Chemicaust: What if everyone was a God?

Well, shoot: I meant to have this up yesterday (Sunday) but it totally slipped my mind.

Note: Because I feel this post is far too self-promotional, I will be putting up a bonus blog-post on tuesday!

I entered a contest-ish thing here: http://brenleedrake.blogspot.com/2011/06/four-teens-judge-your-story-with-three.html and was supposed to put a tag-line and the first 250 words of my manuscript up here. Well, I'm doing that now, and I'm pleased to find out that they will (hopefuly, I haven't submitted it yet) be accepting submissions until July 20th.

Anyways: here it is for your viewing pleasure, the first 250 words of Chemicaust.

 Title: Chemicaust
Genre: Sci-Fi/Steampunk, Short Story
Pitch: What might men do with unlimited power? And what might they allow to be done? Chem is the Mad Element. It is a blessing and a curse with as many names as shades and hues.
First 250 Words:

A flicker of time passed. The stars were smudged with blood, like a camera lens capturing pictures in the crimson-smeared hands of a weary photographer. Another flicker; the world was ending, the atmosphere was wrong, the sun shone through too intense, too yellow even through the blood. It was painful to keep eyes opened, stinging with blood and with sweat, his mouth boiled dry of spit, his throat parched. He lay flat on his stomach. It was painful to stay awake against a light like that. Another flicker and it was dark again. The wind whipped at his hair, long by army standards and a darker black by contrast to his pale skin.

Somewhere nearby a rat scurried about, digging in the dirt, gnawing on bones and devouring bits of burnt flesh. The sand beneath him was a dark grey, and cold, like powdered granite. The smell of burning and the heat of the explosion were already gone, had been gone for a while. It felt too soon for the noise and the light to be left behind. The rat emerged in the dark, red eyes and pointed teeth, a demon in the cold. The moon was a deep yellow unfamiliar to the soldier’s eyes, but kinder than the sun. Luke didn’t remember any time passing, but it flickered again.

He couldn’t move....

About Me: I entered this contest because I am currently working on a novella, the inspiration for which comes from the work submitted here. The Novella will include an updated version of this work (Chemicaust 2.0, if you will) and any input would be appreciated. Feel free to follow me on twitter: @MadElementBooks, or check out the completed work, Chemicaust, for free from Smashwords, here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64721