This summer I picked the project up again. As is often the case with my strange fiction projects, I wasn't sure where it was going to go for some time after I had put the first words down. I had worked out the outcome and drafted the next section by my thirty-fifth birthday. I had decided by then to work it into a scope of stories, big and small, collectively called "The Anythieves", a name I was given in a dream about ten years ago, related to another story. The shared universe of this story cycle has connections of characters from plot to plot, and slides liberally around through time, exploring diferent themes. I am including below the first two sections of "Around Eleven".
Cap Mango, a Commentor to this blog and a Good Friend, has set an interesting challenge for himself in his desire to participate in a month-long writing contest. See his blog, "The Seven Day Quest" for more details on NaNoWriMo.
While plans didn't work out for Cap this year, he has resolved to be in training for next year and is writing towards that end. In a show of solidarity, I have resolved to complete two of my projects in The Anythieves Cycle- Around Eleven, and One Night At Goodman's Place. I will be posting on that project soon.
Enjoy the excerpts. I will write more on the cycle shortly.
gargh =:]
The headlights of passing cars became spotlights that played across the smooth surface of another place. As the light paused and hung for a moment in the corner of the room, a man stepped from the shadows and brought with him the hand, and arm, and body of a tall woman. Her platinum hair was piled high over a graceful neck and a delicately exposed back. Her gown fell in shimmering waves of silver that caught highlights from the mirror on my nightstand.
They danced to the rhythm the night played outside my window. They spun and swayed with the rattle of trucks. They caressed and held each other in time to the arguments of my upstairs neighbors. Finally, they waltzed to the sultry blues of a well-timed, out-of-work musician practicing his saxophone on a fire escape down the alley.
The couple was joined by the shadows of cats dancing across a chain link fence. The figures moved to their music in perfect ballroom form. The flashing lights of a tow truck caused a crowd to form on the dance floor, swirling around, with them.
***
The man and the woman stepped out onto the dance floor and began their swirling circuit through the crowd. At first, all he could think about was how radiant she looked. Their movements were without conflict or hesitation, as they swayed and shifted together through the others just outside the shifting spotlights.
Anyone watching would assume the couple had danced many such dances in many such clubs on many such nights. No one watching would have guessed how his heart had leaped earlier that evening when the man saw the woman by the bar, ordering that too-dry martini. No one watching would know how the light catching the silver lines of her gown had sent electricity to his brain and had seized his tongue. No one watching would have known her heartbreak, or the soothing balm his quite-shy smile had laid on her soul. No one watching would know that they had just met. No one watching would know that their trip across the dance floor was a means to avoid the distraction of crippling, awkward, conversation, as much as the result of the attraction that drew her hand to his hand, and his arm to her waist.
But even as he moved with her, danced with her, and was lost in her, the man became drawn outside of his reverie by the shadows outside the spotlight. It seemed to the man, as he looked over the woman’s shoulder, that the walls of the club had been lost in a distance of glare, smoke, and shifting darkness. The woman’s arm tightened around his middle. She had noticed too. Outside the spot that remained fixed on them (and why did that damn light keep following them? the woman wondered), she saw the shadows move at awkward angles, and the darkness overhead form irregular, alien, and altogether too-large depths to what should have been rafters and light riggings.
“I know,” he whispered in her ear, “just keep moving.”
They continued to dance, holding closer to each other as they went, suspecting only they were what was real, as the dark prowled and flashed around them.
The lights got brighter and the music dimmed. Then reality snapped the other way and they were dancing once again in shadows as the strains from the band pit rose around them. Always though, the man and the woman stayed in their spotlight, holding each other.
From a life filled with derringers, stickball bats, and tommy guns, the man finally came to a place where he had met fear. Not the apprehension of the moment, not the uncertainty of death, but the knowledge, at the root of his soul, of something worth fearing. Even knowing that Dolczek’s men were in the club, that they had followed him there that night, he had not been afraid. But now, with her in his arms, he knew the mobsters to be a threat to be dealt with sooner than later, and the shadows the real reason he should be running, maybe for the rest of his life.
But, not without her.
“We need to get out of here,” he whispered into her hair.
“You think so?” Her steps remained light. He knew her voice was not mocking him, but offered general defiance of their circumstances.
“I have an idea, but I’ll need your help.” He spun them towards where the band faded in and out among the shadows outside the spotlight.
“Anything, let’s just go.”
“There’s a back way out, under the bandstand. You take the trap door by the drummer’s riser to the service duct and through to a supply room. I’ll meet you there, then we can make our way out.”
“How does that involve my help?”
“There are some people following me, like this weirdness isn’t enough,” he cocked his head to indicate the obvious. “We’ll need to make our way around them if we’re going to get out. They’ll be looking for a looser in a bad suit, not a couple out on the town, lost… in each other,” he finished lamely.
“Right.”
“You’re okay? Coming with me I mean.”
“We’re going to need to talk,” he could feel the half-smile as she pressed against him. “I may need to be asking you the same thing.”
“Then it’s decided. We shall Run Away together,” he declared in mock triumph. Then he caught himself. “So to speak.”
“Yes. Indeed.”
“We can talk when I meet you in the storeroom.” And with that he moved her to the edge of the floor and she slid from his arms and out of the light. He bowed slightly at her parting back, and then straightened as he saw her ducking behind the musicians. He dusted off his pants with his fingertips, and straightened his jacket with both hands. He still stood alone, in the spotlight, as the band wound down. The house lights came up as they concluded their set.
Strange. The shadows had gone. Reality had returned.
Which meant there was more normal terror to be dealt with. At least muscle and bullets were something he had experience with.
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