Welcome to the rough draft of Uncommon Empathy, Chapter 1. I figured I would post this to get some feedback on the story so far. I'll be doing this with most of the story probably (or at least the 1st half.)

Enjoy!

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Energy.

The pulsating sensation of an excited crowd.

The harmony I felt with my fellow bandmates as we walked out on stage.

The feeling I got deep in my gut when I took stage next to Mick, the lead singer, and pulled my bass up before releasing the first second of our song, beginning the show for all in attendance.

I beamed, this was the life. This was why I woke up each day, this was why I survived High School, this was why I quit college six months in and focused on my music.

Knights of Rodanthe was my reason for living.

So how I went from being bassist for the band to being the most feared serial killer since Jack the Ripper was entirely beyond me.

Let’s get one thing straight before you read this.

I’m the villain.

I’m the bad guy.

You’re not supposed to like me.

I’m ashamed of what I’ve done, and yet I couldn’t feel less remorseful. Perhaps, it’s just some part of me that feels ashamed.

The rest of me bathes in the screams of my victims, smiles as I take their life within my hand and do with it as I please.

I drink up their fear like a fine wine, I inject it into my veins and revel in the high. All my victims, women, perhaps deserved it.

I hated them, but they didn’t know.

I used my image to infiltrate their lives. I played myself up to be a gentleman who cared. I dined them, romanced them, showed them I wasn’t just a stoner bassist in a band. Once I gained their trust, I left them.

I let them sit inside their homes, sulking over the loss. Then I arrived, at their doorstep, at their apartment, wherever they lived so long as they lived alone, I never made victims of girls who had roommates, unless I was planning on taking them both.

I struck at midnight, never making the kill sexual. The energy I felt as I took their life was more than orgasmic for me.

I overpowered them, holding them down, placing my arm over their mouth, enduring their incessant biting with some sort of sick-

No, that’s not it.

I crumbled up the piece of paper and tossed it to the side. I had been trying for months to come up with a new idea for my next hit novel.

So far, I had nothing.

With “All These Little Things”, the words just flowed. Perhaps because those events actually happened to me, the pain, the happiness, the adventure, it all happened.

For the past nine months I had done nothing but sit around in the house. Two weeks prior, I went out with my friend Sal, but that night was pretty anti-climactic to say the least. I liked Sal, but his tastes were not my style. His idea of a great night out was going to a bar, wooing some girls, getting drunk, going home, and binge watching an entire season of Star Stories.

That’s fine for him, but ever since I got my first taste of a truly wild life with Paul, I had been craving to have it again. All my story ideas from then until now have involved main characters with wild lives; vigilantes, assassins, murderers, thieves, detectives, escaped criminals-turned-good-guys.

But, my life wasn’t really like that. My brain seemed limited to only developing a story around things I knew to be true, things I had experienced firsthand. It seemed impossible to break away from this formula.

Perhaps what was missing was an adventure of my own, I began to wonder.

I tumbled out of bed, leaving my notebook in place on the messy, unkempt sleeping space, and grabbed my tea mug from off the table. I strolled down the hall, across my living room, and into my kitchen, greeting Paul the dog with a smile before pouring myself another cup of hot water from the kettle on the stove.

Paul looked up at me, his goofy face seemingly questioning my existence. This adorable guy had been my rock through this past year.

I looked up at the clock, it was already 5:30PM. Time flies when you wake up at noon and write until daybreak.

But this is the life I wanted, wasn’t it? Being able to support myself off my writing, being able to sleep all day if I wanted to, take vacations whenever, and just pop out a book when the money gets low.

But that’s not how it was. After Paul died, I continued my blog. I had started making money from it, people began paying me to review their books, I was getting advertiser deals. For a short time, I began a vlog, but I lost my flow for it and quit five months in.

I hadn’t updated the blog in over a month, I had seven books that had been sent to me by fans who wanted them reviewed, some of them had up to $200 dollars tucked away in the pages as a “thank you,” or more likely, as an incentive to read them.

And recently, for whatever reason, my ex-wife Julie had begun sending me packages of my stuff. They were very trivial things, things I didn’t think to take when we divorced. They were things I didn’t really need, like picture frames I had bought to put our wedding photos in, spices and herbs that only I liked using in food, little cans of paint samples from when I wanted to repaint the house and Julie was totally against every color I picked, and at one point she even sent me an unopened toothbrush.

Looking back on the divorce, I don’t think she wanted it as much as I did.

I heard a knock at the door and I walked over to it grudgingly, not wanting to engage in human interaction this late in the day. I assumed it was Saul, since he had a habit of showing up uninvited every now and then.

I opened the door, and there stood that ridiculous, pale, messy haired Saul.

In one hand he held a lit cigarette, in the other he held a lollipop.

“Alan, what are you doing tonight?”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh,” he looked down absentmindedly, then stuck the lollipop in his mouth, “what about right now?”

“I’m trying to come up with a story right now.”

“Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“No,” I looked at him questionably, “It’s only 5:30.”

He looked down at the hand he had his cigarette in, and checked his watch, “Correction, it’s 5:45. Almost 6:00 if you wanna get right to the point.”

I nodded my head in frustration, “what do you want, Saul?”

“There’s this chick who wants to go out with me tonight, but she’s got a sister. The sister is pissy about not also having a date tonight, so they want to go out together. I would happily take them both out, but the hot chick says her sister doesn’t want to be third wheel, yadda yadda yadda, something about misogyny, yadda yadda yadda, so will you come?”

“No.”

Saul rolled his eyes at me, “why not? You do nothing but coop yourself up in this house all day, it’s depressing.”

“You know I’m not interested in dating anyone right now.”

“It’s one date, how bad can it be? Not like you’re gonna end up together.”

“Thanks but no thanks, Saul,” I began closing the door on him, but he whipped out his hand and stepped inside.

“Listen, Eberly, if I miss this date with this babe just because you got this celibacy thing going on, I will never doggy-sit Paul when you go on book tours ever again.”

I sighed in frustration before swinging the door open and pushing Saul out, “how many times have I told you not to have lit cigarettes in my house?”

He extended the cigarette through the doorway, just to piss me off it seemed, “so you’ll come?”

I bit my lip and shook my head, “fine, I’ll go get dressed.”

“Thatta boy,” he patted my shoulder before walking forward again. I stopped him and nodded towards the cigarette.

“Put it out.”

“Fine,” he tossed it into the bushes and walked inside behind me.

I put on a simple suit, nothing fancier than what Saul was already wearing, and looked to Paul for approval.

He’s a dog, so all he did was look at me and cock his head, but I assumed that meant “looking good, Alan.”

I walked out of the room to meet Saul, but instead of sitting on the couch patiently waiting for me like I expected him to, he was sneaking around my book shelf.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He looked at me bluntly, “do you have any copies of your books?”

“Yes,” he continued rummaging through the shelf, knocking down paperbacks and causing a mess, “why?”

“I was just texting the hottie we’re going out with tonight, she says she’s a huge fan of your work and wants a signed copy of your first book.”

“I don’t have spares to just give away,” I nodded my head, starting to rethink this entire thing, “I have to order them in advance.”

He turned to face me, a self-help book he randomly grabbed in his left hand, “well where is your copy then?”

“I’m not giving you my first copy,” I crossed my arms and furrowed my brow, “that’s sacred to an author.”

He rolled his eyes and continued rummaging, “you can always buy more.”

“Saul, I’m serious,” a phone began to ring, I assumed it was his since mine had been dead for two days straight. He finally took his destructive hands off my bookshelf and answered the call ringing from his back pocket.

“Oh, hey baby!”

I shook my head and sat down on the couch, Paul jumping up next to me, seemingly on guard from the crazy Saul.

“Oh yeah we’re in the car right now, we’ll be there in about an hour,” Saul walked towards the door and nodded to me, so I got up and followed him, whispering goodbye to my mutt before heading out the door.

00000000000000000000000000000000

Saul’s “dates” were meeting us at a restaurant known as Finnicky Barn, a country themed diner for those who have never actually been to the country side. It was then that I realized a simple T-shirt and jeans would have been just fine, but this is apparently what Saul considered a semi-formal kind of place.

In walked the dates, a thin blonde girl in a short red dress, and next to her, a shorter brunette in a longer, blue dress.

Both of them were incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t pin a name to either of them.

Saul stood up and hugged the brunette, and the blonde extended a hand to me before pausing and giving me a confused look.

“…Alan?”

I looked up at her and it suddenly hit me, “Jessica?”

Paul’s Ex-Fiancée.

She smiled wide and I stood up to give her a friendly hug. She began to giggle before sitting down across from me, her cheeks red from blushing, “I can’t believe it’s you, my little sister mentioned an Alan but I never thought it would be you!”

“She didn’t tell you my last name I presume.”

“No, she didn’t. She just said Alan, Saul’s friend.”

The brunette laughed, “I’m actually a big fan of your work, Alan. I read your blog around the time you first started it, I never thought I’d actually get to meet you! My name is Lyric.”

“Lyric Cawthon? Have I ever met you before?”

“I don’t think so, I’m a year younger than Jess but I never went to school, I was a really sickly kid and had to be homeschooled.”

“Anyhow,” Saul butt in, making sure he was seen in all his glory, “what is your opinion on politics?”

The table went silent for a moment, and then Lyric spoke up, “you’re going to discuss politics on a first date? Really?”

Jess held up her hand slightly, “well hold on, I think knowing the basis of a potential partner’s political stance is a good way to determine the possibility of future dates and a relationship,” she smiled then jokingly said “you wouldn’t want to end up in bed with a Republican, now would you?”

Saul creased his eyes at Jess, “I’m a Republican. What’s wrong with ending up in bed with me?”

I sensed the increase in tension in the room immediately, and tried telepathically informing Saul that he should probably be quiet.

“Well for one you’re not my date, so I guess that’s good,” Jess looked to Lyric, but the brunette seemed to be just as disinterested in this conversation as I was.

Saul started looking cocky, “just because you’re not technically my date doesn’t mean we can’t end up in bed together.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Are you really saying you won’t sleep with a guy just because he has different political opinions from you?”

“I’m saying I won’t date a guy with disgusting political opinions, and I won’t sleep with a guy I’m not dating because I’m not a whore.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I got up as quickly as I could.

Lyric got up soon after and followed me, “I do too.”

I didn’t go to the bathroom though, of course.

I went outside, getting some fresh air on the sidewalk of City Place. Lyric followed me out, and reached into her bag to pull out a pack of cigarettes.

I shook my head, I hate cigarettes. The scent, the smoke, the people who ignore the warnings and smoke them anyways despite causing harm to those around them who choose not to smoke, it all annoyed me to no end.

She looked up at me, hazel eyes looking innocent, “you mind if I smoke?”

“No,” of course I did. But I wasn’t going to impose my views on someone I just met.

Although I still felt in my heart that I had met her before, and recently too.

She took one of the white sticks out and put it up to her lips, “I know I need to quit,” she took a lighter out of her purse and struck a flame to the cigarette, “please don’t judge me too harshly, it’s been a rough year.”

I smiled out of pity, “it’s January.”

She laughed and nodded, “exactly.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been there too,” I turned away as she exhaled, “but it does get better.”

She looked at me, wide eyed and doubtful, “for you it did. But not everyone gets the pleasure of marketing their pain for others to enjoy.”

I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hit me hard, “I don’t feel like I marketed my pain.”

“Then what else would you call it honestly?”

“Sharing my story.”

“And you did. But then you sold it. You marketed it. You blogged about it and told people they could meet you and pick up their own signed copy of your story. You took your pain, wrote it down, made it relatable, and then you sold it to every sucker who would buy it.”

I huffed and turned to her irritably, “wait, I thought you liked my book and you wanted a copy from me?”

“I’m a fan of your work. Doesn’t mean I can’t be critical of the man behind the words.”

I turned away again, then breathed in some clean air before continuing, “then using your logic, every person who has ever written down their own story seeks only to profit from it.”

She tapped her cigarette and crossed her arms, “and to some degree you have to admit that most of them do.”

“Where is your evidence for that?”

“I’ve been telling my story on my own personal blog for six years now. I haven’t made a dime from it, never marketed it, and have never accepted a sponsorship. I have 400 steady readers and I’m fine with that. I could make a living off this if I wanted to, but I won’t.”

“Well that’s your choice.”

“Yeah. It is,” she sniffed a bit, likely from the cold, before dropping her cigarette to the ground and squashing it out, “I’m going back inside.”

As she walked away from me, I caught a glance of her side profile, and suddenly I remembered who she was.

She was the sad woman walking outside my window at the hotel in Missouri.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The rest of the date was confusing and awful.

Saul kept getting into political and social debates with Jessica, Lyric and I ignored each other almost entirely.

Until the end of the night when she asked for my number and sent me a link to her website.

“So, she never markets her blog, huh,” I thought to myself mockingly, looking down at the name of the blog with a slight chuckle. www.lyric-sings-a-story.com.

Saul took me home, letting me know the entire way back that I should have tried harder to talk him up so that Lyric and Jessica would like him. I told him he should have stopped bringing up politics just to impress them. He disagreed.

I greeted Paul as I walked in through the door, the little man was jumping and spinning in circles out of happiness, seemingly speaking to me, “you have been gone for DAYS, Alan. Never leave me again, I nearly had to go through the garbage!”

I poured him some fresh water, cleaned up Saul’s mess from earlier, changed into my robe, and hopped onto my laptop to get some writing done.

But I soon found myself playing solitaire instead.

I wasted about thirty minutes playing Tri-Peaks, my favorite version of solitaire, and in my opinion the easiest.

After a while, I decided I would check out Lyric’s blog. Perhaps, I figured, I could get some inspiration there.

Really though, I just wanted to see if she wrote about what happened to her that night in Missouri.

I went into the archives and checked the dates.

I couldn’t remember exactly what day Paul and I were in Missouri, but I remembered it was during Fall, so I started in September and worked through the blog, speed reading until I saw something relevant.

My eyes rested on a page titled “Missouri Misery.” I would have called it clever, but I was already too critical of her personality to do so.

I read through what I was thinking would be a heartbreaking story about her best friend dying, her mother getting cancer, her brother ending up in the hospital after a horrible car crash.

But my hopes of her misery including actual misery were trashed when I read the first sentence of this post;

To all men who think they have it hard.

You don’t.

Stop acting like it.

Awfully strong words for the beginning of a blog post, but perhaps this seemingly needless jab was relevant to the rest of the post, right?

It really wasn’t.

So, my sister and I are on a quest for her ex. She heard something about him going cross country from this stoner guy, and she wants to go see him and discover why.

At least at this point I knew Paul was right.

But low and behold, I got my period-

I rolled my eyes, did I need to know that? I had explosive diarrhea the night after I got roofied, I didn’t feel it necessary to add to the story though.

I skimmed through the rest of her post, and it was all about her period, from the brand of tampons she used to the shape of the stain when it leaked…

I suddenly realized that Lyric was one of them.

You know who I’m talking about.

The women (and some men) who think everything should be on the table to freely discuss, including bodily functions.

They get angry when other people get grossed out by these things, but I see no reason why we shouldn’t be grossed out.

If you put a plate of fecal matter on a dinner table and get told “that’s gross, please don’t do that,” you can’t just say “it’s a normal bodily function, we should normalize it and talk about it.”

Periods are already normalized, but they’re also private. Just like feces. Keep it in your pants and please stop flaunting it as a symbol of power.

Now that my opinion on that has been said, let’s get back to what I was doing before I decided to read Lyric’s blog.

Oh yes, I was playing solitaire.

What a great game.