The Collective NaNovel

Daily Word Count: 2,313
Total Word Count: 11,522

It’s the end of Day 5 and the beginning of Day 6 and I’m happy to say that things are looking up in odd and unexpected ways. It’s true, Darla and Stan have virtually no backstory and I will likely scrap whatever I happened to have written for them because of its extreme level of suckitude. But Ernie has entered the story and he’s behaving quite nicely. I think that the threat that I might do evil things and cause tragic accidents to happen while he was making a fried banana sandwich was just the thing he needed to straighten out and fly right.

Plot is happening but in a very small way, but I think things are going to get a bit more interesting rather quickly. I am insanely pleased about “The King and Me Pawn Shop” and about the quirky things that are going to happen there.

Darla has successfully “called [Stan] a bum and slapped [him] real hard.” And she’s also “thrown his shit out into the yard.” We’re getting somewhere.

The most surprising event of the evening was the appearance of The Traveling Shovel of Death (TSoD). I know, I know… I didn’t see it coming either. I was happy though that before anyone got too rash being only 11,522 words into the novel Ernie just got knocked unconscious.

And so I leave you with the following excerpt cataloging the very first appearance of the TSoD in any of my NaNovels:

On this particular Wednesday night, Ernie came in the back door, entered the security code (33-14-51, which is significant because Elvis starred in 33 major motion pictures, won 14 Grammy awards, and it was Highway 51 South that runs in front of Graceland in Memphis, TN that was renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard — incidentally the exact year that Ernie was born), and turned to go up the stairs to his apartment. But out of the corner of his eye he saw something move. And the something that he saw move couldn’t possibly have been anything other than another person. Ernie was not alone. With his eyes fixated in the darkness on the figure that was moving towards him, Ernie grabbed whatever he could reach that was in the back of the Pawn Shop. This was the area of the pawn shop where Ernie kept the random junk that people brought in. There was no rhyme or reason to any of the stuff that he kept back there. Ernie might have been just as likely to grab a feather boa as he was to have grabbed anything that would have served him as a decent weapon against this intruder. However, the item that Ernie would happen to grab would be a good heavy shovel. As adept as possible for a man who had just closed out a bar tab totaling enough to feed a small starving African country, Ernie swung the shovel in the direction of the intruder. He missed and the shovel’s flat paddle went whiffing through the air. Ernie couldn’t tell if he was even close to the intruder, but he swung again, and again. The shovel was heavy and Ernie wasn’t able to hold it up high enough to have done any fatal damage. However, after whiffing the shovel at least five times through the air at the intruder, Ernie managed to connect with the intruder’s knees, causing a tall dark figure to swiftly plummet to the pawn shop floor. The intruder landed in a heap and Ernie rushed over to finish him off.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN IN MY PAWN SHOP YOU FREAKING LUNATIC!!! I AM GONNA MAKE YOU WISH YOU WERE NEVER BORN!” Ernie screamed at the figure on the floor as he wielded the shovel over his head. His balance was off because of the heavy shovel that he had poised over his head, ready to smash the intruder wherever he could manage to hit him. The intruder lay on the ground groaning.

“Uuuuuuuuuu….. Errrrrrnniiiieee. Uuuuuuuuu….”

“Stan?” Ernie asked puzzled.

“Wadda ya have to go and hit me with that gawddamn shovel for?” Stan asked, still curled up on the floor.

“How the hell did you get in here? I didn’t get a text from ARSP! This whole place has got more armed security than the damn White House!!” Ernie said, fumbling for his cell phone. Could it be possible that Stan had broken in and ARSP had missed it? Nope, there wasn’t a single text informing Ernie of a silent alarm. “Jesus, heads are gonna roll….” Ernie muttered under his breath.

“Ernie, Darla kicked me out… can I crash on your sofa?”

Ernie was too busy fumbling around trying to find a light switch and trying to dial the number of ARSP. He didn’t care if it was 3:00 AM in Singapore, if the freaking Earth was crashing into the sun, or if they were in the middle of a nuclear holocaust caused by the creation of radioactive cucumbers. He wanted to know how it was possible that his baby brother, his incredibly mentally challenged baby brother, was able to hack into the system, break into his Pawn Shop and fail to trip the silent alarm.

“Ernie…. Ernie… I said, Darla kicked me out. She’s trippin man. I swear… I came home from a night out with the guys and she practically tried to kill me. She threw all my shit out in the yard. She tried to kill me.”

“How the hell did you get in here? Yes, hello? Yes, I wanna report a break in… no… no… I didn’t get a notification of a silent alarm… yes that’s exactly the problem…. I’ve apprehended… erm… subdued an intruder but there was no notification of a silent alarm…” Ernie was explaining to ARSP.

“YOU’VE APPREHENDED YOUR FREAKING BROTHER FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING ERNIE?!” Stan started yelling

“I need a complete diagnostic of the system… and send the authoriti–” Ernie didn’t get to finish his sentence because Stan had stood up, relieved Ernie of his makeshift weapon and clocked him square on the head with the shovel. Stan quietly picked up the phone and in his best impersonation of his brother he said,

“Actually, on second thought, I think we have everything under control over here. The authorities won’t be necessary… of course, security phrase is ‘I didn’t do anything but just jiggle’… of course I will, you have a lovely evening too,” and Stan hung up the phone and headed upstairs to the apartment, leaving Ernie lying unconscious on the floor.