Travers

Travers pulled the car in and parked it on the street. He sat and looked at the house in the night. A rundown place, sitting under a street-lamp; a place like any other. A reasonably well-kept garden and front lawn. Unremarkable in every way, except that he was here, and that meant that the place was altogether something else.

He sat and checked his watch, looked for movement, but there was none, checked it again, then opened a bag of chips and ate.

Nothing. Not a light on. Nothing to give away the fact that it was a notorious crack-house, and in less than an hour’s time, he would have to go inside and make the hit, then get the hell out of there, without anybody noticing, which, of course, was impossible. There was always collateral.

He pulled out his pieces and checked them over, polished them with a white cloth, sat and went through his routine. Checked the time and the date and the text message that had all the details: ‘9 Chatswood Road, 11pm, Ed Johnston, 55, bald, overweight’. The night went on, and he had everything polished: the Walther 38 hand gun, and the 12-gauge shotgun: his two prized pieces that he did all his work with. He put them all back in his leather bag, zipped it up and snapped the radio on, listened to the late-night jazz, then, saw a cop car, of all things, rolling down the street. A beam of light emanating from it, sifting through the houses and yards.

He snapped the radio off and ducked under the dash-board, just seconds before it flashed through the hull, and then was gone, then waited a full five minutes before daring to look up, knowing that at any moment, there could be a tap on the window, and that he would have to make up some story about the what the hell he was doing here, in the middle of the night, in the heart of suburbia.

He inched his way up the seat and looked around, dared to sit up fully, saw that the street was again, empty, checked his watch. Still 45 minutes to go. He snapped the radio back on again and watched the house. Still nothing.

How easy it would have been to just go in early, look for the guy, do the hit, and roll out, but these things had to go exactly as his employer said they would have to go, not that he had ever met his employer.

A light came on in the house and a door was thrown open. A kid came out and stumbled onto the porch, fell over and looked up, started yelling, and then a fly-wire door was thrown open and a man stepped onto the porch and picked the kid up and carried him back into the house and slammed the door. Travis ate another hand full of chips, spilt some of them down his shirt, looked on, dismayed. The last thing he wanted was to have to confront an actual family, living inside.

He checked the time again, thought about pulling out of the job, but knew that there was a price for that move, that it would be him that would be lined up by some goon or group of goons, and he knew that he wouldn’t stand a chance, and so, with a heavy heart he unzipped the bag, pulled out the shotgun and then the pistol, screwed the silencer on it, hoping that it would be the only weapon that was needed.

He put the pistol in his pocket and opened the car door, stood and held the shotgun under his jacket, closed it as silently as he could and looked around the street, then scuttled across the road and opened the little gate that led up a path, walked it, then up the steps to the house and tried the front door. But it was locked. Now, he would have to be very deliberate and economic with his movements.

In the next moment, he threw his body against the door, smashing the lock and part of the hinge and almost fell onto a carpeted set of steps, and suddenly, a woman was screaming, and, in that moment, he knew that the worst possible outcome had arrived, that the whole thing was going to be a total mess.

He ducked, just seconds before a bullet went whistling past his face, then crouched down and saw the woman, dressed in a nightgown, holding a pistol and about to unload on him, then dove behind a couch by the time the second bullet was fired. He pulled the shotgun from his jacket, positioned it on the top of the couch, aimed at her and pulled the trigger and the poor woman never knew what had hit her. The bullet landed in her neck, blood splattering from it, landing on the carpet, sent her flying, where she finally landed against the wall, a crippled rag doll and dead. And then, in the next instant, another shotgun explosion, and another bullet, flying past him, almost shaving his face. Travis turned to see the man, standing, staring at him, holding a pistol.

Travis lifted the shotgun and fired on him without hardly aiming, and the bullet slammed into the man’s abdominals, bursting them open, sent entrails and blood splattering onto the carpet where it made an audible thump. He was thrown through the air and landed on the carpet, perched against a wall, stared back at him, like a zombie, lying in his own blood. A look of shock on his face, and then, at noticing his dead wife across the room, hatred, until his eyes rolled back in his head, and his breathing stopped and he became lifeless.

Travers walked up to the man and stood over him, looked at the eyes rolled back in his head, bent down and closed them, then heard the sound of tiny footsteps. A kid, no more than a toddler, standing behind the bars of a set of stairs, looking at him with eyes full of wonder. He looked at the kid, knowing what he had to do, what he should do, reasoning it out, then picked up the shot-gun and aimed, but the kid just stood there, unable to comprehend any of it, and so, he put the gun down and turned and left.

The street was empty. He reckoned he had around 30 more seconds to get into the car and get out, before the cops would show up, and most likely gun him down. He found the car keys still in his pocket, got them out and opened the door, threw the 12 gauge in the back seat, took the pistol out of his pocket and threw that in, too, then got in the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition and the Pontiac started with a roar. And so, he threw it into gear, and made his way out of the suburb, then onto the highway, kept to the speed limit. 

Traffic everywhere. He looked over and saw a family in a brown station wagon, looking exhausted, then lit a cigarette and coughed, suddenly disgusted with it, threw it and the pack out the window, vowing that it would be the final time that he would quit, then got off the interstate. 

The night had turned freezing cold by the time that he made it back to his home. He opened the garage door with a remote and pulled the car in, got out and locked it, opened the side door to the house, closed the garage door and went up the stairs, took his clothes off in the dark and flopped onto the bed and was out.

Dreams of another time and another place. Travers slept the sleep of the haunted, saw other souls in his dreams, and wondered about them; spirits, moving in time that had somehow, once belonged to him, but not anymore. Looking into a woman’s eyes and admiring her face, brown eyes and hair, a face that was a sculpture’s masterpiece.

He slept through his alarm and didn’t wake until the afternoon, the light coming from under the blind, making its way up the carpet. He threw the sheet off and sat, for a moment, then made his way to the kitchen and turned the jug on, made himself a cup of coffee, then walked out to the deck and looked down at the street. He sipped it and the horror of what he had done crept over him like a virus. He watched a car amble down the street, a hand on the wheel, the head of the driver, looking around. Was he a hired goon, too? Would they send a guy like that to make a hit on him, a guy like himself, if he decided to get out? The rest of the street, as it always was, men and women walking along, eating ice-creams, people with tanned skin, forever.

He finished the coffee then showered and got dressed and left the apartment, stepped out into the sunshine, made his way down to the main strip, pulled up at his favourite café. He found a seat and sat down. A good-looking waitress came out from behind the counter and he ordered breakfast with her, pulled out his phone and checked his messages.

‘Meet at Docklands, tonight, 7.30.’

Travis sat and ate the eggs, then noticed a woman, sitting at a table opposite and alone. He looked at her and saw that she was handsome with long brown hair and good features. He leaned over the table and tried to catch her eye but it was impossible as she was wearing sunglasses, then decided to use his voice, said the first thing that came into his head.

‘You enjoying the view?’

She looked over at him, her head doing a double take.

‘Yes, I suppose, I am, you?’

‘Always.’

She looked away and he knew that he would have to come up with something quick or she might lose interest.

‘You doing anything today?’ He asked. She looked at him and laughed.

‘Nothing in particular, you?’

‘Just got to go visit my boss and quite my job.’

She smiled at him and put her sunglasses down.

‘Good for you. I love quitting jobs. It’s one of my favourite things.’

‘Me, too…So, what are you doing today?’

She flashed a grin.

‘Are you asking me out?’

‘As a matter of fact, I am.’

He stood and walked over to her table and asked her for her phone number and she agreed and he plugged it onto his phone and wished her farewell and paid, then made his way to the beach, buoyed by the encounter, then got back to the task of worrying about whether or not his life was at stake.

A warm sunny day, everything perfect, except that he was a hired goon who couldn’t get out of the business, or get that kid’s face out of his head.

He made it to the beach and started his walk, the sun, warm on his skin. Women tanning themselves in bikinis. He kept walking and made it out to the end of the pier, sat and watched the waves coming in, lines of them, rolling onto the sand, thought more about the meeting, about getting out, and whether or not it would mean leaving the area, or maybe even the country. That was until he looked up and saw the gun barrel pointed at his face. He looked at the gunman and didn’t recognise him at all. A guy, much like himself, hired to do a job, and nothing more.

The only question left was why? In the seconds that he had left, he trawled his mind for a mistake that he had made, but there was none. Who knew, maybe there was a used by date for this line of work and here it was?

These, his last thoughts before the gunshot went off, and everything went white, leaving, whatever was left of him: a large stump of meat, dressed in a cabana shirt, with a head blown apart, splattered across the pavement.  

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[JayG]

I did this critique before I checked to see if I'd done your work before. So this repeats pretty much everything I've already said. But for some odd reason the site won't let me delete the critique, so, here I am again. 😀

Let me first say, that most people don’t have the sense to ask, and simply assume that since we learned to write in school, we have that taken care of. And that's where your problem lies, because in reality, all those reports and essays that you were assigned served only to make you good at writing reports and essays.

But the goal of a report is to inform the reader. The narrator, because his voice cannot be heard, is of necessity, a dispassionate external observer. If we use those techniques when writing fiction, the result will read like a report. There's no way around that.

As the author, and until it's pointed out, you won’t see that, because you begin reading already knowing the situation and the characters, plus what’s about to happen. So, it will work perfectly… for you. The reader? Not so much.

That’s why we must always edit from the chair of a reader. In fact, having the computer read it to you is a great way to do that. It's something I use as my second to the last edit before I release a novel.

To show what I mean, look at a few lines as a reader must.

• Travers pulled the car in and parked it on the street.

This makes perfect sense to you because you know where he is. But why do we care where he parked his car, when we don’t know where he is, or why he’s there. In fact, why even bother telling the reader that he parked the car? Why not begin with him sitting in the parked car? That will tell us how he got there, and gets to what matters, more quickly. Every unnecessary word you can cut speeds the read and adds impact.

• He sat and looked at the house in the night.

This is not him studying the house. This is you, someone who is neither in the story or on the scene, talking TO the reader. And... How can it be “the” house when we’ve not been informed of why he’s there, where we are in time and space, or, what’s going on?

My point is that we're being given information, but not being given the context to make the words meaningful. It’s not a matter of how well you write, or talent. It’s that you are, as you’ve been taught to do, reporting. But literally, here is where an agent or publisher would stop reading. And that's what you need to fix, by digging into the skills that the pros take for granted.

• A rundown place, sitting under a street-lamp; a place like any other.

Look at this line as a reader: a house can’t sit “under” a streetlight. They light streets not houses. And, if it was a "place like ANY other," it would look like the Grand Canyon and the Empire State building, and... My point is that we have to be specific. We cannot say or expect, “You know what I mean,” because the reader doesn’t.

I know that’s bad news, and I’m certainly not making you happy. But, the good news is that once you begin using the skills of fiction writing, those problems won't occur.

The reason I hit you with this is that we'll not address the problem we don't see as being one, so I thought you might want to know.

And here's more good news: Once you master those professional techniques the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun. Once you truly understand how to place the reader into the viewpoint of the protagonist, that protagonist becomes your cowriter, whispering suggestions and warnings in your ear.

And at some point, as you write, your protagonist will straighten, place hands on hips, and say, “Me do THAT in this situation? Are you out of your mind? Not with the personality, resources, and needs that you've given me. In fact, what I would do is…” And until your characters do that, they're not real to either you or the reader.

As for how to gain those skills, the library’s fiction writing department can be a huge resource. Personally? I’d suggest starting with Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Try a few chapters. I think you will be very glad you did.

And, if an overview would help, you might check a few of the articles in my WordPress writing blog.
But whatever you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/