My novel (only first chapter!)
I need advice on whether to continue with this or not. Let me know if you like. Just testing it out as ive run out of printer ink oops!
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Chapter 1.
It was tranquillity personified. The sea was almost devoid of movement. The golden sand glistened in the sunlight, shells shimmered as if alive by the beauty and even the trees lining the beach were still. It was the perfect view that God himself would choose to put on a postcard of this earth.
The only sign of anything out of place was an unaccustomed stranger lying on his back in the soft sand. Dressed in a woolly hat, dark damp jeans and a large fleece, it was like staring at the sun itself and seeing an Eskimo shivering on its surface. Unmoving, the man just lay there, as if a new part of this picture. He had been there for five long days and six even longer nights.
It was only recently that the man had become to lie still on the sand. Looking beyond the line of the sand against the trees, you could see signs of his recent activities. A small rain shelter had been very haphazardly carved from 2 fallen trees. An empty water bottle was lying casually on the shaggy grass. A T-shirt was hung on a branch that overlooked the beach, drying off in the beautiful blazing rays.
Not just a day earlier he had carved that shelter using only a sharp rock and his own teeth. “Where the hell are they?” the man was saying while tying together two long sticks of bark with an eccentrically shaped piece of seaweed. This was his fourth day on this most remote paradise. He looked again at the sky, which was darker that a burnt out bonfire, and prayed that he could complete his structure quick enough to avoid the forthcoming onslaught that nature would almost defiantly hurl at him. He pressed on. After shoving even more seaweed in the small cracks that were left in the structure, he ran down to the outcrop of rocks on the beach to gather as many rocks as he could to block the opening with. Hastily protecting his newly made fortification, he clambered inside and waited. He had grown accustomed to this over the last 2 weeks. Travelling seventeen thousand miles by all possible means of transport, from a jet plane to a camel, he had waited more than most people do in a lifetime he thought.
“Screw it”, he said to himself, “I ****ing won”. “They will come”, he repeated in his mind, over and over and over until he finally slept for the first time in 3 days. But in those three days, he had changed. It was like a caterpillar erupting from its chrysalis. 3 weeks ago he was a nobody, the person you would walk past in the street and not even notice he was there, nobody cared if he existed, nobody believed in him. Now one person believed. Now one person had some faith in Gods master plan for us all. He did. He would show the world. He was born again, a man with a mission.
Then the peace of the picture on the postcard fell apart. Screaming was sounding in the mans ears. He sat up quick as a flash, and then fell immediately back down. Apparently with no food for five days and no fresh water for four, you energy isn’t as it should be he thought. That’s when he realised the screaming was his. “I’m going insane,” he mumbled. What he didn’t know is that drinking seawater in very small amounts for four days in a row will drive a man insane. Couple that with hypothermia, from the thirty-five degree days, and the freezing nights that are well known for the equatorial climate, he wasn’t in good shape. That scream was to be his last ever movement in his life.
Chapter 2.
Walking down the street, James Chapman looked a complete mess. People would hurry past him in case he asked them for money, or in one case, their entire wallet. He walked right past the job centre and straight into the dole office to collect his next two weeks drinking money, then walked straight back home to his council provided accommodation, after taking a quick detour via the local off license.
Awaiting him when he got home was the post. The usual array of six or seven brown envelopes was there, demanding money for gas, water, electricity, TV license, and of course Ladbrokes weekly reminder that he owed them nearly two thousand pounds from his “safe” horse tip two months ago, that lost by a nose. Then a quick flick through the junk mail, to see how many holidays he had won, how many gold effect chains he could claim by calling the number below.
Sat in his chair by the fire, that hadn’t been turned on for three months for fear of gas explosion, he put his newly purchased bottle of vodka down by his only remaining shot glass he hadn’t smashed in anger, and poured himself a full glass full. Reaching for the remote to turn on the lottery results, to see if he had miraculously hit the one in over fourteen million chance of that big win, he saw an envelope he swore wasn’t in the rest of the mail. With just his name on it, he felt nervous. Who had put it there?
Slowly getting to his feet, he picked up his baseball bat and methodically searched each room, only to find the same damp and mould as when he left it earlier. Going back to his chair he picked up the letter and gingerly opened it.
