A novel development

With my horror anthology Totentanz available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Smashwords and selling, and with the Kindle All Stars project progressing at dizzying pace, and with the draft of my story for the Diamond Light Source competition on a shelf for enforced separation ahead of revision, it's time to get back to the novel.

Working on short stories is always fun, largely because the novel is the "main" writing job and therefore writing shorts is just a form of procrastination (albeit a very constructive form of procrastination), but I need to get my mind back onto the big piece, because I love writing it and I think it's going to turn out to be pretty good when it's all done and dusted.

Here's an excerpt from what I've written today:

That evening the residents of the arches are suddenly promised an impromptu display of juggling from Quinn. He is clearly drunk and unsteady on his feet, and the anticipated entertainment is as likely to come from his lack of coordination as from any demonstration of juggling skill. A brazier is lit and we gather ourselves around it as Quinn lurches forwards and back amongst us, the flames reflecting like marble on his shiny bald head.

“Objects, objects, give me objects,” he cries, and we throw various items towards him: sticks, empty tins, crushed beer cans, rocks. “No…no…no…” he says, and tosses each donated object aside in turn until he settles upon an empty beer bottle, a plastic wheel from a shopping trolley and a rusty wing mirror housing from an unidentifiable car.

He holds up each of the objects in turn, showing them to the crowd, turning them this way and that and weighing them in his hand, indicating with an exagerrated frown or shake of the head how difficult he expects it each to be to throw and to catch. He squats down, performs a series of theatrical stretches – he is a small man, and very thin, and as he does this he looks ridiculous, like a child mimicking an adult – then he begins to juggle. The objects arc smoothly above his head, tracing easy parabolas between his flashing palms, and the crowd is instantly delighted. He shuffles left and right, clowning and stumbling, trying to give the impression that he will drop them at any minute, but he is clearly in complete control. He starts with a simple three-ball juggle, then he begins to introduce complexity: the bottle swings up from behind his back, the trolley wheel from underneath a crooked leg.

“Where did you learn to do that?” someone asks.

“I trained under the Great Meliakoff,” he says, the objects whirling higher and faster, “The greatest magician the world has ever known!”

“Magician?” comes a cruel voice, “How about you make yourself disappear?”

On hearing this a chorus of ragged laughter tumbles out into the archway. Quinn stops suddenly, catching the objects neatly in his hands, one-two-three, and turns to face his heckler.

“Don’t joke about things like that,” he says quietly, his eyes burning in the fierce light of the brazier.

“Fuck off,” says the voice, but Quinn doesn’t seem to hear it.

“What Anatoly Meliakoff did was real magic, not any of these cheap tricks that you see these days,” he says, his eyes fixed on some point far away, beyond the reach of mortal vision, “And in the end it killed him. Or it might as well have done. At the end of his final ever performance he performed a trick in which he and his servant, a little dwarf man who he called Azamat and who he dressed up as a demon, were utterly obliterated. A huge explosion, then there was nothing left, just smoke and soot. I was watching from the wings of the theatre and saw it all. It wasn’t planned. He lost control. I saw how terrified he looked, just before. The newspapers said it was his greatest illusion, but it was real. I know it was. I was his personal assistant, I knew every one of his tricks. I’d rehearsed every show with him, and he’d never done anything remotely like it before. Nothing. And no-one ever saw him again. After that I promised myself I’d never touch real magic again.”

There is an awkward silence as he looks mournfully at the floor, then he suddenly tosses the objects over his shoulders and throws out his arms.

“More drink and I’ll show you some more,” he cries, “More drink for more tricks!”

A can of cider is produced from somewhere and thrown towards him, and he catches it and drinks it down in one before asking for three sticks and some rags. There is a flurry of activity and the requested items are fetched, and he spends a minute tying the rags onto the ends of the sticks.

“For my next trick…” he begins, but as he is preparing he forgets to explain what his next trick is. It soon becomes clear, however, for he dips the rags into the brazier so that each now resembles a flaming torch. The crowd instinctively shuffles backwards, and Quinn begins to throw the torches up into the air. They whirl upward, hang precariously for a moment, and then plunge back to earth, spitting sparks and tracing surrealist parabolas that hang in the eye for a moment before fading. Quinn throws them ever faster, ever higher, and the crowd is spellbound now, rows of eyes following the dizzying progress of the torches, and he senses their amazement, feels their tension, and he responds as any showman would.

Higher and higher he throws them, impossibly high now, each one landing perfectly in the palm of his hand again, and again, and again…until he misjudges the height of his stage and hurls one torch so high that it smacks hard into the brickwork ceiling of the arch above. It sends a shower of sparks and brick dust raining down upon him, and the collision fatally alters the trajectory of the stick such that Quinn is forced to throw himself out to one side to catch it, which he fails to do. His feet betray him, his knees buckle and he falls into a heap on the floor, sinking instantly into a drunken slumber. The torches tumble around him.

The spell is broken. The show is over, the crowd melts away. Quinn snores lightly beside the brazier, his dying torches scattered around him, and fiery tears glisten at the corners of his eyes.

“Was all that true? About that magician?” I ask.

“Who knows?” says Walt, “He seemed to believe it, at any rate. And that’s probably all that matters.”

First draft. Will be edited.

But it's still words.