THIS STORY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 17. It contains scenes of sexual assult and graphic violence. DO NOT READ ON if this upsets you.

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Blackout

Part 3

It remains night over Presaria City.

Howling rain and surf impacts with the blunt face of the jetty sending a towering fountain of foam and spray surging out over the pier, slapping down hard on the weather worn timber. There is a thunderstorm out to sea, throbs of lightning preceding the yawning, echoing rumbles cascading across the dark ocean and into the deep, twisting bowels of the city. The moonless night is illuminated solely by these images, flashes of light gone quicker than they come, captures in time of the towering cloud forms reaching piteously from the black heavens to the chaotic spray of the brooding ocean, the storm like a synapse, the thinnest cleft of apparent calm between the churning bulk of the clouds and the seething pulse of the ocean, arches of white hot light leaping the gulf between sky and sea in an instant, thousands a second, a constant cackle of thunder rising and waning with the rolling energy of the surf against the battered and tired shoreline.

The city is not spared. The weight of the storm piles against it, the crusty scab of gothic civilisation clinging resolutely to the earth like a limpet to rock. Gales scream, washing over it, through it, thunderous squalls whipping the peaks of rolling ocean surges into white caps, surf flicking over the city, filling the air with the scent of the ocean, salt and water and rickety boats and uncleaned decks rank with dried fish entrails. Rain too, thick like a thunderous applause upon the city, sheets of water tumbling from the twisting sky upon the dark alleyways, the rooftop hideaways, wind whipping under doors, around windows, through letter slots, finding all manner of hiding place.

No boats are out tonight, t’would be a suicidal run, the light beacons off the coast silent. The shore is skirted by a profuse, tortuous grove: the dark heat of the mangrove