But I'm hoping to provoke some interest at least so please tell me exactly what you think, and be as harsh as necessary. I want to get to a stage where people are reading it because they enjoy, and want to follow, the story, rather than feel forced to simply review it.
Anyway enough rattling on or this will end up longer than the story itelf. So....
May 4th 2013
It was a typically peaceful (some might very well have said mundane) night in Franklin Township, a quaint little borough of Portage County, Ohio. The Township Hall, mainstay of the Franklin community, was built in 1837. A fairly plain brick building with an astonishingly well-kept lawn, the flagpole was the main feature of the Hall; almost as tall as the building itself, it provided support for a wonderfully large American flag, which was fluttering meekly in the breeze. The rooms within were dark and, in fact, the entire Main Street was a picture of calm; nary a sound to be heard - save for, perhaps, the subdued, constant call of the crickets - and the muffled din eminanting from No. 16 Main Street. It was a little past midnight by the time Gary emerged from the house, and he was seething.
The door was violently slammed shut and, beer in hand, he stumbled towards his crystal-blue '87 Chevy Camaro. Once upon a time it might have been able to get away with calling itself a classy, elegant vehicle but, what with being over 25 years old, those days were sadly long behind it. And without wanting to draw too many obvious comparisons, the Camaro might well have been an allegory for Gary himself. Balding, and possessing an ever-expanding paunch, Gary liked a beer or two; or better yet, half a dozen when the occasion took him. Tonight Shelly had managed to tape over the game; the Browns were playing the Broncos, always an event for Gary, and she had managed to tape over it.
With what, he didn't know or care to find out, as he fumbled with his keys, awkwardly prodding away at the lock's rim. After several attempts, he finally slotted and turned the key, swinging himself into the driver's seat, an act that sounds far more graceful on the page than you might think. Gary swayed gingerly, but steeled himself for the all-important ignition stage; he managed to turn the car on in one.
"You've still got it" he mumbled, congratulating himself on this feat. Hoping Shelly would hear him, he slammed the door shut with as much force he could muster. (Gary wouldn't notice until much later that this was what caused the left-wing mirror to unhinge and sag, making it almost entirely useless for the purposes of road navigation) Welcome to the Jungle blared out of the speakers. Gary didn't exactly have any destination in mind - or a proficiently functioning mind in order to choose a particular destination - but he drove, and seemed almost inexorably drawn to Franklin's main attraction; the Rockwell Lake Dam. Unsurprisingly, the car wobbled from side to side as he passed Main Street; Gary squinted through the darkness as Axl Rose's screams broke through the once-silent darkness.
As Gary approached the shoreline, he was almost certain that he heard an unusual noise emanating from somewhere toward the middle of the lake, almost as if a brick had been dropped from a great height. Several birds bolted from the trees around the lake that housed them; squaking frantically, the generally perpetual calmness was again interrupted. This time Gary could in no way be blamed, of course.
It was, by all accounts, a minor miracle that he and his Camaro had even made it to the dam, and better still, that Gary had gingerly walked to the shore without losing his balance. He didn't particularly locate the most idyllic of spots, either - rather than the usual sun-kissed, white-sanded beaches one would normally associate with a coastline, only mud and sludge seperated the river from the land. Most probably they were a product of the Dam itself, which, by preventing the natural flow of the Cuyahoga River, causes an intense build-up of sediment. Gary was downstream, at the mouth of the mad-made "Lake" Rockwell, one of the many lakes that the great river flowed into. Meandering slowly back through the forests and out of sight, to Gary's left, was the river, and dividing the two was the dam itself.
By Ohio standards, the dam was positively insignificant in size, although it certainly made Gary feel small; a metal behemoth stretching from one bank of the river to the other, providing the main source of drinking water for not only the township, but the surrounding counties. The moonlight reflected off the water majestically, bathing the area in an almost eerie silver glow; Gary was mesmerised as he sipped on his Budweiser. The first pangs of guilt over the wholly unnecessary row with Shelly were beginning to permeate his relaxed mind, making him uneasy. A bigger gulp of the Budweiser.
He rubbed his forehead; the hangover was a long way away, but his guilt was only just asserting itself. Deep in contemplation, he was in no way prepared for the tremendous noise that he suddenly heard.
Gary flung his head back - throwing him off his precariously maintained balance - as an enormous bird screeched above him. He landed, rather painfully, in the muddy banks of the lake.
"Fuck!" he yelled, his back absorbing the brunt of the force. Before he could build on that near-automatic expletive, he searched, wide-eyed, for the bird he had just heard, his mind racing. It took him several moments to come to the realisation that it wasn't a bird at all - rather a plane, or some sort of enormous flying object, completely devoid of any lights. Silhouetted against the night sky, it streaked above the canopy of the trees, just skirting the edges of the dam before plummeting into the river upstream. The whine of rapidly pressured metal could be heard, although several miles away, with consummate clarity. The noise was unlike anything he had ever heard; had he held his head to the Camaro's speakers with Guns N' Roses turned up to 11, he surmised that it wouldn't even be halfway close to the roar that had just caused his very bones to shake. A rush of adrenaline surged through his veins as he sat, back aching, caked in mud, on the shores. As shocking as the crash had been, the worst was yet to come for Gary.
"My bud..." he whispered, mournfully. He was right; the can was just about visible as the currents took it out of sight. Gary leant back, let out a very well-earned sigh, and tried to make sense of everything.
First off, maybe you should take your story out of the quote formatting, and put your Author's Note as a quote, or even hide it with a spoiler 
Would look neater that way 
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