day 19

Woke up late and just got started.  This one isn't so bad.  The trick to character relationships might be to come up with back stories before you start, or atleast in your head.  Also, defining characters by their wardrobe choices and then having them turn out differently isn't bad.  Not that I'm any good at this but it's just Day 18.

Mission for the day is to finally remember the difference between "effect" and "affect."  Think I got it.

            The snakeskin boots and leather jacket paraded through the swinging doors like they were on a parade float.  As soon as he saw the coast was clear he came over to the bar and put the diamonds behind the counter in the safe.  The place was poorly lit, a jukebox in a far corner with tables running along the wall looking like booths.  Everyone gathered around Snakeskin Pete.

            The old bumb slammed a fist full of quarters down on the bar.  He expected service.  Everyone had gathered around Snakeskin Pete, and he was demonstrating how he could use his knife to dissect even the largest creatures.  The crowd oohed and ahed at his above average use of pantomime.

            “Nowe we just gotta wait for the stash to cool down,”  Pete had a bellylaugh.  “In the meantime, let’s crank out some tunes.”  He plugged the jukebox in, and a Conway Twitty tune started as the mechanized hands lifted up the record and set it down on its track.  Pete stormed around behind the bar and poured himself a double, and as he settled into a stool the quiet conversations of a Thursday night started up again.  No one was much for Conway Twitty.

            Jake Folly was left laying in a ditch with only a black eye to show for it.  He first picked up the frame for his glasses, popping the lenses back in, and then reeled back at the sight of his cracked watch.  The minute hand and second hands twitched back and forth like the antennaes of a recently smashed bug.

            He dusted himself off which did little good but expose the wrinkles and holes in his vest.  Walking the hundred feet back to his car, he turned the key in the ignition to no affect.  He dug through the road maps in the glove compartment and got his hands on the little gun, the touch of the Smith and Wesson a refreshing cool against the tepid dampness of the desert.  He kissed the gun and put it in his inside jacket pocket, careful to reset the safety.  Reclining in the passenger side seat, he attempted to take a short sleep but was rudely awoken by a tapping inside of his brain like there was a glass cage on the inside of his cranium, and the long prickly fingers of a witch were checking to see if her newts were still alive.

            Jake hoofed it back to the cattle ranch.  He dreaded returning to the mansion, seeing the Old Colonel and having to resort to lying.  Seeing his reflection on the surface of a grain silo, he knew he should probably return to his room first and get his look back together.  The only trouble was getting in and out without being noticed.

            Snakeskin Pete found a great spot to set up his cans, a long line of stumps.  The trees had been removed when there had been a surplus amount of crows that had started a colony there.  The oasis was barren, with little life in the shrinking lake which would disappear for good in a few more seasons. 

            He stood there shooting and setting up the cans repeatedly through morning, laughing as the coyotes howled.  A single beam of light cut through the vacuous sky, cutting the night in half like a slice of pie.  Snakeskin went through the bucket of slugs looking for a fresh one, and when he noticed he had ran out ammo grabbed his bottle of whiskey and kicked back under a tree.

            A floor board creeked in the frontier stye mansion on the top of the hill.  “Jake,”  The old tycoon said from behind the divide of a partition.  He wheeled himself through but Jake wasn’t around.  The tea kettle whistled in the kitchen and the clock ticked as loudly as it always did, although it may have seemed louder.  Out in his driveway, the car engine hiccuped, coughed up a cloud of smog, and began pulling out in reverse.

            “You’re a damned fool Jake!”  He called from the open window, waving his hand to fulfill the requirement of the cliché.  He sat there later that night, sipping old brandy from a snifter and listening to his old Cowboys and Indians radio broadcast tapes.

            Jake gunned it past his own car, the wind swept over the flat canvass like a delicate perfunctory gesture.  This was the latest injury inflicted onto the quiet community by Snakeskin Pete in a series of equally irksome annoyances; Pete had opened a bar, driven the sheriff and deputies out of town, broke out of jail, and immediately robbed Jake on the highway.

            As Snakeskin Pete woke up under the tree, he dusted his pants off, checked his pockets for his knife, which was there, and sauntered his way back into the bar.  He removed a diamond from the stash with the intention of forcibly trading it for more ammunition.  The morning lights shined through the opened window of the bar, and off in the distance a glimmering light caught his eye.

            Hopping onto his chopper and ascending the hills into a stretch of crags which formed a rust colored crust over the horizons.  His eyes didn’t believe what they saw, it was his chateau, up in smoke, on the top of the mountain.  While he normally only used it to hold his equipment and tools, his good stash of old magazines was on the top of that hill.

            Jake stood by the house with the little gun drawn, hidden by the outside of his hand.  Pete jumped off his bike with bravado and made a gallant series of lunges up the hill, it was at a weird angle that prevented him from walking naturally and combined with the boots with was a definite disadvantage.  Jake’s shiner had went untreated, and his right eye was sealed in a permanent squint, which did just fine for peering over the barrel of a gun.  As the house behind him collapsed, he shuffled a few feet forward and kept his finger on the trigger.  But Pete lunged with the knife.

           Not a particularly good one.  Had one of "those days" as they call it.  Hey, atleast I finished I think is good enough for me.  See ya