Daily Writing Practice - The Deadbeat

Thanks again to Marc for my inspiration today:
http://daily-writing.blogspot.com/

Alrighty, today I'm going to provide you with the first line of your poem or prose and then you get to take it from there. Sound good?Okay, here it is: The streets were thick with fog...Go!


The Deadbeat
The streets were thick with fog and Phineas wandered aimlessly. He drew his thin wool coat closer and his gnarled arthritic hand tried to hold the collar closed. Stupid, crap thumb that couldn’t bend to hold anything, bugger arthritis, and now he was faced with this confounded damp mist. None of it made life any easier.

It was a typical English side street lined with brick row houses and if he squinted he could make out a succession of off–duty black taxi’s sitting at the curb. It was early in the morning before the majority of people got up but it really could have been any time of day because the pea soup murk imprisoned any chance the sun had to proliferate its rays. The roads were empty and the city was relatively quiet although Phineas could hear the murmur of traffic from one of the major arteries several blocks away. His eyes scanned the pavement below and watched his own black shabby shoes taking step after step. He looked up.

The glare of the computer screen burned his eyes. The typed words on the paper captured what he had been seeing in the world that inhabited his head this morning. It was now 4:30 am and Phineas realized he’d been sitting at the computer for at least an hour. His body clock had gone out of whack several weeks ago and it seemed that he was waking up every morning around 3 o’clock. Sometimes he was able to turn over and go back to sleep, other times when he could not settle he got up so as not to disturb his wife and went downstairs to the office to do work or to write.

This morning when he’d finally gotten up after tossing and turning for what felt like hours he decided he was going to start a novel. It would be great; he had the outline, plot and characters in his head. He’d obviously been writing and typing for some time, but where had the time gone? Had he been walking the foggy street for all of that time? Had he drifted off to sleep sitting in front of the computer and dreamed what he had seen. He closed his eyes and put his fingers onto the keyboard.

When he opened his eyes again the fog was still there and he was continuing to walk down the middle of the deserted street. His footsteps did not echo but each stride created a dull thud that was swallowed by the weight of the grey mist. Inside of his jacket the newspapers that were carefully folded and packed to stave off some of the frigid damp that would irritate the rheumatism in his left shoulder shifted slightly.

A sudden searing pain stabbed him in the chest and he felt his left arm go limp and numb. What was going on? Staggering slightly Phineas put his right hand onto the boot of one of the cabs on the side of the road. He needed to find a place to sit down and rest. Yes, rest would be a good thing. He tried to kneel down slowly but his arm gave way and his knees slammed into the edge of the sidewalk and he toppled forward. Fortunately, his reflexes seemed to kick in and at least he got his gnarled hands down in front of him. After his body slammed into the pavement his head made a rather slow gentle decent to the smooth, cold hard cement. His eyes closed and he lay still. The crushing pain in his chest was now like a vice grip and his breath came in short gasps.

Phineas opened his eyes. The computer screened glowed, his fingers still sat on the keyboard. He read the words on the page. “The crushing pain in his chest was now like a vice grip and his breath came in short gasps.” His eyes moved to look around the office but his hands remained motionless; he was looking out of his eyeballs but it was a physical impossibility to get his limbs to move. He was imprisoned by his body.

The gripping agony in his chest throbbed rhythmically; he could hear an erratic heartbeat in his ears. He looked at his lifeless numb right arm and started to feel a rising sense of panic. What’s going on? Am I having heart failure or what? This doesn't make sense, how can I be dying? It’s my character that is dying, not me.

He shut his eyes to block out the light and felt the damp cool surface of the concrete on his cheek. Looks like I’m snookered. I’m homeless, alone, and I’m going to die right here on the street. Well, what did it matter really? After he’d lost his job, his wife & family and then his apartment he’d been going from shelter to shelter and had only a fortnight ago found a cardboard box which he dragged to the atrium of a local church. He was rather surprised to have woken these past mornings as he fully expected that he would become just another statistical displaced person who died from hypothermia.

A heart attack was not something he’d counted on but everybody had to go sometime and he guessed it was his time. It would only be a few minutes now, he calculated, before his heart would cease its crazy, irregular palpitations and everything would stop. Nothing would matter soon; not the age of his body, the damp, the cold, the trembling in his hands or the holes in soles of his shoes. He felt his consciousness slipping and the bright light of the computer hurt his eyes. Slowly everything started going black whether his eyes were open or not.

The last thing Phineas heard was a piece of machinery coming to life. Now, was that the sound of one of the taxi’s starting or the cooling fan of a computer? Then again, did it matter?

Salynne ©2009