“Fired?!”

I stared at her in disbelief.

“I don’t understand.”

She crossed her arms and stared me down, unsympathetically.

“I think you do.”

“You’re the firm’s lawyer. Isn’t it your job to protect me?”

“It’s my job to protect the firm’s interest. If you don’t understand that, Elliott and Croswaithe was never the right place for you.”

I buried my head in my hands. This couldn’t be happening. I had done everything by the book. How had it had gone so horribly wrong?

“Your exit interview will be at 8am tomorrow. Please be punctual.”

She stood up and I lifted my head to look at her. She was gesturing to someone behind me. I turned. It was a security guard, waiting outside her office, the glass walls allowing him to watch us unobserved. He came in and stood next to me. He wasn’t moving but he stood so close to me that I understood the threat. Patricia looked at me with narrowed eyes. They had worked intimidation down to an art form.

I stood up and walked out slowly.

The office was unusually quiet. I could feel their eyes on me as I walked down the corridor. I felt like a prisoner on death row.

It couldn’t end like this. I looked around desperately.

The restroom was coming up ahead. I sped up slightly. It took the burly security guard a moment to increase his pace but the gap was all I needed to duck sideways into the open doorway. I heard him grunt with frustration as I ran in.

Ha!

It was a small victory but it was all I had. And it had bought me some time.

I rushed into one of the stalls and called Kay.

“Kayla Schmidt” she said pleasantly into the phone.

“Kay, it’s me!” I said quickly.

“What is going on?” she muttered into the phone.

“They’re firing me.”

“What?” her voice dropped down to a whisper. “Oh my gosh! I’m going to lose my apartment. I’ll have to move back to Atlanta. Oh fish. Flipping pancakes.”

Flipping pancakes was the Kay’s equivalent of Defcon 1. She had been brought up in a strict Southern household and no matter how upset she got, she couldn’t find it in herself to curse. I was born and raised in the city and cursed freely. It was odd that we were best friends, but I didn’t have time to reminisce over that.

“You’re fine”, I said, “I didn’t tell them about you.”

She was quiet for a minute. Then she sniffed. I realized she was crying.

“Stop that!” I hissed at her, “if they find out that you are talking to me, they’ll toss you out right now.”

She stopped.

“Kay” I said desperately, “All the evidence is in my desk drawer. I can’t get it out now. Will you lock it and take the key? I’ll meet you at the Wheeltapper after work."

“Okay” she said. I could hear her turning the key. “Done."

“Thanks” I said. “I gotta go.”

Not a moment too soon. A female security guard walked in.

“You can’t stay in there forever” she said.

“I don’t want to leave like this”, I said. “Escorted out of the building. Just let me get my coat and my handbag and I’ll leave myself.”

“Don’t bother”, she said, “I have your coat and bag right here. You have two minutes to leave the building. And don’t even think about trying to take anything else with you.”

I unlocked the door and came out. She didn’t make any move to stop me. I went straight to the elevator. I was out of the building in less than a minute.

I had been drinking at the Wheeltapper for several hours when Kay walked in. She gave me an apologetic smile and put a set of keys on the table.

“Thanks” I slurred.

“I moved the files. Don’t worry, no one saw me”, she said, looking around nervously, “Also, I locked your drawers again, just to throw them off. I think they might break into your desk tonight, after everyone leaves.”

“That’s clever”, I said. “You should go. I wouldn’t put it past them to have you followed.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“I dunno.”

“Pat's really mad about the whole thing. The partners think you showed her up with your bathroom stunt. Someone overheard her saying that she is bringing in the big guns for your exit interview.”

I shrugged.

“I really just don’t care anymore. Peter is a lying, cheating, morally decrepit turd. His client is defrauding that pension fund and he is actively helping him hide the money overseas. I’ve got the proof and I was naive to think that they didn’t know and would do something when they found out. All they care about is billable hours. Well, I’ll go to the Attorney General if I have to. If they don’t care about the law, they have no right to be lawyers."

“I’m scared”, said Kay.

“Don’t be, you’re out of it now. You’ve done enough”, I said reassuringly.

She left quickly. The waitress brought my next round. And then several rounds after that.

I’m not sure how long he had been sitting at the bar by himself. But I knew that I had been drinking alone at that table for too long. And he was handsome. So when he came up to me, and asked if he could join me, I could think of nothing I wanted more.

He looked at me and chuckled.

“Banker, lawyer or hedge fund?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Armani suit. Cartier watch. Prada bag. And you look utterly miserable. So that’s a definite yes.”

I smiled at him and he beamed back at me.

“Lawyer. And you, happy face, what do you do?”

He chuckled.

“I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before. I’m a lawyer too.”

“You any good?”

“I like to think so. Otherwise, my parents wasted a lot of money on law school."

“Where did you go?”

“Yale.”

“Solid safety school.”

He burst out laughing. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had laughed with me, I liked it.

“Let me guess, you went to Harvard” he said, shaking his head.

I nodded. “I did, and it wasn’t easy. I grew up on the lower East Side- in the projects, not the village. I earned my right to go Harvard by studying my ass off.”

“Not completely, I hope” he teased, peeking around me.

I was several drinks down.

“Do you want to come home with me?” I said bluntly.

“What?” he looked at me, startled.

Embarrassed, I stared down at my glass.

He put his hand over mine, reassuringly.

“I’m not judging, I’m just surprised. And to answer your question- yes, yes I do. I’m really glad you said that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s hard being a guy and having to read all these subtle signals, never knowing when to ask, not wanting to push. I really like you but I would definitely not have had the nerve to ask right off the bat. But I think there is something I need to know.”

“What?”

“Your name.”

I laughed and he joined in.

“Alex."

“Hi Alex, I’m Joe. Would you like to have one for the road?”

I smiled and nodded.

“You have such a lovely smile. Why were you so sad when I walked in? Please say anything except a bad break up. I really don’t want to be your rebound guy. Rebound relationships never work.”

I chuckled.

“Well, yes and no. It was awful break up. But not with a guy. With my firm. They are firing me.”

“You’re a Harvard graduate, why would anyone fire you?”

“We get fired too, you know. But I found out that something that one of the partners had been doing. And it’s illegal. So I reported him to my supervisor and instead of doing anything about him, they decided to fire me instead.”

“Maybe I can help? I mean, I know I only went to Yale, but still, I am a lawyer too, you know. ”

I shook my head.

“Thank you, that’s a really nice thing to say but I don’t want to involve anyone else in my mess.”

“What if I want to be involved in your mess?”

I think I fell in love with him in that moment.

“Tell me, I’ll help if I can. What did this guy do?”

“His client is stealing money from a pension fund and he is helping.”

He raised his hands.

“Just to play devil’s advocate, let’s say that’s true. He is a lawyer, it’s his job to defend his client, no matter how morally repugnant it may be to him.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that. He actually helped his client to hide the stolen funds. And he’s taking a cut. What he is doing is illegal.”

“Do you have proof?”

“Yes.”

“In a safe place, I hope.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?” he raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“I don’t know where it is. My friend Kay hid it for me.”

“She sounds like a good friend.”

“She’s the best.”

“Nooo!” he protested, "I want to be the best, what do I gotta do to beat out Kayla?”

I laughed.

“I’m not sure, she’s a really good friend.”

“I’m paying the tab. Then we’re going to your place. I think I can give your friend a run for her money.”

“Fine by me” I struggled to stand up as he walked to the bar.

He came back with my credit card and helped me up. We put on our coats and stumbled out of the door. It took less than a minute for him to hail a cab and in less than ten, we were in my apartment tearing each other’s clothes off.

“You weren’t exaggerating”, I said, lying back and pulling up the sheet. “That was amazing. I think my whole crappy day was worth it, just for that one moment.”

“One moment?! You were yelling for a good ten minutes!”

I laughed and he joined in. He pulled me closer to him, and his chest felt warm against my back. It was nice.

“Don’t worry. Everything will work itself out, it always does.”

“I hope so” I said sadly, “but I’m scared.”

“Of what? They can’t disbar you for doing the right thing. And the next firm will see that you are not only intelligent and honest but also incredibly brave. And your friend too.”

“The firm doesn’t know that she had anything to do with it.”

“Good, keep it that way. Maybe she can be your man on the inside, in a manner of speaking.”

“I don’t know. She’s done so much already.”

“She hid the evidence. I’m not saying that that’s nothing, but it’s not that much either. It’s not like she helped you to collect the evidence.”

I looked guilty.

“She did, didn’t she?”

“She was the one who noticed that money was going missing from the pension fund. She made copies of their internal statements.”

He shook his head.

“That’s totally illegal.”

“I know” I said, “but she did it for the right reasons. She took a big risk so I need to keep her safe now.”

“Who’s gonna keep you safe?”

I didn’t answer.

“Hey Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta go, I have an early meeting.”

He rolled me onto my back and kissed me.

“But I’ll see you tomorrow” he looked at his watch, “or today actually.”

“You will?”

“Yes, I will.”

He rolled off the bed and got dressed quickly. He blew me a kiss and left.

I looked at the clock, it was 5am. I had to be in the office in three hours.

“Ugh!”

There was no point in trying to sleep it off. I went to the bathroom and forced myself to throw up. Then I had a shower and made myself some coffee. Several cups later, I was exhausted but I didn’t feel drunk anymore. It was 7am. I changed and headed to work.

It was cold out and I walked slowly. I was seven thirty by the time I got there. I signed in at the front desk and waited. I recognized the burly security guard who came down a few minutes later. I smiled at him but he just stared at me indifferently.

“Let’s go”, he said, pointing to the elevators and I followed him obediently.

When we got upstairs, he led me to one of the main conference rooms.

That was odd.

I walked in and sat down. A few moments later, Kay walked in. She saw me and froze.

“What’s going on?” she asked nervously.

“I have no idea”, I said.

Patricia walked in.

“Please have a seat”, she said to Kayla.

“Why is she here?” I asked but Patricia ignored me.

Kayla sat down nervously on a chair at the far end of the room.

Joe walked in.

“Joe?” I said, stunned, “what are you doing here?”

He smiled at me. “Hi Alex, told you I’d see you today. I bet you didn’t think it would be so soon!”

I looked between him and Pat, who was smiling smugly.

“No!” I said, my heart sinking, “no.”

He laughed loudly.

Sober now, I realized that his laugh didn’t quite reach his eyes. It was a cruel, mocking laugh devoid of any happiness. What had I done?

I turned to Kay in a panic.

“Don’t say anything!” I said and she shrunk back further into her chair, clearly terrified.

Joe smiled at her.

“Don’t worry Kayla, you don’t have to say anything, we already know you helped Alex. She told us everything.”

I shook my head at her and she smiled at me, bravely.

“I don’t believe you”, she said to Joe. “If you knew that, you’d have fired me already. I wouldn’t be here.”

“You’re wrong Kay- do you mind if I call you Kay?” he asked. He continued without waiting for a response, “Alex told us that you illegally photocopied your clients internal statements and shared them with her. Did you know that you could be disbarred for that?"

She looked at me, stung at my betrayal. How could I explain to her what I had done?

"She also told us that you are the only one who knows where the evidence is hidden, and that my dear, is why we are here. Give us the evidence and you can walk out of this room right now. Or we can have a different discussion.”

“Flipping pancakes” she said, staring at me in disbelief.

“You should do it, Kay”, I said softly, ignoring the pain in my chest. “It’s your only way out of here.”

“I don’t need advice from you”, she said coldly.

She pulled a set of keys out of her bag and tossed them on the table.

“It’s in the file room. In the drawer labeled Miller. It is the key at the end.”

Joe pointed at the door and smiled. “You’ll go far at Elliott and Croswaithe.”

She left without a backward glance and they looked at me.

“Sign this”, said Patricia nastily, pushing a piece of paper towards me.

I skimmed through the document.

I couldn’t help myself; I looked at Joe for help.

My Joe- the one I had taken home last night. Joe, who had pulled me out of despair with his laugh, Joe, who wanted to be in my mess, Joe, whom I had fallen in love with.

But in the cold light of day, that Joe didn’t exist.

He looked at me, his expression full of malice and pushed a pen towards me. He was almost salivating with eagerness as he watched me pick it up. It was more hurtful than anything he could have said.

I signed it and pushed the paper back towards him.

It was over. I had lost.

"Why do you do it, Mom?" I said, staring out of the windshield. The weight of what I was asking hung heavy in the air like a pregnant cloud full of rain, right before it opened up to birth its gift of water on those down below.

My question was met with silence.  Exactly what I predicted she would answer.

Eight hours ago, we were in another state, in a real home. There were friends to call, shopping to do, and videos to look at. A typical weekend day in the life of a teenager. Mom and I were finally living a degree of normalcy we hadn't been a part of since time began.

Now, we were on the road again. The confines of the car closing in on me as the desert landscape, painted a soft orange, flashed by. Our belongings were in the trunk, haphazardly stuffed in trash bags, my friends and shopping forgotten.

"Mom," I said, turning to look at her for the first time in several hours. "Answer me."

Tendrils of her auburn hair escaped through the cracked window along with her cigarette smoke. Her two o'clock grip of the steering wheel was a claw with blood red nails. Her mouth, lacquered with bargain bin lipstick in a faded shade of pink, folded itself into a thin line.

She was angry. I had upset her with my impudent tone. Fear struck my chest like a hammer folding steel. I didn't dare move. I couldn't breathe. And when she turned, I flinched, expecting the worst.

But nothing came.

"You are too young to understand," Mom said. She brushed her hair back, exposing her face. It carried the destruction of a million years, her slumped shoulders the weight of the world. A woman resigned to her fate.

Would that become me, too?

"I do understand, Mom. I really do." Even at the age of fifteen, I understood my mom was someone whose life I didn't want to emulate.

Mom took a heavy drag on her cigarette, chest rising. Her normally flat stomach puffed out with the effort. She rolled the window all the way down to expel filter and the carcinogens in one long exhale.

The smoldering tip bounced off the side of the car to lie on the road for years to come until it broke apart and disintegrated. Just like Mom's hopes and dreams had a long, long time ago.

"I'm sorry," she said, deftly lighting another Slim500 with one hand.

I waited for her to say more. I hoped for it, but nothing else was forthcoming.

Out of the windshield, even at this hour, the road was blistering in the sun. A mirage on a lonely stretch of road that would lead us full circle down the same path.

We stopped for dinner at a truck stop. It was the kind where a slap on the back was a greeting and flannel shirts, even in this weather, were the norm.

We picked up menus from the hostess stand and chose a booth some distance from most of the noise and chatter. The sunlight came in through the dusty blinds, making perfect horizontal lines of gray and white across our table. I only had time to trace a couple of planes with my finger when the waitress came over.

She was straight from a 1950's movie. Her candy striped uniform and starched white apron fit in well with the weathered decor and cracked pleather seats. She took a pen from her bleached blonde hair and a pad from her pocket. Her drugstore makeup couldn't hide the kindness in her eyes as she peered at my mother and me.

"What'll it be girls?" Her West Virginian accent was slight but unmistakable.

"I'll have the tuna melt with coffee. Lots of cream and sugar." Mom's hair hung in her face as she spoke. It was a futile effort. Everyone could see what was going on with her—with us. Her face told the tale with its shadows and bruising.

"The condiments are on the table, hon'." The waitress directed her pen in a not unkind jabbing motion towards the back of the table where the creamer and sugar stood, neatly stacked in a metal basket. Soldiers propped up against the scuffed wooden beam that ran under the window.

"Fine," Mom said to the innards of her purse, ignoring everything and everyone as she searched for some elusive object like a Conquistador for gold.

The waitress, Denise (according to her brass colored name tag), gave Mom a look before turning to take my order. Her shiny silver St. Christopher's medal caught the sunlight, causing me a bit of discomfort as the flash hit me right in the eyes.

"And for you, sweetie?

I rubbed the pain away with closed fists. The involuntary tugging of my lips into a smile at Denise's endearment helped my sour mood to lift away like a helium balloon with a lover's note.

"I'll have the cheeseburger, rare. Hold the pickles and the onions, and a vanilla milkshake."

"We serve our burgers well done, hon', but I'll tell the cook to leave off the pickles and onions."

"Thanks," I said, handing her our menus.

While I retraced the planes, Denise tucked the menus under her arm and wrote our orders down with a flourish. She smiled down at me as she placed a plastic table tent with the number 13 on it, ignoring Mom who was still on a mission deep inside her purse.

"I'll be back with your drinks in just a minute,"she said to me, tucking the pencil back inside it's cave.

As soon as Denise left, Mom pulled out a pack of cancer sticks as if that were her quest all along. 

Just the lucky cigarette was left, its end facing up. A lone wolf in the pack of comfort.

Mom liked to smoke before eating. She said it helped curve her appetite, but I never bought it. Smoking helped her steady herself. The smoke going in, covering the insides of her lungs before being blown out of her nose was an act of contrition for the things she had done—to others, herself, and to me.

"I'm going outside," she said, scooting out of the booth to stand up. "You stay here and watch the stuff."

The stuff consisted of her old brown bag with a partially broken strap, a cracked cell phone, and the black leather wallet Tony had given her for Christmas with two crumpled tens and one five-dollar bill inside.

It was something to watch, it truly was.

Mom moved past me down the aisle, slim hips swaying from side to side. Three pairs of hungry eyes followed her every move. The truckers poked each other with beefy elbows as she headed out, enticing them with a swing of hair over her shoulders. When she lit up, her lips curled into a pale smile, head tilted, looking up at the sky as she contemplated everlasting life.

Denise came back with Mom's coffee. "Hey," she asked, setting the steaming mug of brown liquid down. "Are you two all right?"

"Sure. We're just fine," I said, lifting my attention from my absentminded tracing to meet her eyes.

Denise's pupils dilated, her St. Christopher's medal danced as she held it to her trembling lips. She stumbled back from me, feet nearly tangling over one another. When there was enough distance between us, she turned on her heel, walking away without a backward glance.

I knew ol' Denise didn't mean any harm, but it was better to steer clear of the troubles between Mom and me.

Outside there was a show going on. Mom had two of the truckers by the arm, and the third followed behind, stepping on the heel of his buddy's shoe in his haste. Mom's head was thrown back in laughter, eyes glinting red in the dying sun. 

Time was passing quickly. Too quickly. The planes on the table had now disappeared.

Mom came back when it was full dark. Her tuna melt had long since grown cold, her fries weak and floppy. My burger laid in its grease, my milkshake melted.

"You ready to go?" Mom asked, opening up the compact she kept in her pocket. She dabbed at her now rosy lips with a napkin, and it came away red. I zeroed in on the minuscule spot of blood on her right cheek. It was too tiny for any others than for those of our kind to pick out.

"You are getting sloppy in your old age, mom," I said, mirroring the speck on her face with my finger.

Mom smiled, her full belly making her joyful once more. She wiped away the blood and cleaned her two front teeth with a razor sharp fingernail, sucking what had been between them with a slimy, slurping sound.

"Is there any left?"

I hated myself for asking. It made me seem weak…desperate.

Mom laughed at me, a tinkling sound like a million tiny bells.

"Sure," she drawled. Mom's accent, more hidden than Denise's, was ancient. Whittled down to almost nothing over millions of years.

"You don't want to eat, do you?" she said, pulling out a crisp twenty from the wad of cash from her now bulging pocket. She placed it on the table between our uneaten plates.

I shook my head. "Just asking is all."

The pleather on the seat creaked and shifted as I stood up to look out the window and into the night. The truckers' semis would still be parked in the morning, and their owner's well-hidden corpses would turn to dust as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Mom spared the rest of the patrons and staff of the diner the same treatment, but their minds were forever altered. Those souls would never remember us or what happened. It was better for them that way.

We gathered our meager belongings, leaving the same way we came in, two weary travelers on the road to nowhere. And when we walked out into the night, Mom made time stand still.

©Jess Wylder

She was a parcel marked fragile

beautifully packaged and sealed

filled to bursting with odd debris

life’s flotsam and jetsam stuffed

alongside passions, bleak thoughts

airtight, dreams held imprisoned

with shards of past harsh bastards

and pockets of self-doubt, worries.

She was marked fragile and arrived

I hold this receptacle of negativity,

begin tenderly to pick apart edges

pluck harsh content from dark insides

and place, so gently, replace the bad

with mirrors reflected and vivid lights

each day, I take away a little more rot

so that she will have futures unbroken.

I think about how it should be, love, to the point where I speak to God above. Who'd ever think that a single word of imperfection grasped upon an intersection of feelings and mutual benefits, yet here I speak of how it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit my personality judging from the way I prove my mentality, it isn't much of a problem given that I didn't care at all, sadly for this love of mine, for you I decided to fall yet it was un-explainable how unattainable you were how you talk, how you move even how you blink your eyes, no one other than her. I loved the feeling you gave me the meaning you filled the laughter in the air the love that you killed, because I realized one thing, it was that It couldn't be, how one sided the love was just added to my misery, a pain in the chest, it stung at best it hurt like hell but I was lost under your spell, I am pathetic because of how sympathetic I was, falling over your words of empathetic mistrust. No longer do I judge my way of impulse I feel my heart. Its one sided

A symphony or an a cappella.

A quartet or more.

Baritones, tenors or altos;

Choose your classical voice singers.

What else do you want me to synthesize,

Creating a synthesis of rhythmic settings 

To desensitize your pain 

Or augment the pleasure of life?

With my plucking of strings, caresses of the weighted keys of the piano, slaps of the bass groove or masterfully created pitter-patter patterns on the drums.

I am all that you wish to express in words but merely cannot convey the raw experiences no matter how eloquent your speeches are.

Come, you hear angelic tones rising just above the horizon line with chords reminiscent of the Trinity's unity, three in one.

Draw near, there's soothing notes that'll make you forget your misery. Don't you wish to be better?

Meet with the consonance of carefully composed harmonious lyrics.

Or if you don't want to be healed just yet and need to vent, go further down the spectrum and meet with the ambient dissonance. I'm sure your pain will make sense of the cacophony.

There's many elegy for bitter people such as yourself.

Falsettos for false people.

Interludes for those who are in and out of your life transitioning through different time.

All with varying tempos dictating the marching of your walk in the journey.

There's also modulating nostalgia stamped across eras and memorable events that marks different times and tempos and clicks.

Nevertheless, I am here to express your inner soul musical tones with undertones of writhe or overtones of tranquility.

With melodious impromptu that exalts embellished emotions from within.

But above all, here's my final cadence to you!

Don't allow yourself to descend too low that you cannot hear the crescendos of life's progress that propels you up skyward.

Gravity is bearing down,

The vultures circle above.

Your favorite accessory is your frown,

No one has shown you love.

Blurry faces whisper lies,

You're tearing out your hair.

It's your heart that weeps and not your eyes,

But please don't kick the chair.

A little too much--

all they ask of me is a little too much.

They hold no pity,

no sense of right and wrong.

For all I wanted,

was a little less.

A minimalist girl living with the rich.

Spoiled beyond imagine.

I could only wish for the bills to break.

But some wishes can't come true.

The colors I see are plain--

No red, no orange, no yellow.

But only as I lit the fire,

I saw the real light.

The reds--

The oranges--

The yellows--

And it was beautiful.

The smell of riches burning

is a great one indeed.

We’re very pleased to be starting the Friday Feature up again, where we showcase Prosers weekly and allow them to share details about themselves as well as what makes them tick.

Our first Proser is Lapo Melzi, who you can find on Prose under the username @Eusorph. He lives in a small town near the Italian Alps called Vergiate, roughly translated as Greentown, that sits in a national park with wonderful woods and lakes.

“My house was a farm full of all sorts of animals when I was little and it later became a horse riding school for many years. I had the luck to grow up surrounded by animals and learned to trust, appreciate and love them. The woods remain the place where I always feel at home and the mountains are still my favorite hiking ground.”

Sounds beautiful. We ask what Lapo’s career is there. He explains: “After a career in advertising and independent Film, due to health issues, I am back in my hometown and work as a restaurateur in the family business. Although I have forfeited my previous career, I have never given up on my stories and what I really want is to be a full-time author.

Always intrigued about this, we prompt him to explain what his relationship with writing is and how it’s evolved? “I started writing poetry when I was in high school. That was my first ever creative endeavor and one that made me aware of my abilities. It wasn’t until my twenties though that I tried my hand at stories. I was attending Film School in Milan then and nobody wanted to write what I wanted to direct. I never thought I could write fiction (I had too much respect for books) but I really wanted to tell more imaginative stories than those that were given to me by the screenwriting students at my school. So, I did my best and wrote my first scripts. It was difficult, but scripts are very bare bones and technical, so I didn’t feel daunted as I would if I had tried to write a book. Then I just kept on writing and during the years I discovered that was my real instinct: to sit down and write stories.”

“The conscious decision of being a fiction author came much later, only about three years ago, because of my second bout of cancer--talk about a blessing in disguise! My first encounter with big C happened during my thesis year in the Film Department at NYU. At that time, I simply let it pass over me and concentrated on shooting and finishing my thesis—it did scare me, but it didn’t make me stop and think too much. The second time, almost five years later, during a routine exam and at the time when I was about to be considered “out of danger” had a very different effect on me. I realized that at any time in the future I could die quite suddenly and if that happened I couldn’t afford to go without having written my stories. In my opinion, the real tragedy in life is not dying--that we all have to do--but it is dying without having done what we have at heart. So, I said “the hell” to everything that wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I had been writing scripts for about fifteen years by then and was really tired of the limitations imposed by Film. In particular, I was tired of being obliged to write only what I could produce and I was yearning to delve into the internal emotional and psychological life of my characters. I also had a hunch that I would write better novels than scripts by then. But it was just a hunch, because I didn’t have the slightest idea whether I could actually write interesting prose. So, I gave up Film for good, sat down and wrote my novel Horse Sense. It’s been the best decision I have ever taken in my life. The one I don’t have any regrets about.”

Prose asks Lapo to discuss the value that reading adds to both his personal and professional life. He tells us: “I haven’t read a book with my eyes in more than twenty years, because they get too sore too quickly and give me headache. Instead, about fifteen years ago I discovered Audiobooks and was hooked right away. I always loved oral storytelling and find Audiobooks far superior to audio-less books: you can read them while you also do something else, filling more waking hours than paper books; they let you visualize far more, because your eyes are not busy reading text; and finally you have some of the best actors and voice actors reading the story you love--try listening to Jeremy Irons reading Lolita or Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and tell me if they don’t sound better than the voice in your head!”

“When I started writing I had to give up reading, because I constantly found myself filling the gaps in my stories with material from other people’s books and I hated it. Some people say that artists usually have to usually start by imitating someone else they admire. I don’t believe and I think it’s a bad exercise. Instead, writers should start immediately to try and find their own voices--it’s painful, but important.”

“Now, I read about three to four book a month, both fiction and non fiction. They make my life less boring and open my mind to the world, letting me learn new things each time. As an author, they offer a insight into other authors’ styles, plot and dramatic devices, story ideas, dialogue rendition. Also, given the incredible variety of styles, topics and the fact that even books that are considered classics are very far from being flawless, they provide a lot of encouragement in my endeavors and lessen my sometimes crippling perfectionism.

We ask what can we look forward to in future posts and what he is working on now. He explains: “Right now, I am working on my second book entitled “Quigley,” the story of a New York pet flying squirrel, who abandons the safety of his apartment in order to save the squirrels of Central Park from the tyranny of murder of crows with the help of an ex-experiment rat, embarking in a journey that will either shred him to pieces or transform him forever. The novel is the direct adaptation of my award winning screenplay “Quigley.”

“After that will be the turn of “Romeo Vs. Juliet,” a pastiche adaptation of the beloved Shakespeare’s story set in a Verona where Renassaince and modern times coexist and that answer on a comedic vein the question: what would have happened if the two too-young-to-be-married lovers had survived?”

“Then it will be the turn of “Wassapu,” a Dickensian story of a heartless jackelope-riding villainous creature that robs all the other animals of the Dome Forest of their food and leaves only misery in her path. One day though, she is lured by a cookie to a great city, where she butts head with the score of homeless orphan street urchins that fills its streets and finds out she isn’t the only one who has been robbed of her heart and hopes. After this, there are already other planned stories, but I don’t want to bore you.”

We like flattery, so we want to know what Lapo loves about TheProse.com? “The greatest challenge for an independent author is visibility. Prose is a great way to reach a wider audience that otherwise would never be acquainted with my work. It also gives me the opportunity to get in touch with other fellow authors and start an artistic conversation with them.”

“The Prose team seems genuinely interesting in promoting its members unlike other platforms, where you are ignored unless you pull 1m views. I think this is great and a great added value for readers, who can count on Prose to showcase fresh and different authors, instead of pushing more of the same.”

It’s all true, and thank you. Tying in with our feature on our blog site, we ask if there is one book that he would recommend everybody should read before they die. His answer: “One is not enough :-) The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Seabiscuit an American Legend, Cyrano de Bergerac and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.”

Is there an unsung hero who got him into reading and/or writing? “I don’t know about unsung, but it was J.R.R. Tolkien for me. For two reasons. The first is that I was fourteen when I read the Lord of the Rings—it was the first book that I chose and bought by myself—and it changed my life. I think I should have known that one day I would try to become an author, because to this day, I still have burnt in my memory the image of when I put down the Lord of the Rings in the left shelf of my old wood and glass bookshelf and I thought, “This is what I would like to write.” The thing is, though, that I had never written anything before, nor I was planning to and I didn’t even ever show any aptitude to writing stories at that point. It was just a purely instinctual thought that rose to the surface. Now I know why it surfaced. The second reason is that no other author that I know put so much work, research and invention in a story as he did. I profoundly admire his patience, dedication, strength of mind and imagination.”

We ask Lapo if there is anything else he wants to share with fellow Prosers. “Other than here on Prose, the most important place where you can find me is on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/LapoMelzi), where, if you like my work and want to see me become a full time author, you can donate a recurring tiny amount of money (as little as $0.25 per part) and become a Patron of the Arts. It’s like going back in times when Dickens published his novels in weekly installments: you get something great to read each week and the independent author can keep on being independent by earning a steady income that will enable him to write his next book.“

Thank you Lapo. We hope you enjoyed the return of our Friday feature as much as we did, as we’ll be back showcasing another Proser next week. Get in touch if you want to be added to the list, contact us on info@theprose.com

As writers, we are often delving deep into the depths of our experiences and emotions which is fine but if we're not careful it can be difficult to dig our way back out.

As poets we can be best friends with sorrow and pain but we must not wallow through that familiar rugged terrain for too long.

I say that for we can drag others to come down into our pit of pity in hope that others can feel the same pain that we are going through.

However, we must be careful in pulling that emotional tug for others aren't as strong willed nor emotionally capable of handling such damning words that sprouts from our minds and hearts.

We can cut down others with the sharpness of our angst or build up others with the softness of our whispers.

So in whatever you decide to write down, keep in mind that you have that power and influence to guide the reader's mind to go to your state of mind: bitterness, jealousy, happiness, forgiveness, humor, pain, sorrow.

So in other words, lighten up sometimes for the world is not all doom and gloomy.

There is a light at the end of that dark tunnel, and may God give you that strength to keep walking forward until you have passed through the worst. For when you do, you will smile and say, "Well then, that wasn't as bad as I thought." And move forward with a clearer vision since you have the Sun shining down your path and you can see where you're going now.

The ocean swallowed you

That's what I tell myself

That can be the only reason why

what washed ashore that day

Was merely a bitter husk

And not the man I loved