A writing thread

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Wow, Pearl! Congratulations, that's great. :)

Thanks Cori!

The only reason why I was able to pull off completing this book was because I'm unemployed. So, I had the time and energy for this project (Don't worry, I'm still job hunting).

My family and some of my friends are not happy that I'll be E-publishing because they don't have E-readers. I guess for my family I'll just e-mail them the chapters or print up the book on my printer.

On second thought, no. My book is quite R-rated and I would be mortified if my family read it, especially my parents.
 
Just finished a new chapter from my novel. It's out of context, obviously, but as far as a sample is concerned, it's definitely functional, as it touches on a lot of the themes that the book covers. Please read it and let me know what you think. As always, my goal with this is to communicate images, levity and maybe even throw in a few poignant ideas here and there.

Chapter 8

As Franco rolled over the dusty, haphazard driveway that led an unwelcoming path to his one-story home, he saw all the familiar weeds and smelled the mothballs that sent away the snakes that crawled through them. He shed a small tear and wondered why he had considered hijacking Jack’s car and heading west earlier that evening. There was no one here to beat him like that trucker did.

OK, he feared being beaten here as well, but at least not in front of a young child.

Except for his younger brothers.

But he never feared that he would lose his life, and what could be more valuable than safety?

The lonesome tear dried rapidly and he burst through the door. It was 1 AM. Typically, he would sneak in at this hour for fear of waking up his unruly father, but he had gone through such a traumatic ordeal that he felt as if he hadn’t seen his family in years. Surely they would feel the same way.

The moonlight of a waxing gibbous struck a bottle of Corona. Several bottles, in fact. The TV was on; there was an alien glow on the opposite side of the room and it let off a subtle, high-pitched tone. One of his older sisters was splayed out on the floor. He stepped over her and checked on his little brothers in their Pixar-themed bedroom to make sure they were alright. His other siblings kept their doors locked tight, and they interacted this way at all hours.

Franco sighed and collapsed on the couch. He heard a rustle coming from his father’s bedroom, but ignored it and flipped to an infomercial for a plastic bowl that allows you to cook an entire box of pasta in the microwave. Ordinarily, he was intimidated by fine cuisine, but pasta was well within his range.

Franco was inspired. Struggling to get up off the couch, he got up to his feet and searched the kitchen for something to cook. Another rustle from his father’s bedroom. The cupboards, such as they were, lay bare. There was no one around to purchase groceries. The refrigerator was stocked with beer and frozen pizzas. He shrugged and took out an Icehouse. There was a bag of barbecue chips on the counter. This would have to do.

When he returned to his spot on the lumpy couch, PBS was hawking a collection of generic ‘70s hard rock. Its creators assumed that its authenticity would be confirmed by the use of outdated slang and garish tie-dye packaging. Franco choked when the square in the sweater extolled Cream.

“Golly, this takes me back. I remember when Eric Clapton was really the man. Oh yeah, my wife and I are really taken back to the good old days by this Time Life collection.”

Franco started throwing chips at the TV. “What’s this fetus talking about? Eric Clapton isn’t a man.”

Then he started turning his potato chip projectiles toward his incapacitated sister. He was on his second beer now, and feeling good.

“I should buy this for Jack to set things right. Maybe he’ll pull his head out of his ass and join me in doing something cool next time. This would be decent getaway music.”

Franco was getting a bit too rambunctious, however. The rustles from the bedroom turned to groans. And then it turned to hellfire. “What…the fuck…time is it? DAMMIT! FUCK! 2 FUCKING 30 IN THE FUCKING MORNING SHUT THE FUCK UP OUT THERE DAMMIT YOU DON’T DO SHIT AROUND HERE! NONE OF YOU! YOU’RE ALL UNGRATEFUL! IF ONLY THAT WHORE MOTHER OF YOURS COULD SEE THIS SHIT SHE WOULD PUT A CIGARETTE OUT ON YOUR FACE AND FUCK SOME GUY AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME…”

Franco’s eyes grew wide. He propped his sister up against the couch, put the six-pack of beer and the chips beside her, turned the TV up even further and went to bed. Several minutes passed while Franco stared into the dark. His sister was woken up and questioned, and a chair could be heard crashing against the wall shortly thereafter.

This is what Franco’s life had become. He didn’t feel bad for what happened because this is the part he always played; the satirist, the witness to a horrible crime. He only came home because he had nowhere else to go, and when he did, he merely exacerbated issues. He knew he was an awful human being, but he could pin it on his bad home life. Just the same, he wanted to have kids some day, and he didn’t want them to feel that home was merely a place to sleep restlessly. He didn’t want them to turn misanthropic before they even had interest in the opposite sex.

He supposed that’s where his rebirth earlier that evening came into play. He knew he could be something very alive and vital, but not under this roof. He could make a difference out on the street, outside of these patterns that caused him to be so cruel and inhumane. There was good somewhere in this world. He saw it in his little brothers, and he wanted to preserve that. He would take them out for some fresh air in the morning, or perhaps the afternoon. It doesn’t matter; it’s really all the same air. A steady diet of Nickelodeon and Capri-Sun turned Franco into the young man he was, and he wanted none of that for them.

It was deep into the afternoon when Franco awoke. He had hoped that his brothers would have already left to go to a friend’s house or something in order to soothe his guilty conscience, but this was not the case. They were sitting on the couch, watching not Nickelodeon, but an offshoot, Nick Toons. Franco watched with them briefly and wondered when they got digital cable. At first he was pleased about this. Then he looked over at the desolate kitchen and frowned. There was nothing here for them.

“Luke, Danny…we’re going out.”

Danny, the youngest brother, 8, chimed in excitedly. “Where are we going?”

Luke, a significantly older 9, answered for Franco. “Probably somewhere lame. And we’ll probably have to walk there.”

Franco was indignant. “What’s your problem with walking? Are you fat or something?”

“You’re DEFINITELY fat,” Luke responded. He kicked him weakly in the shin. It still hurt a bit.

“I was going to take you out for ice cream in my shiny new Toyota…but you definitely don’t need it.”

Luke had a stunned expression. “When did you get a car?”

“Why wouldn’t I have a car?”

“Because dad says you’re a deadbeat,” Danny helpfully chimed in.

Franco raised an eyebrow. “We can’t all be like dad. Some of us need to sleep.”

“I don’t need to sleep till 2…” Danny had not yet mastered the fine art of conversation.

Franco did not need to answer the boy, so he didn’t, although his point was a good one. “Let’s go.”

“You’re lucky it’s a repeat,” Luke said. But he would have left already if he had anywhere to go, if any friends had called. The windows were blocked off by comforters, mattresses were set against the walls…the house was a bunker to quarantine a dying family, and none of them wanted to be a part of it. Just the same, Luke’s years as an amiable child were running on fumes, and his stint as a willfully difficult adolescent was beginning prematurely. Franco didn’t yell at him; he understood completely.

Their drive was not silent to start with; Luke and Danny loaded Franco down with the requisite torrent of questions all children ask before they learn that there are many topics not worth learning about. “Where did the car come from?” “Where are we going?” “Do you have a job?” “Why did you yell at that driver?” “Can I drive?”

Once Franco answered them all, his little brothers started to drift off. He had to confess that he wasn’t sure where he was taking them, but at this point he was the only one awake in the car. Luke and Danny wouldn’t have said so, as the topic didn’t come up all that often, but they missed having someone in their lives that didn’t care whether or not they were unpopular for slathering sunblock on their faces. They wanted someone to buy them ice cream and let them know everything was alright. Their mother passed away after bearing Danny – even on her seventh child, nothing is certain – and this caused a great deal of contempt between Luke and Danny. It wasn’t explicit, but the relationship was not nurturing; it reminded Franco a lot of Daniel’s relationship with Jeff, which is one of many reasons why he loathed Daniel so. He took advantage of weak individuals in the same way that Luke did.

But Franco was not often around to intervene. He had spent the better part of three years completely cut off from his family, dreaming of a way to get rich, drop out of school and move out. He had tried starting a rock band, he had tried online pyramid schemes and he had even tried odd jobs. The one thing he didn’t try was college, which seemed a great deal more far-fetched than his other plans. But now that Jack was heading off to college and leaving him with a privileged douchebag and a basket case as his only friends, he had incentive to accelerate his efforts. He wanted to leave and take along those who still had some life left in them, but he had nowhere to go.

That was the main problem with taking his brothers out. He had no money, having spent it all on gas, and he was wasting much of it driving around in circles. He thought of the places he used to go as a kid, and from that he drew a couple of ideas.

When Luke and Danny woke up, they were in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Down the road was Jack’s home, and they were parked in Jeff’s driveway. Through their hazy vision, they saw the sun being blocked by the steeple of a very old home (there were still some architectural marvels to be found in his McNeighborhood). Franco led them down the one-lane street that was meant to pass for two to a clearing inside a circle of pine trees.

“Alright, we’re here,” Franco whispered.

Their vision had adapted fully to their surroundings and the two started to look around. Franco had been here for a half hour sweeping, hiding (re: collecting) the pornography and generally making it look appealing to the youngsters. He left the comic books out, which Luke was immediately drawn to. Danny liked the tire swing, which was in reality horribly dangerous due to its close proximity to the surrounding trees. Franco explained the history of the tree fort to them as they pretended to listen. Occasionally, Franco would glance wistfully across the street to Jack’s house and remind himself that he needed to confront Jack later this evening, or at least return the car.

The peace was short-lived, however. Soon, Mr. Simmons caught wind of the trio utilizing his property for merriment and walked outside to put a stop to it.

“Hey, HEY! Does this look like a playground to you? Is this a school yard? Well, I’ll teach you not to walk on other people’s property!”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Simmons!” Franco responded magnanimously. He enjoyed toying with the old man, and he wanted to show his brothers how to properly handle situations like these. “How do you like the renovations I made?” Edgar Simmons’ property truly had never looked so beloved in decades.

“It looks like trespassing. This isn’t how I want it. When I want work done properly, I’ll give my quarter to someone with respect.”

“If you say so, sir. Give my regards to Glenn Beck.” Franco gave a motion and his brothers began kicking over the neatly stacked piles of pine needles. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Mr. Simmons shook his head and went back inside.

Franco felt a shiver of pride shoot through him as he scanned over the scene before him. There was still hope that his family tree could bear beautiful fruit. The streetlights turned on above them and an instinct within Luke and Danny told them that they needed to head home. With a confident look, Franco convinced them otherwise.

He drove them to one more location, a walking path several miles from their home that stretched long and perilously into the mountains. It was the very definition of “wild and wonderful” West Virginia. Franco used to walk miles into pseudo-uncharted Appalachia to contemplate, throw rocks at wild life, and so on. He knew better than to take his brothers as far as he would often go, but far enough to allow them to experience the serenity of evening fog saturating the valleys below.

Franco hadn’t expected their father to be home, and he certainly hadn’t expected him to hit the bottle early. But it had been a hard day, and if there’s any maxim he followed in the years following his wife’s passing, it’s “work hard and carry a big switch.”

The cliché regarding abusive confrontations with parents is that they can only be experienced and remembered in impressionistic, fractured pieces that can be assembled by psychiatrists for $40 an hour. Tonight, this likely happened for his brothers, but the opposite was true for Franco. He saw the bottle fly towards his head and subsequently duck under it as if Wachowski had directed him to do so. He combated his father’s drunken ravings with silence. Franco had been down this road many times over the past several years and he knew how to best limit the damage. His father did not lay a hand on Franco or his brothers. He knew his second eldest son’s time under his roof was coming to a close, and for all of his bluster, he did not want to lose his relationship with his son, but they both knew this was a pipe dream.
There was a pause. His father sat down and tears welled up in his eyes. “Frank, you’re grounded for a month.”

Franco kept a straight face, though he wanted to laugh. No one could chain him. Not anymore. “Oh, alright, dad.”

“I’m dead serious. I know your first instinct is to do whatever I tell you not to do, but you’re 18 now. If you don’t want to listen, you’re out on your ass. Disobey me on this and you can trust that you won’t be coming back. You won’t be seeing your brothers, the ones you endangered, anymore.”

Franco felt a gravity to this situation that he wasn’t used to in conversations with his father. Perhaps he was starting to sober up. “I told you ‘alright.’”

“Who’s car is that, the one you were driving?”

Franco had nothing to hide. “It’s Jack’s. I need to take it back to him later on.”

“The hell you do. I’ll take it over there myself.”

“Dad, you’re drunk.”

“You’re damn right I am. Put up with your kid’s bullshit for 18 years and get back to me. 18 years of paychecks floating down a sewer to nowhere…drinking in private, drinking in public…building shitty tree houses that aren’t half as good as you remember them being… Fucking hell, maybe you know all of this. Maybe you’ve got a family somewhere that I don’t know about. Go on, go to your room. You know that’s where you want to be.”

Franco plastered on a frown and went upstairs. His brothers – who had scattered immediately after the bottle collided with the wall – sat on the stairwell and marveled at him as he passed by them, silent. When he arrived at his room and began to turn the doorknob, he considered leaving right then and there; just turning back around and walking out the front door. He didn’t want his brothers to panic, however, so he went in his room, closed the door and sat on the bed in order to bide his time. He had no need to plan the right course of action; it was sitting in his lap.

A part of him wanted to laugh; his father was so supremely out of touch with his own son’s motivations that it was humorous. And yet, there were consequences at play here. When Franco considered what he would be losing in climbing out of that window, he felt a deluge of uncertainty flood his mind. This could very well be a turning point in his life that would seal him off in a whole new dimension, the Cold Hard World that he secretly knew he wasn’t ready for, in spite of his bluster.

Perhaps jacking his best friend's car was a milestone in and of itself. Not something to engrave on a plaque, and certainly not a Kodak moment, but potentially life-changing all the same. He needed to know. He needed to speak with Jack and find out if he would have to spend this summer entirely alienated from his best friend instead of being offered the scraps of his life. Determining this was of utmost importance to Franco; as much as he loved his brothers, there would be no opportunity to raise them in his father’s absence as long as he made hungover guest appearances, and he loved Jack dearly. He was the brother he never had yet would have substituted for any of his others.

Staring off at the wall for a few seconds, he gathered his nerves and felt a gentle pulse in his neck. His shadow was stretched thinly over the cadet blue wall, magnified by the moonlight. It loomed large, seeming to dominate the whole room. There was a clatter in the kitchen that crept under his door. He never wanted to feel this small again, and the first step to that is to enter into something greater. The concept makes no intuitive sense, but that’s why he assumed there weren’t more leaders in the world; why he lived in a town that lived to write its own epitaph, planning its funeral every day. He knew his was a long distance off. He had time to gamble away. If he proved a failure, it would be on his own terms. No fear of the inevitable day in which he would stumble into the living room drunk at 8 PM in his underwear, ranting about the years he wasted on those he appeared to love.

Franco’s window creaked loudly as it struggled to open. Perhaps this was a sign? No, it was an excuse to be lazy and inconsequential. His brothers inevitably heard it. He thought he saw the shadows cast from their eavesdropping selves as they stood at his door. There were no tears, only exhilaration as he made his escape. This day was a far better finale than he could have hoped for, and besides, even if he were excommunicated, he could probably spend most of his time at the house and his father would never know.

And so Franco greeted the evening, which had grown increasingly humid. His kindergarten teacher would have told him that God was merely crying over what had happened to him and his brothers, and in this vulnerable moment of giddy naivety, he could accept it as fact.
 
Believe it or not I actually had it open but started writing instead and never got around to reading it. :lol:

That's the thing that I struggle with; I spend way more time writing things than reading them. I feel like I have a very narrow frame of reference for what a "good" novel looks like, honestly.
 
I used to be just like that. And by "used to be," I mean like a couple of years ago, probably less. Didn't really value the genre at all. I guess I can still be super analytical in my writing, but I'm just big on conjuring up images in people's heads lately.
 
Just woke up. It could stand on its own as a short story, probably, a form of writing I've always liked. There's some really nice descriptions in there, like the gibbous and the house being a quarantine centre. Not sure how long it's all going to be, but it seems like you achieve a hell of a lot in plot in just one chapter... this is just one guy's opinion, who doesn't write extended prose, so feel free to ignore it, but you could probably slow it down a bit. Kudos to you though, I have no idea how anyone could write a novel.

"Franco was inspired. Struggling to get up off the couch, he got up to his feet" was a weird line though.
 
Yeah, that overuse of the "get" verb is pretty ugly. I must have been spacing out when I wrote that.

The book will be about 500 pages, and the plot is very extensive, but I wanted to keep the pace up. I will say that the chapter I posted is very pivotal; there are a number of chapters with a slower pace.

Thanks for reading, Danny, I appreciate it.
 
Maybe I'll post some stuff in here. Maybe. Now that I'm writing in my novel again.
 
My novel is finished!! If any of you guys want to take a stab at reading it, I've got a file ready to go. I don't have any intention of just throwing it out online without a copyright or anything, but I'll PM it to whoever is interested. Any and all feedback is important as I proceed to edit it in the coming months. For all I know, it's loaded with typos and nonsense right now.
 
I was told today that I should do Film Studies. Nah, if I was gonna do lessons in that field I would choose acting. I never really thought that I'd make good actress. Usually I'll watch Hollyoaks and find a really wooden actress that I could be as good. However there is one role that I think I may be able to fulfil as an extra, and that's a zombie. I practice my 'zombie routine' ever so often, and no I'm not kidding.

But I'm on a mission to discover what is meant when a film is said to be arty. I have got a book that explains the difference between what the writer calls art-narrative films and what he calls classic Hollywood Narrative System, but I was still confused so I looked on Wikipedia. I think I have a better understanding of what it is now, but the bit I don't get is when you've got these 'in between' films that combine traditional Hollywood narratives and the more experimental art narratives that are more about style than plot. Why does my book say that Requiem For A Dream and Blue Velvet combine art-house and Hollywood narrative? I would say that Blue Velvet could be considered pure art house. Why the fuck does Wikipedia list Brief Encounter as art house? No it bloody isn't. It's a heartbreaking Romantic Drama with a linear narrative (ie: a beginning, a middle and an end). I cried like a bitch at the end of that film one Saturday afternoon. You can have auteur directors (ie: directors with a distinctive and unique way of directing) without ever making an art house film. Spielberg, Danny Boyle and James Cameron are just three examples.
 
Below is a fairly suspenseful short story that I wrote for class. It's been workshopped repeatedly and this is as close as it's going to get to being the final draft, unless you guys spot something about it that truly blows. It is a kernel of my second novel, On the Rocks, which I intend to start work on once the semester lets out. The story is in spoiler tags because it's nearly 4,000 words long and scrolling really sucks. Hope you like it, but I'll understand if you don't:

"The Nightwatchman"

By LeMel/Traviud/Hey You In The Bushes

One…two, three……………four, five…

The idle security guard winced. He hated it when the drops falling from the ceiling lost their rhythm. He had time to notice such things every night; the only difference was what he noticed. Tonight he noticed the moonlight reflect on his badge to reveal his name, “Phil Kowalski,” engraved on silver that shone with a conscientious polish. These isolated details were the only things that separated one night from the other since he had accepted this job ten years, four months and seven days ago.

This Wednesday was identical to last Wednesday, which was, incidentally, quite similar to the Thursday two weeks before. It was his responsibility to make each one special; he had heard as much on a self-help tape he had been recommended and subsequently purchased.

What made tonight special? Well, besides the irregular drops and the reflection of his badge, he could also see the outlines of the machines on the factory floor thanks to the full moon. That was relatively uncommon. It made the “WARNING: HIGH VOLTAGE” sign take on an eerie luminescence. But the highlight of the evening was that Phil had ventured to Back Bay Hardware to purchase batteries for his flashlight the day before, allowing him to reacquaint himself with the factory’s many dust particles.

Going to the store was an easy task for many, but it wasn’t easy for him. It hadn’t been easy since his mother had last been around to do the talking for him. She always knew what to say, but she couldn’t speak for him anymore. There was something wrong with Phil, and he knew it. He didn’t like the way people looked at him. He dissected the meaning of every glance and always assumed the worst. People called him “paranoid.” His mother preferred to call him a “sensitive child.” It was a phrase he never would have thought of, and that’s why she spoke for him. That’s why he loved her.

Phil didn’t have any interest in what others had to say because words only hurt him. He chose an occupation that required no input. His job was to watch over a New England cannery as if it were his one true home. And in many ways, it was. Traveling home meant traffic, uncertainty, hostility, and for what? A couple bottles of Sam Adams and an hour in front of the television. Unless, of course, he had been too cowardly to confront the bill collectors that month, in which case he would watch his fish until his eyes went out of focus, rendering them colorful balls of drifting cotton. Phil loved fish; he could be certain that they would forget the times he forgot to feed them. Until he stopped being certain, that is. He second-guessed himself whenever he felt tired. After giving it some consideration, he decided that he could not remember the last time he was truly wide awake.

Phil’s official title was “security guard,” but he preferred the antiquated term “night watchman,” and you would too if you worked at the Teabury Cannery. It was a rustic, historically significant yet economically inappreciable factory that took one on a trip through time. The grounds were lit by incandescent lamps that one could see through the cloudy, neglected glass windows of the second floor. From that vantage point, Phil often waited for Paul Revere to warn him of the oncoming British. He could mentally craft an outline of him on foggy nights, which often rolled in and out without protest from the adjacent Atlantic.

Though a bold full moon found its way through cracks in the cloud cover, wintry precipitation was a certainty. Phil always kept a close watch for it. Inside the warehouse, it was so quiet that he could hear the sound of snowflakes in the midst of their fateful kamikaze missions, meeting their brethren on the ground to form a glorious, crackling heap. Phil liked to think about snow. It was soft and kind and brought out the romantic in so many people. It pleased him to think of each snowflake’s unique anatomy. He considered each day a snowflake. Or he hoped to start doing so.

Phil had no way of watching the snowfall from the bottom floor, so he clambered up the uncertain stairwell leading to the mammoth windows on the northern wall. It was once steady and a freshly-painted metallic green, but had grown cynical and dull from years of supporting factory employees. He heard its pessimistic creaking with every step and grew to fear it as much as it feared him.

A glance out the window eased Phil’s tension instantly. There was nothing he found more soothing than a gentle snowfall on a still night. The town of Teabury was visible to the north, lit up like a quaint ceramic tea light. He found the town to be appropriately named. On bright, clear nights, there was a boat on the shoreline that he loved to watch. It wasn’t so much the appearance of the boat that he was fond of; its dark wood had been warped from years of neglect and was encrusted with algae. Rather, he liked the way it rocked while tied to the dock. Though it was unable to escape, it seemed all too ready for the day it could finally happen. Its eagerness never fully ceased, even though its hope was consistently deferred. He created scenarios in his head that would allow him to free it. Perhaps take it on a trip to Teabury and beyond. But he thought it wasn’t his place to do so. He wasn’t the kind to steal a boat and make his dreams come true. Never was and never will be. Nonetheless, it comforted him to know that it was there.

To the south, through the windows on the opposite wall, one could see Boston. Phil hated that city for everything it represented and for all it offered him. There were people there who smiled and drank and didn’t care about what you or anyone else thought. They were happy people who could make their dreams a reality. People who looked utterly flawless in flattering citrus lighting. He knew he couldn’t have any of their joy. Especially not tonight. Tonight was not a night for noise and debauch. Tonight was a night for peace.

The night did not sound peaceful. It was a massacre. Ice crystals hissed at fate for betraying it so. Sleet popped with machine gun rapidity. But he loved it, as it masked the soulless hum of the canning machinery. Eventually, the snow and sleet ceased and Phil could hear himself think. He could hear everything. The natural turn of the earth shifted the aging factory in subtle and terrifying ways. Phil jerked his head back to catch each sound in the act. Loose conveyor belts shook; rats gnawed through ancient wiring.

The cacophony was set aside. He saw something; someone. It stuck in his peripheral vision. It wasn’t in the factory; it was someone outside.
Who would be outside in this ungodly weather?

This was a good question; it was his responsibility to guard the premises from the sort of people who would be out in ungodly weather such as this. Suspicious people. It was also his least favorite part of the job and he approached such suspicious scenarios with trepidation. He had security cameras to aid him in this process, but he found his senses were far keener than any camera the Teabury Cannery could afford.

Phil placed his face up against the window and carefully scanned the parking lot and adjacent sidewalk, which were lit by two fortunately-mounted street lamps and neighbored by a small patch of grass and, a few feet beyond that, the coastline. This coastline was very notorious within the town of Teabury. Many years before, it had been commonly chosen as a location for men and women with nothing left. They went there because they felt no one was watching them and no one could stop them, and they took their own lives. The waters by the coastline were referred to as crimson tides. Phil was aware of this but could never say he had seen one of these suicides for himself. There were no reported cases and he hadn’t caught any unreported ones. It occurred to him that tonight may very well be special after. But after seeing nothing he assumed his cruel imagination was playing tricks on him in the night, as it so often had.

Then, at last, he saw them. Two men. One was crouched on the ground. Another was standing beside him in a threatening manner. The second man was shouting at the first. Phil couldn’t hear the words but the second man’s body language suggested that he was delivering a verbal thrashing. Perhaps he was a friend? A spurned lover? He could make out the details of the first man’s face in the amber glow of the street lamps and saw that he was weeping.

The second man – wearing a faded orange suede trench coat and a brown hat with a brim that covered his face with some room to spare – took out a silver switchblade. It was so strange to see a man like him quite literally brought to his knees. He was brutish in appearance, blonde and several inches taller than the man he assumed was the assailant. He had broad arms and an impressive stature; logic dictated that he should easily be able to stand up for himself, but he was the victim of what appeared to be a much weaker man. Phil thought of him as the victim as the horrible scene unfolded.

There was something very strange about the man in the trench coat. Phil almost felt that he had seen him before. Phil had a tremendously good memory, for better or worse, so it was entirely possible that he was experiencing déjà vu. But he couldn’t be sure from just seeing the back of the man’s coat, nor from seeing his pale hands. Despite his relatively diminutive stature, he was in his victim’s head and that disturbed Phil. He knew people like that. In fact, everyone had that power over him.

The arms of the brutish blonde were stretched out in front of him and frozen in place. There were tears in his eyes as the man in the orange trenchcoat cut him to pieces. At last, he collapsed. There was a pool of blood around him, though Phil could not tell where the source of it was. Phil wept for the poor soul, but he was confused by what he saw. Surely this was a homicide. The man in the trench coat had taken this man where nobody could find his body and took his life. He didn’t know what the victim had done. It didn’t matter to Phil now. All he could think of was that he had to tell someone what he saw. And that terrified him.

The man in the trench coat examined his work and shrugged callously. He then turned around and attempted to pick out possible witnesses. Phil remained perfectly silent. He found himself incapable of movement. His eyes glanced over the shoreline and, on this cloudy night, he found it was impossible to see his boat. He began to perspire. The man inhabiting the right-bottom corner of his vision turned around cautiously and pulled out his knife before turning back to his original position. As he turned, he spotted the witness in his peripheral vision. Just as Phil had watched the terrible homicide without any conscious effort, so the assailant caught a glimpse of the lone witness’ face by chance.

Phil retched. He slipped onto the steely green grating and felt merciless waves of memory pummel him. He had seen the man before. After all this time, he had forgotten what it was like to look into his eyes, so villainous and cold. That man had murdered his mother, cutting him off from his one source of protection. He had orphaned him and placed him in the care of his uncouth aunt and uncle, a couple who never understood his unique quirks. Phil felt no hate at this moment; this was not an opportunity for retribution. In fact, he had sought to avoid seeing this man ever again. He had subconsciously moved out of the city to avoid a second encounter with him and, in this moment, only sought to preserve his miserable life.

Phil’s best defense was his wits and keen senses. Failing that, there was a gun resting on the table in his office. This was his life to lose. It was his responsibility to stay calm and call upon the training he had hopefully retained. First of all, he stood up straight, rising from the pool of vomit he had created upon seeing the assailant’s sociopathic visage. To retrieve the gun, he knew he would have to hurry; the man tracking him was old and rugged yet strangely agile. As Phil ran, kicking up clouds of dust into his flashlight’s pale beam along the way, he considered the man’s possible motives for murder. What could he want? What did he want all those years ago? He began to feel woozy and ran into the blunt end of a machine on the factory floor, which left a deep bruise on his thigh. As he struggled to his feet, he decided that this was no time to reflect on the past. If anything, it would soon find him.

Every step Phil took sounded louder than he was accustomed to. His adversary must have heard them. He took a brief moment – it could be no greater than this – to consider how he would best navigate the factory floor. Run? A brisk walk? Tip-toe? He chose the brisk walk, allowing him to move at a solid clip without making a great deal of noise, but this put extra pressure on his bruised thigh which was beginning to throb.

Phil heard a quiet rustling in the foyer. The lock on the door leading to the foyer jiggled and then, bizarrely, seemed to create a light thud. The man seemed to have removed the lock entirely. At this moment, the stranger took on a sort of omniscience. There was no choice but to run; Phil would be found and killed if he couldn’t locate his weapon in time. Phil was a large man; his frame was generous and he was not afraid to test it with a poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. Every stride he took was met with resistance from his own body. His intimate knowledge of the factory was his only advantage, though the superstitious part of him suspected he had lost even that. If he did run into the man in the trench coat, he knew his size wouldn’t save him. It hadn’t done much good for the old man’s victim.

When he at last reached the break room adjacent to his office, paranoia set in fully. He could hear booming footsteps in his head, but not outside of them, as if his temples were standing in for a bass drum. His emotions fluctuated wildly as he turned around each corner, as if every room represented a different part of his psyche. The lighting changed in time with this, ranging from dark to light; colorful to drab.

Eventually, he noticed a pattern. He had been running in a scared circle. Backtracking, he noticed the hallway that led to his office was in the room he first entered but he simply hadn’t noticed it. He wondered how many other details he had overlooked in his blind panic.

The gun was the first thing he saw when he walked into the room. He had seldom touched his Beretta, only carrying it when he felt the need to keep up appearances, but he was so overwhelmed with emotion that it seemed to be his key out of a prison of fear and doubt. It felt like an old ally. Finally, he was in control. No one could take this away from him, not even that villainous old bastard.

He thought about the old man. Who could dedicate their lives to such vile acts? How could you age twenty-five years and grow so little as a person? There was something missing in a man like that. When their eyes met all those years before, he knew the man could only contribute death to the lives of those he came into contact with. He didn’t understand the value of a life, yet the old man’s face hadn’t aged a day since the first time Phil had laid eyes on him. It wasn’t fair.

His mother had been struggling. She had opened a restaurant and it was a resounding failure. She was deemed unfit by the state to be a parent. All too often, Phil went to school looking ravenous and unkempt. But he wasn’t unhappy. He understood that his mother would have done anything to put him in a better situation. He loved her. And he suspected that things were getting better. She wore a tearful smile the night of the break-in.

Phil cocked his gun and kept it as still as he could, facing the open door. Time passed extremely slowly, waiting for his inevitable encounter. The steps in his head were no louder than they were minutes before. Perhaps the man had lost his way. Perhaps he was stepping in place, trying to lure Phil into a sinister trap. Neither seemed all that plausible, but both scenarios were possible. And that chance was enough to keep him frozen in place for several more minutes.

This situation felt familiar to Phil. He remembered hearing his mother’s footsteps thudding below the stairs the night she died. But they must have been the killer’s. They started loud as he walked past the unwitting child and grew quieter until at last they piqued his curiosity enough to chase them down.

The steps were again growing quieter. They grew quieter still until the killer had exited the building, shutting the foyer door behind him. Phil had not been found.

Yet he felt no relief. The machines resumed their soulless whirring, which called him out to the factory floor like a siren. Much work was left to be done. As he walked down the halls and back to the floor, it became clear to him that the wind had picked up. It was screaming. Its tantrum was fierce enough to topple a nearby power line. The hallway went dark. The machines were silenced. Only a ray of moonlight shooting through the large windows of the second floor allowed him to return to his post.

The backup generators were set up to turn on automatically following a power outage of this nature, so he waited. At first, he played with his flashlight, but turning it on made visible the dust in the room. The dust, along with the square grey shapes in front of him made him feel as if he were occupying a crypt. This was an uncomfortable thought, so he turned it off with a forceful click. He then began to listen to his thoughts, but they were drowned out by the disquieting silence of the powerless machinery. He felt alone. Too alone, even to his liking. At last, he simply waited for the generators to return him to normalcy.

On cue, the power returned. The machines roared with new life. He smiled a sentimental smile. After a short time, it faded. He thought of what he had on the agenda for the night and realized his schedule was empty. And that it would be tomorrow. And that it had been for months. His normalcy was a farce. He wanted those damn machines to silence themselves the moment they came back to life. The door to the foyer opened with a creak. He needed some air.

Phil crossed the threshold absently. There could be something worth fearing somewhere on the premises, but his brush with death had turned out to be the most memorable part of the night. He approached the rocky coastline that neighbored the cannery as if it hadn’t had such an ugly reputation. As if it hadn’t been the host of a bloody homicide. Off to the east, there was no end to its waters. How significant was one man’s life in relation to that?
A thought ran through his mind as if it were racing to a more worthy destination. Don’t look back. He ruminated on it for a moment. Maybe there was something else for a man like Phil Kowalski. Perhaps he could be a fisherman as his father had been. No, he couldn’t.

He looked back at the cannery and began to cry. This had been his sanctuary for a decade. It allowed him to prolong the agony. He glanced over to the brutish blonde lying still on the burgundy rocks and no longer pitied him.

The glance graduated to a stare. There was one detail about the murder scene that he hadn’t noticed. The man’s wrists – they were the source of the blood. Vertical cuts. Phil looked into his hand and saw his gun clutched within his involuntary grip. Turning around quickly, he saw the old man walking towards him confidently. His countenance grew more overpowering and evil with every step. He seemed to glide toward his next victim, like an angel of death. At last, he spoke.

“I can set you free.”

Phil realized he had trapped himself. He was being offered a way out of dire circumstances, just as the brutish blonde had been. As so many had been on the shores of these burgundy rocks. As his mother had been. His emotions fluctuated wildly, as they had when he first grabbed the gun. Part of him was glad to see the man. He wanted to have a memorable night, and it was exactly that, thanks to him. There hadn’t been many in a long time and there may not be any others. He wouldn’t have to see the Godforsaken cannery ever again. Another part of him knew that other memorable nights were possible. As long as that chance was there, he couldn’t give in. He couldn’t see it now, but the boat was waiting for him.

He dropped the gun and dove into the frigid water. When he arose, the shoreline was empty except for the brutish blonde and the forsaken Beretta. The old man was gone. An old cannery neighbored by dying trees was not a beautiful sight, but he was grateful to have seen it. More beautiful still was the soggy brown boat. It was just a faint outline, but it was there. He swam back to shore, faced the cannery and arched his brow apologetically. It had been such a good friend to him.

“A true friend would understand,” he said with a sigh. Taking a pen and piece of paper out of his pocket, he wrote his letter of resignation and placed it under the arm of the brutish blonde, where everyone would see it.

He faced the boat east, toward the empty horizon, and hopped in. After an earnest, failed attempt to paddle forward, he realized he never had anyone teach him how. He would have to teach himself.

It’ll be OK. Better than OK. It’ll be a night to remember.
 
Thanks, I look forward to that.

My last novel is in the read-through/editing process right now. I wanted to set it aside for a month or so and work on something else, which I did with this short story. I'm 2/3 of the way through the book now, making appropriate changes as I go. Once that process is finished (a couple of weeks more, I'd say) I'll start looking for a publisher.
 
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