The following is merely a thought process I have for the start of a possible novel. I have a lot of it plotted out in my head already, save for title (though that should come last). Of course, I'm open to the idea of the path changing, as life so often does. This is a story that has worked it's way into my mind in one form or another these past few years.
What I am looking for now are serious people who wouldn't mind reading over drafts of chapters as they come and giving me honest to god feedback. This prologue piece will be the only portion (probably) I will post to the public. All other written pieces will remain typed (or hand-written should I find the nerve) until the whole thing is complete. A book can't write itself and, more often than not, it is not written soley by one person. While the author's is the name on the book, everyone knows more comes into play than just the words he (or she, since I hear some women can actually write...) has written on the page.
And hey, who doesn't want their name published in the book on that "I'd like to thank page" that most everyone seeminly skips over anyhow? (That is, of course, if I even have the talent and the drive to actually FINISH a project......)
On with the actual story. Oh. One more side note. Facebook will more likely than not completely re-format my work. I think it is best read in its normal state with all breaks, spacing and font (courier new, italicized) formats. Oh well though. Just pretend! Oh! Another note. I have never really written in present tense. Therefore, I may have slid into that old past-tense mode here and there. Feel free to let me know where. Not that this entire story is written like this....
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i am the walrus : a start of sorts (wip--work in progress)
and whether pigs have wings. It flutters into his thoughts as he rounds the corner, casually strolling toward his destination. His hand pulls his cell phone out of a pocket. His fingers move over the screen. He dials. It rings. He is still moving, down a picturesque lane lined with tall maple trees (or are they elm? He is not an expert on trees), leaves giving up their green for the autumn gold. Each house looks identical in their non-descriptiveness; all seemingly rolled out of the same “And You Can Live the American Dream Too” assembly line. All of it bullshit. Still ringing. He thinks, I wonder whatever happened to
An answer. He greets the voice on the other line. “Hey. Yeah, I know. It's been a long time.” Talking. “I'm good. I'm good.” More talking. “I've been-- Hey, what's for dinner?” His lips break into an honest grin. He hasn't used that line in a long time. It works. “I can go with you guys, unless, you know it's a private thing.” He knows it is private, but knows at once the voice on the other end is going to insist he go, no matter what. “No” would be off the table.
“You could say I'm in the neighborhood.” He is, in fact, at the front door now. As he expects, the lawn is perfectly manicured, the hedges trimmed and the porch stoop swept of all debris. Ah, Suburbia. He pulls out his key, never surrendered, (never asked for) and unlocks the door. Steps in. Pauses. Eyes closed.
He inhales. He takes in the scent of home. Images flash over his closed eyelids in the haphazard shapes and colors most often found in kaleidoscopes. All at once he is five again, bolting around on amazing adventures with fantastic creatures conjured from the infinite depths that is the child's imagination. Imagination gives way to reality and he is older, though not as old as he is now, sneaking up the stairs from a night spent on adventures of less childish nature. And still things barrel on and on, all in the span of seconds.
“What? Sorry.” The voice on the other end of the line cannot wait for this sense memory play to run out its act. “An hour? Sure, not a problem. Should be perfect in fact.”
He kicks off his shoes, not bothering with the laces. What is the point, as long as the shoes are off? “You don't have to do that, I can just as easily call a cab.” More insistence. He peels his socks off. Barefooted he walks out of the foyer, onto the hardwood floor. Starts exploring.
“Fine, fine.” He runs his hands over the smooth surface of the large, sterile dining table. His eyes scan the room quickly. Everything is untouched. Every chair. Every piece of china on display. Even the light switch. “You sure he won't mind?”
More words. “I know, I know. I just,you know?” He pauses between the archway connecting the dining room with the kitchen. More untouched crockery and counter space. No dust, but untouched just the same. “I'm not being ridiculous. Just realistic.”
He runs his fingers over the surface of the counter. Solid and sleek. Everything in the place speaks of taste and refinement. Paneled appliances that integrate seemlessly with the walls and cupboards. Not a stray glass, fork or plate to speak of.
“Alright, alright. Fine. An hour.” Conversation wrapping up. “I know. I love you too.” He clicks the end button, sparing only a momentary glance at the phone before he deposits it onto the counter, quickly forgotten. Footsteps carry him up the carpeted stairs, cloud-like under foot.
The stairs open up to a long hallway that stretches in either direction. He goes left. As he walks down the hall, his fingers trace over the bare spaces between hanging photographs. A vacation to Maui. Fourth of July on the lake. Cider mills. Family poses for Christmas. Perfect smiles. Neatly manufactured visages of a life that anyone outside these walls would beg for.
Somewhere amongst these pictures, sometime down the foggy path of time, something had been lost. These empty spaces of white between frames. From pleasant moment to pleasant moment. On and on and
His fingers grip the knob to his bedroom door. His childhood bedroom door, he mentally corrects. A slow turn. He pushes it open. The single window has blinds drawn and the room is covered in a pre-dusk haze. Light struggles vainly to sneak between the cracks, but is ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to give natural glow to the room. He closes his eyes. He breathes.
So much has happened in this room, he thinks. It all washes over him as he stands in the threshold. Every waking memory. The air, stale with the sealing of the room, assails his senses. The crypt has been opened.
He imagines himself as he was some years back. Completely oblivious and unaware. Content to be malcontented with a snooping parent. To space out for hours on end, window cracked just the slightest, joint lit and some hazy, mellow Radiohead tune lilting from the speakers. To spend countless hours immersed in the seemingly endless button mashings it took to save a pixelated princess from some virtual tragic fate. To spend even more hours with mind locked in a world created within pages of a novel most would call trash or garbage, but to you it was the escape from everything that was wrong with everything else.
His eyes blink open, adjust to the dimness and he is on his bed. Old, childhood bed, he corrects again. He stares up at the ceiling. The ceiling fan does not spin. The light remains off. He reminds himself he has less than an hour. He reminds himself to breathe. He realizes he has stopped since coming into the room.
Steam now covers the mirror. Hot water streams out of both faucets in his bathroom. Old bathroom, he tells himself. Old everything. Water rapidly fills the sinks. It starts to cover the surface of his counters in a sheen of water. It spills over the edge and ointo the tile floor.
He pulls himself up onto the surface, poised on his knees, now wet, as he traces his left index-finger over the steam covered mirror. His tongue protrudes from his mouth, squeezed by his lips in a look of extreme concentration. He tilts his head as he writes four words.
Seemingly satisfied, he pulls back and is standing erect on the floor once more. He doesn't spare the mirror a second glance. He leaves the water running as he moves to the bathtub.
It too, like the sink, is overflowing with hot water. Steam rises above the rippling surface, vaporous and comforting. He doesn't hesitate at the searing heat. He steadies himself with a hand on the wall opposite himself. He plunges a foot. Weight is put on it. Steady. He pulls his other foot in. The skin of his ankles almost immediately turn red, though he does not see. He's not looking down at his feet to notice. He feels it.
A turn. He's facing the faucet and he brings himself into the water. A submarine submerging. More ripples and even more water sent splashing outside of the tub and onto the floor. His beige floor mats are, by now, soaked through. The carpet outside the bathroom door is probably wet, he thinks. Don't sweat the small stuff.
The heat almost overwhelms his senses, almost threatens to expel him from the tub altogether. Like some rickety boat on some raging ocean he is almost capsized, but somehow manages to rise above the crest. His eyes close and he lets the scalding water take a turn at his flesh.
He has read somewhere that it is best to shave when the razor is hot. When the hair follicles have been loosened by the heat of the water. Massaged by a brush applying shaving cream. Of course, that could all be Wikepedia trash. Another empty mind spewing forth more tidbits of misinformation and calling it wisdom. Or is this something his father told him? He cannot at this moment put a finger on it. And a thought sneaks like a thief into his mind:
'The time was come,” the Walrus said, 'to talk of many things: Of shoes--of ships--of sealing-wax—-of cabbages—-and kings—-and why the sea is boiling hot-'
The first cut is quick and steady. And vertical. The warm skin splits without resistance. The blade, thin and sharp, is also hot and this is its raison d'être. At first he doesn't open his eyes. He just feels the sensation of his warm blood mixing with the hot water. He cannot see it, but he can imagine it just gushing out.
And it is. Blood is pumping out into the tub with such rapidity that his head is already starting to go hazy. He switches the blade into his hand with the slit wrist. A sharp pain soon finds its way to those wonderful nerve endings in his brain. He pays it no mind, however, as he brings his fingers around the hilt of the X-Acto knife. With a another slice, he thinks, it will be done.
Shaking when it's finished, breath quick and shallow, his arms fall helplessly beneath the water. His head lolls back onto the wall behind him. His eyes wander downward over his naked, submerged body and settle on the two distinct cuts. Blood is oozing out in speeds he couldn't imagine. Such an odd thing, he thinks to himself, that this red liquid, this oil, keeps this fleshy machine running. Amazing still, he thinks on, that in each drop contains his soul. If such a thing even exists. Odder still, he muses, that it's supposed to be blue. Another farce of Wikipedia?
There is no music playing, but as he rolls his eyes back up to the ceiling, he distinctly hears singing. A familiar tune, though he can't quite place it. He wants to move his lips in sync with the words, but strength has left him. His breathing slows.
Subway is no way for a good man to go down, he sings somewhere within the deep recesses of his mind still clinging to life. Rich man can ride and the hobo, he can drown...
His eyes start to flutter close. The room fades to an infinite blackness. A faint voice, his own almost seemingly now disembodied whispers, “I wonder whatever happened to
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and that's that.
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