The Seventh Round: Opening Lines

The opening lines of my novel, The Seventh Round, to be published in the near future.


(My childhood memoir When I Was German is available on Kindle at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FM254KM
And also:
At Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-i-was-german-alan-wynzel/1116946664?ean=2940045270991
At Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356144
At Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/When-I-Was-German/book-Yggik0p7ZUGyhMYqTTN2wg/page1.html?s=iVi7ZinlUkG-F-aEidZXYQ&r=1
At Inktera: http://www.inktera.com/store/title/06c86017-5f7a-4351-aef8-1ccfc9ff65bd
And at Apple using iBooks, search in iBooks on "wynzel"
Follow me on Twitter @alanwynzel)

THE SEVENTH ROUND

            Monday.  It’s an hour before dawn.  The apartment is cold.  I haven’t turned up the heat yet.  I can’t afford it.  Later on, I will.  For now I huddle on the sofa, shivering in an old quilt.  The leather sofa is my bed when my kids are here.  The leather is hard and cold like the jagged shards of frosted grass outside.

            The gun rests in my hands.  Also cold and dead.  But pregnant with possibilities.

            The gun is a .38 caliber revolver with a seven-round cylinder, cast in steel alloy.  Rendered in a deep blue unseen in the dark.  I feel the heft of it, the solidity of the thing, as I stroke the smooth metal with my fingers and thumbs.  I take it in my right hand.  A perfect fit, as if custom-made.  I finger the trigger and thumb the hammer.  I never gave much thought to guns before, but now I understand.  The shape, the weight, the easy fit in the hand.   The power inherent.  The potential.  The gun forge may follow the blueprint, but the design was cast from the base yearnings of the soul.

            I open and spin the empty cylinder.  The action is even, fluid.  It shuts with a soft click.  I haven’t loaded it yet.  It isn’t time.

            I have to get up now.  I wrap the gun in a hand towel and, feeling my way in the darkness, slide it with a tinkling of glass behind the bottles of vodka, gin, and tequila in the liquor cabinet.  I set it beside the box of shells.  Withdrawing my hand, I tip the gin bottle, and catch it just by instinct.  I’m well accustomed with handling those bottles in the dark.

            Now into the kitchen, where I shut the louvered door behind me, turn on the light, and put water on for coffee.  In silence, I will have breakfast then tiptoe to the toilet for an hour-long struggle to clear my bleeding bowels, a task never completed, and finished with the painstaking easing of my screaming hemorrhoids back inside myself.  Holding my breath and praying that they don’t rupture completely.  When that is all done, I will turn on the heat, awaken my kids and take them to school.  Then I will go to work.

I will leave the gun here, for now.