[H.M. Murdock]

The fun part about being bored, wired and pensive is that you can have fun impulses like, "Hey, I think I'll write a noir blurb!" and actually fulfill that impulse.
Enjoy. Ish. Mild language.

It wasn’t so much the things he said, he thinks. It’s how he said it. Thoughts like those are easy to have to justify a fight in the rain where your breath makes a white haze to gaze through.
His knuckles bled; they would be bruised and swollen soon. Rubbing them instinctively, the young man made a motion as if to pull the wet fedora further down on his furrowed brow, but thought better of it. Instead he chose to flip the collar of his coat up against his neck before jamming his hands into the deep, lined pockets and shuffling off down the street.
Things happen in a dark road. People get drunk, say what they don’t mean and generally end up paying for it through the mouth. Give a man half a bottle of single malt from Scotland and he thinks he’s William [____]ing Wallace. What he forgets is that a bottle isn’t a sword, and a big mouth isn’t a large following of vicious highlanders set on freedom with frightening recklessness; the man with the tougher knuckles and denser skull wins, even if he’s stupid. That’s how life is- it’s like a blanket that’s just too short. Sure, you can pull it up to cover your shoulders and neck, but that pulls it away from your bare feet. Put it down over your feet and you get cold anyway, because your neck is exposed.
This isn’t to say that our boy was drunk. No, sir. Aside from the drunks, skunks and skanks, there are the sharks. The big boys who know they’re big and flaunt it like hell itself couldn’t take them in a brawl. In a parade of Average H. Joes, they’re the Dizzy Gillespies and Great Satchmos. They play their tune, and everyone else can just listen or disappear.
Our boy’s a shark. His mother’s proud of him because he’s big, strong and gets all the babes with expensive tastes. His father’s proud because he lied, blackmailed and shouldered his way through the Ivy League ladder of Yale- except that his father just thinks he raised a smart kid. His siblings know better because he still beats the [____] out of them, and nobody knows it but him and them and the fly on the wall. He’s not a shark because he’s stupid, or because he’s intelligent. He straddles comfortably the fence between the two, except that he straddles it because he thinks it’s the highest throne available- a shark thinks he’s better, and everyone agrees for the sake of their health on lonely nights.
How do you find a shark? Small men quiver when they walk alone- sharks are big, just like nature demands. They wear trendy stuff; hats, big coats, wingtips and three-piece suits with black handkerchiefs in the breast pocket, thank you very much. A shark is the man who hasn’t got a bottle, hasn’t got a whore, and hasn’t got a goofy grin on his face. He hits up a speak easy just for targets to crash against a brick wall, and he doesn’t regret it.
Our boy is a good shark. He’s got big arms and a big chest. He wears his wingtips with a measured amount of pride, and his fedora is always low to shield his eyes from the sun- when it’s dark, it shields him from seeing what he doesn’t want to see. Our boy is street-smart and street-tough. He counts fights while he throws cards into a top hat on the bed of a cheap hotel while the lounge below cranks out cheap tunes from cheap brass.
But the best thing about being a shark is that sharks eat each other. If you eat a shark, you get his reputation to add into yours- after all, if you beat him, you must be good. But if the shark eats you, you might as well not exist.
On this particular night, the only mistake our boy made was the mistake of wandering into a bigger shark’s feeding ground carrying a wallet that wasn’t his with a smell of alcohol on him that wasn’t his either. But whether it was his or not, it was the drop of blood in the water that frenzied the bigger shark. Our boy was a good shark; now he’s a good meal.

[Mara's Mom]

I like this, Mr. Dock. These are my favorite lines:

What he forgets is that a bottle isn’t a sword, and a big mouth isn’t a large following of vicious highlanders set on freedom

He straddles comfortably the fence between the two, except that he straddles it because he thinks it’s the highest throne available

On this particular night, the only mistake our boy made was the mistake of wandering into a bigger shark’s feeding ground carrying a wallet that wasn’t his with a smell of alcohol on him that wasn’t his either.

Our boy was a good shark; now he’s a good meal.

I think you maybe were born in the wrong decade. I just realized the other day that my singing voice was born in the wrong decade. I can sing Baby It's Cold Outside spot on. My voice is most naturally suited to sultry, velvety songs. And Mr. D's friend, Mr. S, was born in the wrong century because he likes to wear long white nightgowns and carry candles. We accidentally caught him doing that.

Now, can you write some other kind of blurb about fairies or elves? [/waits patiently]

[guitarczar]

I like it too. At the beginning I wasn't that interested but then as I kept reading, my attention continued to heighten. I probably enjoy it because it has the big guy that's in control, that knows what he's doing. But I think that your guy is better than say, some of the other big guys like James Bond, because he has that intensity, but it's controlled. He's always sizing things up, analyzing different situations. He's not particularly bright or moral. He's a force that knows how to do what he does best. Maybe it was just the way you described it, but he stands out to me more than the other tough guys I've read about. I'm interested to find out how he got like that. He seems like a guy that would hold all his relationships at arm's length, because he held one too close to his heart and it exploded. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more about this (if you have more).