Voices

Voices speak to Joao

Hey everyone, I'm adding some new material to The Long Game as I work on its sequel and I thought I'd share some excerpts with you as they come together. This one is juicy and will flesh out one of the characters in the novel.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." – John Milton

The asylum walls wept with condensation, the air thick with the stench of despair and institutional neglect. If banality had an aroma this place had managed to capture it. Joao Iscario paced his padded cell, his bare feet slapping against the cold linoleum like accusations. Joao twitched and began whispering - his fingers twitching to a tune know only to them. A discordant tune that made the shadows deeper if such a thing were possible

" Twenty-three, and already broken—committed after that night in the Bronx alley. Yes, alley where the voices first whispered the promise. So hard to hear them amid the screams but they found me. Yes found me. Eduardo never hears them. Eduardo was the lucky one. No voices for him surely. He was too perfect, too beautiful. No, no, no. Voices for Joao and the stain of Insanity. No one ever believed m about the voices, not even Eduardo. They call it schizophrenia. HA! No, no schizofriendia for Joao, those voice were from outside, from the other place, the cold place."