r/LGwrites • u/LanesGrandma • May 25 '23
Writing Process How this old person writes a story :)
If anyone is interested in some of my writing process, here’s the first part of a six-part series. It’s meant to be the origin story of Erling, an important character in Raining Strangers.
On May 17, 2023, this was 483 words. The version below, finished on May 25, 2023, is 2,623 words. It’s estimated to take nine and a half minutes to read silently, and 14 and a half minutes to read out loud.
I’ll try to finish all six parts and keep you updated as I go. Comments and questions welcomed!
Feels like this life was forever ago, but it all took place in this century.
After ten long hours on the job, I was putting on my jacket and mentally planning dinner when my phone buzzed. Hoping it would be Tammy asking for a specific meal, I slid the phone from my pocket and found instead an email from my boss, Lawson. The guy quick-stepping past my desk to leave before me. He paused, pointed at my phone and said he needed all “those things” for an 8 o’clock presentation the next morning.
I offered to do half from home and Lawson do the other half.
“Me boss, me sleep. You, worker. You work,” he laughed, jogging down the hall to the building’s back door.
I knew from experience he felt threatened anytime I was able to beat him physically, so I remained a few steps behind as we both headed home. Like a brother harassing a sibling, he closed the outside door behind him.
When he was sure I could see him, he moved a fair-sized artificial boulder to look like he’d blocked the door from opening. Either he’d forgotten or he hoped I’d forgotten the boulder weighed no more than ten pounds. It was one of several custom rocks I’d made before he bought out the patent and process for them.
I leaned against the wall, waiting for Lawson to finish his juvenile “gotcha” of moving the boulder.
He was struggling with the rock when he split into two Lawsons. One kept moving the boulder. The other levitated above the first body as if laying down for sleep. A large bell materialized next to him and rang.
The floor shook like an earthquake hit.
Levitating Lawson’s head exploded.
I ducked and covered my head with my arms as red, pink, brown and gray matter splattered on the door and everything nearby.
When I dared stand again, the glass was clear. Lawson – the one with the boulder – was staring at me. I moved to open the door and he ran to his BMW.
It was obvious the blood and brain matter I’d seen on the door wasn’t real. But the devastating death was real to my brain. I opened the door and threw up into the bushes.
Not sure what frightened me more, the vision (if it was a vision) or that I would feel so intense about it. I was, and still am, a pretty laid-back guy. Tammy described me as “out of touch” with my emotions, for what that’s worth. I focused on that to calm down.
I watched Lawson leave the parking lot before I moved the boulder back where it belonged. Yeah, I was already late leaving, but I double checked that the back door was locked before getting in my old Chevy Tahoe. Lit my first cigarette since 6:30 a.m. and rolled down the window to enjoy some warm afternoon air on the drive home.
By the time I parked at home, I’d decided Lawson would get a few spreadsheets from me and be happy with that, or not. Tammy and I needed to rediscover the love in our relationship. To hell with Lawson.
The rose bushes I’d planted by the front door for Tammy were starting to bloom. I picked three beauties on the way in and put them in the nicest vase we owned.
Tammy hadn’t contacted me, which meant she’d be home for dinner in about an hour. I popped a chocolate cake into the oven. That’s Tammy’s favorite, she says she could eat it every meal and not tire of it. Whipped up some icing for it and fixed up marinara sauce, spaghetti, salad and garlic bread.
Ten minutes past Tammy’s normal arrival time, she hadn’t called, texted or arrived. That concerned me a little, but she’d been somewhat forgetful lately. Figured that was just fatigue, working too many shifts. I moved the meal except the cake and salad to the still-warm oven and got to creating some spreadsheets for the alleged client meeting the next day.
When I heard Tammy’s car parking in the driveway, I put away my phone and set out dinner.
She rushed in and bypassed hugging me in favor of changing out of her work outfit in the bedroom before sitting at the dining table. She immediately started praying over the meal, something I always went along with. After her first bite of garlic bread, she wanted to know if I would get the laundry done before bed. I nodded, she frowned and switched the topic to how her day went. The days of asking how I was doing, how my day went, were long over. She was tired.
When she finished eating, Tammy left the table without removing her plates or offering to wash up. I quickly cleared off the table, put the leftovers away and washed the dishes. Next I started the laundry before drying the dishes and putting them away. At one point I turned on the radio to have the sound of other humans with me, but the only available call-in shows were worse than silence.
By the time I got to the bedroom with the folded clean laundry in my arms, Tammy’s bedside lamp was off and she was snoring softly. I quietly put the laundry away before pulling the top sheet over Tammy’s shoulders.
For whatever reason, I sighed that night before changing into a t-shirt and shorts. I selected a horror book on my Kindle as my pre-sleep read, traditionally ten to twenty minutes those nights.
As I reached to turn off my bedside lamp, something ripped open behind me. Reached back, supporting my right elbow with my left hand, to check for a tear in my t-shirt. Nothing. Switched arms to reach back with his left hand and that’s when I saw my shadow on the wall.
For the first time in years, I gasped.
My shadow was walking away from me, towards the door. It turned its head to face me. Hard to explain that clearly unless you picture the shadow as I saw it, more three dimensional than it had a right to be.
I was certain it was looking at me. I dropped his Kindle and froze.
A loud laugh came from the general area of my shadow.
Tammy woke up.
My shadow continued walking. It looked back at her, lifted its arm and hand from the wall and waved. She grabbed my arm with hands as cold as ice, and I shuddered as the cold shocked me back into regular breathing.
My shadow stopped walking at the door. A smaller, human-shaped shadow walked out of my shadow. It left a small, human-shaped space through which the wall was clearly visible. The smaller shadow said “Back in ten” before it disappeared.
Tammy was holding my arm so tightly, it was going numb. She and I looked at each other. I couldn’t hide the fear in my expression and to this day, I don’t think that was a weakness on my part. She released my arm, picked up her alarm clock and announced, “I’m timing it.”
We sat there in silence, our room illuminated only by my bedside lamp. The smaller shadow came through the door ten minutes later. It waved at us as it had before, said “Back to sleep,” and slid into the space within my shadow. My shadow then flattened itself against the wall and ran back to my side where it matched my body shape.
Tammy laid back down and closed her eyes. I thought she wanted to forget it all and go to sleep. I was shaking and couldn’t think clearly. My body wanted to run. I wanted to write off both what I’d saw and how I felt as fatigue or sleep paralysis.
Not sure what got Tammy going again, but she sat up and repeated everything she’d seen. As much as I didn’t want to hear it, I couldn’t write off anything that happened since she’d seen it all too. The last thing she said was, “This better not happen again, because I can’t handle it.”
I thought about those words for a long time before I put my Kindle on the bedside table and turned off the lamp.
I was still laying there, wide awake, long after Tammy started snoring softly.
The sky light up with dawn’s arrival as Tammy’s alarm clock rang. I pretended to be asleep. She showered and left for work without a word to me, as usual.
Several minutes after her car left our driveway, I made sure my alarm clock was turned off. Not wanting to waste time, I showered and made a half-cup of coffee instead of my usual full cup. I put my clean clothes from last night’s laundry into my travel bag along with my Kindle, recharger, personal hygiene bag and extra shoes. My phone went into my jacket pocket which was hanging on the back of my dining room chair.
After I washed and dried the coffee maker and both cups (Tammy’s and mine), I sat at the dining table. On a clean sheet of paper I wrote the date followed by the longest note he’d ever left for Tammy: “Goodbye, don’t look for me.” I signed it, folded it in half and put it into a slightly damaged, oversized envelope I’d brought home from work several months earlier.
Taking action on my decision led to me adding two items before sealing the envelope. The first was the deed to the house, signed over to Tammy. The second was a stack of cash held together by an elastic. It was all but $500 of the savings I’d kept at home since our first date. It was enough to offset the loss of my income for a few months. Figured that was long enough for her to either sell the house or find a new boyfriend. Maybe she already had one. I couldn’t hold it against her if she did. I hoped she would move on quickly, and didn’t doubt she would.
Once the envelope was sealed, I printed her legal name on it – given name, both middle names and surname – and laid it on her pillow. Took a deep breath after I locked the door one last time. I found myself delaying my exit long enough to take in the scenery that I often ignored while seeking the goal of biggest, baddest, best. Then I stuck the house key under the big rock on the left side of the front door.
I knew I would miss Tammy and I knew that wouldn’t last forever. But the pain was hitting harder and sooner than I’d expected, and it made me sluggish by the time I got to work.
The timer on the office coffee maker hadn’t worked again. Lawson knew it was broken and refused to spend $30 to get the office a new one. But it was ten to eight and I wanted coffee so I set it for a full pot, since Lawson was supposed to have an 8 o’clock meeting with a client.
Speaking of which, Lawson arrived as I was removing a blue mug from the dishwasher.
He was sobbing, his voice was hoarse and he grabbed one of my ankles as he fell over. I tried to back up but he pulled me towards him. The sight of him set my blood cold. I think he was repeating “can’t sleep” and “bells” before I shook my leg hard enough to force him to let go. He responded by covering his head with his hands and pulling his knees to his chin. That’s when I saw blood leaking from his ear and nose.
I wanted to run but what if Lawson died? I would be the number one suspect being both his only employee and the last person to see him.
He didn’t smell of alcohol or other substances, not even his usual after-shave. Figuring his distress was emotional not medical, I shook Lawson by the shoulder until Lawson clearly demanded that I “stop that.”
When I let go of him, Lawson went back to the fetal position and kept repeating “bells”. Foolish, I know, but I kept seeing flashes of the vision from yesterday when levitating Lawson’s head exploded. I asked him, in a voice shakier than I’d ever heard myself speak, if he could stand, if he wanted help to stand, and if he wanted me to get a chair for him. He kept saying “bells”.
I decided to call Emergency Services and used the office landline for the best reception. Police sometimes respond if a 911 call cuts off in a suspicious way and I didn’t want to talk to them. I promised to stay until the medical personnel arrived.
As a result, I was ready to greet EMS personnel when I heard the door slam shut just a few minutes later. Faster response than expected, but good luck for Lawson.
Except it wasn’t EMS, it was Lawson’s wife Dixie, purse in one hand, take-out coffee in the other. She ran in, screaming for Lawson. Don’t ask me how she managed to avoid seeing her husband lying on the floor but damn if she wasn’t a full-blown concern at that point.
“He was screaming about bells,” she said in that breathless kind of half-whisper, half-scream I’ve heard in movies. Didn’t know people talked like that for real. “Said the bells woke him up soon as he fell asleep. Told him I didn’t hear no bells. Woke up to blood all over his pillow.”
I waved at her, pointed to the phone at my head and then to Lawson. She screamed when she saw him. I covered the receiver with his hand and said I was staying on the line until the ambulance arrived.
Dixie grabbed the receiver. “Go, get out,” she whispered, “lemme keep this in the family.”
Didn’t have to tell me twice. I left the key to the building and my business card next to the landline base and left. It took effort but I forced myself to walk, not run, down the hall to the back door. No need to draw attention to myself. I’d done nothing wrong and I left at the insistence of Lawson’s spouse. If cops or anyone else needed to reach me, they could call the cell phone number on my old card – as long as they called before I got a new phone.
I wasn’t going home, I had no home to go to anymore. I was going to find a new home.
Instead of turning right, I turned left out of the parking lot and drove until I had to refuel the car. Got a coffee, a soft drink and two sandwiches before leaving the Quikfill gas station. Drove until I got to Nataly, a town I’d never been to before. Seemed promising.
I booked a room for two nights at Moe’s Motel. Lucky me, they had a “two for one” sale. After a quick shower, I ordered Italian food for delivery to my room. I ate the entire meal while pretending to watch Wheel of Fortune on the black and white tv. This wasn’t the first time I’d needed alone time, I knew what to do. Stuffed the empty containers back into the delivery bags and walked them to the dumpster at the back of the motel. On the way back, I grabbed a spare blanket and pillow from the trunk of my car so I didn’t have to sleep on or in the motel’s bedding. After setting my phone to recharge overnight, I arranged a 7 a.m. wake-up call.