Here’s the final installment to my story. Part One was posted earlier…if you did NOT read that first, please do so before reading part two….

Thanks again to my friend Brad for initiating this. It was great fun!

Enjoy…Remember: this is a first draft. :)

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First-line challenge, part two:

Inhale: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .

Alex lay on the tracks, motionless. He could feel the pain pulse in his legs, twisted under him and jammed between the concrete railroad ties and the gravel ballast. He was certain both legs were broken. He tried repeatedly to find the strength to drag himself off, but the pain was so strong in his chest, and his breathing so shallow from the injury to his right lung. He barely had the strength to stay awake.

For the next two minutes, he waited. The last audible voice he heard was somebody asking about who owned his Chevelle. He had wanted to throw rocks at them, get there attention in any way possible, but there was no strength to do anything but repeat the same prayer, over and over, believing that miracles do happen in the states as well.

At 2:05, as he struggled to keep his eyes open and avoid slipping into unconsciousness, he was jolted by the inevitable, foreboding sensation that time was running out. It was faint at first, nearly imperceptible. But within seconds, the vibrations were followed with a discerning hum. In less than two minutes, the southbound train would be passing by on its way to Ruxton Station, and there was nothing Alex could do to stop it.

Exhale: And let eternal life be found. . . .

*    *    *

Chelsea walked out of her manager’s office and looked at the clock: 2:04. The “meeting” took less than a minute for her to be handed the change-of-address form that her elderly neighbor had requested. It was this kind of special, door-to-door service that her manager expected from all of them at the Ruxton Post Office, and Chelsea was never one to complain. In fact, she knew that, if things worked out like she had been told earlier in the month, she would keep the same neighborly relationship going when she took over the Ruxton Station after the first of the new year. Her manager was a jerk in so many ways, and she wasn’t unhappy to see him retire. He got the customer service part right, though, and that more than made up for his misgivings.

She stepped outside, first folding the form and stuffing it in her bag as she walked blindly onto the lot. She was parked on the other end, and when she lifted her head, she noticed that several people had gathered around her silver Mustang. Immediately, she wondered if something had happened to her car. There were strangers leaned up against it, hands stuffed in pockets, waiting for something or somebody. One man, in particular, paced anxiously, speaking emphatically on his cell phone.

When the officer saw her approaching, he took one step toward her and pointed his finger toward the red Chevelle.

“This your car, miss?”

At first, she thought he was pointing at her Mustang, and began to answer when she saw Alex’s Chevelle with the Corolla rammed into its front end like a punch in the face. She stopped, relieved then shocked at the realization, and looked for Alex.

“No. The Chevelle belongs to Alex DeVeers. He’s not out here?”

“Nobody is claiming the Chevelle, miss. Did you see him today?”

Chelsea started walking toward the officer. “About ten minutes ago. He was dropping off a few letters and then heading out to—”

She stopped abruptly. In the sudden rush of seeing the crowd and Alex’s Chevelle, she had not noticed where she was walking. She looked down and saw a pair of sunglasses, lens now shattered and frame twisted.

She recognized them immediately as Alex’s.

“He’s not here?”

“Nope. I was just on my way to check the stores when—”

Chelsea looked to the left at the fence that separated them from the tracks. She could hear in the distance the approaching southbound train.

“What about the guy in the Corolla?” she asked. “Did he see Alex before he hit his Chevelle?”

“Never saw anything. The stupid kid had his head in his crotch looking for his phone that he dropped.”

Chelsea could feel the train now. She looked again at the fence and tried to imagine a scenario that might be different than what was becoming her worst fear. What did she have to lose by checking?

“Come with me.”

She ran toward the fence with the officer behind her.

“You think he’s down there?”

Chelsea didn’t have to answer. As soon as reached the parking lot’s edge and stepped on to the grassy hill, she could see Alex’s body, limp, on the tracks.

She dropped her bag and started climbing the fence, screaming over her shoulder.

“You never checked the tracks? You never checked them at all?”

The officer shouted to the crowd for some help, and within seconds, three others—including the stupid kid in the Corolla—were scaling the fence.

They knew they had no time to waste. All of them saw the train’s headlight bearing down the tracks. They felt the vibrations. Heard the ominous hum. Thirty seconds—maybe less—is all they had before Alex would be killed instantly.

Chelsea was the first to reach him. His eyes were wide open, frozen in fear as he muttered some prayer over and over. Somebody said something about him being paralyzed and not moving his neck, but there was no time for that.

She looked around to see where they could take him. Behind her was the grassy hill. No safe place there. She looked on the other side of the tracks. Directly in front of them and to the left was a sharp drop to the Gunpowder River. Pushing him over the edge and on to the rocks below might kill him instantly, so that wasn’t an option either. To the right, about 150 feet, was a clearing wide enough for them to lie him down safely. She looked at the officer, who understood their only option.

“You mean, you want us to run him toward the train reach that patch of grass?”

She didn’t waste the time responding. Instead, she pointed at the others.

“Each of you get around him like you’re carrying a coffin.” The officer didn’t like the analogy, but he and the others knew exactly what to do. “On my count, we lift him and head over there.”

Suddenly, the stupid kid in the Corolla realized what that meant. “I’m not running into the train, if that’s what you mean.”

As if on cue, the train operator saw them on the tracks and blew his horn. He threw on the emergency brakes, yet despite all of the drama of the sparks and the squeals, he knew it would never stop the train in time.

Chelsea reached over Alex’s body and grabbed the Corolla Kid. “You did this to him. And now you’ve got a second chance to save him. If you don’t work with us to get him off these tracks, I’ll make sure you’re the last one on them when that train passes through.”

She had no idea where that had come from. She started to tremble from the fear of it all—the rapid rush of adrenalin that they were all so close to death. She looked into his eyes for another second, and together they bent down to lift Alex.

“One, two, LIFT.”

Alex let out a deafening scream. His left leg was still caught on the tie, and he could now feel the new tear in his upper leg.

“Stop!” The officer kneeled down and freed Alex’s leg. There was another scream, and Alex passed out.

“No time!” shouted Chelsea. “Let’s go!”

They carried Alex’s lifeless body toward the oncoming train, stepping as carefully as possible over the concrete ties as the gap narrowed. They couldn’t afford any mistakes. One trip on the ties would mean certain death for all of them.

“Faster! We’re almost there,” Chelsea screamed. They could barely hear her as the roar of the train and the boom of the horn were deafening.

She could see the clearing just five steps away now. They were going to make it after all. She envisioned the last few steps, the relief they would feel when the train passed them by, the rush of the wind as it cooled them in their victory.

That’s when Corolla Kid tripped, just three steps from the patch of grass. He went down, and Chelsea tumbled over him, her momentum carrying her one step closer to safety.

The train was just feet away. The officer looked up. Saw the terror on the operator’s face. The helplessness and the fear.

Chelsea thought that Alex was the lucky one. Unconscious, he couldn’t feel this fear. He would never know how it all ended. He would go peacefully, unlike the rest of them.

The officer and the others felt differently. On their last, final instinct, they dropped Alex on the tracks and jumped in front of Chelsea. While the officer pulled Alex to safety, the other two dragged Corolla Kid and Chelsea a seemingly impossible ten feet to the edge of the patch of grass.

The train passed them, mauling Chelsea’s discarded shoe that remained on the tracks. Chelsea passed out, and Corolla Kid pulled out his cell phone, chirping with a new text message. He read it quickly, responded with a “not now! BRB!,” and then collapsed. The officer radioed for a medic, sat down next to Alex, and checked his pulse. Slow, but steady.

He looked at Corolla Kid and smiled. “Nice phone.”

“Can’t leave home without it,” he replied, smiling nervously.

“May I?” The officer extended a hand, and the Kid handed it over as it chirped again, now in the officer’s grip.

He flipped the top and checked the message.

Hurry. I’m hungry.

He typed in a response, sent it, and closed the phone. With one quick motion, he threw the phone as far as he could, northbound along the tracks. It landed with a metallic scrape against the concrete ties before leaning against the right rail.

“Oh, and by the way,” the officer offered. “You’re also under arrest.”

Corolla Kid said nothing as he lowered his head. He doubted he’d BRB to his girlfriend—or anyone else, for that matter—for a very, very long time to come.

I had the good fortune to have Thanksgiving with my lifelong friend, and we exchanged a first-line challenge, where we provided each other with the opening line of a potential story. We negotiated to write 1,000 words by Ravens/Bengals kickoff on Sunday, but I wrote my first 1300 words this morning, with about another 1000 to go later this weekend.

Here’s what I came up with.

He watched the seconds tick by – inhaling and exhaling – while he waited for the train to arrive. He had learned long ago that, when everything else around him was collapsing, the one thing he could focus on and control was his breathing. It allowed him to keep his head in Fallujah at the height of Operation Phantom Fury, when he repeated the one prayer he knew over and over, believing it was the bridge he’d need after being blown up by some IED—a discarded shoe or even a tired baby doll. He did everything possible to keep the rhythm of breath-prayer-breath in sync with his heavy steps.

Inhale, step-step: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .Exhale, step-step: And let eternal life be found. . .Inhale, step-step: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .

Afterward, when the insomnia kicked in back home in Baltimore, he thought about how breathing kept him alive as much as prayer.

Now, he hoped he could somehow pull off the same miracle, this time on the Light Rail tracks just outside the post office on Ruxton Road.

Inhale: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .Exhale: And let eternal life be found. . .Inhale: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .

He had just stepped outside after sending a few letters to the boys he came home with, and another letter to Charlie and Grace about their son’s heroics last January. It was his promise to Allan that morning, that he’d keep in touch with them and bring to life every laugh, every story shared with Allan before he died. It wasn’t hard to do, really. In fact, it helped him a little, too, when the pain seemed a little stronger on days like this.

He passed the animal hospital on the small strip of stores and stepped on to the parking lot. He could already feel the rumble of the approaching train on the tracks behind the stores, and he couldn’t wait to get in his car, turn on some Zeppelin, and drown out the rest of the world on his ride home. His restored red Chevelle stood out in the corner, the Crager mags catching the sun every which way. To his left, the roar of the northbound light rail train dulled the other sounds around him as it passed by, and he picked up his pace to his car. In just seconds, he would be back on Ruxton, navigating the sharp turn toward West Joppa Road and heading home.

He never made it. Not home, not on Joppa. No navigation of sharp turns. Not even any Black Dog or Dazed and Confused.

Afterward, he wasn’t sure whether it was the blinding shards of light from the mags or the deafening sound of the train passing by that distracted him, because somewhere between the last light rail car passing the Chevelle and Alex removing the sunglasses from his shirt pocket (those reflections from the mags were just a little too much like the flashes of light in Fallujah), he was struck with the full force of a 1985 Toyota Corolla. Later, the report would detail how the driver dropped his phone making the turn at Joppa and Ruxton and lost control of the car when he bent over to pick it up.

Alex’s glasses flew straight up in the air as his body, lifeless like some ragdoll drop-kicked across a room, hurtled the fence and tumbled down the embankment, finally resting on the train tracks.

He could still feel the vibrations from the northbound train that had just passed, a sizzle-hum that faded all too quickly as he lay on the tracks, unable to move.

On the other side of the fence, he heard the shits and damns from the teenaged driver, looking at the damage to his car that ended up in the front end of some guy’s nicely restored red Chevelle.

“Fuck! My father’s going to KILL me!”

Alex heard a few patrons coming out of the post office, rushing to the teen to see if he was okay. When they arrived, he told them to hold on as he texted his girlfriend.

Got phone, in accident, all ok. BRB.

They formed a circle around him and the two cars as someone called 911.

No, everybody’s fine. Just get here as soon as you can.

They stepped over the green anti-freeze fluid flowing down toward Ruxton. Was it from the Corolla? The Chevelle? Impossible to tell, another gawker said. The front ends of both cars were too intertwined to tell which took the harder hit. Other fluids—oil, transmission fluid, was it? And something dark red—they covered the ground like some middle school science experiment gone awry.

They talked louder. Waited for the county cop to sort it all out. Wondered who owned the pretty red Chevelle parked in the corner, now pushed against the fence that protected innocent patrons from falling onto the tracks.

Alex tried to shout, but his right lung was punctured, and the best he could do was whisper the same thing, over and over, as he waited for the sounds and the vibrations of the inevitable southbound train:

Inhale: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .Exhale: And let eternal life be found. . .Inhale: Direct me now, O gracious Lord. . .

Towering above the strip stores and across Ruxton was another three shops—all consignment—with a miniature Big Ben clock towering over the center store. Alex couldn’t see the entire face of the clock, but he could watch the second hand sweep between the 9 and the 3. The minute hand, moving ever-slowly toward the number 1 (was it really only a little after 2 p.m.?), helped him measure exactly how much time he had to get off the tracks. The southbound train would be passing through in less than 7 minutes.

Barely enough time to be rescued or signal ahead to the operator to stop the train before it reached Ruxton Station.

“Shit! My father is going to be so pissed,” he heard the teen say again.

Then the sound of a siren on Ruxton Road. Thank goodness, they all thought, that nobody was injured. The biggest victim, it seemed, was the poor stranger who owned that beautiful Chevelle.

When the officer arrived and made sure nobody was injured, he pointed a finger at the Chevelle.

“Anybody know who’s car this is?”

Inside the post office, the front desk attendant looked up at the clock: 2:01 p.m. Time to punch out, finally. She picked up the stack of envelopes she had just collected from her customers and moved them to the outgoing bin. She noticed Alex’s letters, the same cream-colored envelopes he always used to write to his buddies (and always Charlie and Grace), and figured he’d be long gone by now in his red Chevelle, playing his predictable Zeppelin, and heading to Loch Raven for a walk along the reservoir before heading home. Maybe she’d meet him there this time. Just to make sure he was okay.

She rinsed her hands, grabbed her coat, and headed toward the back door, where the tracks were just feet from the walkway that led her to the parking lot.

“Chels, got a minute?”

Of course she did. She turned around, stepped into her manager’s office, and closed the door.

It was now 2:03 p.m.

Please do not be disappointed in me. I just can’t string together enough minutes in the day to write a cohesive work of fiction. My mind is too bogged down with other thoughts of money, family, careers, and my place in this world.

I am not complaining, nor am I looking for any encouragement to “get through this” or “just keep writing.” I just need a little time to sort through this whole moment.

Thus, the shift in my Nano Project.

I started writing a story called Cafe Yesterday. Then I came up with another idea for a seven-book series that is a lot like Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. The ideas are flowing like crazy. The actual time I have to place Butt In Chair and write for any sustained period is practically nonexistent.

Take today for example. Leave house by 6:30 to take H to the gym. Pick up H at 10, then take M to soccer tournament at 10:30. Take H to skating lessons at 12:15. Take M to horse lessons at 3:00.

Again. No pleas for sympathy. We’re all in the same boat. I get that.

But as a writer, I can’t just flick that creative switch on and off as easily as I can start and stop the Jeep in the carpool shuffle. As much as I’d like to be like those writers who can do that….I cannot.

Yet….I will not abandon the Nano Project altogether. Instead, I will attempt a creative nonfiction piece of no fewer than 50,000 words that chronicles my attempts to locate, lasso, and enliven my muse, to discipline myself as a writer to somehow do the things I’ve always wanted to do.

Could be ultra boring to read, and I promise you nothing. I may not even share all that I write. But if I can do this–If I can fulfill this promise to me to spend 50,000 words exploring the writer within, then I believe something good will come out of it.

Now. Back to the car pool line…

Café Yesterday, Chapter One

by Rus VanWestervelt

At first, Devin let the panic consume him almost as fully as the speed with which he was falling. The panic started much earlier, of course, when he was still on the ridge, that first slip and then the desperate lunge for the small branch that gave him just enough time to realize what was happening.

He had been in the woods for nearly three days, hiding, surviving, eluding Jake and the others who wanted him dead. Their reasons were no different than any of the others; Jake was just better at the game. He had a way of running his business that way: smooth, clean, with a reputation of giving you every break you deserved—and then some. But when your time was up, when you had crossed that line and missed his final deadline, Jake made sure the payback was swift. It just made good business sense to clean up and move on.

But Devin was different from the others who had crossed that line. Everybody who knew of his survival skills in the woods was already dead, and so he played the role of the senseless fool to Jake and all the others, knowing that when he needed to fall back on being a Rambo in the woods, he would fool them all.

Jake was hundreds of miles south, still in Baltimore, combing the Medfield district one block at a time, getting a little more agitated with each homeless idiot who hadn’t seen Devin in days. They suppressed their smiles, their laughter in seeing Jake a little unnerved by Devin’s disappearance. Stevie and the others on the street knew better than to let Jake sense their delight; marked men like Devin didn’t survive this long, and the fact that Jake was now the one conducting the search-and-kill mission told them all that this payback was anything but swift. Something was going wrong. They hoped Devin was enjoying this brief reprieve; once Jake found him, the payback would be anything but swift. Devin was in for a slow and torturous end to his life.

Devin knew it would be this way with Jake. In the past, death was never waiting at the end of the game. He had been beaten badly a few times, and one of them—Carl—had dished out his paybacks by getting a little too friendly with Devin’s little sister. Jake’s rules were different; his reputation rested on his kindness and faith in his customers to honor their end of the contract. When they didn’t, it was never a question how it would turn out. It was a matter of when.

In the seconds before the thin branch snapped and Devin slipped over the cliff’s edge, he cracked a smile in his panic at the irony of eluding Jake. He had made it this far north without a soul following him. He had been extremely careful in remaining anonymous since leaving Baltimore. He had pocketed the last few sales of smack to give him enough cash to run, and the slate-gray Honda Civic he stole from the Fullerton Park-and-Ride was too common to warrant a stop along I-95. Devin was 400 miles away before Jake—or anybody else for that matter—had even realized that he had run. As far as the world was concerned, Devin Andrews had disappeared completely, just as if he had never existed at all.

The smile didn’t last long, though. The crisp crack of the branch wiped all expression from his face. His feet dug into the dry dirt trying to get some kind of leverage, but the ground crumbled beneath him as pebbles and patches of grass tumbled down into the ravine, lost in the darkness. He was at least 100 feet from the bottom (as far as he could tell), and he was nearly certain that he would not survive the fall.

When the branch snapped, he searched desperately to the left, then to the right for something to cling to. Every vine and branch in sight was thinner than the one he held on to, with the exception of a single root about 8 feet below him, protruding from the cliff.

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