Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Aftermath

What a grueling experience it has been trying to write Real Life/Real Death.

Not to suggest that I'm not proud of my work, though it needs a lot more work to be good, I'm very glad to be done with it. This little story was originally just going to be an exercise in writing. The plan was to write a new chapter a week until it was done. There was no outline and no planing beyond the initial idea of doing a crime noir with real life superheroes. And I gotta say, I took a valuable lesson away from this little exorcise: I hate writing like that.

The problem I had with Real Life/Real Death was, as I was writing it, it became a chore to write an open ended story that wasn't working toward anything. Bless Stephen King for being able to write stories with no ending in mind, but I cannot do that. I need to have a clear goal in mind when I'm writing, and I didn't have one with Real Life/Real Death.

I also really struggled with the schedule, which is plainly obvious as I started this at the end of 2008 and here we are marching through 2010. I'm not too bothered by the schedule thing though. When I write, I am usually working on multiple projects at a time, so I always keep myself busy. But the fact of the matter is, as time progressed, I became less and less interested in finishing Real Life/Real Death because I felt it had no purpose other than a writing exorcise I was become more and more frustrated with.

The good news is, in last few months it's taken me to finish it, I've settled on a goal to work toward, which has reinvigorated my interest in the story. The bad news is, the new goal means I've got twenty more chapters to write to really complete the story. So, although I'm done with the exorcise, I'm far from completing this story. But the rest of the story is going to operate at my own comfortable pace, so I'm not planning on updating any more chapters on the blog. I'm certain nobody actually read any of it, which is fine. As I've always say, I write for myself. The second half of the book is also going to involve a lot of editing anyway, and that's messy. I've no intention of taking down the old posts. I'm an advocate of letting history speak for itself, so if nothing else, these series of posts will serve as a digital record of something I did from Fall '08 to Spring '10 for anybody who may be interested.

The End

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Twenty

THE STORY

I died.

On my way to the afterlife I dreamed. My dreams were neither surreal nor enlightening.

First, I dreamed of Sandy. She was dancing, but I was the only one in the room. Only it wasn’t a room, it was like some kind of cloud high above the sky.

Then I dreamed of Anne. I dreamed she had finished her schooling, gotten a high paying job, and married a handsome young man, eventually beginning a family of her own. Even in my dream I wasn’t a part of her life, but I felt consolation knowing that she had grown up to be a strong, independent woman without my intervention. It was enough to know she was happy.

I also dreamed of Peter Poppins, the only guy in the world to put up with my shit complaining. I guess that’s what he was paid to do. Still, he did it with a smile. In my dream he was surrounded by dozens of beautiful women, somehow maintaining a different conversation with all of them. Confidence and charm poured out of him. As I watched him, I became him, and slowly the women disappeared until there was only me.

I dreamed of all my old friends. Friends from the police force, from college, even childhood friends, they were all there. I suspect they were all saying their goodbyes. I don’t remember much about them other than their passing faces morphing into each other.

Interspersed between these dreams were flashes of light and images of Jennifer. She wasn’t in her costume though, not in my ratty old clothes either. She was wearing normal clothes, a blouse and jeans. She looked much younger than she actually was.

I suspected that I was trapped in purgatory and feared that I would know no eternal rest.


But you don’t really care about any of that, do you?

When I awoke, Jennifer was at my side. Her left arm was in a sling. I had been in a coma for the last week. She told the hospital that she was my daughter, so they let her stay. It was sweet of her.

I did die, though. For six and a half minutes I was flat lined. I had actually been shot in four separate places, only one bullet hitting a vital artery (it missed my heart by centimeters). One other bullet stuck inside my stomach, one in my leg, and the last one, the ricochet, took my right ear with it. I’m still deaf in that ear.

I don’t remember being shot that many times, but the wounds don’t lie. Sandy was unscratched, thank god. The police showed up minutes after I emptied my gun. They shot the guy who broke Jennifer’s arm. I missed every single shot I took. At least I didn’t hit Jennifer.

There was a big media circus surrounding the whole event. Jennifer and her friends were all taken into custody. I don’t think they were charged with anything, I didn’t really keep up with what happened to those fucks. Once I came out of my coma, they corroborated their stories with mine. Internal Affairs had been investigating Kosloski and his friends for some time. The information that Jennifer’s friends had, along with the evidence I had linking Kosloski to Gurly, finally put him in the shit. And there was no getting out of it.

Long story short, he’s in prison, I lost my detective license as well as my gun license, and Jennifer is back in New York City. I still get letters from her. We keep in touch. She’s doing well.

So that’s the story, at least as well as I remember it. I’m sure you just going to focus on the gangsters and the costumed idiots, what little there was of them. I’m sorry I wasn’t more a part of that.

Yes, I still see Sandy. No, I haven’t talked to my daughter, but that’s not really any of your business so fuck you for asking. I offered to sell you the story of what happened those few days, not my entire life. As if your readers cared about a retired old fuck like me.

You’re just going to make up whatever fucking ending you want anyway.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

REAL LIFE/REAL DEATH Chapter Nineteen

I've been sitting on this chapter for a while now. It's the penultimate chapter, and I am going to finish the final chapter next week. I've learned a lot in this little exercise and it will be a great relief when I'm finally done with it.


YOUTH, SEX, AND POWER

A hail of bullets criss-crossed around the room in all directions.

It was pretty late, but there were still a couple groups of people in the bar. I’m not sure where the extra people came from, but I was pretty drunk anyway, so that’s not really all that surprising. When I downed Koslowski, they made their presence known by opening fire in the sparsely populated bar. They were not cops, they were Gurly’s men.

As soon as I heard the gunfire I fell on Sandy, getting us quickly to the ground and covering her as much as possible. I wasn’t too sure, but I think everybody was shooting at me, though the gunfire continued even after I hit the ground. I was prepared to lay there for the rest of eternity.

Sandy screamed the entire time. I choked a little and coughed.

Amid the noise and chaos of the gunfight, I noticed that the room began filling up with smoke. It was emitting from a small grenade that had been dropped into the room at some point. At the precise moment I had become aware of this development, a pair of hands had grappled onto both me and Sandy and was dragging us across the floor to the open exit.

Sandy continued screaming. I joined her.

The unexpected pressure on my shoulders had lead me to the conclusion that I must have been shot. All the telltale signs were there, warm sticky fluid seeping into my clothes, numbness of the limb, and above all else, intense searing pain radiating throughout my entire body from the source point.

Once out of the bar area, the phantom hands continued to drag us across the marble floor until we were safely behind a large structure of modern art, or some such nonsense. I rolled over and propped myself up against the so called art and looked into the eyes of my savior, Jennifer. No, she was wearing her mask, she was Night Cat right now.

“Stop moving, you’ve been shot,” she ordered.

“I know,” I coughed. No blood in the cough thankfully, that’s a good thing.

The gunfire stopped. I looked to my right and saw Sandy huddled into as tight a ball as she could be. One of the other kids was there too, Captain Kick was his name.

Just then, I noticed that the gunfire had stopped, though there were still sounds of a struggle coming from the bar. Then, signaling the end of the struggle, a single gunshot pierced the empty hotel lobby. The hollow explosion echoed down the hallways and up the walls like a specter trying to escape a life of torment. The ringing echo continued for an eternity.

Then there was a silence.

I ruined the status quo by violently coughing, announcing very loudly to anyone who might be listening just exactly where I was.

Night Cat tensed up. She was crouched next to me, completely obscured by the stone slab we were using as shelter, but she wasn’t hiding. She was poised, staring intently at some point in space just beyond the edge of the obscuring wall. Her left hand rested gently on the stone protector, her right hand on the floor. Her fingertips were suctioned to the surfaces like an Olympic runner about to launch into a mad dash. The muscles in her legs rippled through the skintight clothes. She was beautiful. For the first time since I met her, I admitted that she awakened old feelings deep inside me that were better left buried and numb. Despite being in the middle of a violent gunfight, time was polite enough to freeze these few moments for me, so that I could really see this girl for the first time as she truly was. I looked at her for so long, I felt I should have been ashamed. And even though this girl exuded youth, sex, and power from every pore of her body, all I could seem to think about was my daughter. If you didn’t think it by now, that’s sure to convince you how fucked up I am.

Time kicked back into high gear. For a fraction of a second, the beginnings of a shadow crept around the side of the stone pillar. Then she was gone.

She dashed around the corner in a low crouch. First I heard the gunshot, then the piercing scream that drowned out the sounds of an electric tazer connecting to flesh. I poked my head around the corner to see what was happening just as a bullet ricochet off the marble, missing my face by inches. My eyes filled with tears, trying to expel the dust and marble shards that now blinded me. All I could hear was a distinct C Sharp tone, which drowned out the rest of the world. Despite all that, I had a clear image in my mind of exactly what I saw just prior to my blinding.

There was a man, presumably the owner of the aforementioned shadow, sprawled out on the floor just a few inches from me. Night Cat, in a full dash, was charging another man standing at the opening of the bar entrance. That man was aiming his pistol at her. The fist shot had missed and I wasn’t sure how many more were fired, having been blinded and deafened by it.

I processed all this information with the speed and consciousness it takes to blink. I rubbed my eyes red, stood up and rounded the corner of the stone pillar. My ears were still deaf from the ringing but my eyesight was returning. Amid the streaks of black and yellow light, I could see two distinct blotches, one red and the other gray. Furiously blinking my eyes in an effort to conjure up my vision, I tried to take a wide stance, but ended up leaning on the marble column. My left hand grappled my right wrist as I raised my gun, attempting to steady my aim.

I didn’t really know what I was doing, I couldn’t see, hear, or think. I was acting on impulse, and once I saw the red blotch fall to the ground, I emptied all the chambers in my Smith and Wesson.

Then I fell backward and blacked out.