First Line Friday

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for readers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, readers are hooked on a book by the first lines?

Psst I found this at Becky’s Book Blog. Please go check her out!

Rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be a current read, ARC, TBR, favorite read, close your eyes and pick a book) and open to the first page.
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first.

First Line(s)

*Admittedly this runs longer than normal because where the natural break, where it felt it made sense, was further in.

Excerpt from the High House Manifesto

It always starts the same: a deepening blue in the veins about the writs. This is common knowledge. What follows is shallowness of breath, coughing, fever, and muscle pain. Once contracted, one or two days may pass before the darkened veins spread throughout the body, at which point the sclera of the eye will become tinged and mottled. The coloration reaches the extremites next, turning the fingers and toes a dark thundercloud blue. In the final stages, the veins become increasingly sensitive, pulsing and ready to explode.

In the most severe cases, they burst beneath the skin. Eventually, the pain becomes unbearable, accompanied by varying degrees of delirium and paranoia. As one Bard famously reported, “They are even more afraid than we are.”

The current epoch has been irrevocably taineted by death and chos; our streets, fields, and homes run thick with the foul, rotting stench of disease.