SMALL BEGINNINGS:
CHAPTER 1 ANYBODY HOME...?
By Bryant Perkins
“Enoooooooch,
Enooooch!” I had always been able to accurately discern my mother’s often
shifting moods by the way she belted out my name. Today, she was happy.
It
was the beginning of summer; I had just graduated high school, and was about to
start the first of four tumultuous years in college. All season long I ran wild
and free, coming and going as I pleased. However, today was different.
I
held off on going to the usual summer activities; family barbeques, taking dips
in suburban swimming pools with friends, and basketball at the park. No, today
I was staying close to home because my mother had requested my help with the
yard work.
My
home was simple yet you could tell a very proud African American family who
didn’t believe in hiring gardeners tended it. I mean, why hire gardeners when
you have two sons?
“Enooooooooch!”
Trust
me, I hear her. I just don’t feel like answering. It’s because of her that I’m
in these woods, at the edge of my backyard, single handedly fighting back
Mother Nature’s steady encroachment towards our porch. And all with nothing
more than a pair of dirty pruning shears and work gloves. Both had long since
seen better days. The shears were missing a handle and the gloves had so many
holes I might as well have had paper bags on my hands.
The
weeds I was supposed to be trimming were fighting for every inch of sunlight as
they snaked casually through the base of our pine tree line. Their fibrous tendrils were always
getting caught in my father’s dilapidated push mower thus making it extremely
difficult for him to cut the grass this far away from the house.
“What
I wouldn’t give for a nice flamethrower right now,” I thought to myself, “I
could just burn down all this stuff nice and easy.”
“Yeah
mom! What?”
“Come
inside and eat. I want to talk to you.”
“Don’t
have to tell me twice.” Although, I wondered what she wanted to talk with me
about. Oh please, don’t let it be the sex talk. Mom and I knew I was at least
ten ex-girlfriends past the sex talk, or so I had hoped.
“On
my way!”
I
left my trusty yet tattered weapons of environmental warfare in the garage and
headed inside the house that surprisingly did not smell like food at
all…tricked again!
My
mother sat at the kitchen table, the smile of a veteran deceptionist spread
wide across her still fairly young looking face. No one really knew how old my
mother was because her 50-year-old skin had hardly a wrinkle.
She
opens her mouth, “here it comes, the sex talk…” or at least I thought.
“Enoch
Smalls, do you know how you got your name, and why…?”
I
let out a long sigh as my mind ruthlessly peeled apart my eyelids,
”damn…dreaming again…”
Come back July 1st for the release of Chapter 2: When A Man...!
ABOUT SMALL BEGINNINGS:
A secret organization of scientist are hunting a New York City antique dealer (Enoch Smalls) and a female anthropologist (Katherine Assoui) who just happen to stumble across the wrong ancient artifact.
With no one to trust and very few places to hide, the reluctant pair must comb through the pages of antiquity and a crumbling biblical past in an effort to keep the artifact from falling into the hands of cold-blooded genius killers.
There is much at stake, as this ancient relic could either propel the world towards a new era of technological advancement or plunge it into chaos, and darkness.
About The Author:
Bryant Perkins originally began his writing career as a news reporter, writing dozens of articles for The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, Xenia Daily Gazette, and Lancaster Eagle Gazette. However, it was his love of Science Fiction that lead him to write his first short story - Where Gods Go - in 2001, a story about what happens when alien prisoners have to clear their names after being wrongfully convicted of genocide.
In "Small Beginnings" Perkins hopes to create a Sci-Fi world out of a modern day existence and ensure that every page is filled with action, adventure, love and hope.
