Is it Tuesday again?!
May. 20th, 2008 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaMan, I need a break from the news. Not watching it any more. La la la I can't HEAR you!
Prayers and thoughts going out to Senator Ted Kennedy and his family. My father-in-law *and* his best friend and neighbor both were taken from this world by a similar condition (although theirs were metastatic from other parts of their bodies.) It stinks. La la LA, let's not think about that. Also, death toll rises in China. And Myanmar-formerly-Burma's crazy gov't finally admits it can't take care of the disaster, so they're going to let aid workers in, even though everybody's probably already dead or has malaria or whatnot. Florida is on fire. La, la, LA!!! *firmly covering ears with hands*
Instead of thinking about all that, let's inflict upon you the opening of a suspense novel that I was playing with yesterday. Two agents have told me that if I write a suspense novel, they'd like to see it. So I thunk, whaddahell, why not?
Jerry Dingeldorfer staggered into the Vegas Hilton's garishly huge lobby. The trip from Florida in his old junker of a Ford Escort had been tough, and would've been even if gasoline weren't $7 a gallon, but for the past couple of hundred miles the heat had been getting to him. A thermometer he'd glimpsed as he rolled down the Strip had read 110 . . . and that was in the shade of the buildings. The lobby was meatlocker-cold, though, so maybe his head would stop throbbing after a couple of Wallbangers.
His reservations were in order, for a change. The desk clerk perked up as she handed him the electronic cardkey to Room 888. "Oh! I think you have a message waiting. Wait, it's here somewhere." After a brief search, she came up with a large manila envelope.
Expecting it to be from his old buddy Dabney Curtis--the guy who'd wired him just enough funds to get out here so he could do some arranging and tweaking of scores for Dabney's "great new gig"--he accepted it without examining it and grabbed the handle of his luggage-on-wheels, waving away the bellhop. One of those sets of elevator banks ought to take him to a cool shower and clean sheets.
The elevator was packed. He wedged himself in just as the doors closed. The car started upwards, but then it jerked twice and the lights flickered. Everyone gasped. "Oh, my God!" shouted a Midwestern-looking matron into his ear. His eardrum went inside-out. But before she could shriek again, the lift started jerkily back up and everyone breathed out in unison.
Everyone else bolted from the elevator at the next stop. He rode the rest of the way up to eight alone. Glancing down at the envelope, he saw that it had a postmark from Portland, Maine. Not from Dabney? Then who? Nobody knew he was coming out here, especially not his sociopathic ex. She was supposed to communicate with him ONLY through that old windbag of a lawyer of hers (although she was a lawyer herself as well.)
In his room, he threw down his luggage and overcoat, then tore open the envelope. It contained a page that had come out of a computer printer using the old Macintosh "Ransom Note" font.
"Sorry about the ruse, Jer, but you weren't summoned by your old buddy from the glory days of the lounge lizards," it began. "I wanted you here so we could be together again. I've missed you. I knew you wouldn't come if you knew, so I arranged for this deception. Don't worry, you'll have a blast. So relax a while and wait for me to contact you. La-la! Love, Guess who!"
He blinked. Not a hallucination, because when he looked again, the page was still there. His fingers were numb. Behind the paper, stuck to it, was a strange doodle-graphic. It looked like the stick figure used in the kids' game "Hangman." Underneath were seven squares representing the word to guess. The first letter was filled in: "H."
He peeled the graphic off the note and stared. It had been stuck on with something really odd--maybe cherry pie filling or strawberry jam.
Now I'm waiting for the next scene to arrive. It's SUPPOSED to be here already *tapping foot*
Prayers and thoughts going out to Senator Ted Kennedy and his family. My father-in-law *and* his best friend and neighbor both were taken from this world by a similar condition (although theirs were metastatic from other parts of their bodies.) It stinks. La la LA, let's not think about that. Also, death toll rises in China. And Myanmar-formerly-Burma's crazy gov't finally admits it can't take care of the disaster, so they're going to let aid workers in, even though everybody's probably already dead or has malaria or whatnot. Florida is on fire. La, la, LA!!! *firmly covering ears with hands*
Instead of thinking about all that, let's inflict upon you the opening of a suspense novel that I was playing with yesterday. Two agents have told me that if I write a suspense novel, they'd like to see it. So I thunk, whaddahell, why not?
Jerry Dingeldorfer staggered into the Vegas Hilton's garishly huge lobby. The trip from Florida in his old junker of a Ford Escort had been tough, and would've been even if gasoline weren't $7 a gallon, but for the past couple of hundred miles the heat had been getting to him. A thermometer he'd glimpsed as he rolled down the Strip had read 110 . . . and that was in the shade of the buildings. The lobby was meatlocker-cold, though, so maybe his head would stop throbbing after a couple of Wallbangers.
His reservations were in order, for a change. The desk clerk perked up as she handed him the electronic cardkey to Room 888. "Oh! I think you have a message waiting. Wait, it's here somewhere." After a brief search, she came up with a large manila envelope.
Expecting it to be from his old buddy Dabney Curtis--the guy who'd wired him just enough funds to get out here so he could do some arranging and tweaking of scores for Dabney's "great new gig"--he accepted it without examining it and grabbed the handle of his luggage-on-wheels, waving away the bellhop. One of those sets of elevator banks ought to take him to a cool shower and clean sheets.
The elevator was packed. He wedged himself in just as the doors closed. The car started upwards, but then it jerked twice and the lights flickered. Everyone gasped. "Oh, my God!" shouted a Midwestern-looking matron into his ear. His eardrum went inside-out. But before she could shriek again, the lift started jerkily back up and everyone breathed out in unison.
Everyone else bolted from the elevator at the next stop. He rode the rest of the way up to eight alone. Glancing down at the envelope, he saw that it had a postmark from Portland, Maine. Not from Dabney? Then who? Nobody knew he was coming out here, especially not his sociopathic ex. She was supposed to communicate with him ONLY through that old windbag of a lawyer of hers (although she was a lawyer herself as well.)
In his room, he threw down his luggage and overcoat, then tore open the envelope. It contained a page that had come out of a computer printer using the old Macintosh "Ransom Note" font.
"Sorry about the ruse, Jer, but you weren't summoned by your old buddy from the glory days of the lounge lizards," it began. "I wanted you here so we could be together again. I've missed you. I knew you wouldn't come if you knew, so I arranged for this deception. Don't worry, you'll have a blast. So relax a while and wait for me to contact you. La-la! Love, Guess who!"
He blinked. Not a hallucination, because when he looked again, the page was still there. His fingers were numb. Behind the paper, stuck to it, was a strange doodle-graphic. It looked like the stick figure used in the kids' game "Hangman." Underneath were seven squares representing the word to guess. The first letter was filled in: "H."
He peeled the graphic off the note and stared. It had been stuck on with something really odd--maybe cherry pie filling or strawberry jam.
Now I'm waiting for the next scene to arrive. It's SUPPOSED to be here already *tapping foot*
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Date: 2008-05-21 07:11 pm (UTC)