Busy and Bent

Sigh....bad blogger, bad blogger (smacking myself on the wrist as I write.)

The thing about drawing for a living is when the heat is on - deadline heat - there is little time for much else. I have to admit, I google myself, it's true. And I find that people do read this blog (surprise, surprise). And then I feel guilty because I haven't posted anything for days. It's an odd and viscious circle, totally created by my own mind.

I digress. I always digress.

Here is an opening to one of my favorite unfinished novellas Bent Highway. It lingers in my mind, and some day I am going to finish the damn thing. 

 
Bent Highway

My Zippo clacked open and a thin blue flame danced under the coffee spoon. I wasn't thinking of anything – just watching the reflections and the metal turning colours. I wondered if I had the guts to put the hot spoon to the barely scabbed over gash that grinned at me like it was about to break wide open and gush red ants.

That's the sort of crazy shit that'd been going through my brain for over a month. It tumbled in there with what I could remember from the past year of driving long stretches of road trying to escape boredom and bad road coffee.
The handle of the spoon was getting warm in my hand, so I figured it was ready, I'd cauterize the mother, then I'd be damn sure nothing would bust out of there.

"Honey, what in the hell are you about to do?"

I jerked back, slammed my lighter shut, and plunged the spoon into the coffee. It sizzled in the murky brew.

"You need a warm up, you just give me a call."

The waitress had to be pushing forty-five but her hair spilled across her shoulders like she still could turn heads at the Seven-Eleven. A badge dangled off one of her pointed breasts and shouted at me Dandy Diner, and underneath, in a curled script that made me wince, Janine.

She poured the coffee into the cup with my rocket hot spoon.

"Good and hot now. Anything else?"

I shook my head. I waited for her to say something about a rough night or some other corn-pone inquiry – you out slamming cougars against the rose bushes again – or some crap like that. I shouldn't be too hard on poor Janine. She's probably got a trailer park boyfriend with a pack of cigs rolled up his sleeve, a tattoo that says bitchin' and a piece of shit car he treats better than her.

The thing was, between the black patches of my memory and the pictures that were soaked in fluorescent dye in my head I couldn't tell if I had a rough night, day or past week. Truth was, I couldn't recall fuck all.