Hello, I am taking part in NaNoWriMo 2019. For those of you who don’t know NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. (I guess it should be called InaNoWriMo as it is now International!) The idea is to write a novel length story (at least 50000 words) in one month (so at least 1667 words a day for 30 days). Last year I took part and “won” (ie I wrote over 50k in a month). This year I am going to give it another go.
As I did last year I will use @MarianneWest’s daily freewrite prompt as a starting point (so each day I will use themostdangerouswritingapp.com and write for 5 minutes with @mariannewest’s prompt in mind. I will then write another 1500 odd words and publish it on the blockchain so you can see what crap I come up with!
Today is 1st November 2019 and I am using yesterday’s prompt to write the first chapter of my story
(@mariannewest/day-741-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-peak)
Today’s prompt is:
peak
Marlie stood in the shadows trying not to breathe in too much. As well as the usual late-night stink of urine, kebabs and weed there was something else in the air too. Glancing down at the dirty grey floor, she saw a pile of what looked suspiciously like vomit. She took a step away and looked at her wrist, still unused to the watch that was strapped to it.
He was late.
Of course, he was late. Billy was always late.
But he always showed up. Sometimes not on the same day, but he always showed up.
He was dependable. Just in an undependable kind of way. That's what Marlie always told Gabs when she told her that he wasn't any good for her.
Gabs was jealous. It was plain to see. Marlie could see it in her eyes. She didn’t blame her, if their situations were reversed she’d be jealous too.
The bus station was busy. Even at this time. There were groups of people, girls and boys heading home after a night on the town, bellies full of cheap food and expensive booze. They laughed shouted, stumbled. There were couples too. Some of them were arm in arm, or hand in hand, leaning on each other’s shoulders. Some them stood apart, not looking at each other. Some of them were talking in hushed but angry tones. Or one of them was doing the talking the other looking away. Marlie smiled. She had been there.
And, then, there were the usual loners. The homeless, the mad and the just plain weird. There was one woman dressed in so many clothes she looked like the Michelin man, dragging a battered bag on wheels, picking stuff up from the floor and sniffing it. A man stood on the far side of the station talking to himself, occasionally shouting, telling the voices in his head to fuck off.
People like that didn’t bother Marlie. Leave them be and they’ll leave you be, Auntie Dor always said.
There was another man that worried her more. He stood at one of the other stops, smartly dressed, like he had just come from an office job, or was just going to one. Even though it was too late - or too early - to be doing either. He kept looking over at Marlie, glancing away when she met his eye. He was watching her.
For a moment, Marlie wished she smoked. People who smoked always had something to do. She felt awkward, lost without her phone. She never went anywhere without her phone. But Billy was adamant. If they were gonna do this, they needed to do it right. They needed to disappear into thin air. Phones could be tracked. Everyone knew that. And it wasn’t just the police who could follow you. Anyone bright enough - or with enough money to afford to employ someone who was - could do it. No, if you wanted to disappear you needed to ditch your phone.
“Leave no trace,” Billy had said, earlier. “When you buy the bus tickets, pay with cash.” He had looked at then, his eyes locked with hers, his hand gripping hers so tight she had almost cried out. “Bring as much cash as you can, Lie.”
Billy was the only one who called her “Lie”. If people shortened her name most people called her Marl. Gabs called her Mar. Marlie always said it made her sound like an old woman, like somebody’s grandmother. She wouldn’t let anyone else call her that. Only Gabs. Marlie felt herself begin to tear up. She pulled her bag from her shoulder and pulled a packet of tissues from it.
Marlie thought the cloak and dagger stuff was a bit much. Billy was being paranoid and she told him so, too. After all, there was nobody who would be looking for her. No one who would miss her. Apart from Gabs, of course.
“People might not be looking for you, Lie,” Billy had said, letting go of her hand. “But, they are as sure as fuck gonna be looking for me. You don’t know the people I know. They are bad people, Lie. I’m in trouble, and the kind of trouble I’m in is the kind you don’t want following you.”
She hadn’t asked him what sort of trouble he was in. She hadn’t asked him who the bad people were. Sometimes, when he came to see her, Billy would hand her a paper bag stuffed with cash. He’d tell her to look after it for him, then a few days later he’d ask for it back. At first, she had wondered if he was testing her. She wondered if he counted it when she gave it back. She knew better than to take anything from it. She wasn’t stupid. Once, though, she had slipped a tenner into the bag, to see if he would notice, say something. He hadn’t. She never asked where the money came from, or what he was going to do with it when she gave it back to him.
Marlie didn’t know exactly what it was Billy did, but she could make a guess if she really wanted to.
She just didn’t want to.
After wiping her eyes and blowing her nose she used another tissue to dab at the palms of her hands. The bus tickets she held on to so tightly were damp and Marlie checked them, made sure they weren’t damaged. She’d always suffered from sweaty hands. It was one of the things she most hated about herself.
“But where will we go, Billy?” she had asked.
“The Peak District.” Billy hadn’t hesitated. She'd never been, but he told her it was beautiful. "You're gonna love it, Lie. My Dad took me there once. We went hiking. Walked until we couldn’t walk no more. I had a blister the size of a golf ball, really I did. We pitched a tent and cooked beans on a camping stove. Ate them straight from the pan. So much open space, Lie, it’ll take your breath away. We’ll start there.”
Gabs said she thought the Peak District was a shithole. But then Gabs thought anywhere outside of North London was a shithole.
Billy had told Marlie not to tell anyone where they were going. In fact, he told her not to tell anyone they were leaving at all. But Marlie couldn’t just leave without saying goodbye to Gabs.
“She’ll be worried,” Marlie told Billy. “If I just disappear, she’ll think something bad has happened and she’d contact the police. Do you want the police looking for us, Billy?” Billy had shaken his head. No, he didn’t want the police looking for them. He agreed Marlie could tell her that she was leaving. That she was okay.
“Just don’t tell her where we’re headed.” Billy said. “It’s safer for everyone.”
Marlie hadn’t meant to tell Gabs. But she always told Gabs everything. And Gabs was so good at keeping secrets. So when Gabs asked Marlie told her the truth. But she made her promise not to tell a soul.
“Don’t go, Mar,” Gabs had said, after a long silence. They had met at the park, just before dusk. They’d sat on the same bench by the playground they had been going to since they were kids. Marlie pretended not to notice the tears in her friend’s eyes because if she knew if she wasn’t careful she would burst into tears. “I don’t trust him. You know he doesn’t treat you right. And besides.” Gabs wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Do you really want to get mixed up in whatever he’s involved in? He’s running scared, Mar. And he’s a big boy. Like you’ve said a million times, he can look after himself. He don’t scare easy, Mar. Whatever he’s running from must be dangerous. And whoever is chasing him will be chasing you, too.”
Marlie hadn’t said anything. She had put her arms around her friend and gave her a hug. They had sat like that until the sun had gone down, and the yellow street lights had flickered on around them.
Marlie glanced up as a bus - their bus - pulled up at the stop. The doors shuddered open, and a few passengers stepped onto it, dragging bags or carrying rucksacks. Marlie looked around her. Still no sign of Billy. She checked her watch again. The buss would be leaving in five minutes time. The ticket was valid for the whole day, so if they missed this bus it wasn’t the end of the world. But it would mean hanging around in this dark and smelly place for another three hours.
Where the hell was he?
Perhaps, something had happened to him. Perhaps, he had tried to call her, to tell her the plan had changed, but she didn’t have her phone on her, did she? There was no way he could contact her.
The smartly dressed man was walking towards her. Marlie could feel the sweat on her hands and she tried to wipe them, one at a time, as discretely as she could, on the back of her trousers.
“Are you waiting for someone, Miss?” The smartly dressed man smiled at her. Marlie ignored him, looking around him, desperately searching the crowd for a sign of her Billy. The man shifted, he was pulling a bag from his shoulder. Marlie took a step away, moving closer to the bus.
“I have something for you,” the man said. Marlie glance up, suddenly wondering if Billy had sent the man to meet her. To give her a message. “Here.” In his outstretched hand he waved a brightly coloured leaflet. Marlie recognised a symbol on it and let out a deep breath. He was a Jehova’s Witness, a God-botherer trying to save her soul.
“No thanks,” Marlie said. “I don’t do God.”
“Well, that’s okay, Miss,” the man said, laughing. “God does you. Where are you headed to, anyway?”
Marlie ignored him. The doors of the bus - the bus she was supposed to be on - hissed shut and the bus pumped out a cloud of smoke as it pulled off.
“Are you waiting for someone?” the man asked again, moving nearer to Marlie.
“Yeah, she’s waiting for me. Now do one before I stuff that leaflet up your arse.” Billy took hold of Marlie’s arm and pulled her away from the man.
“You’re late,” Marlie said. “We’ve missed the bus. We have to wait for three hours now, Billy. What the fuck are we gonna do for three whole hours?”
“Change of plan,” Billy said. He was wearing a dark jacket, hood pulled up, and a rucksack on his back. He marched towards the other end of the bus station and Marlie had to almost run to avoid being dragged.
As they approached a line of maybe a dozen other people a bus pulled in. It was smaller than the others and had a picture of a turtle or a tortoise on it and the words “The Slow Coach” emblazoned in fluorescent green along the side. Billy pushed his way to the front of the queue, ignoring the tuts, the excuse mes and the do you minds of the other passengers.
“But the tickets I bought aren’t valid for this service,” Marlie protested.
Billy smiled and pulled two tickets from his jacket pocket.
“These are.”
The bus driver scanned the tickets and handed them back to Billy without looking at either of them.
“Come on,” Billy said, heading for the back seats. He sat by the window on the left-hand side, patting the seat beside him.
“I don’t think this bus is going to the Peak District, Billy.”
“Good,” Billy said, pulling his hood off his head. “Because that’s not where we’re going.”
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As usual, I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes (and then popped it into google docs to check for errors and tidy it up a bit):
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