Pistol Whipped*
*This post contains violence and strong language that may shock persons unfamiliar with modern media.
This is post 25 of Section II. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here
He crumpled, holding his hands to his eyes. “Damn it,” he said, Gregory again. “Get me a wet cloth. I can’t believe you did that. Fuck. My contacts. Get me a goddamn cloth, I said.” He was whimpering, holding out his hand for the cloth. “Come on, Chlo. Don’t be such a bitch.”
Unable to wait longer, he staggered to the sink and rinsed his eyes. Only when he turned back toward her, eyes streaming, did he realize she had the gun trained on him.
“Oh give me a break, will you?” he said disgustedly. “Put down that fuckin’ thing. Game’s over.”
Chloe was learning to listen to voices in her head. She lowered the gun, ignoring his hand, outstretched for it. “Just a minute. Let me get you the cloth,” she said in a normal voice, and came back a minute later with a damp washcloth.
“You hurt me!” he said accusingly, and began to clean the green gunk off his face and hair.
He never saw it coming when she hit him twice with the butt of the pistol and tied his hands and feet together with some extension cords while he lay unconscious. When she was plugging the phone back in, she caught sight of Jeff’s card, lying beside it.
Continue
This is post 25 of Section II. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here
He crumpled, holding his hands to his eyes. “Damn it,” he said, Gregory again. “Get me a wet cloth. I can’t believe you did that. Fuck. My contacts. Get me a goddamn cloth, I said.” He was whimpering, holding out his hand for the cloth. “Come on, Chlo. Don’t be such a bitch.”
Unable to wait longer, he staggered to the sink and rinsed his eyes. Only when he turned back toward her, eyes streaming, did he realize she had the gun trained on him.
“Oh give me a break, will you?” he said disgustedly. “Put down that fuckin’ thing. Game’s over.”
Chloe was learning to listen to voices in her head. She lowered the gun, ignoring his hand, outstretched for it. “Just a minute. Let me get you the cloth,” she said in a normal voice, and came back a minute later with a damp washcloth.
“You hurt me!” he said accusingly, and began to clean the green gunk off his face and hair.
He never saw it coming when she hit him twice with the butt of the pistol and tied his hands and feet together with some extension cords while he lay unconscious. When she was plugging the phone back in, she caught sight of Jeff’s card, lying beside it.
Continue
posted by Hobbes at 3:58 AM
10 Comments:
Getting good now. Action along with the character depth. I think it's a lot better than some blogs that have stories by published writers trying to plug their books. You got aspirations? Or have you already been there and done that? It's fun anyway. I am enjoying it.
Definitely, Icy. I'm ready for some longer posts. Lula wasn't far off, was she? Weirsdo, have you been peeking in my window?
Thanks, you guys. I think this is good, but as my last rejection e-mail kindly informed me, "nobody reads novellas," so it's unpublishable. I haven't written anything else good, except Pansi material and a so-far-unpublished Levinas article.
The posts are not going to get longer, since I'm already more than a third of the way through this material, I enjoy the process, and I think I should keep the format consistent. But I can send you the whole thing at the end, if you want. Maybe by then I will have a story or two to add here, but right now I only have nebulous ideas. Kids and violin take most of my time.
P. S. No, Doug, but it sounds like a great place to go for material. I still want to hear the bedsheet story in its entirety.
Me too, Weirsdo.
Just make them longer and they will be a novel. Maybe move some of the action into the beginning to hook the reader. I think you might have lost some with introspection too early. Like Quinton Tarantino does his movies putting the end at the beginning. It really sold for him for Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. I knew a really smart woman who was the principal of an elementary school and had even been an administrator. This was about ten or fifteen years ago when she wrote stories about dragons and magic and the publishers kept telling her no one liked that sort of stuff and it was unpublishable. With word processors now days, it's easy to chop it up and move things around and rewrite them, saving the original. And keep a sharp focus on who will be buying the book. It won't hurt to experiment if they are being stubborn about it anyway. Nothing to lose as long as you don't let it interfere with what is really important in your life. A book is just product that people will want to buy. It becomes a classic or art or literature only after you are dead and gone except for a very few that devote their entire lives to it.
Am I out of line here? If so, sorry. Just thinking. But I really like this part! I still think it should have been at the beginning and then flashed back to Ed and the gay guys and kept us reading to find out what happened to Chloe.
wasn't Anthem technically a Novella. ;)
Nice stuff Weird Bird.
Thank you for the compliments and advice. I don't really know anything about Anthem or Quentin Tarantino. Isn't Anthem by Ayn Rand? Enough said. And Quentin Tarantino's movies are really violent, right? Blech.
Are you talking about J. K. Rowling? Was she an administrator? If so, she was not the Minnie Strator type, because that would be Professor Umbridge of Book 5 (ORDER OF THE PHOENIX).
Anyway, I've lived with this manuscript for a while, and I like it the way it is, for the most part, though I take no offense at suggestions. I don't think people who only like Chloe's almost-rape are going to sit through the gay dinner party no matter where it is. I also think it reads a lot faster when not divided into short snippets. It's not ideal blog material, but oh well.
The audience is socially liberal, literate people, and the publisher who said it was just too short runs a gay publishing house and said it was the kind of material they'd be interested in, if it were not for the length. If I ever get my act together and write anymore such stuff, he has invited me to submit it with this, but the problem is I actually don't have a yen to write about gay people. It's just that when I got married one of my gay friends got me a subscription to THE ADVOCATE and MS. MAGAZINE to keep me liberal after I admitted to him that Dr. Weirsdo had once voted for Reagan, and I guess reading about all those issues and having gay friends that play music with me came out here.
I wasn't talking about J K Rowling. This woman was just a local school principal, but if she had stuck to her guns she might have proved that publisher wrong and had a successful children's book. But she gave up and started a petting zoo. That is where Lula belongs, but I don't think anyone would want to pet that creature, they might catch something. Sick 'er Icy!
Lula: I have great respect for Tom and Icy and consider their suggestions carefully. But I am not sure about the school principal, because she was, after all, an administrator.
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