for the last few weeks, i've followed the same routine on friday nights. i come home, i have dinner and spend some time with the only person crazy enough to live alongside my own craziness. eventually, i brew a pot of coffee and, around midnight, i sit down in front of the computer and start writing until i feel like i'm about to lose consciousness.
it occurred to me today that have really, really gotten to love my friday nights. despite the fact that i end up going to bed shortly before the sun comes up, despite the fact that i know when i go back to start reading the things i've written, i'm going to find all sorts of strange mistakes to testify to just how tired i was getting, this just seems to have become the time when i feel most relaxed and most able to accomplish something.
of course the problem now is that i've started wanting to do this every night, which can get a little tricky when you have a day job and have to get up at 6 in the morning (well, having the alarm go off at 6, which isn't quite the same thing as getting up, but close).
at any rate, it's late on friday and i've hit the point where i don't think i'm going to be creating anything more useful tonight. here's a short excerpt of what i've been working on. the adventure continues...
***
“So now what?” She says it aloud exactly as her uncle says it, mimicking his clipped, deadpan voice.
The answer had always been hers to give. She could have what she wanted, all she had to do was ask. Perhaps, she thinks, she’d feel better if she just ran back to him, to his giant, empty house, with its scents of flowers in the front garden. She knows this isn’t the first time this thought has occurred to her, but it is the first in a while. She could go back, of course, whenever she wants, without asking, without even letting him know to expect her. She could walk through the streets and feel at home and eventually she would forget this place and Adam would become another confusing spirit whose real existence melted into her over-active imagination. She believes that she could forget.
The book glares at her accusingly. Would she forget it? She wants to think she could. It isn’t difficult for her to free her memories. Unless she concentrates on holding tight, most of them just fly away of their own accord. And yet somehow, she can’t quite think of the mark left on her by these mysteries surrounding Cronos, her shadowy benefactor, as something that she could release. Like the memory of crying as she was carried away by the woman in the scratchy brown suit, some things she can’t get rid of.
So now what?
She runs her finger over the carefully recorded notes, trying to feel out the story that lies underneath them. It’s no use. For all the pages she’s filled, for all the talking she and Lloyd did, for all the details they were able to recall, the sobering fact remains that the two of them really don’t know much at all about what happened, either with Cronos or the book.