Fiction WIP

It’s hard to put into words, how I’m feeling right now.

Maybe you’ve felt the same? Maybe not, I can’t say. Only you can compare your vantage point with mine.

I know I feel trapped. Snared like an animal. There is fear. There is panic. There is wondering how to get out of the situation I find myself in – and fast – without causing myself more pain. There is the recognition that I’ve caused this and that the fault lies with me. Not all of it, but a healthy dose; a significant proportion, which I’d estimate to be 90%. That’s my best guess.

It’s causing me to withdraw from the world, but also from those closest to me. Which isn’t good. Certainly not for me, although I justify my position by telling myself it’s good for them.

You’ve seen ‘Falling Down’, right? The Michael Douglas movie? Everyone has their breaking point. And I think I’m about to find mine.

A Few Lines

It's cold down here, behind the concrete spiral staircase
clinging like a leech to the bridge, with its drains permanently
blocked and its patina of grime
only London can produce. It's cold
down here.

A Bit Part - WIP

So, got me some writing done recently, for the Tales of the Alphabet. Nothing much, just a couple of hundred words I'm happy with and about six hundred I'm not. Thought it might be time for a preview. So, here it is. Just a tiny bit.

It was a cold night, the clouds low and a whipping wind keeping the streets clear of people. Just the odd car, here and there, traversing the city. It had rained earlier in the evening, great torrents of water that had caught people by surprise and sent them scurrying like rats to shelter under awnings and in doorways.

The kids, who, until dusk slung its shroud over the neighbourhood, had been playing on the dilapidated, broken sofa that sits outside Clarence Jeffries’ bungalow, ran out into the downpour. Shane said he could hear their parents calling them, voices strained against the drum of the rain on car roofs. I couldn’t, and said so. He got a huff up, as he often does, and retired to the bedroom. I heard the TV switch on, muffled male voices announcing sport time; the gentle thud of his sneakers as they fell from his feet to the wooden floor.

I took a pull from my Marlboro Red, slurped back the smoke.