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SqueakyWheels
Ben Singleton
Europe, London

Words: 1250
Access: Public
Comments: 3

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The Game (excerpt)

This is an excerpt from a story called The Game, the main charecter kills his victims in order to steal their identity, in this excerpt he is making the change to escape a bad situation. His currnet identity is Dean whose life he has destroyed and now has to move on;

Out on these city streets I am exposed, if the police are looking for Dean then I need to become invisible, disappear into the componentry of an urban landscape, hiding under the guise of vagrancy I can become part of the animate scenery a moving piece of trash, of used up commodity. People expend a large amount of time avoiding any sort of contact with the dispossessed, as a homeless person you simply become nothing, a nuisance represented by a shocking statistic, its amazing how buried in the sand the populous of industrious nations are when confronted by the contradictions that underpin their fragile grip on happiness. This attitude plays into my hands however it gives me somewhere to hide, I always carry some old clothes specifically for the purposes of this camouflage, I duck into an alley and dispose of the designer threads of Deans wardrobe and change into the soiled garb of the underclass, once out onto the road again I mediate my agile stride into a limping stagger affecting the tired and addled life force of a broken man.

Luckily I have managed to hold onto most of the essential game elements to make a change, I have enough not to need to purchase anything and leave more traces of Deans degeneration, keeping my tracks to a minimum is a precedent now. The change I have in mind is risky, a man called James Price, I know a little about him, but not enough to be sure of what is really going on in his life, one reassurance I do have however is that during the time I watched him he appeared to be on a fairly downward spiral of his own. He spent a lot of time in job interviews and bars, but never actually in work, his home life when he was there was turbulent, he never spent any time with the wife and kid, turning up late sleeping eating and then leaving, it all added up to the picture of a looser.

In my current situation this kind of life is probably a blessing, one looser jumping into another is no great shakes. To hold up for a time behind the slum walls of disaffected domesticity and plan my next move is the least risky plan of action available to me. All I need to do is locate and isolate him, take his face and get on with wrecking his life.

Price lives in a small estate in east London, swallowed in the twisted bombed out hulk of a Victorian suburb, I have enough time to get there by foot if I knew the way, but I can't be a sure he's slept there or that he wont get the thirst early in the day. As I walk past a cloister of shops, as if heaven sent an old rusting car sits lopsided in the uneven square of car park. Stealing a car like this is an invisible crime to the police who in reality have no desire to chase a valueless needle in an all too giant haystack. A car will make things pass more smoothly and give me somewhere to hide when staking out Price, no one will pay attention to a dishevelled man in a heap of a car amidst the broken wreckage of east end conurbation. I am not surprised to find the door open on the listing drivers side, someone probably wants this nicked for the pittance of an insurance pay out. Sliding into the PVC upholstery and taking hold of one side of the wiry steering wheel I ram a screwdriver from my bag in to the steering column wrenching it open and revealing the naive colour coded wiring, which when torn free and splayed soon yields the definitive spark to the engine.
Out on the road, I realize I am flailing directionless amidst the confused streets of outer London, this convoluted nexus of digested towns and villages that have all succumb to the economic will, pulled in by the tightened buckle of the A406. I can just about work out my way through the more recognisable and well worn thorough fares, but in these twisting back streets the points of the compass become obfuscated, lost even too the most directionally honed, I elect to drive until one of the A routes in and across reveals its self, this never takes long, you are never far in London from some form of dual carriage way teaming with cars packed all hours of the day with the polluting bustle constantly zipping to its next bottle neck. I locate the orbital and head east past great swathes of near derelict land, from which towers of edified glass stand as mirrors for the grey milky sky, up along the three lane behemoth that creates a crusty dermis for this dirty old town, the nimbus following me in the upside down pools of reflection, lining the way into the full linear break down that is the alternate side of the 406 the writhing junctioned road that heads east.

I pull off the carriage way and head toward the epicentre, a feeling of cutting across the trunk rings of some fantastically old tree over takes me, that or the spherical blast lines of some slowly exploding atom bomb. Approaching Hackney and the Price residence I check my watch, its still very early, my excursion into the time motion study of efficiency has paid off, pulling into the battered purple garages that line the perimeter of Prices estate I survey the land, I have a reasonable view of his front door from here, there are no other rational exits, unless he leaves by the window, so I park up and wait.
The desperation of this place soon gets to me, the uneven concrete floors littered with the faded colours of packaging set against the jutting lines of the dwarfish high rise flats, cutting bleak lines in the already bleak sky, although I can't imagine that even the bluest of skies could redeem this urban hell. The modern beige of the bricks peppered with prefab boards and peeling paint jarring against the dirty red of their less than square Victorian boundary counterparts. I find myself lost in the listless motion of a billowing carrier bag, floating to and fro, is this what it has come to, is this what I have become, this is no escape.

My head becomes heavy with sleep, rolling forward every time the somnolence takes hold like some powerful opiate, the gaps between becoming increasingly long. After a particularly extended bout of sleep, I jerk up to the rattling sound of a closing door, its Price, leaving thankfully early, I get out of the car and move toward the path, watching from a distance to see what direction he takes after coming out of the stairs. He comes toward me, looking away as he passes, excellent he is going into town as opposed to the local shop, there is stretch of derelict land that he often uses as a short cut, I can kill him in there and do the necessary with out the risk of being observed.

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Comments  
SqueakyWheels Comment by: SqueakyWheels - 2007-01-04 02:46
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Hi, this an excerpt from the middle of the book which I probably should have explained. The main charecter has been selected as a player in the game because he is an outsider and in a downward spiral. The game is a kind of thrill seeking exercise, where by the players get thrills either living or destroying other peoples lives, the book charts the eventual collapse of the main charecter.
Thanks for the tip on the comma's that is something I will have to watch.
Cheers
Ben
Kerosene Comment by: Kerosene - 2007-01-03 07:18
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Sounds like the start of something decent. Why does the MC want to wreck people's lives? I didnt quite get that.

I notice you put many a comma in places a new sentence should start.

also, read through and correct the "its" that should be it's (it is)

-john
flypaper Comment by: flypaper - 2007-01-02 10:05
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I get a real right hand drive feel from this excerpt. The language is urban and Londonesque with a descriptive quality that is effective in conveying the main character's desperation. I would suggest fixing up a few typos etc. otherwise not too shabby!
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