—Every Tuesday Vicki at I’d Rather Be At the Beach hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros, where we share the first paragraph or two of a book we are reading or thinking about reading soon.
Mine comes from Head On by John Scalzi.
THE DEATH OF DUANE CHAPMAN
The journeyman Hilketa athlete was looking to make an impression in his final game. But then he did something unexpected. He died.
By Cary Wise
Special to the HILKETA NEWS.
By the time Duane Chapman died on the Hilketa field, his head had already been torn off twice.
Having it torn off for the third time was unusual, even for Hilketa, in which the point of the game is to rip the head off a selected opponent and then toss or carry it through a goal at the end of the field. The computer operated by the officials in the game operations room—improvised for this exhibition game between the Boston Bays and the Toronto Snowbirds in an appropriated stadium luxury skybox—was supposed to select randomly from the defending players on the field who would be the “goat” for the current play: the player whose head the offense would try to remove while the remaining defense players fought them off, with their bodies and with game-approved weapons. With eleven players on each side, it was unusual for any one player to get goat duty more than one or twice a game.
This isn’t for me but I hope you like it.
No, not one I suspect for me either but then you never can tell.
Not for me.