The Novel Begins..

Okay guys, yesterday I was sitting in the shallow pool with a gorgeous girl. I started out telling her I wanted to write a novel but I didn't have a good plot, a good story and that I didn't know what to write about.

She simply said... Just start writing.

So... The only way to write a novel is too start. With that I present the start of something I hope to develop, its unedited, raw, delightful (Hopefully). Please comment on what you think. (Comment whoring, the greatest bloggers do it the best!)

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Untitled
By Matt Dewse
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1

It was a lonely evening, a cool rain had been falling for a few days now and when a gust blew up a cold wind could be felt sweep through the shacks modest interior. Huddled in some old blankets we had found, smelling old and musky I watched Dennis caress his warm cup of tea between his palms and forefingers. The shack didn’t have electricity, just a lone candle which burnt silently in the centre of the room.

The small fibro shack was perched among some tall peppermints on a long sandy dune. It was hard to say when it had been abandoned as everything still seemed to be in tact, even the beds had been made, but a calendar with a small reproduced painting of a wooden craft hanging on the wall just above the bunks read April 1981 and we’d assumed this was the last time someone other than us had ever lived here.

The leak in the old rusted tin roof was the most pressing matter when we first arrived but Dennis had gone to work with his resourcefulness and made good the hole with some spare tin which he had found under the floor of the house. Here we lived comfortably for the next four months, collecting water from the public toilets at the end of the street in a good size pot and eating fresh seafood when we could catch it, otherwise we would heat up tins of baked beans over a small gas cooker and we worked when work was available. I had held a good job on a trawler for a month or two before the business had folded.

I could remember this town just two years ago, a great hive of festivity, construction was going on all around, large double story building’s with endless planes of glass which glistened in the sun and people were jubilant, excessive and ignorant. All just enjoying the fruit’s of there labours with champagne and lazy weekends cruising around the coast in powerful motor boats. Even I, like the others had enjoyed these times, soaking up the warm atmosphere of the evening sun and chilling out to the latest pop-rock which played from the in deck CD player.

‘It’s all an illusion’ Dennis had prophesised one day as we sat contently in the sand. We watched the sun hit the horizon and throw up a marvellous orange haze throughout the cloudless sky. I remember the day quiet clearly, we had spent a good deal of time skiing around the headlands behind a friends speedboat, drinking recklessly on cold beers which we stowed in the depths of his built in ice box.

It was rather confusing when he professed that it was just an illusion. It definitely felt real enough as the water had shoot up from the tips of my ski and into my now bloodshot eyes, or the red blotches on my skin where I had forgotten to protect with sunscreen. Actually I would have to say it was one our greatest days we had shared together since we had meet.

‘All this’, he said jerking me from my thought’s. ‘It’s a charade’.
‘You know what I mean’, he protested when I said I did get it and I didn’t and I was just more confused so I changed the subject and made meaningless jokes about how Ryan, who tripped over board earlier in the day, had managed to protect his beer from falling in the drink.

Things soon started changing though, just as Dennis had predicted, friends who worked away started spending more time at home, sitting around the house drinking Jack Daniels in small premixed bottles and joking about what ever uselessness was on TV. When they got bored of that they ordered chilli muscles with a side of a dozen oysters from a restaurant down the road and feasted with great vitality. A month had past and they offered to sell me there TV for a quarter of its cost.

Condemned by our way of life Dennis once again suggested that we leave this rat race, find something a little quieter, a little easier. When he had first asked I made excuses that I was working a good job, I had an apartment and was too busy most days to contemplate leaving, but finally, a week after being fired I agreed to the move on the proviso that we would stay until my lease was up, which fortunately was only one month away. When we checked our bank balances though we had little room to move anyway.

The cost of the apartment sucked up the dregs of my saving’s and Dennis and I struggled to make the last round of bills. When the day had come to move out, Dennis had helped me move all my furniture to my parent’s shed. They argued relentlessly with me as I had predetermined, but I made my case and in the end they came around seeing as there was no sense in getting rid of perfectly good couches. I promised them I’d find a new job, and kissed my mum affectionately on the cheek as I left.

Two weeks later we found the shack. It was a rather great find, although still nestled amongst the big over looking glass monstrosities in the same town as we had decided to leave, it was the right price. Free. Deciding it would be better to just save some cash before we hit the road, arguing that it was summer anyway and it would be a shame to lose out on this great weather.

For the next four months we spent countless hours just frolicking down the beach, in the sun, my board shorts became loose and every day I woke convicted more with something I still could not fully understand. Dennis smiled contently when I told him and just laid buck on his towel to bask in the radiance of the sun. He was of a slim and well built build and by the first month he was well tanned hinting a Mediterranean complexion.

‘You will understand’ he thoughtfully announced after a minute had lapsed. The more we hung out, living like this, the more I noticed him becoming unhurried and he would sit for minutes before answering, more than usual that is. I, myself had even noticed I wasn’t in any sort of rush either. We just went about doing our thing in our own time, fishing, diving, reading and living until at one point I thought time had almost stood still.

2

The rain echo off the thinly lined tin roof, I looked up at the dark mouldy spot on the roof. The patching had worked even after a few day’s had pasted not a drop had come through. Dennis was sitting in the corner apathetically flicking though the box of books we had found in the main bedroom. It was the main room as there weren’t any others. He stopped to for a moment and I thought he was reading the back, then he slapped the book against the ground and squashed a curious roach.

“I’ve read all these”, he moaned. He usually never complained, he was more of a charismatic kind of guy who hops out of bed the second he wakes up, so it was unusual to hear him like this. Though he wasn’t the only one feeling melancholic, I did too. It was the rain, definitely the rain. It seemed to draw the life out of the both of us, we became lifeless and disinterested. Water had seeped in thought under the threshold of the door and destroyed our playing cards.

We tried to go out diving one day, but the swell had come up with the persistent wind and rain, the water being to murky we decided to try do some fishing. After an hour had passed the best we had managed was one thick bull herring, but being so cold we resorted back to the shelter of the shack and shared other the single fish amongst ourselves with a portion of plain rice.

By the sixth day from when the rains had started we busied ourselves packing our rucksacks. Dad had brought me my pack a few years back when I had gone on an extended camping trip with school. It had a large zipper so you could open it out making it easy to fill and a second bag which zipped on and off with ease. With a sturdy metal frame and good set of padded handles it made a great pack for walking.

Dennis offered to carry the cooking gear, which consists of a pot, a pan and the little gas stove, I packed the two bowls, two cups and utensils. When it came to packing the rest of our stuff I didn’t have much, just a couple cloths, an old thin sleeping bag, a well worn book by the title of “The Rum Diary”, a large wrap of plastic and spear gun that strapped to the outside of my pack. Dennis, like me had very little but his bag was bulging with other bits and pieces he thought we might need along the way.

We set out and cleared the small shack. We put the large pot back under the waterless sink, washed the sheets and made the beds. Dennis repaired the leak under the door and locked up all the windows. When we had finished we looked around and then at each other, Dennis looked joyful and we both felt proud. Even though the shack wasn’t ours we felt someway connected to it and we agreed one day we’d return to find it just the way we left it. Neither Dennis nor I ever did though.

3

The day before we’d left we decided to just chase the sun, where ever that may be.