The Forking Story: Throw The Bones (a Cheating Death splinter story)--Version 1A
Here's the shtick: I write a story, a scene at a time. Then I write a pair of second scenes, taking the story in two different directions--a story fork. The reward total after three days determines which fork survives.
Background: I wrote a novel called Cheating Death, which one day you'll have a chance to read. In that novel, a bit character appears for one scene, a detective named Casparus Abbett. I liked him. He needed more life. In this story, he gets it.
Fork 1A:
The big man slammed a meaty fist on the center of Casparus Abbett’s desk. The crash reverberated across the floor. Conversation died and heads swiveled. Abbet himself simply sat there, as if this kind of thing happened all the time. It did, but that didn't make it less painful.
“You could have stopped them. You were a block away. Even you could run there in fifteen seconds. We had them,” the man said, leaning down to bring his face even with Abbett’s. Spittle flecked the corners of his mouth, and some jetted across to speckle Abbett’s nose. He didn’t wipe it off. That would only make it worse.
“I was on a case,” he said simply, as if noting the time.
“You. Were on. A case.” The man’s fist punctuated each word, the desk rattling. Abbett’s pencil, earthquaked off the edge, clattered to the floor and rolled away, fleeing the scene. “You and your useless cases are the reason we have a drug problem in this city in the first place. That man was carrying fifty sticks at least. Next week there are going to be ten more kids hopped up on that trash. Ten more lost kids. And you just sit there. You don’t even care.”
Abbett knew he could say, “I do care,” and it would be the truth, and it wouldn’t matter. Fisk had to rant. Abbett was a target. That was part of his function. So he didn’t say it, instead gazing steadily back at the huge cop, his dark uniform stained darker by the wet at his armpits. Abbett didn’t cringe at the foul breath in his face. Having few other options, he put all the concern he could onto his face, though Fisk had never been the sort that could read it.
After a long, tense moment, Fisk blew a smoke-stained breath into Abbet’s eyes and straightened up. “Unbelievable,” he said.
Abbett saw the muscles bunch in Fisk’s right forearm, and knew they were very close to the moment he might have to do something. His stomach sank. Not again. The whispers still hadn't died down from the last time.
Fisk was just cocking his arm back when another voice cut across the room like the crack of a whip.
“Fisk!”
Fisk paused, but didn’t put his arm down. He kept his eyes locked to Abbett’s face, and Abbett could see the effort it cost him not to let his jackhammer fist fly.
“You don’t want to do that,” the voice said. Captain Subramanian, probably the only man in the building that could keep this from getting ugly. Uglier.
“Yes, Cap’n, I surely do,” Fisk said, through clenched teeth.
“My orders, Fisk, are to put that arm down and leave Detective Abbet alone. It’s not his fault your perp escaped.”
Fisk took a three-count, then let his arm dangle. He gave his head a small shake. “How do you even sleep at night?”
Subramanian checked something on his clipboard and said, “Abbet, that murder suspect you brought in is singing like a bird. Will you get down to lockup and take his statement so we can try him and hang him?”
Abbet reached down, recaptured his pencil, and mated it with his spiral notebook. He rolled his chair back a few inches and stood, bringing his eyes even with Fisk’s. “I don’t sleep, Lieutenant,” he said, his words clipped and precise.
He made sure he was out of sight before he ran his hand through his graying hair and let his long-held breath escape.
Fork 1A:
Abbett watched the street. Shimmies of heat jitterbugged on the pavement. Nothing moved.
Not even Abbett, whose eyes stayed pegged forward like they’d been stapled to Wadsden Street. He’d have a crick in his neck later, but that water was already under the bridge and gone, and all that was left to him was to make sure the pain earned something worthwhile. He increasingly doubted it would. Not enough to move, though.
To his right, a sidewalk, cracked and weedy, with a chain link fence where a building had once been. Bricks, rust-colored and crumbly, lay haphazardly in the vacant lot. Next to it, farther up the street, stood a decrepit warehouse, windows boarded up. Beyond that, a car sat in front of what had been a diner, back when this part of town had regular people in it. The rest of the block was similar, stretching out ahead. Both sides. Slowly decaying in the blazing July sun, like hundreds of other blocks in dozens of cities.
But those blocks didn’t have that car parked there.
Abbett’s eyes hurt from the reflection off the chrome bumper of that car. It gleamed like a department store Christmas display. Even brand-new cars didn’t come that clean. The tailpipe jiggled every now and then, just a fraction, but enough that Abbett knew the car was running. Had been, for going on half an hour, since it had glided to a stop in front of that diner.
By that point, Abbett’s head had already been down low, out of easy sight, and behind the front bench. Someone in that car had glanced through the driver’s window on the way by. Empty. No one ever looked in the back seat.
Two men had exited the car, both wearing suits in the July heat, one with a conspicuous bulge at his left breast. They’d walked across the sidewalk and down the short flight into the sunken diner.
Abbett’s car blended perfectly with the rest of the street. Missing a hubcap, once-white paint scratched and patchy, decorated with rust, it had been parked there for months. Abbett parked it there himself.
The back seat was surprisingly comfortable, and the car had more to recommend it than it appeared from the carefully-prepared exterior. Today Abbett thought he might get to use some of the other qualities than the cushy rear bench. Today. Had to be today.
If those men would just come back out of the diner while Abbett could still use his neck muscles.
Voting commences now. You can vote for this story and for Fork 1Z, if you like them both, but only one will survive. Move that slider to weight the story you can't live without. Deadline is Thursday, high noon GMT, when the larger payout lives on and the smaller withers and dies.
~Cristof
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