A couple excerpts from a novel I've been working on
They continued along the pothole ridden road in silence, John gracefully dodging grasshoppers, his father lumbering slightly behind in his awkward gait. John had never known why his father walked the way he did, his steps had such an unsure, almost hobbled quality about them. Maybe he'd had an accident earlier in life, or maybe it was just a reflection of his father's personality. Either way, at such a young age he didn't think, or didn't care to ask, and he realized now he probably would never know why his father walked in such an unsual manner. He'd never thought of it that way before, and a part of him was upset by the thought.
They took a turn on to a very narrow path that branched off the main road. It was mostly dirt, but parts of it were covered in very old pavement which was cracked and crumbling away. The two were surrounded on all sides by large trees, birches and pines mostly, but the occasional maple or oak could be seen as well. John didn't know the names of the trees then, but his father did.
The sun that had been beating down on them as they walked along the main road was all but gone now. It was still mid-day, but the trees were so lofty they seemed to curve over the path, obscuring the sun almost entirely from view. The shade was thick, the path dimly illuminated by something that seemed halfway between light and dark, and John would have been scared had his father not been there. The air was thick with mosquitos, which John batted at endlessly, and the occasional croak from a frog could be heard in the distance. Once in a while they'd hear the leaves rustle and a chimpmunk or small bird would poke it's head out of a tree. The first time this happened it startled John, and he jumped a little, but eventually he grew used to it and even began looking forward to it.
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His memory struggled and what it pulled back was more of an ocean than a pond. Any body of water viewed through the perspective of a scrawny five year old boy was bound to take on a much larger appearance, but the pond that coalesced in his mind's eye, that in reality was probably not much more than spit in a puddle, was a vast expanse of beautiful water sparkling in the mid-day sun.
He wondered if the pond even still existed. Probably not, not much he remembered from his childhood home remained. His father told him that no one else had ever been there, that they were the only ones who knew where it was, but his father was prone to hyperbole and even though from what he could recall it was quite a trek to reach, he imagined there were at least a few others privy to it's location. Still, he kind of hoped that his father was right, that only the two of them had ever been there, that the pond was something they shared alone, and that no one else would ever lay eyes upon it again.
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The euphoria washed over him and he lost track of where he was. The bed he was lying in, the woman by his side, for a brief moment they ceased to be. He thought about his father's words, and he almost felt like he was there again, feeling the sun beating down on his back and wondering why his father was talking the way he was. He was too young to understand then, but he knew now.
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The face beside him wasn't particularly beautiful, but through the drug induced haze, and lit only by the bits of moonlight diffused through the curtains, it almost looked angelic. In reality she meant very little to him, she was merely convenient, but looking at her now, like this, he wished he loved her. He wished he could wake her up, and tell her that she was all he wanted. Tell her that they should elope tonight and be together forever. He wanted so much to feel like that, but he knew he didn't, and never would, and most of all he knew the only thing making him think this way was the oxycontin he'd snorted earlier pumping through his blood stream. He contemplated waking her up for a quick fuck before trying to go back to sleep, but the oxy came back in a wave before the thought had even finished and he realized he just wanted to lay back and let it carry him from this place once again.
Taken from the first two chapters. Let me know what you think.
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"You know I dreamed about you, for twenty-nine years before I saw you, You know I dreamed about you, I missed you for, for twenty-nine years"
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