The Story - Beginnings

So far, so good. ‘The Story’ remains unsatisfying. It is unfinished, there are holes in it. More work is required.

This is normal. Often the changes are far more radical—they may yet be but, for now, let’s just have a look at what we have here.

Ignoring the very first paragraph, for now, let’s see what the second part needs.

In this part the ‘hero’ tells us where he was brought up. It sows the seeds for a picture of him that is already mentally tough; he has suffered hardships and that, for him, sex is ‘normal’ even if it is vicariously through his mother.

It does not explain why he needs to escape or, indeed, how he escapes. So there is a hole in the story right there.

Let’s plant some more details into that part:

I started working for the gangs when I was around ten years old. They gave me a knife and told me to go kill someone. My schoolfriend.

I told Mum. She shrugged and told me to go kill him. Either that or die.

They gave me a girl to play with after that. Just for a few hours. I didn’t really know what to do with her. I had to ask Mum. Mum explained about that so I should know what to do next time.

One of the more senior gang members, he must have been around seventeen or eighteen, mentioned that there was trouble in the south. There were rumours of war there but the gangs in their tenements would sort that out; this was not our problem.¹

There were other rumours, too. We knew that one of the rumours about a ‘green’ area further north must be some sort of joke; perhaps it was ruse by enemy gangs to get us to desert so they could move in and take over our tenements.

One of the rumours concerned me. I heard, through one of the junior members, that a ganger on the twenty-third floor wanted me dead. I don’t know why he wanted that but rumours like that had ways of becoming true.²

Around four or five in the morning when it was really dark and raining hard, I slipped past the lower floors. They had left only two guards on the exit at the Ground Floor where their main office and storeroom for the drugs were. The rest of the guards would be inside—high or asleep, no doubt.

I thought that I should be able to ease past them but one of them seemed restless, more observant than the other. I came up behind him, put my blade under his chin, pushed his head forward and pulled the knife out across his throat. No blood on me but plenty on the floor. He was busy trying to push it all back in when I squeezed past him and slipped quietly out onto the street.

It was raining heavily, enough to keep everyone under cover or indoors.

A few tenements north was the river. I had heard about it but never seen it. It was bigger—wider, than I thought it would be. Perhaps all this rain had swollen it up. The bridge would be guarded. The gangs the other side would want to keep us out.

I crept along the banks keeping to the dark parts under the road, slipping on the shiny stones and occasionally finding sticky mud. I put some on my face to try and stop my skin showing up in the odd light that filtered down from the streets. Not many lights left now but those that were still lit posed a threat to me right now. The rain soon washed off the mud, it was a stupid plan.

The bridge was made up of steel girders. Unpainted for years the steel was now mostly rust but, maybe, it was strong enough to hold my weight. By the time I had made my way across under the bridge it was full light.  I stopped at the far end and watched for a while; sometimes I let rainwater from the bridge run into my mouth.

The streets the other side looked deserted. Deceptive. Every now and then a face would peer out of one of the windows. They were checking the streets.

I wedged myself into one of the cross members of the bridge and slept.

Once it was properly dark I crawled out and made way through the glistening streets, picking my way through garbage that stank in the wet air. I passed more than twenty blocks before the countryside became quite suddenly open.

I didn’t understand the clear area until an aircraft appeared with bright searchlights underneath it illuminating everything on the ground. I froze, immobile hoping that they were attuned to movement. I didn’t know about infrared. Another aircraft appeared and landed vertically beside me. Two men with guns pointing at me half lifted me into the aeroplane. It took off and headed north.

The men in uniform questioned me for hours. I explained that I had been trying to escape to a place that we were told existed north of the tenements. A place where we could live in peace.

They told me that I was looking for The Colony. They laughed.³

That was how, at fifteen, I joined the Army. I thought I had escaped but I had only dodged the gangs briefly. They killed my Mum. Mum would have said it was all right; that she was too old for whoring anyway.

One day I would have to go back. The Government never let you live somewhere else. Once you were registered in the tenements that’s where you lived for ever.

1              I needed a stronger link to the end of the story and decided to insert it here. The mention of the war in the south against the gangs in the tenements there lends credibility to the end.

2              There has to be reason why he escapes. People in that situation tend to stay where they are and not risk everything by running away. The odds of getting caught are high and the penalty is, clearly, fatal.

3              This is still incomplete. He escapes but it’s all a bit ‘rushed’. What was the ‘clear area’? That needs some work—an explanation needs to be integrated into that.

He was arrested by the army and taken away in a ‘helicopter’(?) to somewhere. As a result he joined the army. Still sketchy and needs more background.

This is how we work on the start. Naturally, the end needs some work, too.

In the next ‘Blog’ we will build up the end a bit and see how that works out.

It may be, in the final examination, we shall decide that the story is not worth pursuing and we will scrap it—move on to something else. But, just for the time being we will play with it and see how it goes.