Welcome to the next episode of scenes or sections from the original novels that make up The Prodigal Band Trilogy that were deleted within the trilogy book. Most of the scenes or sections posted in this series were deleted for the sake of allocation of the amount of pages.
But this section here was not included in the three-books-in-one trilogy mainly because I had originally written this as a short story related to the trilogy series and I only put it into The Prophesied Band for its heart-warming, feel-good quality. When I was writing this short story that I’d incorporate into the second novel in the trilogy, I cried my way through it! And when I was re-typing from the original novel onto this laptop for inclusion here, I cried again!
The short story, by the way, made its way into a yearly publication of poems and short stories written by members of my local writers group, Texas Mountain Trail Writers. At the time I was the editor of the monthly newsletter as well as the yearly publication.
This section/story takes place within the time frame of spring, 1996, when singer-frontman Erik and bassist Keith are recovering from mild heart attacks they endured in early February (as told in the final chapter of Battle of the Band.) At the same time, Ger, Erik’s wife, is battling esophagus cancer she brought upon herself during her long bout with the eating disorder called bulimia, which involves eating lots of food and then immediately purging it by vomit into a toilet or whatever. This is told in Chapter Four of The Prophesied Band referenced here. In Chapter Six, she is seeing doctors for treatment and discovers she has the cancer, and has difficulty swallowing any food or drink.
In April, 1996, after bringing her to a doctor visit for a second opinion on this cancer, Erik decides to buy chocolate chip cookies (called biscuits in England) at a local cookie shop, but not for Ger. He has not been a worthy father to his two-year-old son, Alec, as he admitted in Chapter Four of The Prophesied Band, and he has vowed to change that–he himself never really had connected to his own father as stated in the final chapter of Battle of the Band, so he had no guidance as to how to be a good dad. He had to figure this out on his own.
But son Alec wanted nothing to do with his father, either. Erik was an alcoholic, and he smelled like it! Alec did not want to be around someone smelling of whiskey or scotch and having ‘clammy’ hands. Yet Alec also knew his father did not smell that way anymore, as the singer severely cut down on his booze consumption, only having drops of booze added to tonic water ‘for the taste of it’ by his personal assistant–who had strict charge over all booze in the house so Erik wouldn’t!
Continue reading “The Prodigal Band Trilogy Original Deleted Scenes, Part Five”
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