Venice Via Venice

By Stephen Brailovsky

Venice via Venice is a time travel romance novella. Our Hero, Sergio, is stuck between a rock and a hard place and he doesn't know the half of it! 500 years in the future in a city by the same name,Sergio will find what he needs to capture love. He's escaping from a miserable death sentence in Venice, Italy to a homeless revolution in Venice Beach and can't seem to find a moments rest.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Trashy Novel Corp
• Release date: Feb 24, 2010
• ISBN: 9780984344024

Stephen Brailovsky

Stephen Brailovsky was born in Panorama City in 1973 and currently lives in Silver Lake. He has been writing strange fiction since he was 8 years old. Enjoy his collection available here.

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Venice Via Venice

By SJ Brailovsky

Dedicated to Arianna

Copyright © 2009 SJ Brailovsky

Published by The Trashy novel corp at Smashwords

Worldwide rights reserved

Los Angeles 2009 ISBN 978-0-843440-2-4

Sergio Del Mare

I get up early. I push my blankets aside and look out the window. I can see that it’s not raining. Today is a good day. I kick out the rats and clean up from the night before. Wine bottles scattered around a dumpy little boat that’s floating in a canal off the Grand Canal. This is where I live for the time being. It’s not much of a life, but it’s a beautiful life for me. I dress with limited space, lying on my back to put on my pants. I open the door and come out onto the deck. I stoke the fire from the night before that’s been made on the sidewalk. There’s something left in it. I stoke it some more and throw on some tinder and a pot of water. I’m going to have some tea.

Today, like all other days, I will head out into the Adriatic and fish for a living. I’ll spend all day in the currents throwing nets and reeling them back. I can do it for a lifetime. The motion. The feeling.

I make my way inside for some Chamomile flower to soak in the water. It creates a delightful tranquil feeling. I’ve also procured some sweets from some local lords party that I recently crashed.

That’s what I do. Fish during the day. Crash the Royals parties at night.

The Beach Bum

Dirty, sandy, saltwater washed, grungy looking bums. They’re drunk again, too. Some of them can’t make it back to the beach from whatever liquor store that just sold them booze. They lay haphazardly in the street, sometimes dangling a foot in the gutter. The horde leaves behind the ones that are too blitzed to make the struggle; and they love it, they won’t have it any other way. The beach is full of them, just a bunch of dirty drunken bums with an attitude and a full schedule of beach napping.

They’re the beach bums and they really don’t care about any of it. Not like they lead you to believe. They just don’t care. They’ve got serious shit to do like find the perfect spot to take a nap. They’re doing shit like scoping out the perfect baby carriage (sans baby) that has gone astray then finding a trader on Ocean Front walk and living the good life on the proceeds. They’re busy scamming enough money for beer and smokes and quietly taking a piss around the corner.

They’re fucking busy taking care of whatever.

Most of them are good souls but they suck, no matter what, in the end. There’s nothing anyone can do. You can only love them as much as you can trust them, which isn’t very much.

Lately they’ve formed massive enclaves along Venice and Santa Monica and thumb their nose at the police, local renters and homeowners. Fearless drunken wrecks of dirty, dirty smelly bums, bumming around and getting all bummed out.

There are thousands of them.

The New Venetians.

There are only artists in the new artist lofts by the beach. Only artists and rich kids from Brentwood and Beverly Hills. The land is owned by the Italian Pusschiami family. They own all of Venice Beach, live on Billion Dollar point and rent out the rest.

Wealthy influential Italians and their young, hot offspring own Venice Beach and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. It’s good old fashion Fascism for the New Venetians on the front lines. High rent and glorious statues of the Pusschiami Patriachs for those poor bastards. So what if the rent is high, the artists don’t care because they’re rich and just getting richer. The artists are far too busy being artistic, driving their limos, smoking coke and having art gallery openings to pay attention to anything; but it’s all so New Venetian to pay the exorbitant rent and not care.

Since they own the place, the New Venetians lobby for laws to suit themselves and punish the bums, like anti-gypsy laws. At least they don’t mine the beach like Santa Monica. They bump into the bums on occasion. Usually for sport, but they’ll never be able to take on the full force of the raging bums.