David Frame
New Member
I've just started a book based in heaven about a murdered guy named Bruno who is tasked with solving his own death. Any feedback on the first few chapters is welcome (I'm up tp Chapter 14):
ONE
When was dead not dead? When it was still life?
Was it when the blood continued to rush and the lungs still blew, when the cold still bit and the noise continued at just a decibel too much? Or was it something else, something far subtler yet equally natural when considered apart. Could it not be that life was part one, the introduction, the incubation, the womb period for what was yet to come. If Bruno had have been asked these very same questions just three and a quarter minutes before now, he may well have had no answer to give. At this precise moment in time however, he could at the very least venture an educated guess.
“Okay,” said Bruno, wondering why he wasn’t crying like a recently informed war widow. “So I’m dead.”
“Pretty much, in a nutshell, that’s about it, yes” replied the stranger. And this girl certainly put the strange in stranger, thought Bruno. She had shoulder length blond hair that caught the light in the peaks and troughs of its subtle waves. Her eyes were a chalky blue, soft and wandering. She seemed to be distracted as she spoke to him, but given that they were sat on what appeared to be his very own living room sofa, floating in a space filled with nothing else but space, he was at a bit of a loss in regard to where her attention may actually be drawn.
“I must be going crazy,” sighed Bruno as he rested his forehead in the palms of his hands, his elbows perched on his knees.
“You don’t seem crazy to me,” she said with a reassuringly gentle pat on the back.
“I don’t seem crazy to me either, but then again the wacko’s always the last to know.”
His left hand tingled with the discomfort of pins and needles. He flexed his fingers for a while and when that failed as a remedy to the irritation, he hung his outstretched palm over the side of the chair arm, hoping gravity’s pull on his blood would restore the norm at a greater pace.
“I’m sorry,” said Bruno, most definitely intrigued, but oddly without even the slightest hint of panic. “You keep telling me I’m dead, but you’re giving me little else to go on here, lady. How long ago was it that I died, I mean, how did I die and what exactly’s going on here?”
The stranger fixed her gaze onto Bruno and pulled her hand over her mouth. “Oh, deary me. I must apologise for my rudeness, I really haven’t shown you the civility that you so rightly deserve given the circumstances,” she said, in what definitely sounded like a Scandinavian accent. “It’s just that I’ve been expecting my Mother and I was assured that I was on the rota to receive her today.”
“Your Mother?” asked Bruno bemused.
“Cancer,” nodded the girl gravely.
“Your Mother has cancer?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” corrected the stranger with a wave of her forefinger. “Had cancer, Bruno. The word you are looking for is had. H. A. D. Had.”
Time to put an end to this crazy talk once and for all he decided. The time was definitely nigh for some straight talking and he was ready to deliver it. “Look lady, I don’t know where I am or what the f..ff….ffff…..f.” No matter how much Bruno tried, the word just wouldn’t depart his lips.
“This time Bruno, the word that you are looking for, that awful, awful word, is no longer a part of your vocabulary. You must live under different rules now that you’re here. You’ll soon see that language of that kind is not a part of this place.”
As a New Yorker, okay, ex-New Yorker he was forced to admit, the F-Word was quite simply a part of every day vocabulary. He used it as a positive, a negative, an insult and an accolade, when supporting the Mets, ordering a pizza, hailing a cab or missing the latest girlfriends birthday. He could speak it in his mind, close his eyes and see the letters, but something smothered his capacity to articulate, his ability to roll out the verb.
“You mean I can no longer swear and curse, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” she said. “ But why would you wish to use such bad language given the beauty of the place?”
With eyebrows raised, Bruno glanced at the nothingness beneath him, above him, before him and behind him, a look to either side painting an identical picture. “Yeah, it really is something to behold,” said Bruno with more than a heavy helping of sarcasm. “Me, you, my sofa. Wow, what a view.”
“But you haven’t arrived yet,” she said with a knowing smile. “You can’t see what’s not there yet to be seen. We’re outside Bruno; inside’s where the good stuff is.”
“So I’m dead then?”
“As Disco,” she nodded.
“Right, I can believe that, and I’m not yet inside. But why are we sitting on my sofa?”
“Because Portman believes that it helps with adjustment, you know, less of a shock I guess, having your own sofa to wait on, something that you recognise.”
“Who’s Portman?” asked Bruno.
“Oh, you’ll like Portman. He’s the manager of the Tavoli Social Club.”
TWO
It was only when they eventually stood that he realised he was not wearing any shoes. Jeans, sure. T-shirt, check. Socks and shoes, no. He was in exactly the same clothes that he’d been stood outside the bar in only half an hour or so beforehand. He could still smell the nicotine on his clothes, even feel the sticky patch on his elbow where he’d been leaning against the varnished wood of the bar.
She held his hand as they stood side by side, in a mutually comfortable silence. The situation felt like a sixth grade date when holdings was as far as you would get, and you were grateful for that. They seemed to be waiting for the nothingness to open up and reveal a something. His breathing seemed easy; he’d only noticed this due to the silence that engulfed them. Bruno had smoked since he was fourteen, nineteen years now, and it had definitely taken its toll on his lungs. But not here, the in of oxygen and the out of carbon dioxide were pleasingly effortless. Given they’d been stood in silence for at least fifteen minutes, he decided now would be as good a time as any to test the extent of his new found lung capacity. He held his breath and began to count.
One, two, three. He killed time by wiggling his toes into the fresh air, which he currently hovered in like a ghost out of an old black and white flick. He tried stepping down from his invisible perch, but wherever he stopped his foot, he seemed to discover some unseen solidity, preventing him from failing into the bottomless, colourless and invisible pit. Eighty-four, Eighty-five, he carried on. He thought he ought to be a little more vexed than he was, considering he was, after all, dead, but the situation felt instinctive, almost matter-of-course. He knew he was a goner, it had been confirmed to him on more than one occasion, but he was remarkably unphased by the prospect of a lifeless life, or whatever this subtle quagmire turned out to be. He knew this was no dream, that this was the real deal, but he was at peace with it all the same. When somebody tells you that you’re dead, you’d be excused for shedding even the smallest of tears, but nothing could be further from his mind.
He turned his head slightly as to observe her out the corner of his eye. She was actually quite beautiful, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on how. She was just one of those girls that had something about her. After thirty seconds or so of secret admiration, Bruno turned his attention back to his lung capacity.
He eventually exhaled on seven hundred and nine, and only then because something happened that seemed far more interesting than his current personal challenge.
“Close your eyes, Bruno,” came a voice from behind him. He did as he was asked.
“Now step forward with me,” followed the next command, a gentle palm resting on his shoulder.
“You can open your eyes now friend.”
“Holy ss…sshh.s….ss,” struggled Bruno.
Three
The fields were a deep luscious green, back dropped by rolling hills and picture postcard mountains. The grass, the envy of any championship golf course, felt soft beneath his feet, too short to poke up between his toes but spongy enough to leave small impressions on the soles of his feet. The fields were spread like blankets for as far as the eye could see, rolling almost unnaturally, with a perfection that most definitely, could only, be manmade.
There was a distinct smell in the air, but every time he tried to match it to his memory, it eluded him, evaporating back into the scentless oxygen. He could hear a myriad of sounds in the background, akin to a television not quite muted, but like the smell, he struggled to pinpoint its unseen source. Above him were stars, acutely obvious in the cloudless night, yet around him was daylight, somehow delivered without the glow of even a solitary streetlamp. He focussed on the bluish grey of the snow tipped mountains in the distance, picking out the odd flickers of light that were dotted sporadically around the base of the Herculean rock.
“What are they?” he asked, his arm outstretched, his forefinger pointing in the general direction of the small, dancing light sources.
“They’re meeting places,” said the grey haired man, who coincidentally, Bruno noticed, was still resting his hand on his shoulder.
“Meeting places for what?”
“Meeting places for people,” replied the old timer with the offer of a handshake. “I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m Khan.”
“Hi,” said Bruno.
continued in reply...
ONE
When was dead not dead? When it was still life?
Was it when the blood continued to rush and the lungs still blew, when the cold still bit and the noise continued at just a decibel too much? Or was it something else, something far subtler yet equally natural when considered apart. Could it not be that life was part one, the introduction, the incubation, the womb period for what was yet to come. If Bruno had have been asked these very same questions just three and a quarter minutes before now, he may well have had no answer to give. At this precise moment in time however, he could at the very least venture an educated guess.
“Okay,” said Bruno, wondering why he wasn’t crying like a recently informed war widow. “So I’m dead.”
“Pretty much, in a nutshell, that’s about it, yes” replied the stranger. And this girl certainly put the strange in stranger, thought Bruno. She had shoulder length blond hair that caught the light in the peaks and troughs of its subtle waves. Her eyes were a chalky blue, soft and wandering. She seemed to be distracted as she spoke to him, but given that they were sat on what appeared to be his very own living room sofa, floating in a space filled with nothing else but space, he was at a bit of a loss in regard to where her attention may actually be drawn.
“I must be going crazy,” sighed Bruno as he rested his forehead in the palms of his hands, his elbows perched on his knees.
“You don’t seem crazy to me,” she said with a reassuringly gentle pat on the back.
“I don’t seem crazy to me either, but then again the wacko’s always the last to know.”
His left hand tingled with the discomfort of pins and needles. He flexed his fingers for a while and when that failed as a remedy to the irritation, he hung his outstretched palm over the side of the chair arm, hoping gravity’s pull on his blood would restore the norm at a greater pace.
“I’m sorry,” said Bruno, most definitely intrigued, but oddly without even the slightest hint of panic. “You keep telling me I’m dead, but you’re giving me little else to go on here, lady. How long ago was it that I died, I mean, how did I die and what exactly’s going on here?”
The stranger fixed her gaze onto Bruno and pulled her hand over her mouth. “Oh, deary me. I must apologise for my rudeness, I really haven’t shown you the civility that you so rightly deserve given the circumstances,” she said, in what definitely sounded like a Scandinavian accent. “It’s just that I’ve been expecting my Mother and I was assured that I was on the rota to receive her today.”
“Your Mother?” asked Bruno bemused.
“Cancer,” nodded the girl gravely.
“Your Mother has cancer?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” corrected the stranger with a wave of her forefinger. “Had cancer, Bruno. The word you are looking for is had. H. A. D. Had.”
Time to put an end to this crazy talk once and for all he decided. The time was definitely nigh for some straight talking and he was ready to deliver it. “Look lady, I don’t know where I am or what the f..ff….ffff…..f.” No matter how much Bruno tried, the word just wouldn’t depart his lips.
“This time Bruno, the word that you are looking for, that awful, awful word, is no longer a part of your vocabulary. You must live under different rules now that you’re here. You’ll soon see that language of that kind is not a part of this place.”
As a New Yorker, okay, ex-New Yorker he was forced to admit, the F-Word was quite simply a part of every day vocabulary. He used it as a positive, a negative, an insult and an accolade, when supporting the Mets, ordering a pizza, hailing a cab or missing the latest girlfriends birthday. He could speak it in his mind, close his eyes and see the letters, but something smothered his capacity to articulate, his ability to roll out the verb.
“You mean I can no longer swear and curse, is that what you’re telling me?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” she said. “ But why would you wish to use such bad language given the beauty of the place?”
With eyebrows raised, Bruno glanced at the nothingness beneath him, above him, before him and behind him, a look to either side painting an identical picture. “Yeah, it really is something to behold,” said Bruno with more than a heavy helping of sarcasm. “Me, you, my sofa. Wow, what a view.”
“But you haven’t arrived yet,” she said with a knowing smile. “You can’t see what’s not there yet to be seen. We’re outside Bruno; inside’s where the good stuff is.”
“So I’m dead then?”
“As Disco,” she nodded.
“Right, I can believe that, and I’m not yet inside. But why are we sitting on my sofa?”
“Because Portman believes that it helps with adjustment, you know, less of a shock I guess, having your own sofa to wait on, something that you recognise.”
“Who’s Portman?” asked Bruno.
“Oh, you’ll like Portman. He’s the manager of the Tavoli Social Club.”
TWO
It was only when they eventually stood that he realised he was not wearing any shoes. Jeans, sure. T-shirt, check. Socks and shoes, no. He was in exactly the same clothes that he’d been stood outside the bar in only half an hour or so beforehand. He could still smell the nicotine on his clothes, even feel the sticky patch on his elbow where he’d been leaning against the varnished wood of the bar.
She held his hand as they stood side by side, in a mutually comfortable silence. The situation felt like a sixth grade date when holdings was as far as you would get, and you were grateful for that. They seemed to be waiting for the nothingness to open up and reveal a something. His breathing seemed easy; he’d only noticed this due to the silence that engulfed them. Bruno had smoked since he was fourteen, nineteen years now, and it had definitely taken its toll on his lungs. But not here, the in of oxygen and the out of carbon dioxide were pleasingly effortless. Given they’d been stood in silence for at least fifteen minutes, he decided now would be as good a time as any to test the extent of his new found lung capacity. He held his breath and began to count.
One, two, three. He killed time by wiggling his toes into the fresh air, which he currently hovered in like a ghost out of an old black and white flick. He tried stepping down from his invisible perch, but wherever he stopped his foot, he seemed to discover some unseen solidity, preventing him from failing into the bottomless, colourless and invisible pit. Eighty-four, Eighty-five, he carried on. He thought he ought to be a little more vexed than he was, considering he was, after all, dead, but the situation felt instinctive, almost matter-of-course. He knew he was a goner, it had been confirmed to him on more than one occasion, but he was remarkably unphased by the prospect of a lifeless life, or whatever this subtle quagmire turned out to be. He knew this was no dream, that this was the real deal, but he was at peace with it all the same. When somebody tells you that you’re dead, you’d be excused for shedding even the smallest of tears, but nothing could be further from his mind.
He turned his head slightly as to observe her out the corner of his eye. She was actually quite beautiful, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on how. She was just one of those girls that had something about her. After thirty seconds or so of secret admiration, Bruno turned his attention back to his lung capacity.
He eventually exhaled on seven hundred and nine, and only then because something happened that seemed far more interesting than his current personal challenge.
“Close your eyes, Bruno,” came a voice from behind him. He did as he was asked.
“Now step forward with me,” followed the next command, a gentle palm resting on his shoulder.
“You can open your eyes now friend.”
“Holy ss…sshh.s….ss,” struggled Bruno.
Three
The fields were a deep luscious green, back dropped by rolling hills and picture postcard mountains. The grass, the envy of any championship golf course, felt soft beneath his feet, too short to poke up between his toes but spongy enough to leave small impressions on the soles of his feet. The fields were spread like blankets for as far as the eye could see, rolling almost unnaturally, with a perfection that most definitely, could only, be manmade.
There was a distinct smell in the air, but every time he tried to match it to his memory, it eluded him, evaporating back into the scentless oxygen. He could hear a myriad of sounds in the background, akin to a television not quite muted, but like the smell, he struggled to pinpoint its unseen source. Above him were stars, acutely obvious in the cloudless night, yet around him was daylight, somehow delivered without the glow of even a solitary streetlamp. He focussed on the bluish grey of the snow tipped mountains in the distance, picking out the odd flickers of light that were dotted sporadically around the base of the Herculean rock.
“What are they?” he asked, his arm outstretched, his forefinger pointing in the general direction of the small, dancing light sources.
“They’re meeting places,” said the grey haired man, who coincidentally, Bruno noticed, was still resting his hand on his shoulder.
“Meeting places for what?”
“Meeting places for people,” replied the old timer with the offer of a handshake. “I’m very pleased to meet you, I’m Khan.”
“Hi,” said Bruno.
continued in reply...