I thought this would be an interesting thing to show all both of you who read this. This is the beginnings of a novel that came to me suddenly. It's plotted out completely, but I haven't the time to work on beyond this point. In truth, I feel bad working on this when I have screenplays to work on and my first novel still needs to be transcribed and revised as well.
Obviously, as you read this, you should be able to pick out the preposterous amount of influence Graham Greene has had on me
I thought I'd offer this to see if anybody is interested in seeing me finish it. I'll keep a quick recap of the rest of the hook at the bottom of the story.
I’m writing this in retrospect, knowing full well that if I don’t write down my thoughts of what has happened I’ll certainly go mad. This is mainly a tale of jealousy and, in hindsight, how it brought me to the brink of insanity, that stony precipice I currently teeter on. It’s funny that they say hindsight is always 20/20, because as I reflect back on what happened, things seem hazy, almost translucent. I know what has happened, but the why is shrouded in that thick fog of hindsight and one wonders where to begin.
To be sure, I said this tale would be one of jealousy, but it didn’t begin that way. Do things ever begin the way they end, I wonder? It seems to me that jealousy and hatred must be planted in a firm soil bed of love and devotion for it to flower and blossom.
And it’s fitting then, I suppose, that we begin in a bed of love. Our bed. Mine and Sarah’s. We’d bought it on our return from our honeymoon, an old oak four poster that creaked so hideously when we made love that afterwards, Sarah would giggle, wondering aloud what the Joneses in the neighboring flat thought of the sound.
“Who cares what they think?” I told her, “To hell with them.”
And I’d meant it.
“I don’t care what they think, per se, but wouldn’t it be terribly embarrassing if they could hear us?”
I laughed, running my fingers softly along the curves of her hips, still glistening in the sweat of our afternoon lovemaking.
“That doesn’t matter.”
She sighed and looked into me, through me, down to the souls as if my eyes were windows looking out over it like a scenic vista. “I love you,” she told me.
And I believed it.
“I love you, too,” I told her, believing that as well.
I close my eyes and I can still feel her running her delicate fingers across my face, smiling at me like an angel, my angel.
She kissed my forehead and leaped spryly from the bed, quickly wrapping her perfect frame in her terry robe. “Do you still have time for tea?”
Pulling my watch from the nightstand and realizing the time, I knew that I didn’t and said so, “I really have to get back to the office, Angel Heart.”
“So soon?”
“It pains me, too, but the Ministry would never forgive me.”
“Can’t it wait ten minutes?” She pouted, tying the front of her gown together, obscuring her pert breasts fully from my view.
“My darling, if it were up to me, this damn war would be over and my division would never need to do…exactly whatever it is we do, again.”
She walked from the bed to her dressing table, combing her beautiful auburn hair back into it’s natural wavy state. “It would be a lot easier to cope, I imagine, iif you could tell me something, anything about what you do.”
“You know I can’t… It’s…”
“For my protection? Yes, I know. How could I forget. You’ve told me hundreds of times.”
To hell with secrecy. Going back into your thoughts like this, you imagine how you’d react in days gone by, knowing that anything you knew, any secret at all that could tell, wouldn’t have meant anything to the war. “I’ll tell you everything you want to hear about. Names, dates, places, anything. Just stay with me,” I could see myself telling her.
Though I didn’t.
I always felt sheepish, being so tight lipped about my work in intelligence. For the first thing, I never felt like anything I could tell her was any big secret and for the second, it made me feel as though she felt somehow unloved. Like an orphan, absent of affection of any kind.
I put myself back together, retying my tie and straightening my jacket before I left for work.
I left a tender kiss on her cheek on my way out.
That burning in the pit of my chest (the one I was confident was love) was the only thing I could remember feeling that day on my walk back to the office.
My work at the foreign office was entirely inconsequential. At the time, I was a called a spy jokingly, but in reality I was merely a glorified filing clerk. True the information I was cataloging was of great national importance, but I didn’t get to do much but alphabetize it by region and then forward it to the corresponding section. Africa, Asia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and so on, ad infitum. It was neither glamorous nor risky but someone had to do it. And I’d had to go through a screening process so stringent that I felt nearly irreplaceable.
And that's all I'd written. Clearly, once he gets to the office, he gets reassigned to a much more secretive position in the European theatre, recruiting double agents to the British cause. As his story of intrigue unfolds, he communicates with his wife, Sarah, daily by letters. Soon, her letters begin to come less often and soon not at all. Convinced of her infidelity, he abandons his mission and heads back to London to find her and make her explain, knowing full well that he has enemy spies hot on his heels.
Obviously, as you read this, you should be able to pick out the preposterous amount of influence Graham Greene has had on me
I thought I'd offer this to see if anybody is interested in seeing me finish it. I'll keep a quick recap of the rest of the hook at the bottom of the story.
I’m writing this in retrospect, knowing full well that if I don’t write down my thoughts of what has happened I’ll certainly go mad. This is mainly a tale of jealousy and, in hindsight, how it brought me to the brink of insanity, that stony precipice I currently teeter on. It’s funny that they say hindsight is always 20/20, because as I reflect back on what happened, things seem hazy, almost translucent. I know what has happened, but the why is shrouded in that thick fog of hindsight and one wonders where to begin.
To be sure, I said this tale would be one of jealousy, but it didn’t begin that way. Do things ever begin the way they end, I wonder? It seems to me that jealousy and hatred must be planted in a firm soil bed of love and devotion for it to flower and blossom.
And it’s fitting then, I suppose, that we begin in a bed of love. Our bed. Mine and Sarah’s. We’d bought it on our return from our honeymoon, an old oak four poster that creaked so hideously when we made love that afterwards, Sarah would giggle, wondering aloud what the Joneses in the neighboring flat thought of the sound.
“Who cares what they think?” I told her, “To hell with them.”
And I’d meant it.
“I don’t care what they think, per se, but wouldn’t it be terribly embarrassing if they could hear us?”
I laughed, running my fingers softly along the curves of her hips, still glistening in the sweat of our afternoon lovemaking.
“That doesn’t matter.”
She sighed and looked into me, through me, down to the souls as if my eyes were windows looking out over it like a scenic vista. “I love you,” she told me.
And I believed it.
“I love you, too,” I told her, believing that as well.
I close my eyes and I can still feel her running her delicate fingers across my face, smiling at me like an angel, my angel.
She kissed my forehead and leaped spryly from the bed, quickly wrapping her perfect frame in her terry robe. “Do you still have time for tea?”
Pulling my watch from the nightstand and realizing the time, I knew that I didn’t and said so, “I really have to get back to the office, Angel Heart.”
“So soon?”
“It pains me, too, but the Ministry would never forgive me.”
“Can’t it wait ten minutes?” She pouted, tying the front of her gown together, obscuring her pert breasts fully from my view.
“My darling, if it were up to me, this damn war would be over and my division would never need to do…exactly whatever it is we do, again.”
She walked from the bed to her dressing table, combing her beautiful auburn hair back into it’s natural wavy state. “It would be a lot easier to cope, I imagine, iif you could tell me something, anything about what you do.”
“You know I can’t… It’s…”
“For my protection? Yes, I know. How could I forget. You’ve told me hundreds of times.”
To hell with secrecy. Going back into your thoughts like this, you imagine how you’d react in days gone by, knowing that anything you knew, any secret at all that could tell, wouldn’t have meant anything to the war. “I’ll tell you everything you want to hear about. Names, dates, places, anything. Just stay with me,” I could see myself telling her.
Though I didn’t.
I always felt sheepish, being so tight lipped about my work in intelligence. For the first thing, I never felt like anything I could tell her was any big secret and for the second, it made me feel as though she felt somehow unloved. Like an orphan, absent of affection of any kind.
I put myself back together, retying my tie and straightening my jacket before I left for work.
I left a tender kiss on her cheek on my way out.
That burning in the pit of my chest (the one I was confident was love) was the only thing I could remember feeling that day on my walk back to the office.
My work at the foreign office was entirely inconsequential. At the time, I was a called a spy jokingly, but in reality I was merely a glorified filing clerk. True the information I was cataloging was of great national importance, but I didn’t get to do much but alphabetize it by region and then forward it to the corresponding section. Africa, Asia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and so on, ad infitum. It was neither glamorous nor risky but someone had to do it. And I’d had to go through a screening process so stringent that I felt nearly irreplaceable.
And that's all I'd written. Clearly, once he gets to the office, he gets reassigned to a much more secretive position in the European theatre, recruiting double agents to the British cause. As his story of intrigue unfolds, he communicates with his wife, Sarah, daily by letters. Soon, her letters begin to come less often and soon not at all. Convinced of her infidelity, he abandons his mission and heads back to London to find her and make her explain, knowing full well that he has enemy spies hot on his heels.
Comments