I can't start things...just finishing them is diffi...
I have decided to give the news letter a rest until I have more free time and some web software to do it right. In it's stead here is and online story I will write until someone tells me to stop. I would appreciate criticism as well as grammar help, and any thing else you all would like to say. Thanks for letting me waste your time. -Management
Parenthetic
A work in progress by Cluis.
Burke checks into his hotel its 3 am and he is about dead on his feet. The plane from Ft. Benning was held over for 8 grueling hours and he has lost all of the excitement to be home. What is home now? He has been gone a short 8 months but surely everything he knows in this Midwest burg has moved along without blinking. The girlfriend he thought he had hasn’t written him in 3 weeks since he told her he was coming home (so much fro chasing away those fears of homosexuality by osmosis). His best friend is still upset over an incident involving an ex and a bottle of Jagermeister (She had it coming I can tell you that much). Then there is the family (not the Mafia). Where have they been? His mom called him once during training. His nephew wrote him a letter (as good as a 16 yr old can who has girls to deal with). He has about $300 left to his name from a final paycheck he cashed to buy a beer at O’Hare. All in all life has to start again, and he never thought it would be like this…or did he. He lies down on the freshly laundered bedding of the Homely Home Hotel and slips into the dreamless sleep of some one who has had his brain cleaned with too much bleach. The weight of self-pity has a comforting effect on us at times. It helps to know that we will always be there for ourselves, no matter what (and that in its self is a pitiful realization).
An unfamiliar sound has Burke (Our Hero) reaching in automaton fashion for his boots when he realizes that odd sound is the telephone.
“Uhh…hullo?”
“Wake-up call Mr. O’Mann.” The gruff disturber barks out from the receiver.
“Roger, thank you sir.”
“Don’t call me sir, I’m Phil and it’s 6:30 and I had to get up to call you, so you’re welcome and have a good day.” The line goes dead in his ear and he looks at it like it said some thing bad about his momma.
“Somehow” thinks Our Hero “I doubt he sincerely means that. I don’t believe that was a happily employed civilian.”
Halfway through making the bed Burke decides that someone gets paid good money (or at least a green card) to make the bed for him and heads for the bathroom to do the morning duty. A slight pinching in the temples tells him that the beer (singular mind you) he drank last night has been having fun without him in his now virginal bloodstream. After eight months of training with no booze, cigarettes, caffeine, or even sugar, (Lickies and Chewies) a milk shake could disagree with his body and probably win the argument. After the 5-minute shower (including drying time) and ravaging his gums with a 3 inch long tooth brush provided assumedly by the same midget that left the 2 in bar of soap Our Hero decides it is high time to find a way home to Boikett (he wonders if I spelled that right).
“Uhh…hello?”
“Excuse me uh Phil?”
“How did I know, what can I do for you Mr. O’Mann? Room service? I could go to the store and buy what ever you want and then get my wife (the fat bitch) out of bed and have her cook it for you and bring it up to your room. How does that sound?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I just need a cab to the bus station.”
“Use the phonebook.” Again Burke finds himself staring at the phone as it dies in his arms.
“I wonder if he beats his wife…I know I would if I was a rat bastard like him.” That is the funny thing about little hotels, they have you pay upfront so you both can relax and treat each other like shit and not think about it.
The cab shows up 3 hours later and the driver speaks some type of Cuneiform (I don’t mean Persian, I mean Cuneiform, the alphabet typeface thingy) and he speaks very quickly. So like a cavalry leader of old (except he is in a rusted out, spray painted station wagon) Our Hero leans out the window and points at a bus moving down the street and says; “Bus!” It seems helpful to the cabbie because he begins to drive in the direction of the bus (it is also helpful to the garbage men as they mock Burke in a mongoloidian echo).
Makbu as the as his license states is near sighted and has trouble with the traffic lights (I am guessing because they are not wedge shaped like the ones on his home planet) meaning he disobeys them with alarming consistency. Burke however is not concerned, he is used to the “move it or loose it” type of navigation the U.S. Army employs, so a little moving violation is no new thing to him. While careening down the back alleys and sidewalks of urban Chicago Makbu begins to sing (not in Cuneiform) along with the radio and it goes something like this:
“Jew mate me FEEWL!…Jew mate me FEEEEWL!…Jew mate me FEEEEWL RIIIIIIIKE A NAHTOORAHL VUUUUMAHHHN!” (insert some screaming pedestrians and a few tire screeches and you are just about there).
Burke breaks out a pack of contraband Tic-Tacs that he found on a road march two weeks ago and has one to calm his nerves (it is as close to a shot of bourbon as Our Hero can get without having a case of the Black Ass as they call it in the service) and reclines to let the synthetic orangey goodness soothe away his worries.
Next stop: The Bus Depot (or a roadblock of armed troopers).