Joshua P. Simon's Blog, page 28

Free Short Story - The Old Warrior

While writing the first draft of Rise and Fall, I took a small break and tried my hand at short fiction. The result was a story titled, The Old Warrior. I originally drafted it in third person, but later rewrote it in 1st person. I go back and forth on which version works better.

I’ve submitted the story a few times and although I had a little interest from a few places, the story never sold. Given the unusual structure of the story and the short length, I decided to post it for free on my website. It isn’t my best work. However, I do like the overall idea and tone of the story. Maybe others will enjoy it as well.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks.



The Old Warrior
I sat near the edge of a cliff with my back against a giant oak. The sun sank below the distant horizon. Light bathed the wide mountains and deep valleys in a blood red. Years ago I might have actually enjoyed the sight, but not today.

My left hand squeezed a bottle of whiskey, knuckles whitening as the cool air blew against my face. A jolt of pain ran up my shoulder when I tried to take a drink. Dark liquor spilled out before reaching my half-open mouth.

I muttered a few curses while switching hands. After taking a long pull, I wiped my mouth on a tattered sleeve and settled the bottle in my lap.

I tried to work the sting from my shoulder, tilting my head back and to the side, laying it against the rough tree trunk, while trying to find the source of my discomfort. The wind rustled through the leaves as I wrestled with the old wound.

Anyone who had fought as long and as often as I had was bound to come up with a wound or two. Dozens, in my case. Each one of the blasted things had a memory I longed to forget.

The shoulder problem came from service during the Second Pithani War. Captured by the enemy and chained by my wrists and ankles, the Pithani had done their best to extract information from me. But, I never said a word. I had wanted to stop the pain, but what little I knew they didn’t want to hear. The shoulder came out of its socket during the ordeal and when I had finally managed to escape, too much time had passed for it to properly heal.

After a long sigh I spat over the cliff. The shoulder finally began to loosen up.

I could go on forever describing the aches and pains that haunted me. The most embarrassing injury came when a horse fell on top of me in a botched cavalry charge, breaking my leg.

I shook my head and chuckled. Even with a broken leg I killed over a dozen men that day, hobbling the entire time. Men talked about that for years afterward. Among the many names I’ve been known by, that day I had earned my favorite.

“The man who didn’t know how to die.”

I had been a man the enemy feared and one my allies held in awe. Of course, I didn’t think about consequences in those days. I was just worried about building up my name and adding to the stories about me, just like my father and grandfather had done before.

But no one looked at me in fear or awe any longer. All those battle scars caught up with me as the years crept along. Even the small injuries started to hinder my ability to fight. I guess when I look back at my life I started out young and foolish and I ended up old and foolish.

A missing finger caused me to lose my sword more than once. A bad leg hampered my footing. The shoulder caused my shield arm to dip on more than one occasion which resulted in the death of several good men.

Once those things started to happen, people began to look at me differently.

“The man who didn’t know how to die,” I said aloud.

In hindsight, the name has become a curse. None of my names will be remembered in song and tales like I always wanted them to. I lived too long. When a warrior gets gray and wrinkled, people forget the glory from their past.

My father and grandfather both died young and it was the best thing that could have happened to them. My name had once been greater than theirs, but not anymore. I never knew when to quit.

I could have raised a family when things started to fall apart, but I kept pushing myself. The more I tried, the further I beat my name into the mud.

I stared at the bruised sky.

They wouldn’t even let me join the field today. They laughed and sneered at me like some fool, yelling insults as I walked away.

“Too much of a liability.”

“Likely to get us all killed!”

“Old and useless.”

The worst part of it all is that I agree with them. I’m not the same man who had been first in at the siege of Hermath or the man who once stood toe-to-toe with the giant of Lanknar and won. No one remembers those stories any longer. They only know the broken warrior I am now.

The last hope I clung to before today had been denied to me—the chance of a warrior’s death. There would be no place for me in the Hall of Vashan, home of the warrior Uthal, the one god I ever cared about.

But, I guess that’s for the best. How could I look Uthal in the eye when we both know how far I’ve fallen?

I took one last drink and tossed the empty bottle out into the air. It fell down into the deep valley where the sound of it breaking was lost in the wind. I grabbed the other two empty bottles at my side and threw those over too.

Apparently the only thing I could still do well is hold my liquor. I had spent the last few coppers I had on the whiskey and still felt far more than I had wanted to.

I climbed slowly to my feet and shook the stiffness out of my tired limbs. Two steps later I stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down. A wall of tall pines stood to either side of a wide stream as if they guarded the passing waters.

I knew the stream was shallow, only a few feet deep and filled with rock. Despite the lack of depth, the water flowed with enough force to wash just about anything out to sea. Just the sort of thing I had been looking for.

“The man who didn’t know how to die,” I said one last time, chuckling lightly and feeling a surprising wetness on my cheeks.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t known how to die. I had never wanted to before now.

Music Monday - Ballroom Blitz

For some reason this song popped into my head yesterday.

The Original Version by Sweet


And the version most people remember . . .

The Family Trip

Each year, Leah and I make at least two trips to see my family in Louisiana. For now, this constitutes our family vacations. The trips were pretty easy on us before we had our kids. They got a little tricky when our son was born, but overall he traveled well. With the addition of our baby daughter, we didn’t know what to expect. I take that back. We expected the worst, especially since we also tacked on a trip to Texas to see my wife’s family and attend her sister’s wedding.

Fortunately, they surprised us and we had a great time with only a few hiccups. Most of those hiccups revolved around the area we were most concerned about, sleeping. Our son is a little over two and a half and our daughter is eight months. So, sharing a hotel room and riding in a car together meant that they often woke each other up. Any parent knows that a tired kid is a cranky kid.

Even still, when you consider we drove 2300 miles, going from Georgia to Louisiana, then to Texas, and back to Georgia, a few hiccups isn’t too bad.

The biggest downside to this trip, as any other that we make, is that it felt too short and at times a bit rushed. Of course, most trips feel that way, especially when family is involved.

The trip had several upsides. For instance, our daughter started army crawling and her personality (which is constantly developing) made huge leaps. Our son is at the age where it seems like each day he says/does something that either blows you away, cracks you up, or both. He had several gems during the trip, but below was my favorite.

Here’s the setup: we eat fast food once or twice a month, at most. However, we ate a lot of it while traveling like most others do. Anyway, we stopped off in Vicksburg, MS on the way home. After checking into a hotel for the night, my son and I went to grab a few things from the store and also pick up dinner. I decided to get Popeye’s to break up the monotony of hamburgers and fries. As I’m pulling into the drive-through lane, this is what I hear:

Him: Daddy, I need a Number 1 with no coke.
Me: Blinks and shakes head. What?
Him: I NEED a Number 1 with no coke.
Me: Laughing uncontrollably and thankful that no one was behind me as I had to stop short of the drive-through speaker.
Him: In a very serious voice. Daddy, go talk to the man and tell him I need a Number 1 with no coke.
Me: I pull up to the speaker and place the order which was a family meal.
Him: Yelling over me while I’m talking to the guy. NO Daddy! A Number 1, no coke.
Me: It’s ok. The things in a Number 1 are part of the family meal.
Him: After a long pause. Ok, Daddy.

First, I think the exchange is hilarious, but more so when you consider the facts. Neither Leah nor I ever order a Number 1 off a menu. That means he had to pick the number himself. Second, we always drink a coke or something similar. However, we don’t let him because of his age. Therefore, he reasoned that out in his head and made sure to specify ‘no coke.’

Good Times.

Music Monday - Cream

Great band with great musicians. Definitely broke up too soon. Some of Clapton’s best work. Fun fact: apparently, John Bonham considered Ginger Baker his rival on drums and often used Baker’s records with Cream and later projects as motivation.

White Room


Sunshine of your Love


Crossroads (live)
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Movie Review - The Dark Knight Rises

Monday I got back from a family-visiting vacation (will post more about it next week). The trip was tiring, but had a lot of positives. I even made it to The Dark Knight Rises on opening day. To me, the film was the best of the three. Yes, it had its faults (plot-wise) which I’ll go into below. However, the strengths far outweighed the weaknesses in my opinion.

***Spoiler alert for all three movies in the trilogy.***

Pros:
This movie was about Bruce Wayne/Batman. Although I love The Dark Knight, my biggest complaint on the movie was that it really focused on the villains (Two-Face and The Joker especially) rather than Batman. Like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises is all about the hero with the villains playing strong supporting roles.Unbelievable characterization across the board. Very few weak spots in any of the major and minor character roles. All did a great a job. Despite any flaws I’ll mention below, the character arcs are what made this film so good to me.Michael Caine – What can I say? The perfect Alfred. He immediately steals every scene he’s in. The emotion he brought to the movie was awesome and I found myself a bit misty-eyed in a few spots because of the delivery of his lines.Anne Hathaway – Like everyone else, I was very hesitant about her casting. From the very first scene she had me. Best Catwoman yet, and probably the closest to the comics. Absolutely loved her performance and story arc.Tom Hardy – The accent/voice was perfect. The swagger awesome. In a lot of ways, he reminded me of the Bane from Batman: The Animated Series, and that’s definitely a good thing. Great casting.Christian Bale – His best performance as Batman and Bruce Wayne, and I liked him a lot in the prior two movies. I wanted more scenes with him as the focal point.Great fight scenes. My inner fanboy was going absolutely nuts at the Bane/Batman fights above all else. Exactly how I wanted it to be. And on top of everything else, Bane actually said THE LINE. (For those who don’t know what that means, go read KnightFall.)Awesome action sequences.The Bat was really cool. The fight around the city was killer.For being almost three hours long, the movie went by really quickly. I know some complained about the pacing, but I never felt it drag. I wanted more.Loved all the nods and tie-ins to the previous films.Cool references to all the various storylines within the comics.Just enough humor to lighten the dark tone of the movie.Another good film score.Perfect conclusion for the series. Answered enough questions while still leaving a few out there.First teaser trailer for Man of Steel! It looks awesome!Cons:
Miranda Tate – She was ok. I knew she was Talia long before the reveal. The references to tie her in to the series was kind of nice. However, I almost wish the reveal didn’t happen as it did since it diminished Bane’s awesomeness in my eyes.The plot had several bumps. Characters did a lot of really dumb things in order to push the story along. Some of those instances took me out of the story for few seconds which I found jarring. I never felt that way in the previous two films.HUGE info dumps. I cringed at several points in the film when a character went on this big speech to give information to the viewer that Nolan couldn’t figure out a way to work in elsewhere. Some of these instances were really bad as it happened at pretty suspenseful parts of the film (e.g. the very end when time was of the essence). There were moments like this in the first two films too, but nowhere near as bad as here.Batman forgot he was the world’s greatest detective and had a brain. Despite being injury-riddled, older, and out of the game, Batman rarely used his brains to solve his problems. Instead, he almost bullied his way through everything. Very out of character for what Nolan established in the first two films and extremely out of character to who he is in the comics.Speaking of being injury-riddled…wow, did Nolan drop the ball here. This is my biggest complaint of the whole film. The Dark Knight Rises starts off with Bruce being skinny and a wreck physically. He goes to the doctor and we learn just how much of a mess he is. However, these injuries are never addressed again once he decides he wants back in to being Batman. What a joke. The only injury they addressed was one knee (ignoring his other knee, shoulder, etc.) and that was done badly. Where did the brace go when he was in prison? Bane wouldn’t have left him that, yet he never limps again.

Also, how did he get all these injuries? According to this film, his last appearance as Batman was at the end of The Dark Knight. We were never led to believe Batman was bad off then, and since he stopped wearing the cowl, Bruce Wayne only became a recluse. Basically, Nolan invented injuries out of the blue to show how far Wayne had fallen. Then he dumped them after the first act when they became too hard to address.The Joker is still alive at the end of The Dark Knight. What happened to him? Obviously, I didn’t expect him to get actual screen time, but Nolan could have at least said they gave him the death penalty or shipped him off to Arkham or something.
So yes, The Dark Knight Rises had its flaws, but I loved it all the same. As far as I’m concerned, there are no better comic book films than the three Nolan films. Man, I wish I could see more.

Batman Beyond, anyone?

Music Monday - Beyond Fear

Scream Machine (live)


Coming at You


My Last Words

Music Monday - Alice in Chains - Black Gives Way to Blue

Since I talked about William Duvall last week, I thought I would a post about his album with Alice in Chains. Musically, vocally, and from a songwriting perspective, Black Gives Way to Blue is top notch. It is probably my second favorite AIC album, behind Dirt. It’s hard to pick three favs, but I tried to do my best below.

A Looking in View


Last of my Kind


Private Hell (easily my favorite song on the album and probably top 3 AIC songs, period)

The Twilight Zone

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. —Rod Serling

I realized the other day that this was the first year in quite awhile that I missed the annual Twilight Zone marathon that happens every 4th of July. It’s sort of become a tradition for me to catch as many episodes as I can throughout the day. Then later in the week, my dad and I will talk about which ones we caught since he and I have always loved the show. Unfortunately, I had to work this year on the 4th and then afterward some other things popped up that needed to be taken care of. Therefore, I might have watched 20 minutes of TV total that day and it never dawned on me to check the Sci-fi channel.

Despite some awful special effects (common for the time), I’ve watched many of the episodes multiple times over. Yes, some shows are better acted than others, but generally the writing is top notch across the board. Rod Sterling is obviously known as the king of the twist ending, but the message that came across in these half hour stories and the questions that were asked, still influence people to this day. I know it’s affected my own writing (mainly in a short story form).

It’s kind of sad that most people my around my age and younger seem to scoff at the show while raising a condescending eyebrow. They focus only on those lackluster special effects, failing to see the story being told.

When my kids get older, I promise I’ll do my part in setting them on the right path. Even though they are years away from being mature enough to watch The Twilight Zone, I can’t wait for them to become a 4th of July tradition in our house.

Music Monday - Comes with the Fall

Some people might know William Duvall as the guy who replaced Layne Staley in Alice in Chains and did about as good of a job as someone could do in that role. However, before AIC he was the guitarist/vocalist for Comes with the Fall, an awesome hard rock band.

Check out a few songs below:

Rockslide


Unbreakable


Strung out on a Dream (live)

The New Norm

When I originally started my blog, my goal was to have three new posts a week. Monday’s post would be something about music, and the other two days would cover writing, reading, and a slew of other topics. At the time I figured two posts a week wasn’t that hard to do. For awhile, it wasn’t.

However, things change and right now life is pretty hectic for me. I’ve also self-imposed some potentially tight deadlines in regards to my writing over the coming months. Therefore, I want to make sure that I have the necessary time to meet those deadlines while also fulfilling my other responsibilities. Therefore, my new posting schedule will be Monday (music related) and Thursday (everything else). Believe it or not, two posts a week is much more manageable for me than three.

That being said, if I do have something exciting to post or a new announcement that can’t wait, then you can consider that a bonus. Ha.