Little left of the raven’s hair pecked to salt-and-pepper now. Did he walk with a limp or talk with a lisp? I wasn’t sure which. He couldn't hold my gaze, and he seemed to cover the edge of his mouth whenever he spoke to hide where teeth might now be missing. He’s smaller than I remember him being, and couldn’t hide the shakes through our short game of chess to save his life, blaming his loss on not enough coffee. As I came to expect long ago, The Priest had come unto him, too. Uncertain of the flashbacks still, what he does remember was prompted through Facebook messages with Bruce Coughlin.
We went to Doyle's for dinner. Yeah, no, I told him, just have a drink, finding his having the shakes that unsettling to me. My surrogate older sibling, my childhood hero, now a side-slung inverse of that former being. He spoke with no gall at all in saying I’m blessed to have my ‘Johnny Cash story’ behind me. That paused me.
I’d sat silently in the corner, masking my hurt, not wanting to be a killjoy. I forget what the final impetus had been to leave that night, whether it was last call or no reason at all, save that Johnny Cash was dead. I'd swiped one of my drinking buddy's 20 mg Ritalins earlier while he had gone to the bathroom, rather than a 10 mg one which is what he’d come to give me if I’d beg. Blurry from there on out. Found my bong on its side the following morning, a dark, reeking spot of bong-water on the carpet by my empty #pillbox. I recalled Sarah having come downstairs and begging us to keep it quiet. She'd never had to do that before, and I felt the fucking heel for it.
I gave him what advice I could, basically that one must become hard and watch out for themselves, damn everyone's enabling and holding him to playing some persona.

#MastoPrompt #NovelExcerpt

Catching us in our descent from the diagonal of a soccer field away, the crowd formed a semicircle, exposing Al Cahill. Hulk Hildebrand stepped in forty-five degrees off to the side behind him, leaning over-and-in to coach with wide-mouthed articulation, knuckling his toady’s shoulder every couple words or so for further emphasis. Chuck the Gall jumped through the crowd to land in a stance resembling that of Jimmy Cliff’s bodacious horse from The Harder They Come, going, “Pew! Pew!” at me as Liz herself came into view, shot a photo, then angled her camera away to manually advance it while holding her target and her stance like a pro. I shrugged my flight-jacket from off my shoulders and felt somebody behind me catch the rest and pull it from my wrists. The last thing I recall before it came to blows was seeing Nicole Morrone, dressed in black, her back against the playground fence, stepping away to stomp out a cigarette, that grin of hers forever floating mischievous.
<Crack!>
I took the first hit like I was supposed to, like my father and Uncle Mick had warned me to from now on following my stabbing what’s-his-name in the fifth grade with my pencil—that way, whatever followed on my part from there in the future would be seen as self-defense, should it be brought to court.

#NovelExcerpt #WritingCommunity #JimmyCliff

The first day of gymnastics, while my mother was driving me there, she told me this would be different than soccer. Because all the kids there had a hard time playing sports, she said. So before I’d even gotten there, I already kinda didn't like the idea that I was going to this thing that was basically for kids who suck at sports. It made me feel like I was in the slow reading group in class, which the teachers never call the slow reading group, but everyone knows it is.

#NovelExcerpt 1/6

The General scowled at this woman who had been his mistress, fed up with her riddles. "Was that your plan, Lorelei? To insert yourself into my fortress, to conjure up your monsters, to lure me to your wild woods and slay me there?"
Lorelei rolled her eyes at this dramatic pronouncement, suddenly tired of the game. “Such ego, General. Why do you assume any of this had anything to do with you?”

#vss365 #ego #NaNoWriMo #NovelExcerpt #vss #microfiction #writing

"You claim to be nothing but the monster the forest spat out.” The Captain gently touched her face, his voice low and reverent. “But you're more than that to me, Lorelei. You're the storm-tossed girl I found on the riverbank. You're the warrior woman who didn't cut me down with her thorns, even after I aimed an arrow at your heart. And you are my lady Under the Hill, who did not leave me to be devoured by Faerie."

#vss365 #bank #NaNoWriMo #NovelExcerpt #vss #microfiction #writing