Archive for January, 2010

Once a month, a bunch of authors get together and post excerpts from published books, contracted work or works in progress, and link to each other. You=2 0don’t have to be published to participate–just an writer with an excerpt you’d like to share. For more info on how to participate, head over to the Excerpt Monday site! or click on the banner above.

I’m going out on a limb here and posting part of the prologue for my current work-in-progress, The Cell. I haven’t shared this with many people yet, but I figured that maybe it was time…so here it is.

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Prologue — somewhere in the jungles of Cambodia

I stopped caring 368 scratch marks ago, but something compels me to keep track of the days. The little hashes on the wall give me false purpose and I pursue the routine task with vigor. But it doesn’t stop my mind from wandering into forbidden territory. How many more scratches will these walls hold? And, worse, what if I run out of space before death frees me.
 - from the journal of Oliver Shaw

Oliver Shaw craved death.  

Cold concrete pressed against his cheek. Each second that trickled past magnified his awareness, until he could no longer deny the wretched truth. You’re still alive. The words whispered across his foggy brain, taunting him—mocking him. His heart kicked out a stuttered beat. A bead of moisture leaked out from under his eyelids, loosening the dried blood that had crusted there. Flashes exploded in his head, the voices and faces of those he’d failed to save.

His stomach heaved. He sucked in a breath and choked on the sudden bile that filled his throat. God, the familiar stench of excrement and putrid food. Why did his gut choose to protest the smell now after more than a year of its constant companionship?

Open your eyes, you gutless coward.

He grit his teeth and dragged his eyelids open. A sliver of light speared into his retina, blinding him with a sharp ache to the back of his skull.

The light bulb.

That single fucking bulb. Always on. Always grounding him in its sick reality, never letting him forget his place, his sins. He bit down on his lip, letting the metallic taste of his blood fill his mouth. He couldn’t take another day in this hellhole—no, not even another hour.

He shifted. Cement scraped his bruised stomach. The movement set fire to the hundreds of cuts across his back. He stiffened and pulled a hiss through his teeth, concentrating on the tracks of dirt and dried blood covering his arms while he waited for the burning to dial down to an acute throb.

His kidneys ached from dehydration and repeated kicks to his lower back. A chunk of his long, matted black hair fell into his eyes. He tried to brush it aside, but his tingling hands refused to work properly. He flexed his fingers against the tattered fabric of his cast aside shirt until the digits cooperated in an awkward dance that pulled at his joints. Sliding his palms against the pitted concrete he combed the crevices hoping for a sharp piece of metal, a rusty nail, anything he could use to pierce the thick vein pulsing in his neck.

His fingers closed around a jagged rock. Relief spilled into his gut and diluted the gnawing hunger there. He inched over onto his back. Fresh blood oozed down his arm. He blinked the nasty laceration into focus, and a new clarity edged into his vision.

This wasn’t his cell.   

The wall was smooth where it should have been scarred, the floor more heavily pitted. Shadows clouded his brain, of his last caning, more brutal than the others, the ropes that had dug into his raw wrists and ankles, angry voices that jarred his skull—and then nothing. How long had he lain here, unconscious?

Irrational fear squeezed at his heart, making it race. He dug his knuckles into his coarse, tangled beard. How many days since his capture? They’d made him lose track. How could he—if he didn’t know—Oh, Jesus, he’d been holding onto his sanity by a thin thread and now those bastards had cut his only life line.

How many days? Five hundred? More? Less? God, he didn’t know. 

His breath choked past his lips, the garbled sound knocking some sense into him. Who cared? One day was the same as any other. His reasons for counting the days were long gone. He was a ghost and no one, not the United States Government which would deny his very existence, nor his family, of whom he had none, nor Catrina—

His throat tightened. He was the only one left. His captors delighted in reminding him of that fact, rubbing his nose in his own judgmental stupidity. He had nothing but his own self-righteous integrity to blame for his predicament. If he had only broken, like his teammates were willing to do, and let himself be used as propaganda against his own government, maybe they’d have allowed his friends a respectful death without suffering.

Their brutal butchering played through his mind twenty-four hours a day in a continuous reel until he was compelled to imagine a different outcome. One where he’d found a way to save them, rather than ending up chained to the wall and forced to watch.      

Now he glanced around the humid cell with its rusty tin walls, where the crumbling floor was saturated with large rotting leaves and God knew what other kinds of fetid waste. Everything in this place had been left to die, including him.

Too little. Too late.

He tightened his grip on the sharp stone and called upon every ounce of strength he still possessed to drag the sharpest point across his jugular. His breath huffed from his mouth. Warm, sticky moisture welled against his fingers in a trickle. He dug the rock deeper into his neck and waited for the rush of blood to wash over his hand.

Nothing.

“No.” The denial sprang past his lips in a rusty warble he no longer recognized as his own voice.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the salty sting of tears still managed to leak onto his cheeks. He chucked the rock across the cell and heard its soft ping against the wall before it kissed concrete. He needed something better. Sharper.

He collapsed back against the nearest wall. His left hand slipped along the groove where wall met floor and his fingers plowed into soft mush. He lifted them into his line of vision. Red.  Staining their tips. He rolled his thumb across the substance, caught of whiff of the pungent smell.

Rotting fruit. A pomegranate. But the texture transported him. Took him back to another time when he’d swirled his fingers in brightly colored paints, his father silently working on a canvas at his elbow.

Paint the world not as it is, but as you want it to be.

 His illustrator father had been an expert in the art of escapism. And though Oliver had painted his little ten-year-old heart out to please his dad, he could never perfect that level of desperation.

He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled over to a pile of mottled fruit and vegetables near the door. The guards must’ve continued to throw his daily rations inside despite his condition. Flies swarmed around the fermenting pulp, but scattered when his toes plowed into a pile of mango. The juice stung the open gashes along his tender soles. He pushed the pain aside with a wince.

He bent and scooped a handful of red mush into his palm. Shuffling to the nearest wall, he dipped his fingers into the fruit then smeared them across the bumpy metal in a wide arc. He slashed at the wall again. And again.

When his palm was empty, he returned to the makeshift palette and scooped up more of the sticky goop. He squeezed guava between his fingers, scooped up eggplant, yams, okra and wet jungle leaves, his frantic movements creating a wash of color. Oranges, reds, browns, greens. Black. A landscape slowly took shape before his eyes.

He stepped back to observe what he had done. Sweat coated his face in a clammy film and several of the scabbed over wounds on his body had reopened allowing blood to trickle down his arms and legs. But he ignored the deep contusions and the shaking in every weak muscle, keeping his focus on the mural in front of him, desperate to remain rooted in an alternate reality.

Here, at last, was a place he could survive, a place where freedom didn’t scare him every bit as much as captivity.

His eyes fluttered closed and he collapsed to the ground.

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I’m not a big fan of January. It’s a long, cold, month and I’m always gritting my teeth and trying to hurry it along. But, the one thing I DO like about January is that it is full of possibilities. The old is behind me, the new is yet to be discovered.

2009 was the year of “Ups and Downs” for me. In my writing life, I finaled in the Golden Heart. Getting that call was the absolute highlight of my year. Unfortunately, life stress got in the way for much of 2009, and I often found myself struggling to climb back out of the pit. But like all experiences, we learn from them.

I learned a lot about myself during 2009. Like just how much I can endure. I learned that I’m darned stubborn when the situation calls for it and although I may be shy and quiet and nonconfrontational, I am stronger than I believed myself to be.

I learned that I no longer need to doubt whether I’m a good writer or not. I am. (Even on those days when I think I suck). I learned that although publication is the ultimate goal, love of writing is enough to sustain me until I get there. And I learned that having good writing friends to give you a shove now and then is absolutely essential. 

I don’t know what 2010 will bring. I certainly hope it’s more positive than 2009. I’d like to think I’m due for a little break about now. But whatever happens, I’m ready.