Day 87: Madness

                Is doing the same thing a million times and expecting different results.  This is why I'm going to have to attack this writing thing from different angles as much as possible.  If you haven't watched Book TV, it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.  That's another shallow platitude from me.  I'm falling into these grammar traps.  I need to be older and more experienced and I'm not doing that by being younger and less experienced.
              Reading things about writing fiction have instructed me that I should keep a journal.  This isn't journaly enough of a journal for me, I think.  I need to get more personal.  It should help that no one comments on this thing, so I should be able to say anything.  At some point I've started censoring myself.  I still am committed to getting good at this.

             Roger picked the guy who looked most serious from the yellow pages.  The many ads that started with “Welcome” or “Please call” seemed too expedient for his liking, on the bottom of the page their was a picture of a staunch flat faced man with furrowed eyebrows and a charcoal three piece suit sitting in front of a fireplace.  This screamed “serious”, the kind of man who entertained important patrons after making them wait in his study for hours while he pondered the great questions of the universe.

            A black townhouse sedan pulled up to the door of the cabin, Roger looked up from his soggy cheerios on the shitty kitchen table through the window.  He opened the screen door and waved from the porch as a man exited the car.  He was full of deliberation, every action seemed smooth, cool, and calculated.

            “Doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would make housecalls, seems like the kind of guy you’d have to go to.”  Roger said as he watched the him scrape one leg on the path up the driveway.

            Jim was completely silent in the shack.  The sun heated the aluminum walls to a bright red, it didn’t look comfortable in there. 

            Roger looked like a sucker.  Forlorn look on his face, right hand gripping his left arm behind his back, face tattooed with pockmarks, dry skin, crows feet, and paleness.  He stood on the threshhold of the doorway in barefeet, the screen door beating against his feet and flinging itself open.

            “A Mr. Roger.” The man said, taking his hat off.  “So sorry to hear about your girls.  My own girls were taken from me once.  Rest assured, I got them back.”

            Roger was delighted at this news.  A smile broke the plane of his face, he silently gestured that the man follow him inside.

            “I apologize for the mess, I have been a mess, I’m just a mess about all this.”  Roger said, kicking rubbish underneath the oriental rug that Jim had earlier ripped.  A cuckoo clock that Miranda received as a wedding present from a high ranking duke sounded its cry on the wall. 

            “If you don’t mind me asking, and perhaps even if you do, Mr. Roger, what sort of people are you involved with?  Are there ransom demands?”  He removed a cigarette case from the inside of his creased vest, opening it and removing a cigarette with one hand.  Roger stared on as he lit a cigarette.

            “A scientist, I think.”  Roger said.  “We don’t have any more news than that.”

            The door to Jim’s shack swung open with a metallic grunt and he came scrambling up the drive. 

              Starting a new one tomorrow will maybe come back to this at some point