, and to top it off I have a week in a remote house in the middle of France booked off in November.
I really enjoyed it, and Script Frenzy really gave me some confidence in putting together some kind of plot of anything more than 2,000 words, hopefully I can get something similar out of NaNoWriMo. But this time perhaps I will take it to another level and actually carry out some editing work on my result.
Chapter 1 – Little Red Civic
The light changed back from green to red in front of him. If he looked in his rear view mirror he would have seen a rather small, irate man sat in the front seat of his rather small car, pointing and making obscene noises in his direction. But he didn’t look behind him. He just sat there, leaning slightly forward to rest on his steering wheel, and with his spectacles sitting on the edge of his nose such that he could see half of the world in front of him in focus, and half of it smudged. He thought about WHY he could have possibly found himself in this position, at the front of a queue of traffic largely caused by his inattentiveness, and without a wife, after 12 years of apparent wedded joy.
The lights changed again, and this time the cacophony of car horns registered to him, in his distraction, and he drove on taking a left. A couple of cars, including the one driven by the little angry man, accelerated as fast as they could past him. Presumably to give him an audible cue that they had been so inconvenienced and probably in some misguided effort to get to where they were going in the same amount of time it would have taken if they had made the first set of lights. He quickly forgot about the impatient drivers, after all - he had some issues that were of significance - and he pulled in to the car park off the next roundabout to get himself off the road and give himself some time to think. It was a late-summer night and the daylight was just going away for the day. Clouds filled the sky apart from a few swimming-pool sized patches of blue, becoming purple. He dropped the car in one of the bays at the back of the car park, away from other families coming and going from the chain-restaurant that sat proudly in this little patch of concrete, and he was alone for a while. He happened to be facing the restaurant as he sat there and could see a giant inflatable rainbow donkey catatonic in the still dusk air.
Who did know about her plan? Who has she left with? Another man? I can’t stop thinking that it must be another man, and I can’t stop analysing it. I’m taking it badly, but when my mind trains on to the thought of the possibility of another man? My brain starts to hurt, and I lose time. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked as much as I did … or maybe I wasn’t successful enough and I should have worked more? Aw hell … the whole thing is messed up and I need to leave it alone, I need to get on as best I can. I mean, I’ll just spend a bit of time away from work, a few weeks or more trying to piece together the clues she has left me and then I’ll slowly get back in to real life and get back to work and let her find me. She’ll want to come back, and if not she’ll get in touch. I’m sure of it.
A little girl walks by with her father’s hand in hers, and stares in to the window of the red Honda Civic with the man sat down, hands on the wheel, looking straight out in front. As far as she can tell he is staring straight at the giant colourful horse by the side of the restaurant, unfaltering. Her neck cranes backwards as Dad pulls her along, she is fascinated by this empty man. She waves with her free hand, the man in the car doesn’t notice.
It has now moved in to a late-summer night, and the over-sized donkey has started to sway as the breeze has picked up. The Daughter and Dad are walking up to the restaurant door together, and Dad makes a phone call whilst he is on the move. They both wait outside the front door for a few minutes, all the while the Daughter looking up at the huge blow-up creature, fascinated by this thing serving absolutely no purpose. Mum comes out the front of the door, and she appears to be struggling to walk as easily as would be expected for a normal adult. She sees Dad, and her Daughter, and with a loud pitched but well-meant wail bends down to hug the little girl. She gives the man a peck on the cheek, and with her arms round his neck goes for seconds, this time giving him some tongue. The Dad mutters something in a deep tone and the woman responds with laughter, again, well-meant but far too loud to be appropriate. The man in the red Civic finds this overt show of affection a little bit too much to take, a tear pushes out and rolls down his cheek as he thinks of the touch of his missing wife.
I came here for a bit of piece and quiet, not to see some perfect family meet again for the first time in three hours and pretend like they have been reunited from the war or something. Jesus Christ, Almighty, will they just leave me alone, they have no idea. God damn it, she’s drunk anyway, she probably doesn’t even like the family. Spending a Saturday night drinking piss-water in some tacky chain restaurant in a non-descript retail park on the edge of town? Drinking her sorrows away while the little - Daughter spends some quality time manipulating a guilty Daddy to get what she wants? They haven’t got a clue what a perfect relationship is like. I had one once, in fact three weeks ago now, and something took it away from me. Oh fuck it, I need a drink.
The man in the red Civic opened his door and stepped out towards the restaurant, hoping that they would have a drinks bar. He crossed by the little girl, Dad and Mum, and gave them all a friendly nod. Dad returned the nod, with grace, and the anger that the man felt so briefly for this family had turned into a little bit of guilt. It was now clear the young girl didn’t want to look at the man anymore - in the flat yellow glow of the car park lights he looked just a little bit scarier than he did chin-lit by the blue glow of his car radio. The car park lighting didn’t flatter him, that was true, but it was also true that the man had been in better condition.
As he made it to within touching distance of the restaurant door, the mother could be heard, somewhere in the car park, struggling with the operation of a car door and offering more laughter to the night air.
He pushed the doors and walked in to the restaurant, the warmth and peace of the summer night gave way to thrum and crackle of a busy restaurant late on a Saturday. It was late enough that the waiting staff had diverted their attention away from the front door, and more towards getting the last rounds of drinks to the tables and tidying up the tables of the parties that had already left. It was half past ten, and there was no chance of getting a table, but the bar was manned, and drinks were being served. His eyes and his attention immediately picked out a number of established couples in the main restaurant seating space, and a number of couples that maybe hadn’t been so long established. All he could smell was perfume. He didn’t recognise any of it, but he wondered if his wife had worn any of the scents at any one time.
He took a stool by the bar. Six or seven smartly dressed young people who, he thought, couldn’t be any older than 18, also occupied the bar. They drank funny coloured drinks out of funny shaped glasses. He could sense that two of the young men in the party had the bravado associated with a little bit of alcohol intake, and they stared straight at him as he took his seat. He knew that they wanted to engage him in some sort of idle banter, or maybe they wanted to take the piss out of him to impress the girls they were with, regardless he willed them to ignore him. He cocked his finger to the barman and ordered a strong continental lager in a pint glass. One of the boys had taken a step or two towards him, tripped on something on the floor, received a round of laughter from his friends, and after composing himself started trying to talk to the man on the stool:
“Hiya mate! What’s going on?”
The boy seemed quite jovial, and the man on the stool was immediately relieved that he probably didn’t need to try and avoid a fight.
“Oh hi, er … not much really … just stopped by for a quick drink before bed …”
“You know anywhere decent to go from here?”
The boy’s friends were sniggering … but the man on the stool didn’t get the joke.
“Erm … what, like a nightclub? Sorry, no, don’t really go out any more to be honest.”
“You don’t get out much?”
The man on the seat wondered if this was the boy’s punchline. He had counted his friends now, and there were seven of them in total. The six of them who weren’t talking directly to him were stealing glances over at them and still sniggering.
“No. Not really. I’m an old guy now, you know”
He was suddenly over sensitive to the people looking at him, and his cheeks were flushing. He tried to rein his emotions in - he knew any overt sign would make him look more like the easy target that this young chap had him pinned down for. His meek attempt at joviality barely registered and was, by the man’s own admission, poor. He continued to try and act nonchalant. He swigged his lager – ‘Stella Artois’.
“Wow, Stella? You going to go home and beat the shit out of your wife later tonight, mate?”
Obviously this was (to an inebriated seventeen-year-old) a very funny thing to say, and all six of his friends found it hilarious. Needless to say the man on the stool was less than amused - He sat there, bright red and still, in silence. Another tear found its way out of his eye and followed the same track down his cheek that the last one did. He dropped his forehead on to his hands, on the bar, and started sobbing uncontrollably. The boy retreated in some kind of shock.
“I’m sorry mate … I didn’t … It wasn’t … come on? You okay? …”
The barman suggested to the young crowd that they might be better off leaving, and left the man on the stool to himself. He sat there for another half hour, lager untouched. At closing time the doorman picked him up off his stool, arm round his shoulder, and escorted him back to his red Civic after checking that he wasn’t as drunk as his behaviour might suggest. The man in the red Civic drove home, and went to bed.
Something I am working on. I have had a single edit run through this after writing it a couple of months ago - offered up for critique. (don't know yet if it is entirely coherent with the whole story, but will get there...)
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Topic: Bay12 Writers Guild (Read 58841 times)