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My last story was well received here, so I thought I would post the introductory chapters to this thing I am working on and get some feedback. This was supposed to be a short story, but it seems to be turning into more of a novella. I just keep getting more ideas while writing. ------------------------ A Theft from Those Who Wonder Guns. Why did it have to be guns? I suppose it would be awkward for the police to carry snakes. Sometimes you find yourself thinking the strangest things when you are staring down the barrels of a Mossberg 590 pump-action riot shotgun, a Heckler & Koch MP5 and a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. The police sure has increased weapon diversity in recent years. Hell of a time to be in the bank robbing business. I was carrying myself that day, but I didn’t like my chances. My sidearm was a simple Smith & Wesson Model 686 six-shooter. That made this an armed robbery. I don’t know what I was thinking. A note saying, “I have a gun. Give me the money.” would have had the same effect, and carried a much shorter sentence. The rest of my crew had cleared out, but the captain goes down with the ship. “Drop the gun! Get down on the ground,” yelled the officer with the riot shotgun, his voice muffled by the visor of his black helmet. He wore full body armor, making him look like a black stormtrooper. The command echoed from the walls of the spacious bank interior. The gun was still in the holster at my side. I reached towards it, and the police officer twitched. poo poo. I jumped across the bank counter just as the shotgun fired, and felt one of the pellets embed itself in my leg. “Drop the gun!” yelled the officer with the MP5. He wore a dark-blue patrol officer uniform and a shiny black cap. I was sprawled on the ground behind the counter. My revolver had come loose from its holster and was resting on the ground next to me. I wondered if police officers were trained to recite pre-written lines with no regard for context. At least he couldn’t shoot me through the counter. I picked up the gun and threw it to the other side. Heard it clatter on the floor. I could hear the police officers mutter something to each other, but I couldn’t make out what, exactly, they were saying. A minute of silence followed. Blood slowly trickled from my leg onto the floor, forming a miniature red river delta on the marble surface. My breathing slowed down, returned to normal. Very slowly, so as not to startle the twitchy officers, I got up from the floor, supporting myself on the counter to spare my injured leg. I looked into the barrels of the same three guns. “Drop the gun, motherfucker”, said the officer with the Glock, slowly, as if he was quoting the main character in an action movie. He wore a light-blue summer short-sleeve uniform along with designer sunglasses. I pointed to where the gun was lying on the floor, close to the officer’s feet, and the rear end in a top hat shot me in the arm. Well, at least I got out alive. ------------------------ As I had feared, the gun made all the difference in court. I was obviously a hardened criminal, argued the prosecutor. I had even resisted arrest, as clearly proven by the fact that I had forced the officers to use lethal force. Ten years, eligible for parole in five. My cell was an off-white rectangle with a bed bolted to the wall, a tiny table, a grey plastic chair, and a metal toilet. The only hint of color was the green mattress on top of the bed. In the corner of the cell, a stainless steel ventilation grille was set into the wall. There was a window, but not much of a view. Standing on the bed, I could just about make out the arid plain below. Only a few bushes broke the red-brown monotony. Some days I would stand on the bed for hours hoping to see a single tumbleweed roll by, like in the movies, but none ever came. Nothing ever seemed to move. After a while, I stopped bothering with the window, and just sat on the bed, focusing on my thoughts. I thought about my gun. My beautiful Smith & Wesson Model 686 six-shooter revolver, which I had never even had the pleasure of firing. I had picked it out carefully in the pawn store, choosing it over several other fine guns, which the storeowner had recommended. I had practiced drawing it quickly on front of the mirror, imagining myself to be the quickest draw in the west. What foolishness. I never even fired it. So what if I had? That would have carried an even longer sentence. “What are you thinking about?” A raspy voice penetrated the silence of my cell and pulled me out of my reverie. For a moment, I thought that I was talking to myself. That the silence had finally eroded my sanity. Then I remembered the ventilation grille. “What makes you think I’m thinking,” I asked, without moving from the bed. “Well, you ain’t moving, so you gotta be thinking. You gotta do one of those, whether you want to or not.” I nodded, and immediately felt stupid for having done so. “I guess you have a point, whoever you are. I was thinking about guns.” “Guns? What guns in particular?” “Smith & Wesson Model 686.” I heard a contented sigh from the grille. “Great choice. I love those old-fashioned revolvers. I’m more of a Glock type myself, though. Pistols are more practical than revolvers. What if you need to fire more than six shots?” “The way I see it,” I said. “If I need to fire more than six shots I’m probably in such deep poo poo that it doesn’t matter.” A hoarse laugh issued from the grille. “You gotta point there mister. I fired more than six shots from my Glock, and now I’m stuck here for life. I might have been better off running out of bullet sooner.” Now it was my turn to laugh. “At least you got to fire your gun. I never even used mine, and yet its mere presence was enough to get me ten years. I wish I had never bought it.” A long silence followed. I lay on my back on the green mattress, trying to count the cracks in the ceiling. Just as I was about to say something, the voiced issued from the grille once more: “I reckon we’ve both been screwed over by guns, then.” “I reckon you’re right,” I said. “I lost my freedom by firing a gun. You lost yours simply by holding one. I suppose somewhere in here there is a guy who lost his freedom by merely standing close to a gun.” “It’s funny,” I said. “I know a man who is a snake handler. All day long, he plays with poisonous snakes, and none of them has ever bitten him. Yet, the mere presence of a dead piece of metal can send your life careening off the tracks.” “Be careful what you wish for,” the voice replied. “Handling snakes can be tricky.” I nodded again, trying to buy time to think of a witty reply, but nothing came to mind. That night, I woke up on my green mattress feeling a familiar pressure in my bladder. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and shook my head to clear out the faint cobwebs of a fading dream. The moonlight coming through the window turned the inside of the cell from grey to silver. The stainless steel toilet gleamed. I yawned, walked over to the toilet and froze. There was movement in the bowl. I stepped aside and the moonlight coming from the window illuminated the snake. Its color was pale olive green and a pattern of black blotches overlaid the body. The head had a blunt snout and a brown v-shaped mark with a black outline. The snake raised its head from the toilet bowl, and we stared at each other in silence. “It’s a rhombic night adder,” said the voice from the grille. “Snakes sometimes swim through the pipes and into the prison toilets. You’ll get used to it.” “I doubt it,” I replied, as I backed away from the toilet, slowly, so as not to startle the snake. “How do I get rid of it?” “Well, you can call the guards, but they won’t appreciate being woken up at this time. I usually just wait for them to leave by themselves. It’ll get bored of your toilet soon enough.” I sat down on the green mattress and yawned again. Life in prison sure took some getting used to. I leaned against the wall and drifted off to sleep. I woke some time later, the pressure in my bladder having grown too strong to ignore. The moonlight still fell through the window. Slowly, very slowly I edged my way across the cold floor towards the toilet. I took a deep breath and looked into the bowl: There was nothing there but moonlit water. I let out my breath in a deep sigh, pulled down my pants and peed like there was no tomorrow. It was only later, when I was drifting back to sleep, that a nagging thought bubbled up from my subconsciousness: How had the voice from the grille known what kind of snake I was looking at? “So, how did you know what kind of snake was in my toilet?” I asked the next morning. There was no reply. I repeated the question the same evening. No reply. Five years passed and no one ever spoke to me from the grille again. I spent my time avoiding fights, looking through the window, and taking rectangular walks in the prison yard. In the third year, I finally saw a tumbleweed. After five years, I went in front of the parole board. Since I had caused no trouble during my time in jail, they granted my parole. Five years poorer, I finally stepped through the prison gates and back into the real world. There had been plenty of time to think during those five lonely years, in which my only company had been the occasional snake resting briefly in the toilet bowl. My plan was ready. I was going to get the old gang back together, but this time things would be different. This time, there would be no guns. Tracking them all down proved to be something of a challenge, though. ------------------------ I found Tommy Selig in Pasadena, where he was robbing a liquor store with a Colt Anaconda .44 Magnum. Too much gun for such a small job. I entered the store through the back door. The interior was a labyrinth of pathways snaking their way through countless shelves filled with beer, wine, whiskey and stuff I hadn’t even heard of before. The flashing blue and red light from the police cars parked outside the front windows made the place feel like an eerily quiet nightclub. The kind of place where people sip their drinks in the corners while the empty dance floor puts on a light show for their amusement. As I traced my way through the labyrinth towards the counter, I saw several customers sprawled on the floor. Between rows of whisky bottles, a young blonde woman in a blue windbreaker was lying on her side, clutching a bottle of Snake River Stampede Canadian Whisky in her hands as if it was a protective talisman. She looked up when she heard my steps and clutched the bottle harder. He knuckles grew white. I squatted next to the woman and caught her gaze. “Don’t worry, Miss,” I said. “I’ll take care of this. You are not in any danger.” She did not reply. Her eyes looked at me, unblinking. I removed the bottle from her hands, unscrewed the cap, and took a nice big swig. Felt the warmth spread through my body. This seemed to calm her, for some reason. She pushed herself up, supporting her weight on one of her elbows and resting her head in the palm of her hand, so that she looked like she was reclining on an invisible couch. “Who the hell are you?” “I am going to fix this situation,” I replied. “Don’t worry, I know the dude with the gun. I’ll talk some sense into him.” She shrugged and took a swig from the bottle herself. “Well, get on with it then.” In an area surrounded by walls of canned beer, I met a middle-aged middle-manager wearing a dark-blue suit. He was lying on his stomach on the floor, with his hands folded on the back of his head. A plastic shopping basket next to him contained four six-packs of various types of beer. He heard me coming and turned his head, looking at me with puzzled eyes. “What the hell are you doing? Get down or he’ll shoot you. He’s insane!” I crouched on the ground next to the man. “He won’t shoot,” I said. “He is too smart for that. The gun is for intimidation, not use. Anyway, he can’t see you through the beer stacks, so you don’t have to lie on the ground.” The man thought about this several seconds, then shook his head firmly. “I’m afraid I can’t agree with your logic, whoever you are. Even if he can’t see me, a stray bullet is far less likely to hit me when I’m lying down. I prefer to minimize risk in all things. It’s my job.” There was a certain logic to that, but my plan necessitated risks. Between rows of red and white wine, I met a man trying to take action, and stopped him at the last moment. He was around a head taller than I was and looked like he would rather skip the birth of his first child than miss a workout session. He was wearing fading bluish jeans and a green t-shirt. He had a crew cut so short that he might as well have been bald. He was crouching next to the red-wine shelves and holding a small firearm in his right hand. I couldn’t quite make out the model from the distance. His back was turned to me, and he didn’t seem to have noticed my approach. Next to him, in a shopping basket, a glass skull filled with vodka stared at me with cold unblinking eyes. For a split second, I found myself wondering whether the skull would reveal my presence to the man. Then I smiled at my own silliness, soundlessly walked up to the man and removed the gun from his hand. He spun around, assuming some kind of crouched martial arts defense position. I had already stepped out of range. I was holding in my hand a Heckler & Koch HK4 semi-automatic pistol. Nice choice. Reliable. I quietly removed the magazine from the gun and ejected the shell from the chamber. “I would stay back if I was you,” I said. “You’ll just get somebody hurt.” He sneered at me. “Who the hell are you? I was a marine. I can take this guy.” “Maybe, but you are still going to get someone hurt. Maybe you shoot him, maybe he shots you, maybe someone else gets hurt. I know this guy. I can talk him down. Getting more guns involved will just make things worse.” He looked at me for a while, silent. The red and blue light show illuminated the countless bottles of wine. A smell of strong spirits permeated the area. Someone must have spilled something. The marine shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Whatever, it’s your funeral. Just give me back my gun, for self-defense, OK?” I did not. As I left, I grabbed the shopping basket with the Crystal Head vodka. You never know when you might need a skull full of vodka. ------------------------ After some more walking, I turned a corner and entered the center of the liquor labyrinth. In the center of a small empty rectangle, Tommy Selig leaned against the brown wooden surface of the checkout counter, smoking a cigarette with his right hand, his Colt dangling from his left. Tommy Selig was very tall and very thin. Curly dark blonde hair grew from his head, like wild grass. His eyes were clear silver, and seemed to reflect the color of his surroundings. He seemed to be lost in thought, but stood to attention when I entered the area. The waves of red and blue light from the police cars made his eyes flash. Blue. Red. Blue. Red He lifted his gun, pointed the barrel straight at my face and said, “I thought I told you all to hit the ground.” I stepped closer, so he could see my face. His own face lit up and he lowered the gun. “Fancy seeing you here! How did you get past the cops?” “Snuck through the back exit,” I said. “Unfortunately, the cops were right behind me. I don’t think we’re getting out that way.” He laughed. “Good thing I brought this baby, then.” He waved the Colt Anaconda in my face, disregarding the most basic gun safety rules. I moved closer and put the shopping basket down on the counter. “That thing will just get you killed faster. At best, they will take you alive before you have a chance to fire it. In that case, you would have been better off not bringing it at all.” Tommy tossed the Colt from one hand to the other and back again. “Perhaps you underestimate my skill. You hardly ever fired your own guns back in the day. What do you know about gunfights?” “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Any time now, a tactical team will burst through the front doors. You can’t possibly take them all. Let’s have some vodka from this beautiful skull and discuss the situation while there is still time. Did you know that the skull vodka is made by Dan Aykroyd, the Ghostbusters guy?” A tactical team burst through the front doors. Tommy instinctively lifted his gun. Five M4 carbines responded to the challenge before he had a chance to pull the trigger. We both dropped to the ground. The skull shattered, spraying vodka everywhere. Soaked in vodka endorsed by Dan Aykroyd, we crouched next to the counter while bullets flew overhead. After a few seconds, the bullets stopped. The store was quiet, except for the sound of shattered glass hitting the floor. I looked up in time to see the tactical team charge into the labyrinth of liquor shelves, disappearing from sight. “See what I mean,” I told Tommy. “Merely holding that gun nearly got you killed.” As if to emphasize my point, someone shouted, “He has a gun!” somewhere in the store. Brief gunfire followed, then silence. “What the hell was that?” said Tommy. I shrugged. “I met an ex-marine on my way to the counter. I took his gun, but I guess he had a spare. He should have listened to my warning.” Tommy sighed. “OK, I get it. Guns are trouble. What are you proposing?” “We get the gang together again,” I said. “But this time things will be different. There will be no more mistakes. No stupid risks. No guns.” Tommy Selig thought about this for a few seconds. The sound of boots against vinyl reached us from the other end of the store. He laughed. “Hell, why not. If you can get us out of this jam in one piece each, I’ll consider it proof that you are still fit to lead. If not, it’s moot. What’s the plan, boss?” I put my finger on my nose. “Well, the tactical team seems to be temporarily lost, so let’s leave by the front door while we still can. There will be other cops there, but as long as we don’t give them any excuse to shoot us, all we need to do is outrun them.” “Is that all?” said Tommy. “I hoped you had a brilliant master plan of some sort.” “The best plans are the simplest,” I said. “The more moving parts your plan has, the more opportunities for them to get stuck together. Come on, let’s move. Leave the gun.” The sound of boots came closer. The tactical team was on their way. Tommy shot a final glance at the Colt Anaconda, and we both walked towards the front door in unison. The door opened, and we stepped into a sea of undiluted blue and red light. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. I heard car doors opening. I blinked and saw two uniformed officers step out of their cars. They seemed surprised to see us. None of them brandished guns. One carried a black baton in his left hand. Tommy and I nodded once to each other, turned, and fled down the street. The officer with the baton pursued. The other one jumped back into his car, and a police siren roared to life behind us. The tactical team burst through the front doors, joining the pursuit. We ran from two cops, a police car, and a tactical team, and no one fired a single bullet. “See,” I told Tommy while gasping for air. “If you had brought the Colt Anaconda we would be dead by now. They won’t shoot as long as we are not a threat.” “We might still die,” said Tommy. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” The car accelerated while we spoke and almost caught up with us. Since trying to run from a car in a straight line was futile, I turned into the nearest alley and Tommy followed. The alley was just barely wide enough for both of us to run side by side. Tall brick buildings rose from the ground on each side, only letting in a small sliver of sky far above. The car screeched to halt behind us. I heard the sound of boots hitting the ground, followed by the slamming of the door. That bought us some time, but the cops were still right behind us. We continued running in unison. The sound of multiple boots behind us told me that the tactical team had caught up as well. As we ran, I saw movement out of the corner of my left eye. A small snake was emerging from a storm drain near the left wall. I stopped abruptly, my boots skidding several feet across the ground, stopping right next to the drain. Tommy Selig stopped next to me. The snake was small, slender, reddish brown with dark brown spots around the eyes. Two parallel rows of dark spots ran down its back, bordering a light stripe in the center. The snake raised its head and looked straight into my eyes. “It’s a Texas Brown Snake,” said Tommy Selig. “They are everywhere these days.” The sound of boots approached. Acting on a sudden impulse, I grabbed the snake by the neck, turned around, and threw it into the face of the approaching police officer. The man screamed, grabbed the snake with both hands, walked backwards two steps, turned around, and slammed right into the approaching tactical team. A cacophony of curses followed, accompanied by the metallic sound of M4 carbines colliding, as six heavily armed morons collapsed into a pile on the ground. The snake perched on top, as if celebrating its victory. “Nice,” said Tommy. We turned down another alley and soon lost the pursuers entirely. SimonChris fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 10:10
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Alright. Snakes and guns are fine, but why so specific with the names? The only name that mattered was the colt anaconda, and I almost skipped over it because it blended in too well with every other gun in the story. That goes for the snakes, too; details that don't matter to the story shouldn't interrupt it. This is also why you should get rid of everything before the last scene break. The story, at least from what I can see, is going to be what happens after the stuff you've posted. We don't need to be shown how he goes to jail and what he does there, and you can show what kind of person he's like through his narration and his actions during the actual story rather than the backstory. As an added bonus, you'd be getting rid of your opening line, which is straight garbage.
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Jan 9, 2017 01:30
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You have used the word "gun" 45 times in 3900 words, not to mention all the times guns are called by specific names. If I really need to make my point on how repetitive this is, find/replace "gun" with "breast" in the doc and read it again.
house of the dad fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jan 11, 2017 |
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Jan 11, 2017 20:29
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