Playing the waiting game…

You’re the first to know that I have submitted Flipside for publication through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and I am now just waiting for it to be uploaded and appear… it seems to be taking a long time… maybe I’m just impatient… maybe I did it wrong…. maybe there’s a problem…. oh, I’m anxious now!

Flipside is different from the other stories I’ve published – well, they are all different, but this is different in a different way. For a start it is told through the first person; I always used to write all my stories like this but began to find it limiting by being restricted to one point of view. However, when I changed to third person narrative, I found that I was still writing from a single point of view… my as yet uncompleted novel, Lucky Portbradden, is told through the eyes of several characters, which was difficult at first, but liberating. The new story I’m playing about with, Radwinter, is different again as it is written in the first person, but by different characters.

After much editing and rewriting, here is the first chapter of Flipside:

Chapter One

“Kill the lights! Kill the lights!” he hissed and jumped across me and grabbing the neck of the lamp, yanked it from its socket and hurled it across the room so it smashed against the far wall.

He bounded from the bed and went to the window and, standing back against the wall, peeped out and I was afraid that he might break the glass to fire from it.

By the light from the street lamp I could see he was terrified; he was saying something, the words stuttering out. I leapt out of bed and tried to embrace him but his body was rigid, his skin icy and yet he was pouring with sweat.

“David! Wake up! It’s a dream, darling, you’re dreaming!”

He looked down at me, but it wasn’t me he was seeing. He jumped, as if at a tremendous noise, and crouched down, his arms wrapped protectively over his head.

“Down! Down! Get down!” and his body shook with imagined blasts or explosions.

It was like watching a movie without sound and it was utterly terrifying. Slowly he stood, staring through me at something on the floor behind me. There was a look of such horror on his face and he was gulping and swallowing as if about to be sick. My heart was racing and beating wildly and I didn’t know how to help him.

His gaze moved and he focused on me, although it wasn’t me he was seeing. His lips moved silently and he looked into my face, into someone’s face, and then he said my name. He stood back against the wall, arms spread, yelling now, forcing the words out but making no sense, a jumble of names and muddled denials.

“No! Don’t take her! Don’t hurt her! No! No!” almost screaming, yelling my name.

“Wake up, David, wake up! It’s a dream, wake up!”

He groaned in agony, his teeth chattering, sweat and tears sheeting his face, panting and gasping for air. I didn’t know what to do, it was so frightening. His arms came down and his head bowed and I was able to hug him to my warm body. He was sobbing, stumbling over words so what he said was meaningless. He held me so tightly I could hardly breathe.

“They’ve got her, they’ve got Jaz!” and then his speech degenerated into incomprehensibility.

“I’m here, it’s me, Jaz, I’m here,” I spoke calmly as I would to a distressed child but he didn’t understand, just wept.

I took his hand and led him back to bed; it was the most scary thing I’d ever experienced. Suddenly he pulled off his t-shirt.

“Doesn’t it disgust you? Doesn’t it make you sick?” he whispered.

I pulled the duvet across him, and half sitting, half lying, held him, his face against my breasts. He was cold, bone-deep cold and I stoked his neck then slid my hand down to his shoulders and back. I guessed he might have some other scar there, I’d seen the ones on his arm and leg, but what my fingers found filled me with sadness. It was too dark to see but I could feel the lines and bumps, the scars shiny and deep where something dreadful had happened to him.

Gradually warmth returned. He relaxed and slipped into a deeper, calmer, more peaceful sleep and my hand wandered across his back, learning what he’d not let me touch or see before.

What David had experienced wasn’t merely a bad dream, it was something much, much worse. Did he often have nightmares like this? It was then I fully appreciated that I really didn’t know this man. I loved him but I didn’t know him, I knew nothing about him. How could I? Twelve hours ago I knew he existed but that was all. I was holding a stranger in my arms.