Excerpt

I think I've posted this already, but it's back a ways, so I decided to do it again! This is the prologue for LOR MANDELA - FOUR HUNDRED DAYS. Hope you enjoy it!

The only visible thing outside of the cement one-windowed room was a hazy blanket of black — a thick inky gloom so dense that neither moon nor stars penetrated it. Inside, the small room was similarly shrouded in stale blackness, except for a tiny sliver of one wall weakly illuminated by three shining green buttons. In their faint glow, the sharp edge of a metal door glinted on the otherwise barren slab of concrete. A musty odor — similar to that of a dust field stirred by the wind prior to a thunderstorm — hung heavily between the cold damp walls and seemed a fitting aroma for a mill which was left dead and decaying by its former owners.
On a simple, grey, utilitarian bench — sterile and hard, and haphazardly jutting out from a corner — sat a tiny creature, curled in a dismal rocking ball, quietly sobbing and shivering. The faint chirping of crickets in the distance no longer appealed to her. In fact, the sound that would have normally held an irresistible fascination now created a sickening knot in the pit of Tabbit’s bulgy brown tummy. “Squankis don’t tells,” she blubbered, “ladys come backs . . . ladys come backs . . . return the powers . . . four hundred days . . . four hundred days.”