Effing Feline rejoices!

I, Effing Feline, have my favorite radiator back!

That’s right. My pet human, author Ed Hoornaert, is back home after three+ weeks in hospital and then rehab. He didn’t realize his back surgery would be quite this debilitating, or that he’d have s scar running from tailbone to shoulder blade..

He’s not writing yet, so I’m selecting from one of his favorite books, The Guardian Angel of Farflung Station. Sandrina is a young woman whose wound is rather concrete.

She can’t talk. But that doesn’t keep her from developing a crush on Farflung Space Station’s new head of security — from a distance. She feels too defective to ever approach a man.

When she was little, she’d used the space station’s vast network of ventilation shafts as her private highways. In here she wasn’t substandard, she was the queen of this dark domain, able to travel without anyone seeing her though she could see and hear everything. The key was to move silently, without making the sheet metal walls pound like quasar-sized drums. That was a lot harder now, which was why she hadn’t gone ‘underground’ for years.

Until today.

She reached her destination. Lying prone in a ventilation shaft overlooking the males-only gym, Sandrina watched Principal Officer Dukelsky jab a punching bag. He wore a shock-absorbing slalom suit that hugged his body as though painted on. The view from the rear was tantalizing, but she wished he’d turn to face her.

On a whim—more like a compulsion—Sandrina had hacked into his personal records. Even his daybook.

That’s ten . . . but here are a few more.

She’d learned his gym time and that his sparing partner, T.X. Mooney, was a former soldier, now manager of Farflung’s branch of Bodhisattva Bank. She knew that Duke was the reformed black sheep of a ramrod-straight New Ontario military family, and that he was determined to make them proud of him again. His job ratings couldn’t get any better. His sperm count was high and his body fat low. He liked aromatic foods, as did she.

She rubbed her wrists where he’d grabbed her, remembering even that with fondness. What would happen if she rattled the ventilation grate to call attention to herself?

He’d arrest her, that’s what.

Be sure to check out the other great writers in Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday.

T