An Exercise in Literary Camera

Mike looked at the bread with gross fascination. The mold didn't even seem so bad as the maggots made themselves known by poking their heads out of the porous manifolds of carbs. One even wriggled about as if to say hi before diving back in to finish its meal...

Strangely enough, the bread wasn't the main travesty of the table. The dishes had a cake of dust two inches thick that the wriggly maggot had actually disturbed a bit, sending a faint poof of dead skin and deteriorated crumbs jumping off the crass china with a slight chain reaction to the surface of what-seemed-to-be mahogany wood.

Mike choked back a gag reaction to the impending cloud, held closer the handkerchief he had hovered over his nose and mouth, and turned around to look at the floor. If Mike had planned on avoiding further sightings of maggots at play, he would have been disappointed. The body on the floor stared at him in slight surprise with a half-finished bagel in tightly-constricted hand. The fingers clawed into the baked staple of the morning with a possessiveness that to Mike seemed almost endearing. That is, endearing if the maggots hadn't set up permanent residence in the still fleshy base of the hand... as well as much of the rest of the body. In fact, the poor departed old man looked liked a Halloween zombie dropout with some teeth showing here, a cheekbone there. The surprised look may very well have been due to absence of eyelids more than any pure shock. Though forensics guessed he may have suffered a heart seizure before dropping to the floor for the last few seconds of his life.

The yellow tape around the body crash site and the prerequisite white chalk outline stood in stark contrast to the browns and grays of the room. Much of the furniture had been moved aside to allow officials ample room to move in to examine the deceased. To think this once big screen giant would have an audience like this at the ends of his days is rather ironic. Mike shook his head as he stepped over a stiff leg and made his way to the door.

Most of the premises had already been searched by the authorities before, so Mike needn't worry about anything here. Just needed to make sure old Gregor Bonsky made it to his last rehearsal. As morbid as the scene might be, Bonsky needed to be on one more set before he goes...

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As you may notice, I treated this stream of consciousness piece as if I had a camera zoomed in on one object and pulling it back gradually to reveal the room and the situation. This would get the reader acclimated to the surroundings of the world and style of the writing and lead into the plot more smoothly. Whatever that is right now. ;p