Through a Smokey Haze – Part Two
Good times happened this weekend. I celebrated my 32nd trip around the sun by getting so completely schnockered that it wiped out not only my post Saturday, but also my post Sunday. I had intended to hold to my writing schedule, and I was successful in writing on Turkey Day, but sometimes life gets in the way and it’s important to stop and smell the roses while you have the chance. It’s not a terrible position to be in, where you take some time to enjoy the life you’re building for yourself. Apparently, I’m a rather pleasant drunk. I did leave my standard trail of compliments in my wake, and it’s a little embarrassing to have to go back and explain that I meant the nice things I said about everyone, but this time without the reckless exuberance. I suppose if that is the worst that I have to deal with as far as my drinking goes, I’ve got it made. The hangover wasn’t too pleasant, but it was the price of admission. The blow was lessened by consumption of water in mass quantities, but you never truly get around it. Plus I’m 32 and what not. So there.
Through a Smokey Haze time. Seriously, I love this story. It has everything I want to read about. A dark, grim, anti-hero figure with a trench coat and a fedora. His happens to have four sleeves, and I’ll reveal some interesting things about his cigarette smoking, but man is this story fun. I love building a tall and bleak city scape, and I’m going to try my best to make this piece about mood and setting. It’s just a little character drama. Obviously some action happens. A mob boss to end all mob bosses was just eradicated, afterall. There’s going to be some stuff that shakes down. I never want to remove from the mood however. I want you to read in a fashion where it consumes you completely. I want you to become the man with four arms and a fedora. I want you to feel the grit and desperation which oozes out of the pages. I want you to walk the brightly lit streets forlorn of any hope. I want you to lose yourself in the world I’m making, because perhaps it will help you deal with more things at home. Who knows. I’m grateful that I get to play on this side of the book game, where I’m making things instead of just gleefully consuming them. I’ll never stop reading until I stop breathing, but I’m so glad I get to contribute to the wonderful tapestry of human imagination. It’s pretty breathtaking to place my own small thread in that grand display. It might never achieve notoriety or fiscal success, but man does it feel good that the powerful play will go on and I contributed a verse. Powerful words from a master craftsman, and they ring true all these years after their creation.
With further imagination…
Through a Smokey Haze – Part 2
Richard and Sam stood at the entrance to the brightly lit, orange tinted alley as the rain fell between the stark and utilitarian buildings which formed this section of Horizon’s cityscape. Each building seemed to compete with the next as to which of them could be the most professionally uninteresting. The rain cared not about the facade upon which it fell however, and Sam Coli’q’uea paid the rain as little attention as the rain paid him. Besides, his fedora kept it away from his face as his mind raced through the information it had just absorbed. He took another deep drag off the cigarette, the cherry of it’s lit end flaring enough to glint of the deep yellow of his eyes. The iris’s, showing a healthy deep blue in their four pointed star configuration, rapidly flicked back and forth as they studied the scene in front of them. He was starting to develop an idea of what exactly occurred here, even if he still couldn’t understand how it had been done.
Richard shifted slightly, trying to keep water off of his very expensive veelborer hide shoes. Sam finally noticed the fidgeting, and let out a gruff chuckle. “Richard, go inside. I appreciate the coffee” he gestured with the almost empty cup “but it’s raining fit to flatten a flutehound.” Richard gave him a grateful and relieved look, and padded back over to the rather crowded cafe across the street. Such a good kid Sam thought with pride as his attorney and business manager gained the dry security of the interior of the cafe. Still can’t believe I raised him so right. He turned his mind and focus back to the blood sprayed alleyway, and to the two members of the Horizon PD’s CSI team as they continued to take pictures and develop a holovid recreation of the scene with their forks. Sam had put his own fork back into his pocket as soon as the scrawl of V’lithlian’s file had finished. He didn’t have the credits to make his fork even half as efficient as the duo before him, but he never felt bothered about it. His private investigations never needed that much firepower, and he’d made it abundantly clear to the Horizon PD that if they wanted his services, he would need unrestricted access to all the information they gathered. There had been no small amount of shouted remonstrances about that part, right up until the Mayor had called the Chief and informed him that he would accept Sam’s condition or he would appoint another Chief of Police that would. Sam had helped Mayor Korith Rid’e’klura when his son had been kidnapped, and he still got cards and letter from the fast growing young man even though it had been almost a decade ago.
“What do you have for me, Teryice, Aleryia?” He addressed both by name, as he never forgot a face. He hadn’t worked with either of them directly in years though, so they both seemed a bit startled being addressed by name. Sam guessed they were used to be viewed as unimportant to the grander scheme of the Horizon PD, but Sam knew where the real work got done. Aleryia, her whiskers twitching with her ears, purred out “There seems to be some difficulty with the reconstruction equipment. The computer can’t get around the requirements of the scene with the penetration of V’lithlian’s carapace.” Her ears whipped back to her skull as she continued, a clear sign of distress. “It’s been going through every known combination of military and illegal weaponry, and hasn’t found a suitable match which would allow for what happened.” Sam nodded. Not only had her carapace been the stuff of documented legend, her reflexes had been so far above the standard that “super” hadn’t even qualified. They were preternaturally fast. Even the ESP branch of Horizon PD hadn’t been able to understand how V’lithlian could exist. “Have you tried to calibrate the system so that it reconstructs the scene if the carapace and reflexes are removed from the picture?” Aleryian’s ears straightened as she scrunched her nose and whiskers with thought. She turned to her partner, who had stopped his own work to listen in. He frowned a bit, then gave a non-committal shrug as he said “Don’t see why we can’t do that.” Sam let a savage grin creep on to his face, and clapped both pairs of hands together in a small explosion of water and noise. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
Whiskerfully,
Justin
