After a considerable hiatus from publishing short stories on Pixelated Thinking (although I did continue to write a few very short ones that remain unpublished), I’ve finally decided to release a new one (the last short story I published here was The Walker in 2011). This is more of an experimental piece than anything. Since the recent few months have had me preoccupied with completing my first manuscript of a sci-fi thriller I’ve been developing over a few years now, it was nice to venture away from that world and those characters with this more abstract project. Also, I needed something new to write to distance me from that first draft that I know is going to need an insane amount of work to rewrite.
This story is called The Drifter. It’s an experiment into a darker-tinged, fantasy-sci-fi dystopian world, something I haven’t actually written before. I think it serves as a nice threshold between my first 45 000+ word manuscript that’s occupied my mind for years now, and a new crime/noir/thriller drama I’m in the early stages of developing into a novel.
Here’s a preview of The Drifter. The story is complete, by the way, and sits hidden away on my MacBook’s harddrive. I will release the full 1000+word story soon, so look out for it on this blog and @RahulDowlath.
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THE DRIFTER (a preview)
The Drifter had walked these roads before. He had been subjected to this hell of placelessness, namelessness, facelessness… he moved like a dark shadow across the grey landscape, gliding like a phantom through these parts.
The towns he passed looked the same: single roads, dusty streets, broken windows in falling-down buildings. An empty existence. All because of the One.
The One who had started it all.
The One who he tried to stop.
The One for whom defeat was never a word.
The One.
A shiver crept through the Drifter’s thin frame, rattling his very being. He stopped.
The town lay before him, just like the countless others he’d experienced.
But there was something different about this one… something he couldn’t quite place just yet.
A single street, flanked by crumbling structures.
Dust billowing in the afternoon gust, the buildings bathed in dusk’s golden light.
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Look out for the full version of The Drifter, coming soon to Pixelated Thinking.
Life in Pixels 