I'm going to get busy on my novel again. It's called "The Lost City". I've got something like 32 chapters done on the first draft, and four chapters done on the second draft. Here is the "Prelude", and Chapter One, if you feel like checking it out:
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Prelude:
In the darkness a hand reaches out, and shuts off the alarm that has just started to ring it out its sleep stealing tone. It lifts up the phone, pulls it under the large brown comforter, and checks the time, hoping against hope that it is some a mistake. Realization creeps in slowly that it is time to rise from the all too brief slumber. The blanket is pulled down revealing a tired face that would much rather go back to sleep. Quietly he rolls over, kisses a woman on the cheek, and gets out of bed.
He walks quietly from the dark
bedroom, tripping over nothing because he always makes sure that his path is
clear, before going to bed each evening. He opens the door, and slips into the
hallway, and walks down to the bathroom. He can hear his son quietly snoring in
the next bedroom, and thinks to himself how lucky the little fucker is to get
the extra four hours of sleep that he gets every day.
The rest of his morning routine comes just as quickly; He does his morning toilet activity, quick shower using only cold water to save on the gas bill, brushes his teeth, gets dressed, and heads downstairs. He walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out his ice coffee, and an energy drink, shuts the fridge, and sets his drinks on the nicotine stained counter. With a sigh, he shoves his feet into his already tied shoes, and wiggles them until the shoes are on correctly. “Another day in paradise,” he says to himself, as he picks up his drinks, and walks quietly to the door, grabbing his keys off of the hook, as he steps outside.
A cool early morning wind blows as a man with dusty-blonde hair gets behind the wheel of a late 80s model Ford truck. He closes the door and situates himself, pulling the underwear out of his crack and moving back and forth until he is comfortable. Had there been anybody else around it may have looked as if he were playing with himself, comical yet disturbing at the same time.
He puts the key in the ignition and the truck chokes into life, smoke rising from the exhaust pipe in an environment killing plume. The radio comes on loud enough to scare him yet he does not turn it down. He smiles in spite of his racing heart. Turning the truck on and hearing his well worn Rush mix tape blast out of the shitty factory speakers had to be a sign that it was going to be a good day, even with a blown passenger door speaker.
After adjusting his rearview mirror, turning it first clear to the right, then the left, until finally facing it dead center so he can see behind himself safely, an obsessive compulsive habit that he has harbored since time out of mind, he backs out of the driveway and turns down the cracked and beaten road, the source of anger during many a town hall meeting. Not that anyone going to the damned meetings ever really expected to see anything done about it. This was the poor neighborhood, the “ghetto” if you will, and there just isn’t money to improve the lives of those who have no money.
The speed limit on this street is only 25, but at this time of the morning there was rarely, if ever, any traffic out and about. He pushes the pedal and gets the truck going just over 30 miles an hour. The window is rolled down and his hair starts to blow. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, gaining intensity as the song reaches one of his favorite Neil Peart drum fills. Suddenly the truck loses control and violently pulls to the left. When the truck crashes into a modest two story home on the right side of the road there were no screams from inside of the vehicle, or from the child’s bedroom the truck has come to a stop in. The hood of the truck is now the final resting place of a slew of stuffed animals, once residents of a large net that had been hanging in the corner of the room.
After a few moments, triggered by a stream of fuel pouring out of the trucks gas tank the vehicle explodes, taking the house up in flames with it. The sound is incredible and can be heard for miles around. No doors open however. Not one nosy neighbor sneaks a look out from behind closed curtains. No phone calls to the police are made, and no fire trucks are dispatched to the scene of the blaze. After only a few short minutes the fire is raging out of control and slowly jumps from house to house, spreading down the street on the wave of the cool early morning wind. This takes very little time as nobody bothers to stop it.
There is nobody around to witness the devastating fire, there is nobody around to care.
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Chapter 01:
“So that’s it, you’re just going to stand there and judge and insult me rather than saying anything helpful at all?”
She looked at him bewildered. It was clear by the look on her face that she had wanted him to say exactly those things, to look into the disappearances to calm her nerves, or at the very least pick up the phone and at least attempt to humor her. “I want you to at least listen to me and make a few phone calls, but I guess even that is just too much to ask from a stubborn pig headed dick like you,” Mary screamed as she turned her back on her husband and stormed out of the living room. A few moments later James heard the bedroom door slam closed and the dead-bolt engaged. He had installed the dead-bolt at her insistence when he had been elected mayor of Cedar Hill. “There are a lot of crazies out there,” she had said. James had had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her that one of the crazies “out there” was her, and that she was in fact “in here”.
James walked slowly over to the couch and sat down in his favorite spot. He had logged many hours sitting in thought on this couch as the town’s mayor, enough so that there was a clear and discernable ass groove embedded into the couch that was clearly his. James was not exactly fat, he weighed about 190 pounds, but if you put enough weight onto the same spot day after day that spot has a way of wearing down. He pulled the small black plastic handle on the side of the couch and the footrest reclined out. He stretched it out as far as possible and laid his head back into his hands which were laced together behind his head. Closing his eyes he sighed and crossed his right leg over the left, the only position in which he could ever really sleep.
James knew he should get up and get ready to deal with whatever petty crap this day would throw at him but for some reason the fight with Mary had drained all of the “give a damn” out of him. He cleared his mind and let himself drift off to sleep. After only a few minutes the light snore which he had lived with his entire life indicated that James was asleep.
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Prelude:
In the darkness a hand reaches out, and shuts off the alarm that has just started to ring it out its sleep stealing tone. It lifts up the phone, pulls it under the large brown comforter, and checks the time, hoping against hope that it is some a mistake. Realization creeps in slowly that it is time to rise from the all too brief slumber. The blanket is pulled down revealing a tired face that would much rather go back to sleep. Quietly he rolls over, kisses a woman on the cheek, and gets out of bed.
The rest of his morning routine comes just as quickly; He does his morning toilet activity, quick shower using only cold water to save on the gas bill, brushes his teeth, gets dressed, and heads downstairs. He walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out his ice coffee, and an energy drink, shuts the fridge, and sets his drinks on the nicotine stained counter. With a sigh, he shoves his feet into his already tied shoes, and wiggles them until the shoes are on correctly. “Another day in paradise,” he says to himself, as he picks up his drinks, and walks quietly to the door, grabbing his keys off of the hook, as he steps outside.
A cool early morning wind blows as a man with dusty-blonde hair gets behind the wheel of a late 80s model Ford truck. He closes the door and situates himself, pulling the underwear out of his crack and moving back and forth until he is comfortable. Had there been anybody else around it may have looked as if he were playing with himself, comical yet disturbing at the same time.
He puts the key in the ignition and the truck chokes into life, smoke rising from the exhaust pipe in an environment killing plume. The radio comes on loud enough to scare him yet he does not turn it down. He smiles in spite of his racing heart. Turning the truck on and hearing his well worn Rush mix tape blast out of the shitty factory speakers had to be a sign that it was going to be a good day, even with a blown passenger door speaker.
After adjusting his rearview mirror, turning it first clear to the right, then the left, until finally facing it dead center so he can see behind himself safely, an obsessive compulsive habit that he has harbored since time out of mind, he backs out of the driveway and turns down the cracked and beaten road, the source of anger during many a town hall meeting. Not that anyone going to the damned meetings ever really expected to see anything done about it. This was the poor neighborhood, the “ghetto” if you will, and there just isn’t money to improve the lives of those who have no money.
The speed limit on this street is only 25, but at this time of the morning there was rarely, if ever, any traffic out and about. He pushes the pedal and gets the truck going just over 30 miles an hour. The window is rolled down and his hair starts to blow. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, gaining intensity as the song reaches one of his favorite Neil Peart drum fills. Suddenly the truck loses control and violently pulls to the left. When the truck crashes into a modest two story home on the right side of the road there were no screams from inside of the vehicle, or from the child’s bedroom the truck has come to a stop in. The hood of the truck is now the final resting place of a slew of stuffed animals, once residents of a large net that had been hanging in the corner of the room.
After a few moments, triggered by a stream of fuel pouring out of the trucks gas tank the vehicle explodes, taking the house up in flames with it. The sound is incredible and can be heard for miles around. No doors open however. Not one nosy neighbor sneaks a look out from behind closed curtains. No phone calls to the police are made, and no fire trucks are dispatched to the scene of the blaze. After only a few short minutes the fire is raging out of control and slowly jumps from house to house, spreading down the street on the wave of the cool early morning wind. This takes very little time as nobody bothers to stop it.
There is nobody around to witness the devastating fire, there is nobody around to care.
-----
Chapter 01:
It was the 23rd day of April in the year 2015
when everything in the world went to hell and never came back. There were very
few people left on Earth to see it go to hell, but for the 207 that were it was
something like a nightmare that wouldn’t end, even after knowing that they were
wide awake.
It was going on seven in the morning when the sun started to
rise over the horizon and weak rays of sun shine attempted to break through the
dark storm clouds that were beginning to come in over the very small town of
Cedar Hills, Iowa. The sounds of chirping birds were effective at keeping the
early morning from being eerily silent, and the air had the smell of the coming
storm, a smell I have always liked. Just looking at the sky it was obvious that
the approaching storm would be a significant one, and would leave behind a mess
for the towns 207 people to clean up, but oddly the storm was the quiet before
the storm, if that makes any sense at all. The rainfall of the last few weeks
had been well above average for the month of April and minor flooding had
already become a problem in many parts of the small town.
A flock of birds took flight from the gravel road leading up
into a driveway at the left of a modest house that had obviously been well
cared for. The birds had been picking at the shells of used sunflower seeds,
and though the picking had been slim a few of the birds took to flight with a
bit of food in their stomachs. The large two storied house was freshly painted,
white with a light green trim and was in near pristine condition, something of
a miracle considering that the house had been built in the late 1800’s and had
gone unoccupied for much of the 1990’s, save for the teenagers that would creep
in, engage in a bout of pre-martial sex, or even some raucous parties, and
would creep back out again without cleaning up the messes that they had left
behind. The home was once again bought and cared for in late 1999.
Breaking the relative silence of the day, a beat up Jeep
Cherokee pulled recklessly into the driveway and stopped suddenly enough to
give the woman behind the wheel a hard jolt, but not fast enough to injure her,
although a few miles per hour faster and she may have got a knock to the ol’
noggin’. The engine sputtered to a stop and a petite strawberry blonde woman
jumped quickly out of the car and barely had time to slam the door shut behind
her as she ran in a panic towards the house, screaming the name James
repeatedly, gaining volume with each cycle.
“James, wake up, wake up now!” she screamed.
“What in the hell?” a tall man with at least a weeks worth
of brown stubble on his face said, opening the screen door and pulling the sash
on his green and red robe tighter. For a split section his man bits had been on
display for the whole world to gawk at in a horrified fashion.
“James, something terrible is happening in Holdenfield?”
For a moment James stared dumbly at his wife, waiting for
her to clarify without being prompted, but apparently she needed the prompting.
“What do you mean something terrible is happening in Holdenfield? What’s going
on?”
“I’m not sure exactly what is going on, but there doesn’t
seem to be anybody at all in town.” She continued on, clearly shaken up about
something, “I noticed it as soon as I drove into town but it took a few minutes
for it to click in my mind.”
“For what to click Mary?” James led his distraught wife into
the house and closed the door behind him as she walked over to the couch and
hovered without taking a seat. He walked over to her and put his left hand on
her shoulder, pushing her to take a seat on the couch, which was white with a
flower pattern repeating over the entire surface. There was an ugly blanket
that she had made two years earlier when she was learning to crochet, it had
earned the coveted couch cover position and had been known as “Mr. Ugly
Blanket” between the two of them.
Mary looked at her husband with that look of dread still
consuming her eyes, “I told you, there is nobody left in Holdenfield.”
The fear was washing away from James in waves. Surely
whatever it was that had his wife terrified was nothing at all, and would
likely be explained away with a quick phone call to Corey Haimfeld, the city
mayor. “What do you mean there is nobody left in Holdenfield? That’s not even
possible.”
Mary stopped for a second and took a few deep breaths to
calm herself before answering. “When I drove into town I noticed that there
weren’t any lights on in any of the houses, and there were no people out
driving to work, or wherever the hell they go at this time of the morning.”
“Jesus Mary, it’s
barely 7:00 in the morning, what do you expect? Everyone is probably still
sleeping.”
“I drive through that
city every day James, and it is never that dead at this time of the morning.
I’m telling you there is literally nobody there, anywhere. There are fires that
nobody are putting out, there are wrecks with nobody near the cars. There are
lights on in convenient stores with nobody tending the god-damned registers.
I’m telling you James, the place is fucking deserted.” She was getting worked
up again and stood up hastily from the couch, her face covered in a thin layer
of sweat.
“What fires Mary?”
“From the car wrecks, there are quite a few of them.”
“What do you mean by a few car wrecks? Did you call the police,
the fire-department?”
“Dammit James, why aren’t you listening to me? I’m
telling, there is nobody in Holdenfield. Everyone is fucking gone!”
“That’s fucking ridiculous Mary. Can you hear yourself? Do
you know how completely crazy you sound right now?” He was getting agitated and
was fighting the urge to slap some sense into her. He had hit her only one time
in their eight years of married life, and it was something he never wanted to
do again. Still, it was taking a lot of restraint to keep from doing so now.
As mayor of Cedar Hill, James had a full schedule in front
of him for the day. He had several meetings with several town nut bags, he had
to sit at his desk and pretend to look busy for at least five hours, not to
mention the phone calls, the various papers he needed to sign, and the round of
golf he intended to play with mayor Haimfeld at the Holdenfield community golf
course later that afternoon. Oh sure he had penciled in listening to his wife’s
incoherent babbling into the schedule as it was a daily occurrence, but this
had been very low on his priority tree and he had hoped for at least a couple
cups of coffee before getting her morning phone call from work.
“So that’s it, you’re just going to stand there and judge and insult me rather than saying anything helpful at all?”
“And just what in the hell do you want me to say Mary? Do
you want me to say that I believe you? That I believe that every single
god-damned person in Holdenfield has just somehow magically disappeared without
a trace? Is that really what you want me to say? Because if it is I can’t do it
Mary, you’re a being irrational and you aren’t thinking this thing through. Did
you go and knock on every door?”
She looked at him bewildered. It was clear by the look on her face that she had wanted him to say exactly those things, to look into the disappearances to calm her nerves, or at the very least pick up the phone and at least attempt to humor her. “I want you to at least listen to me and make a few phone calls, but I guess even that is just too much to ask from a stubborn pig headed dick like you,” Mary screamed as she turned her back on her husband and stormed out of the living room. A few moments later James heard the bedroom door slam closed and the dead-bolt engaged. He had installed the dead-bolt at her insistence when he had been elected mayor of Cedar Hill. “There are a lot of crazies out there,” she had said. James had had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her that one of the crazies “out there” was her, and that she was in fact “in here”.
For just a moment James had considered going after her, to
at least calm her down and find out why in the hell she would make up such an
insanely ludicrous story, but he quickly thought better of it. When Mary
started off on a rampage he had found early on that it was just best to wait it
out and let the crazy wash out of her system. In a few hours she would come
back down to the land of the sane folk once again and he would apologize to
her. No matter who was at fault James was always the one to apologize, never
Mary. In fact I don’t think that Mary had ever apologized to James, not one
time.
Mary had always had a difficult time dealing with adults. He
thought this was likely caused by her fucked up childhood. She would often take
offense to the slightest comment made by any adult and would leap up into the
seventh layer of crazy town, where she was the mayor. James envisioned her with
a crazy red cloak, a scepter of total nut bag, and the pointed shoes of
completely fucking loony. She was however very good with children, so when she
had told her husband that she wanted to become a school teacher the year they
had gotten married he had absolutely no objections and had encouraged her every
step of the way.
James walked slowly over to the couch and sat down in his favorite spot. He had logged many hours sitting in thought on this couch as the town’s mayor, enough so that there was a clear and discernable ass groove embedded into the couch that was clearly his. James was not exactly fat, he weighed about 190 pounds, but if you put enough weight onto the same spot day after day that spot has a way of wearing down. He pulled the small black plastic handle on the side of the couch and the footrest reclined out. He stretched it out as far as possible and laid his head back into his hands which were laced together behind his head. Closing his eyes he sighed and crossed his right leg over the left, the only position in which he could ever really sleep.
James knew he should get up and get ready to deal with whatever petty crap this day would throw at him but for some reason the fight with Mary had drained all of the “give a damn” out of him. He cleared his mind and let himself drift off to sleep. After only a few minutes the light snore which he had lived with his entire life indicated that James was asleep.
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