Friday Snippet
1 comment October 19th, 2007
The following is a snippet from my WIP, The Morgan Affair. Please don’t repost, quote or copy the following excerpt. It is copyrighted.
I tossed the heels of my shoes into the trash can just inside the door, having lost the left one half a block from home. With a sigh, I started up the stairs to my fifth floor corner apartment. Dad had been happy I’d gotten it; with only one neighbor, it was quiet.
I felt that familiar knot in my gut starting to form. I really missed him. He taught me a lot, most importantly that everyone had a talent. Like me, it took some people longer to find it. His talent was to be a jewel thief. He was good. Really good. That’s why when he got caught on a simple job I wondered what happened. He denied being set up , and I don’t believe he was, but I still had a niggling doubt about it. He had been really nervous about the job beforehand, and acting a bit strange. And then he made a mistake.
At the time, I’d been so angry with him. He’d told me he’d retired, but how could he have been so sloppy as to leave a fingerprint behind? When the police arrived to arrest him, he’d seemed relieved. He pled guilty and spent four years in prison, and I refused to visit him there. He was released a week before I graduated from university, and dead two weeks later. If I’d known that was going to happen, I would have done so many things differently.
I reached my floor, feeling drained and my eyes damp. I shoved the heavy stairwell door open and slipped through into the half-lit hallway. Something crunched under my foot. I recognized the shards of a lightbulb scattered on the worn fake Asian carpet, and the lump in my throat threatened to choke me. Scenes from action flicks raced through my head, the bad guys scattering stuff on the floor to warn them when someone approached.
I bit down on my bottom lip to hold back the hysterical laugh threatening to burst from me. There’s nothing sinister about a broken light bulb. It was probably the kids down the hall, or from upstairs, who broke it. I looked down the hallway and saw my apartment door ajar. My phone slipped out of my nerveless fingers and hit the floor. Anger rose in me, burning away the fear that had started to sink its talons into me.
Scooping my phone up off the floor, I ran down the hall and slammed the door to my apartment open. My cry of dismay was probably heard in Timbuktu. The smell of sour milk, rotten eggs, and something like wet dog assaulted my nose. The small table where I kept my mail and keys was overturned and smashed, and the envelopes that had been there this morning were gone. Two steps deeper into the apartment I saw the kitchen and my heart twisted. Almost every dish and cup I owned was smashed and mixed with the contents of my fridge to to create a criminal impressionist painting on the linoleum.
Two more steps carried me into the living room. The orchids and violets who had survived the previous break-ins lay strewn across the floor, crushed and ground into the off-brown carpet. The empty entertainment unit mocked me, the faint outline of dust marking where my mother’s records had sat.
I felt like a witness at a car crash, wanting to move on but but being drawn further into the disaster. The bathroom floor was a thick sea of multicolored stuff, with empty bottles laying scattered about.
I didn’t have anything worth stealing. They’d gotten it all before. What could they possibly be looking for? I turned around and went back into the living room to get the phone but it was gone. They’d stolen that too, along with the broken answering machine I hadn’t gotten around to throwing out yet.
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