Touchdown

Air flight always excites me. I stare out the window at the red, pulsing light on the edge of the wing and think how much the whole thing feels like time travel. Like we are skipping ahead of everyone else. A trip that would take 20 hours by car will only take us 3. That's time travel, right?

I turn and watch her laughing with her best friend. Her brown wavy hair cascades down my favorite purple and grey striped sweater she wears to get me to smile. I always like it when she laughs, but even more when she laughs with Lindsay, the blonde Mom of three and so much more. They've been inseparable since junior high and it's easy to tell. They have that kind of laughter that no matter what your mood, it forces you to laugh along.

Long Sunset

This is a very short chapter from my long running Western "The Thousand Devils". I've been working on this/not working on this for closing in on 10 years. Earlier this year I completed the first draft in the screenplay that most likely doesn't make much sense.  That's what happens over 10 years, you develop as a writer and the words you put down at the beginning of a span that long don't mesh at all with the words you are putting down now. I'm no longer a late teenager full of angst... I'm now a late twenty-something full of angst. Not really, but you get the idea.

So with all of that being said, I'm different now than I was then, meaning I have a different perspective from which I write. An epic in which a guy must hunt down and kill a bunch of demons now no longer gets me excited as a writer. I have to find a way to explore the characters. For the longest of times I was going to make Michael (the hunter character) my primary antagonist all the while keeping Wyman Rustwine, the retired Confederate soldier with a grudge against anyone who considers themselves a Yankee, the sidekick, stock character. But recently, I've been playing with the idea of making the narrator Rustwine and having him be "our eyes" through the story. So the following super short story is my way of working with that approach. Enjoy it . Hate it. Disregard it. Who cares... after this much time "The Thousand Devils" is a story I will either tell in due time or one that I will not. Hopefully I will finish the story someday... but I'm cool either way.