Exert

A short bit of dialouge from my most recent project, a "kids book for grown-ups" that I am calling "PLUME".

..and when R.W. turned to her, he could see she was no longer taking interest in resistance. Her curls in her eyes, she stared blankly past him, just over his shoulder, as though she were climbing the ladder with her eyes in an attempt to escape the fate she knew was to come. But how could she?
R.W kept his foot firmly against the hand she had still clinging to the roofs edge. He saw, in the silhouette of the mountains, headlights. Father was returning, and R.W realized that if he was going to pry the leech from his household, he had to do so soon. Well, pry may not be the correct term, it seemed now all he had to do was let the leech fall.
He took the butt of his long extinguished cigarette, dropped it (more so then flicked it) to the rooftop just beside her hand, and allowed his eyes to rest upon it.
It was in this moment of clarity that he realized he had come to far to not kill her. Yet, as the headlights turned from two distant spots to the thrum hum clunk of his fathers sedan, he felt, for the first time, sorry. For his father, for himself, and mostly for Ms. Anna-Mae.
"Fire Hazard" he said calmly, and then, as though it would have no result, he lifted the foot that had held her hand to the building, and twisted his toe on the stub of tobacco and paper.
The sound a body makes from two stories is dull. R.W thought of a scene he'd watched on the television of two rams colliding. Thummp. Then silence, save for the increasing noise Father's motor was producing, in what felt to be, to R.W's cold ears, an operatic crescendo rising through the melodic tap of the rain.