Young Adult Book - Free

I've just updated the original blog site that lists the first ten chapters of Inner City for free....

Have a read if you like... it comes with pictures! If you like what you read then follow the links and read the full book at Smashwords.

Read the blog - here

And if you like the book please let others know.... this starving writer will thank you!

Inner City - New Draft

Excerpt from Inner City - Full copy Now available at Smashwords

Chapter 1.

Callen sat on a plastic bench in the empty corridor of the Family Administration Agency. His feet swung back and forth, his eyes riveted on the large doors in front of him, his mind desperate to know what was going on behind them.

The seven year old looked out of place as he sat alone, orphaned in the cold open space. His parents, Leona and Jonathan Carrus were behind the imposing doors fighting for their lives. The City’s authorities had charged them with being financially unfit to raise a child and they were struggling to convince the Judge they could reverse their business fortunes.

 “I don’t understand why I’m looking at all this technical data,” the holographic image of the Judge said, his frustration towards the speed of the trial starting to show.

All City officials were holographs. Officials of every kind within the City worked in plush, secure buildings well away from those they had to pass judgment or enforce rules upon. Their holographs were the new government public relation conduits, projected out amongst the population and supported on the ground by minimum wage employees and automated systems that enacted their decisions.

 The holograms were projected onto a clear, reactive, computer encoded silicon substance that linked and mirrored every move the corresponding official made. In this way the three dimensional form and image of all officials, including Leona and Jonathan’s Lawyer, oversaw their duties.  

“We are demonstrating, Your Honour,” their lawyer argued, “the potential for a breakthrough. Every person in this city carries a crystal containing their personal scan, every person. That’s almost ninety million potential clients.”

The Judge was losing patience. 

“We are dealing with a very simple question of wealth. The defendants are no longer earning enough or hold enough assets to meet the requirements of parenthood and their son is not yet nine years old, so he’s eligible for reassignment. Is there anything else I should be considering?”

The Judge’s duty was a grave one, but his decision was delivered for the good of the community. Within this City the average life expectancy was one hundred and forty years and the longer lives led to overcrowding. New lives were at a premium. Each child had to be carefully assigned to those best suited to provide and raise a new citizen of the City to the standards demanded. Millions of couples were working towards a child of their own and their businesses were flourishing, not going backwards. 

While the Judge knew the pain his decision would cause in the short term, he remained convinced he was doing the right thing by all those who lived within this city’s walls.

 “Callen Carrus is to be taken from his parents and reassigned immediately to a new eligible couple who meet the financial requirements to raise a child.” The hammer fell. The decision was final.

Leona wept uncontrollably. Tears streamed down her face. Jonathan sat beside her. For the first time in his life he did nothing to comfort his wife when she needed comfort. They had lost their son. When they were granted the right to have Callen their business was going from success to success and their luck held out through the citizen’s genetic program. They were both young and proved genetically appropriate to be given permission, through the invitro process, to donate egg and sperm as the biological parents of their own child. In this modern world it was akin to winning the lottery and both Leona and Jonathan felt truly blessed.

How had it all gone so horribly wrong so quickly? Here they were, less than a decade later, listening to a judge destroy their lives and take away their child. They had lost their family. 

A guard came and stood behind Leona and Jonathan as the Judge looked to them.

“Your son is to be escorted from this building. You are to have no further contact with him and no record of his existence with you is to remain. If you try to contact the boy in any way, you will be charged and face a sentence of fifteen years incarcerated public service. Do you understand?”

Leona sobbed and nodded. Jonathan hardly moved. 

“Yes”, he said without ever taking his eyes off the Judge. They had no choice but to accept that Callen was no longer their son. 

Chapter 2.

A neat woman with a painted smile entered the far end of the corridor. She walked directly towards Callen. Her conservative skirt and button down blouse sung of her position within the government and try as Callen might to ignore her approach, he couldn’t.

“Callen”, she said from about half way down the hall. “Come with me, please”.

“I’m waiting for my parents. They’re in there”, he said pointing to the doors in front of him. 

“No, they’re not sweet-heart. Come now, I’ll explain everything”. 

Callen looked to the women. She was trying to look like a friend. She offered a hand, her delicate fingers extended. Callen jumped from his seat and ran at the large doors guarding the courtroom. He pulled hard on the handles but hardly managed to cause any movement. Callen cried out. 

“Mummy! Daddy!” 

In the courtroom Leona and Jonathan tensed to the sound of Callen’s cries. They reached for each other’s hands and squeezed tight. Legally their son was now someone else’s concern.

Callen was led down the long corridor. He struggled hard, but a dissenting seven year old proved little problem to the experienced escort.

At the end of the corridor a door swung shut behind them. The ensuing silence made a mockery of the life changing drama that had played out along the hard polished plastic floor moments before.

Callen sat in an empty room. It was the third room he’d been in since being taken from the floor housing the court rooms. Every now and then someone would come and talk him through legal protocol, but Callen’s head was swimming with information and he’d taken to pretending he understood simply to cut the complicated explanations short.

The wheels of administration were suffocating him in procedural red tape and his seven years of experience didn’t help him understand the mechanics of what was happening, no matter how well explained. All he knew for certain was that his parents were not with him and would never be with him again.

 His mind protested the fact. He remembered the lessons about families at school. The icy cold fear of every modern child surrounded him. He wasn’t going to let this happen; not to him. He wouldn’t accept reassignment. He didn’t care who his new parents were or what the law demanded, he’d never give up the parents he loved.

 Towards the end of the day, Callen was collected by a young man who took him to a dormitory. He was assigned to a bed within a plastic molded room. It was explained he’d stay for the night and then his new parents would arrive to take him to his new home. Callen said nothing. He didn’t want anyone knowing the thoughts he was having. When the reassignment was finalised he’d go with the strangers and play at being a dutiful son, but at the first opportunity he’d be away to find his old home and his real parents.

 Callen took a long time to fall asleep. As he lay in darkness his mind drifted to a memory of a holiday taken beyond the City walls, to a sister city by the beach. He’d been given a window seat on the plane and as they began their descent, Callen stared in fascination at the barren, inhospitable land they were passing over. Then he saw movement. It was a band of savage ‘Outlocked’ moving across a sandy clearing. Callen had always suspected the terrifying stories of these people were made, or at very least exaggerated to scare and entertain, but here they were, in the flesh and real, Outlocked savages.

He shrieked with fear and excitement and others went to look out their windows. Callen’s parents had to calm him. Then they answered a barrage of questions. They recited the well known facts about the Outlocked people: how they lived a poor excuse for a life in the exiled wastelands. How they’d been shut out hundreds of years before for causing dissent and threatening the economic survival of the prosperous, hard working citizens within the modern cities.

Callen was amazed to have actually seen them. When he returned to school he’d gain celebrity status over that fact. He’d seen the savages from so many popular horror movies.  

 The thought of those Outlocked creatures, so close to the walls of the resort they were travelling to frightened him so much he couldn’t sleep. He lay in darkness in his hotel bed and every time he closed his eyes the terror of the savages gripped him. His parents came each time he cried out, but they struggled to ease his fears or answer his many questions: What if they were cut off on holiday? What if they were overrun by Outlocked? What if the horror movies came true?

His parents reassured him the modern automated security systems would never let that happen. As long as he stayed inside the walls of their cities he’d stay perfectly safe; every City citizen knew this one rule by heart. Callen’s parents held him tight in their arms and it was this that helped him finally drift asleep. Now, on the first night of his reassignment, that memory of being nursed and reassured by his parents gave Callen the peace he needed to fall asleep again.

In the morning Callen woke and was taken to a shower where he was rudely scrubbed by a woman wearing rubber gloves and an apron. The task left him humiliated, but more was to follow. He was taken, still naked into a doctor’s surgery where he was strapped down on a full length chair. The chair whirred to life and stretched him out until he was lying flat out. He tried to turn his head to see all the instruments, but straps around his forehead and chin held his head firmly in place.

There was no colour in the room. There had been no colour in any of the rooms. Not the room he slept in, not the shower room, not this new room. A doctor's hologram flickered to life beside him. Even the projected image of the doctor was wearing white. Callen lay, strapped down, fully exposed, embarrassed and vulnerable. The doctor was a young woman and her holographic image mimicked her movements as she manipulated controls on a panel that caused robotic machines around Callen to buzz and whir to life. Instruments on long metal arms began to examine his body on her command.

Measurements and checks were made without any explanation. Finally the doctor spoke as she typed her notes.

“You’re a very fit young boy. You’re going to make some lucky parents a wonderful son.”  The doctor powered off and her image disappeared. 

The restraints around Callen's body snapped open. He jumped from the chair. The door to the room was open and Callen hid behind it peering out. Had everyone forgotten he was naked?

The woman who had scrubbed him down re-entered and took him by the hand. Callen couldn’t take being treated as less than human any longer.

“Can I have some clothes?” He whined. The woman looked at him in astonishment.

“You’re about to get a whole new wardrobe if you’d just be a little patient.”  Callen gave in and walked with the woman as she navigated the hallway. There was no-one else to see him, something he was extremely grateful for.

Another room waited; another white room. He sat on a cold plastic bench molded into the wall. His hands stayed fast to his lap. The woman in white left him for a moment, then re-entered, wheeling a large plastic cage. Callen stared at it. All he could think was the cage was for him; they were going to wheel him around on parade. The woman swung open a door and revealed clothes. The large mobile box was a wardrobe now displaying, shoes, socks, underpants, pants, shirts and jumpers. 

“These are all yours, paid for by the Helfners.” 

Callen had never heard of the organization and he gave a mystified look.

“Your parents,” the woman answered off his look. Callen stared motionless. In one day his entire life had been turned upside down and shaken. The woman left the room and Callen swiftly went to the cage to dress. He searched for his favourite labels. When he'd finished he looked like a mannequin in a department store, displaying the unmistakable creases that new clothes hold.

The door was still open and once Callen was happy with his appearance he walked from the room to be met again by the woman in white.

“Good, you’re finished,” she said. “We’ll get all the other clothes sent around to your home some time later today. Your Mum and Dad are waiting for you. I think they’re a little excited.”

Callen had been doing his best to remain brave, but having two strangers referred to as his ‘mum and dad’ was too much for him and he broke down in tears. Within seconds Callen was a sniffling, snorting, hyperventilating mess. The woman in white showed compassion; the tears of a seven year old had managed to reach past her hard, professional veneer. She hugged him close until his tears stopped.

“You have to be brave about this. The Helfners are going to love you very much. You’re a lucky young man.”

“I don’t want new parents. I want the ones I’ve got; they want me too, I know they do,” Callen whimpered. The woman was thrown by the statement. She didn’t know how to react.

“But you’re seven years old,” she said, as if this explained everything. Callen stared at her, searching for meaning.

“Surely you’ve been taught about families at school? You must know how people have children?” She asked.  Callen chilled. He did know. He’d been remembering the lessons since this nightmare began. He could virtually recite every word he’d ever been told about family reassignments, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

After a moment he reluctantly nodded that he understood. The woman showed relief. Had he not known, for whatever reason, she could have been facing a delicate situation. She moved quickly, brushing a few stray fibres from Callen’s new clothes as she encouraged his recovery.

“See if you can’t cheer yourself up. Your new parents don’t want their first sight of you to be in tears.” 

Callen ran the back of his hand across his eyes.

“Good, boy,” the woman said. “Now let’s put on a smile and go and meet your new mummy and daddy.” 

Callen was led through a door into a room of colour, a room of synthetic seats and viewer screens, a room of sound and activity and milling, expectant mothers and fathers. Raegher and Annie Helfner sprang to their feet as their number was called by the digital voice. They raced across the short space, threw their arms around and hugged Callen as if he was a long lost son, which, in a way, he was. Callen suffered the smothering without a word. There was little else he could do.

The trip home was uneventful. The route was entered in the transporter’s computer, it locked onto the magnetic tracks and both Raegher and Annie were left to tell Callen all their plans for the rest of his life. They could have been talking about revolution for all he knew. He kept nodding and changing his focus from one to the other, all the time watching the passing streets. He was frantically trying to map the direction of his old neighbourhood. The Helfner’s unit was almost two hours drive from the administration buildings. By the time they arrived Callen’s head was spinning with landmarks and turns taken and all the while the incessant chatter continued. 

On their arrival at the Helfner’s home Callen was shown straight to his new room. The walls were bright yellow. A bright blue bed with bright red cupboards set them off. A mobile of the solar system hung from the light and as the planets rotated, so did the colours they gave off. Callen was overcome with the vibrant room. He sat on the bed and the Helfners retreated to prepare for their first dinner together. Callen began planning when and how to leave this new and unfamiliar family. 

Dinner was a feast. Everything a seven year old could want; largely synthetic, but far more nourishing than anything natural. The ham and vegetable simulates were a forerunner to the sweets, a simulate ice cream pie with a crust of chocolate biscuit all covered in fudge so thick it stopped running as it cooled. Callen’s appetite had not suffered over the past twenty four hours and he happily had a third helping of dessert to the delight of his new parents. 

In bed, he was visited and kissed on the forehead no less than three times before Annie and Raegher finally turned in for the night. Callen waited a good hour, desperately trying to keep his focus, his eyelids grew heavy and he’d throw them open in a torturous battle against sleep. When he thought the time was right, he got up from his bed and silently inched along the hall to check on his new parents. They were sound asleep. He headed back to his room and rummaged quietly in his wardrobe. He located a back pack perfect for what he had in mind. He loaded the bag with anything he thought might come in useful and he left the room.  

Quietly he navigated the stairs, stopping only at the kitchen to add food. He looked at the chocolate sauce now sitting left over in a container, useful or not, he’d have that too. He closed his bag and then walked to the front door and silently opened it and left. He rode the lift to the ground floor and for the first time in days, relaxed. He was beginning his journey to find the parents he loved and refused to give up without a fight. Everything he’d planned was working out perfectly. He’d have the whole night to search before anyone ever knew he was gone. He opened the building’s door to walk out into the night. 

The building’s alarm wailed to life. A flashing light above the door lit the surrounding space with its intermittent piercing blue light. Callen couldn’t believe he’d forgotten something so obvious. Every building in every modern city had an alarm. He turned and ran. His plan would remain the same. The only thing changed was his head start.  

Inner City - Scott Norton

I recently began redrafting Inner City - my first novel, published online about two years ago. The book was listed free to try and gain a fan base as a writer and has so far downloaded close to 6000 times on both Smashwords and another site where it is available to be downloaded and read for free.

The book has had many reviews from wonderful readers who took the time to have their say on both the Goodreads and Nook Book sites. I really can't thank these people enough, strangers to me and only connected through my writing - if you are one of them, you will never know how important you are to me.

My stories evolve over time. They start like a fog and slowly clear. I don't know why and I wish they delivered themselves more fully formed - but beggars can't be choosers.

The reason for the redraft is I adapted Inner City into a screenplay and it has had some interest. That means nothing of course until finance is raised and production begins - and having been down the road before with other projects, even optioned projects, even development funding, even attached actors and directors, nothing is guarantee until the movie goes into production - and even then, cross your fingers it gets finished and released.

It also made a decent level in the Page Awards, before I withdrew, not having realised that money earned for writing TV scripts ruled a writer out of entering a screenplay. This still seems unfair to me as writing television serial drama and writing a screenplay are worlds apart - but I had definitely written more than the $25000 earned cap, so I did the right thing - embarrassed to not have read the rules properly before entering, I might add.

But, adapting the story for the screen and making it fit the 105 - 115 page model meant I had to make some very tough choices. Not all worked, but a couple ended up being so much better in story structure terms that I have been compelled to change the original to meet the story of the screenplay in those few areas. It makes the story far more suspenseful, it creates better rendered secondary characters and it will hopefully give me a chance to attract a publisher. It suddenly occurred to me, since I posted the book online two years ago, I haven't sent it to anyone.

The reason for this is that as a writer you go through peaks and troughs and somewhere around 2009/2010 I came very close to throwing in the towel. I had lots of work as a free script doctor, was involved in many volunteer production projects, writing and directing shows for the Melbourne International comedy festival etc, but unless I went back to working on television shows in production and giving up the dream of finding a way to tell my stories my way and getting them to an audience, it seemed I'd hit a brick wall.

That's when I published online. I published under my middle name of Norton to make sure friends and family didn't review or download - I wanted an unbiased view of whether or not my stories were worth telling.

So thanks to everyone who downloaded and a special thanks to those who reviewed - especially those who gave me the good with the bad. This sounds far too dramatic than it needs to be - but those people, for good or bad, have kept me writing. They are why I decided to try and tell the story as a film, my first choice in storytelling and the one I'm most experienced in, and they are also why I'm redrafting. My view is, nothing I write will ever be as good as I would like it to be - but with the help of those who have taken an interest and commented, Inner City is certainly headed in the right direction.

Will Inner City ever be offered for free again? Of course - to those who ask. If you read some of my blog posts, you will know I advocate free content in the belief that, if something is good enough, the free samples will generate paying customers down the track. Maybe by word of mouth or maybe through the next item produced... so feel free to ask for a copy... like some have already done. Ask and you shall receive.

As soon as the story is redrafted I will make sure those who asked get a free copy. And it's my pleasure to do so. Enjoy reading!

Twitter - Scott Norton

I've decided to start posting when I make an update. So you can check Twitter rather than having to check back here to see if there's something new. Thanks.

https://twitter.com/norton_scott

And something fun for the occasion!

New Releases coming soon!

So here's the new book cover and back cover to Inner City.

Scott Norton on Smashwords

I'm about to release more onto Smashwords.com. Probably three separate releases over the next few months. 3 Surprising Shorts - 3 short stories with a  twist. And a collection of poems that have been festering in my computer hard drive for years. And they aren't great art - they range from ridiculous kids poems suited to a Sesame Street on magic mushrooms type show. (If anyone's old enough to remember 'The Electric Company' who had brilliant people like Tom Lehrer writing for them - then some are in that vain, trying to approach his greatness.)

Others are just doodles, some serious and some about serious things, but not so serious in style, like:

GAY MARRIAGE

The sanctity of marriage is the new topic de jour

 Anyone can do it, doesn’t matter, rich or poor

It’s a sacred oath to God that shouldn’t be ignored

Unlike other oaths to God that make us kind of bored.

But don’t let those gay folk reach the altar

They wouldn’t know their fingers from their ring

They’d decorate the church in gaudy colours

And they’d all be booking Elton John to sing!

Marriage is a union, till death tears you apart,

Unless you’re young, you rushed a bit or needed a green card

The ring, the dress, the spot-lit vows, it’s all that we adore,

And I should know, the records show, I’ve done it twice before!

But don’t let those gay types reach the alter

It’s reserved for those who understand the vows

The church is not a toy, like a priest’s young altar boy,

It’s entirely there to join the men and fraus.

The other release is something I wrote just after Inner City - about 10 years ago - a factual account of raising a 13 year-old street kid. All will be free so keep checking when they come online and enjoy with me the drugs, the violence, the 11 suspensions, 3 expulsions and two arrests that made that period of my life so memorable.

The final two Novels I've been working on are also on their way. The Bride Wore Cocaine has been entered in an award for unpublished work and they stipulate it can't be published - even online until judged. Shame because I really think it came up well. It's probably close to something Bret Easton Ellis might write, in subject anyway - about a young man brought up in a protected middle class environment who meets and falls for a girl who shows him the world. The trouble is, like many people who experience something they like for the first time, he likes it too much and goes way too far. His girlfriend actually turns out to be the hero of the piece which is something I didn't even realise until I'd finished writing it - but that's one of the things I love about writing - especially when things work and characters drive themselves. Here's a taste - with very little context other than - Bailey has been given a Xanax for the first time by his girlfriend who is trying to help him over feeling guilty - although she doesn't know the extent of his guilt or just how serious his transgression is:

They both sat and traded gentle conversation as they ate. It didn’t take Bailey long to bring up the one thing he’d been thinking about all day.

“They brought the machine back today.”

 “And?”

“Nothing wrong with it. They replaced some wires as a precaution, but that was it. Daryl nodded as she ate the last of her vegetables.

“So you have no reason to feel guilty. He obviously stuck his hand somewhere stupid, while the power was still on and …” She got up and took the plates away without finishing her sentence. She piled them by the sink and took some ice cream from the fridge. Bailey could see she was going to a lot of effort to make him feel better and while appreciated, he didn’t feel he deserved it.

“You don't have to do this you know?”

“I know,” Daryl said. “Here. Take this.”  Daryl split a pill in half and held one portion between her thumb and forefinger, ready to drop into Bailey’s palm.

“What is it?”

“Xanax. I’ll run a hot bath for you. You’ll love it.”

He took the pill and popped it in his mouth without hesitation.

“Where did you get it?”

“My doctor. I told her I had anxiety attacks.”

“You lied to your doctor?”

“I feel anxious sometimes.”

“But they’re not attacks.”

“How do you know? Maybe I just tolerate them better than most people. ”

Bailey had experimented with very few drugs before he met Daryl, but these few experiences had been ridiculously innocent events, more a teenage rite of passage than any real exploration. Drinking spectacularly bad mixers before heading to the local teenage dance clubs run by police or church youth groups were a regular event. He smoked his first cigarette in the laneway behind his parent’s house when only twelve, certain at any minute some local neighbourhood patrol would sweep him up and report back to his parents. In high school and then at university he smoked dope without loving or hating it, but he’d always drawn the line short of anything else. And then along came Daryl. And he trusted her enough to try anything she suggested. Now she was giving him something new to explore and she promised a ride that would only slow him down and leave him sleeping peacefully. It sounded perfect, just what Bailey needed to help his guilty mind relax.

The bath was warm. It had candles flickering at each corner and the bath salts had turned the water aqua blue. When Bailey lowered himself in he found a rolled towel at his head and the music from outside the bathroom was light and soothing. He drifted in stasis trying to gauge if the pill was working.

He couldn’t notice a difference until he began to float at the very top of the water. His body had never been so light before.

Every problem he had drifted away like dirt from his pores. He thought of work. It didn’t matter; Simon Pearce – un-noteworthy; his stalled career – unimportant. The only thing that really mattered was Daryl and he had her, and this bath, that was important too, and Xanax, lovely wonderful soft and woolly Xanax.

 

The door inched open and Daryl’s head poked into the room.

“How’s it going?”

“Okay,” Bailey said trying not to let Daryl know how completely brilliant he thought both she and Xanax were.

“Do you feel nice and fuzzy?”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Are you almost done?” She asked.

This caught Bailey by surprise.

“I thought you might be ready for bed?”

“I just got in.” 

Daryl laughed. Her half tablet had done what she promised. It took away Bailey’s stress, his worries and his evening.

“Try two hours.”

She helped Bailey from the bath. He stood motionless cupping his arms to his chest as she wrapped a towel around him like he was a little boy in need of maternal care. He leant forward and snuggled his nose into the crease of her neck and came close to falling asleep.

“No you don’t. Wait until you’re in bed for that.”

“You’re coming too, aren’t you?” Bailey’s hands wandered out from under the towel and began exploring Daryl as she did her best to dry him off.

“Of course,” Daryl said. Bailey took this as a cue to plant a kiss. He missed his target as Daryl shoved him playfully away, unravelling the towel as she did and leaving him naked in the hall outside the bathroom. He quickly walked to the bed and disappeared between the fresh sheets.

Daryl drained the bath, blew out the candles and went to turn the CD player off.

“You were in there so long I’ll have to help you get all the wrinkles out.” 

Daryl kicked off her shoes and slipped her t-shirt over her head. Bailey didn’t move.

“Bailey?”

He was dead to the world, lost in a deep sound sleep. Daryl was left horny and alone. She had a seventy-kilogram bed warmer without any of the truly useful attachments working. It took her some time to get her mind to drift towards sleep, but once she had, she and Bailey spooned close together and hardly moved for the next few hours.

Bailey’s mind went to war with the Xanax as it tried to remove all his worries from recent events. As each hour passed the battle was waning towards the mind and the finger of guilt began to tickle Bailey again.

Suddenly, he was back in the bath, but far from alone. Sitting opposite him was Christ, a long greasy beard floating on top of the water, the hairiness of a Middle Eastern hippie who believed in sharing everything, even baths.

Bailey couldn’t hide his male curiosity, given the company, and he stole a quick glance at the Messiah’s jewels. He was cut, but no surprise there. Jesus noticed and closed his legs slightly.

“What are you doing here?” Bailey asked.

Jesus hardly looked up. He was facing a personal crisis of his own, his travel wafers had spilled and now floated on the water.

“Fuck off.”

“Excuse me?”

Christ chased a really soggy wafer and tried to trap it under the water. He used stealth to bring his hand from underneath and grab it by closing his palm slowly. The wafer wanted to escape like a raft, riding the water around it, but Jesus lived up to his hype, he was good in the wet.

“Are you okay?” Bailey asked.

“Not really.”

“Are you upset with me, because of what I did?”

“No.”

“Then why so angry?”

“They nailed me to a fucking cross!” Jesus said, holding up a hand and letting the water drain through the hole in his palm for affect. The wafer he’d just caught escaped with it. He rolled his eyes in frustration and hit the water hard sending a wave splashing onto the floor.

“Fuck!”

Bailey had expected Christ to be a sweet and forgiving man, but people always expect understanding when it’s someone else who’s done the suffering.

Bailey jumped slightly as a toe brushed his scrotum.

“You should cut your nails,” he said, trying to be understanding of a man who only ever wore sandals.

“You think I want to be here?” Christ asked.

“I’m not sure.” Bailey didn’t know what else to say. He decided to change the subject to avoid any further awkwardness.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?”

Jesus stopped what he was doing and glared at Bailey with disbelief.

“Do I look psychic?”

A stunned Bailey watched his bath-mate catch the last of his floating wafers and put them in a silver tin. It was a pathetic site. Wafers are a lot of things, but they’re not waterproof.

“Will I go to heaven?” Bailey asked, still trying to discover if the soggy prophet knew his fate.

For the first time Jesus stopped and looked at Bailey as if he mattered. Bailey thought he heard angels singing and with the acoustics in the bathroom they sounded really good.

“Yes,” Christ said in his best phone voice. It was deep enough to send small ripples across the surface of the water. Bailey had never felt more relieved in all his life. But it was short lived.

“If there was a heaven!”

Bailey’s bewildered expression forced Jesus to repeat the revelation.

“There is no heaven,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? There is no heaven.”

Bailey tried not to look confused, but it wasn’t easy given he was in the middle of a delusional dream which placed him in a warm bath entwined in the legs of Christ.

“If there’s no heaven, why do so many people believe in it?” Bailey was almost certain Jesus was having him on.

“Because people are stupid. It’s a philosophical concept that I tried to explain metaphorically. The moment I said the words ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, those without the means to accept the statement as a conceptual idea began searching for it like it was real estate. And they’ve never stopped.”

Bailey sat quietly, waiting for the punch line delivered by a master showman. Jesus sat waiting, even for him, timing was everything, but there was no tag coming. Finally Bailey spoke.

“So, there’s no heaven?”

The face of the Son of God registered pity towards Bailey.

“You’re not that quick, are you?”

Bailey shrugged off the insult as being from an unimportant source and did his best to show intelligence by expanding the proposition.

“If there’s no heaven, we can do what we want, without any moral implications? It doesn’t matter if something’s good or bad?”

“That’s up to you. Everything’s where it should be,” Christ said, pointing to his temple. “Good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell. You want to see them, look in a mirror.”

Bailey thought about this as Jesus soaped up his jewels with an organic soap left by Daryl as a display rather than a functional cleanser. It was part of her overall aesthetic giving the bathroom a sophisticated air. The soaps were matched by clear plastic bags of potpourri laid like mines around the edge of the bath.

“What the fuck is this?” Christ said, as the soap disintegrated in his hand.

“It’s organic soap.”

“It’s leaving little bits of shit all over me!”

“That’s oatmeal,” Bailey said, trying to ignore such a selfish complaint and bring the conversation back to him.

“Who’s the dumb son of a bitch who thought sticking oatmeal in soap was a good idea?!”

Bailey had the feeling Jesus wasn’t giving him his full attention. He pressed on regardless.

“You’re trying to make me feel guilty and own up, aren’t you?”

“No,” Jesus said as he hunted down more oatmeal clinging to the hairs on his chest.

“I know you are,” Bailey said defiantly. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

Christ looked at Bailey with incredible intensity and lent forward. Bailey couldn’t tell if the lean from Jesus was to emphasis what was about to be said or to pick a stubborn piece of oatmeal out of his ass. Both tasks were managed at the same time, hardly a miracle, but still impressive.

“Listen carefully. No-one cares about you. There are so many things going on in this world that are so much more important than you, no-one’s ever going to notice anything you do.”

Suddenly Bailey sat up and called out. He’d taken the covers with him leaving Daryl open to the air. She woke with concern.

“What’s wrong?”

Bailey looked around. He took a moment to orientate himself. He looked at the room, then the bed and then Daryl, then he calmed down.

“I was dreaming.”

“You okay?”

Bailey nodded, but it was clear he wasn’t. He just wasn’t ready to talk about his cleansing religious experience.

And that brings me up to date to the piece that is my current work in progress. It's a labour of love 25 years in the making - not that I've been writing it that long - but that's how long I've had the pieces of the story. It took me many years and many false starts to get to where I am, and in 2010 it was written into a minis series that attracted a really world class director - Peter Andrikidis. At least he loved the script so much he read it in a day and called me, letting me know if we got funding he'd be happy to direct. Does anyone have a spare 15 million?

Anyway, one of the Networks who said a period piece made the budget for a 4 hour mini series prohibitive, thought it would make a great novel - so that's what I'm doing with it and I'm now 100+ pages down and have sent the first 8- pages around and I'm happy to say I have already had some initial interest. Again - stay tuned for developments.