Option 3 - Prologue
[This is the beginning of a new novelette I’m working on featuring Morgan Mason, one of the characters in The Board Splinters novel I’ve been working on for a few months. Occurring in 2010, this is sort of the origin story of how Mason became the journalist in TBS. Let me know what you think.]
You want to know when it all went sideways? When I stopped being the guy with a press badge and started being the guy with a torch? Pull up a stool. Order us doubles and start a tab – you’re on an expense account aren’t you? Yeah, no offense, but you’ve got that look, the one that’s like no one’s really checking your reimbursement requests.
Hey, bartender? Can you close out my tab? Yeah, it’s under Mason, Morgan Mason. Thanks.
Anyway, I’ll tell you about the night I killed my career, my marriage, and my reputation. All three with one shaky iPhone 4 and a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey. By the end of the month, the story would cost me more than a job — it would cost me her.
It wasn’t noble, what I did. Don’t mistake me for some martyr in a leather jacket. It was messy, loud, reeking of cigarettes and bad decisions. And this is a city that doesn’t forgive cultural slips. But hell, maybe Tyler Durden was right — you’re only free once you’ve lost everything. Not sure I’m there yet, but I’m definitely at the stage where I’ve moved on from regret avoidance to regret management.
Picture me: wired, drunk, hunched at a sticky table in an LA club that thought peeling paint was a design choice. A notebook covered in ash, an iPhone I barely knew how to work, and that itch in my skull that told me history was about to lurch. By dawn I’d have footage that should’ve burned Hollywood to the ground. By dusk I’d be out of a job. By the weekend I’d be radioactive, a “deadbeat” headline with a heartbeat.
And here I am, still breathing, still drinking, still telling the story. Some people will say I’ve bent the facts. Maybe, but this is America in the 21st fucking century. Facts are cheap in this country – Truth is the only expensive thing, and I carried all the weight on this story. If you don’t like it, order another drink and find a priest.
So listen close, because I don’t repeat myself. This is how it happened — the night I set my own life on fire and laughed while it burned. And if you’re still with me at the end, put the last round on that expense account – if you don’t abuse your privileges, it’s like they don’t exist.