The Journey Begins... 16,066 Words

 Well, I didn't manage to include kafkaesque just yet, but it's coming! Got my writing done early so I can head up to the real Jackie's Place this afternoon... tomorrow I will see how it goes getting some writing done at the cottage. I have tried to get as much done the last couple of days as possible- taking advantage of the rainy weather. The plot is starting to take shape for me, I think I actually have a direction to take.

Today's excerpt is from the end of my writing session, where James, Josh, Maeve and Gordon are about to begin their journey to find Danae. In a surprising twist, James has been reading Gordon's dissertation.

               They threw their bags into the back of the Cadillac Escalade James had acquired for the trip (most likely borrowed from the set of Donnie’s River: Legacy) and were on their way. Josh was surprised by the copy of Gordon’ dissertation he found on the passenger seat. He could see a number of sticky notes sticking out the side of the document, and as he flipped through the pages, he could see a great deal of highlighting and notes in the margins.

               “You brought this?”

               “I figured it would help us,” James responded nonchalantly, avoiding eye contact with Josh who was delivering a fierce imitation of his mother’s perpetual stare. “I think this guy really knows what he’s talking about, you know?” James continued. “I stayed up reading it last night, and he is really onto something. I never knew how unfair it was that rats got such a bad rap during the bubonic plague, but he lays out this flawless argument that…” his voice faded as he caught a glimpse of Josh’s face, which was frozen in an expression somewhere between outrage and astonishment.

               “He said it would help us find Danae… so I figured I would study it.” James finished with a shrug.

               Josh couldn’t imagine how exonerating rats’ involvement in the spread of deadly disease would help them find Danae, but he was touched by the effort. James had always been a hard worker, studying scripts and learning everything he could about what he considered relevant to the characters he portrayed. Josh could see that in the absence of knowing what to do, James had fallen back on what had worked for him in the past. It was sweet.

               “Okay,” he said. “Good idea.” Before James could continue his explanation of the opening chapters of Gordon’s dissertation, they had arrived at Toodie-Loo Incorporated, which looked just as unhinged in the early morning light as it had the day before. They entered the building, shuddering at the creaky door sound effect.

               “I’m back here!” Gordon called from the back of the store. They followed the sound of his voice and found him in a small back room. There was a table set up with 3 empty chairs. Gordon had a map of Ontario laid out on the table, and it appeared he had circled their location on the map. But there was no other location indicated.

               “What is this?” James asked, with more curiosity than accusation. It seemed that in reading some of Gordon’s dissertation, he had come to trust the detective more than the previous day. Josh and Maeve exchanged a glance. They were less certain, their shared fear uniting them for a moment.

               “We are going to parley,” he said, pointing toward the empty chairs at the table.

               “Parler?” James asked. “You mean the social media platform for Nazis? Do you think she has been kidnapped by operatives from the far right??”

              

Gordon rolled his eyes in a shockingly accurate imitation of the famous Donnie O’Toole eye roll gif.

               “Don’t be obtuse,” he said. “We are going to palaver, have a conference- but not like an academic conference, which would obviously be a complete waste of time. Today is the initiation of the journey, we must determine the path forward. Please sit down,” he said, once again indicating the empty seats.

               “I thought you said you knew where she was,” Josh said, his heart sinking. He had known that trusting the strange man had been a stretch, and here he felt his worst fears were confirmed. “Shouldn’t we just… go there?”

               “One does not simply walk into the liminal space,” Gordon said incredulously. “This is a journey of the soul as much as a journey of the body. We must let our souls direct the path and not the other way around. To do anything less will lead to complete disaster and almost certainly to abject failure. Do you not realize that we are placing our very souls in peril?”

Here is the full James VanDerMemes video, should you need it for inspiration: https://youtu.be/tLHAoYtxrt8