If you’ve been hanging around here or on Twitter with me for any great length of time, you’re bound to have heard me mumbling about my novel Sanctuary at least once or twice. Well, this week’s short story up on Darkness & Good is your first official introduction: Another Kind of Hunger takes place a couple of months before the main action of Sanctuary, and is about the novel’s villain, Scott. If you know the story, the short might be mildly spoilery, but I think it should be okay. Obviously, this is one of those villain-POVs designed to give insight into Why The Villain Is Villainous, so… yeah. You’ve been warned.
Also, there is animal mutilation at one point. Sorry. He’s the villain.
Scott waited for the usual shouts of irritation to greet him as he slammed the front door of his home and kicked his school shoes off. Instead, silence hovered over the house, heavy and cloying. Silence, that was, except for his rumbling stomach. He sighed and schlepped down to his room, dodging the stacks of miscellaneous paperwork and clothing in various states of cleanliness that lined the hallway. Looked like dinner would be beans on toast again.
Scott kicked open the door to his room and crossed the threshold into sanity. The rest of the house was his mother’s domain, carpets crusted with dirt and crumbs and ineffectual insect spray, mould growing in the corners where damp had invaded the house, drains stinking like a public toilet block.
In his room, the carpet was, if not clean, at least vacuumed. The array of stains were at least assured to stay where they were, and the walls had been scrubbed down so regularly they were starting to look worn. He closed the door with a heavy sigh and dumped his school bag in the bottom of the wardrobe.
Read the rest of Another Kind of Hunger here.