Latest Posts

Detained Chapter 14

Author: April 12, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

14. Mike

The crawlspace took longer than he’d expected. A second after the trap door was lowered softly behind him, it went pitch black and he smacked his head on a joist hard enough to send him spinning to the floor. He sat for a moment, head ringing, and when he shook it off he realized he was turned-around and had to force himself to pause and regain his bearings. He fished his phone from his pocket and thumbed the flashlight on.

The crawlspace was a disaster, The floor was dirt, uneven and littered with rocks and old cans and bottles. The whole place was layered in spider webs, and as he swept the light around a dozen small bodies scampered away. He was sitting hunched over and the floor joists scraped against the back of his head.

“Three feet my ass,” he whispered.

He started crawling, awkwardly holding the phone in one hand and trying to avoid the bottles and other sharp edges buried in the dirt. It was surreal and quiet under the bar; the moment the trap door had been lowered all the sound had muted down to nothing, and all he could hear was his own breathing and the crunch of the dirt and debris under him. He moved as quickly as he could, searching the subfloor above for signs of the second trap door.

It was surprising how quickly his sense of the physical space above faded away. It seemed impossible that the crawlspace was as large as it was—it went on long after he assumed he must be close to the back room. Being able to see only small areas with his phone contributed to the sense that the darkness went on and on, infinite and featureless.

And then there it was: The trapdoor leading up into the back room. He was sweating freely as he positioned himself under it, shining the light up to make sure he could see exactly where it was in relation to himself. Then he killed the light and pushed the phone back into his pocket. Rising up on his haunches, he put his hands flat against the panel and slowly lifted the door up, just as a commotion happened in the bar, shouts and the thud of feet on the floor carrying back to him.

He hesitated, listening. The shouting went on, but he couldn’t make any of it out. He considered turning back, creeping back up behind the bar, pretending that nothing had happened, but without knowing what he was crawling back to, it was too risky. The best way forward was to press the tiny advantage they’d managed to establish.

He waited another few heartbeats with the trap suspended above his head, listening and letting his eyes adjust. The air smelled damp and ripe, like stale beer. He was behind a shelf filled with cans and cardboard boxes. A wall of used kegs was on the other side, both barriers serving to shield him from the rest of the room.

The commotion in the bar had died down, and he could hear talking in the back room.

“—kind of weather you get up there?”

“All kinds, man. We got that saying: You don’t like the weather, just wait and it’ll change.”

“Four seasons in one day, huh?”

Jesus, he thought, they were chatting, getting to know each other. Haggen sounded relaxed, even, like he wasn’t worried about anything.

Slowly, Mike lifted the trap up, standing slowly as he did so. His head swam a little as he straightened up, and for one panicked moment he thought he might pass out. Then everything firmed up. He could see through the shelves that Haggen’s restraints had been adjusted; his wrists and ankles were still bound but he wasn’t hogtied. He sat more or less comfortably on the floor, and gave every indication he was unworried, confident, and possibly enjoying himself. Mike found himself liking this guy a lot. He knew that under normal circumstances they would have hated each other, they would have been the sort of guys who were unable to go five minutes without starting an argument. But somehow the alchemy of being in this incredible situation had changed the whole dynamic.

The guard, Warner, stood with his back to the door. He wasn’t holding his sidearm, but Mike thought his posture could be described as ready. He seemed friendly and just as confident and comfortable as Haggen, but was obviously not going to let that interfere with guarding the man as he’d been ordered. Mike was impressed in spite of himself. Some guys could either be friendly or they could be ready. Not many could be easygoing and chatty without sacrificing their situational awareness.

As his eyes got used to the dim light, he scanned the rest of the room. It was an all-purpose supply closet he was surprised had passed a health inspection, assuming they bothered with such things when you were as far off the road as McCoy’s place. Dry food, kegs, bottles, condiments, boxes of napkins and other equipment were stacked all over the place.

After a moment’s searching, he saw the crossbow. It had been hung on the wall behind Haggen, along with a few other items: A bright orange vest, a green canvas backpack, and a sheathed hunting knife that hung by its own separate strap. He couldn’t see any bolts for the bow, but he assumed they would be in the backpack.

There was no sneaking it out. He was going to have to take out the guard, quietly.

He scanned the room again. There was no way to sneak up on Warner; he would have to come from around the shelves, putting him squarely in the soldier’s peripheral vision. Even if he manged to get the jump on him, there would be time for him to yell, to attack, to make noise.

When he looked back at Haggen he jumped, because Haggen was staring right at him, still talking. He winked, then turned back to face Warner as if nothing had happened.

“Dude, you mind if I stood up? My ass is asleep!” Haggen said, all aw-shucks hick charm.

Warner hesitated. Mike imagined he was running through the possible interpretations of his orders. Mike had never served in the military, but he’d known plenty of people who had, and he knew the one overarching fact of life in a military unit of any kind was obeying orders issued from the legitimate chain of command was not optional.

But what was legitimate? Mike had the idea that this was an unusual unit, in an unusual circumstance. From the shadows, he watched Warner’s face as he worked through the implications.

“All right,” he finally said, laying a hand on his sidearm. “I won’t help you. If you can stand without assistance, and stay right where you are, I won’t object.”

“Cool,” Haggen said. With what Mike thought was transparently theatrical effort, he struggled to get to his feet. When he was upright but still clinging to the shelf for support, he spun away and sailed into Warner.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry!”

Warner caught Haggen by instinct, and Haggen grabbed onto his shoulders and spun him slightly so his back was turned. Mike moved immediately, running and launching himself at the pair, wrapping one arm around Warner’s neck and slapping his other hand on the soldier’s mouth. For a few moments the three of them struggled in near-silence, with the only noise being heavy breathing and grunts, the scraping of their shoes on the floor.

For one horrible moment, Mike thought Warner was going to break free. The kid was strong. Haggen, unbalanced by his ankle bonds, had both hands planted on Warner’s sidearm,. preventing him from drawing it while Mike choked him with an imperfect, rushed hold.

Slowly, Warner weakened, and finally slumped his weight against Mike, who strained something in his back desperately stopping them all from falling with a loud crash to the floor. Gently giving in to gravity, the three of them sank down until he and Haggen were sprawled, panting, on either side of the soldier.

“You a wrestler, too?” Haggen said between gasps.

“Was,” Mike said, sitting up and rubbing his arm. “For a few months.”

“I gotta become a millionaire and travel the world taking lessons,” Haggen added, slowly climbing to his feet. “It’s got benefits. What’s the plan?”

Mike got up and plucked the crossbow, backpack, and knife from the wall. He dropped the bag and bow and pulled the knife from the sheath, using it to cut Haggen’s bonds. “Grab his sidearm.” He looked around. “Does he have more zipties on him?”

Haggen stuffed the gun into his waistband after checking the safety and then searched Warner’s pockets. “Yup,” he said, brandishing a fistful of black plastic ties.

“Let’s get him up and tie him by the wrists to the shelf here, so it looks like he’s standing,” Mike said. “Then you get the bow and bag out of the way and wait here, look like you’re still bound, just in case anyone just pops their head in here. I’m going back through the crawlspace to the bar, and Jack is coming back through. he’ll take the crossbow, and then the two of you are coming down the hall, and we’re taking them all down. We’re taking the bar.”

Haggen met his eyes and held them, face slowly breaking into a grin. “Hot damn, when you first walked in I thought you were an asshole tourista,” he said. “I’m declaring you an honorary citizen of One-Eyed Jack’s.”

Mike smiled back. “It’s an honor.” He walked over and dropped back into the crawlspace, crouching down. “Don’t start anything unless you have to,” he said. “The longer we put this off, the better our advantage.”

Haggen nodded, bringing the bag and bow over and dropping them on the floor. “Got it. I can improv the shit out of this, don’t worry.”

Mike nodded and disappeared under the floor. A moment later he popped up again. “Haggen: This is all about surprise. We’ve got a handgun and a crossbow. We’ll try our best to help out in the bar, but it’s gonna be you and McCoy making the difference. McCoy’s skittish about killing people and he’s going to go for non-fatal shots to incapacitate.”

Haggen nodded. “You think I should too?”

Mike’s expression was neutral. “I think you know if we fuck this up, we’re all going to be hogtied in here until they decide what to do with us. And they’re going to be irritated if we injure or kill some of them. I guess all I’m saying is, we gotta make this count.”

Haggen nodded. “Got it.” Then he grinned. “Kill ’em all.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Novels, Writing

Stuff Happening Does Not Equal a Plot

Author: April 10, 2021 0 Comments

I recently wrote a brief article recalling an old episode of Seinfeld with the central joke that Elaine is dating a man with the same name as a notorious serial killer. I’d forgotten all about the episode and Joel Rifkin. It’s often amazing how time works; back in the early 1990s Rifkin was definitely big news where I lived, and once reminded I can recall how much his name was in the news, which sells Seinfeld’s joke. Thirty years later, it’s amazing to realize I’d completely forgotten about a man who killed 17 people.

Seinfeld was, of course, famously about “nothing.” Of course, that’s cute and all but not really true: The show’s episodes definitely had plots in which characters did things, those actions had consequences, and there were defined arcs. But I think of it now because I’ve recently read a series of novels by aspiring writers that appear to have been informed by the Seinfeldian Nothing Rule. In other words, they don’t have much of a plot.

Plot is So Bourgeois

Now, you can pull off a novel that doesn’t really have a plot, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The problem with these recent books is more fundamental, because the authors think they have a plot. But they don’t. What they actually have is a series of events. A lot of writers apparently confused “stuff happening” with plot.

Plot requires shape. I won’t get into the different models for a story, the theories about rising action and when your protagonist should experience despair — the point is, your story should not be a flat series of events. You need conflict, setbacks, twists, and a discernible arc of some kind as your characters move through the story. If all you’re doing is listing the things your characters are doing, it doesn’t really count as a plot, does it?

And yet so, so many writers make this mistake. They come up with some characters, they come up with a goal or, worse, a scenario of some sort, and then they just … describe things that happen.

An easy way to make this mistake is to assume that if the events you’re describing are dramatic and powerful on their own, that’s all you need. While describing a terrifying or dramatic event can make for some good writing, it still isn’t a plot. Even describing how your characters react to the event in question isn’t a plot unless it has shape to it, unless their reactions drive them to other actions that intersect with other events and/or the desires and intentions of other characters (preferably in conflict with them).

One way to test whether you have a plot or a series of events is to check each action taken by your characters and ask if they’re acting in their own interests or simply reacting to external forces. This isn’t foolproof, but if the answer is the latter every single time, you likely have a series of events instead of a plot.

It’s true that life is just one damn thing after another. But that’s why we need stories that aren’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to drink six beers in ten minutes. Don’t ask why, just dial emergency services.

plot, Writing

Misadventures in Drinking: Jack and Cokes

Author: April 7, 2021 0 Comments

FRIENDOS, I was not always the suave middle-aged man you know and love (er, tolerate?). I was, for a surprisingly long time, an idiot. For example, when I began my legitimate, legal drinking career (in contrast to my illegal minor-league drinking career) I had very little of what you might call taste. Was lite beer involved? So, so much.

Also: Jack and Cokes.

Look, life is a learning exercise. I will not pretend that I came out of the womb understanding music theory and appreciating good whiskey; you have to go through some wrong turns before you figure things out. What’s funny is that when I was young I learned to drink my whiskey straight because it was such a furtive experience — taking the time to mix a cocktail meant more exposure, more chances to get caught. When I found myself of legal age, however, I wasn’t quite ready to start ordering two fingers of rye, mainly because I’d never learned to pace myself. If you handed me two fingers of rye, ten seconds later I had an empty glass and I was ordering another.

So mixing my liquor was a good strategy, and I started drinking Jack and Cokes because they were whiskey-adjacent and sweet, went down easy, but also diluted everything so I didn’t end up on the floor of whatever divey bar I was in.

Usually.

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

The scene: I’m probably 25 years old. At the time I worked in publishing, and we had Summer Hours, which were kind of amazing. Every year during the summer you could opt to work an extra hour or two Monday through Thursday and then leave work at 2PM on Friday. It was awesome, and naturally everyone took the opportunity to head to the local dive bar and start their weekend at exactly 2:05PM. So I’m in a shithole bar that was probably called Mickey’s or Danny’s or something like that, drinking my Jack and Coke and bullshitting with my coworkers.

At some point, a few folks ordered a round of drinks but then mysteriously left the bar, so a trio of Jack and Cokes were left on the bar next to us, glistening and paid for. And a co-worker jokingly suggested I drink them quickly before the universe noticed its mistake and took them back. And I thought, gosh it would be hilarious if I did just that so I reached over and shotgunned all three in the space of about a minute.

It was kind of hilarious. For about thirty seconds.

I now suspect I know what it’s like to fall into a coma. As I crawled to the bathroom on what is probably the filthiest floor imaginable, the world receded from me and I swear I saw a shining light and possibly some form of Buddy Jesus grinning down at me, gesturing that my time had come. And I think it was Buddy Jesus holding my hair out of my eyes as I vomited several organs into the scabby toilet in that dive bar.

I emerged bug-eyed, the knees of my trousers damp. I collected my things without a word and walked out of there. My takeaway centered on the coke part of the Jack and Coke, and I swore to only take my liquor neat from that moment on.

Buddy Jesus rode with the bus with me all the way home. That guy is creepy AF.

Bullshit

Detained Chapter 13

Author: April 5, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

13. Candace

She added to her virtual resume the little-known skill pretending to enjoy your own imprisonment. Her list of skills was getting pretty long and esoteric. She wasn’t sure what kind of job they would help her get assuming she wasn’t executed in the next eight and a half hours.

None of the soldiers seemed to be paying any particular attention to them, but they were careful anyway, keeping up a stream of chatter and basically pretending to get drunk. It made sense, she thought; they’d tried a few gambits and seen one of their own killed and the other two threatened. It made sense that they would simply drown their sorrows. It served two purposes: It made everyone think they’d given up, and it gave them a reason to hang around the bar area and shift position a lot.

Mike made his way around the bar in stages, always engaged in conversation.

That was the hardest part, she thought. The chatter. Behaving like you were talking to people and hanging out was exhausting when it was all for show, when all you wanted to do was watch the guards and scream out of frustration and fear.

Mike just dropped behind the bar. One moment he was there, the next he was on the floor and hidden from the rest of the room. None of them reacted in any way. None of the soldiers took any notice. And she kept pretending to have a conversation with Jack and Glen, or she was having a conversation but it made no sense, it was just the three of them saying things to each other and nodding. She couldn’t pull her thoughts into line long enough to make any sense as Mike crawled to the trap, pulled it up, and slipped down, pulling the trap shut behind him.

They’d allowed about three minutes for Mike to make his way to the other trap in the back room, based on the darkness, the difficulty of moving in such a confined space, and an effort to not make any unnecessary noise. Longer, if he got turned around. But from what she’d seen of him, she doubted that was likely. After that, she had no idea what would happen.

“Excuse me?”

Candace felt herself tighten up, her throat closing up as a surge of panic went through her.

“Young lady?”

You’ll be okay. She could picture her father nodding encouragingly, telling her to make it work, she was smart, like her mother. She forced herself to turn. Dr. Raslowski scowled at her from his table, his glasses turned into opaque discs of white light by the collection of monitors facing him. He waved impatiently.

“Yes you, dear God save me from the hicks of the world. Come here.”

Her mind raced. Up to this point, Raslowski had acted as if the entire population of the bar didn’t exist, and she realized she preferred to be a figment of someone’s imagination. That terrible eyeless face pointed in her direction was much, much worse. She kept hearing him spit doesn’t matter after Simms had been shot.

Doesn’t matter.

She tried to mirror his scowl and did the only thing she could think to try: She stalled. “What do you want?”

He cocked his head as if examining an interesting-looking bug. “I want you to come here.”

She looked at Eastman and McCoy, but they both had no suggestions for her. So she took a deep breath and turned and walked over to where the Physicist sat, staring at her. As she approached he leaned back and crossed his arms.

“Please do take your time. As you might imagine we came here and are holding you all under guard for no reason of any importance whatsoever, so there is no urgency to any of this.”

She stopped a few inches away from him. His eyes roamed over her and she felt the familiar, creepy vibe of a man studying her body and making a record of it for later use. “What?”

She was conscious of Mike, worming his way under the bar, in the dark, about to creep up from below and try to take out an armed guard, free Jim Haggen, and deliver weapons to Jack McCoy.

“Sit down,” Raslowski said, turning and placing a small metal box on the table. “I’m going to need some blood.”

“What?”

Raslowski sighed as he pulled a pair of plastic gloves from the box and began tugging them on. “Solely to check identities. Jesus, you people,” he muttered. “King!”

King stepped out of a knot of four soldiers who’d congregated around the front door. “Sir?”

Candace eyed her. She was cute, sort of, short with dark, curly hair. She moved with a fighter’s posture, Candace thought, shoulders out and head lowered, like she was always prepared to scrap. Her face was round and blandly pretty, set in a mask of near-total disinterest.

“Round them up,” Raslowski said. “I need to take some blood samples.”

Candace stood frozen, mind racing. Mike! He was under the floorboards, or in the back about to jump Warner. If they discovered him missing, it would go badly for all of them.

King snapped off a salute, then hesitated, a scowl flashing across her face. She doesn’t like him, or taking orders from him, Candace thought. He wasn’t military. He was a scientist, and they’d probably been ordered to take his commands. But how long does that discipline last? Candace ran her eyes over King and noted the black armbands they all wore. If they were right and something bad had happened and might happen again, and these soldiers were assigned to guard them—

Candace gasped a little as it hit her. The black armbands—these soldiers had been chosen, or volunteered, to die. Or at least to take that risk—this was a suicide mission, in some sense. They were dead anyway.

King’s face smoothed out and she snapped off another impressive salute. “Sir!” Raslowski didn’t even notice; he was busy pulling syringes and tubing from the box, along with a small beige device that had a tiny screen on one end. It looked like an advanced pencil sharpener.

Candace thought furiously, holding herself still. If she tried to signal Jack and Glen, she might be observed, it might give everything away. If she did nothing, in a few moments they were going to discover something was up.

I could cause a disruption—I could jump King and knock her down, start a fight, she thought.

She saw Mr. Simms in her mind, dead, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. That seemed like a dangerous choice, to say the least.

I could try to signal Mike. Make a noise.

But I don’t know what would make it through the floorboards, and I don’t know what would make sense to him but wouldn’t give everything away.

King had turned away. Candace knew she had a second to make a decision, to do something, anything.

She thought,

Jesus Christ, just do it!

She closed her eyes and let herself drop to the floor.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Detained, Novels, Writing

Detained Chapter 12

Author: March 29, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

12. Mike

McCoy laughed. “Are you fucking kidding?”

Mike shook his head. The whiskey had been a mistake; he’d been shaky and at first the alcohol had felt good, calming him down. But now he felt fuzzy, and he wanted to be sharp. “We don’t have a choice. Listen—it’s not certain, but there is a chance that this ends with executions, right? No matter how remote, if there’s a chance of that, we have to defend ourselves. Even if it’s just 1%.”

McCoy leaned back, taking another hit from the bottle. Mike wanted to say something, to suggest he stay sober, but hesitated: He didn’t know these people. “Maybe,” McCoy said. “You got a point.”

“Damn right he has a point,” Eastman said fiercely, surprising Mike. He’d taken Eastman to be an academic, a milquetoast. He didn’t expect him to see reality so quickly, or be so supportive. It remained to be seen if the retired teacher was going to be able to back it up with action, but Mike was encouraged. He had a feeling he was going to need everyone at their best.

He took a deep breath, because that led him to his next thought. He looked from McCoy to Eastman to Candace. “We need to get Haggen out of the back.”

“What?” McCoy said, grinning. “You think that won’t be noticed?”

“Ah, let him stew back there,” Eastman said. “Jimmy Haggen’s all right, but he’s a troublemaker. Always complaining, always telling us how we’re supposed to be living. But he just wants to hide in the woods, to be left alone. Believe me, I tried to organize him a bunch of times. He’s no goddamn use to anyone.”

Mike shook his head. He was impressed with Haggen. The man was a little crazy, but he’d fought well, and he’d taken cues and picked up on things quickly. Mike had his doubts about McCoy and Eastman, but he thought he could rely on Candace—and Haggen, so he wanted him. “Haggen’s reliable. I think maybe he just hasn’t had the chance to show you what he’s got yet. Let’s think about how we could break him out without setting off any alarms.”

McCoy made a face. Eastman rolled his eyes.

Candace looked right at him. “They’ve got him in the back? With the kegs?”

Mike nodded. He fought off a smile; he liked this woman. She was smart, she was up for anything, and she was capable. He was impressed with how she’d handled herself getting online—there’d been no hesitation when he and Haggen had set to it. She hadn’t been shocked or tentative, she’d gone to work.

“We can get back there through the crawlspace. There’s a trap door behind the bar.”

“Dumb idea,” McCoy said. “They got Jim under guard, right?”

Mike thought back. Then he leaned up out of his seat and looked around, checking all the soldiers. “Yeah. One of the soldiers—Warner. Dark skin, bad attitude. He’s not here, so I think he’s still guarding Haggen.”

McCoy shrugged. “There you go. Fucking suicide to even try.”

Mike nodded. This was confirming what he thought: Haggen was reliable. McCoy and Eastman weren’t. That made it even more vital to get Haggen loose.

“Even if you got him free,” Eastman said, “it would just cause trouble. There’d be a reaction.”

“Not if we leave Warner back there,” Candace said. “Tied up, gagged. They’ll assume he’s still guarding Jimmy.”

Mike shook his head. “No, this is a military unit. There will be scheduled check-ins, relief.”

Candace shrugged. “We’d have a window, then. We’d have some time. First we need to know the schedule, right? They have to walk right past us here to get back there. We watch, we make a note. We know how long we’d have. Then we time it: We bring him out, we know exactly how long we have until he’s noticed.”

“And do what?” Eastman asked. “He’s not Superman, guys. Okay, Mr. Malloy says Jimmy’s useful, reliable, whatever. And okay—we have a deficit in terms of manpower, we could use a warm body. But say we have an hour—say we could get Jim loose and we’d have an hour until they noticed? We need to have a plan in place before we spring him. We need to know exactly what we plan to do, or it won’t mean anything.”

Mike nodded. “You’re right.”

“So let’s make a plan,” Candace said. She looked at Mike. “You said take control—how do we do that?”

Mike looked at her, then at McCoy, Eastman, and back to her. “We take the guns.”

McCoy laughed out loud. When he spoke his words had the slightest slur to them. “Sure! Of course, it’s easy. First we cut Jimmy loose but make sure they don’t notice, because having Jimmy Haggen on our side makes all the damn difference. Then the five of us take on, what, a dozen armed, trained soldiers with no weapons?”

Mike shook his head, feeling his heart rate climbing. He knew this was reluctance dressed up as objection—McCoy just wanted to get drunk and hope for the best, and any suggestion that they take action, take risks he was going to meet with all the reasons it was a bad idea. And the worst of it was, Mike knew it was a bad idea, for exactly the reasons McCoy had just outlined. But he couldn’t do nothing. He’d spent too much of his life doing nothing, and now he’d spent a year or more doing nothing in a different way, doing nothing by trying to do everything all at once. “Don’t play that—”

Candace interrupted. “We have weapons,” she said.

They all turned to look at her. She blushed, and Mike thought it made her look lovely.

“Jack, your hunting gear is in the back, too,” she said, looking from face to face.

McCoy frowned. “It’s a crossbow, kid.”

She nodded. “And a survival knife,” she said. “And the bow’s an auto-cocker, and you’ve taken down some huge Moose with that thing.”

“All right,” McCoy said looking around to make sure none of the soldiers were close enough to hear them. “But it’s still just one weapon.”

Mike was thinking quickly. “An auto cocker means you can reload in what, a few seconds? Without having to plant the thing for the pull. If we can get you into the right position, you could do some real damage.”

McCoy stared at him. “Some damage? You’re talking about killing people.”

Mike shook his head. “You know how to shoot. You can go for injury instead of killshots.”

“And when they start returning fire? When Hammond gives the order to just kill us all? Burn the place down?”

“And what, you want to just sit here and hope for the best?” Mike demanded, feeling his pulse pound. “Look, we have the element of surprise. I go down the trap, get the drop on the guard back there, and if nothing else we suddenly have an advantage they’re unaware of. It’s better than sitting here drinking liquor and waiting for someone else to decide if I’m going to live or die.”

Eastman was looking down at his hands. “I tend to agree, Jack.”

“Me too,” Candace said. “Better to do something than nothing.”

McCoy took another slug from the bottle, eyes on the soldiers around them. “All right. Why you?”

Mike shrugged. “It’s my idea, first of all. Wouldn’t be right to make someone else take the risk. And I know how to fight. No offense, but you and Mr. Eastman here are a little older and out of shape.”

Glen smiled. “And that’s being kind,” he said.

“I don’t suppose once I’m in the crawlspace there’s a way outside?”

Candace shook her head. “It’s literally a crawlspace, maybe three feet high. Its dirty and filled with spiderwebs and pipes and electrical. It’s dark—but it’s a clean shot straight back to the other trap, which will bring you up behind the freezer in the back. Between that and the shelves and kegs you have a good chance of getting up and out without being seen by the guard.”

Mike nodded. “All right. Jack, you stay behind the bar. Stop drinking. We need you as sober as possible. I’ll make my way back there and take care of Jimmy, and take the guard’s sidearm. Then I’ll head back, and switch places with you—you head back there through the crawlspace. The hallway entrance is your best position—no one behind you except Hammond, you’ll have visual command of the whole bar. Glen, Candace, when Jack heads back you get behind the bar—casual, move slowly, like you’re making yourselves a drink—so you’ll have cover.”

“What if Hammond comes at me?”

“Jimmy will have your back,” Mike said. “And I’ll be up here with the sidearm. They look like Beretta M9A3s, which means a minimum ten-round magazine, but maybe fifteen rounds. Either way I’m familiar with the basic M9 design and I think I can be pretty accurate with it.”

Candace smiled slightly. “Let me guess: You spent a few months paying someone to teach you about guns.”

Mike nodded, returning her ghostly smile. “I’m no expert, but I’m an okay shot.”

She looked around. “Okay. Me and Glen will be on distraction duty. Anyone looks like they plan on heading back there, we’ll do our best to stop them. We ready?”

They all looked at each other. McCoy picked up the cap of his bottle and deliberately screwed it back into place. “Okay,” he said. “Ready.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Detained, Novels, Writing

Everything is Writing

Author: March 24, 2021 0 Comments

The other day The Duchess came across me lying on the couch, with no fewer than three cats stretched out on top of me like frogs riding on the gnarled back of a crocodile. Startled out of a nap, I cried out “Ho bisogno di una guarnizione!”

“Working hard on that novel, huh,” she said.

“Dammit,” I said, sitting up and sending cats tumbling to the floor. “This is writing.”

Something that gets lost in translation is how much writing is not writing at all. People get hung up on word count or other metrics tied to the whole butt-in-chair business of writing stories or novels or horrifying ‘content’ for Internet sites in exchange for filthy lucre, but writing is a lot of other things. Research, yes, that can be part of it. Also, reading other people’s work, other books and stories, which means that an afternoon spent in a sunbeam reading a book is writing.

Also, watching movies or TV shows or listening to music, because you never know when your slithery little underbrain will steal something and mill it into an idea for your story.

Also, thinking. Just sitting somewhere having a think on your story or some aspect of your world-building or, generally, anything at all is writing.

Also, naps. Anything that fuels you or feeds your creativity. Stuck and can’t write your way out of something? Take a nap. Go for a walk. Play a game. Let your mind wander a bit. That’s writing too.

Getting words on the screen is vital; literally no story has ever existed unless someone put some words on the screen or page. But that’s not all it is, and if all you do every waking moment is type type type, feverishly chasing word count goals and completed projects, you won’t be doing your best work because you’ll only be doing half the work. Fifty percent of writing is a mysterious subconscious process. You have to give yourself the leeway to let that process grind.

Of course, for me personally a huge percentage of my writing time looks like I’m sipping a delicious whiskey while staring off into the middle distance with a pensive expression on my face just in case someone is somehow taking a photo of me at that exact moment. This is also writing, no matter what The Duchess says.

Writing

Detained Chapter 11

Author: March 22, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

11. Candace

When Mike re-entered the bar area, trailed by a short, angry-looking female soldier, Candace was startled at how beat-up he looked. His demeanor was grim, and her relief at seeing him look relatively whole and healthy gave way to sudden apprehension. She looked at Glen, who was leaning against the bar with her, and then at Jack, who stood behind it, and exchanged worried looks with each.

“You look like a man could stand a whiskey,” Jack said, keeping his deep, rumbling voice low.

Mike nodded. “Jesus, yes,” he said, sitting—or, more accurately she thought, dropping into one of the stools unsteadily.

“Jimmy?”

A complex wave of emotions ran over his face as Jack slid a slopping shot glass over to him. “In the back. He … he was a hero back there. You left the monitor on—”

She gasped.

“—and he distracted them so I could turn it off. Your Mr. Haggen’s a hero.”

Wow, she thought. Not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that, son?” Jack asked. “You had moves.”

Mike looked at Candace. “I picked up a few things in my travels. I spent some time training with a bunch of mixed martial arts fighters. Just to learn.” He rubbed his jaw. “Jimmy gave as good as he got, though.”

Mike picked up the shot glass and looked around. He leaned in close. “Did you find out anything?”

Glen cleared his throat. “In fact, she did. She found out that Dr. Raslowski there is a world-famous physicist.”

“Who left his swanky job under mysterious circumstances last year,” Candace added.

Mike frowned. “A goddamn physicist?”

Glen assumed a pose Candace recalled well: Teacher at lecture. Even in gym class, Mr. Eastman had been fond of offering tidbits of history and other subjects, often telling them that just because gym class was for their bodies didn’t mean they couldn’t also expand their minds. She also recalled the whole class groaning dramatically whenever he launched into one of his lectures.

She had no urge to groan now. She looked around to make sure the soldiers weren’t near them, listening in.

“He worked at the Holzman Institute,” Eastman said. “Which I’ve heard of.” He looked down at the floor suddenly. “Not, mind you, that I really understand what they do there. out of my league, definitely. It’s wild stuff. You heard of String Theory?”

No one reacted. After a moment, Mike sighed. “I have, sure.”

Eastman nodded, looking up with an expression that Candace thought she would classify as excited. “String Theory’s the simple stuff compared to what they were doing at the Holzman. We’re talking fundamentals of the universe here. Like, the basic building blocks of reality, that kind of stuff.” He looked down again. “Like I said, I don’t claim to really understand it all. But that means our Dr. Raslowski is one of the most brilliant men in the world. Who got fired for ethics violations.”

Mike blinked, every part of his body seeming to ache and burn. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh shit is right,” Eastman said, nodding. “I think we know something else, too. That old factory up the road? You said was blazing with light, crowded with people? Someone’s been cooking up something in there, and they lost control.”

“Lost control of what?” Candace asked.

Eastman shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Like I said, I don’t claim to understand the man’s work.”

Mike sighed. “You put the words fundamental forces of the universe and lost control together, and—”

“—we’re fucked,” Jack finished, sounding, Candace thought, cheerful.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Why us? Why come here? If they lost control of … something—I don’t know, say they got Godzilla up there and he snapped his chain—then why in fuck would they think they were safer here? Or better able to run things from here?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mike downed his whiskey and coughed. “Mr. Eastman?”

Eastman rubbed his chin. “I’m no expert, but if I had to have a theory I’d say you have to apply the old Occam’s Razor. What’s the simpliest explanation for needing to be here?”

After a moment, Mike nodded. “Us.”

Eastman nodded. “Us. We’re the only thing here that can’t be replicated, that can’t be found anywhere else. It could be. It’s possible. I know it sounds nuts, but it’s logical. Therefore it’s possible.”

Candace frowned. She felt like she was running on an ice rink, trying to keep up without falling on her ass. “So what does that mean? Why would they need us?”

Mike gestured at Eastman, who shrugged. “I don’t know. They don’t seem to want anything from us. They seem content to just sit on us.”

“Like they’re waiting for something,” Mike said, looking around. “If there was an accident, maybe they don’t know if it’s a chain reaction or something.” He nodded to himself, warming to a concept. “Think about it: If we assume they’re up there at the facility tearing open the fabric of reality or something, and there’s an accident, the first step might be containment, right?”

Eastman nodded, so everyone else nodded.

“So, what’s the containment area? How far does the problem extend, whatever it is? Maybe they know, maybe they don’t. Maybe this bar lies inside some sort of Red Zone, or maybe they’re just being careful. Either way, maybe Dr. Raslowski runs the numbers and says, okay, if nothing happens in the next ten hours, we’re golden. So they might decide to sit on us and see what happens.”

“So then why not just observe?” Candace said. “Why shoot poor Mr. Simms? Why keep everyone in here?”

“Someone panicked,” McCoy said.

“Or maybe our actions have something to do with it,” Mike offered. “I don’t claim to understand the fundamental forces of the universe either. Maybe they need us to stay put, and the only way to guarantee it is to hold us by force.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just glad the man’s not a Structural Biologist and we’re not going to die of some alien virus.”

“None of this changes anything for us,” Eastman said. “It’s exactly the same situation. We’re trapped in here with armed soldiers who have demonstrated they’ll kill us. The only difference is that now we have to worry about wormholes or something.”

They all stood in silence for a moment. Candace found herself taking a physical poll, checking herself for injuries. She couldn’t believe in the chaos she’d escaped without a scratch.

“So what’s the point, then?” McCoy asked, pouring Mike another shot of whiskey and then taking a sip straight from the bottle. “We just sit here for the next nine hours, asking permission to take a piss and hoping we don’t accidentally piss off a jumpy kid who’ll shoot us dead?”

“There’s another problem,” Mike said, picking up the second shot and staring at it. “These soldiers. You notice they don’t have any identification? No nametags, no patches, no insignia. They’re not in communication with anyone that we’ve seen.” He looked around. “They’re off-book. They’re unacknowledged. Or, you know, private, someone’s private army. Officially, they’re not here, right? Which means none of this is happening, officially. That’s their fallback—if everything went according to plan, there would be a cover story. Some explanation. Or we’d just be warned that no one would believe us. They’d just deny anything ever happened.”

“So?” McCoy asked, taking another slug from the bottle.

“So, they killed a man,” Mike said. “Now they have a mess, and they have a bunch of witnesses who might make it a point to seek justice or revenge or whatever.” He slammed back the shot and put the glass back on the bar. “And we know some names. I will bet you Hammond or Raslowski or some of the grunts are thinking, right now, that maybe the cleanest thing to do is kill us all.”

Another round of silence met this. Finally, McCoy shook his head. “Naw. Simms was an accident. A mistake.”

Mike nodded. “And when the nine hours is up and they all breathe a sigh of relief because their little problem didn’t happen again? They’re going to allow us to just go our merry way, to call police and journalists, to hire investigators to look into Simms’ death—and the facility down the road?” He shook his head. “I know people with money and resources. Rich people. When you have money and resources, you start to think you can make any problem go away, and it makes you cruel and it makes you do things you shouldn’t do. And no one has more money and resources than the U.S. government.”

“If it is the government,” Candace mused.

“Oh, it’s the goddamn government all right,” Glen Eastman said dourly, “but let’s not forget all of this is conjecture,” Eastman said. “We’re still operating with a real deficit of actual information. We could be way off.”

Mike nodded. Candace thought about it. “But Mr. Simms is dead,” she said. “And we know who killed him.”

McCoy looked at her. She held his gaze. She’d known Jack McCoy pretty much her whole life, and he knew she wasn’t one for panic or hysteria.

“And since we don’t know why they’re so terrified of any of us getting out of this bar,” Eastman said, “we can’t in good conscience leave, can we?”

McCoy raised one bushy eyebrow. “What’s that?”

Mike nodded, and Candace knew what he was going to say. “I agree. We shouldn’t try to get away. We don’t know what’s happening. If there’s something that could endanger other people, we have to stay here. Until we know exactly what’s happening, I think we have to do everything except escape.”

“Then what do we do?” McCoy asked slowly, as if still processing this suggestion.

Again, Candace knew what Mike was going to say, and she felt a thrill when the words were spoken out loud. “We can’t run away. But we can’t wait to find out if they just liquidate us. We have to turn the tables. We have to take over.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Detained, Fiction, Novels, Writing

Misadventures in Drinking: The Depth Charge

Author: March 21, 2021 2 Comments

Note: This little essay is about alcohol, which means a more competent person would have a) written it in time to post on St. Patrick’s Day instead of (checks notes) x days later, and would have somehow arranged to partner with a liquor company that’s been sending him emails about trading free booze for promotion. Instead, here I am drinking on my own dime like a sucker and making terrible decisions like a … well, like a Somers. It’s kind of our brand.

FRIENDOS, we all know that Jeff likes a drink. I went to my doctor recently for my annual checkup, and the standard screening questions took a turn when we came to the part about how many alcoholic drinks do you consume. There was, not gonna lie, an awkward silence that lasted some time. The only saving grace came a day later when my blood test results came back and it was determined that I have the bodily functions of a much younger man. I have the liver function of a robust teenager, in fact. But it was a tense moment.

Now, my love for booze has been part of my personal brand for most of my adult life. It’s a bit hackneyed, sure, and a little Basic. But I believe we all have the right to be a little Basic. Just because a middle-aged man slurping whiskey isn’t exactly hip is no reason not to enjoy it as a persona, dammit, and I will die on that hill.

That being said, The Drink has not always been my friend. In fact, it has occasionally been a humiliating enemy.

THE DEPTH CHARGE

I am an incredibly simple person. I don’t like complexity, and I don’t like actually spending times on things. If lunch can’t be made in under a minute, I don’t want lunch. That’s what you’re dealing with. So it shouldn’t be surprising that I have never trucked with cocktails. If a drink requires preparation beyond a pull tab or a pour, I am not interested.

But! I was once young and foolish, just like you. So there was a brief period when I attempted to be classy and sophisticated and continental, which meant trying out cocktails of different sorts. The idea was to order something with a recipe so I could be very picky about the ingredients and preparation, implying all sorts of life experience I did not, and still do not, have.

There were failed experiments as I resisted my fate as a shot-and-a-beer type. I threw a Martini Party and downloaded several Martini recipes from the Internet, including a Chocolate Martini that yielded … regrettable results. I volunteered one New Year’s Eve to mix up a bunch of different specialty shots, including a Bubblegum Shot that resulted in one of my friends wandering the remnants of the party with a pie-eyed look on his face, draining the dregs of everyone’s drinks until he literally fell over.

But my most humiliating (and therefore best) attempt at cocktails involves something called the Depth Charge, which is not even really a cocktail, adding a nice layer of ridiculousness to this story that is very on-brand.

A Depth Charge is, in theory, a shot of whiskey dropped into a pint of beer. The idea, as it was explained to me, is that you drop in the shot and the chug the beer. Why? I have no idea. I had no idea then, and I have no idea now. Was I trying to impress a girl? Possibly. Does that make this even more humiliating? Definitely.

We were in a dive bar in Manhattan, the sort of place where you avoid going to the bathroom because you’re worried about contracting the Andromeda Strain. I don’t recall how the Depth Charge made its way to my table (which may explain my thought process, or lack thereof), but once it appeared in front of me, it was Challenge: Accepted! time.

I knew I was in trouble within the first few seconds. I dropped the shot glass into the pint glass and everyone looked at me like I was insane, which made me suddenly wonder if I’d fundamentally misunderstood the entire process. I am a man who never admits error, however, so I just lifted the roiling drink and tipped it back to the growing horror of my friends.

Chugging beer has never been a skill set for me, and things went south quickly. Whiskey-infused beer began dripping down my chin, all over me, the table, literally everywhere. I kept going (see above re: Never admitting error) offering a cheery thumb’s up to let everyone know that this was all part of the expected procedure. When I finished there was more beer on the floor than inside me, making the Depth Charge the least-efficient drink ever devised. There was a lengthy period of awkward silence.

I was later banned from that particular bar, for totally related reasons.

The moral of this story? Keep your drinks simple, or your Inner Idiot will seize the opportunity to make you look foolish. Ever since then, I drink my beer and whiskey quite separately, thank you. The results are just as humiliating, usually, but there’s much less mess.

Bullshit, Whiskey

Detained Chapter 10

Author: March 15, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

10. Mike

He had to admit he hadn’t expected much from Haggen, and it just went to show that no matter how much you saw or how many people you paid to hang out with you and show you how they lived, you could still be surprised.

He’d been restrained along with Haggen, plastic zip ties binding their wrists behind their backs, marched into the office, and shoved around pretty roughly—but not, he reflected, shot. This was either a renewed imposition of discipline from the colonel, or a new policy concerning the hostages. His face burned with swollen pain, one eye was closing, and when he breathed he felt the ragged tug of what he suspected was a bruised or maybe broken rib. He didn’t mind. He’d given just as good, and he’d been relieved that Haggen at least knew the one golden rule of staging a fight: You can’t stage a fight. You just had a real fight for staged reasons.

As soldiers marched them down the hall, he’d wondered again why the two of them were still alive. All Simms had done was try to leave.

Colonel Hammond leaned back in Jack’s chair and studied them. She was a woman that people would call handsome, he thought. The sort of tall, gawky woman who wasn’t unattractive, really, but who didn’t fall into any of the boxes you normally put a woman into. She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t ugly. She had neither grace nor clumsiness. She was tall, but slight, had bright, clear eyes—and a presence. She was the sort of person you were instantly intimidated by, but who you couldn’t easily describe—at least not physically.

“This bullshit,” she said suddenly, spitting out the words as if with great self-control. “Stops now. Are we clear on that? Whatever bad blood exists between you two, it stops right now. There will be no second reprieve, yes?”

She was looking at him. Mike made a mental note, adding to the short list of information he’d managed to accrue over the last two hours: She didn’t know much about them. She’d demonstrated they knew all their names, and basic background, but her knowledge wasn’t deep. Or she hadn’t had time to read it all. She thought his fight with Haggen was not only legitimate, but based on an existing grudge.

“Or we get shot,” Haggen said, spitting a wad of blood onto the floor. “We get it, Kommisar.”

Her eyes shifted to Haggen, and Mike glanced at the computer. Candace had left it on. To his horror, the screen showed a photo of Raslowski. All the colonel would have to do was glance at it, and she would instantly know they’d been snooping. He wasn’t sure how she would react, and he didn’t want to find out. The phrase no second reprieve rang in his head.

His eyes scanned the room, landing on the thick black power cord that snaked from the back of the monitor to the power strip on the floor. The strip had a red switch on one end that would kill the power in an instant.

Mike marked the switch’s location and looked back at the Colonel. He could turn it off just by taking one step forward. He wasn’t worried about getting a beating, or getting into some other trouble. He knew if he did it while Hammond was sitting at the desk, she would notice the screen going off. She wasn’t an idiot. She would know something was up.

Hammond sighed and leaned back in the chair. She looked from Haggen to Mike and back again. For a moment he thought she looked absolutely exhausted, her face hollowed out, her eyes dull and blank. He thought, irrationally, that he was about to die: She would just decide not to worry about it, to kill them both to be safe.

“King, what’s the count?”

The soldier with the curly hair straightened up just slightly more. “The Doc counted off nine hours last,” she said.

Mike made a mental note: One more piece of data—nine hours, whatever that means.

Hammond nodded, then looked back at me and Haggen. “You gonna be a pain in my ass or can we consider this shit settled? In case you hadn’t noticed, my people are a little itchy. I’m sorry about your friend—I truly am—but if you cause one more lick of trouble for me, I’m going to hogtie you and dump you in the back with the beer kegs for the duration of this duty, are we clear on that?” She shook her head. “And that will be more for your own safety than anything else.”

Haggen nodded cheerfully. “You can put me in the back with the kegs any time, Colonel.”

Mike hesitated, then shook his head. “Everything you’re doing here is illegal. You’ve detained us illegally, you’ve killed an American citizen without cause, you’ve restrained me and … ” he hesitated, then on impulse decided to keep up the pretense that he was intimately involved, a local or at least familiar with everything and everyone. “… Jimmy, you’re trespassing—the list goes on.” He looked her right in the eye. “After killing one of us, how am I expected to believe you won’t just kill us all when you’re done here with whatever this is?”

Hammond leaned back in the seat and regarded him. Mike thought she was evaluating him, considering him, and it made him nervous.

“Mr. Malloy,” she said, her voice icy cold. “That is a possibility, unfortunately.”

Mike’s heart skipped a beat. Had she actually just admitted she might murder them all?

She leaned forward, planting her elbows on the desk. “I am hoping to avoid that eventuality, though. I am hoping to resolve this without any further bloodshed. Part of that is up to you—if you have influence over your people, use it to calm them down. Use it to keep everyone under control. Do that, and there’s a much better chance of avoiding any further problems. Because if crowd control becomes an issue here, we will fall back on alternative methods, without hesitation, understood?”

Mike was stunned, but managed to nod back. He started to agree, but remembered the computer screen. He need to play for time. He had the feeling that another outburst, another round with Haggen would just get them hogtied—or worse—but he didn’t know how else he was going to distract her.

Suddenly, Haggen leaned forward. “Well, Colonel, let me speak for all of us when I say you’re a right fucking cunt, and you all can go fuck yourselves.”

Mike stared. Was he crazy? He was going to get himself killed. He was going to get them both killed, right here, in this office.

The colonel had gone completely still. She stared at Haggen with a similarly disbelieving expression. The whole room seemed to have frozen.

Haggen nodded. “You got this bullshit command because none of the men would take it, right? You been cooling your heels in what—the commissary? The secretary pool, taking dictation?”

“Warner,” Hammond said in a tight voice. “Shut this piece of shit up.”

The other guard, a tall, lanky man with tree-like arms, nodded, but Haggen just smiled more broadly. “Sure, get the men to do your ass-kicking, too. Stupid fascist bitch. Been wanting to boss some men around, found a career path that let you do it. Bet every man in this unit wants to slap your bitch face but can’t risk their career. I bet—”

Warner stepped between Haggen and the desk and expertly socked him in the belly with one powerful punch. Haggen bent over, instantly reduced to a silent, red-face wheeze.

Hammond stood up. Mike didn’t hesitate; Haggen must have seen exactly what he did, and he’d distracted the colonel the only way he could think of. Mike stepped forward, bringing his foot down on the power strip. He heard the old computer suddenly go quiet, but no one else noticed. Hammond was still stepping around the desk, where she leaned down and took Haggen by the hair, forcing him to look up at her.

“Take this piece of shit and hogtie him in the back,” she said quietly. She straightened up and glanced at Mike, then wordlessly turned away. “Turn Malloy loose.”

King snapped out a small knife and stepped behind him as Haggen was literally dragged away, limp as a ragdoll and still struggling to breathe. “You people need to step back,” the soldier whispered as she sliced his ziptie free. “This goes hard or it goes easy, your choice. Spread that word.”

Mike nodded, numb. For a moment he couldn’t move; frustration seized him. They had little bits of information, but no answers, and they were no closer to getting out of this alive than before.

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Detained, Novels, Writing

Detained Chapter 9

Author: March 8, 2021 0 Comments

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

9. Candace

For a moment, she thought it had all gone to hell. Jimmy followed up his sucker punch with a rebel yell and leaped down onto Mike, fists swinging, and the rest of the place devolved into chaos. The soldiers surged forward, but before they could get to the pair, Mike somehow scissored his legs, gained some leverage, and flipped Jimmy over onto his back. Jimmy then rolled away as Mike pounced, sprang to his feet, and crashed into Jimmy, knocking over tables.

She’d seen Jimmy Haggen get into fights before—plenty of times. He didn’t have any particular training or style; he was a scrapper. He had a lean, natural athleticism that made him a dangerous opponent, but he relied entirely on his reflexes and speed—and an ability to take a punch.

Mike, though, looked like he’d trained somewhere. He wasn’t boxing, his whole center of gravity had shifted. He kept shifting away from Jimmy, then leaning in with lightning speed and landing a blow before dancing back again. Dancing, she thought. It was exactly like he was dancing with Jimmy.

Jimmy was getting the worst of it, though; Mike touched him regularly and he seemed unable to get past Mike’s defenses. Haggen didn’t seem to mind; his smile was constant. She realized they were putting on a performance, because whenever one of the soldiers made a move as if to break them up, they suddenly locked into each other and crashed into another part of the bar, where they resumed their odd dance.

When Hammond stormed from behind past her, she was startled out of her trance. The colonel, tall and cool and more or less the definition of unamused, walked about three steps past her and stood for a moment with her arms akimbo, her back ramrod straight.

Going over the list of things to look up that she and Mike had quickly compiled, she took a step backwards, eyes locked on Hammond, then spun and moved as swiftly and silently as she could down the hall. She’d taken this route a million times, during endless boring nights when literally no one had come into the place before ten at night, but it suddenly seemed sinister and foreign, as if Hammond and her people had taken it from them after their invasion.

She ducked into the office, forcing herself to not look back. She could hear the fight, and she hadn’t yet heard Hammond give any order to shut it down. She told herself that as long as Jimmy and Mike kept it up, she had time.

She slid into the chair and turned on the old monitor; the plastic casing had once been beige but had soured into something yellower over the years. It hummed and took a while to warm up, but the moment the screen slowly began to fade into being she was moving the mouse, clicking on the dial-up icon.

When she’d first started working at Jack’s, she’d been stunned to discover that there was no high-speed Internet, no satellite television, and only this wheezing old relic of a computer. The jukebox hadn’t been serviced or updated in years, and the furniture and decorations were exactly what Jack had inherited from old Catfish Lowell, which Lowell himself had inherited decades earlier. She knew she had never been the hippest or coolest girl in the world (and knew that even the coolest girl in this tiny town wouldn’t even make the list in a big city), but even so the complete disinterest Jack McCoy had in modernizing the place was disturbing.

And the most disturbing aspect by far was the dialup. Before working at the bar, Candace had retained vague, watery memories of dialup Internet, and those memories were unhappy ones. When Jack had painstakingly walked her through the process, she’d been amazed that this was how people had once gotten on the Internet. How she herself had once done it, though she didn’t think she’d had to wait through the screeching modem noises since High School, at the latest. She was doubly amazed that it was still possible, but Jack assured her millions of people still used dialup Internet. She was then not amazed, but rather horrified, at the speed dialup offered. It was like reading a book with someone feeding you one letter at a time from a very great distance.

The login box appeared, with Jack’s user name and the starred-out password already filled in. The modem roared into tinny life with the now-familiar burps and screeches of data over a phone line, and her heart leaped: It seemed incredibly loud in Jack’s tiny, overstuffed office. Her heart racing, she danced in the chair as the handshake completed and the computer announced she was connected.

She clicked on the text-only browser she’d installed a few years back. It ignored all graphics and other elements and rendered every page solely as text. She’d installed it out of desperation after the old computer kept freezing every time she tried to load any web page that had been created within the last five years—the text-only browser meant she wasn’t getting the most fun aspects of the Internet, but at least she was able to read the news and gossip without growing old in the process.

The browser window appeared, no-frills, just a white box with an input line. The fight continued to rage outside. She typed a news site she liked to visit into the box and hit the enter key. She’d discussed it with Mike, and they’d agreed if something worldwide or even nationwide was happening, it made sense to start with that. She held her breath as the modem crunched bits and the browser waited. Then the page started trickling in, one line of text at a time. There was nothing. A football player had been in a car crash and fled the scene. Someone in Atlanta had called in a bomb threat to a church. Russia had sent troops into the Arctic again, but nothing about it seemed urgent.

Not a general event, she thought. Unless they’re suppressing it. She felt foolish for thinking such a paranoid thought, then regrouped. Jesus, we’re being detained mysteriously by troops, she thought. If there was ever a time to be paranoid, this is it.

She pulled up a search engine and typed RASLOWSKI DOCTOR Ph.D. M.D. into the search box. Mike thought that since he was the only non-military person in the group, there might be more on him out there.

She heard Hammond shouting, and nearly jumped out of the seat. The text came scrolling onto the screen; the first few hits were generic ones for doctor-related websites, then an encyclopedia entry. The next few seemed innocuous: Local doctor offices in far-away places, or ratings websites giving reviews for local doctors.

The eighth hit caught her eye; it was a news item, titled PHYSICIST LEAVES UNDER CLOUD. The brief snippet beneath the headline began “Dr. Emory Raslowski resigned his position as senior scientist at.”

She clicked on the link just as Hammond shouted again.

“King and Williams! Stop holding your junk and separate these men!”

The screen filled with minimally-formatted text: Dr. Emory Raslowski resigned his position as senior scientist at the Holzman Institute Monday. Dr. Raslowski, regarded as one of the leading theoretical physicists in the world, has been under investigation by the compliance committee for alleged ethics violations in research programs under his direct supervision. Dr. Raslowski has so far offered no comment on the accusations, and today announced via memorandum that he would be vacating his position. He would not specify what, if any, new position he had accepted, responding to queries only with an emailed “No comment.”

The noise in the next room became suddenly louder, and Candace imagined soldiers getting involved, which meant that Mike and Jimmy were now actively risking their lives. She opened the regular browser and counted the four heartbeats it took to grind through its boot process on the ancient computer, then typed the same search in. She clicked the link and waited another agonizing few seconds while the old browser sorted itself out, the web page appearing in jerky increments as the lights on the old modem danced.

Suddenly, the chaos outside stopped. She could hear Hammond speaking in much more controlled voice. Her heart was pounding. There wasn’t much time.

There was a photo, halfway down the screen. It appeared one scanned line at a time, and she leaned forward, willing it to resolve into something she could comprehend. Line by line, the photo grew like it was being hand-stippled on the screen by unseen hands. When it was halfway finished she knew it was Raslowski, but despite the ominous silence outside and her shaking hands, she forced herself to wait a few seconds more, and then a few seconds more, until it was absolutely him, the same mild-looking man in the same dark plastic glasses, scowling at her from the screen.

“King, if these men so much as make a noise, gag them and handcuff them to the bar,” Hammond bellowed.

Oh, fuck, Candace thought.

Frantically, she leaped up. Without thinking, she dashed forward and slid behind the open door, hiding in the darkness between it and the wall. A second later, Hammond stepped into the office.

Candace closed her eyes. How long could she stand there, how long could she stay silent? What if the colonel wanted some privacy and closed the door? She ran through possible scenarios, reactions. What would be her excuse? Why was she in the office? What justification could she offer?

Suddenly there was another commotion outside, with raised voices that quickly swelled in volume. She heard the colonel hiss a curse under her breath, and then heard her storm out of the office again.

Immediately, she stepped back out from behind the door and with a deep breath she walked out into the hallway. She felt hidden for a moment in the relative gloom of the hallway, but as she approached the bar area again she felt increasingly exposed. Everyone was paying attention to Jimmy, who was being restrained by two soldiers, thrashing about and shouting.

“Fuck you!” he shouted. “This is the United States of America and I demand to be allowed to make a god-damn phone call!”

She held her breath as she approached the line that divided the well-lit bar from the dark hallway. She realized that Jimmy was staring at her as she crept forward.

“You can’t do this! I’m going to fucking own you when I get my lawyer on the line!”

She slipped into the light and leaned back against the wall. A moment later their eyes locked, and he winked at he, then slumped, breathing hard.

“All right,” he said. “I’m done.”

EPUB | MOBI | PDF

Detained, Novels, Writing