Chapter 1
I ran. I have always loved running, ok not always. There was a time when I had been a young boy of twelve years old and quite the husky little fella. Husky as my mother put it, she would never let me call myself fat. Fat was what I was, as most kids seem to be these days. Fewer and fewer kids running and playing outside, riding their bikes and enjoying their youth. More and more of them spend their time inside playing video games or watching whatever teen trash is playing on MTV these days.
As most fat little kids, sorry I mean “husky” little kids, running was hell on my chubby legs and a nightmare on the rest of my body. A few years later, I hit puberty and sprung up six inches and the baby fat I had never managed to shed melted away. The rest of my body adjusted and distributed the weight evenly on my new frame and I was suddenly down a few weight classes. I had spent the summer riding my bike delivering papers, my asshole of a stepfather had made me get the job, and my legs were turned from chubby stumps into steel bars.
My lungs had also turned into something that should have belonged to Superman, as that fall I tried out for the track team. Not only did I beat every other runner by lengths, but I discovered a sort of enjoyable meditation. Running is quite boring; there is nothing really much to do when you run. Sure you can listen to music on your nice new mp3 player, look at the pretty scenery or talk to a running partner. The only real thing you can do, when you are lost in all those miles with the ground flying beneath your feet, is to look inwards and confront your deep inner thoughts.
Those thoughts can be comforting and quite helpful when you need to clear your head. They can also turn on you. They say that your worst enemy is yourself, or more to the point, your own mind. That late summer I learned that all too well. That was when I met her, Mrs. Anderson, the little old woman who owned the big house at the end of the beach just passed the dunes.
I moved to Montauk at the start of the spring. I had been having problems with my writing, the gears in my head seemed to have locked up and my NordicTrack treadmill was just not cutting it. Running always cleared my head and allowed me to get my works running so that I could get back to my writing. I have always been a great starter when it came to my books; it was finishing that has been my issue. The morning I met her, I had at three or four of the damned things sitting; only half finished, on my desk. I hate the way they crouched on my desk, pleading for attention and begging to be finished. Like some sort of lamed literary gargoyles.
So I had rented a house on the shore, hoping that the fresh New England ocean air would clear my head. It was really more of a shack, ok not a shack but it was a tiny one-room affair. It had been a caretaker cottage at one time, with its single room encompassing living/bed room, kitchen and dining room with the only bathroom stored away in what was pretty much a closet. It was quaint and cozy, and appealed to the romantic in me. I am not kidding; there really is a romantic in there somewhere buried underneath the intellectual, the idiot or the asshole. Like I said somewhere, I am sure of it.
I didn’t care about the size. Sure I could have rented a bigger place, I had plenty of money. I wasn’t a multi-millionaire but the sales of the three anthologies
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.11.2013
ISBN: 978-3-7309-6006-6
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