Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Teaser

EXCERPTS FROM MY UPCOMING EBOOK NOVELLA

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A man observing at the edge of the crowd nodded his head and began walking toward his car.

Within minutes the area became filled with police vehicles, the air bombarded by flashing blue lights and the sound of sirens. Overhead, helicopters.

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"What is it?" the well-dressed man asked.

"Don't know, Mr. Walters. Something big."

At that moment the doorman's phone began lighting up. Everyone's phone across the city, and beyond the city, overflowed with texts and calls. Those closest to the scene tweeted like mad.

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In a live television feed, from a camera in a helicopter, lines of blue cars converged on downtown from all directions.

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They stepped onto the blue plywood stage erected for the speech. Kathleen Kallan stood where the senator stood. Bloodstains on the painted stage appeared as dark purple splotches.

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Playing on the network was video of white men in green fatigues target shooting. A militia group indigenous to the state.

"This is very good," Lilly said. "People need good guys and bad guys."

On the video, a line of automatic weapons fired as one. Black barrels emit red flame. The men who fired looked fanatical. Wild men. Neanderthals. They looked dangerous.

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The man was heavy set, with a dark red goatee. A generic white radical, he would've been, except his brownish hair was too long and he had a piercing through one of his eyebrows. Anarchist?

Kathy realized the man stared not at the door, but inside himself. His left hand vibrated.

"Agitated," Kathleen noted.

She felt she looked into the fires of Hell.

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"The bullet entered from a slight angle. From the left, a few degrees, as the senator stood on stage facing the audience. The shooter in the garage was positioned almost straight on, but not quite.”

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"Personality is like a puzzle you look at," the psychologist said. "You never get one set answer. You get possible answers."

The lanky, neat-bearded man read to them from his own report.

"--narcissistic, schizophrenic, paranoid, persecution complex, guilt, self-hate--"

"Everyman," Rodney said.

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“Pale face, like he never went outside. Very white. Strange kind of white. The ultimate white guy. Held everything at arm's length. Not a revolutionary. I can guarantee you this dude was not a revolutionary."

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"I was in the explosion. In the fire. I was there. That's true. Why wasn't I killed? I should've been. My friends died. All of them. My team, interpreters, liaisons. Everybody. I was listed as one of the dead.”

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The senator's funeral dominated television screens across the nation for an entire day.

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"Irrationality," the aide said to himself.

The word wouldn't leave his mind. Tangible dark clouds gathered overhead, waiting outside. The moment of the shooting, the universe opened and revealed to him its irrationality.

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David Chu watched an editor put pieces of footage together. They viewed a segment on a monitor: a long-distance perspective of what the plaza looked like now-- cordoned-off; empty; calm-- followed by a close-up of a woman screaming immediately after the killing.

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“I put the rifle together and opened the window half way, preparing to take a comfortable position. I took a few sips of water from the water bottle.”

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"I had a perfect sight picture on the target. I centered on the head. The trigger squeezed like butter.”

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