My novel, The Devil's Nest, is out for pre-order right now at the great price of $2.99. It is available on Amazon Kindle and the free Kindle reading app for computers and mobile devices. The release date is May 11, 2015. This post contains the first chapter in its entirety, and links to pre-order The Devil's Nest will be at the bottom of this page.
CHAPTER ONE: MAYHEM
“Go Down Fighting” -
Half Life (Never Give In,
1989)
“Sex
and Violence” - The Exploited (Punks Not Dead,
1981)
My vision blurred and I became lost in a puddle of blood. Crawling on
my hands and knees, the room spun around me. Premonitions of
powerlessness clouded my panicking thoughts. It's a scenario that one
might envision themselves in while reading exaggerated bar fight
stories on a message board at two in the morning, but this wasn't an
online forum. This was real and raw.
My blood already spilled onto the floor and my brains were scrambled
by a baleful man – someone who not only smelled of, but looked as
if they were made of cheap cigars and whiskey farts.
The patrons looked down at me in the gloomy and uproarious cauldron
of The Devil's Nest. Tinges of regulation-breaking cigarette smoke
and cannabis caught my nose. Then a foot drove into my ribs and
turned me over onto my back. I took another kick to the ribs, but got
my hand high enough to graze their nut sack. My fingertips clipped
them through their blue denim jeans. It was a rash attempt to buy
myself time and get into the fight, but it only pissed them off even
more. They knocked me back down with a chest-crushing stomp.
I laid in the glass that was broken over my head moments earlier. The
shouts for violence intensified. A silhouette of my attacker emerged,
and their burdensome figure formed in the very little amount of light
that emitted from a bulb hanging pathetically from the basement
ceiling. The towering man wore a Boston Red Sox ballcap, because he's
most likely a bandwagoning dipshit who got into them in 2004. His
longish hair spilled out from under the hat and looked dry like
straw. His terrifying angular face was sweatier than a priest walking
past a playground. A scar under his left eye stood out on a
relatively young face that was aged by alcohol – a monument to
brutality. He stood over me and lifted a fire extinguisher over his
head. This was Ozzie Scroggs - “The Mad Dog.”
He supported that nickname further by mercilessly slamming the
extinguisher on my nose. A thunderous pop rose out of the onlookers.
Drowning in the inhospitable existence, I put my hands up in defense.
Ozzie
threw the extinguisher down with such vigor that it wasn't of much
use. I felt my nose break and the thick, dark red blood clogged my
breathing, flowed over my teeth, into my mouth, trickled off my chin
and ran down the back of my throat. I tried to sit upright to prevent
the blood from going down my throat too much, because I already felt
sick to my stomach. It mixed with the dozen or so pints that I drank
throughout the night. Drinking all the whiskey in my flask wasn't
such a good idea either.
Ozzie's big left foot, made heavier by his Irish Setter boot, knocked
me unconscious before I could take in the crisp smell of its leather.
It's difficult for me to recall how I got to lying on some dirty snow
in the pub's dark back alley. Crawling to my hands and knees, a gentle
touch of my nose brought on a grinding pain. Blood dripped from my
nostrils and stained the snow. My neck struggled to prop my throbbing
head.
I rolled into a sitting position, then felt a rutty cotton glove
touch my right cheek. A grumble slipped from my mouth. My bruised
cheeks swelled and made it hard for me to talk without feeling as if
a pocket of blood was going to burst out of the flesh. I groggily
lifted my head to see a scraggly old man, with long unkempt gray hair
all over his head, and a musty odor that came off his tattered brown
buttoned-up coat. The burdens of life hung on each wrinkle that
hardship carved into his wooden face. Those wintry eyes examined me
from top to bottom.
I looked around the hushed alley with trepidation, dazed and confused,
trying to process the moment. The pitiless wind died down throughout
the night, leaving us to our frozen hinterland. The only thing
between us was the fog from our breath. My muscles tensed and, in a
move triggered by nothing but the natural desire to survive, I put an
arm up to get a little distance from the man. I braced myself for a
mugging.
“C'mon,
kid.” His voice was accommodating. He pulled my arm in a bid to
help me off the ground. “This ain't no place for anybody. December
in Minnesota ain't nothin' to fuck with. Come on...”
He threw my arm around his shoulder, dragged me to the sidewalk, then
flagged down a cab. He threw me in the back seat, then told the
driver to get me to the hospital, but didn't get in the cab for the
lift. At least the bare minimum is better than nothing.
I barely remember what happened next, but I puked all over myself in
the back of the cab. I do remember being diagnosed with a broken nose
the next day. A cute nurse pulled slivers of glass out of my head
with tweezers in the early morning hours. My mouth tasted of dry
blood and stale vomit. My head banged in agony. All I wanted to do
was take a shower and sleep in the warm comforts of my own bed.
This
was all the result of a darts game gone awry. A
fucking darts game.
I had previous history with Ozzie Scroggs before, but a darts game
brought our paths together again. It more than pissed me off. It
reminded me of something that needed to be forgotten a long time ago,
and made me feel more exposed than I ever wished to feel again.
Becoming a better darts player wasn't going to be my way forward, but
I couldn't let that night go without a response. This
was bigger than Scroggs.
It cut to my bones more than most will ever know.
PRE-ORDER THE DEVIL'S NEST ON AMAZON
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