This is the beginning of a chapter of a new story that I wrote tonight. I have only basic ideas and am really writing this only to try out a new writing book I got at a booksale, but it might come to something, who knows? Tell me if you are interested and if you would continue reading.
Chapter One - Premonitions
“You’d better close the window. It’s going to rain and ruin the buffet’s finish.”
The silence that always filled the big, dark dining room became even more quiet. Jedro Addington picked up his fork and dabbed the prongs in his spiced creamed potatoes, avoiding the incredulous looks being given him by table’s other occupants. He had let it slip again.
There was the decisive clink of silverware being laid on the edge of a fine china dish. “Jedro, would you stand up, please?” Aunt Guille looked up with hooded eyes.
Jedro blinked. “Um . . . yes’m.” Pushing his heavy chair backwards, the young man stood up, fingertips splayed on the table on either side of his plate. He waited for further instructions, glancing around the table: Aunt Guille, dark and mousy, crouched opposite him; Aunt Agara, pale and spiderlike, splayed at the end of the table; their mother, Jedro’s grandmother, shrunken like a corpse, sleeping propped up at the head of the table.
“Now pull down your pants and urinate in your dish, please,” Aunt Guille placed a morsel of meat on the tip of her tongue, moved it to the side of her mouth, and chewed delicately. She held Jedro’s gaze, unperturbed by the crude absurdity of her request.
“What?” Jedro half shouted. Aunt Agara jumped in her seat at the loudness of his voice, and Jedro’s grandmother’s head jerked and quivered in a disturbed nod.
“His sense of propriety inhibits him,” Aunt Guille leaned toward Aunt Agara, speaking in a theatrical undertone. Her eyes slid to Jedro as she spoke to her blank-faced sister. “And yet he speaks so openly of his mental abnormality.” Drawing a deep breath, Guille leaned back in her seat and pinned Jedro with her insipid gaze. “The enigmas of the adolescent male brain confound me. Or maybe it is only inherent stupidity.”