Last Line Blogfest: The Idear

This is for the last-line blogfest, hosted by your favorite stalker and mine, Mrs. Lilah Pierce.

This is from a short story I wrote a while back. I used to sit in the attic in this old chair, sharpening my knives and collecting dried snakeskins from where the floor met the eaves and reading this medical school dictionary I'd found up there.

See, this house we lived in for a while was infested with snakes, and rats, and you name it, a total shithole. I hated that house.

I used to climb up the carport, run across the roof, and then monkey-swing into an attic window that was just out-of-reach if you leaned off the second story. My parents fought a lot and this was the only quiet spot I could find.

Anyway. This short story is about Marty. One of the guys he hangs out with calls him Sugar, and Marty found a big-ass knife in the trash dump yesterday afternoon and snuck it up to his attic.

- Eric

Excerpt from The Idear by Eric Trant

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***

The next day it rained, huge drops that fell straight-down without wind and without thunder. Marty sat in the attic next to the window as if beneath a waterfall, hidden behind clear sheets of water as the rain rolled over the eaves. He sat in a toddler's chair, one he'd found crammed into the corner of the attic when they'd moved in a year ago. The wicker seat was chewed-through, and the sharp corners of the broken straws sometimes poked him, but its legs were strong enough that Marty could lean back as he worked. The overhead light had long ago burned out and never been replaced. So Marty sat near the window. The cascading rain somehow amplified the light here.

Marty's fingers bled from where the wire brush had stabbed him; the wild-haired brush wasn't designed to be held, it was designed to spin on a grinder. He had taken a piece of his jeans (the part left over after his mom had made cut-offs) and used the fabric to pad his hands. It worked well, and during the past few hours, Marty had scraped most of the rust from the blade, and saved the rest of his fingers.

According to his mom's scale, the one she kept hidden beneath the bathroom towels so she didn't have to look at it, the knife weighed over a pound. The weight sat heavy in Marty's lap.

In his pocket was another weight, this one a few ounces he'd lifted from the knife-drawer in the kitchen: a battered and chipped whetstone.

Marty held the knife up in the shimmering light. "You're almost clean," he said. "Then I'll put an edge on you that'll cut through glass."

***