. . . Anyway, the topic text box hates me. Ignore it. I decided to try writing out of my comfort for this one - a more plot-driven, YA-type fic instead of a plotless(and unfinished) ramble like Publishers was. This is just the first two pages or so of the first chapter. I know it's crap, too fast-paced for a novel and needs a lot of revision . . . and Uncle Alt needs YOU! to help him find out what.
Chapter 1 â" Realization Jon looked down at the broken pieces of glass strewn about him. He also looked down at his leg, which had splintered in an ugly way upon impact with the ground. There was no bone showing, so the fracture was simple enough, but it was there, so it was bad enough. The brackish weather didnât help his current state of mind â" he was being made out to be a ribeye, a cut of meat on the grill, unable to move, and unable to call for help. Jon's breath was stolen. The bushes he had the good grace to land on were demolished by his impact, and they too were soaked with blood. Jon kept trying to move inside, to get to the phone, but while his right leg was fine, his left was swallowed in an inferno and he couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. He was being buried in his incapacitation and his inability to yell, to press the panic button. It wasn't until he could start breathing again that events began rolling in a favorable way. The neighbors had stopped playing water Knockout long enough to hear Jon's cries of pain. A wispy adolescent climbed the fence and saw Jon dragging himself through a patch of bloodied grass, and called for the phone so he could alert the police. Meanwhile, Jon was dragging himself to the fence gate, so as not to impede his rescue. He fell into an inset garden, and a tomato cage punctured his leg. After wrestling it out of his calf, Jon could start moving. He was thankful that it didnât puncture his femoral artery, but as far as flesh wounds go, he was in a bad situation. He had to crawl up some and then past his porch, over to another inset area, and then out of the fence gate. But as every blade of grass was entering and torturing his wound, all he would be leaving was a trail of blood. He had barely made it to his back porch when it happened again. Jon felt his strength draining from him, his leg stop throbbing and bleeding, his lungs stop crying out. His skin glazed over, shielding him from the temperature, and he couldnât find his arms anymore. The mown grass of his backyard faded from his nose, his shirt fell away from him. The metallic taste of blood disappeared, and he barely had time to dance in the ambulanceâs disco lights before they, along with the siren's whine, were swallowed by a puff of smoke. Jon felt himself reassembled in a strange world. The air popped with iridescence, the ground rippled with his step. Wind was expressed with the movement of the ground, not that of the air. Jon felt no pain in his leg, and he was beckoned to walk onward. It was as if he had been transported and left, downsized, in a droplet of rain on a sunny day. Each movement he made altered the landscape, before the area reverted back to its tentative state. Jon wouldâve been woozy from the state of perpetual flux, but an intangible wall kept him detached in a way he couldn't explain. The path in front of him was long and made of fragments of light. Each step brought about an increased level of heaviness, and each yard made Jon's consciousness fuzzier. But he had to keep walking. Eventually, all he could see were the stars he was walking on, and soon after that, he was falling through the floor, towards the bottom of the ocean.
. . . trippy, amirite? Anyway, I think I killed all of the smartquotes.
