I've had the nagging urge to do a MeW short story this last week. It seems like a contrary idea because MeW has always been intended to be a comic, but this idea of doing a prose form where I could get into some observer's head to a greater degree than I can in a comic wouldn't leave me alone since it first came up. This morning (when I was supposed to be polishing the Wives and Lovers script instead of starting something new) I began piecing parts together and wrote a possible first two pages. No title yet.
My stories come together in different ways. Some come together very formally, starting with a top-down outline and resolving into specific scenes. Others start out as scenes and the plot comes later. This one is appearing via the latter channel -- I have an opening, a vague ending I'm not entirely happy with yet, and at this point a VERY vague idea of the steps in between.
There's a 19-month gap in story time beteen the end of the MWWT: Executive Matters story arc and the beginning of the subsequent Ghosts story arc. This story occupies a narrow slice of time somewhere in probably the early part of that gap. Here's the first version (after a couple editorial read-throughs) of the first two pages -- it's still rough but it's there. I suspect this should be posted in my gallery or a "scraps" section somehow, but I'm being spontaneous and I'm not sure how to post text in a gallery yet (also haven't looked.
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He's short. Not terribly short, but I'm not that tall and in heels I must've looked down on him from two or three inches. He's taller on TV.
Back then he wasn't on TV. I had no idea who he was the first time I saw him; nobody knew him back then (or would've just noticed he looks remarkably like JFK, which has been remarked on to excess). But as famous as he is now, you think he must always have walked around with some kind of golden aura around him. And... maybe that was true, in a way. It's not like your eye was drawn to him across a room, but as soon as you talked to him, he made you think you were important enough to drop everything for. Even though he never did.
But not from a distance. From a distance, he was just like everyone else. I read somewhere that on TV they shoot him from a slight angle so he seems like he's standing above you, but in real life he can't be more than 5'8".
I hope this is the kind of thing you want. All your message said was, "5,000 words on Mearn as you knew him." That's vague (excuse me for saying). But after everything that's been written, I guess all I can contribute is little things I noticed.
The first time I ever saw him was early in 2008, [?check] before he was rich. I was in Atlantic City feeding a slot machine at [?~~~~~~~~], and when I looked up I noticed him standing at the back of the room in the middle of a group of men. I didn't pay much attention, but he was talking to a tall gray-haired man. I think that's why the first thing I noticed about him was how short he is -- the man must've been twice his age, but he and the rest towered over Geoff.
I read later that Geoff purchased the casino, so maybe the man was the owner or a manager or something. I'm only guessing.
And that was it, really. Just another well-dressed man talking some kind of business in the back of the casino, that was my first impression of Geoffrey Mearn. I looked back at my game.
IRC
Content
Exhilarated
Lazy
Joy
