The Dark Days of Me and Him - Teaser

On February 1, the website will go live and the first two chapters of THE DARK DAYS OF ME AND HIM will be up.  Two weeks after that, another two chapters will be up.


But for now, here's a teaser from the first chapter:

Charlie Hudson drinks his morphine through a straw and decides that the next person who tells him how lucky he is to be alive is going to get a rectal thermometer shoved up their nose.

His mother sleeps in the corner with one leg stretched out in front of her and the other turned at an uncomfortable angle. Charlie hasn't seen her sleep so soundly in years. He tries to sit up and nearly blacks out from the pain. Never in his life did Charlie think a three inch incision in his belly could hurt so damn much. Even with a gratuitous helping of pain killers coursing through his body, Charlie still feels everything. The stitches tugging at his skin, the throbbing hole where his spleen once took up space doing whatever it was spleens do, the ends of his broken tibia rubbing together minutely every time he moves. No one has signed his cast yet. It is moon white and itches, though not enough for Charlie to do anything about it and risk waking his mother.

Good Samaritan is quiet now. The last time he awoke, people ran in and out, immediately poking him and shining lights in his eyes and asking him questions he didn't know the answers to. Dr. Echols told him he'd rattled his brain pretty good and didn't seem surprised that he had trouble remembering what had happened that night. Charlie doesn't know what time it is. He looks down at the pale outline his watch left behind wonders where it is. Not that it had any sentimental value, he just feels naked without it. Maybe the paramedics cut it off when they zapped him.

Charlie Hudson flinches at the memory of the accident and retreats back into the narcotic haze. It's a little like trying to recapture a dream when you've just woken up. Part of your brain remembers the world you left behind while the other part is happy to remind you that daylight is just on the other side of your eyelids. Most times, dreams slip away, but for now Charlie lets go of the real world and drifts for a little while longer, trying to forget all that he's lost.