I know it's been forever since I posted a snippet of story on here but I started this today and I wanted to put it out there in the vastness of the internet just in case. This is super rough and basically an outline but this is where one of my main characters breaks up with his crazy boyfriend because his boyfriend tried to hurt his guinea pigs... Well, and was crazy and abusive...
The whole time that I was writing this I was listening to The Main Ingredient's "Everybody Plays the Fool" which is why is shows up in the story snippet.
Michael-
Emile
threw a vase at Michael’s head a week before Christmas in one of his fits of
hysteria. The vase smashed against the guinea cage and Michael finally decided
to called it quits. Emile could hurt him all he wanted but the piggies were off
limits.
Emile didn’t want to hear that they were
breaking up. His fit got worse and he ended up going for the guinea pigs in earnest.
Michael shielded them with his own body while Emile scratched and slapped at
him. Michael refused to hit him, even to defend himself. He tried talking but
Emile was too far gone to hear him.
Emile slapped Michael in the face when he
brought his head up to try and sooth him and his ring gashed open Michael’s
cheek, right along his cheek bone. Emile withdrew a moment at the sight of
blood on Michael’s face. He clasped his hands to his own face and gasped. A
spot of blood landed on Samson and he shuddered in Michael’s hand.
Michael backed away from Emile and slipped
into the bathroom where he shut and locked to door. Michael gently laid the
piggies in the bathtub with a towel before going over to wash his face. He ran
the water to let it get warm and just tried not to think of the piggies
squealing in the bathtub either because they thought they were getting a bath
or they didn’t know where he went and the sounds of Emile on the other side of
the door, sobbing an apology.
The washrag was warm when he brought it to
his face and dabbed at the cut. It wasn’t all that bad but he didn’t want
anyone seeing him like that. It would start rumors. He stripped off his shirt
and looked over the mess of scratches that Emile had left on his torso. No
taking his shirt off on stage for a while either. He cleaned his scratches
until the sounds of Emile desolate crying were almost gone.
It had become so quite after all the ruckus
that Michael could begin to hear Artemis at the back of his mind. She had
dropped a box of cereal when Michael was struck and was cleaning up the mess
and worrying about him at the same time.Her soft, clam voice helped to sooth
his heart and gave him courage to finally talk to Emile.
“Emile,” Michael called in his calmest
voice. Through the door he heard scrapping and banging as Emile stood up
off the floor where he had fallen while sobbing. “I really think you should
go.”
“Michael please,” Emile gasped in his thickly
accented speech. “I love you!” The desperation in his voice made Michael want
to believe him.
“I’m sorry,
but you need to leave. I can’t deal with this anymore.” Emile’s sobbing started
again.
“I’ll give you the money for a hotel
tonight and you can come by for all of your stuff tomorrow when I’m out.”
“Michael, Michael, Michael…” Emile kept
repeating between sobs. “I love you. Michael, I love you.”
“I know,” Michael said, walking over to
the door and resting his head against it. His cheek still stung and the piggies
in the bathtub were chirping quietly. “But that’s not enough.”
Michael left his head against the door and
listened as Emile wandered around the apartment and collected a few of his
things. His sniffels sounded so sad and Michael caught tears running down his
cheeks. He didn’t begin to relax even after he heard Emile shut the door behind
him. He stayed like that for so long he didn’t realize that the sound he was
hearing was in his own head and not in his apartment.
There was the crackle of a record starting
and an audience clapping. Then the sweet tones of The Main Ingredient came
floating to him. Artemis had pulled out her record player and was playing “Everybody
Plays the Fool” for him. She hummed
along as she spun around her living room. She was barefoot and loved the feel
of rubbing her toes in the shag carpet. Her ceiling fan was on low she had her
old and rattlely space heater buzzed by her hideously stripped arm chair. Michael
remembered when she picked it up off the side of the road almost four years
ago. She only sang the chorus to the song in her soft, off key voice.
Michael slipped his shoes off in the
bathroom and opened the bathroom door. He stepped out into his own living room
and tried to think about the feel of the carpet and the song only he could
hear. He started humming the light notes and smiling without thinking about it.
“Fallin' in love is such an easy thing to
do /But there's no guarantee that the one you love, is gonna love you,” Michael
sang under his breath in a magical duet with Artemis and he knew he had the
beginnings of a new song.
Well, there you have it. The short snippet of my story. I really hope that those self publishers don't start calling again. This is so OBVIOUSLY not ready to publish. Unless I had a solid deadline. If I had a solid deadline, this sucker would be done in a week!
I will also leave this super cute picture of some guinea pigs in coffee cups here...
