The Prologue

Can you spot any punctuation mistakes in this?

It doesn't copy properly, so I've had to fiddle with it a bit. Can't get the paragraphs to indent. Also, I can't remember if uppers dilate your pupils or not. Why would anyone expect me to know something like that?

PROLOGUE


The walls of the Saracen’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The double doors were straight across from the bar and the only patrons, apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop, were sitting in the corner, more or less facing the doors. The barman had just slipped through the back.

The detective was wearing a dark suit with an overcoat more expensive than you might expect and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something.

The double doors burst open and a traffic warden came running into the bar then stopped. He wore a beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, his eyes like saucers on stocks, the pupils hugely dilated. The massive dose of multifarious stimulants on top of the whisky had the sweat bursting, pounding out of him. Pulling a gun from inside his tunic, he started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.

Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. He pulled a sharpened chisel with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and he grabbed the detective by the hair, knocking over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.

A furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man doing the stabbing, his lips pulled back, the gnashing teeth bared. He held the head down by the hair and the detective came to rest on his back as he was stabbed in the throat, then many times in his face, then several times through both eyes. He was dead by the time his forehead was stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and the stabbing didn’t seem to ever be going to end. The skull collapsed there and the traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing then. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor by the time he finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the detective’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stretched out his arms, one hand still holding the chisel, and shouted in exultation.

"Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!"

Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard, and then all three traffic wardens rushed out.

The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.


Why would a thirty year old woman want to read that on the bus? Dearie me!