Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

It is official: this has now become a series! Of over used exclamation marks, probably. #1 here, #2 here. These are scraps of writing I have mostly probably discarded as the basis for a larger story (one I will share I still have hopes to use – will you guess which one?), but think are worth letting folk have a random look at. I do of course assert full copyright control over these story ideas.

This week is something I sat down and committed to screen 13 years ago. Last modified 7/25/10 at 8.41pm, US dating system. I’m biased, but I like it. This version is tidied up a bit, because why not, and because I should have done the same for #2. I’ll keep the original as is, and share this version with you today.

If someone wants to use this as a prompt, or continue the story as they wish, they have my permission to do so, provided I am credited for the portion I share below.

The Long Night

Gerard watched the lights begin to blink on in the valley below, dull amber of neon still subdued by the fading light of the sun… soon they would shine like the stars above that they obscured, but now they shimmered hesitantly, hazy in the dirt and dust of the city, fumes twisting in the heat.

He stubbed out his latest cigarette, looking down as it crumpled into an old ashtray of yellow Egyptian marble now ruined by generations of crushed tobacco embers. The smoke curled into his eyes, irritating slightly. He sniffed – he should have learned to avoid that by now, hell, he’d been trying to quit for years: didn’t like what they did to his teeth. Behind him the house was silent, its corridors and rooms waiting, as Gerard always did, to be filled with movement and at least a semblance of life. The house. A ridiculous old mansion built by some movie producer in the 1920s who lost it all when talkies and then the depression hit. The man had possessed so much, but with no skill to adapt, he died. A lesson Gerard felt some of his own contemporaries had not learned well enough.

The house stood on a roughened hillside, unkempt, stretching down to the highway’s river of smog slowly becoming a river of light as the sun’s rays stopped illuminating the atmosphere, and the cold distance of space became apparent. Gerard liked the place, despite it being odd and ostentatious, slapped together in haste by a person of decidedly dubious taste. It had character, and a genteel abandoned grandeur. Still, he wasn’t visiting for the decor, he had been called here, and no-one in their right mind refused the summons. Two weeks now, and nothing. Inactivity chafed. Lily would make her appearance soon, that would be a diversion of sorts.

Gerard turned from the bay window, away from the city slowly beginning to burn with its night fire, away from the sea beyond, cold and ageless; only fools ever thought it warm. The room he stood in was well furnished, though lost in time, the old producer’s antiquated pieces still there, peeling and faded: a high backed leather chair, that ludicrous love seat, as if that S of wood and fabric could ensure propriety! H.G. Wells had trysted mightily upon such contrivances – he had admired the challenge apparently. And now Gerard lived in his future. What would H.G. make of it?

Gerard snaked his way through the maze of mismatched furniture and made his way to the entry hall, dominated by a staircase grand enough for Scarlett to make an entrance upon. He heard the distant sound of water. Lily was showering.  That girl did like to be clean. Gerard briefly considered her body in water and steam, then discarded the vision – no doubt she’d gain pleasure from knowing he thought about her so, and he would not give even an imaginary version of her any imaginary satisfaction. With a rueful shake of his head, he took a small door behind the stair and worked his way through tight dirty white corridors, all chipped old paint and scuff marks, to the kitchen. There was a coffee maker. He had filled it earlier, now he switched it on. Lily’s only scent was her skin, Gerard preferred to drown it out. She always wrinkled her nose at his coffee and his cigarettes, maybe that was why he had not yet quit.