This is an excerpt of Ch.8 “Laconic Loquaciousness” from my novel, “Why Do We Count Words Not Letters. A man has lost his son and his wife, only to embark of a journey to the Caribbean, where he meets a woman. This is their first date.
David Leopold White is an ordinary writer who lives in the town of Lorricho. It is a place where nothing is hopeful, a place even death and time may die. This is a story when a man who can never forget his nightmares. These haunted dreams have long plagued him and nearly killed him because of these horrible hallucinations. When a place gets its attention, it becomes real.
"A Day in the Life of Emily" distills the anxiety of life in a pandemic stricken America into a 1500 word story and meditates on the emotional core of living in terror of both Covid-19 and the rise of domestic terrorist conspiracy groups.
Reggie has been struggling to find the will to live, burning his lungs with cigarettes and drowning himself in alcohol. As he moves from one vice to another, it is as if he is playing a game. But his wife, Nellie plans to be with him no matter what happens, guiding him through this dark time.
An anonymous assassin is sent to infiltrate the St. Petersburg household of Orlov, the son of a ministerial judge deemed a "serious enemy", by an unnamed radical cause. While masquerading as a servant, the narrator spies on the household and observes the extravagant and frivolous habits of the wealthy family, and is repelled by Orlov's aloof treatment of his lover Zinaida. He eventually becomes disillusioned with his mission and the purposelessness of life itself, comparing his own deceitfulness with the womanizing Orlov's self-awareness, and abandons his mission.
