First Draft

Thursday 3:35 p.m.
Just finished the first draft of the first page on my crime book, which I might call Cold Killing. I couldn't remember if stimulants narrowed your pupils or widened them. I suppose someone out there might know that.

<>Cold Killing

The walls of the Saracen’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The bar section was small, mostly empty on this slow afternoon in the springtime. The double doors were straight across from the bar and the only patrons apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop were sitting in the corner, more or less facing the doors. The barman had slipped through the back.

The detective sargeant was wearing a dark suit with an overcoat more expensive than you might expect and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something.

The double doors burst open and a traffic warden almost ran into the bar then stopped. He wore a beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, the sweat pouring out of him, the massive quantities of multifarious stimulants he’d been taking making his eyes like saucers. He pulled a gun from inside his tunic and started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.

Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective sargeant, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. The traffic warden pulled a sharpened screwdriver with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and, pulling the Detective Sargeant by the hair, knocked over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.

A furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man doing the stabbing. He held the head down by the hair and the Detective Sargeant came to rest on his back as he was stabbed in the throat, then his face, then several times through both eyes. Though he was dead by this time, his forehead was stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until the stabbing didn’t seem to ever be going to end. The skull collapsed there and the traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing then. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor when he finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the Detective Sargeant’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stood there with his arms outstretched, one hand still holding the screwdriver and shouted in exultation.

Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!

Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard and all three traffic wardens rushed out.

The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.

Can't fix the formatting, but you get the general idea. Maybe after it's been re-written seventeen times in longhand, it'll be alright. So it was started, the first draft of Cold Killing on 8th of January, 2009.