Short Story 1 - (11) Editing, and a change in the plot - 2

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I am still in the process of rewriting the story, I think the shopkeeper needs a little more fleshing out as a character, not as a man who is bad, but a man who has been forced into a position where he had to do what he's doing just to stay alive.

So he's basically unchanged but with more detail.

The rewrite:


Alphonse, the shopkeeper, had stayed too long missing his opportunity to sell up and retire. 

 By the time he had been ready to call it a day, his wife had got sick with cancer and it had taken all their retirement funds to keep her alive for another six months when despite the doctors best efforts, she died.

 There was nothing left, and unable to find a buyer for the business he could not just close the door and leave. 

 There were complications.

 Like right now.

 The sideline he'd basically forced his way into was always going to come back and bit him.  Selling a little weed on the side to the upper classes forced to downsize after the global meltdown had turned into a range of products, the worst of which was ice, the result of taking too much very evident by the boy on the floor.

 It was only a matter of time when one of the more edgy clients came in and started making demands with threats.  He was asked to sell low to get the customers hooked then forced to raise the price and stop supplying those who couldn't pay.

 It might be a good plan from their perspective but from his, at the coalface, it meant nothing but trouble.

 Which is why he was now looking down the barrel of a gun.

© Charles Heath 2016-2018

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