A Book… My Book… No One No Where.
So I am going to start putting the book I’ve been writing up here. It’s been a sort of secret project of mine now for a bunch of years. Something like 6 or so I think at this point… It’s slow going. I write when I feel inspired. And I want to start pushing my self to write more. So I thought I would at least put it somewhere were people can read it. I got the initial idea many years ago while driving on the 5 to LA. The characters and general themes came slowly and have changed over time… but here it is. If you do in fact read this and know me, or even don’t, I would love feedback. Be warned though I will sometimes go back and drop entire chapters so don’t be surprised if I delete something…. So without further ado Chapter 0. (ps I use minimal punctuation)
No One Nowhere
by j. (me)
Chapter 0: The end of the world, or the center of it?
The car stopped suddenly. She opened her eyes slowly startled by the light around her. The last time her eyes were open the sun had just been setting and there was no way it was day already. She could feel the cold from the outside rush in and then stop abruptly with a thump of the car door. Her husband had stopped for gas and she didn’t know where she was at or what highway she was on. She looked back at her son in the back seat. Still out like a light. Thank god, she thought, getting him to sleep in the first place was a nightmare and if he woke up now it would be impossible to get him back down, he would be too excited. She got up softly and put her husbands sweater that was draped over her legs around her shoulders. Damn did she have to pee! She opened up the door and stepped out into the cold-micro-city-of-nowhere. Two am in the morning and it was as bright as day, and with as many people around as if they were in the square of some small town on a Saturday afternoon. She looked bleary eyed over to her husband, who looked as though he would fall down at any moment if he hadn’t been leaning up against the cold car. Honey, I am going in to get some food. She said in a soft but firm tone, still thinking that her son might wake up. Do you want anything? No he said, hoarse as if his voice were new that day and he was still getting used to using it.
She walked away quickly toward the large sliding doors, almost in a run to escape the cold on her legs and feet. She did not know where they were nor did she care she needed to pee and get warm and that was all that was on her mind. The doors slid open and she walked in. Even brighter than the outside, her eyes squinted to adjust.
It was a large convenient store with the usual random corn syrupy drenched starches oozing promises of cancer wrapped nicely and neatly in plastic with the latest X cartoon character on the outside to entice children and piss parents off. She scanned the market area. To the left was a restaurant. The entrance to which was inside of the store. Weird she though. The restaurant looked old, with fake wood veneer and old brass fixtures on everything for decoration, rusted, falling off and gross. The floor changed from stark white of the store to old brown-ish tile of the restaurant, it was probably red at some point.
The contrast to the store was severe and stark. The “Eatery” seemed to be the only place in the whole “rest stop” that was dark and not plastic, the only light that she could see was coming from old green lamps hanging over the the tables. She couldn’t see the back of the restaurant from where she was at and it looked like it went on forever to nowhere. She saw a clock over the bar and thought it read 1:05 or 1:08.
She ran to the front counter. The young girl behind the counter looked either 13 or 30. She couldn’t tell. The lights or her eyes, were playing tricks on her she thought. Either way the girl didn’t look up. Where is the bathroom she said softly still thinking her son was close. The girl didn’t speak. She just pointed a thin finger to a far corner of the store. She thanked her and ran off.
In the back of the store was a long corridor, with tiles lining the walls and floors, it smelled of mothballs, bleach and piss. A maintenance closet in the back, read Employees Only and on either side open winding entrances into MALE and FEMALE restrooms.
She walked in.
She wouldn’t walk out.
She would miss her son the most.
Chapter 0.5:
A hydrogen atom somewhere really god damn far away, got pushed a little too hard and got a little too excited for its own good….. after awhile though it calmed down and went about its business…. A resulting packet of light jettisoned. It flew hard and fast through the black void. It eventually pierced a dense layer of oxygen and nitrogen and only sorta slowed down a little, relatively speaking. It eventually entered a dirty window somewhere, and made a slight left, barely making it through all the dust and hit the back of her eye, hard and sharp.
Fuck, she thought. That hurts.
Her head pounded. Her short brown hair was already sweaty from the heat that invaded her room. Her work clothes laid on the floor, mixed with the clean, the dirty, and the in between. She sort of remembered working the night before, and she sort of remembered drinking and she sort of remembered fucking…. so she sort of got up and she sorta tried not to think too hard.
Water. I need water.
