Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

me. 'I'll take it from here, Andy.'

'Excuse me,' Goldston said, 'but what…'

'I’m talking to my brother,' Orson said. 'You can wait two fucking minutes.'

'Orson, please listen,' I begged.

'No. You’re just gonna fuck all this up. You know I earned this.'

'Orson, no.'

'What? You wanna do this hard time with me? You wanna get the needle with me? That’s five long years away. You know I could send you somewhere bad, Andy. I could send you to hell before you actually get there, so don’t piss me off.'

'Don’t do this here, Orson. Please. Wait till we get back to the cell.'

'Why not kill you on national television?'

I screamed as loud as my voice would carry and shook in the chair. The guards’ eyes widened as they rushed around the table towards me, knocking over the cameraman. Goldston yelled something over and over, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t form words. Hands grabbed me. I saw Orson smiling, his voice whispering harshly into my ears to be still…

# # #

The waves are crashing gently onto the white beach. The sun beats down on my chest, slowly turning my skin into a deep golden bronze. I look out over the turquoise sea. The blue-green water stretches out to the horizon, blending indistinguishably into the cloudless sky.

Sitting up in my chair, I lift my Jack and Coke from the sand, take a long, cold sip, and set it back down. There’s faint music in the distance behind me. I turn and see my hut a hundred feet above me on the lush, green hillside, its white roof showing through the trees.

I have a strong buzz now. A warm, fuzzy peacefulness.

I lean back in the wooden recliner and close my eyes. The salty breeze caresses my face, urging me into sleep. It’s such a mild day for the tropics, one that invites you to sleep right through it, beneath the sun, in the presence of the whispering waves.

LOCKED DOORS ALTERNATE ENDING

There's a saying about writing without an outline that's attributed to E.L. Doctorow: 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.'

Yeah. That sounds real nice and writerly, and I used to subscribe to this theory. In fact, all the way up to my book, Abandon, I made it a practice not to outline the last half of my books.

The result was disastrous. It haunted my writing process, leading to massive rewrites.

The upshot (for you, gentle reader) is that sometimes the original endings to my novels were pretty cool, or at least had their moments.

In the summer of 2003, I reached the end of the Portsmouth section of Locked Doors, with an unfortunately vague idea of how I wanted to conclude the book.

What follows is that 29,000-word original ending (roughly 140 printed pages). Be warned—this is quite possibly the darkest stretch of fiction I've ever written, and that's saying something. What I was attempting to do with the last half of Locked Doors, was to show how a man and a woman (in this case, Andy Thomas and Violet King) could be systematically turned into psychopaths.

While the original ending of Locked Doors has its flaws, the Epilogue is one of my favorite things I've ever written. It's wild, it's out there, but in some ways, really fits the theme of the story.

Again, with the advent of ebooks, I can bring this 140-page alternate ending of Locked Doors to my readers. Enjoy!

# # #

This alternate ending takes its turn into left field after the conclusion of chapter 49 and the end of the Portsmouth section, right after Violet has been clubbed in the head by Maxine Kite:

Rufus pulled it from his back pocket, pressed the talk button, said, 'Yeah, son, we got her. See you back at the house.'

Vi’s brain told her arm to unzip the poncho and take out the gun but she remembered that she didn’t have it and besides the arm wouldn’t move.  

'Now that’s what you call a good ol’ fashioned wallop,' Rufus said and chuckled.

Then the old man kissed his wife on the cheek and leaned down toward Vi, all gums tonight.

'Her lips are still moving,' he said. 'Go ahead and clonk her again, Beautiful.'

ALTERNATE ENDING

Elizabeth Lancing has lived in pure darkness for forty-one days.

Around Thanksgiving, she stops taking her meals. For forty-eight hours she refuses to eat or drink.

Then, on the verge of death, god saves her.

'Elizabeth.'

The voice booms from the darkness above, masculine, calm, almost robotic.

'Elizabeth, I know that you can hear me.'

She tries to sit up on the cold hard floor but has no strength.

'Elizabeth? Respond to me…are you wondering if you’re really hearing this voice?'

'Yes.'

'You aren’t hallucinating.'

'Where am I?' she croaks.

'Where is not important. You want to die don’t you?'

'Who are you?'

'You know, my child.'

'I have children. Their names are—'

'I know their names. I created them. I’m going to free you. But first, can you do something for me, Elizabeth?'

'What?'

'Eat. You’ll die otherwise, and I won’t be able to help you. Next time I come, I’ll tell you many things. Prepare yourself. Oh, Elizabeth?'

'Yes?'

'Jenna and John David are safe. I can see them now.'

# # #

god returns the next day. He’s spoken to many people in this small stone cell. Some believed. Some laughed. One told god to go fuck himself in the ear. Most had already gone mad and half-brained themselves on the rock by the time he came.

god finds Elizabeth Lancing asleep on the floor. The voice wakes her and speaks to her, though not of the fuzzy, comforting things she expects. It speaks of illusions she has accepted her whole life. god says he speaks truth—truth with teeth and big sweaty balls.