Excerpt 1

Outside the bar down one address to the street corner, a gust of October wind flipped through a sodden newspaper headed 2017 The Pacific Rose. It is a newspaper local to Rose City; capital of Calington in the United Federation of Columbia. There’s an article on weather, a new line of smartphones, some opinion piece about the next president cleaning up the current’s final third term. It’s a successful paper, so naturally next to each store sat a clear-bagged stack of copies.

As one approached the bar, they may have noticed that while the bar is well-maintained, if they squinted enough in just the right spot, painted over graffiti hints in the walls could be traced out as they approached the red-lettered and black-bordered NO MINORS sign fixed next to the bar’s rectangular glass door.

The darkness within - pocketed by yellow-gold islands, purveying occult visages of cold glass bottles embraced each by the eclectic seclusion of individualistic cursive shapes, gilded muggy with tepid light - coveted a singular content of the seemingly knife-defiled unspeaking tongue-mouths of the barstools’ dark, glossy, red-cushioned wood.

The bar had a respectable clientele size; it was a decent place with a noise level at a sweet spot where one did not have to speak loudly to be heard, yet secrets may creep unheard amongst the moderate din. Normally, a study would require a sampling of hundreds or thousands to say something definite, yet like a size chart showing a mouse next to a lynx or perhaps an outdated evolution chart with sketches defiled by unknown anarchists of great talent, those who sat consumed by drink within their mouth-chairs seemed a suitable population sample to enshrine the singular entity who sat at the peak of her chair as if it were -
<i>Her?
His?
Definitely not his, now the body fully seen
… Its.
Its?
Her.</i>
- her tongue;
Lucille’s tongue.