Eh

So I’ve sort of hit a rough patch with the Detective bit, but I’m far from being done with that mother, it’s just figuring out how to get from point A to point Zed now. So in the mean time, I’m going to do something I always thought was fun, which was do a first person gonzo-esque journal type thing, with the alias Malcolm as my Raul Duke. So just in case you’re wondering why this Malcolm guy is such a dick, it’s because it’s little old mwa.

Detective Antipathy, Chapter One Part Four

My eye was drawn to a small, pulpy comic book with a man in a black and white suit and a domino mask, reaching dramatically for his oh-so out of reach 50 caliber revolver on the floor as his limbs were constricted by a monstrous looking, green octopus. Bold, yellow letters blazed: DETECTIVE ANTIPATHY: ISSUE 57 just above his grey fedora hat. Below his gloved hand outstretched for his revolver read: WILL THE DETECTIVE ESCAPE THE CLUTCHES OF THE SQUID MASTER??!!

I had never seen anything so stupid. And I felt even stupider than that at the fact that I was looking at the thing like a 50 dollar bill on the sidewalk. I have no idea why, the stupid name, the obvious ploy to make drooling, slow-witted spoiled brats make their parents buy the issue by placing the main character in ridiculous dramatic peril on the front cover, as if there was no way for a six foot five, 200 pound man armed to the teeth to escape from the clutches of a piece of calamari.

Detective Antipathy, Chapter One Part Three

I was just getting some groceries. A cheap steak to fry up at the end of the week, some cherry pop, milk, corn flakes, miscellaneous fruits and vegetables that end up sitting in my fridge for months, going rotten before I ever bring myself to eating them. It was all going according to routine when this tall, blonde woman packed in a low-cut white dress strutted towards me in the cereal isle and I didn’t want her to get uncomfortable and think I was ogling her, so I did a turn-around and changed my route to the register to go through the magazine isle. Back at home; they didn’t have magazines like this at the supermarkets. Skin-mags, Tijuana-Bibles, comic books, pulp books. All the most blush-ensuing sex and violence one could imagine and suburban mothers wheel their toddlers right through it in their shopping carts to get to the Captain Crunch.

I’ve never bought a magazine in my life, or a comic-book for that matter. My Father was a very strict Baptist preacher, and was one of the main organizers of our town’s yearly comic book burning. One of my friends lent me an issue of Captain Explosion and my Mother found it hanging out of my back-pack after school. She nearly disowned me and probably would have if I hadn’t promised to make it up to God by spending all of my after-school time and week-ends volunteering at the church. I hadn’t even read a single panel of the thing and my parents were beating me raw and apologizing to Jesus for me...needless to say I’ve never even thought about getting anywhere near this aisle.

Detective Antipathy, Chapter One Part Two

What brought me here, crumpled on my kitchen floor like a squished bug, is just like all the evil things my parents warned me about before I left home. I didn’t listen to their voices ringing in the back of my head when I decided to have a glass of wine with dinner, and then that snowballed into me turning into a lousy, good for nothing drunk. One day I’m on top and in control, heading for a promotion, and then I’m throwing up on a crime scene and getting booted from the police force and losing everything I’d worked towards since my early twenties, and dreamed of since kindergarten, when I scribbled a picture of myself as a grown up police officer in blue crayon, with a big, fat, yellow badge hanging off my chest. I'm wondering how everything would have been different if I just listened to the voices of my mother and father like I did back then. I should’ve listened to then. At the supermarket.

Detective Antipathy, Chapter One Part One

I’ve got a feeling it isn't going to be a good day. In that place between sleeping and waking I shuffle a bit to find myself not in bed, but on the ground, and sticking to the floor like sweaty flesh on a hot leather car seat in July. The alarm clock buzzes at me from my bedroom and I try to ignore it and all of the aches that come with fully waking up. That’s when I open my eyes to find myself in a puddle of sticky blood. I must’ve been out for hours because it’s a weird shade of maroon-brown and kinda stained my linoleum kitchen floor like Hershey‘s chocolate syrup. I shift a little on the ground in an attempt to sit up and instantly regret it. Pains in parts of my body I didn’t even know existed shatter through me like what was left of the blood in my veins was replaced with shards of glass. My eyes squeeze shut as a burning tear rips down my face, stinging all of the open wounds on my cheek like rubbing alcohol. A loud expletive tries to fly out of my mouth before I notice my jaw is wiggling on the lower half of my head like a loose tooth.

This is when I start wondering if any of my brains got scrambled up on the trip from standing on two feet in one piece, to quivering on the ground in eighty. I ask the typical questions someone would ask if I wasn't so alone and friendless. What year is it? Who’s president? What’s your name? I pause a little too long on the first two, but more or less get everything right, so a smile stretches over however many teeth are left in my face at the silver lining that at least I’m still USDA prime in between the ears. Then my mind flashes back to the last year and all of the stupid shit I’ve done to get me here and I lament on whether my brains were ever that good in the first place. Christ, I deserve it all.

What Will Happen Will Happen

So I'm gonna just give a bit of a run down as to what I'm going to be using this for. This god-forsaken bit of web-space is to be my thrice-weekly updated journal for my short-stories, not so short stories, and malice-filled, raspberry diet-snapple fueled rants about how the world should stop being so selfish and closed-minded and will only begin the healing-process when everyone listens to me and does everything I say.

For the past few years I've been on and off writing recreationally, and keeping an ongoing journal regularly and writing more oft should be really good for me as a writer, and might just help me grow from 'okay, not quite crap' to the ever coveted level above.

My goals for the next month include finishing a few of my short stories that have been sitting in the corner of my brain unfinished for the last few months, and continue work on my more long-term stories, including my ever-fledgling crime-fiction novel and my teleplay about the woes of a traditionalist news anchor.

At the very least it'll be some good target practice for when I really start writing not crap.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

This is not a test.