GRAB 'EM BY THE THROAT...

...is what they say you need to do when writing in order to get the someone you hope to interest in your work to continue reading.  Here's the opening page of our treatment for, Torso.     So...

A lone fishing line drifts in a wide, slowly meandering river as rain creates ripple after ripple on the water’s oily surface.  Garbage and debris of all manner drift along in the current.  Holding the fishing line is a gaunt young man in his 20’s.  His clothes are tattered and clearly evident of the 1930’s.   Behind him is a massive, still sleeping shantytown, filled with displaced and desperate homeless. The young man is hoping to catch his breakfast before this makeshift city comes to life and the fight to survive another day begins.  While he waits for a bite, he quietly whistles to himself the popular depression era tune: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”. 

From the opposing riverbank light begins to flicker across the small ripples on the water seeming to set them aflame.  It is not the early morning sun casting it’s orange light across the homeless encampment but the blazing fires of enormous steel mill blast furnaces that neighbor the makeshift city.  The entire river valley is a hellish nightmare. 

Thankfully the young man’s line snags something.  He eagerly reels in his catch and drags it onto the shore, only to discover that he’s caught the upper half of a human female torso, it’s head and arms neatly severed.  The young man shrieks and wretches as other inhabitants wake to his gruesome discovery.

             

                                                Cleveland, Ohio

        -1935-