The plan at Saxkova Palačinkarna (Sax is a dog, by the way) tonight was simple: two cups of tea, two beers, and an evaluation of the effect on the first 150 pages of The Monster Within if I add two telling words in the fourth paragraph. The result: three teas, three beers, a rewrite of chapter three, and a bloody knuckle. The first results can be attributed to bad communication, bad counting, and good ideas. The last is a little more complicated. In fact, when I left Saxarna my knuckle was still intact. Indeed, as I emerged from the convenience store with a loaf of bread (the crumbs of which I am picking out of my keyboard as I compose this), I was still more or less in one piece. As I stepped out of the store and put the earphones in, however, I sowed the seeds of my own destruction.
In retrospect, perhaps it was not the act of putting phone to ear that did me in, it was my skipping over a tune in the shuffle because it was too mellow. Thus it was that “Electro” by Gwen Mars was crashing against my eardrums when I got home. I set aside my backpack, and there in the kitchen I proceeded to Rock Out. It was with a grand leaping air-guitar flourish that I cracked my hand into the ceiling lamp.
It wasn’t until after the number off the new(ish) Dickies album was over that I noticed the blood. Rest assured, by then the house was rocked.
