Would love to hear any thoughts people have on the voice and flow etc. Be as brutal as you like, it's all time I appreciate.
Here goes:
Chapter one continues of course but I figured that might be too much as it is... please feel free to stop wherever you want and offer opinions. Even if it's just "I stopped reading at X cause it seemed like a bunch of nonsense."- PROLOGUE -
A quick one-two,
For every occasion.
And a talk of things to come.
’She was the kind of woman you only admit to touching after downing a hundred pints of strychnine. A bug eye to see the world and buck teeth to leave a mark on both your member and your psyche... I ain’t a looker, clear as day, so when I tell you I stand by this gal and by comparison you’d want to lay me down for a good one-two you should understand my meaning.
‘Her aroma left a trail, and I ain’t speaking in proverbials neither, this was a stench to mark the pavers. Walk a yard behind her and you’ll find yourself in the basin next week rubbing raw the soles of feet and burning all you wore. Enter a room, hell enter a town she been in for more than a newts breath and you’ll hear the reeling of all but blind men with nasty colds. When it’s all said and done she got the stench and stature to turn us all and halt a species... still, there was a time it weren’t so bad, quite the reverse in fact.
‘Two eyes, both well socketed ice blue; pierce your heart from ten miles or more no matter your preference. Teeth as white as snow; straight and sized accordingly. A beauty to be sure!
‘Such a damn shame. You see the dreg that did it, take a part of him to the ones in charge and you’ll be a damn sight richer than me, that’s for sure.
‘Mistake they say, don’t much matter to most. Beauty like that’s a rare breed, worth a pretty penny she ever felt the pinch. Deserved better... much better than an accidental jinxing from a drunken stranger in a place as uncivil as Drowning Duck. Wizard they say, Alchemist maybe, not much of anything he ever find himself beside a man with the ability to read a wanted poster. Baker’s the name, Wyman Baker, you ever run into him give him a quick one two from me will ya... the bad kind.’
- CHAPTER ONE -
Barrel full of Baker,
The two brothers,
And the Bumble inn of Rah-Rah-Rah.
Wyman Baker was not a great man. He wasn’t even a particularly good one ... not yet. He wasn’t brave or generous or considerate—the opposite of at least two of those in fact. This all explains to some extent how he got himself stuck upside down in a barrel full of entrails, his legs waving about, trying to get free. He deserved it of course.
But before he found himself in such a place Wyman Baker was making his way in to the region of Rah-Rah-Rah. A town given its name after a lengthy million-coin campaign aimed at uplifting the spirit of its citizens. Unfortunately, this campaign was ill advised and ended in the murder of its marketing co-ordinator by the hands of an angry mob. The name however, seemed to stick and the people adopted it without any noticeable lift in spirit, quite the reverse for the minority with uncontrollable stutters.
Wyman Baker wasn’t a fan of the place. He didn't have a stutter or anything, he just thought himself better than it, worthy of something fancier. But his fractured glasses and dishevelled clothes let him fit in fine as he entered Rah-Rah-Rah. He was an old man. Short and squat with just a hint of the handsome he used to be. He wore a dirty brown vest that was at least a size too big for him, under it was a stained shirt that was only half tucked into his pants and missing a few random buttons.
He was running from many things, not all immediately memorable but the majority severe enough to merit his leaving the much nicer town of Oh-Aar Oakey and risk his feeble mind and body amongst the denizens of Rah-Rah-Rah. He had been here many times before, though his memory of its maze of streets was fading rapidly.
He knew it was not a town fit for frailty of any kind, save for lack of intelligence. In fact any sign of intellect was often greeted with a blow to the head by an ungrateful listener. So Wyman kept his mouth shut as he crossed the steeply declining area that divided one town from the next.
In this little strip was a mass of stalls, all crowded around the base of lopsided buildings that twisted up and away from the sidewalk. It was all built at a severe angle on the awkward slope that made up the area between Oh-Aar Oakey and Rah-Rah-Rah and the buildings seemed to fall like dominoes against each other in an attempt to find some normalcy on unsteady ground. The merchants staffing each of the stalls were as varied as their wares and as odd as the architecture. Families of slanted children sold handmade instruments next to a woman at least three times their size who attempted to sell objects she had likely found clung to the drains of back alleys.
This was the in-between, an area of little government, belonging neither to the side of Oh-Aar Oakey or Rah-Rah-Rah and the ones that lived there seemed shunned from both sides unless they sold something of necessity.
An item caught Wyman’s eye on a nearby table. It was the size of his palm but bulbous at one end and stretched out to a mouth like trunk at the other. Wyman walked over and examined it. Confused, he picked it up and in doing so squeezed the larger end slightly which caused it to erupt in a torrent of obscenities from its makeshift mouth. Wyman took a step back, startled - he hadn’t seen one in red before.
The large woman attempting to shift her wares from behind the table gave Wyman a forced smile revealing a mouth full of gums and nothing more. ‘Just a quarter piece of shine if you gots it, and naught a one more, bargain for you my friend!’
Wyman considered the need for such an item for a moment and could think of nothing. He was anxious though, he hadn’t used any magic for a few days now.
‘I’ll take it,’ said Wyman as he reached into a pocket and fumbled within it for a moment. His fingers touched nothing but dust and cotton trails but as he took out his hand there was a shiny half-coin between his fingers. Wyman threw the coin on the woman’s table then quickly fell back into the crowd. The woman was grateful for the tip and thought well of Wyman for the few moments it took for his magic to wear off and the coin to fade from sight. She cursed into the crowd but Wyman was long gone.
He made his way through the in-between and on to the more level streets of Rah-Rah-Rah.
