Made it to today’s goal. Tomorrow, to get back on track, I’ll have to hit 30k. I’m going to give it my best shot. I was working pretty steadily today to get the 6632 words. Ten thousand will be a little tougher. If I can at least get close, I think I’ll still be in the running to finish.

I think I’ll post a little excerpt. Tony has just been diagnosed as being HIV+. His daughter, Cheryl, (the MC) is visiting her maternal grandparents in Maine. She’s been gone about a month. Cheryl’s mother committed suicide when Cheryl was nearly four. I use “Cheryl’s mother” because I haven’t given her a name yet. In the earlier part of the story, I may have given her a name, but I’ve forgotten it. To make it easier to find and replace when the poor character gets a name, I’ve chosen this convention.

NOTE: This stuff may NEVER see print. Even so, please don’t repost, quote or copy the following excerpt. It is copyrighted, and I have hope it could someday be published.

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Three weeks later, the test results came back, and they made him come in for counseling in person. Tony was stunned to learn he was HIV positive. “But. But. I’m straight. I can’t be.”

They explained to him that with his sexual history, any one of the women he’d been with could have been with someone who transmitted the virus to her, and she had spread it to him. Sorry, Tony, HIV is a heterosexual disease. It’s not limited to homosexual men.

They spent hours in counseling with him that day. Before they would let him leave, they made him sign a statement informing him that if he didn’t inform sexual partners about his infection and use a condom every single time he had sex, he could be prosecuted.

Tony went home angry. What did he have to live for? HIV was a death sentence. Why should he wait? All that baloney they’d said about people living with it for years. He got home and stood in the living room, looking around. The house was a wreck. He hadn’t cleaned it since Cheryl‘s mother had died. What? More than ten years ago now.

He walked through the house, seeing it for the first time. Cheryl‘s room in the master bedroom. He’d never reclaimed it after he quit locking her in. She was here more than him. He didn’t need it. His room consisted of an unmade bed with grayed sheets — they hadn’t been that color originally, he was sure. There were piles of clothes. He must have thirty pair of underwear. He couldn’t count how many times he’d simply stopped on the way to work at a twenty-four hour discount store and bought a three-pack of the cheapest brand he could find. He looked at the pile again. Maybe sixty. He looked at the rest of the room. Empty beer cans and bottles littered the area. The trash can overflowed. One of Mary‘s thongs was draped over the mirror. She hadn’t been here for five years. It had to be Mary‘s, because he hadn’t brought anyone but his secretary here in all those years. And that was only because they couldn’t go to her house. Cheryl had been in school, so it worked to bring her here back then.

He turned to the bathroom he’d been using without looking at it for years. He’d missed the toilet a few times. There was a yellow ring around the base of the toilet. The tub had a dark ring where his shower water drained slowly. The sink was spattered with dark dirt from years of hand washing but no sink washing. He walked through Cheryl‘s room. It was a little cleaner than the rest of the house, but not much. She had piles of clothes all the way back to stuff she’d worn in kindergarten. At least, he thought so. There was some pretty small stuff in there. There was a pile of papers in the corner. It looked like school papers. He sifted through some of them. The kid was smart. She’d never shown him this stuff. He kept looking through the whole stack. He thought back, but he hadn’t seen a report card from her in a long time. He dug through the pile. He found last year’s. Damn. She earned straight A’s and had perfect attendance last year. Who had signed them? He looked. His name was signed but it wasn’t his signature. She’d forged it? Why? He looked at the dates of the first grading period. He’d been in Cancun with someone. He tried to remember who and couldn’t. He shrugged. She hadn’t been important, but the trip had been a blast. So his kid had forged his signature so the school wouldn’t find out her dad had run out on her again. She’d always done that. He’d told her to talk to nobody, and to never get in trouble, and she’d always done what he’d told her about that. She was a smart kid. Most kids wouldn’t have been able to pull that off all these years. He’d never had a call from the school. He tossed the papers back in the corner. He looked in her bathroom. It wasn’t the neatest, but it was mostly clean. He wandered back out into the kitchen.

What was in these cabinets? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d opened them. The counters were dirty and littered with junk and trash. The floor was filthy. Trash overflowed the can — he guessed Cheryl usually took it out. The sink was full of dirty dishes with a roach or two lounging on the edge of water-filled pans. He noticed an odor. One bottom cabinet door was broken off it’s hinges and hung at an odd angle. The stove top was crusted with burnt on overflowed sauces. He gingerly grasped the oven door handle and pulled. He saw piles of carbon-crisped drippings. It looked like most of them were pizza cheese. He allowed the door to bang closed and stood straight. He walked to the back door and looked over the tangle of overgrown weeds in the backyard. He didn’t think he could open the door and step out. The concrete blocks that formed the patio were uneven and overgrown with weeds. Except for the unevenness of the ground, he wouldn’t have known there were paving stones among the weeds.

He dropped his hand that held the broken window blind away to reveal the overgrown back yard. He trudged to the front window and lifted a blind, peering through. The front yard was also overgrown but not as bad as the back yard. It was a postage stamp-sized yard to begin with. There was a weedeater and electrical cord under the eaves. Cheryl must have been weedeating the front yard. How come he’d never noticed? He turned back to the living room and looked at the trash-strewn room. He walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was well-stocked with beer and not much else. He dragged a small cooler closer to himself and loaded it with bottles. He allowed the refrigerator door to fall closed. He pulled open the freezer door and pulled out the ice cube drawer. He dumped it over his beers and put it back in the freezer. He picked up the cooler and carried it to the living room. He placed it next to the couch and flopped down after it, grabbing the remote and flicking on the television. He popped the cap off the beer and guzzled it down in three long swallows. He pulled another one out and tossed the cap against the wall. Why was he alive? Well, it wouldn’t be for much longer.