Here’s my prologue (in rough draft) for TWIST AND TURN, book two in The Twisted Trilogy. I used a prologue to give the readers a glimpse at the paranormal aspect of this novel. I feel that it is very significant and, since my book is written in the first person (Abigail’s perspective), this is a way of seeing it through someone else’s eyes. It’ll tie in later, to make you say ‘whoa’.

So now you know. Abigail’s not crazy. Or maybe she is, for leaving Edwin. But she actually is seeing dead people. (At least one dead person in particular. J

PROLOGUE

~

Six years earlier.

TESSA CLARKE WIPED THE tears from her eyes as she sobbed out of control. She was miserable, but certain she was doing the right thing.

“This is my daughter, he’s not taking her from me,” she cried, as she sped away from her home with no intention of turning back.

She squinted through the dirty windshield at the dark night with blurry, enraged eyes and a heavy foot. She dangerously weaved through cars on the highway until she reached her exit. Relief overcame her when she finally passed the City’s boundaries and dirt began to plume behind her on the freshly gravelled country road.

She looked in her rear-view mirror flashing a glance into the back seat. “I finally did it baby. I did it for us,” she said, a soft smile creeping onto her downturned lips.

A sudden flash of red light blinded her as she turned her tired, burning eyes to the oncoming headlights. A truck was crossing over the narrow bridge before her and it was coming at her head on. The driver eased toward the dirt shoulder and relief swamped her a moment too soon, as the truck suddenly swerved back at her.

Tessa slammed her brakes, but it was too late. She raised an arm to cover her eyes to hide from the imminent crash, as her car skidded through the gravel and collided with the truck at full speed.

Tessa’s head violently cracked off the windshield, instantly spilling blood down her face. Her speeding car spun out of control and hit the bridge barricade. Momentum drove the car forward over the bridge as it begged to climb over the edge.

Sparks flew from the bumper as it screeched deafeningly along the metal barrier, which was even louder than the shrieking baby girl in the back seat of her car.

With blood obstructing what little vision she had left, Tessa reached for one last chance at their survival. She gripped the steering wheel and tugged on it, in an attempt to negotiate the curve at the base of the bridge to no avail.

The car crashed into a concrete support beam and forcefully delivered Tessa’s body through the windshield. She sailed through the air until her battered body crashed into the nearby tree and fell to its final resting place.

The little girl was secured in her car seat, locked inside the twisted heap of metal. She screamed in horror as the blood poured from her mother’s cracked skull. A destroyed cell phone had been thrown from the vehicle and rang in the distance, as a man dragged himself out of the demolished truck.

The man limped quickly to Tessa’s car and yanked on the crushed backdoor, but it wouldn’t budge. The child continued to scream, her shrieks swallowing the open air around him.

A strange noise escaped from the hood of the car before flames burst from it. Adrenaline pumped through the man’s veins as he crawled onto trunk and shattered the cracked window with his elbow. He crawled into the flaming car, maneuvered around the crushed metal and pulled the screaming baby out of the jammed car seat.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, his heart aching painfully for the child’s loss.

Dark red blood ran down his arms and dripped all over the child as he reached her out of the broken glass and carried her to safety. He ripped off his jacket and wrapped it around the baby, his eyes only momentarily resting on her small bleeding limb, as she choked on her desperate sobs for her mother.

The man gently placed the baby in the dewy grass against a nearby tree and scrambled away to examine her mother’s mangled body. The man checked for Tessa’s pulse, but found nothing.

The child lay there, alone by the roadside, in impossible darkness, squealing with fear and confusion.

A sudden flash of headlights in the distance told the man help was on its way. The oncoming car slowed as it approached the flaming scene.

When the man turned around, to wave the car over, he was startled to find a beautiful young girl with long, golden brown hair tending to the baby on the ground. His eyes frantically searched the area for her parents. She couldn’t have been a year over six. But when he looked back to the baby, the young girl was gone.

A handsome, young man ran briskly toward the scene of the accident, as his wife hurried to the screaming baby.

“Did you see that little girl?” the man hollered hysterically, to the young man approaching the scene.

The young man stopped before him and looked back to his wife, worry written harshly across his brow. “I didn’t see anyone, except for you.”

What do you think? Do you find this to be helpful at the beginning of the story, or is it too much, being that you don’t know the players yet? I worry that it’s a bit too long for a flashback later in the story and it would slow up forward progress later in the book. I think putting it right out there and leaving it sitting in the back of the reader’s mind, until the connection comes out later, is more exciting. What’s your thoughts on it?