Here's the first of several passages/pages edited from early drafts of 6 Sick Hipsters. The one below is a personal favorite:
"Wolfgang Brown had a squirrel problem.
The frizz-tailed rodents that darted in front of his '89 Honda hatchback did not scramble back to the greenbelt; they stood frozen before his car to be ground to asphalt. It was as though the squirrels were sacrificing themselves. He imagined them lined up, beady eyes trailing after passing cars. Walnut sized hearts pounding. Them ready to jump, spring forward with some chattering cry like fuzzy martyrs. The hatchback was an altar for holocaust. Their deaths seemed so instinctual that it could be nothing less than religious.
Devout Christians found the Virgin in a pancake. They saw her veiled in a roadside shrubbery. Her smiling in a smear of oil on a pane of glass. Perhaps the squirrels saw an imperfection on Wolfgang’s car that demanded worship? Wolfgang had carefully examined the manifold on the hatchback. He checked out the tires. The bumper. Even the windshield. But he could not find any scrapes, tears, bumps, scratches, or splotches that might suggest, in a squirrel’s eye, an object of adoration.
They squirrels simply died and Wolfgang had no idea why.
In order to reduce the casualties, he took what he called “urban” routes to work. Santavista High was only a few miles south of his apartment complex but Wolfgang drove a five mile loop north before coming back down just so he could take Interstate 75 and avoid the neighborhoods and greenbelts where the faithful awaited the coming of their Japanese rear-wheel drive messiah. It actually worked out better that way. Taking I-75 brought Wolfgang through Fruitville and afforded him a chance to meet up with Tony on Mondays before school began."
© 2005-2008 Rayo Casablanca
