Well, it's been 12 days since I posted anything anywhere related to NaNoWriMo. It's been a hard couple of weeks. I'm getting my word count back up, though, and I'm planning to be back on track by Sunday. That way, I can work at falling behind again before the start of Week Four. I still have no idea what I'm writing about. :-D
I managed to completely forget about three of the characters I introduced in the beginning of the novel and I've been focused solely on a completely different three characters, who are all like old friends in my head. I've decided that I definitely have to stick with characters that have been searching for a story they belong in. This is their time in the limelight. Meet Vincent, Dave, and Cheryl.
* * * * *
“About fucking time you answered the door, Vin,” Dave growled as the door swung inward. “Where the fuck were you? Mars?”
“I was taking a leak, you bastard,” Vincent drawled out while yawning, then straightened ever so slightly. “Cheryl...”
The perky, Asian girl pushed past Dave, throwing him a glare over her shoulder. “He threatened to fry my hover if I didn’t give him a ride. Can I borrow your fresher?” Without waiting for an answer, she entered the house, brushing past Vincent with a brief smile, then disappeared into the small fresher room.
Vincent watched her departure, eyes stuck on the spot where her legs encased in bright orange tights vanished beneath her fire engine red mini skirt. Ever the sensitive type, Dave clapped Vincent on the shoulder. “Probably more ice than anything up there, Vin. Maybe even a bear trap or two.”
Before Vincent could reply, Dave had entered the house and descended down into the basement room they used for practicing. Left with the faint odor of unwashed male, Vincent wrinkled his nose and glared at his lead guitarist. Today’s practice session was off to its usual, jolly start.
Four hours later, Vincent was convinced that they’d either be famous or end up in prison for attempted murder. Cheryl, the drummer, had just thrown her last intact drumstick straight at Dave’s head after he’d made a comment about her inability to keep up with the beat.
“That’s because you’re playing too damn fast, you jackass!” she raged. “It’s a song about getting high and you’re playing it like a fast polka!”
“Guys...” Vincent tried to interrupt, but Dave hollered right over him.
“We wouldn’t have to slow everything down if you could play a consistent beat without fucking it up every two measures.”
“You trying to say that I can’t play the drums? Is that what you mean?” was Cheryl’s shrill reply.
“Guys...” Vincent tried again, equally unsuccessfully.
“Yeah, you couldn’t drum your way out of a strip joint. Everyone knows girls can’t play.” Dave gruffly retorted.
That, as far as Vincent could tell, was the last straw. Cheryl launched herself over the drum set and straight at Dave. His quick reflexes enabled him to get his holo projector out of the way before she hit him, but that was about all he was able to do. Vincent jumped up and tried to pull a screaming, kicking, clawing Cheryl up and away while Dave tried to keep her nails, feet, and teeth away from anything vital. No wonder they had named themselves Friction.
Vincent switched his hold on Cheryl, grabbing her around the waist and hoisted her off Dave enough for him to crawl out from under her and away from the couch.
“Stupid, fucking bitch,” he swore as he rubbed his hand along the side of his neck where she’d clawed him deep enough to bleed a little.
“What did you call me, you fucking asshole?” Cheryl screamed, bucking and kicking, trying to get away from Vincent.
Vincent managed to shout at Dave over Cheryl’s stream of cursing, “Get upstairs and get a derm on it, I’ll be up in a minute.”
“Whatever,” Dave muttered, turning and heading up the stairs.
Cheryl was left heaving and cursing under her breath, most of her energy spent. Vincent looked down at her from behind and tightened his grip slightly. “If I let you go, will you promise to stay down here and not destroy anything?”
“Why should I?” Cheryl demanded petulantly, and then sighed heavily before Vincent could answer. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a big girl. I can control myself.”
After giving her a few more moments to calm down, Vincent warily let her go, ready to defend himself if she decided to turn on him. Instead, she flopped down on the couch and sighed again, looking around the room.
“What are we doing here, Vin?” she asked in a far away tone. “What the fuck are we doing here?”
“Making music,” he replied quietly.
“No, Vincent,” she responded in a similar tone. “We are not making music. We are pretending to make music while Numb Nuts up there criticizes and complains. We should be playing at bars, we should be trying to get gigs, we should be getting our name out there. Instead we’re spending all our time down here ‘practicing.’ Think about it, Vin. We should be on stage!” With this last, Cheryl leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, eyes focused intently on Vincent’s face.
So intently, in fact, that Vincent turned away, a blush rising up the side of his neck. “We’re not good enough yet, Cheryl,” he muttered, and even to his ears it sounded lame.
“Bullshit!” she spat, rising to her feet. “Pure, unadulterated bull shit!” She grabbed her holo projector and turned off her drum set, jamming the device back into her purse.
“Where are you going, Cher?” Vincent asked, following her as she headed for the stairs, purse slung over one shoulder, boots clacking noisily on the tile floor.
“I’m going to a bar and I’m going to get drunk, Vincent.” she replied flatly. “And then I’m going to find someone as drunk as I am and I’m going to have sex with them.” Vincent took a step backward as if he’d be slapped. “And in the morning, I’m going to have a good long think about the direction my life is heading in and how I should change it so that drunken evenings and one night stands stop sounding like a good fucking plan!”
With that, she stomped up the stairs and out the door, slamming it firmly behind her. Vincent winced at the sound, which brought up memories of doors slamming and windows shattering, which circled around to that one perfect, unbroken window...
Vincent slammed his fist into the wall beside the stairs. The pain that ran up his arm into his brain felt so good that he did it again, and again, and again until his hand went numb and his vision blurred and the image of the window and the thought of Cheryl with someone else faded into the nice cold cushion of endorphins.
The next thing Vincent was conscious of was Dave holding him down while he struggled. Vincent was silent, but Dave was calling something, which made Vincent wonder what he was saying. As soon as the need for escape lost to his incredible curiosity, Vincent understood that Dave was screaming his name.
“Vincent, stop it, you stupid little shit!”
And Vincent did so, went entirely limp under Dave and stopped everything. Dave was so shocked by the change that he nearly lost his balance, falling slightly forward onto Vincent before managing to catch himself up on his arms.
“Um, Vin?” he said quietly.
“Yeah?” Vincent replied.
“You’re bleeding.”
Vincent looked down at himself, then over to his right hand, which was a mess of blood and what looked like white flecks of paint. Craning his neck a bit, he managed to see over Dave’s shoulder and found the reddish hole through the wall that he’d pounded with his fist.
Still mellow from the endorphins and not feeling any pain from his hand, Vincent let his head settle back down against the cool tile floor and shrugged a little. “Doesn’t hurt.”
“Yet, c’mon dude, we gotta get ya to a medic.” Dave rocked back on his heels, pulling Vincent with him as he rose.
The lethargy made Vincent apathetic to movement or medical attention, but Dave was insistent. “C’mon, Vin, stand up, damn it.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be fine.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. You probably broke at least a couple of your fingers, you are not fine.”
“What do you care?” Vincent asked with a small, dead voice.
Dave pulled back from his position of half carrying, half dragging Vincent up the stairs, pulled back and looked Vincent in the eyes. “I care, all right? Now get moving.”
Confused by this, Vincent went along with Dave’s urgings, a low, dull throb beginning in his hand. “Cheryl’s gonna quit the band,” he spoke again in his dead voice.
“So what? We’ll get another drummer.”
This stopped Vincent in his tracks. His bloody, ruined hand managed to fist in Dave’s grimy t-shirt and he pulled the older, taller man down to his face so their eyes could meet. “I don’t want another drummer,” he said slowly and succinctly.
Despite knowing that Vincent was maybe fifteen or sixteen tops, that the kid weighed at least a hundred pounds less than him, and had no military training that would match his own, Dave found his mouth going dry at the look in the teenager’s eyes.
Vincent wasn’t in there anymore. Something other, much colder, had bled into his eyes and taken over. And that other had no qualms about doing unspeakable things just to watch him scream and bleed. Dave had seen that look before, when he’d been out on patrol in the Alpha sector, near Earth. And it chilled him to the core seeing it coming from a boy he’d known for the last five years. A boy he’d helped rescue tadpoles from drainage puddles, for Christ’s sake.
Apparently satisfied with whatever he read in Dave’s eyes, the thing that wasn’t Vincent let him go and the boy slumped against him once more, barely conscious now. Not even sure what he was doing, Dave picked the boy up in his arms and headed out the front door. He still needed a medic, though Dave was convinced that a simple street doc wasn’t all that Vincent needed right now.
* * * * *
So, what do ya think? I also posted an excerpt kinda explaining the setting of my novel on the NaNo site. I thought a long excerpt post might make up for me saying pretty much nothing for the last almost two weeks. Oh, and the boy from the first thing I posted? Remember him? That's Vincent. :-D
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cheerful
creative
sleepy
depressed