he was right. The Serbs were like viruses. Locate the host, enter the host, manipulate the host, destroy the host. The atmosphere above Bosnia that night would be filled with residual grunts, gasps, and screams of women violated and men with blistering holes in their heads. Nikola bit his lip and closed his eyes tightly and tried to shove leftover images of Ravno. Of his home town bleeding pillars of smoke like the ends of discarded cigarettes and marinated in the stench of death and crying little streams of blood that ran down the streets like man-made creeks.

Creeks that carried the ashfall away with a mindless sense of duty.

Ana with a ruptured jugular – her slender neck spent and piano-key white – a naked back as smooth as a concrete, and supple, sensual legs crumpled on the kitchen floor.

Broken pipes.

Everything about her had been broken.

And the walls were stained with laughing. Animal noises in the plaster.

Ever been with a girl?

A fallen Ana – like a withered blossom – on the kitchen floor, motionless as Ravno burned.

“Wish I had my music. Good stuff coming out of the states these days. New stuff. You ever heard American music, kid?”

Nikola nodded, “A couple times.”

“Everything about that stuff says freedom. Freedom to do whatever the hell you want. Whenever you want. To whoever. Jeez, I wanna go there. I've got an aunt who lives in,” he paused, taking a thoughtful drag on his cigarette and tapping his hand every time he heard the distant gasp of a bomb, “I don't know. Somewhere up north. I talked to her a couple times on the phone and she said when I was twenty-one I could go to the states and live with her.”

The snowfall of smoldering ashes was becoming more plentiful. A middle-aged man on the other side of the room stood slowly and stretched, as if his limbs were crusted with rust. His cheeks looked as though they had been scooped out of his face and his eyes bathed in dark shadows and hid under black circles of weariness.

The man glanced at Nikola.

Nikola stared back.

He seemed to say, they're coming closer, kid.

Nikola looked away, his mouth dry and his heart punching holes in his ribcage. His heartbeats sounded like snapping bones, like roaring gunshots, like snare drum beats. Echoing in his chest cavity. Echoing forever. In his ears, in his head, in his pulse.

Hell, he wanted it to stop.

The machine gun concerto was crescendoing outside. In the twilight, the sidewalk and street-way rubble, like asphalt blood from shattered veins, rebar twisting from broken slabs of concrete, absorbed the sounds. They caught the sounds with weak and broken hands and collected them like fireflies.

Dmitry flicked his last cigarette to the ground. “Do you know how to use that?” he asked, pointing at the AK-47.

“Load, point, shoot.”

A laugh. “You got it down. I always said that killing is the easiest job in this God-awful world.”

Nikola smiled tightly.

Dmitry rubbed his hands together and shoved them between his legs. “Are you going to use it?”

A harder question. Did he have the strength to pull a trigger? Did he have the resolve to paint another man's blood against walls? To see shocked expressions. To see splintered faces.

No.

Probably not.

But he nodded anyway.

Satisfied, Dmitry nodded. “I wish I had another cigarette.”