Explode, continued further….

Here’s the third installment of the comedy thriller I’m working on entitled “Explode,” about a woman who explodes at work while drinking her morning coffee. Is it spontaneous human combustion, or murder?

Andrea tried not to be overwhelmed by the feeling of desolation that swelled in her chest, threatening to send her silently crouching in a corner like a small child. Julia had been her family, and now she was alone. Not that she didn’t have other friends, but Julia had been the center.

Andrea’s genetic family consisted of a cousin and a sullen fourteen-year-old niece in Fort Lauderdale with whom she exchanged holiday cards every year. Her father had flown the coop when she was eleven, for a twenty-six-year-old stripper whom he’d met at the dry cleaner’s (she was having her leather thong laundered). When Andrea was twenty-four, her embittered mother, who had taken to wearing industrial underwear and pleather shoes, was fatally bonked on the head in a parking lot by a tree, which was felled by an SUV when its owner forgot to pull the parking brake.

Andrea’s ex-boyfriend, to whom she now referred as Toxic Tony, had always been jealous and critical of Julia. But then Tony had been jealous and critical of everyone, since he seemed to be suffering from Terminal Asshole Syndrome.

Not that Toxic Tony suffered himself. He just spewed his negativity and paranoia onto everyone else around him, like a foul-smelling noxious gas. Andrea had her insecurities (along with a bit of hostility towards strippers), but before she met Tony, she had always had enough self-respect to avoid men who treated her like a telemarketer calling at dinnertime. Somehow, Tony had lured her into the world of his skewed perceptions, and Julia had been the only one who had been able to help her extricate herself. Now she felt like she could just drift away up into the clouds, like the balloons that seemed to follow Julia everywhere like colorful ghosts. She knew that, from this point on, she would always be depressed by the smell of rubber.  

Tags: comedy, family, funny, humor, mystery, relationships, thriller