Many mystery novels begin in the middle of the story with a teaser about where the action is heading. I’ve employed that gambit in one of my three short novels about LOVE & ART, entitled Alternate 2. The word ‘alternate’ refers to an alternate juror as this is a story centered around the kind of trial that gets headlines in newspapers.
Preface: In Complete Darkness
I told myself it would take a couple of minutes for my eyes to adjust and counted to 10. Nothing. The darkness was complete. I was lying on my side, so I rolled over onto my back and reached up. My hand crashed into the ceiling with my elbow still bent! I was inside a box. Was it a coffin? No. I wasn’t going to let myself go there. It was a packing crate. I could feel the narrow boards of lightly finished wood and smell the varnish.
I lay flat and extended my arms behind my head. When my feet touched one end of the box, my fingertips grazed the other. I’m 62 inches tall so the box was about 72 inches long. I scooted to the left and right finding the sides of the box, deciding it was equally long and wide, but less than two feet deep. It was a wide, flat, wooden box. It could hold one painting with generous packing material, more with a frame to hold multiple paintings in place. These calculations kept me from panicking, but that wouldn’t last.
I heard footsteps…
