Writing Exercise
This is reposted from a blog I maintain elsewhere.
I’m currently reading Slippage, a collection of stories by kick-ass author Harlan Ellison. I’ve noticed a trend in his writing, in that much of it starts off like an essay, and then moves slowly into the story itself. It’s an interesting approach, and a nice way of setting up some background so the reader doesn’t feel like he’s going into the story cold.
This particular bit is inspired by these two entries from my moleskine: "Society in which people shave all of their body hair out of fear of a plague. Fashions arise around adornment of shaved heads, eyebrows, etc." and "In plague story, a body is found with a full head of hair that causes a man to question his world."
I don’t expect to develop this idea completely here, so I’ll probably use it again later.
Also be aware that some of the language in this is not child-friendly.
The fire, reported in news outlets across the Pan-Continental Republic, cost six lives and caused an additional seventeen injuries, all of which were dutifully recorded on the appropriate forms, stored in the appropriate folders, and filed in the appropriate filing cabinets in the Capital Central Records Repository.
Fourteen blocks burned, all of it prime real estate that was the subject of a local revitalization project, long opposed by a coalition of neighborhood residents who characterized it as a gentrification effort and not one meant to encourage local prosperity.
The jury, almost literally, was still out as to the exact nature of the project. The judge who presided over the last hearing, the fourth attempt by the neighborhood coalition to block the project, was deliberating when the fire started. He later stated that, had the fire not rendered much of the issue irrelevant, he would have found in favor of the neighborhood activists.
A long-abandoned sub-basement of the library, obscured until after the fire by plaster and paint, was discovered by clean-up crews pulling away the wreckage so that the chic bistro the developers had planned for could be built. It had been concealed, covered over during a time when the library was remodeled fifty years before, without removing its contents, like an ancient tomb. Saving the contents for the afterlife.
Many of these documents have anecdotal historic value, as they provide interesting snapshots of the world half a century in the past. Among them, and featured as a "human interest" story on PCR news feeds, was the story of a private investigator who raised a stink in local politics when he insisted that the government had invented the Vindus-Kopelli Plague, known then as V186, to control the populace.
Journal Entry – June 13 – Friday – 0400
Cops woke me up to look at a body in the street. Said it had some "interesting" features.
Understatement of the year.
Dunn was unceremoniously ripped from pleasant dreams by the pounding scream of his phone. Police frequency. It meant steady work, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to wake up to. He fumbled with the small device, oriented the speaker the right way, and muttered nearly incoherently into the receiver.
"What?"
"Dunny! Good morning, sunshine!"
"Jackson. Name’s not ‘Dunny,’ it’s ‘Dunn,’ and it’s three-thirty in the goddamned morning."
"We need you. Car’s outside to pick you up."
"Fuck you, Jackson. I work daytime hours."
"Five minutes, Dunny, and I send ‘em up to get you. I’ll get you a cup of coffee for your troubles. See you soon. Good-bye, Dunny."
Swearing under his breath, Dunn sat up and put his feet on the floor. The concrete beneath his toes was cold. Neon freezing cold. The environmental controls were likely not functioning, since it shouldn’t been that cold in June. Didn’t matter how far north you lived, the Republic was not cold in June.
Making a mental note to call the landlord when he and the rest of the world were up, Dunn pulled on a pair of thick socks and padded across the apartment to his couch, overstuffed leather covered in papers spilling forth from open manila folders. As a kid, he used to call them vanilla folders. Didn’t change the taste of what was inside, though. Cheating spouses. Employees and employers stealing what wasn’t rightfully theirs. Each manila folder belched forth stories of jealousy, hatred, and greed. Stories he was paid to surreptitiously record and pass along to another person brimming with much of the same.
Pushing the distasteful stories aside, Dunn leaned back in the couch and closed his eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration before sitting up and putting on his shoes. Non-slip soles helped at crime scenes. You never knew what you’d be walking through.
A loud thumping sound echoed through the apartment, followed by a muffled voice. Cops trying to sound threatening.
"Mister Williams! You have one minute to exit the premises or we will force this door open!"
"Hold yer fuckin’ horses! I gotta make myself pretty." Dunn opened the front door of the apartment on the way to the bathroom, admitting two uniformed cops in heavy gear. Typical for this part of town, especially at this hour.
Staring into the mirror, Dunn ran a hand over his bald head. The monochromatic design that had been so fresh and edgy twenty years ago was hardly the height of fashion anymore. Now the fashion was bright colors. Bright colors and shifting designs. New pigments that faded and changed color in predetermined ways blew away the old ways of showing your personal style. Dunn didn’t care much about that anymore. The march of technology was fine. He just didn’t care how he looked.
These cops probably did. Under those carbon and steel riot helmets, Dunn was sure he’d find subtle hues of color pulsating across the officers’ bald heads. Half the cops he knew took the job because of control issues, while the other half did it to get laid. A woman loves a man in uniform. That was as true now as it was when Dunn’s father had said it to him.
Journal Entry – June 13 – Friday – 0400 (continued)
Jackson says to keep it quiet. Word gets out, panic starts up. Hard to keep things orderly in the street if people think a carrier is in the city.
"Dunny!"
"Call me that one more time Jackson, and I swear I’ll break your fuckin’ nose."
For the briefest moment, Detective Jaskson’s scarred face contorted in hatred, before the squat thug of a man regained his composure and addressed Dunn more cordially.
"Guess we’re not on friendly terms anymore. No matter. Got a body you gotta look at, but you need to know a few things. First-"
"You promised coffee. Where’s the coffee?" Jackson again looked briefly irritated, but quickly smiled and motioned for an officer to provide what he’d promised.
"Can I get you a morsel, to eat? Perhaps a cupcake?"
"I don’t know. What do bottom-rung detectives eat at this hour?"
An officer in a red cap–traffic control–brought Dunn a foam cup of coffee and then went back to gazing at the cars, whipping through the air like skittish fish when a six year-old pounds on the aquarium. The coffee was gourmet. Made sense. You got the best coffee here, but usually only during the day. Most people scuttled home after dark these days, at least in the cities. Dunn had heard that it was different out in the country, but had never witnessed it for himself.
"Okay, Jackson," said Dunn, gazing at an assembled crowd of police officers, hovering like flies over a tarp-covered body, "Why don’t you show me what you dragged me out of bed for?"
