This is one of those images that could be anywhere.
So, here’s the problem:
Ethan was reluctant to agree to go to the stag night, knowing firstly, that the others going were a bit too unruly when they had too many drinks, secondly, that they had to agree to not know where they were being taken by the bus, and thirdly, anything they saw or did had to remain completely confidential.
That was particularly the case when it came to the ‘stag’.
In that case, Ethan knew exactly what this night was going to be, hours of unrelenting debauchery.
And, since Ethan was the stag’s brother, and he was the best man, there was no way he could wriggle his way out of this one.
On top of that, Ethan had to promise the bride to be that he would not let her husband to be go too far. That statement, of course, was like a box full of hand grenades. He didn’t ask for a definition of too far.
So, seven sober, respectable, hard-working junior executives in suits that were worth more than Ethan’s annual salary boarded the bus.
What happened from that moment the bus drove off, until Ethan’s brother’s body was found floating face down in the river behind the resort, handcuffed to a naked girl in a rubber dinghy, barely alive from an overdose, was anyone’s guess, and Ethan’s worst nightmare.
Especially when he was the last one to see his brother, and the girl, alive.
And, no, this is not based on a real-life experience, though in recurring nightmares I’m the one floating fase down in the river.
The process of writing is rewriting editing and more rewriting.
The other day l wrote some words. I didn’t like them. But it had laid the groundwork for a second draft.
Here it is:
Growing up I did not believe l had one of those lovable faces.
My brother, known in school as the best looking boy of his graduating class, said it was a face only a mother could love.
He was mean.
Simone, a girl who was a friend, not a girlfriend, said my face had character.
She was charming and polite.
Looking now, in the mirror, l decided I’d aged gracefully.
I could truthfully say my brother had not, but that was as far as the comparison went.
My overachieving brother was the epitome of success in business, a veritable god zillionaire. Everything he touched turned to gold.
My ultra successful sister, Penelope, had married into the right family perhaps by chance, but she was also a very learned scholar whose life was divided between her chair and the university and her social life with the rich and famous.
Then there was me.
I gave up on my chance at university because l was not the scholarly sort and didn’t last long. Sadly l was the first of my family to be sent down from Oxford.
Instead, l took on a series of professions such as seasonal laborer, farmhand, factory worker, and lastly, night watchman. At least now I had a uniform and looked like I’d made something of myself.
It would not be enough for my parents who every year didn’t say it out loud but the disappointment was always there in their expressions.
My brother in his usual blunt manner said l was a loser and would never change.
My sister was not quite so blunt. She simply said it was disappointing so much potential was going to waste. I only asked her once what she meant and lost me after the first four-syllable word.
Finally, I’d taken their comments to heart and decided l would not be going home to the family Christmas holiday reunion.
I told my boss l was available to work the night shift over the holidays, the shift no one else wanted.
It was he said the time for reflection. He hated his family as much as I did so we would be able to lament our bad luck though the long cold hours from dusk till dawn.
It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicenter of the North Pole. I’d just stepped from the warehouse into the car park.
The car was covered in snow. The weather was clear now, but more snow was coming.
It was going to be a white Christmas, 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 in an SUV parked next to my car. The door opened and what looked to be a woman was climbing down from the driver’s seat.
She closed the door and leaned against the side of the car. “Graham?”
It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time, my ultra-successful sister, Penelope. From what I could see, she didn’t look too well.
“What do you want?”
“Help.”
My help, I was the last person to help her or anyone for that matter. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”
“Because my husband is trying to kill me.”
The instant the last word left her lips I saw her jerk back into the car, and then start sliding down to the ground. There was no mistaking the red streak following her as she fell.
She’d been shot from what could be a sniper rifle, which meant …
It still needs work but I’ve got the gist of where I want to go.
The idea is not to make a character so loathsome no one would want to read about him.
This will evolve and you can if you like come along for the ride!
A fine day, on this trip a rarity, we decided to take the train to Windsor and see the castle.
This is a real castle, and still in one piece, unlike a lot of castles.
Were we hoping to see the Queen, no, it was highly unlikely.
But there were a lot of planes flying overhead into Heathrow. The wind must have been blowing the wrong day, and I’m sure, with one passing over every few minutes, it must annoy the Queen if she was looking for peace and quiet.
Good thing then, when it was built, it was an ideal spot, and not under the landing path. I guess it was hard to predict what would happen 500 years in the future!
I’m not sure if this was the front gate or back gate, but I was wary of any stray arrows coming out of those slits either side of the entrance.
You just never know!
An excellent lawn for croquet. This, I think, is the doorway, on the left, where dignitaries arrive by car. The private apartments are across the back.
The visitor’s apartments. Not sure who that is on the horse.
St George’s Chapel. It’s a magnificent church for a private castle. It’s been very busy the last few months with Royal weddings.
The Round Tower, or the Keep. It is the castle’s centerpiece. Below it is the gardens.
Those stairs are not for the faint-hearted, nor the Queen I suspect. But I think quite a few royal children and their friends have been up and down them a few times.
This is what we saw driving along the Coquihalla Highway in Canada, a rather infamous stretch of road featured on the Discovery Channel, and yes, we saw a number of cars and trucks off the side of the road, and not in a good way
The road was iced over in place, and driving was difficult, but on the plus side the scenery was spectacular, and it was hard not to be distracted when driving.
But, inspiration for a story? It might go something like this:
…
Arty was adamant that he knew the best where man in the business.
That might gave been true if he was in the middle of the city where there were endless tests and turns that could be used to lost chasing police vehicles.
But that didn’t apply to the open road, and one that was think with ice and snow, even if it had recently been cleared.
But that wasn’t as bad as the fact that we had got free of the city, lost the pursuing cars, changed vehicles, and got away free.
All he had to fo was follow the road.
Except Arty had a temper, and getting stuck behind an old van going ever so slowly on the road, caused him to first blast them with horn, then start doing dangerous accelations up behind them, and then attempt to overtake on a bend in the road.
That might not have been so bad if there had not been an oncoming car, but there was.
Even that might not have been so bad if the car had not been a police vehicle.
But the real kicker: Arty lost control of the car and we went sailing off the edge of the road into a ravine, landing on soft ice which after a minute started cracking and then gave way.
The last place I wanted to be was to be sinking into a freezing cold river, but there we were, all frantically trying to get out.
Fortunately, I did, but not before I was soaking wet, and almost frozen. The rest didn’t make it.
This is one of those images that could be anywhere.
So, here’s the problem:
Ethan was reluctant to agree to go to the stag night, knowing firstly, that the others going were a bit too unruly when they had too many drinks, secondly, that they had to agree to not know where they were being taken by the bus, and thirdly, anything they saw or did had to remain completely confidential.
That was particularly the case when it came to the ‘stag’.
In that case, Ethan knew exactly what this night was going to be, hours of unrelenting debauchery.
And, since Ethan was the stag’s brother, and he was the best man, there was no way he could wriggle his way out of this one.
On top of that, Ethan had to promise the bride to be that he would not let her husband to be go too far. That statement, of course, was like a box full of hand grenades. He didn’t ask for a definition of too far.
So, seven sober, respectable, hard-working junior executives in suits that were worth more than Ethan’s annual salary boarded the bus.
What happened from that moment the bus drove off, until Ethan’s brother’s body was found floating face down in the river behind the resort, handcuffed to a naked girl in a rubber dinghy, barely alive from an overdose, was anyone’s guess, and Ethan’s worst nightmare.
Especially when he was the last one to see his brother, and the girl, alive.
And, no, this is not based on a real-life experience, though in recurring nightmares I’m the one floating fase down in the river.
This is a residential tower down at the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, with every apartment on the beachside overlooking the ocean.
There could almost be a Die Gard scenarion going on here, but I like the idea of a drama unfolding in the penthouse, like
The husband comes home and finds the wife with her personal trainer, who is getting too personal, and he is about to thrown him over the balcony. That’s a long way down.
Uber eats arrive at the door, but it’s really two wannabe ransomers who take the daughter, tie her up, then start making absurd demands, and the daughter almost throws the two of them over the balcony.
But, not one to miss an opportunity, or get her stepmother, who is younger than her, into all sorts of trouble.
The brother of the owner, a single father is killed in a freak accident, and his son has to be taken in, brought back to the penthouse, and thinks he’s struck it rich. The conniving brat is about to be taught a lesson he’ll never forget when he discovers all is not what it seems.
Or my absolute favorite, I win the lottery, move into the apartment, and so do the other 27 layabout members of my family.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.
…
At least the helicopter pilot hadn’t hit the fuel tanks or any of the control wires.
Because of the holes in the fuselage, we couldn’t fly any higher than between two and five thousand feet or go as fast as Davies would like, but the plane settled into a routine and got us where we wanted to go.
Just a few miles from the base, fuel almost exhausted, we got a fighter escort.
At first, I thought the base commander thought we were an unidentified flying object, mainly because something else had been hit, our communications. We couldn’t tell the base we were coming, and they only had the Colonel’s transmission of an approximate arrival time, much earlier than the actual time we were supposed to arrive.
On the ground, we were met with fire trucks, and a military escort, with weapons that could take out a mouse at one thousand yards. Just in case we were terrorists, I suppose.
We were parked in a bay away from the main terminal area and had to wait for a half-hour before we were met by Lallo. Monroe’s comment, that he was probably finishing his lunch which would be more important than meeting us, had kept us waiting.
The two abductees were the first to leave the aircraft, then Shurl’s body was removed after the doctor certified he was dead.
Then the rest of us were allowed to leave the aircraft. A bus was waiting, and everyone bar Monroe and I had boarded and been taken away. Under guard. Perhaps their service had not mitigated their prison sentences. I didn’t ask Lallo why; I’d probably not get the truth anyway.
“Good job,” he said, after watching the bus depart. “Pity, it wasn’t done right the first time.”
A compliment followed by disparagement.
“Next time you can do the job yourself,” Monroe said. “And until you’ve been in the field and actually got shot at, you’d do well to keep that trap of yours shut.”
“May I …”
“…remind me you’re my superior officer? No. I’m sure that status won’t last much longer. I’m applying for a transfer.”
He looked at me. “What about you?”
“Nothing to say, except I don’t blame her. Now, since all you’ve done is prove to me you’re an idiot, I’ll take my leave.”
In the distance I could see a large American car, the sort that proliferated in the 1950s and 1960s before petrol prices were a problem, cutting across the runway at speed. Was it the owner of the DC3 coming to see the damage?
No. When it got closer I could see Bamfield, cigar in mouth, beaming. I suppose no one felt they had the authority to tell him not to.
The car stopped behind Lallo’s jeep and Bamfield got out, then leaned against the driver’s side door and looked at us over the roof.
“James, Monroe. Still alive I see. Pity about the plane; I know the chap who owns it. He’s going to be pissed when he sees the cannon holes. What happened?”
“Bad guys,” Monroe said.
“Of course. Get in, I’ll give you a ride back to the terminal. We can talk on the way.”
Neither of us moved. If Monroe wasn’t going to suffer fools gladly, neither was I.
“Well…”
“I’d rather walk,” I said.
“We’d rather walk, sir.” With a heavy emphasis on the ‘sir’.
“Look, you did a great job, minimal losses, and we got two assets back. Everyone is happy. But, we have a small problem down in South America…”
From the age of 23, my life had been a complete work of fiction, and I have been so wrapped up in that web of lies that I no longer knew what was true and what wasn’t.
23 years and 1 day to be exact, the day after my birthday. It was the last thing I remembered about who I might have been.
Before a truck nearly wiped me out, destroyed my car, and very neatly me with it.
My survival had been described as a miracle, a triumph for the bionic engineers who got a subject to implant their technology, overcoming the bans for creating and installing such technology in humans by simply not telling anyone.
It was why, when I work up, I was in a small room buried a long way from the surface of the planet, a sort of Frankenstein’s secret laboratory.
But I didn’t know any of this, not for a long time, not till things started to go wrong.
All I knew was what I was told, and that was that I was very lucky to be alive, that I had the best team of surgeons, and they had quite literally glued me back together.
Judging by the number of bandages, I could believe them. It took six months for all of the operations to be completed, and another few for the skin grafts and physical healing.
Not only they were impressed by the way I had recovered, but when I finally got to look at the new me, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Certainly, this time around, I was much better looking, physically fit, and tired, but mentally, I was still on a knife-edge.
That accident replayed in my head at least once every day, and that would probably never leave me. There were other jumbled memories in my head that I couldn’t make sense of, of people who looked like aliens, to be in what might call a laboratory.
And then one recurring, of a woman who might have been an angel or a doctor, or both. She never spoke, just remained by my side nearly all the time, sitting there observing me.
It felt strange, but it was not uncomfortable. And it was hard to tell if the memories were real or just my imagination because since I’d woken and returned to what they called the real world I had not seen her again.
…
I never understood what the expression red-letter day meant, other than in the current context, it was to be the day they sent me home.
There were moments when I never thought I’d see home again, and then moments where I knew no one would recognize me.
The reality is they wouldn’t. In saving me, they completely reconstructed me, from the face down. When I first looked in the mirror my face was bandages. Then I’d was scarred and almost bloody pulp. In the end, staring back at me was the face of someone I didn’t know.
It was the price of being saved, but somewhere behind the tonal inflection of the plastic surgeon was the real reason for the transformation, and perhaps it didn’t have to be that way.
But I was grateful and didn’t want to rock the boat. It just makes it that little bit more difficult to consider re-joining the world.
I’d been escorted to a large lounge that overlooked a snow-covered mountain range, where the sky was blue and the sun shone brightly, giving the whole scene a sort of shimmering effect.
A touch of the glass that separated outside from in was very, very cold to the touch. Was this a secret hideaway in the Swiss mountains, and had I been in a secret laboratory?
Or was this another planet?
Was it the drugs they’d been going me every day making me like this, unsure, uncertain, unsettled, and afraid?
I’d been brought to the room and left there, and for a half-hour I alternately sat, made coffee, stood and admired the scenery, checked all of the books in the bookcase, the bottles of alcohol in the bar, then sat again, trying to dispel the nerves.
Then the door opened, the one I tried and found locked, and to my surprise, the angel walked in, looking more beautiful than ever.
I watched her walk across the room, mesmerized.
She stopped in front of me, smiled, then sat in the chair opposite, or rather not so much sit as curl up into the contours of the seat, feet tucked under her, and arm outstretched across the back, almost as if she was inviting me to snuggle into her.
“How are you this morning Matthew?”
Her voice was equally mesmerizing, and I would be happy to listen to her reading a book or the definition of rocket science.
“Very well.”
“It’s been a long road, sometimes difficult, sometimes almost impossible, but we got there in the end. You are, according to the doctors, fully recovered, and it’s time for you to leave.”
“About that…”
“You have questions, I suspect, and a lot of them. They will be answered, all in good time. But for the present, we will not be casting you out to fend for yourself. I will be coming with you, your intermediary so to speak while you reassimilate. Of course, you cannot go back to the life you had before, that life, that person no longer exists. For all intents and purposes, you had died on the operating table after the accident.”
“That was not what I understood.”
What I had understood was very hazy, after they had brought me to the facility. Bits and pieces of that night, of the accident, and the aftermath, of being in the hospital, and what I thought was me looking down at me on an operating table, being declared dead.
And then being whisked away in an ambulance to somewhere else where there were more doctors and nurses, and a man in a suit saying ‘sign this if you want to live‘.
I was not sure what I signed, then, but now, it was to save my life, but at what cost?
“Things are not always as they seem. You have been treated with largely experimental treatments that otherwise could not be performed on people within the current medical regime. Your life, however, was never in any danger, and, as you can see, you have recovered remarkably. All we ask is that you accept the responsibility of being one of the few that have been granted a second life. I am also another such person, and it will be my honor to help you through what can be a difficult stage, reintegration. You are, for all intents and purposes, Andrew Tavener, but as he is no longer alive, your name will be Mathew Welles. I was once Mary Ballen, I’m now Felicity Welkinshaw. Names are only a part of who you are now.”
It was beginning to sound like I was one of a select group. That Felicity was like me, and she accepted who she was, now. Perhaps things were not so bad, a good job, and a girl like Felicity as a friend, perhaps that was only a small price to pay.
Except…
“So, I cannot go back to where I lived, where I worked, see those people I once knew, friends, family?”
“Not as Andrew, no. But, when we believe you can manage it, you will be able to see those people but only as an outsider who has forged a relationship with all or any of them. However, there is one exception, Wendy. You cannot see her, not even accidentally meet her. For that reason, your new life will be as a new junior executive for the company that oversees the medical research that you have been treated, in England. It is for the best, and you will come to realize that.”
I shrugged. It could be worse. But there was something else on my mind. Something borne out of a lot of fractured memories, after coming to the facility.
“This is going to sound very freakish, but I have to ask. Am I still human?”
Those odd memories, I thought I was being ‘assembled’.
“Yes, though a number of what may seem like robotic changes have been made, what we regard as the next step in human evolution. Now, I think it’s time for our going away party. Everyone will be there.”
She stood, and held out her hand.
I took it and had an immediate tingling sensation, such a human reaction.
Followed by a single memory that came back right at that moment, a snippet of a conversation I’d overheard.
“He’s the best god-damned robot we’ve made to date, even better than Felicity, and that’s saying something.”
And the face of the man was the first one I saw as I entered the room.
This is an inlet near Port Macquarie in northern New South Wales. It is adjacent to a caravan and camping park, close to the ocean and parklands.
But, for our purposes, this scene is going to have a few more interesting connotations than just a few campers going for a jog along the beach, fishing in the estuary, or further out to sea on the other side of the wall in the background.
Firstly, to my favorite kind of story, a spy story…
It’s basically the evil billionaire’s backyard to his island hideaway, and our hero intends to come ashore at night and do battle with the guards, break into the underground holding cells and save the girl.
As always, saving the world comes second!
Or, it’s a place like Fantasy Island, without the landing strip on the beach, where people come to have their fantasies fulfilled. OK, to start there are no robots that are going to go berserk, that’s so ten years ago.
And, no, the hosts won’t be dressed in white safari suits. They went out in the 70s.
Then, I suppose, a story that I like, about people who have secrets, people who are broken, people who just want to get away from everyone else, come to this island where they can live in anonymity, without having to interact with anyone unless they want to.
This is Railway Hotel in Gympie, adjacent to the old Gympie station
Just the name Railway Hotel conjured up a lot of interesting connotations. There’s one in almost every rural town that has Railway station, or perhaps a Junction Hotel, a Railway Hotel, or a Terminus Hotel.
And, once upon a time, there were nearly 600 of them, up until the 1920s, ubiquitous hotels build to house the people building the railways, and, then, when they were finished a lot disappeared, but a lot also remained to service the railway station and passengers coming and going.
These days, these old hotels that still exist are anachronisms of a bygone age, rather ornate wooden structures with big rooms and communal bathrooms, bars, saloons, and dining rooms, and only those curious about the past would stay there.
I’ve stayed in a few myself.
But, as for a story, well, the older, the better, because these would have ghosts.
They could also have infamous pasts, like a fire that destroys only part of the hotel, signs of which form part of the character.
A doorway into a now hidden room closed off because of something horrible happening there, could suddenly become a portal, where stepping through takes you back to the time of the event.
In fact, I’m in the mood to write just such a story…
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 