As-yet-untitled short story

This is my attempt to pull off noir-film-style narration. Unfortunately, ever character I write invariably ends up sesquipedalian.

The NASA moon missions were a highly successful attempt to convince the world that the United States could send a man to the moon. The attempt succeeded because it was an effort to convince the world of the truth. This principle holds in most every endeavor. To convince the world that you are dead, let them see your death. Ratsachiel Chiam stood in the middle of a courtyard. All around him, concrete walls held hope prisoner. Grass poked up around his old leather shoes. That grass was the only thing in that courtyard with any hue, as if God’s animation budget had run out. Ratsachiel had something to say on that grey, overcast day in the middle of October. “Excuse me, everybody—” the crowd looked up with momentary interest as he slumped over dead.
High above, right next to a vacant arch in the wall, Ratsachiel Chiam slumped over into the shadows. He’d done it, he’d really done it. Now what? He looked at the ring he had given himself. “It will give you more power than you can dream of, once you kill me,” he repeated the words he had spoken to himself.
Several hundred and nine-tenths years later, I slumped into the beaten recliner behind my desk after another unproductive day of fruitless stakeouts. I’m a detective, you see. Moonlight’s the name, Michael Moonlight. As I can’t effectively threaten anybody who reads this, I’ll wait until some hapless rube laughs at the name to explain why you shouldn’t. I wasn’t thinking about my name, or the stakeouts. I was thinking about the bottle of Moonshine 259 in the bottom-right drawer of my desk. As always, it nearly had my name on it. Often, in a town like this, ‘nearly’ is all you get.
Before I could wrestle the dented drawer out of its steel lair, thunder crashed through the room and threw me against the far wall with all the panache of a drunken pitcher. I picked myself up. My gaze followed. The dust that had so evenly covered the floor was blown back. Lines of especially shallow dust revealed the amateurish finish on the old wood. As I followed them to the point where they crossed, they got thicker and thicker until they were obscured by a man carefully prying plugs out of his ears.
He was reasonably built, but not reasonably dressed. A stretched net shirt was draped over his chest with all the care and meticulousness of a temp who’s just been told he has five hours to live. Myriad wrinkles obscured the precise relationship between his pants and his legs. “Ah... hello. Mister Moonlight? I have a job for you, or maybe you have one for me, or perhaps we’re supposed to pass it off...” He consulted an elaborate scribble on his left forearm; it probably meant something. “Sorry, I’m usually better with this kind of thing.”

Coming Soon (like, I start working on it later tonight, hopefully): The Stultifying Tale for the Edification of Children and Social Inferiors

This was inspired by one of my courses, which focuses on analysis, etc. The book we have to analyze, etc, has a certain je ne sais quois, which gave me the idea for this: a book about gunfights, explosions, and a boy who refuses to keep pets because he knows they'll die for a cheap tug at the readers' heartstrings.

It's not a very developed idea, but I have no problem with making it up as I go.

Nothing to see here yet

This will be my writing blog.  I will post stuff here.  Just not right now.  Ow... academics.