Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [951]

The ground was littered with ash-covered corpses, some burned or half blown apart by automatic weapons fire. Dried or nearly dried blood had pooled in the street. Two men were prying loose our emergency bell. The bright, clear, early morning sunlight made the whole scene less real somehow, more nightmarelike. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 951

Note

The detail order is the craft here: corpses and pooled blood are given first as flat inventory, then the emergency bell — a communal object, being dismantled for scrap — arrives without comment and does more damage than the bodies. The final sentence names the estrangement effect rather than performing it, but the paradox it states (bright clear light making the scene less real) is a good one, and the vagueness of ‘somehow’ sounds like a witness rather than a writer.