I’m rewriting the novel I was working on. I changed my style from first person to third person and plan on changing character views from chapter to chapter. Not consistently but often enough that this style will be identifiable. Writing my book originally gave me an idea of where I wanted to go with it but other than that I just didn’t feel like it was right even though I wrote probably a third of it. I thought the only way to get back into it was to start from the beginning keeping those key details and story elements in mind. So here I go. Let me know what you think and wish me luck!

Chapter 1

It was perhaps the silence that led to the unfortunate events of this night or perhaps it was the stupidity of one overly proud man. The shaded figure in the middle of the room had an eerie sense to him, almost foreboding. His hood was no different than the hood of any other jacket except for the fact that he wore it. The darkness reached out from him and stuck to his aura like only a man of true darkness could know. It didn’t take long for a somewhat foolish man to come up to the silent figure. “Why don’t you speak?” Said the foolish man. The shaded figure simply ignored him, drinking a beer in the middle of the bar. The foolish man eyed him and made an attempt to get closer, “Speak you worthless sack of shit.” Still the shaded figure made no attempt to move or sway from his current action.

The foolish man shuffled his feet and made no movement to hint at his leaving anytime soon. If he were a cleverer fellow or if his mother taught him proper manners then maybe what happened next wouldn’t have occurred. The foolish man, irritated, reached out to pull the shaded figure’s hood back. It seemed as if time froze in that moment as everybody turned to look at the middle table with the cold beer and hooded figure. An inch from the hood the foolish man froze; the darkness seemed to reach out from the shaded figure and extend up the arm of the foolish man. This time when the shaded figure took a sip from his beer he held the bottle still, it touching his lips and the condensation dripping atop the table. The foolish man’s expression seemed to change from arrogant, to confused, to shocked, and finally to terrified. All eyes still watching the scene play out, the lights seemed to flicker as the foolish man fell to the ground, paralyzed. He started to have a seizure and everybody in the bar rushed to the middle table trying to reach him. However, it seemed that everybody heard the heart of the foolish man giving out because not a single soul in the place believed he was going to get up again. Many looked from the convulsing body back to the shaded figure in a dance that they could only complete with their eyes. Soon after the lights flickered again and went out briefly, thus revealing the disappearance of the shaded man from the middle table in the city bar.

Chapter 2

Troy was asleep in his room when he saw the scenes of the bar play out. He had a connection with the shaded man, something far more cryptic than comprehendible. Troy stirred in his sleep as the lightning flashed and the thunder roared from outside. A shock went through him as deep as his sleep and he woke up in a fury, sweating from head to toe and truly terrified of what he was continuously seeing. These “nightmares” as Troy called them had been plaguing him sporadically for the past several months, getting darker and clearer every time he had them. The dreams were always different but they followed the same man, the shaded figure.

Troy took a moment to regain himself before getting out of bed. Walking to the nearby bathroom Troy didn’t bother to turn on any lights, the darkness never bothered him, he felt comfortable in it. Sighing, he looked in the mirror to find the purple and grey bags underneath his eyes becoming more prominent as he got less and less sleep. Knowing he was not going to get any more sleep on this night, Troy strolled over to the window and watched the rainfall scattering across the open landscape behind the trees.

The lightning continued to flash and the thunder continued to roar, still Troy felt almost welcomed by the wildness of it all, his eyes dancing along with the unwieldy light. Troy thought to himself the rage of a storm can only be matched by the rage of my soul. He began to think back to his earlier days when things were simpler and he wasn’t so weathered. To be fair, Troy’s life had never been simple; he was an orphan by the age of four and could barely remember his parents. Sometimes he gets flashes of what they used to look like, perhaps a lullaby or two but that is the extent of his memory, swirling around like the sand in the desert wind.

Troy moved from place to place, from home to home because there was always something about him that was off, he was never like the other children, he was never what a family was looking for when they took him in. He had dozens of brothers and sisters, none related through blood, and he never remembered a single one. He has scars from the many times when he was beaten or abused and he continues to remember the harsh lessons that he was forced to learn through all of the years of his life up to this point. School taught him very little, he never could quite grasp the realities of this world but that could be by chance. Of course, there could easily be other reasons for his weak grasp on the earthly ground that he was forced to succumb to. Then again it could just be that he never truly felt awake, only halfway aware with one eye open.

Troy wondered these things silently as he curled up next to the window and watched the storm play out in front of him. He felt as though he could reach out and touch the lightning as if it were obtainable and stable when he stared up at it. Troy always knew he was different than everybody else but watching the storm reminded him that when it came to nature and who he really was, he would always be one with the storm.