Real Characters
a short story
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright © 2011 by Harvey Stanbrough
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Real Characters
It was a dark and stormy night, but nobody noticed. They didn’t even care. They were all characters in another novel that would never be published because of opening lines like that one. Even before he put them on paper, while they were still little more than electrical impulses in Jacobsen’s brain, they had breathed a communal moan of disappointment. Well, all but Sam Stade, whom Jacobsen envisioned as the main character of the novel.
Sam was the resident tough guy. He never sighed and he never moaned. In fact, shit was nearly all he ever said, ususally as he was flicking a cigarette butt, which was never shorter or longer than three-quarters of an inch, either out the window of his car during a mandatory high-speed chase or into the corner of an alley just before he slammed a bad guy’s face into a brownstone wall. He nearly always looked neat in his brown suit with black pinstripes, although it was seldom buttoned. His hair was always in place too, cut short, and combed straight back. In fact, the only time he looked even slightly dishevelled was when he was getting beat up by bad guys in his office. At those times, his jacket hung on the coat rack beneath his fedora. The collar button on his shirt would slip out and his narrow black tie would loosen and drape across his white shirt at an odd angle. Jacobsen allowed him only a very limited vocabulary that consisted mainly of curse words, other tough-guy talk that was usually italicized for emphasis, and clichés, and Sam was none too happy about it.