Some of Chapter 19

Alex trailed off as he thought about the magazines he had hidden away inside the lining of the suitcase. He should have brought them out last night and shared them with Simon just as they had done that time a few years earlier after finding one of his father's magazines. They had been convinced, as all kids are at that age, that their parents were holding out on them, that there must be a secret stash of money that they'd squirreling away over the years. All they came across was a single magazine in a box on the top shelf of a bookcase in the garage. For a few seconds they were quite disappointed at the lack of money, but that quickly gave way to excitement at the prospect of looking through a dirty magazine. It was dusty, clearly untouched for a while, which was the only reason Alex agreed to let Simon slide it under his shirt and slip away upstairs with it, hiding it on a hard to reach shelf at the top of Alex's bedroom closet. Not that Alex would have had much luck stopping Simon, who had initially wanted to start browsing through the magazine right there in the garage. Alex convinced Simon to wait and spend the night. The boys regularly took turns sleeping over at each other's houses during the summer, so Alex's father wasn't surprised by the sudden request that Simon be allowed to stay till tomorrow. After dinner Alex grabbed his own sleeping bag, and his father's, and laid them out on his bedroom floor. If the weather had been nicer, he'd have preferred setting up the tent out back and smuggling the magazine out of the house, but that wasn't an option.

They waited till Alex was sure his father was asleep before Simon grabbed the magazine and returned to the sleeping bag he was using on the floor. The boys spent well over an hour flipping back and forth through the pages of the magazine as they lay in their separate sleeping bags, attempting to subtly shift their positions periodically, hoping to get more comfortable yet still trying to hide the bulges in their shorts from each other. They were looking at the last page of pictures, for the second or third time, when Alex heard the familiar creaking sound of the stairs just a few feet from his door and realized that he'd been so caught up in the pictures that he'd been oblivious to the fact that his father had woken up. Alex grabbed the magazine and shoved it into his sleeping bag. He climbed out of the bag, reaching for the lamp on his desk. He could sense his father just outside the door and had a split second to make a decision. He could either continue for the light and hope he got it switched off before his father opened the door finding Alex in a state that no son wants to be caught in by their father, or he could head right back into the bag. He opted for the latter option and had barely made it all the way back into the sleeping bag when his father knocked gently on the door and pushed it open. Both boys were lying in their bags, eyes closed, pretending to sleep. "Nice try, guys. It's time to turn off the light."

So I'm writing a book.

I'm at just over 100,000 words, roughly 400 pages, probably another 100 pages to go. I thought I'd be done by now. Hell, I thought I'd be done 100 pages ago. So much for that. When I finally do finish I'll go back and revise what I've written, taking out the completely crappy parts and fixing the broken ones. I'd like to think that this scene I just wrote, part of what is now chapter 25, will remain:

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It wasn't the blood. There wasn't much of it, only where the welts crossed over each other, and Alex had never been squeamish about blood to begin with.

It wasn't the pain. The worst had been when the belt actually made contact with Christian's skin. Everything since was just an echo.

No, it was the entire awful scene. The stoned young woman, barely a woman, with cold dead eyes. The boy, Christian, unable to defend himself from some horrific torturer, tiny rivulets of blood rolling down his back. This nightmare that the boy and his sister were forced to relive. And it was the total lack of feeling from those two unwilling participants. The girl so broken by drugs, she didn't know how to feel. The boy so broken by pain, he had given up, at least till the wounds healed, hope returned, and the cycle began again.

It was that scene that caused Alex to lose control of his stomach. He had seen death, his father's and nearly his own. He'd had the most awful thoughts pushed into his mind as he slept. His body had become a toy in the hands of a demon. But it was this scene, man made, horrific, repeated in homes throughout the world... It was this scene that made Alex sick.

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