My idea for a novel (538 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: -0.23 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <romiustexis.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2008-06-15 04:44:59 EDT
I have an idea for a novel I was just wondering how bad it was...
The Atlantic ocean smells of turpentine. Its grey waves wash over me. The sky is overcast and the sun is dull. I smell the salt air and I watch the matronly obese cavort in the sea.
I saw her leave. Now I am the youngest person on the beach by ten years. I have a headache brought on by too much time at the beach. My bladder is full. Anytime I am near the ocean I feel an overwhelming need to urinate.
I walk down steps from the bay shore to the public bathroom. It reeks of stale urine. My head tilts. I peer into the urinal and watch a gold stream splash a urine cake. A deodorising scent from the steam escapes towards me. I no longer smell the salt air, or the stench from human release. I smell only cancer. If cancer had a smell I imagine it would be the smell from pissed on urine cakes tucked inside urinals located in the back of public beach bathrooms located along the Atlantic coast.
I've watched her for two weeks. Today she has gone to the ocean with friends. I take the shriveled penis and place it back in my trunks.
She sat on the sand not two hundred yards from me. She displayed for the world her modesty only. She wore shorts and a long sleeved shirt over a bathing suit. Her friends wore tiny bikinis. Each girl had a cowboys hat perched on top of their heads. Their bloodshot eyes where hidden behind the fashionably large sunglasses of the 1970's.
She left with her friends, but I did not follow. I have no inclination. I know where she is headed. I know she is on her way back to her parents. She will eat supper and then she will jump into her Jeep Wrangler and drive home. Alone. I will be there when she gets in.
I know where she works. I know the daily routine. I know she is a careless person who drops her keys. I know she insists on stops at nearby donut shops for coffee when she is 30 minutes late for work.
I take my time. I enjoy even the smells of cancer on the beach. I am content to be alone. I walk back from the restroom to my beach towel on the sand. I pack my suntan lotion, and my camera phone with music player. I place those things in the pouch of my collapsible chair with built in umbrella. I stare at the ground and march the trek back to the public parking lot. I avoid the large shells and rocks that could cut my feet.
I place the beach things only in the trunk of my car. The black paint has greedily absorbed the sun today. The Volvo 740 is without air conditioning, so I drive with the windows rolled down. The car stereo works, but is not connected to the speakers.
Beside me in the passenger seat is an old am/fm receiver with a large speaker. I leave it in the passenger seat with the windows down and the door unlocked. I have left the radio unguarded in the seat like that for 9 months. No one has stolen it. I switch it on and the batteries are still good. I turn the dial to the classic rock station and turn the volume up as high as it will go. At highway speeds with the wind and noise of the traffic I can just make out the melody of what is playing.
My Volvo has a responsive turbo engine. I purchased the car from Vincent Amerigo. I offered him 900 dollars and he promised to deliver me the title. Vincent left to San Fransisco and has never sent me the title. I drive without insurance because the tags are good for 2 more years. If I do not attract attention from the police unnecessarily, I should be able to drive without any of the inconvenience and cost of registration. 900 dollars is well spent.
***
"I can kick your ass!"
She wants to test my strength. She rushes at me. Her fists are balled tightly. Her arms windmill. I grab her by the wrists and and throw her on the bed. My knees pinch her thighs apart.
I can sense the fear now. Her pale complexion has gone white. Nervous perspiration beads across her forehead. She tilts her neck upwards. I meet her forehead with mine. "Don't even fucking think you can take me." I mutter into her ear. A small smile breaks out onto her face. The futility of her arm movements cease. I relax my grip on her wrists. The prickly flow of blood returns to her hands.
I wake on my bed. The curtains are drawn and no light penetrates them. I have a painful erection. The alarm clock reads 1:36 am. I listen to the ceiling fan whirl above me. I cannot go back to sleep. I start work in only 7 hours.
"If I don't get back to sleep I will be tired all day" I warn myself. I ignore my own advice. I roll out of bed and fall in a heap onto the floor. I walk sleepily into the computer office I share with my roommate. I turn on his computer and open the Internet. I check my mail and myspace. I have several accounts.
Work is dull. I pass the time by daydreaming as much as possible. I work as a cashier at a grocery store. Sometimes customers take 40 seconds to search for exact change. They rifle through their purses and billfolds like old men on the beach treasure hunting with metal detectors. When they find the nickel and two pennies buried at the bottom they exclaim aloud with the pride of a juvenile displaying his latest creation with crayons to an exasperated parent.
I think they see in me a look of wistfulness and mistake it for admiration or approval. I am just returning to the real world. In my mind I have been playing basketball. I have been enjoying the lustful embrace of their adolescent child who waits besides them. The child is urging her parent forward with rolled eyes and a carefully constructed look of aloofness.
All this dirty bill paying parents must do. All this food shopping and talking to the help is beneath them. They have text messaging to do. They have black mascara to apply in heaps and gobs. But sometimes I get a peak at the budding cleavage. That is my little secret. I do not tell mother. I do not tell father. I smile back at the parents. I take the change from them and treat it like a hero's quest has been fulfilled. I must get off the floor.
The break room is not a respite. I suffer through stories from middle aged woman who feel no need for age appropriate hair cuts. I hear how their ex-husbands get arrested for child molestation. I like the idea that the ex-husband has no one else to turn to than his swinging ex wife when confronted by the police. He lies and suggests an alibi can be found with his former lover. She is outraged that her good name has been sullied by accusations of pederasty. She has no such modesty in informing me of her participation in her husbands alcohol fueled fetishes.
I dislike her immensely for her disloyalty. Even when a romance goes bad one should remember the special bond one promises during coitus. It is no real surprise to me that she lacks morality. We live in an unethical society. All around us there is dishonor, there is suffering. There is no nobility left in the human animal. Our days are filled by the endless droning on of television. We pursue goals. We function despite constant encounters with stupidity. The Elders of Zion, the corporate fat cats, our elected leaders must sit back and laugh at us each day. It is no wonder they take us for fools. We suffer for them.
***
We live in the same building. I can't imagine that is coincidence, though you would. I must admit, there was a time I would have found "fate" or such ideas to be laughable. I am not as certain as I was before. Moral certainty is the only immoral crime left to modern man. I will speak more to you on this, but right now you are not ready. I do not wish to confuse you by interloping the tale and my lessons so early.
You wish to know more about her. What is the color of her hair? It is black. The color of an ethnic Italian. Thankfully she does not have the full blood of an Italian flowing in her. I have been entranced by exotic and beautiful women before only then to glance down at their arms to see that they are covered in man fur. I cannot hide my contempt. I must look away. I must cease my conversations with such people. I have a fear of the malformed. My fear is natural. I will not apologise for it.
User Reviews
Submitted by Littlebint (user info) at 2008-06-17 04:01:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Give up your day job and focus on this, it really is great, wonderful, amazing. It's rare to find something this good anywhere. I feel that all my reading needs will be met by your beautiful skills.
Actually I'm lying, and tired.
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (user info) at 2008-06-16 11:22:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Not bad. I'm intrigued, write more.
Submitted by X54 (user info) at 2008-06-16 00:51:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I agree, this isn't really an idea for a novel, it's more of an excerpt. As a standalone piece, I think it starts off well with the suspense of the stalker. But stories that end with "then I woke up" suck. This one doesn't end with that, but it takes off in a new direction that I didn't find as interesting as the stalker.
A couple of other things I noticed: "But sometimes I get a peak at the budding cleavage" S/B "peek." "Their bloodshot eyes where hidden behind the fashionably large sunglasses" S/B "were." And also, how do you know they're bloodshot? You the narrator couldn't have perceived "The prickly flow of blood return[ing] to her hands."
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-06-15 12:49:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I mostly liked this actually. However it seems as soon as you get something going you ruin it.
You wish to know more about her. What is the color of her hair? It is black. The color of an ethnic Italian. Thankfully she does not have the full blood of an Italian flowing in her. I have been entranced by exotic and beautiful women before only then to glance down at their arms to see that they are covered in man fur. I cannot hide my contempt. I must look away. I must cease my conversations with such people. I have a fear of the malformed. My fear is natural. I will not apologise for it.
"arms to see that they are covered in man fur" the phrasing used here completely clashes with everything else in the paragraph. 'man fur' especially seems juvenile and detracts from persona you're trying to mold.
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2008-06-15 11:35:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
If cancer had a smell I imagine it would be the smell from pissed on urine cakes tucked inside urinals located in the back of public beach bathrooms located along the Atlantic coast.
__________
If you edit that line just slightly, it's actually really good.
If cancer had a smell, I imagine it would be the smell of pissed on urinal cakes located in the back of public beach bathrooms along the Atlantic coast.
______________
One really quite impressive image/idea is enough to start with. Work on it.
Submitted by Chroniclysm (user info) at 2008-06-15 10:04:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
If you can write a novel out of this "idea," I will reconsider.
Furthermore, if you were to post an actual idea, that would be an idea.
Maybe you should hold off until you have like, I dunno...a page. Or a chapter? Outline? Storyboard? Something? Pictures of you naked? Are you female?
Yeah.
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:53:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
My idea for a novel
-----------------------------------
Got this far. You don't post "ideas" for a novel, you publish a novel, or you post a chapter or so of your novel here in the futile hope that someone famous will read it and offer to publish it immediately.
Highly fucking unlikely BTW, as this site is to the internet what Timboctou is to geography. A pretty awesome place, but nobody important wants to go there.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:47:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:34:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I take my time. I enjoy even the smells of cancer on the beach.
------------------
cancer has a smell?
-----
Yes. I saw it on Animal Planet. They've trained dogs to detect malignant skin cancer byt the smell.
A fact which is orders of magnetude more interesting that the text of this post.
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:40:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
And plus, it's really fucking boring. I barely managed to get through it. Stop using so much florid prose and just describe what happens. Then make what happens less boring.
Submitted by Darth_Famine (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:35:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Good premise, the guy tends to run on though. with a little polish it could be good.
+1 for the potential
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:34:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
I take my time. I enjoy even the smells of cancer on the beach.
------------------
cancer has a smell?
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:31:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Uh, so what's your idea? What you wrote here isn't an idea, it's just a little excerpt with no clue as to what the overall novel deals with.
I personally don't mind the stunted sentence structure because it's all internal monologue from a character, and that happens to be the way he talks. Mind you if the entire novel were like that I'd find it annoying...and I don't think anyone wants to read a whole book filled with morbid observations from a reprehensible weirdo, which is what your character sounds like.
Submitted by bjrog2 (user info) at 2008-06-15 09:04:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Sounds like boring filler from a mediocre novel. You could turn it into something interesting, and coherently constructed with a bit of English homework.
Things dont read well. When they are written. With. Really fucking, annoyingly-short. Sentences.
Shlongy is right, even though he hasnt written anything. His implied criticism is relevant
Learn from it
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-06-15 08:38:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
How bad do you want to hear it?