» Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:34 pm
Tale's exercise in CLICHESTORM, draft 2. A thread about names alone seems boring. Have some character framing to go along.
My name is Manion. I won't let it be said that I'm a particularly violent man by nature. I grew up pretty normal. Raised on a farm with my parents, planted some crops. Once I even got an old tractor working. For 20 minutes. When I became free of commitments, I took to wandering. I wanted to see the world. Got a gun, lived off the land, hunted my own food. Dodged the occasional bandit. A courier job seemed perfect for me.
Vegas changes you. For me it was by way of a bullet in the head and a few feet of dirt. Maybe I shouldn't begrudge the guys that did it. They didn't kill me after all, though not for lack of trrying. But that does mean they buried me alive. That thought sticks with me, even if I don't exactly remember it.
Maybe it's the brain damage, but I don't dodge bandits anymore. I've seen the guts of so many men that by this point if I settled down, I could take a job as a surgeon. An exaggeration, but not by much. I've seen men blown apart. I've seen men turn to ash. I've seen heads turned into gooey paste. And more often than not, I saw it happen down the sights of my gun.
I never hurt a man who hadn't hurt someone else first. There's three guys who deserve it more than anyone else. And when I find them, I'm going to do them a kindness. I'm going to show them how to do a job right.
Vegas changed me. Time to return the favor.