Yesterday, I declared a serious outlook on all things writing, which includes a regular focus on my blogging life and I want to do my best to stand by it. So I set up a timetable for daily activities here, however daily I can make it be. Saturday's needle fell on Book excerpts and Weekly Flash Fiction just as Friday's fell on Being Me. I'll try my best in making weekly updates and also get a couple of my fellow writers' works here. For now, you readers should bear with having just me and I will do my best to not disappoint.
Today's Excerpt: Unexpected Repercussions by Artie Margrave
(This cover is still in the works, as much as the book is)
11th March, 1988
Hurley Rd,
PA, Bridges, Portland
How could a place be
so hideous, so deadening, so unpicturesque?
Josh’d finally found himself just
beside the rusting signboard that read Hurley, with the weird sun peeking
through the clouds image etched beneath it. The image was weird because the sun
had very little to do with the place. Warmth had very little to do with the
place.
The day was sunny and full of life:
that much he’d witnessed, that much he knew, but the metamorphosing powers of
this street put doubt in context. Whatever sunlight streamed upon here was
heavily polluted, so fouled it didn’t hit anywhere near the ground.
Now he was down with a
nerve-blistering hesitation concerning placing a foot forward. He couldn’t even
place his hands on the signboard for support: that too was cold, really
frigorific and right then, he needed to maintain all the internal warmth he
had.
With the pushing reluctance, he
walked in. It had to be done. Once and finally. At least he prayed. And in, he found out how truly the idiomatic looks
could deceive. The street had a wayward darkness. The sunlight wasn’t being
polluted, no; it was being rejected, resisted. The nighttime he’d witnessed with
Blake was even brighter than the day he was presently experiencing. The houses
beside him were sad, sorry-looking. To his senses, they cried: I don’t want to be here! They were, all
of them he studied, blandly identical. Thin oak trees were found in parts of
the sidewalk. The green here was peculiarly ok.
He stopped. Something was moving
in the distance, in front of one of the houses. He resumed walking and as he
got closer, he saw it was a woman, bent and tending to her lawn. He hadn’t come
any closer before she looked up and spotted him. Her skin was sallow, her hair
black and bristling. She paused from what she was doing to watch him walk by,
an action Josh wasn’t much at peace with. Even away from her, he knew she was
still watching. He’d thought the street unpeopled. Now as he took closer looks
at the houses, he saw eyes and faces peering through drawn curtains, some
briefly, others more circumspectly. Another person had taken the bold step of
standing in the front yard, distantly: a man, gathered by a coat whose pockets
socketed his hands. His face was hidden by the shadows of a morning that didn’t
look much like but his shape… like someone familiar—
He stopped again, this time
firm-footedly. The signpost suddenly loomed into his face he had to stagger
back to keep balance, physical and mental. The oval head attracted his sight. Matthews Cemetery. And then his eyes
moved to the gate, now dull, lusterless.
This
is the place of Skull… and Bones. He saw the fading-red graffiti that he’d noticed that first
time. Automatically, his sight crept into the cemetery, a moment when time
stopped, a moment when his breath held still and his throat turned dry.
A moment suddenly dispelled by the
muffled ringtone of his phone. He dug the phone out of his pocket and checked
the id—Jodie. For this one time, he was grateful for the call and picked it the
soonest his trembling thumb found the green pick call button.
“Hey, sis.”
“Not heard from you. Where’ve you
been? Where are you?” Jodie’s voice streamed into his ears with loose
allowance.
“With the guys, and still with the
guys,” Josh answered. “Having a beer… ok, two and—hey! Drop that Jim.” And he
opened the gate and hit it in pretense of having a disruptive fellowship. Which
he briefly regretted for the cold sensation the gate injected into him. When Jodie
spoke, she sounded thankfully convinced.
“Ok,” she steadied, “but try not
to come home knocked out.”
“I won’t, sis,” Josh replied, “and
if I do, I’ll come with someone who isn’t.” Then a pretend laugh that rolled
into real before he hung up.
He suddenly realized his breath
back. Returning the phone into the pocket, his fingers brushed the docile,
timid pistol. How he missed that shotgun! It had been impounded and sequestered
by the BPD. Little chances of him getting it back.
Fingering the low-class hardware, he
got a stab of daring. He pushed the gate open, ignored then endured its
consequent creaking and walked in.
The gate closed behind him of a ghostly conformity
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