Writing Sample.

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Tonas Deal

His hands shook like the desperate wings of a wounded bird. Even balled to fists they quivered horribly. His legs shook too as he crouched in the darkness. Anxiety screamed unrelentingly in his frantic mind. He felt like red-hot iron being randomly, maliciously hammered into something amorphous.

What he needed was a systematic approach, some pattern to latch onto. It’s how his mind worked. Once Tonas Deal found a pattern, he could repeat it, over and over and over. Always he’d lived like that. It was easier.

Lately – well, for a pretty long time actually – his pattern had evolved not at all to his liking. External pressures forced unwanted changes. The pattern always got him through though. Always!

Not tonight… Was it finally broken?

It terrified him how much his hands were shaking. He clasped them together and hugged his arms against his body in the alley off Town Square, eyes clamped shut.

His job reconciling business accounts had been all about patterns. It was easy! When the numbers on one side didn’t meet up with those on the other, he could always see the reason – someone broke the pattern! Sloppiness or laziness were more common than fraud or deception, but whatever the cause Tonas always saw it. He was a superstar with those books, so fast and accurate. They loved him at work, paid him well, gave him lots of leeway. That’s what led to the pattern he used to have, the one he wanted back.

It went like this. Long lunch at Drewar’s. Three goblets of Ridgeline Ruby. The storied winery was a client after all. Had been. Whatever. It served for the afternoon. It did! Actually, four was more reliable. How efficient he became as the effect waned. Those columns of numbers practically added themselves in the late afternoon. Just the thought of happy hour! That, too, was at Drewar’s.

It was. Then that uppity new bartender made a little comment. Just an off-hand… jest? No! Its calculated malice was like a slap across the mouth. “A seventh Ruby on the day, Sir, and not even suppertime.” The fool did his employer no favors with that. Happy hour moved to the Eagle the very next day. What barman worth a bucket of warm spit would say something like that? And to a regular?!

Suppertime wasn’t really a thing most nights. He was supposed to bring in new clients, was he not? How better to find and schmooze them than happy hour starting at Drewar’s or the Eagle, then moving on to… so many choices! The Thorn and Thistle – always a favorite. Maybe the Sword and Scepter (if someone else was buying). Eventually, though, the prospective clients would just… disappear, get lost between destinations or… it was hard to be sure. They couldn’t keep up with the excitement. They were exciting those nights! Tonas knew everyone. Everyone in those places anyway. They were all so great, and they loved him! At least that’s what he remembered…

There was a lot he didn’t remember though, about those nights, but always he’d awoken in his own bed. He had! Then the pattern changed, became… unpredictable. Waking up in an alley, a gutter, the town lockup? It was beneath him! He was a graduate of Forton Academy, his father a barrister of great renown. Those new wakeups came with such a crush of anxiety. Paralyzing… This must stop! The pattern must change!

It did.

Anxiety took over to start his day, every day. Such self-recrimination. Such heartfelt promises that this must, should, could, would end. Today! He said it and felt it, and meant it, and committed to it with every fiber of his being! Tears, real tears, streaking his face in the mirror.

But he couldn’t very well not go to Drewar’s for lunch, right? It was right next to his office, and he knew everyone, and they expected him, and they greeted him with such cordial accommodation, brought the first Ruby before he’d even looked at the menu. He couldn't very well send back such a fine vintage, could he? Ridiculous!

Tonas took a deep breath and held it, which lessened his trembling a moment. He reached up with a grubby finger, noting the crescent of black filth under its long, jagged nail, and wiped saliva from the corner of his mouth. Just the thought of Ridgeline Ruby had suffused him with such longing. He was salivating like a starving man at a banquet. His anxiety had dissipated for one golden moment before rushing back in a spasm. Now again his hands shook, even worse than before. He forced them down and clasped them to his quivering knees as tightly as he could.

Stop shaking!

His pattern had become only worse and worse and worse and worse. Drewar’s, Ridgeline Ruby, clients, work, money, family, his sense of decency and self-respect, they all went out of his pattern, his life, one by one.

But still he loved them. Patterns. His mind just worked that way. Systematic! And still he had one. Lunch was Bandor’s Hall now, every day. Soup, thin and watery with occasional little chunks of the Gods know what. Then the circuit. Every day the same. He used to vary it, but why? Patterns were easier.

Each tavern he entered, wide-eyed and smiling, his mouth a halo of innocence, there was a chance he’d get a taste. He still had friends in this town. They no longer loved him like they used to, he knew that, but some would still get him a little something, sometimes.

New barmen were the better bet, starting him a tab under some made-up name. The name would be fake, but his upper middle-class demeanor and speech were the real things. They could get him well into a besotted evening. Afterward though, that establishment was burned. He’d even had to remove some from the pattern permanently after enough angry, even violent, demands for payment. Others fell out as his clothes became shabbier… Drewar’s, the Eagle, certainly the Scepter.

Now rock bottom was rushing up at him like a nightmare from which there was no waking. Yesterday he got only half an ale – nipped behind the back of a drunk bargeman at Weigh and Away by the river. The beating and forcible removal had been fair price for half a strong drink, but even so it was not enough, not nearly, and today, no luck at all. Nothing. Not a drop.

Now the shaking.