“Where do you live?” He asked the wet, begrimed face of the surprisingly tall oldster.

The man’s face was lined and drawn from age and, Jason guessed, from whatever had befallen him. His hair was grey and scraggly, falling limply in a sodden tangle around his head. His eyes appeared glazed and unseeing, or perhaps seeing somewhere Jason couldn’t see. Concussion was a strong possibility, Jason thought, looking into the man’s eyes, which weren’t entirely tracking.

“Where do you live?” he said again, a little more urgently, giving the man a small shake.

The man’s eyes seemed to focus on his face for a moment. Perhaps he’d fallen and hit his head, Jason thought, studying the disheveled figure in front of him. The cosplay-style clothes meant he wasn’t one of the city’s many homeless, so concussion or mugging seemed the likely cause of the fellow’s condition.

“Shhcathor.” He muttered bleakly, his voice slightly slurred.

“Where?” Jason replied, not understanding what the figure before him had said.

The old face stared at him for a moment, then lost focus as he mumbled something unintelligible, his body starting to shake in cold or shock, perhaps both. Perhaps he was just a drunken bum after all. Every city had them, Jason knew, so maybe he’d stolen the fancy clothes he was wearing under the dirt-smeared coat.

“No home, huh? What about I take you to one of the homeless shelters.” He suggested.

He had a vague idea there was one a few blocks over, not that far beyond where he’d parked his car in the basement car park of his friend’s unit complex. It was handy that Joe did not have a car at the moment and didn’t mind Jason using his allocated parking spot whenever Jason needed to come into the city proper.

The fellow shook his head, then seemed to focus, but as he did so, he became agitated, muttering something. He then grabbed Jason’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip and jabbed Jason in the chest with his finger saying something Jason couldn’t understand as he did so. The language sort of sounded like Greek or maybe Jewish? What was certain was that Jason had no idea what the fellow was trying to tell him, except he didn’t seem keen on the Shelter thing.

“All right, no shelter.” And the fellow lost some of his agitation but then jabbed Jason in the chest with his finger a couple more times, accompanied by some grunting words

“Oh. No way, man, not taking you home with me!” He spluttered as he finally realized what the old man was trying to get across to him.

The man wobbled, jabbed Jason’s chest feebly a couple more times, and then the oldster’s eyes rolled up, and he slumped limply against a surprised Jason, who somehow managed to hold on to the fellow rather than dropping him on the ground.

“Oh hell,” Jason muttered, desperately holding the old fellow up.

He maneuvered himself into a position where he could get an arm around the relatively thin old man and hold him up by having him half lean against Jason. A quick glance around showed a couple of unsavory-looking types a bit further down the road, but, fortunately, they were on the other side of the street and seemed content to stay there. He found he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the old man in his current state, so Jason began hobbling up the road towards where his car was parked while supporting the old man, who sometimes helped and other times dragged, making it slow work getting his car.

NOTE: This story needs to be edited and there are changes that need to be made before it is published.

Chapter 1

Strange encounter

An old man was feebly moving his arms and legs while lying in the dirty little alcove where the Convention Centre ended, and the next building started. The sprawled figure appeared to be cold, worn, wet, and disorientated.  Jason Lerner paused in the cold, wet sleet for reasons that would be hard to explain. Afterward, he decided it was the fact his great-grandfather had frozen to death in Boston just after the war that had motivated him to stop, although, at the time, this reason did not consciously register. In truth, it was simply the sight of an old man who appeared to be in trouble that brought out feelings of benevolence towards his fellow man. Plus, the fact he looked to be dressed like one of the cosplay participants at the convention may well have had something to do with it. There was practically no one else in sight this late, and the traffic swishing past in the wet conditions had declined to merely a steady trickle rather than the daytime charging herd.

“Hey, man. You been mugged or just slipped over in the wet?” He asked, moving to the huddled figure and bending down to lend the moving and, therefore, not yet dead oldster a hand.

The huddled figure tried to brush his hand away rather weekly and muttered something doleful Jason couldn’t catch.

“Come on, old man. You can’t stay here. You’ll freeze to death by morning!” He said loudly and took firm hold of the huddled form.

Still muttering, the old man relented enough to allow himself to be pulled up with the sodden and battered-looking coat he was wearing falling open to reveal black trousers made of some shiny synthetic-looking material that was obviously expensive but now rather begrimed, plus he had on dark, elaborate leather boots. His shirt was some silken material, a dark grey with silver flecks forming some sort of pattern that was too hard to make out in the dim light afforded by the street light a little further along the boulevard. The silver filigree, or whatever it was, almost seemed to writhe on its own as if it was alive. Must have been at the convention for sure, Jason said to himself, seeing the rich and strange clothing underneath.

ARCon wasn’t one of the real big conventions, but it was one of the better ones, or at least Jason thought it was. It was one of the few literary-themed conventions still running these days, rather than being movie franchise or pop culture based. Or at least it had been. The comic book superhero juggernaut was slowly overwhelming the more traditional literary aspects of the convention, which he supposed was to be expected in this day and age, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. With the recent changes to its coverage, it now attracted a more diverse crowd, and the cosplay people could be anything from a hobbit to a Marvel character to something really obscure.

Wishing all a happy Christmas or Happy Holidays as preferred.
Going away early this year and won’t be back until January – may do some work while I’m lounging about in beautiful Yamba NSW – or I may not….

I will begin serializing another unpublished book on Monday.
It is waiting for me to edit it as there are several inconsistencies with later books int he series
Only the first book is “finished” so far – but there are 4 more in various stages of completeness as well.
I have been holding onto to this series to be used as my into to “real” publishing but I never seem to get around to searching for an agent so I thought I’d give you people a taste of it.