this is a teaser of something I've been working on with josh picco, i'll give you an epilogue and a brief look at the first chapter part i'm certain about keeping. please let your fresh sets of eyes be my guide as to whether or not my writing is on the right track..
bm
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- Epilogue -
There’s a certain atmosphere created within a party’s headquarters on the night, and particularly the precise moment, of a big win for one of their comrades. The raw electricity between supporters and members of the media lights up a room like the burst of engulfed birch bark on a glowing ember. Common men and women stand side by side with a sense of pride, of victory, of being on the winning side.
Some people could just use a win, so long as we convince ourselves that political wins can compete with any personal win in life. Above the outpouring of joy, tears flowing, signs waving, blood teetering through veins in a manner only seldom achieved, there remains a calming and cooling sense of empowerment for those involved. For the man of the hour, whose campaign of sweat and political strategizing has led to this monumental moment.
Those who are present, who felt the muscles across their chest and every tooth in their head clench simultaneously in anticipation of poll results as they sporadically arrive, remember every moment. They remember wiping their brow and wondering if the drumming in their ears was their own heart beating or the sounds of the thousand hearts around them, beating in a rhythm of strict cacophony.
There’s a brief lull in the crowd as the newly elected successor to Canada’s leadership begins to speak. It was said to have sounded like a rain was falling all around them on this night.
- CHAPTER ONE -
He remembered the cold shiver running up his neck the first time he had heard the rats. This is not where he was intended to be, and he knew it only to be true the first night he would later spend away from the apartment building he called home. An apathetic superintendent, too much turnover in tenants when you lock up the thieves and the vagrants, just a scum-infested shit hole to try and call home.
If you could, that is. Hell, you had to call it something.
Every morning was a gamble. You would set an alarm the night before, but it was only a fail-safe. More often than not, Dean awoke to the beating of single rain droplets as they fell from the festering ceiling tiles to his forehead, as well as into several strategically placed buckets throughout the room. He had decided, long ago, that the position of his bed in the room was the ideal spot to avoid significant water damaging the mattress or rusting the bed frame, save for the one single leak perpetually landing on the tip of his brow. A constant, and somehow reliable, thumping. It made him think of an abacus he had once seen in his grandparent’s den, and the noise it made as he slid the weighted beads from one side to another in time. He felt the seconds of every night creak on and on, as each drip of water hit the bottom of the buckets surrounding him. Thankfully, they only needed to be emptied once every four or five days. More than that, and he would finally bring himself to knock on the door of his superintendent and demand it be fixed.
That, or he would move out. Whichever came first, he thought. Dean was too a timid man to consider making choices that affected his life so drastically.
