I have a stab at improving this starting piece every now and then, a project that started about a year or so ago, and I find myself rewriting the start over and over because I’m not satisfied with the characterization.

It’s not so much the storyline, as it is in trying to create sympathy for the character, and not find him as dull as ditchwater.  He’s improving with age.  As writers, we tend to create colourful characters and shy away from those who are dull and boring, because after all, as a reader, you want to become something or someone who is far from ordinary.  Well, Graham is starting out ordinary, but he will be anything but by the time I write those words ‘The End’.

I promise.

…

I am the master of my own destiny.

My father had drummed that into me, as well as my older brother and younger sister, over and over, until it became a mantra.

For them.

I could not say I didn’t have the same advantages afforded to them, afforded to me.  I did.

But somewhere lost in the translation, someone forgot to tell me that it was only advice, not an order, and mistaking it for the latter, I struck out on my own path.

And for the next ten years, it was a long and winding path that led me to this point in time, in a small room that held nothing to tell me where I came from, or who I really was.

My parents were very wealthy with an Upper Westside Apartment in Manhattan and a holiday house in Martha’s Vineyard, my sister had a successful medical career and married a most eligible bachelor, as expected, and my brother, he was a politician.

I’d not seen any of them in at least five years, and they hadn’t called me.

You see, I was the black sheep of the family.  I dropped out of college when it all became too much and drifted.  Seasonal labourer, farmhand, factory worker, add job man, and night watchman. 

At least now I had a uniform, and a gun, and looked like I’d made something of myself.

It was hard to say why, but just before I was about to head out of the factory to end my shift, those thoughts about them came into my mind.   They might be gone, but I guess I would never forget them.  I wondered briefly if any of them thought about me.

It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicentre of the South Pole.  I’d just stepped from the factory warehouse into the car park.

The car was covered in snow.  The weather was clear now, but I could feel more snow coming.  A white Christmas?  That’s all I needed.  I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.

As I approached my car, the light went on inside an SUV parked next to my car.  The door opened and what looked to be a woman was getting out of the car.

“Graham?”

It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time.

I looked again and was shocked to see my ultra-successful sister, Penelope.  She was leaning against the front fender, and from what I could see, didn’t look too well.

How on earth did she find me, after all the years that had passed?  Perhaps that sparked my un-conciliatory question, “What do you want?”

I could see the surprise and then the hurt in her expression.  Perhaps I had been a little harsh.  Whatever she felt, it passed, and she said, “Help.”

My help?  Help with what? I was the last person who could help her, or anyone for that matter, with anything.   But curiosity got the better of me.  “Why?”

“I think my husband is trying to kill me.”

Then, with that said, she slid down the side of the car, and I could see, in the arc lamps lighting the car park, a trail of blood.

My first thought, she needed the help of a doctor, not a stupid brother, then a second thought, call 911, which I did, and hoped like hell they got here in time.

And, yes, there was a third thought that crossed my mind.  Whether or not I would be blamed for this event.

…

© Charles Heath 2022

Well, who are you people?

…

It was a distraction.

One minute I was looking at three people holding two of the freighter crew hostage, then next I was watching the three disintegrate into a matter stream, and disappear.

It was not possible, and yet I saw it with my own eyes.

I pressed the transmit button on my communicator and said, “What the hell was what?”

“A ship, twice the size of this vessel, came out of nowhere, appeared on screen for about a minute and then disappeared.”

“Along with our friends over here. They just dematerialised. It seems they can transport people whereas we can only transfer matter. On a good day.”

Another voice came over the freighter’s internal communications system, “Cargo supervisor to captain, it seems we have just lost a container of plutonium fuel rods, sir.”

“Did you hear that, sir?” I said.

“Those would be the rods needed on Venus we were sent to pick up. Without them, they’re about to go offline. Get back here now, we now have a humanitarian rescue mission. Out.”

I looked over at Myrtle. “We have to leave, I’ll be along in a minute.”

I walked over to Jacko who was looking far more relieved now he didn’t had a space gun being held to his head. “How did you get to be hauling Plutonium?”

“Only ship available, I guess. Freighters are stretched thin with this new building program on the outer planets. Can you call up head office and tell them we need repairs.”

“No comms?”

“No anything at the moment, except life support, and that’s likely to become a problem if they take their time. You know how it is.”

I did. Repairs never seemed to be a priority, not considering how much a ship cost.

“I’ll get the captain to get space command to put a rocket up them. Any idea who those people were?”

“Not any of us I reckon. I think we’ve just made first contact with a new species. And if they know what they can do with the plutonium, things might get a little interesting out here.”

Interesting indeed.

…

© Charles Heath 2021

Someone, many years ago, told me that once you turned 65 the weeks just flew, you know, like when a day was a long time, days will seem like hours, weeks like days, and years, well, it’s like watching the time clock on a time machine.

That last week went really fast, and now suddenly I’m 70.  What happened to the last five years!

But…

I finally knuckled down and got some work done on the multitude of writing projects I’ve got going on.

I’ve recently been working on a story I’ve been calling ‘The helicopter story that’s been keeping me awake’, that got to the fifteenth episode, the end of what I now call part one, and as of the sixteenth episode is now under the ubiquitous title of ‘What happens after an action-packed start’.

Now written through to episode thirty, it starts on the third part and the climax of the story, and I may call it ‘What happens when you’re sent on a fool’s errand’.

The story will have three parts and will become a novella.  The title, “Under the Cover of Darkness”, and Part 1 is called “Crash Landing”.  More news on the other parts soon.

It has also become part of my “Cinema of my dreams” series, under the subtitle of ‘I never wanted to go to Africa.”

Another that I have been calling ‘I Always Wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt” was a whimsical idea that cropped up because I was stuck on an aeroplane, where the initial idea was formed, then home where it was a hot afternoon, and it reminded me of a desert island, just where you’d expect to find treasure.

Of course, the treasure isn’t on an island, it’s somewhere on the Florida coast, and there’s an intrepid adventurer who had the ‘real’ map, sought after by a variety of bad people.

It’s now rounded out into ninety-one episodes, and nothing like what I originally envisaged.

It too is one of the ‘Cinema of my dreams’ series, subtitled, naturally, ‘I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt’.

Last week I even began drawing up the treasure map, after all, you can’t have a treasure hunt without a map, can you?

Then there’s my war story, without a title.  That might not happen until it is finished.  It has forty-seven episodes so far, but we’re heading towards the end quite quickly.

It’s in WW2, and the Germans are about to discover all is not going their way.

Another of the ‘Cinema of my dreams’ series, it is subtitled ‘I always wanted to write a war story’.

There is a fourth story, under the title “Was it just another surveillance job’ that has surprisingly found a new life, and I’m having fun trying to work out the lies from the truth, except in the spy business, no one ever really knows which is which, do they?

It has just ended with 67 episodes and is finally at a conclusion.

There’s a fifth, a story that started out being fuelled by screenshots of planets in Skymap, that blossomed into my take on space travel and meeting alien races out on the edge of the galaxy.  Fifty-one episodes on, it’s a miracle they haven’t been blasted out of the sky.

Stay tuned for another progress report.

Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.

That was particularly true in my case.  The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.

At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me.  I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.

The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters.  She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.

Routine was the word she used.

Her fellow detective was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible.  I could sense the raging violence within him.  Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.

After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.

But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.

The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.

For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.

They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts.  Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.

No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.

She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy.  Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution.  Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.

It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down.  I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess.  Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.

What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again.  It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.

And it had.

Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe.   I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.

We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee.  It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.

She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.

I wondered if this text message was in that category.  I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.

I reached for the phone then put it back down again.  I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.

© Charles Heath 2018-2020