The tale
So, I entered NaNoWriMo this year. I won. This is the prologue and first chapter. Perhaps one day, you’ll be able to read the rest from picking up a copy at your local bookstore!
This is completely unedited, raw and there are probably typos, spelling and grammar mistakes and things that just plain don’t make sense. But I’ve not started editing yet!
The Centre of the Earth is an Attraction
Prologue
The far reaches of space are just that, far. Farther than anyone can imagine. The ends of the universe are unlimited. We’ve not and probably never will travel there, in any of our times. It’s incredibly massive. Really, really, huge. Ginormous.
But it’s not big enough for the both of us.
Actually, it is, depends on your opinion behind metaphysics and the idea of a fourth dimension. There is an argument raging and it is an argument that has raged for along time and will probably rage until the end of days. Some people believe that one supernatural omniscient, omnipotent being created everything. Some people believe that a long time ago, psychiatrists aided a evil galactic ruler to drug and kill everyone on earth, capture their souls in energy beams and attach them to every new born on earth. More enlightened people believe none of this, they think we started from primordial soup, although they can’t prove it, it’s slightly more believable than the other two stories.
Whatever happened, I do know that the end of everything will probably be brought about by one thing, greed.
Chapter One
’I'm sorry sir,’ said the teller, ‘you’ll have to speak up, I can’t hear you.’
Flynn looked at the teller, she was young, blonde and had a lip ring. Could you wear a lip ring in a bank? In this bank, obviously yes. It never ceased to amaze Flynn quite how relaxed society was about jewellery in places it doesn’t normally reside. Flynn wiped his hands on his trousers and removed the sunglasses from his eyes.
’I said, ‘ said Flynn, leaning as far foward as he could, ‘Empty all the fucking money into this bag or I will remove your head from your shoulders with this extremely large and oily weapon.’ Flynn pushed back his coat and revealed a large black gun. It was indeed very oily. It glistened with oil. Flynn liked his guns to glisten. He placed it upon the counter and sighed. It was a lovely instrument of hot, speedy death.
’That is what I thought you said sir, ‘ the teller didn’t seem at all nervous or fazed by this affront, ‘I just needed to confirm it. Before I did this.’ With that, the teller dissapeared from view and an enormous plexiglass screen slid up from inside the counter with such speed that it caught Flynn by surprise. This in itself was suprising as he new it was going to happen. What happened next was more upsetting than surprising. Flynns’ gun was lifted into the air by the glass and smashed against the ceiling. Small, oily fragments of metal rained down upon Flynn and the people standing around him.
’Bollocks.’ said Flynn, ‘Just fucking bollocks.’
This happened a lot to Flynn. Not so much the robbing banks as things going a bit pear shaped right at the very moment when they need to stay whatever shape it is they should really be. He had begun to believe that it was a genetic trait given that it happend to him with such frequency. Either that or some enormous cosmic fucking joke. He really had had enough now. Even when he was a kid, things like this happened — again, not so much with the robbing banks bit, afterall, children don’t generally do that (although, there was this one kid, smart as a weasel and about the same size, robbed a bank on one of the outer moons of FordFocus9. He managed to trick the teller into thinking he was some kind of dumb robot, employed by the branch to ferry money from one teller to the next to the next to the vault. He performed his role as faux-helper robot very well. Apart from the “to the vault” bit. However, methinks it has more to do with completely fucking stupid tellers, hallucinagenic drugs or just absolute dumb luck on the kids part that he actually managed to get away with it!). When he was 12, Flynn decided he wanted a guitar. He’d travelled around all the music emporiums and instrument establishments he could get to, which was a lot and no mean feat for someone without a drivers licence or parents. He’d finally found the guitar he wanted, it was, of course, much more money than he actually had, but the guy in the shop said he’d put it away for a few weeks and Flynn could come and pay in installments until it was finally his, he laughed when he did this, but Flynn was too in awe of the axe. It was a fantastic instrument too, it looked like Roger Waters had ripped a line of coke from it (he hadn’t), Jimmy Hendrix head sweated all over it (he hadn’t) and Ozzy Osbourne had puked on it (who knows with Ozzy). It was a classic and, although expensive, was worth it. Flynn worked as much as he could. He helped at his local garage, bussed dinners at the local eating house and helped out elderly neighbours for the few coppers they could give. He also did a bit of drug dealing, fenced some stolen goods and ripped off tourists outside the airport — you know, general kid stuff. Every week, he’d visit the guitar shop and pay off a bit more of his tab, soon the guitar would be his.
After a particularly fruitful week working as a cum-scrubber at one of the cities more unsavoury adult establishments, he’d acrued enough in tips and wages to finally buy the guitar. That weekend he set out for the shop, cash in hand, to pay off his tab. When he arrived, he proudly announced his intention, only to be met with a dumb stare.
’Sorry’, said the guitar shop owner, ‘I actually sold that guitar a few days after you’d paid the deposit’.
’You did what?!’ exclaimed Flynn, the blood had suddenly all rushed to his head and he felt a bit strange.
’Yeah, I didn’t think you’d actually ever pay it all off. You don’t look like the kind of kid who’d pay your sweet shop tab, let alone a tab for a luxury item such as that superb guitar I had laid away for you, hehehe.’ The guitar shop owner chuckled like it was all a big joke. He rolled his one glass and scraped his long, disgusting, greasy hair back from his face. ‘Look, if it makes it any better, I have this incredibly good value trumpet here, it’s actually rumoured to have been owned by Miles Davis back when earth wasn’t a steamin’ cesspool of poverty but a steamin’ sauna of musical talent.’
’I don’t want a trumpet’, sulked Flynn, ‘I wanted that guitar.’ Flynn was struggling with his rage, he wanted to leap across the counter and push each one of the drumsticks in the rack behind the guitar shop owner, into the guitar shop owners eyes.
’OK, look,I’ll tell you what, I’ve got this guitar here, a real doozie of an axe, just right for a kid like you.’, he handed Flynn a Flying V, ‘What do you think?’
’Yeah, it’s OK - I’ll take it.’ said Flynn, desperate, dissapointed and disillusioned. He liked his emotions to aliterate.
Flynn stepped out of the shop and walked home, both excited at his new purchase and dissapointed that it wasn’t the guitar he’d been dreaming about for the past three months. As he rounded the corner into his street, he was mugged, beaten senseless and left to lie in the gutter, guitar-less, penny-less, senseless and about to lose his consciouness too.
See? Not a lucky guy.
Back to the here and now, Flynn considered his options. His oily, heavy, sexually arousing weapon of choice was in peices at his feet. The bag marked “Loot” was empty. Most of the banks occupants were lying face down with their hands over their heads crying, muttering and/or screaming and those that weren’t were stalking towards him with their guns drawn and their radios sqwauking loudly. It seemed like a somewhat hopeless situation, but Flynn was used to somewhat hopeless situations, he’d even managed to worm his way out from under a completely hopeless situation or two, he cracked a smile.
’Gentlemen, let me explain!’ said Flynn, raising his hands in the air in a show of atonement, ‘this is all just a mistake.’
’There’s no mistake sir, please lie on your front with your hands behind your head, so we can stand on your neck and place these incredibly uncomfortable restraints upon your person.’ said the closest guard, he managed to be holding a gun, a pair of plastic handcuffs and his stomach in, he was doing a grand job.
’Now, I don’t think that’s called for. Standing on my neck? Really?’ said Flynn, he was buying some time. His sunglasses were over his eyes again and he was surveying the entire scene for a way out. There wasn’t one. Flynn decided he’d probably have more luck with escaping after he’d been arrested. ‘I’ll let you put the cuffs on me and I won’t struggle, just don’t stand on my neck please.’
’I'm sorry sir, ‘ said another guard, ‘it’s not like we have a choice, it’s in the training manual, step 4 of restraining a criminal, stand on his neck while a colleague applies the restraining cuffs — we can’t break protocol sir’.
’Very well,’ smiled Flynn as he lay down, preparing to be arrested, ‘can you at least take your shoes off?’
Just then, there was a shout from the doorway, a female shout.
’Nobody fucking move, this is a robbery!’ shouted the female shouter.
’It was’, said Flynn by way of reply, ‘now it’s an arresting.’ He was unable to look up because there was a socked foot standing on his neck pressing his nose into the carpet. It was an unpleasant carpet. It smelt funny.
Flynn could hear a scuffle break out, something that sounded like someone slapping a fish, some muffled crumpling of guards bodies as they hit the deck, a small yelp like that of a kicked chihuahua and then the pressure released from his neck and he looked up to see a pair of patent leather boots about three inches from his head. Then there was a chapter-ending sized explosion and everything went black for Flynn.
