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pjthompsonAnd late to the game, too. Here's the first chapter of a WIP, in honor of International Pixelstained Technopeasant Wretch Day. I make no claim to its professional quality, am nowhere near an SFWA member, but what the hell?
Those of you who read my novelette, "A Tale of Two Moons" may find this one interesting--but it's not required reading to "get" this. Um, hopefully.
WARNING: naughty language
CHAPTER 1
The body was heavier than they thought it would be. Out in the sticks with nothing to see by except the headlights of the car, they stumbled around more than they should have, too. Tanner lost his footing in the dark and nearly plunged down the gully himself, pulling himself back by clinging to the corpse's arms. That nearly yanked Dealey off his feet, but Dealey held onto the body's legs, leaned back, and somehow dug his heels in.
"Careful, fucker."
"Sorry." Tanner was just a scared-sounding shadow.
"Move back beside me and we'll dump this thing instead of you."
Tanner moved parallel to Dealey, breathing hard with the effort. Dealey originally had the idea to swing the corpse back and forth a few times, pick up momentum so they could give it a really good chuck over the side, but it was too heavy for that. People on TV didn't seem to have this much trouble.
"Who'd a thought this little shit weighed so much," he puffed.
"I know."
"Let's just tip him over and finish this."
One good swing was all they managed but Tanner let go before Dealey. The corpse's head and shoulders hit the ground even as Dealey carried through with the swing over empty air. The body laid there, half on the road, half off.
"For Christ's sake!" Dealey gave the body a kick, but it didn't move.
"Roll him," said Tanner. He crouched down and Dealey crouched beside him. They pushed together and finally what was left of Richie Salcedo rolled over the edge and down the side of the gully. Too dark to see how far down he went, but they heard a lot of thumping and scraping and rocks sliding. They'd probably chucked him far enough so he wouldn't be too visible from the road. Besides, what did it matter? They'd be leaving the boonies and heading back to L.A. Let the local yokels worry about the corpse.
Dealey got back into the driver's seat, but Tanner leaned into the window, his face emerging from the dark into the light of the overhead cast from Dealey's partially open door. His eyes looked skittish and too big, sweat popped out on his thin upper lip.
"I gotta whizz," he said.
"What, now?"
"I nearly wet myself with that last shove."
"Hurry the fuck up. We don't want to be sitting here if some hick cop happens to drive by."
"Who'd drive by way out here?"
"Just hurry!"
"Yeah, okay," said Tanner and disappeared back into the dark.
#
The white noise from Sheriff JK Montmorency's car radio was mostly just that--the static hiss of nothingness. The spirit voices that sometimes came through when he sat beneath the radio transmitter tower on Charon Peak didn't have much to say on this night. Once in a while a word or name dropped into the void, but nothing JK wanted to hear, disconnected nonsense: Tanner . . . Dealey . . . gully . . . remember . . . decide . . . Richie . . . Though one phrase came through--chain of lights--it didn't make any more sense than the rest.
The voices never did make a lot of sense. Coming through the white noise after radio station KWUT went off the air at midnight, they mostly communicated non-sequiturs. Some nights they were livelier than tonight, and sometimes what they said verged on the poetic or the profound. But this night, like everything else in JK's life these days, they were empty and meaningless.
"Whatever possessed me to come up here?" he asked the empty SUV.
Truth was, he hadn't been sleeping well since his friend, Lunar Magnusson, disappeared. They used to come up to Charon Peak when they were kids to listen for ghost messages. The last night Lunar had been around, six months back, they'd come up here for old times' sake, though they were both pushing forty. Lunar had been on the raw edge of despair and JK hadn't been able to do a thing for him. Helpless. Useless.
The spirit voices had a lot to say that night. Put on a hell of a light show, too, swirling all around the car, chanting enticements for Lunar to come play with them. Apparently he'd taken them up on the offer because he disappeared from his motel room with nothing but the clothes he wore, never to be seen again by anyone in Dos Lunas or back in L.A.
The image of a green-eyed girl suddenly flared before JK, her face a tracery of mist on the windshield. "Annie," he whispered, and felt the knife twist in his gut. Lunar wasn't the only one they'd never brought back, and it seemed like it was his fault, all of it, because he hadn't been enough of a man, enough of a lover, enough of a friend to stop them from being taken.
"Maudlin son of a bitch," he said, disgusted with himself, and turned the key in the ignition. The sheriff's office SUV roared to life and JK turned towards the Charon Peak access road to begin the drive down from the mountains. Time to end this pityfest and head towards home.
#
As JK wound his way down the mountain and into the foothills, he noticed headlights in the distance, glaring like lighted pathways away from Charon Peak, bright in the isolated dark of the countryside. The car they belonged to appeared to be stopped on the access road, because in the twenty minutes it took JK to get down from Charon Peak's summit, they hadn't changed position. At three in the morning, out in the middle of almost nowhere?
JK sighed, but instead of turning west to cut over open land to his cabin, he kept going north along the road. His deputies didn't patrol this area often and somebody could be stalled out here. Stalled away from any major roads on an access road that led nowhere but to the Peak. JK pulled his badge, flashlight, and gun out of the glove compartment. Real crime was a rarity in Dos Lunas. What there was usually came imported from L.A. or Ventura or Kern, via transients--and they hadn't even had any of that in awhile. But you never knew. Didn't hurt to be cautious.
JK stuck the magnetized badge holder into the breast pocket of his jean jacket so the badge showed. He laid the flashlight and the gun on the seat near his thigh. He'd strap it on when he stopped the car.
In the illumination from the headlights of the stopped vehicle, JK recognized a small outcropping of rock he'd always called Penistone Crags, in honor of Emily Brontë, although that wasn't it's real name. He didn't think it had a real name, though the Kuntash like to joke that it was the erect phallus of Hoteipay, lover to the goddess who first brought the Kuntash to the Dos Lunas Valley. The Hoteipayunga clan, when it had still been active, used to come out here every now and then for a ritual. He'd gone to one with his Grandma Adeline once when he'd been just a kid, so he knew there was a deep gully just the other side of the stone, mostly invisible in the darkness. He hoped no one in that car had fallen over the side.
He didn't recognize the car when he got close. He didn't know every car in the county, of course, but knew most, and he'd never seen this one before--a 60's era black Cadillac with a finned back end. His headlights picked up one person in the car--sitting behind the driver's wheel, staring straight ahead. He may have checked JK out in the rearview mirror, but he didn't turn around to greet him as JK would expect from a stranded motorist.
Something didn't feel right. JK pulled up behind the car and leaned forward so he could put his gunbelt around his waist before getting out of the car. The guy in the Cadillac still hadn't moved.
JK made a note of the license plate and picked up the radio to call in. "Dean, this is JK. You out there?" The radio hissed white noise, not even a ghost voice to reply. "Goddamn it, Dean, answer the radio!"
Nothing. Jackass had probably snuck home again for early morning canoodling with Nancy. And this time of night--morning--dispatch calls rang straight into the home of his chief deputy, Bernie Bustamante, and his wife, Myrna. He'd roust them out of bed if he called this into dispatch. JK decided his hinky feeling wasn't strong enough for that.
He checked his own rearview mirror but saw nothing behind his SUV. JK flipped the switch on the overhead light off so it wouldn't come on when he opened the door and light-blind him. He grabbed the flashlight and opened the door slowly, eyes searching the darkness all around, but didn't see much. He kept searching as he eased up to the car to position himself behind the driver side door, then he switched on the flashlight. Only then did the driver turn to look at him, blinking as the beam of light hit his eyes. White guy, early thirties, long thin face, a smile as sincere as a snake's. JK motioned for him to roll the window down and the guy put on some laughing show like he'd forgotten.
"Hello, officer!" he called out loudly. Too loudly. JK glanced around, still didn't see anything.
"You having some kind of car problem, sir?" he asked.
"Oh no, officer. W--uh, I got lost and realized I was heading the wrong way. I turned around and pulled over for a minute to get my bearings."
Thirty minutes or more to get his bearings? "Uh-huh. And where were you headed, sir?"
"Um, Fillmore."
"You did get lost if you're headed to Fillmore. That's way southeast of here."
"Yeah, I realize that now, but I didn't when I turned off on this road."
"Didn't you think it strange to be driving on a dirt road?"
"Sure did!"
"You came quite a ways down this dirt road before deciding to stop and turn around."
He gave an empty-sounding laugh. "Tell you the truth, I was half asleep. Took me awhile to notice. That's another reason I pulled over. Wanted to make sure I was alert."
In the glare of JK's flashlight the guy's eyes looked anything but sleepy. That could be a reaction to the light, but there were potholes on this road as big as barbecue pits and he didn't think anyone could be sleepy enough to drive over them and not wake up.
JK casually flicked the safety off on his gun. "Can I see your license, sir?"
A bright flash off to his left, a boom so loud in the night, a tearing pain in JK's back. His flashlight fell from his hand, light cascading in circles across the road, as he tried to reach for his gun. Another boom and he spun with the impact and white hot burn in his shoulder, gyring him down to the ground. Then something hit him on the head. Then nothing.
Those of you who read my novelette, "A Tale of Two Moons" may find this one interesting--but it's not required reading to "get" this. Um, hopefully.
WARNING: naughty language
CHAPTER 1
The body was heavier than they thought it would be. Out in the sticks with nothing to see by except the headlights of the car, they stumbled around more than they should have, too. Tanner lost his footing in the dark and nearly plunged down the gully himself, pulling himself back by clinging to the corpse's arms. That nearly yanked Dealey off his feet, but Dealey held onto the body's legs, leaned back, and somehow dug his heels in.
"Careful, fucker."
"Sorry." Tanner was just a scared-sounding shadow.
"Move back beside me and we'll dump this thing instead of you."
Tanner moved parallel to Dealey, breathing hard with the effort. Dealey originally had the idea to swing the corpse back and forth a few times, pick up momentum so they could give it a really good chuck over the side, but it was too heavy for that. People on TV didn't seem to have this much trouble.
"Who'd a thought this little shit weighed so much," he puffed.
"I know."
"Let's just tip him over and finish this."
One good swing was all they managed but Tanner let go before Dealey. The corpse's head and shoulders hit the ground even as Dealey carried through with the swing over empty air. The body laid there, half on the road, half off.
"For Christ's sake!" Dealey gave the body a kick, but it didn't move.
"Roll him," said Tanner. He crouched down and Dealey crouched beside him. They pushed together and finally what was left of Richie Salcedo rolled over the edge and down the side of the gully. Too dark to see how far down he went, but they heard a lot of thumping and scraping and rocks sliding. They'd probably chucked him far enough so he wouldn't be too visible from the road. Besides, what did it matter? They'd be leaving the boonies and heading back to L.A. Let the local yokels worry about the corpse.
Dealey got back into the driver's seat, but Tanner leaned into the window, his face emerging from the dark into the light of the overhead cast from Dealey's partially open door. His eyes looked skittish and too big, sweat popped out on his thin upper lip.
"I gotta whizz," he said.
"What, now?"
"I nearly wet myself with that last shove."
"Hurry the fuck up. We don't want to be sitting here if some hick cop happens to drive by."
"Who'd drive by way out here?"
"Just hurry!"
"Yeah, okay," said Tanner and disappeared back into the dark.
#
The white noise from Sheriff JK Montmorency's car radio was mostly just that--the static hiss of nothingness. The spirit voices that sometimes came through when he sat beneath the radio transmitter tower on Charon Peak didn't have much to say on this night. Once in a while a word or name dropped into the void, but nothing JK wanted to hear, disconnected nonsense: Tanner . . . Dealey . . . gully . . . remember . . . decide . . . Richie . . . Though one phrase came through--chain of lights--it didn't make any more sense than the rest.
The voices never did make a lot of sense. Coming through the white noise after radio station KWUT went off the air at midnight, they mostly communicated non-sequiturs. Some nights they were livelier than tonight, and sometimes what they said verged on the poetic or the profound. But this night, like everything else in JK's life these days, they were empty and meaningless.
"Whatever possessed me to come up here?" he asked the empty SUV.
Truth was, he hadn't been sleeping well since his friend, Lunar Magnusson, disappeared. They used to come up to Charon Peak when they were kids to listen for ghost messages. The last night Lunar had been around, six months back, they'd come up here for old times' sake, though they were both pushing forty. Lunar had been on the raw edge of despair and JK hadn't been able to do a thing for him. Helpless. Useless.
The spirit voices had a lot to say that night. Put on a hell of a light show, too, swirling all around the car, chanting enticements for Lunar to come play with them. Apparently he'd taken them up on the offer because he disappeared from his motel room with nothing but the clothes he wore, never to be seen again by anyone in Dos Lunas or back in L.A.
The image of a green-eyed girl suddenly flared before JK, her face a tracery of mist on the windshield. "Annie," he whispered, and felt the knife twist in his gut. Lunar wasn't the only one they'd never brought back, and it seemed like it was his fault, all of it, because he hadn't been enough of a man, enough of a lover, enough of a friend to stop them from being taken.
"Maudlin son of a bitch," he said, disgusted with himself, and turned the key in the ignition. The sheriff's office SUV roared to life and JK turned towards the Charon Peak access road to begin the drive down from the mountains. Time to end this pityfest and head towards home.
#
As JK wound his way down the mountain and into the foothills, he noticed headlights in the distance, glaring like lighted pathways away from Charon Peak, bright in the isolated dark of the countryside. The car they belonged to appeared to be stopped on the access road, because in the twenty minutes it took JK to get down from Charon Peak's summit, they hadn't changed position. At three in the morning, out in the middle of almost nowhere?
JK sighed, but instead of turning west to cut over open land to his cabin, he kept going north along the road. His deputies didn't patrol this area often and somebody could be stalled out here. Stalled away from any major roads on an access road that led nowhere but to the Peak. JK pulled his badge, flashlight, and gun out of the glove compartment. Real crime was a rarity in Dos Lunas. What there was usually came imported from L.A. or Ventura or Kern, via transients--and they hadn't even had any of that in awhile. But you never knew. Didn't hurt to be cautious.
JK stuck the magnetized badge holder into the breast pocket of his jean jacket so the badge showed. He laid the flashlight and the gun on the seat near his thigh. He'd strap it on when he stopped the car.
In the illumination from the headlights of the stopped vehicle, JK recognized a small outcropping of rock he'd always called Penistone Crags, in honor of Emily Brontë, although that wasn't it's real name. He didn't think it had a real name, though the Kuntash like to joke that it was the erect phallus of Hoteipay, lover to the goddess who first brought the Kuntash to the Dos Lunas Valley. The Hoteipayunga clan, when it had still been active, used to come out here every now and then for a ritual. He'd gone to one with his Grandma Adeline once when he'd been just a kid, so he knew there was a deep gully just the other side of the stone, mostly invisible in the darkness. He hoped no one in that car had fallen over the side.
He didn't recognize the car when he got close. He didn't know every car in the county, of course, but knew most, and he'd never seen this one before--a 60's era black Cadillac with a finned back end. His headlights picked up one person in the car--sitting behind the driver's wheel, staring straight ahead. He may have checked JK out in the rearview mirror, but he didn't turn around to greet him as JK would expect from a stranded motorist.
Something didn't feel right. JK pulled up behind the car and leaned forward so he could put his gunbelt around his waist before getting out of the car. The guy in the Cadillac still hadn't moved.
JK made a note of the license plate and picked up the radio to call in. "Dean, this is JK. You out there?" The radio hissed white noise, not even a ghost voice to reply. "Goddamn it, Dean, answer the radio!"
Nothing. Jackass had probably snuck home again for early morning canoodling with Nancy. And this time of night--morning--dispatch calls rang straight into the home of his chief deputy, Bernie Bustamante, and his wife, Myrna. He'd roust them out of bed if he called this into dispatch. JK decided his hinky feeling wasn't strong enough for that.
He checked his own rearview mirror but saw nothing behind his SUV. JK flipped the switch on the overhead light off so it wouldn't come on when he opened the door and light-blind him. He grabbed the flashlight and opened the door slowly, eyes searching the darkness all around, but didn't see much. He kept searching as he eased up to the car to position himself behind the driver side door, then he switched on the flashlight. Only then did the driver turn to look at him, blinking as the beam of light hit his eyes. White guy, early thirties, long thin face, a smile as sincere as a snake's. JK motioned for him to roll the window down and the guy put on some laughing show like he'd forgotten.
"Hello, officer!" he called out loudly. Too loudly. JK glanced around, still didn't see anything.
"You having some kind of car problem, sir?" he asked.
"Oh no, officer. W--uh, I got lost and realized I was heading the wrong way. I turned around and pulled over for a minute to get my bearings."
Thirty minutes or more to get his bearings? "Uh-huh. And where were you headed, sir?"
"Um, Fillmore."
"You did get lost if you're headed to Fillmore. That's way southeast of here."
"Yeah, I realize that now, but I didn't when I turned off on this road."
"Didn't you think it strange to be driving on a dirt road?"
"Sure did!"
"You came quite a ways down this dirt road before deciding to stop and turn around."
He gave an empty-sounding laugh. "Tell you the truth, I was half asleep. Took me awhile to notice. That's another reason I pulled over. Wanted to make sure I was alert."
In the glare of JK's flashlight the guy's eyes looked anything but sleepy. That could be a reaction to the light, but there were potholes on this road as big as barbecue pits and he didn't think anyone could be sleepy enough to drive over them and not wake up.
JK casually flicked the safety off on his gun. "Can I see your license, sir?"
A bright flash off to his left, a boom so loud in the night, a tearing pain in JK's back. His flashlight fell from his hand, light cascading in circles across the road, as he tried to reach for his gun. Another boom and he spun with the impact and white hot burn in his shoulder, gyring him down to the ground. Then something hit him on the head. Then nothing.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-25 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-25 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-27 01:25 am (UTC)Having now read it, I share in this feeling...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-27 04:37 pm (UTC)Because you liked it or just because you want to know what happened to JK? she asked, not being at all manipulative.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-27 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-27 04:42 pm (UTC)