May 28th, 2008

The following is the first part of a story I am writing. It was started from scratch tonight and due to time I am going to have to split it up. Though it is not a finished story I feel it still fits in the boundaries of the rules I have set for myself as the overall goal of this is just to keep me writing. It has some structure errors but I am not editing these as I go.


May 28th, 2008


There is a small village outside of a small town in the outskirts of the capitol city to a state that is often forgotten. This is a town of roughly four hundred people comprised mostly of later middle-aged people and their generation of kids. This town has a doctor’s office that acts as their hospital, a federal post office, a school with four teachers, and a life expectancy of 64.2 for men and 66.3 for women. It must also be noted that this is not a story of colonial times or the dustbowl, but a story that happened just barely a year ago. In this town there is a large open field that stretches just beyond the grocery store all the way to the mayor’s house. In this field sits two houses. The first house being a split-level with pale yellow siding and a small white front porch with a single rocking chair. Directly beside this house sits a ranch style home with brick walls and also a front porch, this one being a dark stained wood color. A paved road with a cul-de-sac about fifty feet from the houses on one side stretches all the way back to the town connecting with the major thorough way, Megre Road, that connects the town with itself. This single paved road is the only way to get to these two houses.

The circumstances of these two houses being alone together in a large field are quite extraordinary in themselves. At least, they are to the people in the town that it happened in, as you could hardly go a day without hearing some one mention it, and it is still common to hear it brought up in every day conversation still today. These two houses were the first step in a large contracting company’s attempt at spreading and building a large subdivision right in the middle of the town. This itself was a subject of much controversy as a large section of the town thought this expanding was a great idea while another faction thought that it would ruin the peace that they had, the safety and security. They felt that too many people in their small town would only ruin it. In the end the expansion side won, most likely due to the fact that a certain small group were set to too make a lot of money off of this subdivision. Most notably, the mayor, David Alberta, a portly man who is developing a bald spot on the top of his head, would be the benefactor and also the center of this controversy.

The contracts went through and development began. First, a road was built, followed by two houses built to industry standards in just a few weeks. These were to be show houses to entice the population to purchase a house before they were even built. Billboards were placed all along the highway and one was placed right in the middle of the town.

It was about two weeks before construction on more houses for the neighborhood was to begin, some even already purchased (the billboards had worked) when the mayor was caught and charged with accepting bribes from the contracting company. David Alberta was caught attempting to cash a personal check of a large amount at his bank. When he tried to cash it, an astute young teller at the bank noticed it was strange for a mayor to receive such a large personal check and reported it to her manager. Her manager reported it to her boss, who reported it to his boss, who then reported to his boss, all the way until it was investigated.

David was charged with bribery and sentenced to two years in a federal prison two states to the north. With this sentencing the development stopped, the contractors pulled out, and the two houses were sold at bargain prices to the first bidders.

And that is where the real story begins. The first house, the split-level, was bought by an aging man of 65 with the money he had recently collected from the passing of his wife. His name was Robert Barkosk and he at the prime of his life had been an extremely successful composer. His main instrument being the cello but he was also proficient in piano and the viola. Over the past 15 years Robert has felt that he has lost his talent, and with the passing of his wife, jumped at the opportunity to purchase such a nice house for so cheap with only one neighbor. He had hoped to spend some nice time by himself working on his music.

A man named Benjamin Outley purchased the other house, the ranch. He was a sculptor in the classical sense that loved to work with stone. He would spend months at a time working on a single piece, which upon finishing would be purchased and whisked away to someone in some city somewhere in the world. While Benjamin was successful he was nowhere near the level he had hoped to attain in his lifetime. He bought the house in the middle of the field in hopes he would be inspired and perhaps complete his master work; vaulting him into stardom in the art world.