Excerpt the Second

Image via WikipediaI'm fairly certain that I've at least got an actual scene from my novel going on here. The goal was to focus on character motivation...I was going to write about how Muriel wants to be a daredevil and find adventure but can't have it because she's stuck in the city. You can all see just how well that went. I gave the nutjob just what she wanted...or, well, what she thinks she wants for now.
 Somehow I never end up developing the parts of my characters that I sat down to develop.

I do believe I have a new development for my Muriel, however: She's crazy as a loon.

(Psst...I hope there aren't as many typing and spelling mistakes in this excerpt as there were in the first!)



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The snow was falling in sheets. As she leaned out the window, feeling the tiny, icy pinpricks land on her skin, Muriel tried to make out the building across the alleyway beneath her bedroom. It was all in vain; there was simply too much snow.

She leaned back into the room and shut the window. Chilled water dripped down her face as the flakes that had lighted on her head began to melt in the warmed air. Snow, and lots of it. Just what she had been hoping and praying for. December and January had almost passed completely without so much as a flake.

Behind her the television was chattering away, and she crossed the room to her dresser so that she could turn it off. The entire house was finally asleep. Now it could be quiet.

While she was still at the front of her room she flipped off the light switch, leaving the room in complete darkness, and felt her way to her bed. Muriel didn't want the slightest bit of glare on the window. She was hoping that the man would come and stand on the sidewalk that night like he had every night for the past two weeks, the one that she could see if she looked as far to the left as she could while staring out at the city beyond. Of course, the snow that night would make it harder to see him, but Muriel had the feeling she would. It was almost as if the world around him wanted him to be seen.

The snow was so thick that night, however, that she couldn't even see the fire escape directly outside. There was only a thick, animated whiteness, squirming and moving as if it were alive as each snowflake rocketed toward the ground. Muriel tried to zero in on a single flake and follow its journey to the ground, but it had left her field of vision before she could really even focus on it at all.

All seemed still in the frozen world outside save those madly swirling snowflakes.

Muriel snapped awake before she had even realized that she had fallen asleep. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she was covered in cold sweat. Something had frightened her, of that she was convinced. But what?

She rested her forehead on the glass. A chill shook her as the heat of her body met the frigid windowpane. How long had she been asleep? It couldn't have been very long, for the snow had not slowed one bit...unless it was going to snow buckets all night.

That was when Muriel saw it. Or him, rather.

He was in the alleyway this time. Not very far into it, as he still would have been quite visible from the street were the weather not so bad. He was only a relatively small black form, shaped very much like a man and nearly invisible behind the wall of falling snow. But it was him, there was no question.

Muriel slid her window open and climbed out onto the fire escape wearing nothing but her pink flannel nightgown.

The cold snow quickly penetrated her slippers, but she didn't care. Holding onto the rail to keep her balance, Muriel climbed down the metal stairs, taking note of how many level areas she came to. There were three floors between her bedroom and the alley below. Before long she came to the ladder and nearly slid down it rather than climbed.

Her foot finally struck pavement when she realized that what she was doing was absolutely insane. She was a thirteen year old Jewish girl standing in the middle of a snow filled alleyway in Brooklyn at who knew what hour of the night to meet some stranger that she had seen from her window. It was completely mad.

Mad and wonderful.

Muriel grinned and set off in the direction of the anthropomorphic black figure.

The closer she got, the more of him she could see. It was as if they two of them were concealed in a bubble; the blizzard was raging all around it but not inside of it. It could have simply been that she was so focused on him that the snow didn't matter anymore, but Muriel always liked to imagine that something simply wonderful was happening, even when nothing out of the ordinary was going on at all.

When she was only a few feet away from him he turned, and she saw that he was wearing a bowler hat pulled down over his face that was as black as the suit he wore. It looked as if not a single snowflake had landed on either one. They were still both just as black as black could be.

He reached out his hand, palm up, and beckoned to her.

Behind her was her apartment, and inside were her mother and father. Muriel loved them more than anything else in the world and couldn't stand the thought of leaving them alone. She also knew that it was incredibly wrong to go with a stranger, because when one did such a thing one had no idea where one would end up.

And that was what had her pinned. She didn't know why, but Muriel knew that this individual wasn't your garden variety stranger. He had somewhere that he would like to take her, and if she didn't go with him, she would never find out where that place was.

Crazy, irrational, and sometimes unbelievable Muriel took his hand and followed after him when she felt him pulling on her. He threw the jacket of his suit over her shoulders and led her on toward where she knew the street was, but where she saw nothing but that moving whiteness.

Before long the white was still and hazy, and she realized that there was no more snowfall. There was only seemingly endless white fog, and various details and outlines coming gradually into focus.

Though she was dazed and dizzy, Muriel actually managed a laugh. She had come into the alleyway just to talk to this gentleman, and so far she hadn't said a single word.