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His dark secret - Chapter 3

by Bav Dav 

Posted: 15 January 2005
Word Count: 962
Summary: A brief chapter 3 to remind us of the main plot. I'm particularly interested in whether anyone has engaged with the character at all. B


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London seemed a long way away now. He was a young man then, looking to define himself. He was a less young man now and was defined as an average bloke who just wanted an easy life. This disc wasn’t helping.

He tried the disc on the computer at his desk. Same error. He hadn’t expected much else. Time to call Dan.

“Dan, remember that CD that I got from by brother’s mate. The one that wouldn’t open on my computer? You said it was a Mac disc and you copied the contents for me.”

“Yes, I remember. The pictures of Cameron Diaz on the beach. Very nice. Have you got some more?”

“I have no idea, I’ve got this disc and I don’t know who it’s from or what’s on it,” he stopped short of mentioning the money. Dan was a nosey bastard and it would only make the whole thing worse.

“OK, bring it up to my lair.”

Dan’s lair was a huge windowless room on the first floor. It was rammed with rack upon rack of full-on computing hardware. The speccy lad on Roberts stairwell probably came here in his wet dreams for a wank. Despite the presence of some serious heat generating kit the room was freezing, kept at sub-zero temperatures in order to prevent the whole building from melting.

Robert knocked on the door of the lair. Dan’s head appeared at the porthole after a few moments and the red light on the door switched to green with a quiet click. This was fun. He loved going to the lair, it made him feel like James Bond.

In the lair today Dan was playing a selection of the hits of Leo Sayer. Working alone in this cold, locked-down environment had clearly driven him mad. Robert wondered how he might react to this solitary confinement, probably very badly. He certainly couldn’t see how he would ever get any work done without his boss breathing down his neck. Not these days anyway. Mind you, that wasn’t so different from normal. Go figure.

Dan took the disc from Robert and stuck it into a green Imac on his desk. After a few seconds an image of a CD appeared on the desktop. Dan double-clicked it and the contents were displayed.

you got a cute way of talkin’...

The disc contained 3 word documents; Untitled1.doc, Untited2.doc and Untitled3.doc. Not the most inspiring naming convention he thought. He clicked on Untitled1.doc.

...gonna dance the night away...

A blank word document opened up in the word processor. Dan scrolled through it and remarked that there were 7 pages of it. All blank. Not a great start. He tried Untitled2.doc and it was equally blank but this time had only 3 pages. Untitled3.doc had only 1 blank page.

...dancin’, wooh! Dancin’, wooh!...

That’s pretty weird.

Naturally Dan wanted to know what this was all about. Why were they looking at a bunch of empty files? Robert was reluctant to let him in on it. So he didn’t. He wandered off mumbling something about the accounts department.

…ahaaaahhaahhh…

He always thought that the accounts department was a good excuse for pretty much any aimless wandering he did during work hours. If he fancied stretching his legs he’d loudly exclaim that he was going to see “Jackie from accounts about an invoice.” He’d met someone in accounts at a Christmas Party a few years ago and he was sure she was called Jackie. The fact that at the very same Christmas party he threw up in his own top drawer and couldn’t remember a thing about it didn’t make him doubt his memory, just his solvency, all his receipts had been in there for the months expenses.

Robert wandered back to his desk clutching the disc and trying frantically to work out what this was all about. He tried the number again but he had no luck. He left a message along the lines of “What’s this all about?”

It’s not as if £270 was even that much money. He wasn’t exactly skint and he could easily spend that in a week on food, booze and entertainment. It also seemed quite a specific amount, why not £250 or £300?

His phone rang. It was an internal call. He knew this because the ringtone took on an annoying whiny tone. He picked up.

“They were corrupted,” it was Dan.

“Eh?”

“They were corrupted. Those word files you had on the disc. Must be to do with PC files saved on a Mac disc or something. Anyway, I managed to extract something from them. It’s a bit weird. The first one is just full of kisses as far as I can make out, or X’s anyway. The second one says ‘Sally – soon be gone’ at the top and probably had a photo on it but I can’t recover that.”

“What about the third one?” Alarm bells had started to ring in Roberts head.

“The third on says ‘My darkest secret!’ “

...it’s cold out, so hold out, and do like I do...

The last sentence bored into his memory making him dizzy “My darkest secret!” That rang a bell. A big noisy bastard bell. An ugly, noisy, well buried bell which was now ringing so loudly he felt sick. He sat down. He didn’t like bells at the best of times, they just reminded him of school. A ringing bell in those days just meant that it was time to leave the safety of the classroom and get the shit kicked out of him by Paul Forrest. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to have just Paul Forrest and his gang to worry about right now. Right now he had to worry about Sally and her darkest secret.






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Comments by other Members



Beadle at 10:44 on 16 January 2005  Report this post
Hi B

I'm hooked now. The ending was a nice mystery within a mystery. We still have the mystery surrounding the disk, but this is further deepend by the mystery about Robert's knowledge of its contents.

This for me would have been the perfect follow-on from Ch 1. I do wonder whether it is just as a result of the mechanism of this website - you've posted three fairly short chapters that I have read over three separate occasions - but I think if elements of Ch 2 were merged with Ch 1 and Ch 3 - both ending on the 'mystery hook' - it would have had a better flow for me.

As for you specific question about being engaged with Robert, I like him as a character but I don't feel I know an awful lot about him. It's not an issue for me as I am being carried along by the story and the story-telling.

I'm still getting confused between the two men in certain parts (see below)

"In the lair today Dan was playing a selection of the hits of Leo Sayer. Working alone in this cold, locked-down environment had clearly driven him mad. He wondered how he might react to this solitary confinement, probably very badly. He certainly couldn’t see how he would ever get any work done without his boss breathing down his neck. Not these days anyway. Mind you, that wasn’t so different from normal. Go figure."

The switch between "... clearly driven him mad." and "He wondered how he might react..." was confusing and I had to go back and re-read this to make sure I knew which discription applied to which person.

Robert is the central character for me and I wonder how you feel the story would work if it was written from his point of view as the narrator? Again, I personally like that kind of story-telling, although I know it can be difficult in terms of slotting in plot points etc.

I actually wrongly read the Dan's lair bit as 'down' to my lair, and had to re-read it when you said it was on the first floor. Down to my lair (in the windowless basement) sounded very sinister...

I like the leo Sayer touch by the way. Did you know poor Leo has left this country for Australia because he feels nobody takes him seriously in the UK anymore?

One final thing, I know I said I would only comment from a reader's point of view, but I actually work in journalism so I can't help proof reading as I go along.

This might be a point that other people in the group have a view on as to how accurate copy needs to be and whether it should be proofread closely before it is posted on the website?

I noticed that the first mention of the files on the disc featured 'Untited2.doc' - I thought this was on purpose until I saw it the second time as 'Untitled2.doc'! There were a couple of other typos as well - again, that might just me being anal, but it would interesting to hear what others think.

I'm liking this very much and I want to know what's going to happen next.

Cheers mate

Paul





<Added>

obviously I did not proof read my comments for typos very closely before posting them!

scoops at 10:30 on 20 January 2005  Report this post
Bav Dav, Je suis confused. At the end of chapter 2, which stood alone from and unconnected to chapter 1, we had Robert and his mate considering the words of the London cousin. Now we appear to have zoomed ahead in time, and are following on from chapter 1, which means chapter two was a flashback... I think you need to stop and think very carefully at this point or you're going to run the risk of parallel stories diverging, rather than converging. At the moment it reads to me like two different novels being presented alternately. Have you actually gone back to chapter one and read all the way through? Does what you're writing make sense to you as it is on the page or does it only make sense to you in the context of what happens next? If it's the latter, put yourself in the place of a reader and ask whether you would continue reading a book if it didn't make sense to you by chapter three? I know I wouldn't:-( I'm not trying to put you off because I thought chapter one was brilliant, and chapter two was also beautifully written. I like your character, I like the various storylines, and I like the mood. This could be really saleable:-) I think though, that it is lacking coherence at this stage and the style is still changing from chapter to chapter. Style however is the least of your worries - the current danger is that you're not putting a proper structure in place. Structure is the difference between rewriting to improve, and rewriting from scratch... Even though you're clearly desperate to keep ploughing on because the narrative is taking you over, I think you should stop for 24 hours, print up what you've written so far, and then go over it sentence by sentence. It's too good to get wrong:-) Shyama

Bav Dav at 10:45 on 20 January 2005  Report this post
Thanks Shyama,

I appreciate your comments very much. The great thing about this site is being able to share opinions with published authors. I am not overly concerned here with the lack of clarity, I'm hoping that when it's finished that it will stand up better.

By way of explanation. As you pointed out, there are two narratives in the story. One is present day, Robert recieves the disc, works out it's related to an episode in his past and sets out to help someone he thinks is in trouble in order to salve his own conscience (sorry if this gives too much away). The second narrative is about the episode in his past which has caught up with him. I don't want to give too much of either story away at any one time so I'm using a non-linear structure to intercut the stories.

I'm sure when it's finished I'll need to give some consideration to how it flows together but I have read books written in a similar non-linear format which I have used as inspiration. Iain Banks comes to mind.

I guess I do have to be a bit precious about this, I've never really had to defend my writing before and I'm finding it extrememly useful.

I'm more concerned with the change in style though. Did you think that Chapter 3 was closer in style to Chapter 1 or are they all different?

Cheers,

B

<Added>

I should mention that I tweaked Chapter 2 a bit to make it a little clearer that it was a different timeline. Reading it again on your advice I think it may still be a bit woolly. I'm loathe to make too many changes. Would a simple * make much of a difference?

scoops at 12:04 on 20 January 2005  Report this post
B: As long as you are aware that the two don't currently flow together that's fine. It wasn't the fact that the narrative is non-linear that bothered me, so much as the lack of recognition when one comes to chapter two - the style, content and even the main character are very different from chapter one. Each chapter, as I say, is terrific - but they're working alongside each other like bank tellers rather than footballers, if that makes sense? My anxiety is that if you don't try and combat the problem at this stage, it will become progressively harder to control the narrative when you're twenty, thirty or forty thousand words down the line... In other words, you may be setting yourself up for a fall. That said, I bow to your confidence and celebrate it:-) As for style, this chapter doesn't have the staccato eccentricity of the first, so it does feel different, but it's easy enough to put right. I await chapter four with interest:-)Shyama.

Bav Dav at 12:24 on 20 January 2005  Report this post
Bank tellers not footballers. I like that.

Cheers Shyama.

B


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