Lit Noir
Benign change, perhaps following Netflix’s lead, headline from nypost.com: “Best Buy will stop selling DVDs and Blu-rays after the 2023 holiday season.” Going the way of VHS?
I’m 14 pages into my latest work and see no end in sight. Most speculative stories end disastrously for the protagonist. I don’t want this one to. The guy’s only 30 and a decent person down deep. Here’s the opening scene:
The light was blinding. The four detectives in the room were shadows, standing back. The smoke was thick. He smirked, recalling the “This Is A Smoke Free Building” sign out front. He felt as if he were in film noir. What was that movie where Victor Mature was given the third degree, although he was innocent? I Wake Up Screaming, he said to himself, nineteen-forty-one.
“OK, Johnny Boy,” said a pock-marked man in a dark suit, stepping into the light, face inches from the suspect’s. “Where were you last night?”
His throat clenched. He couldn’t remember. He’d been drinking.
“How well did you know Elvira Clark?”
He scoured his mind. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“And how d’you explain this?” said a second detective in a similar suit, who was as swarthy as a male gets.
He scanned the driver’s license. What the…? he thought. He’d just renewed it.
“Twenty-twenty-three,” said the same man. “Are you from the future, pretty boy?”
“What?” He squinted, baffled, head pounding.
“Go ‘head, play dumb, moron,” said another, stepping forward. “It’s not that big a stretch.”
“Did you nail that tasty dish before you gutted her, psycho?”
“What!?”
“Come clean, slimeball,” said the last cop.
Now all four were hovering over him. “Look I…”
Here’s a still from the flick. It’s not the pic I had in mind, which I was unable to find, but it serves the scene well. Photo from Google Images:
Another terrific day for the floating book shop. My thanks to the buyers. Here’s what sold: eight kids’ books, including six from the My Weird School Daze series by Dan Gutman and Jim Paillot; six Cucina Italiana magazines and four on cooking from McCalls; two books in Russian; The New Crowd: The Changing of the Jewish Guard on Wall Street by Judith Ramsey Ehrlich and Barry J. Rehfeld; Dubliners by James Joyce; Mrs. Jeffries Turns the Tide by Emily Brightwell; Cage of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard; Heroes, Gods and Monsters Of The Greek Myths by Bernard Evslin & William Hofmann, the fourth copy I’ve sold of it recently, three left. I am blessed.
My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Vic-Fortezza-Author-118397641564801/?fref=ts
Read Vic’s Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza
