The Final Nail in the Coffin - Freewrite (part 9) - Prompt: Nail

in #fiction7 years ago (edited)

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This is the ninth freewrite in my experiment to see if I can create an ongoing story from the prompts each day. The general premise of the story was inspired by a comment I left at @freewritehouse competition post, Ongoing Stories. Each day I will begin with a paragraph from the previous freewrite for continuity.

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Everything snapped back to normality as I stared at the bottle on the table.

Alberto stopped laughing. "Wine hombre? Not only red wine my friend, have you ever tried mescaline? I love that shit but I'm guessing you haven't got the stomach for it Ash. I put a whole dropper of that stuff in there. Now we gonna trip together my friend, and we'll come to some arrangement by the end of the night. Count on it!"

The red wine swirled in my glass. I saw a barmaid approaching through the bloody swirls of claret.

Alberto draped his arm over my shoulder as he ushered me out on to the deserted VIP terrace overlooking the ocean. The tide was high, lapping the shoreline like a lizard tasting the air to keep cool. Those eyes flashed slits of black emptiness again, tight slats of reptilian ichor draining my soul with the ageless divinity of death.

"I have this problem mi hombre". He hissed mingling with the breeze as it faded out like the transition between dreams. "We need someone to move the shit and it has to be someone white, hombre. I can't do it!"

His laugh stretched into the night, long melodious deep barreling waves of sound. The chirrup of crickets kept time with the background of the music humming from the club. That laugh concertinaed through the warm evening, a baseline modulated by the light of the moon.

SLAM. Alberto slammed his hand down on the edge of the balcony. Slam, slam, slam three times like nails being hammered into a coffin. "What's it to be then Ash?"

I stared down at the waves caressing the wall of the club, lights from the hotels in the bay cast modular crescents of color across the sea. El Nino had swollen the ocean with life, like a pregnant cat languishing in the heat. Poseidon taking a deep breath before the plunge. A tiger flashed across the sky, sleek stripped rivulet of stars leaping from sea and heaven to plunge down into me, filling me up with the heat of El Nino.

My elbow hit Alberto in the jaw as his hands flew up fast and practiced to my throat. Heat pumped through me like liquid mana, I was sleek death faster than this prey. My hand flew to his belt, automatic, as it grabbed the semi-automatic pistol and pushed it up under his chin. Those lizard eyes flashed mirth at me, mocking, unbelieving. The tiger responded, as the pain of a knee to my balls lit up the night in bright flashes of pain and the muzzle flash sprayed a bloody fountain of claret across the face of the moon.

He went up and over the balcony, landing in the lap of the oceans shallow waves. He lay under shimmering stars, haloed in bioluminescence from the tickle of the tide. Kissed by phytoplankton, silhouetted by the breath of El Nino.

To be continued...

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This post is in response to @mariannewest freewrite writers prompt which can be found here. The picture is from pixabay.com creative commons licence, please follow link to credit. This is the only freewrite in which I have ever conducted research to reflect a degree of probability in some of the details. As I am hugely interested in oceanography I felt I wanted the tidal/plankton effects in this story to have a plausible explanation. I guessed that El Nino could produce these conditions but wanted to be sure, and found the confirmation in a scientific study which can be found here. Check it out if the effects of El Nino in Mexico interests you at all. I spent an hour reading this before I wrote the 5 min freewrite, so I guess I cheated a little 😉If you have enjoyed this short fiction you can check out my other work on my homepage @raj808 or follow links below to previous parts in this ongoing freewrite story.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Authors' reading part 1-6

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If you would like to join a fantastic community where we strive to help new steemians grow and develop, why not join me at #promo-mentors discord group which you can find here. I am one of the poetry/fiction mentors over at #promo-mentors, if you have any questions or need any guidance with either of these tags please don't hesitate to ask for me, @raj808.


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Oh, heady stuff. Nice pace to it!

Oh, yes, the pace! That "swift as a tiger pouncing" pace, the drive, in this series. I love it!

A very fine piece of writing. You can really set a scene.

It’s your midweek free write encourager here with today’s challenge to your literary dexterity: https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-188-5-minute-freewrite-wednesday-prompt

Also, don't forget to read the latest posts from our new page
FREEWRITE HOUSE!

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Click the graphic to join in the fun!

Thank you @deirdyweirdy. Descriptive narrative has always been my strong point with dialogue being the thing I have to work on the most ;-) I appreciate your feedback and comment :-)

The descriptions are so well-written here -- and the action!

It was a labour of love writing this series based on the freewrite prompts @deeanndmathews and also something a cathartic journey for myself having had, shall we say, a colorful life (although I never had to kill a drug dealer like Ash).

The next episode is the final one, and it is definitely where the catharsis came for me. You know when I was studying writing at university, the lecturers used to say 'if you are only writing for yourself without considering your audience, you will not be a professional writer' and they were strangely both right and wrong. It is true that you're most likely to find success as a writer writing with your audience in mind, but as I found with this serial story, people who had never been in a hallucinatory state like cough cough me Ash still became entranced by this story, even though if you read all of them back to back they are very disjointed. I did that on purpose because that is what can happen when in extreme altered states of consciousness, but in this case what my lecturer said was wrong. I think sometimes you can stumble upon writing that is both cathartic for yourself, but also draws the reader in.

When it happens it is magic.

Thanks for reading. I'm glad you enjoyed this part... nearly at the end now. The final part 10 is scheduled to be shared on Listnerds tomorrow.

The lecturers have committed themselves to a world in which only certain audiences COUNT... few considered what would happen if a technology was created and more voices could speak ... and more audiences could find those voices. All of us have our limitations. The problem comes when we attempt to limit others to our limitations... but the lecturers were wrong, and here you are, with your audience drawn to your authentic story.

You are doing a great job creating a continuing story from the prompt. I have enjoyed reading your saga. Thanks for sharing.