Jackie Bushore's Blog: The Ghost in the Coffee Shop
March 17, 2017
New manuscript
Currently a little over halfway of my new manuscript, called "Rotten", an LGBT science fiction novel following a group of survivors in a post-war America.
An excerpt:
The boils on his skin had filled with a vile yellow fluid that stank of decay when they finally gave way and broke. Beneath them, raw flesh. Edgar cried out at the slightest touch. The sheets brushing his sores, the breeze through the window against exposed muscle fiber.
I didn't know what the Rot was then, only that something horrible was taking my new friend in a whirlwind of misery.
The last thing he said to me before a pustule on his cheek broke, exposing the sinew of his jaw and teeth barely visible beneath swollen, bleeding gums, was, "Alex, thank you. But joder todos." He was wheezing. Frightened, I reached for water, but when I presented it to him, I realized he was actually laughing.
"Joder todos," he repeated. "Fuck everything, Alex."
Later that night, Dad told me to take Andy into the basement and skin a kill for dinner. When we came back upstairs, Edgar was gone. All that remained were my sheets, stained with pus and blood, which Dad burned the next day.
He never said a word about what happened to Edgar, and I never asked. I didn't have to. The shotgun that hadn’t moved from beside the front door from was now sitting on the old wooden table on the back porch, its barrel speckled with blood.
An excerpt:
The boils on his skin had filled with a vile yellow fluid that stank of decay when they finally gave way and broke. Beneath them, raw flesh. Edgar cried out at the slightest touch. The sheets brushing his sores, the breeze through the window against exposed muscle fiber.
I didn't know what the Rot was then, only that something horrible was taking my new friend in a whirlwind of misery.
The last thing he said to me before a pustule on his cheek broke, exposing the sinew of his jaw and teeth barely visible beneath swollen, bleeding gums, was, "Alex, thank you. But joder todos." He was wheezing. Frightened, I reached for water, but when I presented it to him, I realized he was actually laughing.
"Joder todos," he repeated. "Fuck everything, Alex."
Later that night, Dad told me to take Andy into the basement and skin a kill for dinner. When we came back upstairs, Edgar was gone. All that remained were my sheets, stained with pus and blood, which Dad burned the next day.
He never said a word about what happened to Edgar, and I never asked. I didn't have to. The shotgun that hadn’t moved from beside the front door from was now sitting on the old wooden table on the back porch, its barrel speckled with blood.
