Draft passage from my second Elrod short story:
The next day, Elrod showered, dressed, and in the cold, clear morning, walked toward a small downtown market about a mile away. En route, he mused about his situation and what seemed to be a new stage of recovery from a severe head injury he suffered in the vehicle accident that killed his parents and left him an orphan.
Mind is clearing more and more, he thought. I no longer talk about myself in the third person, Elrod is doing this, is doing that, and I seem to be putting sequences together in a better way. I'm smart, and from reading and therapy, know I'm a global thinker. I'm not sure how far this will go, but, I've got a new sense of myself.
Elrod reaffirmed to himself that he no longer wanted to be without shelter on the streets again. He learned to be frugal, to bank money unspent from his disability checks, to use his food stamps carefully, and to be persistent in his work to reduce the disabilities he realized he suffered from his childhood head wound. The room at Motel 23 he could afford.
“A new me,” he said softly. “Seven years on the streets. Enough of that!”
Still looking like a homeless person, Elrod walked through the roads bordering a city project and added a shuffle to his stride as he neared the market. A new me putting on the old me, he mused, smiling. Off to his left, he glimpsed a young boy knocking on a door, carrying a lunch bag. The door opened, a hand reached out and took the bag. The boy then ran farther up the street and around a corner.
I heard about that, he thought, kids used as drug couriers for street dealers. Leave it be, but keep what I saw in mind.
(c) 2014 Wes Rehberg
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