So I’ve started writing a short story, and I’d like all your opinions on it. I’ve included a short excerpt from Chapter 1. It doesn’t have an official title, but suggestions are welcome. Please let me know what you think!
Chapter 1: Rain
Rain. It was always the rain that brought him back. Something about it woke him from a daze that had long been the world he knew. For hours know he had sat on that bench. Gazing at something long forgotten, or never known. Looking past the world around him, through it.
It was not so much the rain that brought him out of that haze, or the rumble of thunder that signaled it’s coming. It was the smell. That smell of hot crayons that happens when tainted water meets hot pavement.
The world came back into focus for a moment.
“How long have I been here?” Jack thought to himself.
No matter. It was the same as it had always been, a place that he knew but didn’t care for. A park bench that he had sat on a hundred times. Jack knew every knick, dent, and ding in that old wooden bench. Countless times it had splintered into his hands when he got up to leave as if it was trying to hold him there.
Jack leaned forward, and reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small gold lighter. Flicking back the lid and sparking it to life in one swift motion, Jack drew in the first puff of his next cigarette.
The smoke filled his lungs along with the damp and musty air, and he began to stare longingly at the little gold lighter in his right hand. It was his fathers. From years of use that gold had begun to flake and scratch aways exposing the nickel underneath. Much like Jack, the years of being dropped, picked up, struck, and dropped again, had taken their tole.
Jack stood up and contemplated where he would go next. He couldn’t go home. Not after what had happened.
As he began to walk, the world began to go back out of focus as Jack sunk deeper and deeper into his own directionless thoughts. He walked slowly and steadily forward, the thud thud of his heavy boots the only sound disturbing the night air.
He liked nights like this. He liked walking alone, through the side streets and neighborhoods. This is when his world was at peace.
Orange Beats Yellow 