Dodging a Train

Note: This story was originally published in Close to the Bone Magazine

    ~ The drunk was a big boy, well over the bouncer’s own one-sixty, but Abel’s four years in Holman Correctional Facility had taught him that it wasn’t size that got you through the day; it was who could get the most violent the quickest. He had the drunk snatched up—the man’s shoulder torqued to the breaking point—before anyone else could work out what was going on. They were almost to the door when Holly let loose with such a steady and vulgar stream of threats and insults that even the sailors at the pool table drew back. ~

I generally encourage everyone to write. With a few friends, I might even urge them to publish. When one of them received an unnecessarily discouraging personal rejection for what I thought was a great story, it didn’t sit right with me. I dove into that magazine’s stacks and tried to figure out what the editors were looking for that my friend’s story didn’t have. Even though low word counts are daunting for me, I wanted to see if I could crack their code and write something they would deem worthy.

Twenty stories later (some very good), I worked out that they liked violence: blood and broken teeth and all that good stuff. And what luck! I am quite literally a subject matter expert on the topic. For almost thirty years, I’ve train to punch and kick and choke and hit grown men with the ground (the last is my favorite description of Judo). I’ve broken bones and had mine broken in turn. For almost a decade now, I’ve analyzed real world violence for a living, and I’ve had more formal education on what happens to the mind and body in a fight then most people know it’s possible to receive.

I picked a single detail, one of a thousand unique and fascinating moments that you can only experience when you’ve been caught up in the unscripted chaos of a fight, and I built a story around it. It’s not how I usually write, either in style or length, but it felt solid.

When the rejection arrived from that same magazine, they went out of their way to praise the action and the pacing. I’m always appreciative when editors take the time to give specifics, but the part they found too implausible. too fantastic to believe? The one detail that I’d pulled (without embellishment) directly from my own experience.  

Fortunately, the fine folks at Close to the Bone are either more familiar with violence or more willing to trust those who are, because they gave my little story a home. Give it a read and see if you can spot the real world detail. It will only cost you the five minutes it takes to read it!