Shouting Grounds

Seconds later, the group emerged from the low-rise onto Percy Street. Marcel’s heart rate settled more and more the further they got from his apartment, as he realized that this was just another case of the city exploiting his questionable talents. The street glistened in the pale yellow of streetlight, and wind pulled at his coat as he stepped from the doorway. It had stopped raining sometime after he arrived home from the bar.

Lieutenant Fatty started to slowly amble down the steep steps toward the sidewalk, and Marcel could now see that the City’s Finest had brought not one, not two, but three fuckin’ squad cars…so much for being discreet this time.

Marcel reached out to grab the rail, slightly worried that the stairs might be slick, when Mustache suddenly swept him back with his left arm and chopped Lt. Fatty on the nape of his neck with his right! Fattman rolled down the stairs like a 300-lb. snowball, collecting all of the other cops in a heap against a lightpole. Marcel started to turn toward Mustache, getting only a glance at his gleaming nameplate, “O’Toole”, before the officer put Marcel in a headlock and dragged him back through the doorway. He swung Marcel away from the door, which he slammed and bolted shut. Marcel reeled backward and suddenly found that there was no more floor as he tumbled backward down the short stairwell toward the basement. The cold, hard concrete floor greeted him with a dull thud.

Marcel shook off the cobwebs to find Officer O’Toole standing above him. He slowly drew his hand back to his coat pocket, but the cop held out his right hand, showing Marcel the gun that used to be there.

“I wouldn’t think you’d want to shoot me…Doc.” he growled.

Marcel gazed stupidly at the man for a moment…”Walt?” he managed to blurt.

The cop pulled off his hat, peeled off the brush-like mustache and was transformed into, “Walt Sparks, at yeh service!”

Marcel grinned and reached out to be helped up. He rubbed his lower back from the fall as he looked Walter over, dumbfounded. The moment ended when commotion could be heard outside the door at the top of the stairs. Apparently the mountain of cop had crumbled and reformed at the top of the steps.

“We’d better go, unless of course you want to head to the station again…” Walt turned toward the hallway to the service entrance when Marcel grabbed his shoulder.

“I can’t leave yet, there’s something I have to get from upstairs.”

(To be continued…)

Here’s the first part.

I wrote it in Word but for some reason the formatting (indents and such) would not carry over when I cut and pasted it here. I tried saving it as rich text, plain text, and even straight html but no matter how I input it here it wouldn’t retain the formatting. Thus the simple blocks of text you see below…

Filed under the “Story Project” label.

What the fuck were cops doing in his flat? More importantly, how much did they know?
After several panicked moments he allowed reason to douse the fire raging inside his mind and with an almost visible effort forced his fists to unclench.

He realized the men had stopped talking and were staring at him. Had one of them said something? Was the burden to the conversation now on him? Had they searched the small 1 bedroom apartment? Had those window shades been open or closed when he left and had…

Wait, what was that? Did the one with the moustache just wink at him? His mind raced as he fought for answers. Marcel knew he had to say something.

“…the fuck?” was all he got it. The cops seemed less than impressed.

“Cut the shit pal. You’re wanted downtown. There’s been another murder and they want you to come down and weigh in on it. We’re paying double this time if you can figure out the cocksucker who did it. You in or you out?” quipped the short fat one.

Even as the voice in the back of his mind screamed the opposite, Marcel willed his head to nod affirmative. Anything to get them out of this room! Had they searched it? Did they know? His eyes darted to the window shades…

“Good let’s move”, grumbled one of them.

They pushed their way past him, the fat one having to turn sideway to get through the doorframe. Once out in the hall they turned and waited impatiently for Marcel who hadn’t moved an inch.

“You coming doc?” asked fatty.

Reluctantly Marcel left the room and carefully closed the door as his escorts ambled down the cramped hallway. As he did so he allowed himself once quick and furtive glance to the floorboards in the west corner of the room. With a small measure of relief he noted they appeared to be untouched and intact. For time being at least.

Nevertheless, as he slowly trailed after the two officers, Marcel found his hand tightly gripping the gun in his coat pocket and his mind squarely centered on what was under that floor.

(To be continued…)

Sitting in a hotel room in Appleton, Wisconsin, I came up for an idea for something to add to the website. While simple in idea, it may or may not be easy to implement, and by no means is it worth spending dosh on (this means you Beard). A few years ago, Redscape and I started a pass-around story, where one of us would write a few pages, then stop in mid-thought and email it to the other to continue. The story started out interesting and fresh, but quickly derailed when we got to a critical plot point (who knew?). Would something like this be simple to implement on the blog? We could make it as simple as just uploading the story to the file transfer page and continue it around. To speed things up, we’d have to limit the writing each person could do to 1/2 a page or so, and try to keep it so each person will have the story for a day, then pass it on. What do chall think? Dumb or not?

BTW – Beardo, the Desksite project animations are fuckin great.