New Novel drafts

“There was this old lady whose husband had died of lung cancer, and looked to her son as her sole reason to live. Then her son one day died in a car accident. Everywhere she went she would eventually bring it up. How she was in the kitchen making dinner when received the news, how she was too distraught to even take care of the burning pie in the stove, how she asked

, how it shook her belief in God and didn’t make her lose her faith. Nobody didn’t felt sorry. But her biggest problem was that, she never got over it, not even with the help of psychiatry. In society there’s this unspoken rule that no matter what you went through, how broken you are,
you should always fit in,


So inevitably everyone got tired of her spiel, and started to withdrew from her with their ‘oh so sorry’,

and amicable but firm rejections.

She could never find a workplace that accepted her behavior

And of course she shot herself a month later.

Then everybody had to act sorry again and pretend that they didn’t
They talked about how much

 that they didn’t think
So yeah that’s the story about the old lady. And what was I supposed to be talking about again? Oh yeah. To accept sympathy is to be weak.

You pick up yourself piece by piece and assemble them together with duct tape and superglue.



Abigail Snow was sitting on the bus seat, staring past the rain droplets sliding down the window, into a void of nothingness for a short, timeless eternity. She got off the bus in the pouring rain and started walking to the store on the other side of the street.

Anthony was imagining what would happen if he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, as he stared past the droplets sliding down the bus window into a void of nothingness. He was thinking about how he would load the bullets into the clip, but he realized where

He lifted on his backpack from the ground, put it on, and stood up from his seat. He stepped out of the bus door, and sat on the bench in the bus stop.

A dark rat, its soaked furs glistening under the street lights, skittered across the pavement and slipped into a gap out of sight.



People passing by with their umbrellas or raincoats were looking at him with curiosity. He acquiesced and took in the rain.

Droplets dripped from his wet spiky hair down his black leather jacket, into his jeans soaked with splotches. An old black woman was watching a news clip on her phone on her chair behind the panel of glass, and her eyes darted occasionally to the monitor with the surveillance footage in front of her.
Anthony picked up a random folded umbrella somewhere and placed it on the counter. The clerk tapped the screen, and shifted her eyes. “What’s a fine young man like you doing walking out there in the rain? You'll get pneumonia in this weather."
Anthony took out his wallet from the pocket while she said this, and was now fingering through what meager items there were. "I forgot my umbrella at a concert last Saturday, you know, in all the ruckus. I’m making this experience painful, so I won't make the same mistake next time." He placed a wrinkled bill down.
“You look like a soaked rag. Funny young fella.” Anthony took the change, and was about to proceed to the next scene of his gray life in that usual zombie lifestyle perfected and patented by the urban-dwelling nobodies, when a familiar melody made the hair stood on his neck. A feminine voice was humming the chorus of a favorite obscure band of his behind the shelf. He circled around. There stood a young woman dressed in
	, examining two brands of chocolate bars in each of her hands.
He strode forward, but stopped midway after realizing he now had all the charm of a soaked rag because of his attempt at self-flagellation. He smacked his forehead, turned around, and was leaving when the young woman noticed him.
“So you know the band
too?” She excitedly hurried through the sentence, “it’s an oldie, but it’s a good oldie.” Her eyes were lit up.
	“Yeah, they’re a good band. Their songs are good, and the guitarist is very skilled in creating catchy riffs. But I’m more of a
Punk guy myself.”
	“So you’re a guitarist too then?” She raised her voice.
	“Yeah, I mostly play by myself, I’m looking for a band to join. My previous band members weren’t interested in practicing the songs at all. The most they ever did for the band was posting pictures and cliché rock star quotes on their social media. They were more interested in getting p-, I mean wooing the ladies.” He chuckled awkwardly.
	To remedy the situation, he took out his phone. “Don’t believe me? Lemme find that video of that live concert I did.” He said as he smeared his wet fingers on his jeans. He opened the browser typed the words of his former band into the search bar, and slid through the results. “We uploaded lotsa videos, I wanna find the best one.” Her expectant stare made him restless. He settled on the best one – probably not the best one overall where he was showing off his skill at the expense of the band, he realized too late. Then it just happens that an omnipresent, tasteless ad of some short-lived mobile game blasted.
	“I’m sorry - you know, these ads. If I was ,” he made a joke. Just finish this video, get me outta here, and I’ll never see her again, he thought.


"Uhm, Abigail? I got a question."
"Shoot."
"How come is it that a fast food place like this is armed like a bank?"
"Oh, you mean the glass. I guess back then people traded commodities with each other over the air like "normal" people used to trade. One day someone looked at that mass of air between him and the cashier and thought to himself: Hmmm……How could I take advantage of that? With the entrepreneural spirit of innovation he came up with an ingenious idea, pulled out, pointed his gun, and ran away with a measly amount of money so he could live for, I guess, a week. Some people are just evil. It's always good to have some basic boundaries and walls around you. When I see a place without boundaries and walls I always see disaster on the horizon."
"But this is a fast food place."
Abigail
"I think I have your answer. You were only half-right, this is a fast food place. But this is a fast food place in Somerset."

On a Wednesday, A performed the usual ritual of charging her
when B asked the obvious, "It's weird. Why do you always only charge your card a bill at a time?"
"Inflation. In any country with a modern sensible mode of free market capitalism the central bank always maintains a steady rate of inflation to encourage consumption or investment and discourage savings. Therefore the value in this card depreciates in the long term. Every bill that is on this card is not a bill put in other investments that would appreciate."
A pressed the button on the machine and pulled her card out. They walked toward home. "Of course this is provided that they don't change the price of the services, which is a given since it's a public utility - it's been the same price for the last five years."
"Hmmm..." B reflexively put her hand over her mouth, and lowered her head to ponder. "You're wrong." B blurted in the elevator. "Whenever you charge the card you spend time. You know, walking to the machine, taking out the wallet and inserting a bill, so you spend less time if you charge your card full than partially. That time could be used on more productive activities that would bring you more benefits than the benefits you gain from inflation." The elevator doors opened.
A looked back at B with surprise, and walked out. "I uh...Wow. You're one of the first few people I met that's as peculiar as me. The last time I explained this to someone they just looked at me like I'm a freak."
"Well, they're not wrong. If every fucking person on this planet thinks I'm a freak might as well wear it as my badge." A turned the door keys.











	“You know, time as we know it, only exists in our head. It’s an idea, a concept we thought up to help us live our lives easier, man. There is only the now, the present, and that’s all that matters. The past is the now that has occurred, and the future is the now that will happen in the future. We all think kick the can down the road, leave the hard problems for tomorrow, cause it’s the future! But the future is now a few days later! The we in the future is the same as the we in the present moment!”
“You know what I think about all of this? I think Abigail put a little bit too much in this cake.” Matt dizzily pushed himself up with his arms from the couch into a standing position.
“Oh my fucking god,” Cliff took a step forward with his body hunched over, and took another step. “I think I’m having an existential fucking crisi-”, he slipped forward, and stretched out his arms to grab the table so as to not land on his face.



	“All of us fear death. I mean all of us, every person, every human, every creature ever from the dawn of the first creature who had a brain big enough to understand the concept of death. To fear death is to be human. But if we think about it with every second of our lives we’d be paralyzed so much that we’d die. So we distract ourselves, live a life of hedonism, do drugs, play video games, do anything except pondering over death. Or we create delusions of life after death, a homogenous heaven where a lobotomized multitude sing praises to a god. And we’re good at not fearing death – we’re all descendants of those who survived. If you obsess over it too much you’d get eaten by a lion, or you’d forgot to gather berries and hunt animals and starve to death.



	“Hmm, I think a secondary dominant here would work wonders.” Clifford
as he pored over the guitar tab. “What are all of you making that face for? I’m assuming a band of your degree of sophistication has at least a passing knowledge of basic music theory.
Chromaticism? Borrowed chords? Anyone here know what I’m talking about?”
Clifford scowled and stood up from his chair. “This is one of those situation where I’m the only one around who has basic knowledge of what we’re supposed to be doing again, isn’t it? Ok, Smaragda, ” Clifford the drill instructor pointed his finger and dictated, “for the second chord instead of a major chord, shift the middle note down half a step, and play a minor one. There, now this chord progression has some of that weird feeling, and isn’t as ‘boring’ as before isn’t it? Instead of a major chord in the key you play a minor chord sometimes, for a minor key vice versa, that’s a borrowed chord. That way you used 12 notes instead of 7 notes, that’s chromaticism. There’s passing notes, chromatic mediants, and a lot more but let’s end the class for today.”
“Oh! You mean doing this gimmicky thing and playing out of key!” exclaimed. He began strumming Clifford’s chord progression and was now adding his own flair. “Sorry man, I knew exactly what you were talking about only that I didn’t have your fancy vocabulary terms to describe it. I’d appreciate it if you’d speak English next time.”



“Yeah yeah, Puritanism. You want to know why I helped that gave half of my sandwich to that homeless dude on the subway? I did it because I have a big fucking ego, I have a selfish desire to be a good person, and it feel SO GOOD to get my ego stroked when I know I’m remembered by others as a good person. I did it because I could collect my one-time ‘get-out-of-jail’ free card when I litter because I don’t need another receipt every time I purchase a chocolate bar. I did it because I have an image to uphold, so I could sell more merch. What do you care what I think, as long as he gets his free lunch.”
“I once tried taking a philosophy class in college and dropped it because my squalid condition precluded the prospect of apprehending further the more cultivated consciousness of the human condition, me-fucking-thinks.”


I sat down
“That’s how it was at the beginning I guess. It’s a secondhand account, so don’t take my word for it. You are a skilled journalist, so I assume you are familiar with how unreliable biographical memory is.” S took a swig of tea from a bland white mug.


“He also read a lot of novels for fun, and not of the ordinary bestselling, light reading kind. Most of them were literary classics you’d expect a literary academic to read. His favorite was the works of Dostoyevsky. I think the band’s original name was going to be ‘Demons’ or ‘the Possessed’, after the novel. Abigail, in her usual fashion, dissented with him, and pointed out that it doesn’t fit the tone of our repertoire. He even managed to pick up some elementary Russian and held conversations with some Russian-speaking people, the topic and level of which I have no idea. Inevitably, I had to do some heavy reading in order to reach his wavelength, which was probably the most valuable thing I got out of the band.”
“There are two kinds of Dostoyevsky readers: readers who walk away from the book wiser for they had witnessed a tragedy occur, and realize that a part of these tragic heroes exists in all of us. And then, the kind of insufferable pricks who empathized with the protagonists of the story and wound up more miserable than they had been. You know, they’re the kind of people who are – uh, fucked up in the head, who completely miss the point of Catcher in the Rye and Taxi Driver. It should be obvious what kind of reader he is. So I wasn’t surprised when that fatal incident happened. I expected something of that tragic nature to occur to him, eventually.”


"So, "
"It was a really heartfelt song that I wrote about the"

"I think it's really popular because sometimes people just have this fascination - no, obsession with death, Freud called it the death drive I think? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. You know it's like that comic book villain who decided to kill half of the universe just so he could impress Death because he's in love with her. I think for people living on the edge - there's this obsession with death cause it's right around the corner for us, do or die, all-or-nothing. You either live your life as a rockstar, burn fast, and die in some hotel of an OD, or you live your life as a nameless dot concealed in a crowd, raise a family and work a 9-to-5 job and die anyway because of cancer, heart attack, or some other reason."
He lifted up his head and stared outside of the window pane on his right side. Out of nowhere three pathetic seagulls decided to commit suicide, and threw their heads against the window pane. There was a series of muffled thuds.
"But isn't that a bit too black-and-white"


Suddenly the reporter was on fire.
"Do you, uh, tend to do that? Spontaneous combustion?" The fumes of burning plastic coming from the reporter's couch was irritating Andrew's eyes and noses, and making him cry.
"Yeah. The doctor says I have this condition of spontaneous combustion after I burned down my school's bathroom when I was young. Please keep it a secret from my wife and daughter. You said it yourself, we all die eventually, so why not become a beautiful firework while we're at it?" The sprinkler in the room then started to spray water, dousing everything, "Ah, sprinklers, modern life's greatest invention for saving lives."
"Hmmm, everything seems to be wet now. Does it mean this interview is ruined? Did you back up your notes on a cloud or do we have to do this all over again?"
""

"Ok, I guess I should leave." Andrew opened the window, stepped his right foot on the frame, grabbed the top of the panel with both of his arms, and jerked his other leg on the frame, ready to jump down. The view from a height of ten floors was making him nauseous. "Nah, if Abigail found out that I killed myself, she'd probably kill me. Not today I guess."



, and met Abigail holding a half eaten chocolate bar in her hand.
“Hi, Abigail, it’s been a while.” Andrew remarked casually.
“”
“”


Andrew pulled out his gun and shot her in the chest.

She glared at Andrew, her eyes widely open in surprise and disbelief. She rapidly took in a few breathes, then fell face forward. She clutched his jacket, and was holding her upper half body up, but her grip loosened, her body turned, and she laid face up on the ground.
The spot of red was now spreading across her clothes, and she was now coughing up blood.

She was now gurgling a mouth full of blood. The voice was now sickening to his ears, so Andrew aimed his gun at her head and fired.








“There’s a difference between what you believe in and what the church believes in. One’s flesh and blood and one’s an institution. That’s why we keep church from state.”
“You ever read the Acts in it entirety? The parts where everyone shared what they had, where they stood up to Herod and broke out of prison,
If
Came here again he’d be a called a hippie, a socialist. He’d fucking wreck the
Of those preachers on TV.”

Andrew could always bring to mind clearly every little feeling and other minutiae of the moment that changed his life, but couldn’t remember the exact time and date. He was returning to his home with a plastic bag filled with groceries and snacks when his phone rang. It was an unknown number.
“Hello, is this the brother of Mr.
? This is officer
speaking”
Andrew closed his eyes and sighed, “Yes, this is. What did my brother do this time?” He stood before the zebra crossing, looking both ways for any traffic.
“Sir, I am sorry to inform you, that”

“We think it was probably an overdose: There were needles on the floor, his pupils were the size of a pin, and his arm…you know.”
“Nothing. I’ll…come by later to the station. I’m…now doing…something. I can’t say I didn’t expect this.”

He laid his hand with the phone down. His entire mind was now blotted out with a large blank nothing. A countless amount of cars and pedestrians around him must have passed him by on their way while he just stood there. He heard and saw everything around him and nothing around him at the same time.
It was until a while that he realized that the ice cream sandwiches in his bags were melting in this weather. He robotically moved his legs forward on the way home out of habit. He opened the door, stuffed the entire plastic bag into the freezer, threw the keys and the phone on the table, and laid down on the couch. His arms and legs were splayed out in a careless fashion, and his face was frozen with an emotionless expression. He was staring past the skyline of the city into that nothingness again.
He recognized his copy of Gone with the Wind out of the corner of his right eyes on the couch. His blank eyes laid upon the thick weathered book. He stretched out his arm, and hoisted the book in front of his face. He flipped through the pages, looking at every word and reading nothing.
“But can’t I bring my DS with me?” Andrew was now standing in Dad’s garage and his brother was beckoning Dad with his child voice.(use pout here?)
“No video games. This is a camping trip.” Dad was now lifting a large, black suitcase into the trunk. “Why don’t you bring a book with you like Andrew?”
“”


Andrew peered out the window from the shotgun seat as the buildings gave away to soaring pines

He smiled and let the cool sensation of wind blow past his arm.




“How come is it you’re always reading that book? Gone With the Wind? Is it very difficult? Like the Bible?”
“No, I always couldn’t find the time to finish this book. Something would come up, homework, exams, sports, and I would have to stop reading this book, to do that something. And when I had to reread it again I forgot the feeling of most of the chapters and I have to read it all over again.”


Dad was drinking from a stainless steel cup.
“It’s pine needle tea, do you-” The phone was blasting one of his favorite songs he set as his ringtone. He stared at the phone, still sitting there with same emotionless expression, and the limbs carelessly splayed out. Then the phone rang, and rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. He simply grunted and shoved his body up from the couch with his arms. He leaned his arm on the table and slouched forward as he walked to the phone and picked it up. The caller was
“”













“You know what,” Matt stopped midway,“I think we should take the subway this time.”
“Wait, we’re not taking your car?” Andrew asked the obvious.
“No offense to the guy who sold me this car, but I don’t wanna go there in this piece of trahs. Now that we got the money, we gotta get the style.”
So they parked the car around the closest station and took the subway.




“How about Fuk Lung’s? If you haven’t tried their wonton soup, you gotta try it. I would say it’s the best you’ll find in this city. I heard they finally finished renovating.”
“”





 “HEY ANDREW!” The amount of restaurant chatter around them was very loud, and Jim had to raise his volume. “WHAT WAS IT YOU SAID ABOUT THE
AGAIN? THAT THEY WERE
? I LIKE YOUR JOKES, YOU COULD BE GREAT AT PARTIES IF YOU TALKED MORE!”
“u don hav to yell Jim jus text is ok”, Andrew took out his phone and typed.
Jim read the message, and slammed his phone down. “WELL I’M SORRY FOR NOT BEING AN ANTISOCIAL PRICK! WHEN I WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE ELSE I DO IT FACE-TO-FACE WITH MY VOICE! YOU KNOW WHAT? FORGET IT. THIS IS NO PLACE FOR A CONVERSATION!”
“Of course, it isn’t. You’re not supposed to talk much when you’re eating in the first place.” Abigail was pouring the vinegar into her small dish.
“Sorry it took a while, there weren’t any spots around the block for the the car.” Matt took the last seats around the table, “is Jim acting out of turn again?”
“no he said he like my joke”, Andrew typed again.

“Why is this taking so long?” Abigail stood up from her chair and scoured the restaurant for any waiter heading in their direction.

The waiter came to the corner of the table, and laid down one by one the four bowls of soup. Tendrils of steam slowly rose above the bowl
Abigail grinned and licked her upper lip. She bent forward, closed her eyes and took in a deep , audible sniff. “I think we need to say a prayer to the god of wonton soup to express our gratitude in receiving such a divine blessing. This kind of mouth-watering,
must be the act of a god, probably one of those forgotten primordial deities in ancient China in the age of cavemen.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in god?” Matt was now fishing a wonton into his spoon with his chopsticks.
“No. I just don’t think ”