At long last, I can share with you the beginning of the novel I’ve been teasing for months now. After lots of tinkering and more round of editing than I’ve ever done in my life, I can finally introduce you to these characters and to this town.
There’s lots more coming, but I hope this sample quenches your thirst for the time being. You can read a bit of it here, on this post, but if you want the full Chapter 1 scroll on to the bottom and click the link.
Enjoy the ride 🙂
There hadn’t been a suicide in Little Rush for at least fifty years. Maybe that tells you everything you need to know. For a few years, I’d been keenly aware that I would one day break that streak. Like the moment before you hit a deer with your car, speeding on a backroad late at night. Inevitable. Beautiful. Raw.
It’s not that I wanted the feeling of death. I never liked pain. Always avoided it, honestly. I once cut my thighs with a razorblade for about a week before I gave that up. Once I realized that alcohol numbed everything more effectively, I went for that particular addiction rather than self-harm. I suppose it was the better choice, in a brutal sort of way.
Honestly, you could even say I was afraid of death. But at the same time, I couldn’t look away from it. Talking with Willow once, I compared it to standing on a train track. Not tied down, just of my own free will. With every night that passed, with every panic attack or breakdown, I could feel the ground shaking under my feet. See that swift-moving beast in the distance as it prowled closer. And I knew that death was coming for me. Faster than it does for most. I felt jaw-clenching fear but wanted it so badly.
Little Rush. That quaint, postcard town. I felt a disconnect with it, you might say. Everybody else, they found parts they enjoyed. They had places or people that rooted them. I just didn’t. All those people growing old and wasting away in the same spot for years… to me, it felt like they were settling, like they could’ve achieved something greater. Who would give up the world for a life of this? Not me. I was gonna get out. But if I had to die here, then I would take care of it my-goddamn-self.
I thought about my funeral, probably more than was healthy. Especially the playlist. A set of songs that would capture my entire life. Maybe I’d start with Bon Iver. I wondered how that would affect the old people.
Honestly, as long as Mason and Willow showed up, that’s all I could ask. Those were the only two people who really cared about me. They were the only two keeping me around. Not in Little Rush. Just alive in general.
“Hudson!” my dad yelled from the first floor. I could barely hear him over the low hum from my window AC unit. The wooden stairs creaked as he moved up a few steps. “Feed those chickens!”
I ground my teeth together. I’d been laying on my bed, head resting on a pillow, wasting away the first week of summer. “Mason’ll be here any minute,” I yelled back, not rude per se but definitely not happy.
I didn’t want an argument with him. After a full day working outside, he was often on edge. There was a moment’s pause. I closed my eyes and tried to really savor those last moments of rest. I used to refuse to do my chores, but I eventually got tired of my phone being taken away. We both knew what would happen now.
“Then you best hurry,” he called back with a chuckle.
Click the link below to read the full chapter…
David Kummer 