Hey, look, it’s Friday again. Let’s all raise our collective glasses full of well, whatever your particular poison of preference happens to be. Or, hell, even if it doesn’t come in a glass. But, um, let’s try to keep it to legal vices this time. I’m still waiting on a court date from that last time.
Anyway, seems like a good day to fire up the Archivemobile and take another trip down Old Blogpost Lane in search of a piece of short fiction that no one’s cracked an eyeball at in a couple of years.
Today’s installment is “The Bar Patron and the Young Lady”, which isn’t really about the bar patron at all and only half about the young lady. But, hey, it’s my short fiction and until someone decides to throw a couple of Benjamins at me for it, I’ll keep whatever title I like.
This one I wrote very quickly, if I recall correctly. The goal was to see if I could squeeze out an entire short in half an hour or less. If it matters to you, I failed at that. It took a little over 45 minutes to get to the end. But I was happy with the end result, so that’s quite good enough for me.
There’s a bit of head-hopping here—that is, a point-of-view switch that takes place without any type of separation or scene break to highlight it—which is a pretty big no-no in fiction, in general. I wanted to see, though, if I could start with one POV and then switch to a second and make it stick well enough that by the time we go back to the original one the reader might have forgotten about it altogether. I’ll let you decided if it worked or not.
Anyway, here’s your short excerpt:
With a shrug, he took a wallet from the breast pocket of his smokey suit jacket, placed two bills on the table, and stood up. He plucked his overcoat from his chair and folded it over his arm. Turned away, looked back, hesitated. The weight between the pair slipped. In that one moment hung the grimmest shred of hope. He had a finger of scotch left and something unsaid written plainly on his face.
But rather than give those words voice, he picked the tumbler up from the table, drained the amber liquid, and with it her last fleeting hope. He set the glass down and walked out in silence.
I know, I know. There’s little enough “young lady” there and none of the titular bar patron. What gives? I suppose you’ll just have to find out for yourself if the curiosity has you. Click here to go read the full story. Then let me know what you think in the comments or with a “Like” or whatever. Heck, feel free to even tell me you think it needs to chopped into tiny word pieces and fed through a wood chipper. I like to hear opinions.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got today. And, hey, look, it’s weekend time all the sudden.
So get out there and enjoy it.
And try not to set the place on fire.
Pud’n
Puddintopia 