Novel Excerpt

It’s finals week, and I have no ‘bloppick’ for today. I thought I would post an excerpt of the story I’ve been writing since… I dunno, birth, maybe. I’m in the process of coming up with new titles for a lot of what I’m working on, and I honestly haven’t touched this in months, so I hope it’s not boring. If I’m not supposed to post this, I’ll let Lisa delete it, but I’m not one to back down even if I don’t have a topic, I gotta post something! Constructive criticism is appreciated, though I might get more than I bargained for asking for that, considering how long it’s been since I’ve read any of this.  

 

Around four a.m., he decided to take the bone back where he found it. I’ll put it back…and then maybe I can play with it again the next night. I’ll get night after night of fun out of it, then maybe break it sometime and find another. It might break on its own anyway, but I don’t have to risk that now. I’ll save it. 

 The cemetery was so serene this early in the morning. Obviously, nobody would be there to bother him when he returned the femur to its owner. With the bone in his teeth, he climbed over the spiky fence with ease, hoisting himself up over the points with his hands until he was high enough to vault forward, pushing off the fence’s edge with his feet. The femur vibrated against his molars as he hit the grass on the other side of the fence. Now, to remember the name on the gravestone…Can’t be giving anybody a bone they already have two of!

It didn’t take long for him to realize that he had already forgotten the concept of alphabetical order; letters arranged in different patterns no longer made English words in his eyes. Letters didn’t even look like letters. He could not read them, and not because it was dark outside. He could see fine in the dark. He just couldn’t read, not unless he could make a connection between his olfactory and visual senses. He decided to try and find the scent of his Axe deodorant and follow it back to the correct gravestone. It took fifteen minutes or so to find the owner of his toy and when he saw it again, he remembered how to pronounce the name on the commemorative block of stone. Oda Miller, there you are, you sneaky lady. I guess I’ll be giving this back now. I hope you didn’t mind that I chewed on it some. The woman had been at rest for over sixty years. He was pretty sure Oda wouldn’t have been missing that femur a whole lot.

 

Luckily, the hole he had dug to reach the femur in the first place was still dug up. All he had to do was drop the femur back into the grave and cover the ground back up. He gnawed at the large bone for just a minute longer, savoring that beautiful crunch, then spat it into the hole. It fell against another leg bone with a muffled clatter. The night-runner tried to be thorough when filling the hole back up, but there wasn’t much he could have done to fix the grass. After the grave was restored, he visited another nearby grave that was decked in so many flowers it could have passed as a garden on its own, the tombstone filling in for a lawn ornament. This old fellow probably won’t even notice if a few flowers go missing.

 

To make up for the ugliness of the grave he had just dug up and refilled to the best of his ability, he plucked two modest, yellow flowers from the dirt between his thumb and forefinger and placed them on top of Oda Miller’s disturbed grave. Here, these are pretty. Do you like the color yellow?

Something scrambled out from behind the tombstone to his left. His attention immediately hooked onto a large rabbit, scanning the area for a tasty flower to snatch up. A friend! Too bad I just finished burying my bone. Maybe he’ll let me chase him! The eyes of the nocturnal wanderer released an amber glow of delight as he locked his gaze upon the rabbit. The fluffy rodent stared back as though it had been caught in the act of some horrible crime. Before a minute passed, the bunny began side-stepping its way out of view. As though choreographing some sort of dance, the wanderer responded by stepping lightly to the right, almost mirroring the rabbit’s movements. C’mooon, give me a run, give me a run tonight! Two more weak steps by the bunny. Little, beady black eyes locked onto his. He licked his chops.

Thanks for reading!

In Christ,

Luther D. Powell