Teeny-Tiny NaNo snippet

Yes, I'm horribly behind the NaNo word count. No, I'm not terribly concerned. However, spurred on by the Great Galloping Aussie's NaNo excerpts, here is a tiny, tiny bit of what I've been working on. It's very rough, but I'm working on NOT editing super hard-core as I go along. It's driving me nuts, but I'm working on it.

*Be forewarned, this is a very gritty tale, so if violence bugs you, don't read on*



What’s left of Jason Parker can be found at an abandoned farm twenty-eight miles northwest of Phoenix. His body is just outside the barn, close to a patch of cholla and prickly pear cactus. The ants have already started in on him. There won’t be much left if he isn’t found in the next few days or so. The desert is always hungry and doesn’t like to let anything, especially dead things, go to waste.

I watched him die. I stayed and watched him bleed out onto the hard-packed dirt, waiting for him to hurry up and get it over with.

When someone gets shot on t.v. or in a movie, they usually fall down and die. Bang, bang, you’re dead. That’s not how it happens in the real world. Jason didn’t fall down when the 9mm round ripped through his belly. Not right away. And he didn’t just kick it either. It took him eighteen minutes and forty-one seconds to die. Almost twenty minutes of listening to the whistling sound of air sucked into lungs that couldn’t keep up and watching his hands try to keep his organs from sliding out.

I’m not sure what I think about that. Jason Parker was a murderer and he deserved to die, but Christ that was a hard way to go. I thought I would be the one to pop him. I wanted to be the one. I put a lot of effort into the plan. That’s not how it went down, though. But now, crouched over the meat that used to be Jason, it’s not so clear-cut.