Take a walk through time as you follow six hippie friends who rejects society norms as they attempt to navigate through life during the 1970s in this sit-com like novel.
Started: August 2021
Published: June 3, 2022
Ended: -
Cover by AlexandraLing2000
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Darkness swarmed like the wings of a bat and enclosed James. Standing in an alleyway near the heart of LA—sweet, beloved haunting Sunset Boulevard—chilled him to the bone. The chill that hardly ran through the city freely traveled through the secret side streets and alleys like rats.
Here I stand in a foggy alleyway on the night of my twenty seventh birthday, a cursed age according to Daniel. How did I end up here as a rat, standing over a body in an alley reeking of spoiled trash?
He gazed to the crying blonde woman on her knees clutching the dirty shirt of the unmoving man. Chatter floated from passersby who didn't dare take the short cut he attempted. Chatter he could hear, but the cries of the woman the outsiders could not hear; as if they were in a twisted dimension preparing for the afterlife.
It started out as a good day, a sunny day that became cloudy and murky, and that red hair floating in my mind's eye like a distant dream. James turned and gazed at Sunset Blvd. Laughter, friends, lovers. Let's go back to the morning, when all was nice; when we were smiling and friendly . . . before the betrayals.
"I stand in thee alleyway, the backbone of the spirit of The City," he said. "Evicted from Heaven to this stormy dark land of madness with neon lights reflecting on puddles from the Sky's tears."
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Grease rumbled and popped from the diner's kitchen. Eric Clapton's guitar wailed from the jukebox on Derek & the Dominos' "Bell Bottom Blues." Mildred scowled at a young couple sitting near the door, the brown woman wiping under her eyes and the pale man across from her in a black trench coat, collars upturned, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes, and a cigarette with an inch long ash burning between his fingers. Nina could tell Mildred wanted to cover her ears and yell, "To hell with the young generation! I can survive without their business!" It'd be dramatic, Nina knew, like Patty Duke's alley scene in Valley of the Dolls.
Seated in their usual booth, Daniel hung his head back and moaned at the salty scent of bacon then pouted at Nick, his third silent beg for food. Nick noticed nothing, cupping his mug of coffee with both hands while humming and reading his scribbled notes on his notepad. Beside him Nina squinted at the April morning light and absentmindedly mumbled it'd rain later. The sky was such a deep blue with an antagonizing wind. Daisy sat on her knees jumping from one conversation topic to the next.
