For the One Hour Challenge today (which was interrupted by the second year English teacher wanting to tell me about what happened after the earthquake last March for about fifteen minutes), I wrote a scene that would maybe happen somewhere shortly after the second chapter of the Detective Lory story. No proofreading, of course, as per the rules. Proofreading comes later. Here is a scene from Detective Lory's story.
The house was, or so it looked from the outside, completely desolate. The yard was dried up and dead, a testament to those who frequently visited it in the waning hours of the night. The front door had been boarded up and then subsequently broken into more times than was necessary to count, and the most recent time was still evident by the shards of splintered wood still clinging to the rusty, jagged nails that protruded from the cracked and broken doorframe. As I approached the place, that feeling of dread I'd long since learned to ignore (though not to suppress—it still came, now and again) crept into my veins, reminded me that there were places that exude an aura of unfamiliarity, of foreignness that warned against entering. I entered.
The first thing anyone could have noticed was the furniture, covered in old sheets like that would somehow retard the passage of time and save the plush couch from the dust that crawls and the rats that chew. It was all arranged very neatly in a circle, facing outwards, closing off a space in the center that radiated stink. The circle’s inside was completely sullied, stained with old and perhaps not-so-old blood and littered with bones that looked unsettlingly human. I had certainly seen worse before, but that everything else in the place was free of gore and instead caked with dust while only this circle was painted red and brown made my reason-centers churn a bit. I tore my eyes away from the strange circle, and scanned the floor.
Footprints. Footprints, and not my own, appeared here and there where the dust would show them. And the lot of them was pretty new, to boot. Three, four, maybe more had been through here recently, though not through the front door, through which I had come. No, their prints led back deeper into the house. Of course they did. Of course. I undid the leather strap on my hip holster and loosened my revolver, just in the unlikely event I would need it, and strode quietly toward what I assumed would be a kitchen area.
Telltale signs here told of habitation. Empty cans were stacked up in the corner, dirty dishes not far away, and half a jug of water was on the table next to a kerosene stove that was still lit. The goddamn fire was still lit? Then someone must have been here just minutes ago! Did they hear me coming and split? Dammit!
I turned the stove off (after all, I’d read enough stories of houses burning down with people inside) and yanked my gun from my hip, looking to make sure all the chambers were packed. If someone was here, they might still be, and if they were, then they might be keen on my own exit, regardless of how it was executed. I listened closely, for a long minute, but I could hear nothing. As silently as I could manage, I slipped toward the door that led to the basement, which was ajar and inviting (like the maw of some strange beast waiting to prey on the unsuspecting passer-by).
The stairs were warped and mouldering, so if I wanted to get down there, there would be no chance of doing it without anyone noticing. My best chance was to do it fast, get to the bottom landing, and stay low. If anyone shoots, they will likely be shooting at my chest, not my knees. I took a deep breath, then steeled myself and kicked the door all the way open, in the same movement starting my descent. I definitely heard something down at the bottom of the stairs, I know I did.
Taking the steps three and four at a time, I hit the bottom and ducked, and just in time, too. A loud crash rang out, and the wet wooden wall above my head splintered into bits. I swung back behind the stairwell and fired blind around the corner, and heard a cry. Good. The sound of something clattering to the ground and a soft thud of a person’s knees were drowned out by the growling cry that issued from my attacker’s lips. I poked my head around the corner to check: safe.
The possibility that there would be more of them was definitely there, but for the moment, I had to get the gun away from this one. It was a shotgun, with a short barrel, and it was now a disassembled shotgun. I had hit the man in the thigh (a lucky shot, really), and when I got close he spit and cursed in a language I don’t think I had ever heard before. I leaned down to him.
“You have two choices. One, tell me what the hell you are planning, or two, get shot again. Then we move back to step one,” I said, cocking my hammer. “Up to you, champ.”
After a bit of deliberation that may have involved a bit of extra gunpowder and the infliction of another wound, I was informed that the people I was looking for called themselves Cat’s Silver Eye, that they were powerful and influential, and that I would never stand a chance against them. Of course, more information came afterward with a bit more persuasion (“I’m halfway out of bullets, now. Would you like another?”), and he mentioned that they had some item of great power. Mumbo-jumbo magic quack work, if you ask me, but it was something. They were trying to get the other half of the key (oh, so it’s a key, is it?) so that they could open a vault that contained some infinite thing or another.
I’d heard about enough of his talk, though. I left him cuffed to the stairs and went further into the basement. It was damp down here, and smelled like moldy paper and kerosene, with just a touch of something foul. The walls were plastered with scraps of paper covered in scribbled notes, diagrams, maps… and then there was a Polaroid picture, a copy of one of the ones in that package from before. A lady in a long dress with a handbag smiled brightly as she walked arm-in-arm with a sharply-dressed man into a restaurant. The same figure in the background, standing under a theatre marquis that touted the playing times for “Ace Backwards,” a new film.
No, hang on. Wait a second. Ace Backwards? That film isn’t supposed to be released for another three days…?
Showing posts with label Detective Lory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detective Lory. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
New Story Start!
This is the unedited, un-proofread version of the story I began writing today under the duress of the ONE HOUR CHALLENGE.
The ONE HOUR CHALLENGE is an exercise that consists of unplugging the internet from my machine, opening up wordpad, and typing for sixty minutes nonstop. This is the first time I have done it in a long time, so I wanted to let you guys know I am still writing here and there. Hereafter follows the story bit, cut off authentically at the one hour mark.
The last time I saw her, we had both been much younger. The light had been a yellower shade, and the music had been scratchier. They used different techniques to capture images back then, but even after seventeen years I could recognise her on the screen that was once silver and now just an axpanse of white.
I'd never met her, personally, but I knew all about her. She was the most enchanting actress of my childhood, the princess with the flirty eyes and the pouty, slightly-moist lips. She was the subject of every young boy's imagination, every director's vision, every late-night businessman's lust. Her body was a measure of sheer perfection, skin the colour of cream and hair that floated about her shoulders like gossamer. She was everything a boy of thirteen years could have wanted in a woman, but everything he could not have. I grew up on her films the way most children grow up on milk and bread.
I'd written her letters, of course. Every self-respecting boy wrote her letters. Once in a very long while she would appear on a radio show or the like and read one or two of the letters she received, talk about them, and always wish a kiss to the boy who wrote it. She never read any of mine on the airwaves, but I always hoped that she'd wished a kiss or two my way on her own time. When I turned seventeen, my father took me to see the opening of her fiftieth film, "Sleeves on my Heart," an absolutely riveting tale about a girl who loses her way in Paris only to be saved by a dashing young gumshoe who was fleeing the mafia. I imagined myself as that hero, that agile, quick-witted lad who never missed a single clue to who had murdered his father.
I knew it right away. I wanted to be a detective. I'd become a private eye, and have an office with a door that would have my name painted on it. I'd be taken into the confidence of beautiful ladies like her, or sweep them from harm's way, or do whatever else detectives did until the last scene when they get the girl. My father gave me the information I wanted about how it was done (he, himself, was a carpet layer, but he'd had a friend back when he was younger that had run the same race as I wanted to run. I made a few contacts of my own over the next few years, and when I hit twenty-five, I'd gone through the police academy and done my time as a beat cop long enough. I quit the force and started on my own business venture.
My office was small and wood-panelled, but it was everything I had wanted when I was a kid. The problem was, now that I was older, I had more... sophisticated tastes. It would do, but only until I could afford something better. Something with a glass door, maybe, and a desk with a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer that was never empty. During the time it took me, though, I never missed a single release of one of her films. "Midnight Trigger," "A Rose in the Mist," "The Orchard Letters," all of them. What we call her best films now. But then, for me, her best will always be Sleeves.
When I woke up this morning, I had a headache. My television played light static, an empty bottle lay next to my couch, and my ears played the song you hear when you think you are dying. Out of the VCR stuck a black casette with a white label across it: "Hold the Door for Me," the last movie she'd done before she just sort of dropped off the radar three years ago. I pulled the blinds shut, alleviating at least a bit of the headache-inducing reality to which I was subjected, and put my old copper kettle on the burner for coffee. Like any story you will hear any private eye tell you, business had been slow around then. I'd had a few cases here and there, but nothing really big for almost two months. My tiny office was still the same as it was four years ago when I first rented it, except I did have a bottle of some horrible booze that smelt like paint thinner in my desk. I was not looking forward to the prospects of sitting in the office all day again, but it was better than sitting in my drafty flat -- at least the office had a radiator to help stave off the winter's fingers.
Two cups of coffee, an aspirin and a short worry about my rent later, I pulled the collar of my jacket up and started for the office.
The landlord had left me another pleasant note reminding me about my rent stuck in my mail slot. I put it with the others she had so finely written me (in the trash bin), and sat heavily in the leather chair that had been both a business conductor and insomnia relief to me. With weather like this, I didn't expect many visits, and only perhaps one or two telephone calls. Winter seemed to dull the crime scene in this city to no more than a trickle, which was paradoxically both good and bad. Still, I fully intended to spend the first half of the day second-sleeping off the remainder of my hangover until the call came in.
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Is this Detective Lory?"
"...yeah. What is it?"
"Detective, this is Officer John Holloway. We received a... package at the station, think you should come take a look at it. Looks like someone's looking for you."
"What? What's in the package?"
"Maybe you should see it yourself."
"...fine, give me a half hour."
The boys in blue and I never really had too good of a reputation since I quit the force. For a while I though Sergeant Harris was out to step on my toes at every opportunity, pulling the police tape excuse at every case I got. Harris was the kind of fellow you'd expect to eat his cereal without milk, a real macho-man type, who wasn't terribly fond of being beaten to the punch, not especially by one of his former subordinates. If he had the chance to stick his fat thumbs into my pie, you bet your coat he'd do it. So, really, I didn't feel like going to see him or officer what's-his-number or anyone else at the station.
But then, what were the chances I'd just spend the whole day sitting at my desk drooling otherwise?
I arrived a little later than I'd said (on purpose, of course), and strode behind the receptionist like I was the boss. She started to protest, but just then an officer with the nameplate "Holloway" hurried up to me.
"Detective, what took you so long? This could be a real serious case here."
"Sure it is, kid. All right, what's the skinny?"
"Well, Detective, it seems someone has got some pretty grand plans laid out, and you look to be part of them. Here, let me show you."
I followed him into the back, where of course Sergeant Harris stood. He had his back to me, and was leaning with both hands on a table, stuying the items thereon intently. I approached the table and nodded a sort of half-greeting, half-"oh, you're here too, are you?", and he grunted and smirked in return. The table was strewn with polaroid photographs, pctures of what appeared to be places in the city. Normal lighting, people in the frames, nothing really odd about them, but...
"Well, mister hot-shot, what do you make of it?"
...but in every single shot, a man in a long white coat was in the background. He was always facing the cameraman straight-on, no matter where the location. He seemed to be wearing a sort of opera-mask-looking disguise in all of them, covering the top half of his face. He was tall, but not overly so, and not buiilt in either extreme. A relatively normal guy, it looked like (well, excepting the mask and the jacket).
I perused the photographs again, making sure to look over every detail. Plus, it gave me an excuse not to have to talk to Sergeant Hairy-Ass just yet. In all of the photos, one person seemed to be the focus of the photo. The locations were definitely in the city, and I recognised many of them. A seedy bar on Main street. A news stand on the corner of Fourth and Grand. The cinema down by the docks.
Then I saw it properly. One of the photos showed me, in the cafe by my office, staring into space while
The ONE HOUR CHALLENGE is an exercise that consists of unplugging the internet from my machine, opening up wordpad, and typing for sixty minutes nonstop. This is the first time I have done it in a long time, so I wanted to let you guys know I am still writing here and there. Hereafter follows the story bit, cut off authentically at the one hour mark.
The last time I saw her, we had both been much younger. The light had been a yellower shade, and the music had been scratchier. They used different techniques to capture images back then, but even after seventeen years I could recognise her on the screen that was once silver and now just an axpanse of white.
I'd never met her, personally, but I knew all about her. She was the most enchanting actress of my childhood, the princess with the flirty eyes and the pouty, slightly-moist lips. She was the subject of every young boy's imagination, every director's vision, every late-night businessman's lust. Her body was a measure of sheer perfection, skin the colour of cream and hair that floated about her shoulders like gossamer. She was everything a boy of thirteen years could have wanted in a woman, but everything he could not have. I grew up on her films the way most children grow up on milk and bread.
I'd written her letters, of course. Every self-respecting boy wrote her letters. Once in a very long while she would appear on a radio show or the like and read one or two of the letters she received, talk about them, and always wish a kiss to the boy who wrote it. She never read any of mine on the airwaves, but I always hoped that she'd wished a kiss or two my way on her own time. When I turned seventeen, my father took me to see the opening of her fiftieth film, "Sleeves on my Heart," an absolutely riveting tale about a girl who loses her way in Paris only to be saved by a dashing young gumshoe who was fleeing the mafia. I imagined myself as that hero, that agile, quick-witted lad who never missed a single clue to who had murdered his father.
I knew it right away. I wanted to be a detective. I'd become a private eye, and have an office with a door that would have my name painted on it. I'd be taken into the confidence of beautiful ladies like her, or sweep them from harm's way, or do whatever else detectives did until the last scene when they get the girl. My father gave me the information I wanted about how it was done (he, himself, was a carpet layer, but he'd had a friend back when he was younger that had run the same race as I wanted to run. I made a few contacts of my own over the next few years, and when I hit twenty-five, I'd gone through the police academy and done my time as a beat cop long enough. I quit the force and started on my own business venture.
My office was small and wood-panelled, but it was everything I had wanted when I was a kid. The problem was, now that I was older, I had more... sophisticated tastes. It would do, but only until I could afford something better. Something with a glass door, maybe, and a desk with a bottle of whiskey in the bottom drawer that was never empty. During the time it took me, though, I never missed a single release of one of her films. "Midnight Trigger," "A Rose in the Mist," "The Orchard Letters," all of them. What we call her best films now. But then, for me, her best will always be Sleeves.
When I woke up this morning, I had a headache. My television played light static, an empty bottle lay next to my couch, and my ears played the song you hear when you think you are dying. Out of the VCR stuck a black casette with a white label across it: "Hold the Door for Me," the last movie she'd done before she just sort of dropped off the radar three years ago. I pulled the blinds shut, alleviating at least a bit of the headache-inducing reality to which I was subjected, and put my old copper kettle on the burner for coffee. Like any story you will hear any private eye tell you, business had been slow around then. I'd had a few cases here and there, but nothing really big for almost two months. My tiny office was still the same as it was four years ago when I first rented it, except I did have a bottle of some horrible booze that smelt like paint thinner in my desk. I was not looking forward to the prospects of sitting in the office all day again, but it was better than sitting in my drafty flat -- at least the office had a radiator to help stave off the winter's fingers.
Two cups of coffee, an aspirin and a short worry about my rent later, I pulled the collar of my jacket up and started for the office.
The landlord had left me another pleasant note reminding me about my rent stuck in my mail slot. I put it with the others she had so finely written me (in the trash bin), and sat heavily in the leather chair that had been both a business conductor and insomnia relief to me. With weather like this, I didn't expect many visits, and only perhaps one or two telephone calls. Winter seemed to dull the crime scene in this city to no more than a trickle, which was paradoxically both good and bad. Still, I fully intended to spend the first half of the day second-sleeping off the remainder of my hangover until the call came in.
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Is this Detective Lory?"
"...yeah. What is it?"
"Detective, this is Officer John Holloway. We received a... package at the station, think you should come take a look at it. Looks like someone's looking for you."
"What? What's in the package?"
"Maybe you should see it yourself."
"...fine, give me a half hour."
The boys in blue and I never really had too good of a reputation since I quit the force. For a while I though Sergeant Harris was out to step on my toes at every opportunity, pulling the police tape excuse at every case I got. Harris was the kind of fellow you'd expect to eat his cereal without milk, a real macho-man type, who wasn't terribly fond of being beaten to the punch, not especially by one of his former subordinates. If he had the chance to stick his fat thumbs into my pie, you bet your coat he'd do it. So, really, I didn't feel like going to see him or officer what's-his-number or anyone else at the station.
But then, what were the chances I'd just spend the whole day sitting at my desk drooling otherwise?
I arrived a little later than I'd said (on purpose, of course), and strode behind the receptionist like I was the boss. She started to protest, but just then an officer with the nameplate "Holloway" hurried up to me.
"Detective, what took you so long? This could be a real serious case here."
"Sure it is, kid. All right, what's the skinny?"
"Well, Detective, it seems someone has got some pretty grand plans laid out, and you look to be part of them. Here, let me show you."
I followed him into the back, where of course Sergeant Harris stood. He had his back to me, and was leaning with both hands on a table, stuying the items thereon intently. I approached the table and nodded a sort of half-greeting, half-"oh, you're here too, are you?", and he grunted and smirked in return. The table was strewn with polaroid photographs, pctures of what appeared to be places in the city. Normal lighting, people in the frames, nothing really odd about them, but...
"Well, mister hot-shot, what do you make of it?"
...but in every single shot, a man in a long white coat was in the background. He was always facing the cameraman straight-on, no matter where the location. He seemed to be wearing a sort of opera-mask-looking disguise in all of them, covering the top half of his face. He was tall, but not overly so, and not buiilt in either extreme. A relatively normal guy, it looked like (well, excepting the mask and the jacket).
I perused the photographs again, making sure to look over every detail. Plus, it gave me an excuse not to have to talk to Sergeant Hairy-Ass just yet. In all of the photos, one person seemed to be the focus of the photo. The locations were definitely in the city, and I recognised many of them. A seedy bar on Main street. A news stand on the corner of Fourth and Grand. The cinema down by the docks.
Then I saw it properly. One of the photos showed me, in the cafe by my office, staring into space while
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