the following is the first of hopefully a weekly installment of some sort of work of fiction about a nineteen year old named Jude. let me know if you notice any grammatical errors or just think something needs work...

He climbed the ladder up into the dark, musty attic. It was pouring outside and he could hear the sound of distant, moaning thunder and sheets of rain falling on the roof. Jude had only been living with his uncle Ronnie for about a month and discovered the attic above the garage last night. He had waited until his uncle had gone off to work for the day simply because he felt too awkward asking him if he could check it out.

Click. The dust covered light bulb flickered on as Jude pulled the string dangling from it. It wasn’t big or full of interesting things like Jude had hoped. It was really only a crawl space with a few boxes, some Christmas lights, an old fish tank, and some bags of clothes. He crawled on the ply-wood floor and sat down next to three yellowed boxes, lifting the lid off the top one.

It was full of manila folders and old newspaper clippings. Jude’s uncle had been a photographer for the paper years and years ago. Under each picture clipped, he saw the name, Ronnie Holiday. Each folder was tabbed with a year date and there must have been about thirty folders or so. Jude couldn’t imagine doing the same thing for thirty years of his life. Though he admired his uncle and had even started helping him in his dark room down in the basement.

Setting the box down on his left he reached for the other and set it on his lap, discarding the lid. This one was full of old family photos, though not neatly organized like the first one. Jude sifted through the mostly black and white snapshots; many of people he didn’t even recognize. A ski trip, a family barbeque, some kids in a swimming pool. He started looking for the color ones to see if he recognized anyone. There was one of Jude on his uncle Ronnie’s shoulders, eating an orange snow cone. Jude smiled. He remembered that day. It was from the time his uncle had come to Texas to visit. He and Jude and Jude’s mother had gone to the state fair the morning he flew into town. Jude sat there wondering about his father. Wondering what it would have been like if he had known him. If he hadn’t passed away before Jude was born. It always gave him this feeling in the pit of his stomach. A dull, aching, emptiness. Thunder rumbled from somewhere far away. Ever since he left Texas, he’d been thinking of his father a lot.

He sifted through the rest of the colored photos he could find and set them back in the box, messing them around, shuffling them up, as if his uncle was going to come home and find out Jude had been in the attic, not that he would care anyway. Jude put the lid back on the box in his lap and opened the third one to his right.

What had once been in the fish tank was in the third box. A bag of gravel, a piece of fluorescent green coral, a water filter, and some fish food. Not quite the treasure trove Jude had hoped for when he noticed the attic last night. He stacked the boxes back on top of one another in the order he found them and crawled towards the ladder. As he stepped down onto it and reached for the string above him, he noticed a photo lying face down where he’d been sitting. He reached across the dusty ply-wood and slid it towards him. Turning it over, he held it under the golden glow of the light bulb above him. His heart began to race and his stomach turn and he felt within him release and tension at the same time…