My turn! Excerpt

Debra posted her WIP ... what a great idea!! So I'm going to copyright, er, copy her. Here's the beginning of my WIP, "The Adventures of Guy ... to hell and back."

Here goes:

“Did you know that there’s a plastic island in the Pacific Ocean?” Knob asked the checkout girl conversationally.

The girl had multi-colored hair, black lipstick, a bunch of piercings and … until Knob said something to her … a lidded look of boredom.

“Um,” she said, almost startled out of her teenagerism.

“Yeah,” I snickered, sliding a Snickers on the conveyer belt, “Ken and Barbie are its King and Queen.”

Behind me, Thurman was watching a commercial on a small television mounted next to the candy display. “They’ll put a television anywhere nowadays,” he muttered.

Knob looked back at me with the ‘teacher-look’ that he must have picked up during his three years as a college sophomore, “Seriously, Guy. There’s a plastic island about twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific.”

“Um,” the checkout girl shot a nervous glance at the customers beginning to line up.

Thurman tore his eyes from the television and frowned, “A plastic island? I’ve never heard of that.”

“That’s because they don’t want you to know,” Knob said.

“They?”

“Yeah, they.”

“Who’s they?”

“They, are, um…you know…”

“Sir?”

Knob turned back to the Crayola-haired girl, “Yes?”

“Sir. All I needed to know was paper or plastic.”

“Oh, that. Neither. Give me one of those recyclable bags, okay?”

As we pulled away from the grocery store in the Quest Mobile, an old Town Car limo that Knob picked up for five hundred bucks plus a thousand dollars in interest, Thurman asked, “So tell me some more about this plastic island.”

“There’s no plastic island,” I sneered.

Knob navigated around a pothole and shot me a look. Swish, no rim.

After a moment he continued, “Actually, it’s been pretty documented. There’s a huge sludge-like island weighing millions of tons floating in the middle of the Pacific. It’s caused by plastic straws, bottles and other trash that rain washes from the storm drains in California and Japan into the harbors, which then float out to sea collecting where the trade winds converge. The sun’s UV rays break the plastic down into little pieces. Even worse, fish eat the pieces, so it all comes back to us in the form of our food.”

“Nice monologue, Knob,” I said.

“So we’re eating plastic fish?” Thurman asked.

“I’ve heard about that,” a voice said from the back of the car.

We all would have jumped … but didn’t … mostly because our last dose of caffeine was over an hour ago. That, and it’s kinda hard to jump while sitting in a limo. Instead we just kind of jerked like we’d been carpet shocked.

“Who …?”

“Huh …?”

“What …?”

“It’s me,” the voice said.

“Who’s me?” Knob demanded, viciously yanking the wheel to miss another pothole. His passengers rolled right like marbles in a box.

“Aaagh!”

He swerved again. We marbles rolled to the left.

“Aaagh!”

The car righted itself.

“Me … Seth,” Seth said.

Seth’s my little marble, er, brother. He’s not so bad for a little brother, so we let him hang around.

Knob grinned, “Oh, yeah. I forgot you were in here.”

“I was chilling to my i-Pod,” Seth said.

Another violent swerve and everyone’s marbles rolled again.

“What the heck is it with these pot holes?” Knob grumbled as he fought with the wheel.

“I can tell you about that, too,” Seth said.

“About what?” Knob asked.

“The potholes.”

“What about the potholes?” Thurman asked.

“I know why they’re there,” Seth was busy dialing up a new song on the I-Pod.

“Um, because of freezing and thawing and stuff like that, right?” Knob asked.

“Right. That’s how they happen. But the reason they didn’t get patched up is because patches are made from petroleum products,” Seth said.

“So?” Knob asked.

“So because of the price of oil it’s getting too expensive to fix potholes.”

Knob gave him a look through the rearview mirror, “Where do you learn this stuff?”

Seth shrugged, “Civics class.”

“ I always wanted to take one of those classes,” Knob mused.

“You did take Civics … three times,” I said.

“Oh, no wonder …”

Norm
www.normcowie.com

The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness
The Heat of the Moment
Missing (coming Feb 09)
Fang Face (coming Aug 09)