Souls of Purity Chap 1 Excerpt

Storyteller, Author, Writer

Todd Thorne

Souls of Purity

The stiff corpse tumbled, caught on the fissure lip and hung there. The dead girl's clouded eyes stared at Daman, not pleading or beseeching like so many others he'd seen. This girl's eyes were stone cold with perhaps a tinge of surprise at the corners, no doubt from the instant she had felt death rip her soul from her body. Now the corpse had only to be disposed of and there it stuck, caught on that slight ridge at the edge of the fissure.

Daman muttered to himself. Normally he could heave the corpses through in a single motion and their momentum carried them across the fissure to plummet to their fiery fate. Today he was too tired and weak. Yesterday had been the same. And the day before. Not a good sign.

Ducking his head into the fissure, Daman elbowed his way to the girl. He resolved again to do something about that ridge of rock as he reached a hand out to shove on the body. The mottled, lesion-covered flesh of the girl's tiny breast collapsed under his touch, feeling like the squishy consistency of a rotted fruit, decayed but still intact. He slid his hand over to her bony shoulder and pushed on the firmness. With a flip, the corpse vanished and Daman started mentally counting. One... two... three....

As his head jutted over the fissure lip, he caught sight of the body tumbling in the air below. Eight... nine... ten.... He squinted against the intense heat and the glare from ignited gasses and steam that rose up to envelop the corpse. Fourteen... fifteen.... The expected flare came and then the girl smacked into the surface of the churning magma and vaporized.

Seventeen.

Seventeen, and you were gone without a trace.

Seventeen. Sometimes it was a little longer, sometimes less, but in the end nothing was left. If Purity rejected your soul, then death hurled it, too, into the inferno to meet the same end.

San Diego, USA Spring 2008

Excerpt

Chapter 1