Excerpt five

from Jack's Inferno, the beginning of chapter 15 (immediately following the wedding sequence of The Four Bridesmaids of the Apocalypse)

White wedding went down in flames. My condolences to the caterers. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Then again, she wasn't my first scorn. And I'm starting to get used to Hell. So f**k 'em both.

I light a smoke and hale a cab.

The cab driver goes by the name Karl Memnon. He wears glasses with one tinted lens covering his blind eye. The other lens is coke bottle thick and has the effect of a magnifying glass at a glance. He's got greasy dark hair, a thick bushy mustache, and a small triangular patch of hair under his bottom lip. His face is all sweat and stubble. His thick hairy knuckles rest comfortably on the wheel.

"Where to?" he asks me in a hoarse laidback tone.

"Don't care, just drive."

"Sure thing. Got someone after you?"

"Maybe not. We'll see."

We ride through whorehouse ghettos on the low-rent side of the tracks. Lust and pleasure have already crumbled and eroded here; desperation and hunger set up shop in their places. Beauty lost its hold on the people here long ago. No trace of it remains.

The neon is gone. The street lights are burned out or broken. Only the harsh florescent glare from the occasional liquor store shines out into the black night. Even the taxicab only has one working headlight illuminating a path through the oppressive darkness. An homage to its one-eyed master.

I need a place to hide out. To be alone, collect my thoughts. Maybe catch a f*****g nap for once since I've been dead. Not that it probably makes any difference whether I sleep or eat or drink anymore, but even a soul has its habits.

"Hey Karl, are there any hotels around here?" I ask.

"Sure. Got lotsa hotels."

"Can you take me to one where I won't get raped or stabbed?"

"Won't get raped or stabbed?" He c***s the eyebrow over his good eye and lets out a low whistle. "That's a tall order. I might could manage a place where you wouldn't get raped and stabbed. You got a preference of the two?"

"Surprise me."

Reviews

[roarke]

I guess "Auggie Memnon" would've been too obvious.... lol. Nice gritty, urban description of the scene from the cab drive.
I would think "Surprise me" in Hell would be borderline oxymoronic.... hahahaaha. Fun stuff.

[scatterbrain]

i actually love this here:
"White wedding went down in flames. My condolences to the caterers. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Then again, she wasn't my first scorn. And I'm starting to get used to Hell. So f**k 'em both.

I light a smoke and hale a cab."

but then you kill the flow, kill the scene, by still telling us the story. rather than showing (through dialog and body actions), you say this:
"The cab driver goes by the name Karl Memnon. He wears glasses with one tinted lens covering his blind eye. The other lens is coke bottle thick and has the effect of a magnifying glass at a glance. He's got greasy dark hair, a thick bushy mustache, and a small triangular patch of hair under his bottom lip. His face is all sweat and stubble. His thick hairy knuckles rest comfortably on the wheel."
too much. way too much, for me at least. i'm not sure how far into the story this is, but if that's the best that Hell has to offer, then you're already losing. blah. i really can't critique this... i critique linear stories, so when i'm thrown into the middle/beginning/end/somewhere in a story, it's hard for my critiquing to be as effective.

which only means i need to go read chapter 1.