Here is an extract of my writing. Please feel free to leave feedback or comments…

How to describe a nightmare made real? How to pour out the horror of that afternoon?

            Traffic. The searing heat of rush hour in the favela. Behind the wheels of their unipods, cab drivers wilt. Old men sit and smoke outside pavement cafes, remembering the days when they too had to cross the city for work. There are a few businesses in the crumbling stone terraces that line the highway, but shutters are closed and curtains drawn for siesta. Only the street merchants dare to move in these unforgiving temperatures, passing between the stagnant lanes of traffic armed with fruit, jewellery and computer components.

            My mother waves them away and fans herself with a copy of the local newspaper. I remember the sweat darkening the hair at her temples. I remember the dust on the windows of our vehicle, so familiar it is more like a protective barrier to me, without which I would feel exposed. I remember my brother Kieran snoring. I remember Matthew, my older brother, politely striving to turn away the beggar who had paused by his open window.

            A fight erupts on the pavement outside the public house. Two men, one in the uniform of an excavator, are arguing about who spilt the drink of a third. On the balconies above, witnesses cheer their encouragement. In a heartbeat, they are at each other's necks, punching and head butting. Men and women emerge from the unipods around us, like the dead rising from their graves. It is not clear whether they aim to get a better view, or to help – I doubt they know themselves.

            'Kieran, go and break it up,' Matthew says, turning back towards the wheel.

            It is then that my mother is startled by a tap on the window against which her head is resting. Her eyes snap open. Matthew, in the driver's seat, leans forward.

            'Excuse me,' says the man outside. 'Are you Keelin Leandro?'

            He is an ordinary man. He wears a worker's cap, low on his head, and the overalls of a transport mechanic. He is a little over-dressed – a large jacket hangs awkwardly from his shoulders – but nothing else about him is remarkable, and I confess I hardly look his way.

            'That's me,' my mother says. 'Do I know you?'

            'Perhaps. I am a family friend.' He extends a hand through the open window, an awkward gesture given his height. His skin is somewhat pale, almost blue-tinged, and the flesh around the knuckles sags.

            My mother sighs, shakes his hand. It seems such a simple thing.

            Shattering glass distracts me. The fight has turned into a brawl. Someone has thrown a chair through the public house window, and now the vendor and his tall daughters have emerged with thunder in their eyes. My brother Kieran is out of our unipod and rolling up his sleeves. I am about to call him back when I notice the look on my mother's face.

            My mother was always very fair, but now she has blanched frighteningly. She still grips the stranger's hand, but her eyes are wide and bright with astonishment. Stranger yet is the expression of the new arrival, abject horror, even fear, and I see him try draw his arm away like a child who has unexpectedly touched Prime's spiked trunk.

            My mother keeps hold, her grip tightening, her free hand fumbling with the catch of the door. She bangs the door open, pushing the man back several paces, and steps out into the dry heat.

            'Ma,' I call. 'Ma, you OK?'

            'Stay there,
Elis,' my mother tells me.

            'You,' the man in the overalls stammers. 'You… it can't be…'

            'Who are you?' my mother says, peering at him in a way that tells me she knows quite well who he is.

            'It's a trick!' the man cries, and to my astonishment, he turns to flee.

            My mother is too fast. Her hand snaps out, seizing him by the wrist, and though she is not a strong woman, he falters. Perhaps by instinct, he lashes out at her, his left hand swinging towards her abdomen in a swift arc.

            'Ma!' I cry. I remember stumbling from the unipod. I remember the dust and grit of the road under the heels of my hands.

            My mother has collapsed. A dark patch is creeping across her orange uniform. Her assailant is fixated, blood dripping from his fingers onto the thirsty earth. I hear him run. I hear people calling after him, alarm spreading like fire across the line of traffic. I hear my mother's breaths, coming in ragged gasps as she tries to pronounce my name.

            'Where did he go?' Kieran shouts. 'Did anybody see where he went?'

            I am aware of a crowd forming around us, of my brother Matthew shouting for the police.

            My mother's hand closes around mine. Her lips, tinged with blood, are moving almost soundlessly.

            'What, Ma?' I cry, leaning towards her.

            A great welt is forming on the side of her head, a glowing pustule the size of a thumbnail. Something is forcing its way out, pushing through skin, its stems seeping across her forehead like blood.

            I try to brush it aside – whatever it is, it should not be there – but now I am stuck. Its vine-like stems cling to me. I feel a sharp sting as it pierces the back of my hand. Though I scratch at it, it is burrowing into me, disappearing beneath muscle and bone, and I can feel its passage along my arm, as cold as ice.

            'Ma-'

'Look after it…' my mother whispers. 'It is awake…Listen, you must-'

            A man steps out of the crowds. A more incongruous presence I cannot imagine. He wears the smooth fabrics of an Old City Exemplar, the tie around his neck loosened against the heat. A kind of smoke or haze seems to rise around him, so that his neighbours begin to back away, their expressions darkening.

            My mistake, my terrible mistake, is to stand in that moment.

            'I need help!' I shout. 'My mother's injured!'

            Something is coalescing in the air before the upper caste man. I see it gathering itself in our realm, slipping on the cloak of corporeality. I see the glint of its teeth. The curve of its claws.

            'Intelligence!' a woman screams. 'He's got an Intelligence!'

            And chaos erupts around us, people sliding over unipod bonnets and pushing their neighbours aside in their haste to be gone.

The creature wraps itself around my mother's head and my heart freezes in my chest.  It seems to sink into the skin of her face, almost disappearing.

Then it disbands, splitting apart, travelling in a dozen different directions. Something hot and wet drenches my skin. I remember falling, sinking back to my knees. I remember a hoarseness that dies in my throat. I remember looking but not looking at the metres-wide smear on the road. Of the absence above my mother's mangled neck.

'Somebody stop him!' I hear my brother Kieran shriek.

And then, I recall only darkness