John Preston Hanks

Watching John Preston Hanks

Watching is a 35,000 word narrative fiction story that takes place in the Chain-of-Lakes region of Central Florida. The story is about the disappearance of fifty or so people over a ten-year period never to be found and the investigation of what has happened to these people. The narrator has befriended his next door neighbor who is a policeman. The policeman has a confidential file on the cases, all unresolved, who, out of frustration, shares the information with the narrator to give a different perspective that may spark something that would give him a lead to the resolution of these disappearances. The narrator's other neighbor who is a frequent fishing partner, introduces an old street person, half Seminole, half Sudanese. This old man speaks in riddles and is frequent to drink, but eventually convinces the narrator and his neighbors that a large, ferocious animal traveling the Chain-of-Lakes is the cause of the missing people. A quiet search begins by the narrator, his two neighbors, a wildlife officer and two other people they manage to convince others of the story. Encounters with the large creature take place and there is a resolution at the end, or so it is believed.