Red Sea

Over the last few weeks I've been making a conscious effort to get more reading done, and, rather than just letting my self slip into the escapism that a good (or sometimes bad) book will offer, I've also been trying to pay more attention to writing style, flow, forms of expression etc...

*On a side note I think this shows on of the major issues with growing up reading from a selective pool of literature (especially if that pool is fantasy or something similar) in that most of the works that you will read will be written on what can only be described as a middling quality - in that while they are not, for the most part, horribly written, they are, also for the most part, nothing overwhelmingly fantastic either - something which causes the physical writing aspects to take a bit of a back seat to world building and ideas, making it difficult to learn anything, about writing, beyond a certain point*


Anyway, I think it is helping. Though strangely, while I am attempting to read more broadly than I have in the past - it seems that I am getting just as much out of reading works (both excerpts from novels and short stories) that I know to have been written early of a writer - as they are, while showing promise, often more clunky than the works that will come after - something that, firstly, forces you to pay attention to the writing and, secondly, forces you to ask yourself "If I have a problem with this small excerpt - how would I alter it to make it better if I was the author?"


Anyway, it has been a little bit since my last story update, so here is the next bit from the story I put up last

The Life and Death of Alistair Grout: Part 2


The sun was slow in coming and once it arrived it remained long hidden behind a blanket of thick fog that had rolled in off the ocean during the night, only to become caught, like thick cobwebs, between the buildings where it now flitted and flickered in the morning breeze.

Slowly light began to fall upon the city and down below the inhabitants emerged as if ants, shivering in winter clothes and then scurrying this way and that, which each breath trailing behind them in the cold air. The smell of coffee drifts out from alleyway cafés and the people yawn, rub their eyes and drink, resigning themselves to another start of a working week.

From his apartment Alistair tries not to notice and instead pulls a pillow over his head and attempts to burrow further down below his blankets where it is warm.

He is expecting a hangover and he is expecting it to be bad and although he know that it will not work he hopes that if he keeps himself away from the piercing light of the morning sun for long enough he will be able to avoid, or at least delay the onset of the splitting headache that he knew would eventually sneak up behind him and hit him over the head like a hammer.

The sun, however, has other ideas and even as he retreats further under his blankets it begins a probing advance through the window and into the room where it ever so gradually begins to climb up the side of the bed and onto the sheets. He groans and tries to roll over and face away from the window but knocks the pillow from the bed in the process and in doing so catches a face full of sunlight. He clutches his hands to his head, expecting the worst...

... Nothing. No ache, no pain. Slowly he removes his hands and then sits there blinking in the morning light.


No hangover.


He stifles a yawn and then stretches.

He feels good. Really good.

Confused he pulls himself from the bed cautiously. Pale walls stare back at him, unadorned except for splotches of sunlight. The room is empty and largely unadorned, at the other end of the room plain green carpet gives way to tiles and a small kitchen. Had he wanted to he could have made it over from the bed to the microwave and the fridge (there is no oven) in half a dozen steps and would have only had to avoid the large brown suitcase that sat in the centre of the room and was overflowing with essentially everything that he owned.

He sighed: “Home sweet home.”

At least he had ended up here and not dozing on some park bench:- something that had happened before.

He tries to cover another yawn and moves over the suitcase. He had been living out of it for more than a week now and, he acknowledged, it was possible that he would be living out of it in the many weeks to come. He grabbed a towel and moved towards the shower, glancing at something that caught his eye on the kitchen bench as he passed. He stopped.

The flask.

He picked it up and looked at it, turning it over in his hand. Simple silver, no engravings, no marks. He shakes it. Empty.

Slowly he begins to remember the details of the previous night and he then looks around the room alarmed, as it suddenly occurs to him that he might not be alone. After a few seconds he chuckles to himself, and slaps his face lightly with his hand in a mild form of self-abasement: If he hadn't noticed anyone in the apartment yet it was unlikely that there was anyone here. After all there were not exactly too many places that that anyone could hide.

Though, it occurred to him strangely, he would not have been too surprised if the he had found the woman from last night hiding somewhere, there had been something odd about her.

He moved into the bathroom, looking around unconsciously before stripping off and climbing in to the shower. The water was cold and it stayed cold so he quickly towelled of and pulled on some relatively fresh clothes.

Back in the main room the sun has risen considerably in the sky and so everything is now bathed in light. He stands there for a moment, drinking it all in. He feels fantastic, he realises again and for the first time in what seems like forever he contemplates going out during the day.

It seemed clear now that he would not be going home again, for even if everything was forgiven, he knew that he would not be able to live with the guilt. He runs his hand through thinning hair and tries to push the feeling to the back of his mind, though in a way he was already feeling better for having made the decision.

Still, if he was going to be staying in the city from now on he knew he had to do something new, at the moment he felt so full of energy that just the idea of staying in the apartment all day was enough to drive him stir-crazy.

Grinning he pulls on his jacket and makes his way toward the door, feeling something he thought he had long ago lost - a curiosity for what the day might bring.


Little short, but it seems like as good a place as any to cut it off - the next bit is well and truly done, but the tone is quite different so it seems like a good idea to save it until later.

Next post will be up soon - and I may also be taking part in a play by post adventure at some point in the near future which I may link to on here.


M