Oct 10

Written by: Bruce A. Sarte
Monday, October 10, 2011 2:27 PM 

This Sample Sunday is from Towering Pines Volume One: Room 509 available in paperback, Kindle, Nook, iPad and Smashwords formats!

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When light overcame darkness, Liam’s head thumped like he was hung over. His vision returned to him slowly and he could see Dragon players jumping up and down in celebration but he couldn’t hear anything. Liam couldn’t remember where he was or what had happened. Then he saw the crowd that had begun to gather around him. The rest of the team was above him, talking to him but he couldn’t hear them. His head rocked back and forth in frustration. He just couldn’t understand what was going on. He must be at a game but he couldn’t remember.

Ashleigh broke through the crowd with a look of terror on her face. It was the kind would have been perfect in A Nightmare on Elm Street, not at a high school basketball game. As soon as she saw him looking at her, she smiled and wiped a tear from below her eye that Liam couldn’t see. She threw herself on top of him in a poorly feigned display of concern that made the redheaded cheerleader to her left roll her eyes. Sometimes Liam wished Ashleigh would just go away and this was one of those times. The dangling of her blonde hair into his face made him want to shave her head. Much to his dismay all he could do right now was stare up into her blue eyes and hope that she could read the annoyance on his face. Apparently she could not.

Then all at once, his senses came back to him slamming into him like a locomotive. He was overwhelmed by Ashleigh’s cries of relief and then he heard the indecipherable chatter of his teammates. As he tried to push Ashleigh away, he was hit by a wave of pain that started at his shoulder and ran down his spine causing his to lose control of his arms for just a moment. When his face seized in pain, Ashleigh noticed that.

“Are you okay baby?” Ashleigh yelled in his ear over the cheering of the crowd.

Suddenly Liam’s memory came back to him. He remembered where he was. He remembered why the game was important. And most important: Liam remembered why his shoulder felt like it had ten knives stuck into it.

“Get…off…me…NOW!” Liam shouted through clenched teeth. Ashleigh’s sat up suddenly, her face frozen in surprise.

“What did you say to me?” Ashleigh whined. Liam responded by shoving her off of him with his good arm, causing her to stumble backward into the group. Fueled by his seemingly insatiable anger, Liam rolled onto his good shoulder and pushed himself up to his knees… slowly and painfully. Stan moved to help Liam to his feet.

“Hey man, you all right? I can’t believe the stupid ref didn’t call a foul on that. Rogen hit you like a linebacker!”

“What? Rogen?” Liam looked at Stan in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that Rogen did that to him. Then to compound the crime, no foul was called. The realization hit him that the game was now over and the Mustangs lost. That was all he could stand. Liam quickly located where Seth Rogen was. He saw him standing across the court near his bench high fiving his teammates. Liam ran across the court, pushing through people and not even noticing the faces as he plowed past them. He couldn’t hear anything; he couldn’t see anything except Rogen’s self-satisfied smirk. Liam didn’t even feel the pain in his shoulder as he picked up the folding chair and hit Rogen in the back of the head with it. Rogen fell like a sack of potatoes to the ground. So, when Liam hit him the second time he felt it a little bit in his shoulder when the chair connected with the side of his head. The third time the chair connected with Rogen’s head blood splatter hit Liam’s face bringing him back to reality. Liam dropped the chair as if it weighed two hundred pounds right before he was subdued by a crowd of people.

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Copyright ©2011 Bruce A. Sarte