Something gruesome this way comes....

Left alone on rainy Thursday evenings, my mind tends to wander.... This next is an excerpt for something I'm tinkering with - try supernatural-futuristic-gory-London-noir-graphic-novel-script and you'd be about there..... Gruesome deaths, inept police and the idea of getting the vigilante you deserve.... Anyway, here's something delightful (written part comic script, part just as it comes, I'm not good at formatting!):

PANEL 1

Night time, clocks are crawling through the early morning hours. Rain. Gold street lights merge with the vague whiteness of a moon behind clouds, casting pale yellow accents around the city.

We see a night bus, passing through the junction at Monument, heading south to London Bridge. It is profiled against the office and shop windows behind, a dark red creature limping through the night.

PANEL 2

Inside the bus, sitting at the back, on the upper deck, looking forward. A few rows ahead, to our left, a couple, the girl with her head resting on her boyfriend's shoulder. Further forward, a man, head leaning back and against the window, asleep, drunk. Nearer the front, two more men, travelling separately, lost in their own thoughts.

PANEL 3

A shaft of light enters the bus from the left hand side, jolting the girl alert and upright.

“What's that?” she asks.

All faces are turned to the left, looking towards Tower Bridge.

PANEL 4

Tower Bridge, from London Bridge. It is as if the sun has emerged behind the bridge, a bright white light shines along the river towards us, silhouetting the unmistakable shape of the bridge.

And in the middle of the bridge, beneath the top gantry, a shape that is not normal, a shape that doesn't fit. It looks like the tiny shape of a figure, hanging by its hands, crucified almost.

PANEL 5

The sound of the girl's scream follows us as we move closer...

PANEL 6

Closer... (and the light behind the bridge starts to fade)...

PANEL 7 - splash

And closer still; we now can see the full figure of the man, quite close, head to toe.

His hands are outstretched past his shoulders, lashed to the bridge with ropes, nails through the palms. His neck is also roped to the gantry – this may be what has killed him. His head rolls down to the left, his mouth slightly open; his eyes stare dead ahead, cold, white eyes, the colour dissipated from the pupils. He is naked apart from some kind of cloth around his hips. His torso is peppered with wounds, five, six, seven, knife wounds, the blood still dripping fresh. His ankles are bound together, blood has flowed down his legs and caught the ropes at his feet, staining them red.

It is his eyes that we will remember. White, white eyes. Full of fear and pain and some kind of ungodly horror at what has happened to him, frozen in the instant of death.