[REDACTED] Chapter Two - At the Bottom for those reading the new Winston Novel with me.
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First, this is Sides Of The Spectrum. A short story about… I’ll let you use your imagination. It was featured on souledidea.com last week and then featured in Rocky’s recent publication of War Kitchen [The Single Greatest Publication to Hit Our Modern Day Internet]
To further, I, among with beautiful girl I read and show War Kitchen to, are decisive in our opinion that Rocky, as a designer and creator, is ahead of his time. We’re in early.
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Sides Of The Spectrum
She sits on the leather couch with stilt legs twisted over each other. On the coffee table is a glass jar with coffee that looks like a milkshake. She’s pairing the caffeine shake with a double chocolate muffin which, due to her inconsistent picking, has started to crumble on the wooden table top. Her eyes are bright. Moist. Wet with the beginnings of tears. The sun, through a wall of windows surrounding her, lands its shine on the water between eyelids.
The slow going fan above us gives a steady chill and before long I look at my arms to see the hairs pointed to the ceiling. I rub them, trying to find warmth and comfort but everything is frigid. It’s as if some metaphysical source of heat has been sucked through the door and is rushing further and further from us.
I’m in a chair to the side that half spins and I use that feature to distract from gnawing thoughts of false hope, doom, a signature on the line of Regret. I’m trying to keep all of these beliefs inside. I’m trying not to spoil someone else’s day.
Beside her is a good man.
He’s viceless - on the surface. A trait I’ve never trusted and one that I look at with eyes squinted. I always assume there’s a pile of skeletons hidden under the floorboards of the home of a man like this.
The best serial killers know to show a hint of public vice - smoking, drinking, degeneracy. Too squeaky clean and the reflection becomes bright, the actions glare in an onlookers face and those deeper habits are disguised under something more approved. His perfect skin glows in the sun much like her tear hinting eyes. His muffin is still intact without so much as a single crumb escaping.
Watching him watch her and watching myself at the same time wondering ‘what’s he thinking,’ while it’s likely he’s watching her wondering the same - what’s she thinking? Because appealing her, nodding in agreement with her has become just as important as water to him.
A loud cackle from a nearby table.
Two college aged girls in hoodies with hair pulled up point and laugh at something on the blonde ones screen. Their laugh is fingernail on chalk and they, unaware of this, roar their heads back to sing the song of the unencumbered even louder.
I pull my attention from their jokes. I turn back to the man and woman on the couch. I sigh. I look at my own shoes. I look at my own thoughts,
‘how wild is it, people are so close in physical proximity but their attitudes are a universe away.’
I take a sip of my coffee that the barista assaulted with honey and the liquid on lips gives me something to focus on.
One more glance to my right at the laughter, one more glance to my left at the longing and one last thought of, “oh to be human,” before I exhale all air in my body, melt in the chair and look up to the soft turning fan.
— Winston, Souled Idea, Voodoo Child.
Thank you for the feedback last week. Especially Matt Desmond with this insight. Exactly the type of stuff I’m looking for / using to go forward. It helps he’s also a talented writer of the societies underbelly. The type of man to feel at home in the underground and macabre.
The inner dialogue is essentially; writing how I think. Everyone has this ability. When talking to other people, you’re in your brain, wondering about what they’re saying, analyzing their sentences, etc. Writing this helps the reader humanize the narrator.
Especially good for 1st person story telling.
NOW:
[REDACTED]
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CHAPTER TWO
“I don’t think you’ll find it at the bottom of those.”
“I know I won’t. This is a tool for surgery. A scalpel of sorts to get through the exterior. The forceps are whiskey. Vodka is still just vodka. The Russians got that one pure and right.”
He opts for lightheartedness and cracks a smile. I’m thankful. A stranger's smile is a more powerful tool in this journey than any vice. What makes you grin, American? The Germans don’t do it as much as us. But we don’t touch as much as the Italians. In this country we call that sexual assault. These things… culture and society. An ecosystem.
He’s still wearing a fading smile while starting back up,“you gotta good head on your shoulders, son. I’m Randy, what do they call you?”
Randy is a man of disproportionate size. Circumference and height are too close to the same number for him to ever be perceived as Fit, or Healthy. His face is trusting but tough. Bartender physiognomy (outside of Brooklyn.) Denim pants, loose under his belt. Wearing what must be a favorite T-shirt, as it looks like it has quite the social life as well. Thick hands, calloused by something much more physical than pouring drinks. Factory or farm work. The row of mill houses I passed early hinted at a brief industrial period in the area. Likely employing 75% of the local population less than four generations ago. It seems he caught the tail end of this era, rough hands to be expected, before the normal became long and boney - built for typing on a computer.
He’s a man of the Physical Generation.
I tell him what they call me. The greeting. Physical thus formal. This is when a conversation can kick start or flame out. The latter is always the option if wanting things to get weird. Sometimes silence wins. That happens when the conversation counterpart is ruled as boring. On the hunt for the Heart of America, I’m trying to abandon that belief. Say yes to everything. Let the locals spice life as I know it. It’s impossible to know which shadows she’ll peak from. Her beautiful truths, comfortable in the softest hues of our Land. The Heart may be hiding in the memory of the nearest mechanic. It’s best to overturn every rock.
My shadow says, I must be open minded. I must be open minded. I must be…
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