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 Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:13 pm
A few notes:
I'm looking for someone to design me a banner, I will pay handsomely. And also I'd like someone to do sketches of some of the characters which I will also pay for. Pm me if interested.
All Criticism is appreciated. I'd dividing the first chapter into parts for easier reading.
Chapter one: the morning after
Lightning crashed and thunder bellowed around him; he wanted to see what was happening outside his eyelids but through all his strain he could not open them. It wasn’t completely dark; he was falling away from a dimming point of light rather than going further into it. The loud noises seemed to pulse with his heartbeat and he could hear heavy breathing accompanying it.
Is this some sort of nightmare? It can’t be. It all feels like it’s actually happening.
Further dissonance found place in the vision; he could hear a voice.
Jerry? Is that you?
He couldn’t make out the words that were being said only the fact they were being delivered through sobs and a voice crying out. Everything said sounded dyslexic. The perception to see words garbled could be auditory instead in this case.
This can’t be happening. Jerry! Help me wake up, I-I can’t wake up!”
He yelled and tried to maneuver his hands to pound at whatever was keeping him in this state but he didn’t feel a body in fact he felt numb. Only his thoughts conjured feelings. Though his voice sounded out, he had a feeling it was all inside his head. Within the falling void the light had gone away and a sound of running water began. After hearing the water fill what sounded like a sink the sound like pebbles in a bucket being poured out rose to a cacophony. Then things became more sensitive, he could hear someone else’s breathing other than his own. The thunder and louder sounds dimmed away and he could instead hear the smaller things in the chasm like the drips out of faucet, soft snoring, music being played in the distance he could not identify, and finally all these sensations stopped as well. The last thing heard before he could feel a surface forming around him was a final few drops of water but as the plop of sound hit his senses, it echoed and reverberated much stronger than anything else. He awoke to the sound of something like a bug zapper nailing a victim.
Some of the best feelings in the world occur after catastrophes or long periods of discomfort. That first drink of water after being trapped in the desert, a helicopter coming in with rescue aid after a major earthquake or a dog coming back on its own accord after spending half the night looking all over a busy highway; Drew Madding didn’t know why but felt his best feeling was the feeling of eyeballs rolling underneath eyelids after a seamless time of howling darkness. He opened his eyes and gingerly felt his face; it felt warm to the touch, as it did every morning waking up out of a cocoon of blankets. He felt relaxed,
“God. What a dream.”
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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:16 pm
At first the only thing he could see above him was blurry light. He figured it was just his eyes adjusting to the morning. But as things came into focus so did confusion. He was not in his room at his parents’ house. The coldness of the floor burned into him suddenly and he realized that the ground beneath him was a tile floor in a small bathroom. Drew got up, his knees nearly buckled beneath him at his shock. He looked immediately to the left and saw a mirror.
In it stood a 6’2’’ curly haired young man with a stupefied expression and a clean face save a dark brown goatee had taken root. Drew couldn’t believe it; it looked like a thin version of him. He was 330 pounds. This couldn’t be him. Of course it was not a coma; he would not be able to move so easily after the amount of time it would take for that amount of weight to be slept off. Could he have been on some sort of drug that burned his fat off while letting him sleep in some kind of stasis the entire time? Though it sounded like a far-fetched miracle he knew it was just another empty ended theory. Than something else in the mirror caught his eyes, his clothes reminded him what had happened at his last memory before the nightmare and getting up.
He had been invited to a party in Seattle by a work acquaintance who had just won a jackpot up at a casino. He had dressed his nicest, which was meager at best, a white T-shirt with a black dress shirt wore over and a pair of brown slacks with white tennis shoes on. He mainly tried to wear whatever was the newest thing he had rather than any kind of color combination. He found out later that his attire would mean nothing at this particular party. The celebration was not any kind of formal get-together. Strippers for one thing had been there and booze and loud music. It seemed as his acquaintance had wanted to spend all his money on vices rather than any kind of long term investment. Drew was a nervous sort and couldn’t get past the fact that there was half naked woman in the first room of the apartment. He had thought about leaving but considering the celebration was such a rare occurrence (he was never invited much anywhere) he attempted to simply stand in one place and look preoccupied with something other than the drop-dead beautiful woman Jerry had bought for the night.
He wondered if someone had slipped something in his drink to make him hallucinate the way he had in his dream. Now that he thought about it, the last thing he could remember was drinking a glass of water in place of the alcohol that was in great surplus that night. But even a possible drugging didn’t explain how he could lose so much weight so quick.
Drew stepped forward still a bit unsure on his legs. He felt dizzy and went to sit down on a closed toilet near him. Something red caught his eye. He looked up and there was a dead body in the bathtub. Half melted ice surrounded the corpse and what water had melted off was a lighter shade of blood. A newspaper laid over the obese man’s face obscured his identity. Drew thought he was going to vomit but found only coughing rather than puking. He ran out of the bathroom and saw the vestiges of last night’s party. Empty beer bottles filled the wastebaskets in the living room, woman’s and man’s undergarments were thrown on the brown carpet, and various drug paraphernalia such as heroin needles and crumbs of marijuana sat out in the open, there was a woman sleeping on the couch passed out enough to not hear him or know about the suicide in the bathroom.
Drew went over to shake her awake hoping she knew what to do. As he touched her shoulder his hand went right through her as if she was air. Little snaps and crackles of electrical energy popped around the area his hand was immersed in and she jerked awake as if he had shocked her. Drew’s jaw dropped and the woman sat upright, one breast hanging loosely from the red dress that covered her. She felt at her shoulder and Drew could only stare at his hand in shock. He thought,
This has got to be a hallucination.
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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:17 pm
She got up, a look on her face as if she had awoken from a nightmare, and made her way to bathroom. Drew said,
“Hey! Don’t go in there!”
But she passed right by him as if he didn’t exist. He followed her, looking down at his feet wondering how his hand had gone through her like he was a-
No. It can’t be.
He shook his head like something was rattling inside it as he always did when a thought that was so absolutely shocking yet completely possible went through his mind as a well-placed arrow. Only this was so much more extreme! At that time he noticed his feet hovered off the ground little pads of snapping energy underneath them. His jaw dropped again as he heard the strippers scream at what was in the bathtub. She said in her most eloquent way,
“Oh ********! What the ******** is this! Is there anybody here! Help!”
She ran out of the room and pawed at the lock on the door nervously, finally undid it, and ran out still screaming. She did all this passing by him as if he was the sofa instead of a witness. Drew could hear his heart beating and heavy breathing as he crept towards the bathroom. He had to know who was in the bathtub with their wrists slashed open. If he was a ghost he certainly had all the appearances of a healthy human being, he breathed, he could hear his heart and now he had an average weight. All this should have discounted his claim that he was now on the other side but the contrary evidence also had a yelling and screaming argument. A bit of wind from the open door left open by the stripper lifted a section of the paper aloft. Drew lifted his now lead-weight hand towards a corner ready to remove it and also ready to silently scream but his hand passed through it as electricity.
He said to himself strangely relieved,
“I forgot about that.”
Now he was dreading the next question,
“Now what?”
The question created a string of nerve wracking thoughts that ended with Drew going back to the couch and sitting down to get his mind right. As the plush surface met him he felt a sudden heart shaking fear for if his hand went through most things than would his new habit of being ethereal unless he was standing make him fall through layers of earth? But he sat down with no bad karma.
“At least I can sit down without falling into the center of the earth.”
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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:19 pm
He exhaled relief. Though he was still a bit manic he figured this would be a fine place to stay during his wait for the sirens he heard in the distance. He hadn’t heard the stripper at all after her initial leaving but he had a feeling that though she had screamed “help” at the top her lungs she was more concerned with her own well being than seeing that the dead man be dealt with properly.
All Drew could do now was hope that the police would uncover the face and perhaps the meeting between his soul and his defunct shell would make something happen. What that something was he did not know. He couldn’t think of anything last night that could trigger him to do such a heinous act and though he didn’t take the commandments absolutely seriously he figured there must be a punishment for killing yourself other than your family being bereaved. He didn’t want to risk the hand of the universe slapping him for killing himself; so why? Why had it happened? He had been a little nervous and felt conflicted about the illegal acts being committed around him at the party but surely that hadn’t done anything to him to make him suicidal? Than his mind went back to the drinking glass, he tried to focus to see if he could remember anything at all.
Drew closed his eyes and thought hard. He heard something faint in the distance like the sirens getting closer but in his head instead. He concentrated on the sound more and found a painful scream bellow in his mind that made him feel pain all over. He opened his eyes immediately gasping at such an amount of pain. A knock sounded at the door, he figured it was the police. He didn’t know why such a painful reaction would grip him in his attempt to know what had happened. He had always figured the universe would want him to know why he was being punished.
Drew got up and went to the door to see how many police vehicles were there. Surprisingly he saw a woman in a yellow dress standing there, her blond hair fell to her hips and her face radiated sunshine like a star as she smiled. He was about to say something to her along the lines of
“Oh Geez. Mam, you better move aside because the police are here”
But his mouth settled into silence quick, he knew she couldn’t hear him. He looked past her and saw no police vehicles in the parking lot. One passed right by the apartments as he stared on. This was distressing to Drew. Apparently the screams of the stripper hadn’t woke anybody up and got them to call 911. How long was the wait before someone knew about his dead body? As he turned back to go inside he noticed the woman was still standing there but she was not looking through him into the cesspool that had been left behind by the party she was looking right at him.
“Can you see me?”
The woman nodded still smiling at him. She said, her voice cheery as if nothing was wrong,
“Drew Madding, am I correct?”
He was about to say yes but she interrupted saying,
“What a silly question I just asked. Of course you are you, and I bet your wondering what’s going on?”
Yet again he summed up his words then was stopped,
“I am his assistant and I am here to take you to him. Please give me your hand for the call.”
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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:20 pm
Drew was confused. He was a little relieved that someone could see him but what was this woman talking about and how did she know his name? Was this god, an angel? Or maybe something of the other persuasion: a demon or the Devil itself? He thought about her choice of words: I am his assistant.
And what was the call? He thought maybe she was an agent of death and was there to bring him in to be sorted and stamped. The way she talked Drew thought she sounded so detached as if nothing was wrong at all but still very official and protocol sounding. She could be the voice behind an intercom or an operator.
Drew shook his head; he got into thinking way too much about complexities when he should be acting instead though for all that happened perhaps a little thinking ahead would go a long way towards his salvation. She had extended her arm as if for a handshake but he wasn’t’ doing anything till he got some answers. Drew said,
“Wait a second on whatever you’re doing here okay? I’m a bit confused at the moment and frankly a little stressed out. You see there is a dead body in the bathroom and I am wondering if you can tell me-“
She was not listening; she kept checking her wrists watch rather than pay attention. He simply stammered off wondering what time she was waiting on. She came back into focus when he stopped talking,
“Sir. Please take my hand or I am afraid I’m going to have to force you too.” From operator to police she had gone in a matter of seconds. Drew was getting mad, there was no reason she couldn’t just tell him what he needed to know. He had a whole eternity in hell, heaven, wherever and she couldn’t even explain if he was dead at all.
What a bunch of bullshit he thought,
“Look, just tell me what’s going on and I mean for all I know you could be hell’s bounty hunter!”
She didn’t say anything, just bit her lip and looked at her wrist watch. Drew was about to start yelling as she turned the hands of her watch delicately. Suddenly he spun around so his back was facing her but not of his own action. It was like he was standing on a wheel. He was paralyzed from head to toe and moving his head was all he could do He looked down and saw the face of a clock looking up at him.
She grabbed his right hand and he felt something like a buzzing wasp in his hand. A shock went up his arm and a blur wrapped around him. The scene outside of a fast moving car was all around him. He saw barely visible shapes: city crowds, sky scrapers, busy highways all flowed past him as a menagerie seen through spilling liquid.
He thought he was going to be sick but what came up was loud coughing yet again. The blurry images became suddenly solid and like a brake on a speeding car Drew experienced a kind of electrical whiplash. A surge of snapping bolts went past his vision and he felt extremely disoriented. As fast as the whiplash came it was gone and Drew was standing in part of downtown Seattle near the waterfront and his face became shock itself. He looked to his sides, turning in a half circle till he saw the woman again. She was smiling; her voice tuned to that professional feed again.
“If you’ll please step inside he will give you the knowledge you seek.”
End of chapter
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Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 2:51 pm
Very good. I thought it was interesting. One question, can ghosts see themselves in mirrors? I realize that he does, but also can others see him if he looks in a mirror?
I think character development was good, though I would have liked to see his friend, get a sense of what he was like.
Also live near Seattle. Love it. Can't wait to read more. :3
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