I've finally managed to make some progress on my new novel Hole In The Sky to the point where the plot is sorta, kinda pulled together, and I'm happy with where the characters are headed. So I'm taking stock of where I am so far, and thought it might be useful to throw out the first POV chapter of of the main characters, Grub.
Usual 1st draft caveats apply, but also usual questions, the most important of them being: is it engrossing? Thanks in advance for all comments.
~
Grub fished out a couple of the little red pills from the bottle and held them in his disfigured right hand, which shook terribly. A firecracker of pain sparked its way through his head, and he clenched his eyes shut with a wince. His legs buckled a tad, and he held out a hand against the cold brick to keep from falling completely.
Not now, for ••••'s sake.
Beyond the alleyway, screams and gunshots and the rhythmic chanting of anti-corporate slogans and other violent noises melded with the popping in his head, until he could hardly tell them apart. Ashli would be expecting him by now, but he couldn’t ignore the brainstorm. His human hand instinctively closed around the pills, but with only a thumb and ring finger it was tricky to hold them when his brainstorms came on, and they fell to the floor.
No!
His eyes flashed open as he felt them drop from his palm, and he sank to his knees in a panic, scrabbling around on the wet pavement to find them. The migraine smashed hammers upon the roof his skull ever louder, ever harder, trying to force their way out of his overworked brain. Grinding his teeth and whispering a babbling prayer of begging and profanity, both his prosthetic, robotic hand and human hand flailed around, until at last he felt the little gelcap and let out a little whimper of joy. With a desperate gasp he swallowed it, lapping up a slurp of the bitter, gritty rainwater like a dog to wash it down, and then he rolled onto his back, clenching his face into an ache as he muttered nonsense to pass the time until the pill took effect.
When the brainstorm eventually subsided, a minute that seemed an age, his pulse was drumming a desperate rhythm and only tiny rabbit breaths escaped his lungs. Spitting out the rainwater and rolling over to his knees, he allowed the pain to subside and for a moment bathed in that sweet feeling of subsidence, of a return to normality.
Or whatever the hell normality was.
Once back on his feet, his phone rang. He fished it out of a sodden pocket and wiped the screen with a sleeve.
Ashli.
He swiped open the call and tried to disguise his breathing. He probably looked like sh*t, but he reasoned, what’s new there?
“Ash.”
Ashli’s face, half-covered by a tatty black-and-white gingham scarf, beamed out of the screen. She looked pissed off. Again, nothing new there. The woman was set to permascowl. “Grub. Where the •••• are you?”
“I’m there, dude, I’m there.”
“You look like ••••.” Her face became even more irritated. “Have you been having one of those attacks? They’re just migraines, dude. This is more important.”
He bit his tongue. They weren’t just migraines. “No, man, no. I’m good.”
“Get the •••• out here, man, every person counts. You know that more than most.”
He nodded, closing the call. Peering out from the edge of the alley he sighed at the chaos before him on Zantrustraße, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The crowd had swollen to double its size and now rolled along the road, greedily occupying both lanes, gobbling up every inch of free space. The brainstorm had cost him minutes that would mean he’d have to jostle for space through the crowd. The prospect of that filled him with anxiety, and a burst of sweat prickled him under his already sodden shirt. He probably stank like sh*t. Was it all worth it, all this protesting and demonstration crap? What did he possibly hope to achieve with this busted, broken down body? Maybe he should just let the kids do their thing.
In response, first came reason. He wasn’t really doing it for himself; fighting a terrible corporation like NEP-E was pointless for him, but for others, he was an important totem. A symbol of the corporate . For them to leverage justice, even recognition, he had to be visible. He regarded his disfigured hand and flexed it painfully. Phantasms of aches tingled along the ghosts of his missing digits. That had to be visible.
Second came anger. Grub was slow to anger – surprisingly, some would say. People always thought he’d be consumed by anger after what had befallen him, but anger was frequently dampened by the great morass of depression that weighted upon him. But it was there; a dull spark of righteousness that propelled him from the alley and into the crowd. Above him the quasi-organics of Norstoengraz’s skyscrapers pulsed hideously: from some grew giant, suckered tentacles that shimmered a deep, burnished gold in the electric night; from others flapped aquatic creatures’ tails that became teeth that chattered and sang a miasma of harsh electronica and metal and old classical songs in alien tongues, while in the centre of other buildings giant eyes blinked and swivelled and rolled around like pool balls, whereupon others the material of the walls shifted and warped to create titanic vertical lawns, sprouting lush verdant before yellowing and flickering into stubby frost within seconds that evaporated into the indigo air, and other buildings lit up with the bioluminescence of a million tiny submarine jellies. The organica on Zentrustraße was more ostentatious than most other places, being the most moneyed part of the city, and so it made sense for the protest to gravitate here, but he hated coming face to face with the worst of the things he’d designed.
As they thrashed and screamed and paraded themselves above him and around him, the beauty of his designs made him terribly sad, and he turned his head down into his collar and focused on his shoes as he rushed through the crowd. Having one robotic leg meant he could only jog, and with a slightly lopsided gait, and moving quickly was a painful chore, sending waves of cramp up his human leg and his side, making him seethe through clenched teeth. Wheezing inaudibly against the noise, he caught up with the spear of the protest. Here the voices were loudest, the passion at its fieriest, the collective discontent at its most indignant. Men and women of all ages, waved phones, placards, and effigies of monstrous quasi-organic mutations above their heads, while screeching a handful of slogans.
Usual 1st draft caveats apply, but also usual questions, the most important of them being: is it engrossing? Thanks in advance for all comments.
~
Grub fished out a couple of the little red pills from the bottle and held them in his disfigured right hand, which shook terribly. A firecracker of pain sparked its way through his head, and he clenched his eyes shut with a wince. His legs buckled a tad, and he held out a hand against the cold brick to keep from falling completely.
Not now, for ••••'s sake.
Beyond the alleyway, screams and gunshots and the rhythmic chanting of anti-corporate slogans and other violent noises melded with the popping in his head, until he could hardly tell them apart. Ashli would be expecting him by now, but he couldn’t ignore the brainstorm. His human hand instinctively closed around the pills, but with only a thumb and ring finger it was tricky to hold them when his brainstorms came on, and they fell to the floor.
No!
His eyes flashed open as he felt them drop from his palm, and he sank to his knees in a panic, scrabbling around on the wet pavement to find them. The migraine smashed hammers upon the roof his skull ever louder, ever harder, trying to force their way out of his overworked brain. Grinding his teeth and whispering a babbling prayer of begging and profanity, both his prosthetic, robotic hand and human hand flailed around, until at last he felt the little gelcap and let out a little whimper of joy. With a desperate gasp he swallowed it, lapping up a slurp of the bitter, gritty rainwater like a dog to wash it down, and then he rolled onto his back, clenching his face into an ache as he muttered nonsense to pass the time until the pill took effect.
When the brainstorm eventually subsided, a minute that seemed an age, his pulse was drumming a desperate rhythm and only tiny rabbit breaths escaped his lungs. Spitting out the rainwater and rolling over to his knees, he allowed the pain to subside and for a moment bathed in that sweet feeling of subsidence, of a return to normality.
Or whatever the hell normality was.
Once back on his feet, his phone rang. He fished it out of a sodden pocket and wiped the screen with a sleeve.
Ashli.
He swiped open the call and tried to disguise his breathing. He probably looked like sh*t, but he reasoned, what’s new there?
“Ash.”
Ashli’s face, half-covered by a tatty black-and-white gingham scarf, beamed out of the screen. She looked pissed off. Again, nothing new there. The woman was set to permascowl. “Grub. Where the •••• are you?”
“I’m there, dude, I’m there.”
“You look like ••••.” Her face became even more irritated. “Have you been having one of those attacks? They’re just migraines, dude. This is more important.”
He bit his tongue. They weren’t just migraines. “No, man, no. I’m good.”
“Get the •••• out here, man, every person counts. You know that more than most.”
He nodded, closing the call. Peering out from the edge of the alley he sighed at the chaos before him on Zantrustraße, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The crowd had swollen to double its size and now rolled along the road, greedily occupying both lanes, gobbling up every inch of free space. The brainstorm had cost him minutes that would mean he’d have to jostle for space through the crowd. The prospect of that filled him with anxiety, and a burst of sweat prickled him under his already sodden shirt. He probably stank like sh*t. Was it all worth it, all this protesting and demonstration crap? What did he possibly hope to achieve with this busted, broken down body? Maybe he should just let the kids do their thing.
In response, first came reason. He wasn’t really doing it for himself; fighting a terrible corporation like NEP-E was pointless for him, but for others, he was an important totem. A symbol of the corporate . For them to leverage justice, even recognition, he had to be visible. He regarded his disfigured hand and flexed it painfully. Phantasms of aches tingled along the ghosts of his missing digits. That had to be visible.
Second came anger. Grub was slow to anger – surprisingly, some would say. People always thought he’d be consumed by anger after what had befallen him, but anger was frequently dampened by the great morass of depression that weighted upon him. But it was there; a dull spark of righteousness that propelled him from the alley and into the crowd. Above him the quasi-organics of Norstoengraz’s skyscrapers pulsed hideously: from some grew giant, suckered tentacles that shimmered a deep, burnished gold in the electric night; from others flapped aquatic creatures’ tails that became teeth that chattered and sang a miasma of harsh electronica and metal and old classical songs in alien tongues, while in the centre of other buildings giant eyes blinked and swivelled and rolled around like pool balls, whereupon others the material of the walls shifted and warped to create titanic vertical lawns, sprouting lush verdant before yellowing and flickering into stubby frost within seconds that evaporated into the indigo air, and other buildings lit up with the bioluminescence of a million tiny submarine jellies. The organica on Zentrustraße was more ostentatious than most other places, being the most moneyed part of the city, and so it made sense for the protest to gravitate here, but he hated coming face to face with the worst of the things he’d designed.
As they thrashed and screamed and paraded themselves above him and around him, the beauty of his designs made him terribly sad, and he turned his head down into his collar and focused on his shoes as he rushed through the crowd. Having one robotic leg meant he could only jog, and with a slightly lopsided gait, and moving quickly was a painful chore, sending waves of cramp up his human leg and his side, making him seethe through clenched teeth. Wheezing inaudibly against the noise, he caught up with the spear of the protest. Here the voices were loudest, the passion at its fieriest, the collective discontent at its most indignant. Men and women of all ages, waved phones, placards, and effigies of monstrous quasi-organic mutations above their heads, while screeching a handful of slogans.
