UPDATE: TIME’S UP!!! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED!
It’s that time. I’m pleased to announce the opening of THE SURPRISINGLY ESSENTIAL FIRST PAGE CHALLENGE!
Before I get to the guidelines, I’m also pleased to introduce the contest’s co-judge, my very good friend Holly Burns, author of the wonderful and hilarious blog Nothing But Bonfires. I conned, er, persuaded Holly to participate because: 1) she’s British (I mean, they invented the darn language), 2) she’s an extremely talented writer (did I mention her wonderful and hilarious blog that you should already be reading?), and 3) I thought it would be helpful to have a judge from outside the publishing industry, the type of person who might pick up your book in the bookstore after reading the first page — in other words, THIS IS YOUR READER.
So a massive thank you in advance to Holly for agreeing to participate.
And now for the contest guidelines:
1) All may participate. First pages may be from your work in progress or one you invented solely for the SEFPC. I’ve learned my lesson from contests past, and am limiting entries to one (1) per person.
b) Leave your first page in the comments section of this post. People who subscribe to the blog via e-mail: please click through to the site and leave your pages on the actual blog. Entries that are e-mailed to me will not be counted.
4.6) First pages are limited to 500 words. Use them wisely. Paragraphs should be single-spaced with double-spaces between paragraphs (like how this blog post is formatted). Please do not get crazy with your formatting.
+) The preliminary deadline for entries is Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific time although for some reason I always end up changing my mind about these deadlines, so please keep checking back. Nominees will be announced whenever Holly and I have had a chance to decide upon them, and you will have a chance to vote on the ultimate winner.
£) Spreading word about the contest on the Internet is encouraged. I am ready to judge this contest. No matter what. Even a million entries will not faze me. My voice only quivered a little when I said that.
X) And the prizes! The ultimate grand prize deluxe winner will receive the satisfaction of knowing they have a seriously awesome first page, and will have a choice of a query critique, partial critique, 10 minute phone conversation, or one of my clients’ books. Runners-up will receive a query critique or other agreed-upon prize.
And that is it! Keep checking back for updates because these guidelines may be changed on a whim. Thank you again to Holly (here’s her blog one more time) and good luck!
Who has the most surprisingly essential first page? Let’s find out.
bevhale says
LIAR – YA SF – in progress – anticipate 75,000 words
Adults lie. All of them.
Starting with that whole Santa and Easter Bunny thing they lie, to assuring you that Brussel sprout paste tastes yummy, right through to telling you that the all-roobish pink outfit they got you for the dance makes you look mag instead of barfable. Even names. They stick you with a roobish name like Amalthea and then lie about how romantic it is when you really wanted a mag name like Sable or Mary or Rayne or Constance.
So I didn’t exactly believe them when the Parental Units told my sibs and me how much we’d love, love, love Quietude Colony. I mean, who wants to go live somewhere so GU (geographically undesirable) that you’re only going to appeal to some all-withered grunt of a mineral miner or beet farmer? In fact, who wants to go to a place so GU that there’s nothing to do but be a mineral miner or a beet farmer?
Still, since all adults lie, you’d think the PUs would have at least considered that the Colony Service might have lied to them about a few things before they signed our lives away forever.
Wouldn’t you?
You’d be wrong.
See, my dad got downsized when an UltraCorp swallowed his teeny little company. I don’t know why he hadn’t planned for it, I mean, the Big Ten have taken over almost everything in the entire star fusion of worlds and are after the rest of it. But he hadn’t and then when he complained, it meant there weren’t any jobs inside that Ultra for him, not any of the Ultras. And there never would be. You don’t cheese off the Ultras and get away with it.
My little brother Whit says the Ultras are all run by the same ten people, but I think he’s just awfully paranoid for a twelve-year-old weed. Still we couldn’t stay on an inner planet; Mom couldn’t support us on just her job alone, and that meant we’d have to go far away to find something not owned by an Ultra. Far, as in, the back of beyond far. Out so far into the black that no one probably ever heard of civilization.
So here we all are, forty-five minutes until lock down. We’re stuffed in a ship cabin that would be claustrophobic for my little sister Mouse and clutching all the belongings they allowed us in the cabin (which meant ID and a change of clothes packed down in a locktight bag) and sitting in roobish gray p-suits while we wait for them to come turn us into folksicles.
Okay, so they don’t really freeze us, but since it takes a lot of space and resources to ship colonists to the outer colonies they sure weren’t going to want a bunch of people running around a small ship for the six months or so it takes to get there. As soon as all the suckers/colonists-to-be are loaded (us and two other groups), they’ll rig our berths for stasis and then ship us like crates of protein bars to the designated drop point.
ros says
Daniel knelt on the hard dusty floor of the shrine. He bowed his head and lifted the bowl of blood high as he muttered the familiar incantations. Eleven years now he had been coming. Every month he made the same pilgrimage with slightly more resentful steps. Every month his prayer was repeated with a little more desperation.
Hear, O El, Father of the Gods,
the plea of your most humble servant,
Daniel, man of Rapiu,
O El, your servant comes upon his knees
and makes his offering to you,
Grant to my house a son, O El.
A son in my house, offspring within my palace…
Daniel shook off his cloak and laid it on the ground to cushion him. He would remain here, prostrate, for seven days. There was food and wine to be offered to El that would sustain him and the prayer that was to be spoken each hour.
He remembered the first time Danatiya had fallen pregnant. They had been married just a few months and were filled with delight that the gods had blessed their union so soon. Daniel had continued to come each month to the shrine, making sacrifices to ensure the child’s health and his wife’s safety.
When little Paghit had been born, Daniel had been as surprised as Danatiya. But as soon the little girl had opened her big black eyes and looked up at her father, he hadn’t cared. There would be other pregnancies, other children who would be sons, he assured his wife. Paghit was perfect as she was.
There had been other pregnancies, two of them. The first ended quickly, just a couple of months after Danatiya had told him. The second went much longer. Daniel’s prayers then had been urgent and specific. A boy was needed, a son to secure his name forever.
The shadow had reached the cypress tree. Daniel levered himself to his knees, rubbing a hand over his face. He glanced up at the image of the god then bowed his head and repeated the prayer once more.
…A son to rescue my breath from the underworld
and to protect my steps from falling into dust…
Danatiya was older now. Her face was lined and her smile barely lifted the corners of her mouth. She had suffered badly when the second child came. It had been a boy. Daniel found that made it worse. He could not even bring himself to glance at the cold, still form of his son as the midwife wrapped the dead child in cloths and laid him ready for burial. Looking into Danatiya’s desolate eyes was agony enough.
The monthly visits to the shrine had been a blessed relief at that time. Away from his home he could begin to forget the past and in the familiar ritual of prayer and offering, Daniel began to hope again.
rpressey says
The distinctive feeling of someone’s hand on my upper arm had been undeniable. Each icy finger coiled around my shoulder. My heart thumped, and if I’d looked close, I’m sure I could have probably seen my shirt moving with every thud. You would think I’d be used to this sort of thing by now. I’ve been seeing dead people since I could remember.
Adrenalin rushed through me like a gushing river as I slowly placed my foot on the step in front of me and forced the other one to do the same. The stairs made a creaking noise with every step I took, just like on the horror movies we’ve all watched wide-eyed and terrified at three a.m. Three years ago, I became a ghost hunter. Helping terrified people overcome their fears and ridding them of unwelcome spiritual visitors had become my fate. Of course, it wasn’t my day job, by day I worked in my bookstore. However, at night, the witching hour, is when I pursued the unknown. I had dealt with my share of demons over the years and this was my little way of helping all of humankind. I gazed up at the dark form. It crossed the top of the stairs, as if taunting me, ready for a chase. It didn’t know what it was in store for, teasing me like that. I may be small, 5’2” to be exact, but I packed a powerful punch. I had my share of tricks up my sleeve to rid a building of unwanted visitors.
As I reached the top of the stairs, a frigid breeze zipped past almost knocking the wind out of me. A bitter chill rippled down my spine. I prayed the spirit wouldn’t attach itself to me. Since I was a child I’d always had someone around, and by someone, I mean a ghost. Most of the time it’s just a poor lost soul that doesn’t know they’ve died or perhaps they just have unfinished business. Some take longer than others to cross over and it was a struggle to help them. The most recent ghost to attach itself to me was… Are you ready for this? No… You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. All right, here goes… Abraham Lincoln. Yes, as in the sixteenth President of the United States. I know. I know. One day last month I made the mistake of visiting Lincoln’s birthplace and guess who was hanging around? You got it, Abe Lincoln. He’d spotted me eyeing him right away and he knew in an instant that I saw him. The next thing I knew, he was sitting in the back seat of my car waiting for a ride. It took me forever to convince him to scoot over in the backseat. I had to explain it was either scoot over, or lose the hat. I couldn’t see out of the rear view mirror for that thing!
So, welcome to my world! I’m Larue Donavan, psychic medium and ghost buster.
Nathan Bransford says
Posted for Michael Eckert:
Cormac MacGullin and the Renaissance Faire
The MacGullins are the type of people you’d like to have as neighbors. They are a nice family, never make trouble, and always seem to be able to lend a hand when needed. The quaint house the MacGullins live in at the back of the quiet cul-de-sac has a wide backyard where their son, Cory, plays with his Siberian husky, Sapphire.
They seem like good, normal people
Still, even though you could never put your finger on it, there’s something a bit odd about them. The MacGullins spend their summers at the local Renaissance Faire, which is only one thing their neighbors consider peculiar. They’d simply pack up and go, returning just before the new school year started for Cory. This year won’t be any different, as far as the neighbors know. But there are other things, too; nothing terrible, mind you, which the neighbors can only guess at. Peculiar little things that chase a shiver of wonder up a person’s spine if glimpsed from the corner of one eye. Today, Cory is about to discover what the neighbors have always wondered about.
“Cory?”
No answer.
“Cory! It’s time to get up.”
Silence.
“Cormac William MacGullin, get your butt out of bed this minute!”
Cory stirred slightly then looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was seven o’clock in the morning on the first day of summer vacation. Most kids would have been out of the house by now to go fishing, riding bikes, or skateboarding with friends. But Bob and Troy weren’t coming today. Neither of them ever came to his house on the first day of summer vacation. Today was Cory’s twelfth birthday but that didn’t matter much to him. Summer vacation meant only one thing: it was time to go to the Faire, for the entire summer.
“Cory, if I have to come up there…”
“Okay, okay! I’m up, mom!”
Cory threw back the covers and rolled out of bed, rubbed his eyes, and yawned. He stood up and stretched, picked his jeans up off the floor, slid them on, and then walked to his dresser to get a pair of clean socks and a tee shirt. He peeked into a large cage sitting atop the dresser. It was covered with an old blanket except for the front door of the cage, which was always left open. In one corner, curled up in a furry ball, was his pet ferret, Shadow.
“Lucky you,” Cory smirked, “you get to sleep all day if you want.”
Shadow popped his head out from under his front paw as Cory grabbed his clothes from the drawer and walked back to his bed. “You know what, Shadow? I’m twelve today,” Cory said, pulling the shirt over his head. “I think I’ll just tell mom and dad I don’t want to go to the Renaissance Faire this summer.”
Shadow slinked out of the cage, quietly surveying Cory.
“What do you think?” Cory smiled, as he struggled to put his right sock on. “Should I be rebellious today?”
“Don’t be silly,” Shadow replied. “Oh, and happy birthday!”
Karen L. K. says
OTHER – young adult urban fantasy, 72,000 words
CHAPTER 1
I can’t last much longer. It’s been one week, three days, and I forget how many hours.
My belly cramps, and I curl on my bed, staring out at the stars. A delicious breeze glides through my window and cools my sweaty forehead. The air smells of summer—mowed grass, recent rain, lingering barbecue—and tempts me more than I want to admit. Shards of moonlight and shadow shift on the wall. I clench my teeth and toes and try to ride out the pain. My bedroom drifts counterclockwise, and I shut my eyes.
It can’t be good, not shapeshifting.
All the don’ts I’ve heard circle through my mind like vultures preying on my doubts. Don’t worry about what people think of Others, Gwen, they don’t understand. Don’t worry, Gwen, we love you just the way you are, but don’t tell anyone outside the family. If they don’t know you’re Other, it won’t hurt anyone. And don’t ever let anyone see you shapeshift, especially not the neighbors. Don’t.
I shouldn’t. It’s stupid, dangerous, unnecessary—no, it’s very necessary. Just taboo.
I kick off my blankets, slide out of bed, and lock my door. My heartbeat quickens. My breathing sounds too loud. I glimpse a pair of golden lights reflected in the mirror above my bookcase: my eyes, betraying their true nature. Most of the time I pass them off as pale hazel. Maybe my body’s telling me I should be human only 50% of the time, because that’s what I am. Half-human. The rest: a guilty pleasure, a shameful secret.
Screw it. I’m going to. I have to, it’s as urgent as breathing.
bria says
MARKBEARER – YA Fantasy
The smell of burnt flesh lingered in the temple’s cool air. Faela’s wrist itched where a branded circle should have marred her translucent skin. The sick, selfish feeling she suffered during each ceremony rose from the pit of her stomach, forcing her lungs to labor for air.
Across the temple nave, her youngest friend Misa stood with her new markmate. The temple’s brand scorched on their skin encircling their matching marks.
As the eldest daughter of the king, Faela’s duties were clear: remain logical, precise and elegant while exuding joy in the binding ceremony. It was exhausting.
Slipping out the rear portal, she left the cheerful noise and chaos behind in exchange for the garden’s fresh scents and soothing babble of water. Laid out in intricate mathematical patterns perfected by early Elian philosophers, the labyrinth-like walkways distracted her from troublesome thoughts. At the stream’s edge, the moonlit water reflected her blank wrists up for her own scrutiny. She dropped her hand into the cool water and let it pull away her worries.
Unlike a respectable Elian woman, Faela bore her mark between her shoulders instead of upon her wrist. And her mark – to have one with so clear a shape was unheard of. Where others had random shapes marring their skin, Faela’s hidden mark was a wolf’s paw-print upon her back. But, no one spoke of her misplaced mark or her missing markbearer. No one would dare.
Her father sent envoys throughout the kingdom, and still no markbearer could be found. The legates scrutinized birth and morta-records for evidence of her widowhood yet none were located.
Meanwhile, her mother’s reprimands were direct, insisting logic overcome emotions. Logically, there must be a markbearer for her, so feeling like a freakish outcast was a waste of time and energy. Of course, the Queen never stated it like that.
And tonight Misa stood bound to her markbearer – markmate now – in a ceremony Faela both feared and desired. Her celebration still sounded in the temple behind her.
JanB says
Lady Alyssa Randall didn’t normally eavesdrop, but tonight, with an ear against the solid mahogany door to her husband’s study, she couldn’t help herself. They were after all, discussing her.
“It’s been four years and still the chit has yet to give me an heir. It’s time to be rid of her. With my money, mother’s will be throwing their daughters at me,” Edgar boasted.
“Edgar, I think you should reconsider. If you’ll pardon me for saying, maybe it’s not her fault. You wouldn’t be the first this has happened to.”
Alyssa sighed. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t conceived a child. Edgar had forced himself on her countless times, but no child was ever conceived. She wanted to fill her home with children just as much as Edgar wanted his heir.
“Mind your tongue Robert. Remember who employs you and keeps you in that comfortable lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to.”
“There’s no need to threaten me Edgar, I was not insulting your manhood. I was merely pointing out that her time may not be right for conceiving a child. It was five years before my wife and I were able to enjoy the arrival of our son.”
“I cannot wait another year!” Edgar bellowed. My heir needs to be knowledgeable with my company so he will not destroy what I have built. If I do not get an heir soon, I may die an old man before he is of age. Now do as I requested. Get me invited to the best parties of the season. I will be attending alone, which will require you to make excuses for my wife. Now go.”
“No, Edgar, I will not,” she heard Robert answer bravely. “If you attend these parties alone, people will talk, and I will not be a party to this again. Do you recall the gossip with Lady Penelope?”
“Penelope disappeared on her own. I had nothing to do with that as you well know,” Edgar growled.
“If I may say so, you know as well as I that if you are alone at any of the season’s parties, the gossip’s tongues will be wagging. I think it best you wait this out.”
“I will not wait another minute!” Edgar roared, throwing his glass of brandy at the fireplace.
A startled gasp escaped Alyssa at the sound of the shattering glass. Her husband, Lord Edgar was indeed drunk. Again. And in that state, he was most certainly prone to violence in his drunken rages.
She had to get away quickly before she met the same fate as his previous four wives. She had heard stories about their disappearances from the servants, but always thought that it was just idle gossip. Now she wasn’t so sure.
As Alyssa turned to leave, the door she had just seconds ago had her ear pressed against, swung open, bringing her face to face with her very inebriated, very angry husband.
“How dare you eavesdrop on my conversation,” he snarled.
InterfaceLeader says
What a wonderful idea for a contest 😀
Smokey Days
It was an expensive restaurant, residing as it did in the bubble complex. Tabbi looked out at the view to her right. The city swelled across the horizon, great domes and spiraling towers, with the air bridges looping thin and curving between them. It glittered in the sun, all polished glass, steel and white marble. She wondered who had made the decision to build this section in marble. Must’ve cost billions, definitely, but it gave the bubble complex an open airiness and a lightness that it had become famous for.
There was a a spiral tower just outside the restaurant, the sliding curve of its walkway dressed in grass and cascading flower boxes. Someone had put fountains at intervals along the edge, and water gurgled into thin air, turning to waterfalls and then mist as it fell. Rainbows cut through those at the right angles to the sun. Invisible to those who hurried along the garden paths, racing to work or to meet friends or to university, translucent and shimmering in the spray.
She kicked one slippered foot against the chair leg. Denise was late. And that wasn’t like her.
Her briefcase was resting by her other foot, out of place with the rest of her style, but briefcases kept paper safe, and she had given in to practicality this once. She looked around the restaurant again, searching amongst the crowded tables for some sign of her partner.
A corpulent man in a well cut suit sitting alone at one of the booths met her gaze and winked at her. Tabbi let her gaze move on without reaction. She wasn’t going to be stood up by Denise, was she?
The large silver clock on the wall, looped into a spiraling circle of silver, told her that Denise was now forty-two minutes late. Tabbi drummed her fingers against the table. And was caught by the design on her nails, spiraling white and black circles, almost the match of the clock on the far well. She grinned despite her worry, amused as always by the coincidence.
Coincidences were what had got her into this game after all.
Then a waiter was approaching the table, Denise stepping smartly behind him. Like always, Tabbi felt her breath catch in her throat. She knew the corpulent man was watching. Hell, everyone with any taste would be watching. Denise had that effect on people.
She had cut her hair since the last time Tabbi had seen her. Now her red hair just reached her chin, curling around her face, framing the high cheekbones and softening the jaw. Two large, slightly slanted green eyes met Tabbi’s, and the corners crinkled slightly as she smiled. Tabbi smiled back.
Denise perched on the chair, smoothing the skirt of her suit over her knee as she crossed her legs.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said crisply. “Donavon wouldn’t cut the deal. Read the entire contract through twice and then turned it down.”
sonya says
Master of None
Just once, I would have liked to accidentally get my shit together. I could already see that wasn’t going to happen tonight. After all, I am the world’s unluckiest thief. Ask anybody.
Especially my ex-partners.
The long-abandoned warehouse I’d stumbled across had seemed like a blessing, and the worn canvas bag wedged under my spare tire had been downright serendipitous. That was until I started loading my worldly possessions into it, and the damned thing split down the seams when I tried to shove the scrambler under my spare shirt. Out came everything, all over the concrete floor covered with dust and oil and Christ knew what else. The gunk would wreak havoc with my instruments.
As if that weren’t enough, the draft in the place snatched a handful of hundreds and whisked them off into the gloom in a flurry of papery whispers. Like the building was laughing at me.
“Shit!” My voice echoed in the empty space. I froze, dropped to a crouch behind my car, and listened. Nothing yet. I’d ditched the tail half an hour ago, but they’d find me again soon. I figured Trevor must have had my ride bugged while he briefed me — which meant the fuckers had been tracking me for a week. They knew I’d hit the place four days ago and hadn’t shown up with the score yet. I might have caught on if I hadn’t misplaced my scanner on my last run.
Since I hadn’t, my only chance now was to keep going on foot. I couldn’t talk my way out of this one.
I kept the curses in my head this time and started stowing fistfuls of bills in pockets. The lost cash would have to stay lost. Next came the essentials: cell phone, Mag-lite, lock jock, cutter, scrambler, electric pick, Bowie, SAK, wire, Magnum — unloaded, of course. I was a thief, not a murderer. Couldn’t say the same for Trevor.
I’d have to scratch the clothes, too. Not that they were much to look at. Bland, serviceable, meant for blending in. I’d buy more. Though I didn’t need it for warmth, I shrugged into my windbreaker for the extra pockets and headed for the single point of entry and exit in the rundown structure. It bothered me, being in a place with only one escape route. Made it hard to formulate a backup plan other than get busted or die . . . two alternatives I’d managed to avoid so far. I hoped this time wouldn’t break my record — but I had my doubts.
Anonymous says
Paul Lightwing sat at his desk; he opened his third pack of Players’ Silk-Cut Canadians and placed the filterless cigarette gently on his lower lip.
Lightwing was fifty percent Apache and one hundred percent venom. His Native American half was doing tribal penance for working for the FBI, his downtown-Manhattan half was simply slumming.
Lightwing’s mother, a high-class, high-income Jewish attorney, had fallen in lust with James Lightwing after walking too close to a skyscraper he was working on. James Lightwing and his Native American brethren had stepped down from the iron wigwam they were constructing for the weak-kneed, spotty-eyed paleface to break bread and have a spot of tea. As he sat half naked in the searing heat of mid-July Manhattan, filthy air choking up his Arizona alveoli, it occurred to James that his ancestors had shown great foresight in pawning the island off on the white man.
James laughed to himself, looked down from his luncheon perch thirty feet above the protective fence surrounding the building site, and saw Rebecca Pine, standing broad-hipped and high-heeled, staring up at him. The affair was short, sweet, and filled with unbridled loinal passion.
The sight of him pushing a wheelbarrow along a narrow iron trestle had stirred up a forbidden freight train of desire, plunging her down a one-way track of reckless passion. The spawn of this frenzied collision was Paul Abraham Lightwing; his parents had married for his sake and divorced for theirs.
In retaliation for his untimely intrusion, Rebecca Pine had dumped him at the Holy Cross Boarding School, the only place she could find willing to take a three-year-old, and cheap at the price. Paul occasionally saw his mother on holidays, rarely during summer vacations.
He grew up alone, in a world where the children feared him and the priests felt it their duty to chastise the Jew in him while destroying his heathen spirit. They were unsuccessful on both counts. His childhood was an excellent breeding-ground for hate; in this time he learned to corral his anger, preparing to heed his future call to revenge, providing him with a solid basis for a career in the FBI.
Lightwing dabbed out the last cigarette in the ashtray he had sculpted for Rebecca Pine that Thanksgiving when she had not failed to disappoint him again. He squeezed the still-glowing ember between his thumb and forefinger. The calloused hands were an attest to his Third Dan black belt, the hot butt an insult to its power.
Jacob Witkin pushed through the glass door of Paul Lightwing’s office and dropped the Jay Barr file on his boss’s desk. Witkin, a long-haired, short-statured tub of a man, lived in a palace of fear, created to honor the man he worshipped, Paul Lightwing.
colbymarshall says
The Color of Courage- 82,000 words
When I first began my career, I had no idea what I was getting into. I don’t think anyone can prepare you for that first year. It was one of the most trying years of my life. You are thrown into the grind face first, not knowing what to expect or what unforeseen task will be thrown at you next. I not only had to get used to the every day strains of the job, but I also had to learn to fit in and not attract too much attention. After all, I had a secret to keep.
Sure, everyone knew I was a part of the group, but what they didn’t know was that I wasn’t just any other normal participant. My job required me to tell nothing about the exact nature of whom I was or what I knew about the people around me.
Difficult doesn’t even begin to describe what I went through, but I learned. I learned to maintain my composure even when faced with the most extreme danger. I put my game face on during times when I didn’t know what to do, where to go, or whether life as I knew it would end. I became focused on the situation at hand, but always flexible to roll with whatever curves the day would hurl my way. I reached a point where not much surprised me. I learned to turn adversity into advantage. I was and am tough as steel, taking even the most complicated and complex situations in stride. All I could do was just live minute to minute, hour to hour, and live to see another day dawn.
That first year was humbling. I knew some things I wish I never had to know, heard things I never thought I’d hear, and saw things that no person alive should ever have to see. And though it seared me to the core of my being, I withstood the fire to remain dedicated and fearless, a paragon of strength for my country and my family. And no, I’m not a Navy SEAL…I’m married to one.
CaroleMcDonnell says
Inheritance: WIP, about 70,000 words.
“He’s a great kid, ain’t he?” Ethan Lee wiped a tear from his face as he compared the photo in his hand with the printed photo in the Porterville Courier. He turned to his sister, Ruth Ann Hong and half-smiled. “You’re laughin’ at me.”
“I just haven’t seen my brother cry in awhile.”
Turning to look behind him, he indicated the armed correction guards several feet behind him. “I cry, Sis. I cry. You just don’t see.”
She placed her open right palm on the glass separating them. “I know.”
On the other side of the glass, he lifted his own scarred cigarette-stained left hand, mirroring her right one. They held their hands together for several seconds as if that small dual action would bring them closer together. It was Ruth Ann who first pulled her hand away.
“Ruthie”–Ethan leaned back in his chair– “you’re tellin’ me the truth, right?”
“No, no, he’s a good kid, believe me! Up-and-up. Finding his life again.”
Ethan eyed his sister calmly. He was thinking of his mother, of his dad, of his brothers and his large extended family throughout the region, thinking about how he had never brought any good to the family. He pulled at his scraggly black hair. “I wish Mom knew.”
Ruth Ann sighed. “If you tell her you have a son, you have to tell her you lied about the rape, that you really did do it, that maybe you did kill those two missing girls. You really want to do that to her?” She stopped talking. She was daring him, he thought, daring him to feel some compassion for people other than himself. But what did she, a woman, know about compassion?
“I care about Mom,” he defended himself.
She continued. “Mom wants to believe you never did it, that the cops “framed” you, that…”
Her words trailed away and Ethan’s thoughts concluded her sentence. That I am a good person. He glanced back at the corrections officer and lowered his voice. “I want to meet him, Ruthie. I can meet him without Mom knowing.”
She shook her head, almost laughed. He hated it when women laughed at him. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
He lifted the newspaper, glanced at the photo of the graduation class of the Natural Bridge community college, studied his son’s face… then sulking, pushed the newspaper aside. “It’s not ridiculous. It’s human.”
She raised her eyebrows and slumped her shoulders simultaneously. That bothered him. Now it seemed that even Ruthie was thinking he wasn’t human.
“This newspaper stuff,” he continued. “These articles. Taking photos of him in kindergarten, high school, and now college. It ain’t enough. I know that you …well, you’ve been good, sis. Befriending him and not letting on who you are. But…Ruthie, it’s just not enough. It’s just not. I want to talk to him. I want him to know me. To know that, that …that I’m his dad.”
Kissa Starling says
Finding Simmie-
The bikini wrapped around her hip and tied into a stringy bow. Lavender crocheted beachwear was a novelty and she was just the gal to make it fashionable. Soon her carnal image would adorn every mechanic’s wall in the United States. The crocheted pink flower was placed in an optimal position right between her breasts.
Just the thought of her scantily clad body being plastered where thousands of men would see it turned Sasha on. It was the main reason she got into the business. It gave her the thrill that her ex-boyfriend Reggie never managed.
“Get with me, Sasha. I need to you to focus on the camera. Feel free to focus on me later.”
Sasha held her head erect and jutted her chin out. It was what the models called the ‘chicken pose’. The camera loved it, even if she did feel a bit silly doing it. Her body turned to the side and she bent her knees just slightly.
She seduced the camera with her eyes. Unfortunately Jim was behind that camera. He asked her out on a daily basis. Her answer was always “no.” If only her family could see her now- or not.
“That’s a wrap for now. I think your manager’s waiting in the outer room.”
Jim leered at her as she whisked past him. “Give me a call.” He reached out to hand her a scrap of paper with a hastily written hotel room phone number. He tried to grab her skimpily covered ass but she veered at just the right moment and avoided both advances. Score two for Sasha. Not responding to his vulgar actions seemed the best course of action.
“Jerry, they say I’m done for the day. Do you need me for anything? I’m exhausted beyond belief.”
Her manager, Jerry Sein, shook his head. “No, you go on home and get some rest, sweetie. The Old Gold account is tomorrow. They want to try a few shots with you holding a cigarette in your mouth.”
“I don’t even smoke.”
“Yeah, I know that, but the rest of America doesn’t. Imagine all those men who will buy a pack of Old Golds just because of one tiny paper-wrapped tobacco cigarette dangling from those luscious, red lips of yours. The women will want to be you and the men will want to be with you.”
“Fine. I’m getting dressed and going home.”
“Oh, babe. Don’t forget about your donation to the society.”
“Donation?”
“The PR people said it would help your image. You told me there were tons of odds and ends upstairs. Well, anyway I pulled some junk down from your attic this morning while you were here. Go through it and pull what you want and I’ll take the rest down to the Salvation Army tomorrow. I’m going to stay here and go over these shots with Jim. I’m always looking out for you, babe.”
RecipeReader says
FOR LOVE OR RAVIOLI–90,000 words
“Table thirteen isz’a pissed off, Chef.”
The maitre’d’s voice rose above the hiss of the grill, the clang of a sauté pan hitting the ceramic tile floor, and the litany of Italian cursing that followed.
Michael Cortina rolled his neck to release the cricks, loosened his top button. The line was backed up. The kitchen was an oven. And it reeked of burnt risotto.
Man, he didn’t need Carlo in his face.
But we gotta’ get these orders right.
“Okay, my friend, what’s their beef?” Michael asked, trying to decipher an order that might have been written by a five-year-old. Or Trattoria Mia’s newest hire. Where was his sister getting the new wait staff?
The order ticket flapped as Carlo flailed his arms. “I wait and wait and no entrees. Now the customer isz’a pissed.”
“All in a day’s work.” Michael grinned to keep the impatience from his voice, then boomed to the cooks, “Ordering one Mista, two mozzarella, one gorgonzola penne, followed by one veal chop, one special lamb, two Florentine.”
“Isz’a disaster!” Carlo shook a fist in the air, almost decking the soup cook rushing by with an empty vat.
Michael impaled the ticket on a peg, ignored the growling of his stomach, and shaved a truffle the size of a baseball over a re-done dish of champagne lobster risotto. “Table twenty two. Go,” he said to a runner and turned to study the plates cooling on the stainless steel counter. He blew out a breath.
Carlo was right.
What a debacle.
Entrees were piling up, at least one table’s meals had never been fired and his indispensable maitre’d was about to go postal. Was this the successful Italian restaurant he had dreamed about since he was a kid? He gave his head a slight shake. If Mia broke even by year-end like he and Nat planned, it might start to resemble the word success.
He had to make it happen.
“I have one steak Florentine here,” Michael called. “Where is thirteen’s other entree?”
The whir of a hand mixer answered.
“Someone own it.”
A cleared throat. “I overcooked the veal, Chef.”
One deep breath. Two. Three. Michael turned and fixed the twenty-something, just-out-of-school cook with an unruffled but unmistakable warning look. “Okay. You get a pass this time. But watch me.” Michael squeezed the flesh between his thumb and index finger, fingers relaxed and open. “What’s this?”
“Rare,” the cook said sheepishly.
Michael made a fist. “This.”
“Well-done.”
“See–you know your stuff, DeLuca. Use it. No guessing.” Too many wrong guesses could put them out of business in no time. “Thirteen’s a do-over.” He rolled up the sleeves of his chef’s jacket and turned to Carlo. The owlish, gray whiskered old man barely reached his shoulders, but his gaze could cut a lesser man to the bone.
Michael grabbed thirteen’s ticket, looked at the time scrawled on top. Seated at 8:30. Appetizers served at 9:42. He glanced at the clock. 10:58.
Still no entrees.
Maureen says
On the day the world changed, G’sung awoke from her dreaming with a snap. She performed her ritual cleansing, spoke the words of gratitude, and creaked to her feet. She was not young any more, and the spring winds and chill could make her bones ache.
She tottered a step or two as she unfolded from the dream-stance, then let her joints loosen with movement. No indication of evil weather, nothing but the usual groan of too-stiff knees and hips. It would wear off as the day progressed. It always did.
Puttering around her cook fire, she set the water to boil and pondered what tea best suited the dreams she received. They disturbed her, gnawing around the edges of the morning with unclear intent. Nothing simple about tea this day! It must be complex, cloudy, as befitted dreams of great portent.
“Grand day, Shamarra! May I enter?”
G’sung sighed. Not yet tea-soothed, and already tasks to do! But the Group depended on her and she could not neglect key responsibilities. “Grand day, D’jorna. Enter and well greeted.”
G’sung didn’t turn to greet the youngling as D’jorna ducked low to enter the dwelling, instead continuing to ponder her teas. Yes, some hochika, with its warm comfort—that was essential! Perhaps some soothing peura? No. Much too soft for dreams such as these. It would have to be sharp-toned ooalla, bitter and strong, but with a pinch of kcholla to sweeten the bite. Deftly she mixed and blended until the complex mixture combined into a harmonious whole. Only then did she turn to D’jorna, kneeling patiently by the door, but watching intently.
The youngling gestured at the packet of herbs ready for steeping. “A difficult dreaming, Shamarra?”
Not yet ready to share the dreaming—it was too complex for a Shama who had not yet learned to blend her teas!—G’sung shrugged. “The waiting will determine difficulty.”
But the dream had been difficult. G’sung remained disturbed as she started her day. She drilled D’jorna on the morning tea herbs while they ritually drank the brew—the youngling only was able to identify the hochika, not unexpected given the rareness of the other ingredients, but a sign her progress was far from exceptional. After working through the day’s tea-studies, she gestured for D’jorna to begin her daily exercises while G’sung herself stepped out to greet the day.
A good day. The amber sun warmed her skin, and she let her feather-crest rise to soak in the beneficent rays. Enjoying the morning air and sunshine, she headed down the path toward the Group cluster of dwellings, pondering D’jorna as a potential Shamarra Surely the girl would learn the Craft—she had to. G’sung had long forced herself to be pleased with D’jorna, no matter what her failings. So few had even the slightest leanings toward the Craft! Still, being Shamarra had compensations, despite the obligations and discipline it imposed. Overall, it was a good life.
Except for that dream.
Andrew Carmichael says
PUMPKIN PATCH KIDS
It all started one fateful Monday morning. Or Tuesday, maybe. Tuesday morning.
I was sitting in Bio, and Father Bio—that’s what we called him—made us all “quiet down” because he had an “important announcement” to make. When he said it he moved his hands up and down like he was flagging down a plane, but without those bright pumpkin-orange sticks.
We should have known it was bad news right then. Whenever any teacher at St. George’s Academy started something with “important announcement,” they were always taking something away, or making another damn rule for us to follow. One time: “No soccer in the courtyard.” Another time: “We will no longer be serving cakes and pies at meal times. Just one or the other.” But, even with the past examples, I didn’t expect what Father Bio said.
This time: “From this point forth, St. George’s Academy will be enforcing a strict no-tolerance policy when it comes to intimate relations of any and every kind.”
There was complete silence in the classroom after that. Complete. Silence. The rare kind that only happens during the last fifteen minutes of standardized tests. I waited for someone else to do it, but no one put his foot forward so I went ahead and asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“Huh?” I said.
There was bubbling of confirming murmurs around me.
Father Bio cleared his throat and asked, “Is there something you don’t understand, Morton?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. He gave me his look, so I stood up next to my desk. Everyone always had to stand when talking in class. Except for people with a broken leg, or something. “What does that mean, exactly? Intimate relations of any and every kind. Does that include a hug? Are we gonna get expelled for hugs?” I sat down because my work was done. The murmurs were becoming a roar.
“Yeah!” someone else called out, without standing. “What about a friendly kiss?”
“Or a not-so friendly kiss?”
“Are we getting suspended for handshakes, too?”
That one really got people riled up. It was a shock to me, actually. We didn’t do a lot of handshaking around here.
“And what about sex?” someone said. “Are you going to strap each of us to our beds every night?”
That was the winner. Like the heavy weight squash winning the state competition, it was big, bad, and left a sour taste in the mouth. But it was oh, so, beautiful.
Julie Rowe says
Intensive Care
Chapter One
“I can’t wait, Jason,” Willa Hayes yelled into the radio handset. “I’ve got a compound fractured femur here. I need a plane. Any plane.”
Willa flashed an urgent palm at Tommy Inqulactiuk, who held two splints in place on either side of his Uncle Joe’s leg. Blood dripped steadily onto the floor and Willa prayed the splints would keep the broken bone stable enough to travel. The nearest hospital able to handle an emergency like this was a long ninety minute flight away, and she feared he’d bleed out before she got him there.
“The plane isn’t the problem,” Jason Reynolds replied, his voice distorted by the radio, making him sound like he was yelling at her from the bottom of a deep well. “I’ve only got one pilot available. He’s brand new and he’s never flown an air MedEvac.”
“I don’t care if he’s still got a price tag attached, I need a MedEvac now.”
A long painful silence followed, broken only by the heavy breathing of her patient.
“Roger that, Med-one. ETA of your MedEvac is ten minutes.”
Willa had to stop herself from sounding too relieved. “Thank you, Tundra Air. Med-one out.” Willa dropped the handset, letting it dangle by its cord. “Tommy, can you shift this way a bit without moving Joe’s leg?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy answered with a short nod, moving without letting go of the injured limb so Willa could squeeze around him. The gurney Joe lay on had been jammed between the room’s bed and the counter, leaving her with less than a foot in which to maneuver.
She took several large pieces of gauze and layered them around, but not over, the tip of the bone protruding from her patient’s thigh. Then, starting from his groin and working her way down, she wrapped a tensor bandage around his leg and the splints, carefully avoiding the jagged bone end.
“How are you doing, Joe?” Willa asked, giving him a sharp glance.
“Okay,” the white-lipped Inuit hunter said, his eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling above him.
Cherie Claire says
The Right Type – contemporary romance
If Stacy Walker would die an instantaneous death, crushed on impact by an eighteen-wheeler in a head-on collision, the last thought floating through her brain would be that there are no good men in the world.
Mark Bertman, Date Number Five Thousand and Ninety-two, was a testament to that fact. The gap-toothed, stocky man in a polyester shirt two sizes too small to emphasize his excessive biceps could brag with honor that he finally pushed Stacy over the edge in her lack of faith in the male species. He sat across from her untouched quesadillas babbling on about the merits of The Addison Voice, the town’s first alternative free weekly and the newspaper sitting in the coveted number two market share position after the daily.
“Did you read the story they ran about the wrestling competition coming to town? It was hilarious. They profiled all the stars and included what they ate for breakfast, who their favorite hot chick was and what they read on the toilet.”
Mark snorted causing a tiny piece of his burrito to fly across the table, thankfully somewhere in the aisle between Stacy’s arm and their neighbor’s.
“They even asked how they hung their toilet paper, over or under. That was a hoot.”
“That’s hysterical.” Stacy gazed down at her plate, food the man thought was the “best Mexican in town” but completely indigestible in her opinion. She would have insisted the waitress take it back had she not promised her sister to bite her tongue during the date.
Speaking of her sister, if she didn’t kill the man in front of her before the night was over, she would definitely murder Carol for planning this brilliant blind date.
“I loved their ‘Five reasons to hate Auburn’ piece,” Mr. Intelligence continued. “I can’t believe they got a lot of flack for that.”
“Maybe because there are a million Auburn fans in this town and the rivalry between the University of Alabama and Auburn is as serious as…”
“Oh come on,” Mark interrupted. “It’s just a joke.”
That was the first intelligent thing the man said all evening. The Addison Voice was a joke. Thanks to the ass who headed it up.
“Mark, do you realize I’m the editor of The Voice’s competing newspaper?”
Mark gulped down his beer and that, thankfully, caused a pause in the conversation. Stacy could almost see the wheels turning in his head. Very slowly.
“Yeah, I think your sister said something about that.”
“Did she also tell you that I created The Voice, only to be bought out by that pompous Jack Steele who has turned it into the fluff rag it is now.”
“Shut up!” she could hear her sister, Carol, screaming about this time. “Do you always have to act so smart?”
Usually her sister’s tirade always ended with the same remark, “How do you expect to ever find a man and get married when you have to be smart all the time?”
Dahlia Rose says
Dark Touch By Dahlia Rose/ WIP
Thebes, Egypt
She crept up from the bowels of hell, the smell of sulfur and rotted flesh trailed mixed with her bodiless form. Through the cracks of the ancient stone built to praise the pharaohs she found her escape. She had planned for centuries on how she would make her way into the mortal world. Too long had she been tortured in the pits of damnation for a crime that even though she committed was not her fault. She had been coerced by love and for that she had paid with her eternal suffering. She wanted vengeance. Against a world that in her mind had betrayed her. So while her flesh was eaten from her bones by the scarab beetles. While she laid in perpetual agony through the various tortures Lucifer himself had devised just for her. She plotted and waited for the exact moment she could be free.
In the darkness she formed her body, watching muscles cover bones from her toes to her finger tips and then almost translucent skin that finished her body. Her hair that was once the color of a raven’s wing was now completely white. She moved from her dark corner and a sliver of sunlight through a crack in the stones burned her skin and sent her into the darkness once again. She would have to wait until the sun fell to the other side of the earth before she could leave. As she watched the tourists moved through the stone hallways she realized her nudity, not even considering it since all the years she spent in hell she was always naked and exposed. She watched one young woman and she explored the tombs. With a blink of her eyes she copied the tight leather pants and black ripped T shirt she wore. She tried in vain as the hours progressed to change the color of her hair back to its dark exotic color. No matter how much she concentrated it remained pure white, another gift from her eternal punishment she thought. The memories assaulted her ones more and she could feel the sting as her flesh was torn from her back by the cat-o-nine tails. For years she begged God to save her from hell. Her tears sizzled as the hit the rocks as her torment continued year after year until she could not tell what time had passed. When one of them had actually showed an ounce of pity for her and told her how long she had been there, five hundred and seventy years of pain had gone by. The payers to heaven in the midst of hell had made her tormentors angrier as she called out to god for mercy. Even as she screamed his name the devil laughed merrily and his words echoed around her.
“You stupid bitch, he can’t hear you down here.”
He was right God never heard her pleas and she became a servant of the most unholy of fallen angels.
Anonymous says
BLACK HEART ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL/literary/65,000 words
Chapter 1
In a room without windows, I stand on a mat in front of a squeaky Hobart and slice pork, turkey, and beef, sometimes lamb. I wrap meat in white paper and no one cares if I vary poundage, so long as it’s within limits. For lunch, instead of walking across the street for a hamburger, I go out back to an alley lined with stuccoed buildings and prop my shoulders against a foul-smelling dumpster. A condom, snagged on a packing crate, wobbles in the breeze. I let my belt out a notch and wonder if Roxie will notice the weight I’ve put on since I last saw her.
At four o’clock I punch out and go to the boarding house on 35th Street. My room’s okay for a hundred and fifty a week; I’ve seen worse. An air conditioner blows cold wind across the bed, and on the wall I’ve hung a picture of a hiker on the Appalachian Trail. The hiker stands on a rock at the edge of a cliff and he has a cocky smile, the kind I’d have if I wasn’t stuck in Atlanta. It’s not a meat-slicer smile, that’s for sure. Next to him, above an empty bookcase, is a picture of a Maine chef with fingers wrapped around a lobster. The chef has contented eyes, like, if he cooks for the rest of his life, it’s fine by him. I’m going up there, to Maine. That’s the plan, anyway. I’m leaving the street life and hiking out of here. Roxie can come if she wants but I’m not holding out much hope.
I stare at the pictures until the light through the window turns gray, then go outside and drive the streets in a beat-up Buick. Tonight, the air is hot, a simmer that dries from inside out, and the asphalt, slick from a summer shower, glistens like a black mirror. I breathe exhaust fumes and watch the shadows. Heroin, crack, meth, coke, weed, acid, it’s all there.
Both sides of the street, buildings jut into the sky, and signs high on concrete walls jerk on and off. Under branched streetlights, women in jacked-up skirts strut the sidewalk. If a john barters with a whore in bad shape, blowjobs start at ten dollars. Barter with a whore in worse than bad shape, and five will do. I drive past a Salvation Army, past a tavern with an open door, past a massage parlor with iron bars on the windows.
A girl in a silver miniskirt waves me over. She has long legs, and she’s stoop-shouldered tall, a young woman embarrassed of her height. I pull to the curb and roll the passenger window all the way down. She leans inside, dreadlocks framing a narrow face, and a boob slips from its fold. She smells of sweat and smoke, and I wonder when she last took a bath.
“Taz, honey, you know Roxie would kill me for messing with you,” Laketa says.
Sindee Sexton says
“Oh boy, I can increase my erection by twenty percent!” Rhiannon Kinsley threw back her head and chuckled. “Stupid spam,” she muttered, clicking the delete key.
Stifling a yawn, Rhiannon watched a rivulet of water trickle down her shoulder to her naked breast, down her stomach to pool on the black leather chair where she lounged. Allowing her towel to slip from her just showered body, she stretched. She hadn’t even bothered putting her nightgown on. One of the only comforts of living alone.
Boredom pounded its way through her body. She couldn’t even work on her design project because Sanders, her boss, had ordered her to keep her work in the office. He’d even threatened to send her to Workaholic’s Anonymous meetings. Is there even such an organization?
“Imagine that, an employer chastising an employee for —” A sarcastic gasp escaped her mouth. “Working?” Go figure. Didn’t he realize she had nothing better to do? Now she was stuck here, at home — alone — with nothing to occupy her time.
No one interesting was logged into chat tonight, either — not even Cernunnos, the cyber-sex maniac. Not that she really cared. He was the king of cheesy cyber-pick-up lines.
Rhiannon chuckled. Almost everyone who logged into Otherworld Chat had some sort of deity for a screen name. Although it was her real name, she used a mythological handle too. She could thank her Fleetwood Mac loving parents for that. Then again, they had always been good to her. She glanced over at the picture of her parents and her at her college graduation. Even after two years, she still missed them.
Why would she want to change her name anyway? After all, her parents had named her, hadn’t they? Even if Otherworld Chat shut down, Rhiannon would remain a Celtic moon goddess forever, all because of some crazy band from the seventies and their silly song. She minimized her chat screen to check her email.
She highlighted her next unread message. What the hell is this crap? A mass of garbled words and symbols filled her screen. Probably some ancient language, or something. She laughed. Yeah right, a virus is more like it. Her finger hovered over the delete key, ready to vanquish the unsolicited mail.
An annoying buzz reverberated from her speakers, startling her.
Rhiannon minimized her email and went back to her instant messenger program. Cernunnos had sent her a chat alert and waited for her reply.
“Wassup, u sexy goddess. Where u at?”
Rhiannon shook her head with mirth. “Sexy goddess? You must have me confused with another deity. Perhaps Aphrodite or Venus?” She clicked the send button.
“I’m talkin’ ‘bout my Mother Goddess — Rhiannon.” Another message popped up on her screen. “NEthing fun goin’on 2nite?” God, how she hated those abbreviated chat words.
“Apparently not,” she said out loud while she typed.
“So whatcha wearin’ hottie?”
Yay! Cernunnos was horny. Then again, when wasn’t he? Every time she logged in, he was eager to jump her net-bones.
Anonymous says
Sylvie Kaye
For the Greater Good of Mann
Evie Stephans and Adam Moore were hailed as the first couple of Mann. But they weren’t married. Not to each other anyway.
She shared a police beat with him. The only female-male team in the county. A big deal in a town the size of Mann, populated by ten thousand residents more or less. Depending on the number of college-bound graduates home to visit and borrow money and the latest retirees to trade the harsh winters of Pennsylvania for sunny Florida never to return, only into their respective family plots.
Beat cop had never entered into what Evie had dreamt for herself. Still dreamed—-despite the latest snarl.
She’d ridden a convoluted course into civil service, and the folded, bulky envelope inside her pant pocket smacked her with the irony. Along with the evening about to stretch in front of her with nothing to do but read the words over and over.
Fingers tight on the blue BIC, she scribbled her name to the sign-off sheet for the seven-to-three shift, and then Adam’s name, despite the rules against signing another officer out.
Tossing the pen onto the gun-metal gray desk, she exited the police office through a door, windowed with frosted glass for privacy. Her duty boots echoed on the well-worn floorboards in the hollow, brick building that housed the police department, the fire company, and hosted office hours for the magistrate and tax collector. Somewhere in the dark, cool structure the on-duty secretary roamed. Eleanor probably lurked near the lav. Her weak kidneys headlined most of the sixty-year-old’s conversations with Evie.
At the end of the hall, Evie paused for a lukewarm sip from the porcelain water fountain, which was older than she was, before pushing against the heavy metal doors leading out into the sunlight. Blinking, she groped for the mirrored glasses dangling on the pocket of her blue uniform shirt. The plastic arm caught in a tangle of thread inside the well-washed material and wouldn’t tug free. Twisted. Much like her route to law enforcement after her divorce–her first divorce.
Adam revved the engine to his brown Jeep Cherokee, double-parked at the entrance. She hoisted herself onto the seat with a grunt, more from her dismal situation than her climb into his five-year-old, jacked-up vehicle. Flinging her hat onto the dusty dashboard, she sidled Adam with a quick scowl before working her shades free from her pocket and donning them to hide the envy eating at her over his luck.
“What? What did I do?” He lifted his hands from the steering wheel and shrugged his toned, muscled shoulders while she glared.
Three kids. He’d married his high school sweetheart and had produced a passel of children.
What Evie wanted more than life itself was to give life. Her craving to become a mother thrummed through her like a physical ache. The desire grew stronger with each high school reunion and each classmate’s birth announcement and the deliveries of all three of Adam’s kids.
Cat Johnson says
Model Soldier by Cat Johnson (50K) Available April 2008
Kneeling, Army Staff Sergeant David “Hawk” Hawkins surveyed the barren wasteland of the icy terrain ahead. Gusts of brisk winter air howled across the desolation, the frigid area vacant of all life save his team. Exhaling, Hawk’s breath froze before him in mid-air.
With the raise of a gloved hand, he signaled his men. The silent wraiths emerged from the ground, cloaked in the arctic mist, the only signs of their corporeal selves, the barely discernable crunch of snow beneath boots. Upon his signal, Hawk’s squad stealthily approached their final destination on the side of the mountain.
Beginning to feel as though his many sins had come to bear and his sentence was this god forsaken place, this mountain became his own personal Hell.
Hawk decided to err on the side of caution and signaled for a short halt as he considered the juggernaut before them. Through frozen lips, Hawk whispered as softly as a lover’s caress into his radio. “Bravo team, you’re on over watch. Alpha team, move out.”
As they had traveled on this path to Hell for the past hours, hours which seemed more like days, Hawk had divided his squad into two teams. Two entities separate yet bound together, one always supporting the other, providing security. He’d chosen his two best men to lead the teams, soldiers he would soon have to trust, not only with his own life, but with the lives of them all.
Without a word, the two groups responded to his order by moving quickly and surely into position. The over watch team, opening fire into the rocks above, broke through the icy stillness as the air erupted with the belch of gunfire, tracers flying like mad yellow jackets.
Hawk hit the rocky ground hard, knowing his body would pay later. But right now, he couldn’t feel a thing, not while the adrenalin surged through his veins as bullets struck the snow-covered rocks protecting him.
Hawk heard a familiar “pop”. “RPG! Take cover!” he shouted, not bothering with the radio, as the rocket propelled grenade cut a trail through the air, exploding nearby and showering him with debris as he lay behind cover.
As his men returned that less than friendly greeting with their own volley, his thumb engaged the selector lever on his rifle as his finger slipped onto the trigger. The scene seemed to move frame by frame to Hawk’s eye as his brain and body, both on auto-pilot, processed and reacted to the situation.
Hawk’s eyes traced the path the RPG had taken back to its owner, whose fate was decided in the moment he began to rise from cover before Hawk’s sights.
He squeezed the trigger.
Following the quick flash of his barrel, Hawk barely took the time to watch the man fall before he yelled, “Bravo Team, maintain supportive fire.”
An Aspiring Writer says
Being undead sucks. At least that’s what my teenage son would say, and he’d be right. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than the alternative, which is being completely and utterly dead, but this vampire stuff isn’t nearly as fun or glamorous as it’s made out to be.
First of all, there was no big, mystical change that turned me into a walking sex goddess. I look basically the same. I still look 35, my hair is still kind of a flat brown that takes on a 1970s afro quality in humidity. My skin is dry, my lips are chapped, and I still have what my grandmother called “child-bearing” hips and my brother called “bubble butt.”
Overall, it was kind of disappointing that some ancient magic didn’t give me voluptuous curls like Claudia in “Interview with a Vampire,” or creamy, translucent skin like Dracu-babes, and Hell would freeze over before I could wear that leather outfit Kate Beckensdale wore in “Underworld.”
But generally, in spite of the substantial internal changes to my body, I still look like me, only pale. Really, really pale.
Maybe I can get an upgrade later if I’m very, very good and eat only vegetarians.
I don’t even get to be super strong. At least, not yet. I think I can work my way up to that, but Michael hasn’t explained how everything works just yet. I just hope it doesn’t involve Tae Bo videos.
Michael…my mentor, my maker, the man destined to be my dance partner for eternity.
I didn’t really have a choice, I guess, about whether or not I became one of the ‘Cursed Undead’ as my ex-husband called them. It was sort of an accident, and before I had the chance to choose what I wanted, the deed was done, the world went black, and I was dead. Three days later, I wasn’t. Just like Jesus. If Jesus drove a minivan.
Well, okay, maybe not just like Jesus, but there are similarities. He died, then he rose, and then he got to go to Heaven and be with his dad and watch over his children from a safe distance. It doesn’t appear to be that easy for me, but I do get to watch my children from a closer proximity.
The day I died was understandably the worst day of my life. The weather was awful, the roads icy, the traffic heinous, and I was, of course, running late to pick up Ashley from school. She was playing on the swings with the other two kids whose mothers are always late. The playground monitor shot me a too-familiar hard glance.
“Sorry, traffic was bad,” I waved and gave her what I hoped was a sincerely apologetic smile.
jamr says
LUCIFER’S PORSCHE
Satan pouted.
The body writhing on the limestone altar squealed, its howls reverberating against the chamber’s flint walls. Oily black imps the size of chimpanzees pulled the body’s legs through sooty air until they were stretched rope-thin. The imps twittered as the legs snapped in unison, leaving stumps that dangled from the altar and dribbled blood. With hiccupping snorts, the milky-eyed creatures suckled at the stubs.
The legless being moaned. Panting, it looked toward Satan. “Please make them stop.”
Satan tapped the arm of his throne. “Well, since you said please.” He motioned to the imps.
They slithered to the being’s arms. One stroked a hand, the other licked at fingers. The being’s eyes flicked from side to side, its face taut. Mewing, the imps dragged the arms in opposite directions. More screams of “No, no, no!”
“Same-old-same-old.” Satan rolled his eyes. “Legs, arms, necks, yank, snap, splat, like so much taffy.” He sulked into his throne, certain that the “no’s” would shift into sobs, wails, whatever, but without fail end in full-throated shrieks.
He gazed at the thousands of Damned ones cowering against the chamber walls. Pathetic, indiscriminate thugs who’d spent their lives maiming and killing like bulldozers, simply to get this or that from so and so. Not a clever one in the lot.
Periodically, a bat swooped down for a bite, leaving behind an oozing eye socket or gauged cheek. The Damned standing close enough to witness the carnage would recoil with yelps. What did they expect? Hell was hell. Satan used to love that line, a million years ago. Now, well…
Ten meters from the altar’s edge, a head popped off an elongated neck. But that didn’t stop the mouth from screaming as its torso was drawn apart. The joy of immortal bodies.
Satan nodded to the next soul in line. It bore the curved form of a human female. She shriveled to the floor, head darting in search of an escape. A first timer. Satan tried to enjoy her salty, warm aura. One of the imps yanked her to the altar, while his partner drooled thick brown saliva. They nibbled at her feet. The screaming began.
Could he stand a whole day of this? There were only so many ways to despoil these fools. Amputation, asphyxiation, mutilation, blah, blah, blah. It had been such a romp for so long. The best job in the universe. Until the past thousand years or so. Now, eternity stretched before him. Like. An. Eternity.
Perhaps a vacation would help.
It had been months since he’d visited outer-Earth. And he’d only used one of his three allotted deals this year. He should talk to God about upping the Elysium-Hades Treaty limits. His supreme holiness himself would enjoy a few more miracles a year. Even if he did like to harp on about free will.
Lori says
Dragon Son – Fantasy – 100,000 words
Paul Lau fell from the sky.
He landed with a soft thud and turned from side to side, his eyes skimming the dark tenement roof. Empty, except for the round tin vents sprouting up from the uneven, tar-papered surface. Paul crept past them, moving toward the edge of the building, where he crouched and peered into the alley below. A corner street lamp cast enough light to reveal a shadow figure lurking in a doorway.
Paul reached for the holster nestled in the small of his back, his left hand gripping the solid metal handle of his 9mm Glock. He brought it to his chest, released the safety, and stared again at the shadow figure. It remained still and silent. Was it a man or part of the framework? Only one way to find out.
He took a deep breath and hoisted himself over the ledge, his arms spread wide to slow his three-story drop. He landed in a crouch and pressed against the gritty cement surface of the building. His thumb moved to the Glock’s trigger. Its soft click made his heart pound a little harder.
Cold wind gusted through the streets, stirring bits of trash, sending them scraping across the pavement. A stray sheet of newspaper caught on Paul’s leg. He shook it off and rushed in front of the doorway, his weapon held before him.
Nothing. No one.
Rigid metal bars cast long shadows across the empty stoop. Paul backed away, looking up and down the alley. Had he really seen something, or was it—
A creaking noise sounded above. Paul peered through a maze of fire escapes, twisting his neck to see past the rusting metal stairs, potted plants and strings of meager laundry. Up at the top, something moved. Something dark and solid.
Paul leapt up to the roof. His right foot caught on one of the vents and nearly sent him sprawling. Catching his balance, he spun around and saw a dark figure disappear into the shadows of the next building.
He sprinted across the tar paper surface and leapt off the edge, his momentum launching him over the alley, onto the middle of the next roof. He turned a quick circle.
Nothing. No one.
Paul stood still and listened. All he could hear was the rumble of a street cleaner several blocks away. Sliding into the shadows, he crept along the perimeter, staring into the gloom of each building top. No shifting shapes or sudden movement.
The assassin was gone. Had he even been there in the first place? Paul thought about what he saw.
“Shadows,” he whispered.
No, it was more than that. But if it was the assassin, why run rather than attack? He had already killed two men. Why not try for a third? Something wasn’t right. Paul slid his gun back into its holster and reached for the phone clipped to his belt.
Anonymous says
Getting Lucky
The day Annie Crane realized she wanted to have sex again started out with a routine doctor’s visit for a clogged ear. Annie tapped her foot on the examining room floor and thought for the hundredth time about jamming a Q-tip into the orifice, regardless of Web MD’s advice never to do such a thing. The piped in radio squawked that the downtown thermometer read 88 degrees. When the door opened, it wasn’t the outside temperature that caused Annie to grow hot.
Instead of paunchy and reliable Doc Brian, the white-coated figure that filled the door frame possessed a drop from shoulders to waist that took her breath away. He flashed a soap-opera-worthy smile, then glanced at her medical chart. The air charged with anticipation.
“Good morning, Mrs. Crane.”
Every atom in her body came to attention. He looked to be about half her age. A part of Annie that lay buried since her husband’s death thrummed to life. Her heart thumped a familiar rhythm. The young fellow drew up a stool opposite her chair. She stared at him, and his blue eyes seared hers.
Without thinking Annie reached forward and slid her nails under the white coat up his thigh. The muscle tightened beneath the khakis. An exhilarating shiver wiggled up her spine. When her medical chart left his hands and clattered to the floor, she thought he might pull away, but he didn’t.
Annie drew a breath. She threw her arms around his neck. When did she last have sex? She pushed the distracting thought to the back of her mind. She would sort all this out later. His hands snaked around her back toward her waistband.
Their lips locked. What a terrific kisser.
Anonymous says
Faye inhaled the rising steam from her morning coffee as she leaned against the corner post on her porch. Watching the sun rise from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean was her favorite part of the day. For someone who dreaded each day, dreaded the length of them, dreaded the nothingness of them, she loved the beginning of them. Gold and crimson and lavender streaked across the horizon and reflected off clouds poised low over the water.
Ten months. Ten months, one week, and six days ago her husband’s grand and glorious heart gave out. It wasn’t that they hadn’t had warning. In fact years of warnings, but still, death had come as a painful shock. It took her breath away. Made her feel like the loneliest person in the world. And even though at sixty-five he’d been decades older than her younger forty-three, she hadn’t fully prepared herself for this. For the devastation of it.
She’d bought this beach house sight unseen, well, except for photos on the real estate firm’s website. She wanted the most picturesque cottage as close to the beach as possible and in the remotest village she could find. She had a lot of thinking to do. Fortunately, money wasn’t an issue, and she didn’t have to continue working in bank marketing. It would have occupied her mind, but somewhere along the line she’d lost all interest in her job.
Some people, people like her brother and her husband’s sister, accused her of wallowing in self-pity, and, by God, she was. That’s why she was here in this small down east village of Roque Bluffs, Maine, hiding out until she could see her way out of depression and into the rest of her life.
There was one other reason for stationing herself on the porch every dawn. God forgive her, it was the man. The runner. Simple curiosity had brought her to the window when she’d noticed a man running along the beach. After all, she needed to be aware of her surroundings and the people in them. Then it became habit for her to pull on flannel drawstring pants and a sweater, take her coffee outside, and wait for him — every day. She gave a rueful little laugh. After all, she wasn’t…dead.
And didn’t that thought bring on the guilt. For a few months after Ken died, she had no sexual interest. Then, all of a sudden, one night she’d had a few too many cocktails with her girlfriends, and her body exploded in erotic desires. It hit her so mercilessly that the minute she got home, she practically ripped her clothes off to get at her aching pussy.
Elladog says
It wasn’t until the baby started to smell funny that Margaret realized it was dead. She tried to give it a bath, but its tiny limbs were still cold. There was no need to bother with powder or with the pins and folds of a diaper, but she did hum to it as she wrapped it in a blanket. She put it on the porch, then opened the nursery window to air out the room. A sweet spring breeze tumbled in, smelling of impending rain. The cradle sheets would have to be washed.
In the kitchen, Margaret fixed herself a cup of tea. The sudden scream of the kettle cut shrill and cruel through the thick silence of the house. The tea tasted bitter, but she sat stoically at the kitchen table, drinking it anyway. She managed to swallow the panic and rage but not the ache, and one by one her tears leapt off her chin into the teacup. Ingrid’s babies had always been fat and red and loud. Margaret had always had to struggle so hard for everything, and the unfairness of it all was heavy at times.
Looking back, it was clear what had gone wrong. It had started at the party, of course. Only Ingrid would remember, but in all these years she had never said anything.
The rain came, gentle but eager. Margaret put the teacup of tears into the kitchen sink.
In the living room, the album was open on the coffee table. Margaret slammed it shut, then opened it again, petting it tenderly in apology. She turned as always to the newspaper clipping. Ignoring the words, she caressed the faces in the picture with a fingertip. Margaret, Ingrid, and poor, poor Caroline, all wearing pigtails and gap-toothed grins, clutching balloons.
For a very long time, Margaret had been certain she had done the right thing. She suspected that Ingrid didn’t agree, but they had never talked about it.
They would have to now.
Marva says
Bad Spelling – YA Fantasy
Chapter 1 – Having a Bad Spell
Katya lit the last of the five candles and set it precisely on the point of the pentagram. Satisfied that her preparations were as exact as she could make them, she picked up her familiar and held him for a moment. Teddy, her rabbit, made the low-pitched cooing sounds that told her he felt safe and secure, so she set him down in the middle of the five-pointed star. She put a carrot under his nose so he’d stay put.
“Stay right there, Teddy. You know the drill,” she whispered to the little brown rabbit and gave him a final pat on the head. He twitched his nose twice and began gnawing on the carrot.
She consulted the Magical Book of Rune Spelling one last time to make sure she had the incantation just right. She paced slowly around the pentagram, stopping at each point to intone the correct spell for each. Back at her starting point, she pronounced the last incantation, completing the spell with a dramatic sweep of her arms.
Teddy looked up at her with his froggy, bulging eyes and Katya groaned. The little rabbit had indeed transformed–sort of. Poor, long-suffering Teddy was now part frog, part rabbit. Green and slimy–that was the good part. The pink nose and long ears –that wasn’t so good. Just one more instance of bad spelling. If she didn’t get this right, she’d be left behind a grade–once more.
Katya flopped down in a chair and stared at her frog-bunny. What had she goofed up this time? She suspected she had mixed up the vowels on two of the rune words. She wondered why she couldn’t get the simplest things right. Sighing, she opened the spell book and went over it one more time. Ah, yes, she must have mistaken îgwaz for perßô. She stared at the runic symbols, trying to discern the difference.
Transformation was usually a simple spell. It was one of the first spells junior witches were expected to master. Unfortunately for Katya, she’d never performed the spell correctly, not once. At sixteen, she should be graduating, not still trying to complete a kiddie spell. All witches finished school at seventeen, no matter how well or poorly they’d done in their classwork. After that, the Elders expected the young spellcasters to apprentice to an adult to learn the finer points of witchcraft. The way she was going, nobody would offer her a job washing dishes, much less an apprenticeship.
Dropping the book on her lap, she grimaced. They looked alike to her. Runic was a stupid alphabet, she thought for the thousandth time. Every glyph looked way too much like some other glyph. But all her friends and even her smarty-pants brother managed it just fine. Maybe her brother’s name held some magic. Rune was such a great warlock name. Katya, on the other hand, didn’t sound the slightest bit witchy.
Tara says
WIP, YA Novel
I’m sixteen, almost seventeen. But I’m not the ordinary edge of seventeen, parallel parking between orange cones, obsessing over SAT scores and stealing my older sister’s ID to buy beer. I don’t have time for that crap. I’m going to kill myself and there’s a lot of stuff to take care of first.
I already have the day picked out. I marked it on the kitchen calendar in red pen and made little lines darting out from a circle, the way a preschooler draws sunshine. Mom hopes I’m going on a date, as if I would get excited enough over a boy to foul up her precious day planner. She reminds me that red isn’t my designated color on the schedule and holds up the purple pen instead. She doesn’t know what the red represents. She tries to coax it out of me with a high-pitched song, “It must be something very important.” Yeah, Ma, it’s going to blow your freakin’ mind.
When she started dating Kevin, before things got all screwed up, she said she preferred men with a sense of mystery. It was her way to rationalize moving him in so soon, like there was some deep philosophical meaning spewing out of the alcoholic lowlife. She couldn’t identify the brand of whiskey on his breath or figure out where he was at 3:00 a.m.—-that was the mystery. And now I had a chance to present her with the biggest mystery of her life. I wasn’t going to let her down.
While kids at school volunteered for community service just to pad their college applications, I sat at home, the mastermind of a brilliant demise more complex than any AP exam. I had a box to bury, a map to create, a blog to write, and blame to leave behind-—some of it false, most of it true. They would have to sort it all out and weep with confusion. Too bad I won’t be there to watch them squirm. I can only imagine their scars; the way they will take turns burning each other with guilt, slicing each other open with accusation. The deeper I immerse myself into the plot of my own death, the more excited I become envisioning the twisted results. This was better than packing up and leaving for college. Way better. Let the ordinary kids plan the beginning of their lives. I was too busy planning the end of mine.
Now I should say that I’m not really going to kill myself, I won’t actually die. You didn’t think I wanted to end it all, did you? I am going to fake my death and reemerge like Hamlet’s ghost once everyone has done enough damage to each other. Then maybe things will return to normal, I can pass a GED test and get a job roasting coffee beans, waking strangers up with shot of caffeine the way I plan to inject Mom and Kevin with the reality of what they’ve done.
Cindy says
Untitled – Romance – 65,000 words
They should have called by now. The scrape of the wipers dragging over the half wet windshield of the beat-up Ford pickup intensified Kate’s Cameron’s irritation. She tossed her idle cellphone back onto the vinyl seat.
“Come on! Rain already!” She shouted at the low clouds that glowered overhead. They looked threatening but had so far produced nothing more than an aggravating drizzle that kept her fiddling with the wiper controls. Already she’d had enough of Wyoming and the muddy ranch road she’d been driving on for nearly an hour, and she was tired and grouchy from fighting with herself in an attempt to quell an increasingly persistent desire to turn around and head back to Mariana Lakes, California. She let out an exasperated sigh and shifted gears. No. It would take a lot more than a little bad weather to deter her.
Another mile passed and Kate wondered if she had missed a turn somewhere when she finally spotted the sign she was looking for. It was nailed to a tree and stated in bold lettering: Rocky Rapids Farm.
The next half-mile of uphill gravel passed slowly with the gears on the old truck grinding and popping as she crawled towards the crest of the steep road. At the top the trees thinned, and she was rewarded by an unexpectedly stunning view of the farm, which was settled in a vast, lush basin in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The valley floor was mainly pastureland, and though it was blurred by the light rain on the windshield, she could see a tributary that divided the land as it wound its way to a green-grey lake which extended all the way to the granite wall of a mountain. The leaves on the trees held a hint of autumn, and Kate struggled to keep her gaze from wandering back to the fantastic view as she manoeuvred the truck down the hill and into the farmyard.
A modest log house was situated at the end of a drive which circled an untended rock and flower garden. The sweet fragrance of the remaining tiger lilies were a reminder of her own pathetic garden, really little more than a few plastic pots on her apartment balcony.
Now, where is the office? Kate could see low metal buildings some distance to the west of the yard, and she headed the pickup in that direction. A smell of manure grew stronger as she jostled over a pot-holed track and came to a stop in front of a stout building with wood siding that was faded to a dusty charcoal. A tall man in a black cowboy hat waved at her from the open door.
Her cellphone rang just as she put her hand on the door handle of the truck. She paused, wanting to answer it, but the call was twenty minutes too late. The man in the black hat was waiting.
shalanna says
IN THE PUNDIT’S CORNER–romance/mystery-thriller with paranormal elements–85,000 words
All the Underwoods have guardian angels.
Furthermore, most of them claim to have seen their angels at least once during this life. A few are sure they’ve barely missed out–having heard a rustled drapery or caught a flash of light just as the save took place, but being otherwise too occupied with the crisis as it happened to watch closely until it was too late and the angel had flown.
Kay Underwood Fisher was one of the latter.
She hadn’t seen her angel, but she knew she definitely had one. Because otherwise, that truck would have taken her out a nanosecond ago.
“Help!” She flailed her arms from the muddy puddle at the curb where she’d landed. “I think I’ve broken my ankle.”
The parking lot of Dallas Cable News Network was full of responsible types arriving to work right on time, so several passersby rushed towards Kay. A tall, rangy man in a plaid sportcoat was the first to reach her. As the others detoured around, she found herself looking him full in the face. An interesting face.
The face of a young leprechaun. Dreamsicle-toned hair in that boy-next-door-who-just-leaped-out-of-bed style. And freckles. Only a few scattered across his nose and cheeks that lent him a Dennis the Menace appeal. But the little-boy image faded when he spoke in a resonant tenor.
“Are you all right?” He offered his arm, a little awkwardly. Then he apparently realized what she’d said, and amended with, “I mean, other than the ankle.”
A quick mental inventory told her everything was intact, except . . . her left foot was numb. It didn’t hurt–it was oddly deadened, which worried her.
“I don’t know if I can get up just yet.” She tugged her skirt down over her knees. It had scrunched up to reveal quite a few inches of thigh. She knew both her feet had been off the ground for a moment.
“Where does it hurt?”
“My dignity. My social standing. In fact, my standing at all.” She rubbed at the ankle and grimaced.
Skid marks traced a circuit around the parking lot and out onto the main road. A few people were still looking in the direction Kay thought the driver had headed, but there was no sign of him.
The stranger studied the skids. “Looked like a pretty close call.” He had a Garrison Keillor voice with a flat Midwestern accent. “What happened?”
She’d seen a flash of movement behind her as it reflected off the inside of her glasses lenses, felt cold metal brush against her thigh, and had the wind knocked out of her as the concrete rushed up to meet her elbows. There hadn’t been time to think, let alone jump out of the truck’s path under her own power. She had an inkling about what kind of power had pushed her clear, but she couldn’t exactly say that she thought she’d been saved by the guardian angel she and her eccentric family believed she had.
barbarake says
I posted this yesterday (I think) but it doesn’t seem to be showing up. My apologies if it posts twice.
Setting: 1870 East Prussia
A quartet of ravens, wings fixed and unmoving, rode the steady breeze through the pale winter sky. Their black eyes scanned the ground below, a rugged, broken land of marsh and forest studded by dark, jagged-edged lakes. Here, caught and muted by the trees, the wind was hushed and soft, barely ruffling the reeds lining the frost-rimmed waters.
A movement caught their eyes and they sank lower, drifting above the lonely dirt road that twisted through the sparse undergrowth. They overtook a lightly-built delivery wagon, one more suited to smooth city streets than this rough country road. Its tilted roof stood guard against the weather and heavy woolen curtains, gaily striped in yellow and red, were tied shut against the cold. A single chestnut gelding, breath steaming in the frigid air, drew it at a steady trot over the hard-packed, rutted ground.
Nothing for them there. The lead bird cawed twice, rose and circled, then swung north-east, still searching; her followers in close formation.
The wagon’s driver, a stout, bearded man heavily swaddled against the cold, glanced upward as the ravens passed overhead. His dark eyes briefly tracked their receding forms, then he pulled his muffler up over his mouth and relaxed back into his seat, squirming a bit as he searched for a comfortable spot against the wooden slats. He started humming a off-tune melody to the steady beat of the hooves.
A slender young man pulled aside the curtain behind him. “Herr Steinnen? Kann wir…ahh, halt? Bitte?” At the driver’s quizzical look, Erik mimicked first drinking, then undoing his trousers.
The driver’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Ah, ja…gute Idee. Ich muss auch pissen.” He pulled gently on the reins and the wagon came to a halt near a twisted pine, one side burnt and shriveled from an old lightening strike.
Erik pulled himself through the curtains and dropped to the ground. Ahh, it feels good to stand up again. He took a few seconds to stretch his back, then hurried to the tree and unbuttoned his trousers; the two tankards of ale at lunch had filled his bladder to bursting.
Herr Steinnen tied down the reins and joined him at the edge of the road.
Erik looked around as he buttoned his pants. Ahead of them, the sun was invisible, hidden behind a thin high haze, its presence apparent only as a glow low in the sky. Thick clouds were rolling in, racing to catch the sun before it escaped behind the western horizon. All around him were trees and tangled undergrowth, no buildings or fields in sight, the only sign of civilization the rutted road. “Herr Steinnen, wo sind wir?”
“Ein moment.” The older man tied his pants shut, then picked up a stick and pointed at a large rock. “Johannisburg.” He pointed at a second rock. “Styrlack.” Then he drew an ‘X’ midway between the two. “Hälfte.”
“ ‘Hälfte.’ Half. So we’re halfway between Johannisburg and Styrlack?”
Anonymous says
bodrury…’Adrift’
The old lake shack they lived in had been cold all winter. At first it didn’t matter how cold it was, they’d just pile on some more cover and snuggle beneath it laughing and giggling and playing around. Jody would jump out of bed in the mornings and run to the wood burning stove in his bikini underwear, throw on a log and jump back in bed with his cold feet on her. They had stuffed all the cracks with rags to keep out the wind and when it rained the rags soaked up the water and ran down the walls. Now the rags were water stained and brown. It hadn’t been built for winter living but it was all they could afford. Jody just made a hundred dollars a week. He paid out most of that on his pickup. That pickup meant more to him than anything in the world. It had a roll bar and spotlights and he kept it polished to a high shine. Susan felt a little jealous of that truck. She knew it meant more to him than she did.
She rolled over with some effort and looked out across the lake. The sun was high. “It must be noon.” she thought, idly watching the light play patterns on the motion of the water She had the window open wide and propped up with a stick trying to catch what breeze she could. It was too hot to move. The water looked cool and inviting. She toyed with the idea of swimming but was afraid she would sink like a rock. She looked down to her belly huge with child. “Just one more month.” She sighed.
She couldn’t wait to be slender again. Maybe it would be like it was in the beginning for her and Jody, right now it was awful. He stayed gone all the time. She thought she must look so ugly he couldn’t stand to look at her. She never thought it would be like this. Tears welled up in her eyes. She didn’t know where he went each day. He hardly spoke to her any more. She hoped he would be there when her time came.
Her back hurt bad, Jody said that’s ‘cause she laid in bed too much, but there wasn’t nothing else to do. She was uncomfortable sittin’ up so she had to lie down. There wasn’t nobody to talk to either but the old couple down the road. Jody said if she needed help she could walk down there and the old man would take her to town.
The baby kicked and squirmed inside her. She watched as a little knot raised the tight skin across her stomach and slowly moved to the other side. She stroked it gently. She’d heard it could hear her voice and she talked to it a lot. Sometimes she sang just to hear another voice. The baby and the old radio was all the company she had most days.
Barbara Sheridan says
Glimmer in the Shadows (paranormal thriller)
Mark Stewart stared at the body lying in the pool of blood before him. He thought he’d seen it all in his years as a homicide detective but this butchery was beyond comprehension. This was no crime of passion, no momentary lapse of sanity, neither a drug vendetta nor mob execution. This was calculated, cold, savage.
He took in the details automatically, the victim’s approximate age and height, the color of her hair, the worn condition of her dress and shoes. She might have been attractive at one time but now, there was no real way to tell except for the hint of high, delicate cheekbones.
The monstrous part was that the killer had gutted the woman, drawn her intestines up towards her right shoulder, then cut another section of bowel and placed it in the space between the her body and left arm as if it were a baby. Next to her,
arranged with the utmost care, were three small black metal buttons, a thimble and a mustard tin.Mark tried to picture the twisted mind that could have done this, executing it all so carefully and neatly. And more importantly, why.
Instinctively, he reached into his jacket for a notepad and pen to jot down his impressions of the scene only to realize that he no longer had them, no longer needed them.
“The details never ceases to amaze me,” Agatha Swinden said, when she’d made her way through the crowd. She was a stout, energetic 70-ish woman whose face glowed with excitement at viewing the murder scene.
Mark turned and snapped, “Oh, yes, murder is such a wonderful conversation piece.”
Agatha rapped him on the chest with her fan, adjusted her Victorian-style dress and chastised him. “Mr. Stewart, this is a party. Try to behave accordingly.”
With a disgusted sigh Mark moved away from the corpse, letting the other party-goers have their peek. He was just another gawker now, nothing but a pretend cop looking at the recreation of one of Jack the Ripper’s victims in a wax museum. He glanced at the sign next to the exhibit listing the names and dates of the Ripper’s eight victims in large, bold print. There were grisly details of the murders themselves printed below in smaller type but he didn’t bother to read it. It was ancient history. As dead as the victims themselves.
He wasn’t sure whether he was more irritated by the crowd’s excitement at viewing a savage murder or the fact that he was serving as rent-a-cop, chauffeur, bellboy and all-around gofer for an eccentric old lady. Admittedly, she was an eccentric old lady who insisted he accompany her on an all expense paid trip to England so there was some benefit in the assignment. But if he thought about that, he’d think about why he’d been forced to take her offer of employment. And he didn’t want to think about that. Not now. Not ever.
Anonymous says
Not All Sidewalks Are Created Equal
Dear God
Please don’t make me move away. I promise to be good and I won’t fight with my sisters anymore and I even will say extra Hale Mary’s in church and mean them if you will change Daddy’s mind.
Love Angelica
“I won’t go! You can’t make me!” Angelica’s black patent Mary Jane tapped the floor, her fists firmly pressed on her hips.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady,” Gemma Trumble corrected her youngest. “It will all be fine. I know it’s scary, darling, but you have to trust Dad and me. You think we would take you any place bad?” She playfully tapped the little girl’s nose. “Besides, you dad grew up there, and he turned out okay, for the most part.”
Angelical looked into her mother’s eyes, laughter and joy swelling in bright blue oceans, and she wanted to believe her. A deep-rooted stubborn streak fought back. “I’ve heard Dad’s stories lots of times. I don’t want to walk five miles in the snow to get to school, and I won’t get up at five every morning to start chores. I won’t do it.”
Gemma laughed and knelt down to hug her daughter. “If I promise you won’t have to do either of those things, will you come? It would break my heart if you didn’t want to move with the rest of us.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Go outside and play for a while. Don’t wander off too far, and be home in time for dinner.”
“Maybe I could live with you?” Angelica was wandering down the sidewalk, her hands buried deep in her pockets, shoulders slumped forward. She forced a smile at Frankie Felds.
He draped an arm around her back. “I don’t think your folks would let you do that. Maybe I could come visit you?”
She shook her head, sending long braids bouncing. “It’s a long way away, Frankie. She snuggled in closer as they continued towards the school. “We have to go all the way through Saskatchewan to get there. I’ve never even been outside of Winnipeg before. It’s a long way away.”
Without thought, they jumped over every crack, and stomped on every spider along the Linden-lined street. Every few minutes Angelica would stop to take in more of her world, snapping mental photos she could keep forever filed away. Each stop and snap was accompanied by a heavy sigh.
“I wonder what school will be like there.” The thought of finally being able to go to real school, not kindergarten, in this magnificent building had thrilled her. On the first day of summer holidays, she started her countdown to Grade One. 1967 was to be her ‘big’ year; she would no longer be the ‘kindergarten baby who washed her face in gravy’. She ran her hand over the stone wall. Perhaps, if she worked fast, she could simply absorb the magnificent power and wisdom that came from within. Her heart ached.
Anonymous says
UNTITLED – WIP
(Feedback appreciated, but to: jonaustin1481@yahoo.com, please)
Ordered to his feet, his fused joints protested while the metal was wrapped around his wrists and ankles like cold steel hands and a distant bell lumbered alive and crawled through the tunnel, but before its second toll, the weakness in his legs gave way and his body slumped to the stone floor. A torch was thrust near his head, and he found strange reassurance that the dark stains upon the stones were probably from his own blood, and he rose up. He stepped half the chain’s length, his small methodical paces plodding against the bell’s tolling tentacles that streamed past his ears and stretched down the stone corridor until the stillness absorbed their last vestiges.
He neared the gated end and the chants rose up to greet him like old friends at a surprise party. The guard unlatched the gate and thrust him through it, sending him into a heap upon the ground, a cloud of dust to announce his arrival to the waiting crowd. They were there on cue, these old friends who loathed him, hurled epithets, stones and scat. The guards just stood aside grinning. He struggled to put his feet beneath himself as the morning sun seared across the tenderness of his eyes, and the dust, the sun, and the flailing motion of the crowd continued their assault. As he slowly rose the menacing closeness of their faces came into focus and it brought a peculiar sense of vague familiarity that made him feel drawn to them.
Their words were indecipherable but he felt their voices and knowing his destination, they pulled back to allow him through then prodded him on like a dark mass with fiery fists. Flanked by the guards, he trudged each painful step, the chain catching on the uneven stones, each stumble exciting them more and more until he fell face first, cutting his brow, the trickle of blood fulfilling their ecstasy. A child kicked him, a few spat on him. Jerked to his feet, the strain on the manacles sliced his papery skin and blood oozed in wide sheets from his wrists leaving him with gloves of streaking red humiliation. His lips a single line, he rose, turned his head from the crowd to one side and then to the other and he saw the human capsule pinching and seething all about him. A guard rushed past him to the front and glowered and threatened the people with a club and shield while another pushed him forward before they could be engulfed. At the gate, the Sisyphean task of moving the people back began, the guards using their staffs to push them like cattle; until a half-toothed sadist among them jabbed the blunt tip of his club into the ribs of the biggest man at the mass’s helm, and with that, the crowd volunteered themselves backward and the door swung open. Shoved through the ephemeral opening, the door clanked abruptly shut behind him, but a muffled remnant seeped under it, and he could hear the guards shouting and the crowd dispersing.
Katie says
SWORN HONOR 120,000 words
The monster in Sidney Matthews’ closet was real.
Night after night, as he tried so desperately to sink into sleep, terror ran through his thin, child’s body.
How many nights had he lain in horror and shame waiting for his mother to come to his bed? A hundred? A thousand? She came, but not as a mother. Mothers read you quietly lulling bedtime stories, tucked you in, kissed you on the forehead and turned out the light.
Not Sidney’s mother. No, Sidney’s mother came to him on whispering heels in the dark of night, long after the house was quiet, long past his bedtime, long after his father had closed his door with a promise of sweet dreams to come.
Sidney never had sweet dreams. Sidney had nightmares of a devil-woman with maleficent blonde hair, despicably naked under a blue peignoir, and instead of a children’s story, she came armed with the Word of God.
Blood is life.
The first lash of the belt seared into his skin.
Blood is atonement.
More pain. Again and again. Over and over. When he screamed, she beat him harder. When he cried, she called him names. When he begged, she punished him longer. Sometimes he wondered if she was going to kill him. Most of the time he wished she would.
The nightmares always ended the same way. With the unthinkable. The unspeakable.
His mother would strip, run her breasts across his blood-soaked back, turn him over. Kiss him. Tell him what a good, good boy he was. And then she’d take him into her mouth and shame him even more.
Night after night, the monster came, stealing the illusory protection of childhood away from him.
Oh yes, the monster in Sidney’s closet was real.
His life was hell.
*
Sidney bought his first computer on his fifteenth birthday. By the time he was seventeen he owned two more, and could hack into any system in the world. He wrote his own programs, blazed through firewalls, strolled through doors that were closed to millions, coded his own execution commands in the intercellular matrix of the Pentagon, and dreamed about ruling the galaxy.
He was a wizard. A sorcerer of magic.
A God.
He could render an entire operating system useless with the stroke of a key, a wave of a wand.
He could also end a life.
Diane Waltham’s father should never have told him to get lost. Shouldn’t have sneered at him or looked at him like he was less than zero, a non-person who’d never be good enough to date his precious daughter. Like he was a bug on the bottom of Waltham’s shiny black loafer.
Fuck that.
He was God.
A week later Sidney proved it.
First he deleted old man Waltham’s bank account. Twenty thousand in savings, poof, gone. Twelve hundred in checking, nope, not anymore. Credit cards? Maxed out and over ninety days late. Mortgage payment? Four months behind. Foreclosure imminent. And that nice cushy accounting job? Well, bummer for him when a sudden audit showed that the asshole had been skimming into an offshore bank account.
Boo hoo, mother fucker. Life over.
Athena says
Tanaquill
CHAPTER 1
London 1802
Spring
The sun was shining brightly into the busy front rooms of No. 22 Grosvenor Square. The house, which stood detached from its neighbors, was a beehive humming with last minute instructions and pattering feet, exclamations by maids, one to another, quickly, softly, for an important guest was arriving. Careful directions had been given concerning all manner of details, from the flower arrangements that were to face east, to the variety of infusions to be served in lieu of tea. The curtains had been beaten, the floors glossed with wax, and the windows rubbed until spotless.
Daphne Lockwood lightly dusted around an ancient Greek vase in a niche, her lithe figure not unlike the hiereia, the priestess with her temple key, depicted on the vase. She wore her soft purple day dress, covered in a pattern of small lake flowers, in honor of their guest. “When she arrives, I ought to simply ask her,” her voice echoed lightly across the tall drawing room.
“Out of the question,” said Chloe, busying herself.
“It isn’t a matter of idle curiosity,” Daphne continued. “Her Majesty’s instructions placed such an unusual emphasis on keeping the princess’ visit secret, though we’re always very discreet. And it’s not everybody one could tell such a thing in any case, is it?” She paused. “Chloe?”
“Hm?” Chloe was peering under the sofa, checking for dust that might have strayed across the gleaming wood floor. She pressed her hand to the sofa to support herself and stood. “The princess is the youngest daughter, there are bound to be strictures.”
“But could it be something more?” Daphne wondered. “Some unusual circumstance, too delicate to mention. Perhaps if we were to broach the subject first ourselves…”
“Without indiscretion?” Walking over, she pulled out a hairpin and pressed a stray hair back into place, pinned. “‘Too delicate to mention’—I doubt I could have put it better myself. Have I ruined my dress?”
Daphne took a careful look, studying the brick red velvet that brought out an attractive, ruddy warmth in her sister’s skin. Both avowed spinsters in their later twenties, they nevertheless loved beautiful things and knew how to look smart. “It looks lovely. And your hair as well.”
“Thank you.” Chloe briskly brushed her dress’ front. “Fairies are such tidy folk.” She ran her finger across the mantle, the white moldings absolutely clean to the touch—satisfying. Just then she stilled, trying to resolve a distant sound. “Did you hear it?” she said, crossing to the window. It was very faint. Fairy trumpets?
Daphne came to stand beside her sister at the large French window. Leaning over the window seat, they scanned the street below. Grosvenor Park greened across the way, an oval hideaway of trees and lawn, with the wide roads surrounding it lined for as far as the eye could see with tall, pale stone terrace houses.
Chloe pressed her finger to the glass. “That smoke, do you see it?”
“Smoke?” Daphne said softly.
P.G says
The Rise of Emperor Mole.
Many would think a worn looking old mole couldn’t pose any threat to anyone.
If you do think this then you would be very wrong, this mole has big plans, the least of them is to take over the world in which his he lives. It may just be a street or a suburb or even a town but it would be his world to rule.
Mole was a present to a little girl, over the years he was played with then put aside until one day he was taken in by a family who was never home and this gave Mole time to explore his surroundings then gather several like-minded stuffed animals around him.
Mole was a great orator and motivated many to follow his cause and bow down to him; this is where we will begin our tale, just as mole gets his first followers and his first enemies.
Mole had spent the morning checking out the new wave of stuffed toy that his owner had brought in that morning. Thankfully they were not beanie toys, those toys had the brains of dust mites on crack.
Two rabbits, a teddy bear, a monkey and a trio of tigers rounded out the new group.
Each stood huddled against another as the older toys had barged inside and began peppering them with questions and bellows of hello.
Mole had hung back watching each of the new toys, he needed to find one who would be his right hand toy. From his sweeping glance none of these new toys would fit the bill, all had sickeningly cheerful outlooks that all new toys had about the world. He wished his owners would hit another thrift store or garage sale and get some experienced toys that he could work with, really was that too much to ask from anyone?
Being the smart toy he was, he made sure to welcome each of the happy stuffed toys, learning their names and making sure they knew he could be counted on.
Mole shared a room with many other toys, but unlike them he had his own space that he kept just how he liked it. He had a large dolls chair, wicker with a lovely red velvet cushion, which never made his plush butt sore. It also gave him a great view of the room and vantage point for spying on the rest of the room, since that is how he spends most of the day, the cushion was important.
Mole guessed the room was large by owner standards but to him it seemed very small and such a tiny corner compared to the rest of the house.
Mole had no idea the room was just an old disused former bedroom that one of the owners children had slept in before they had moved out to attend college.
Karen says
Love on the Run
Alicia Mills gazed uneasily out the car window at the passing scenery. A pall of fog dimmed the already low light of winter dusk, nearly obscuring the crashing waves of the Pacific. Highway 101 stretched in a curving ribbon of asphalt ahead of her as the Lincoln moved steadily northward, leaving Los Angeles behind.
Alicia glanced over at Sid, her fiancé’s beefy right-hand-man and general dogsbody. Sid’s dinner-plate-sized hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as he drove, and he peered into the wispy fog with a single-minded focus.
One thought at a time was pretty much all Sid could handle. Alicia’s fiancé, Jerry, would toss out a steady stream of orders for his bodyguard cum assistant; it was up to Alicia to parcel them on to Sid in manageable chunks. Pick up the dry cleaning, Sid, Alicia would tell him, or go get the car washed. Take the poodle to the vet.
Of course, today’s order was pretty darn straightforward.
Take Alicia out somewhere deserted, Sid.
And kill her.
Alicia took another peek at Sid and shifted in her seat. Her long braid, caught between her back and the seat, pulled uncomfortably. She reached behind her and tugged it free, then fidgeted with the end in her lap. “You don’t have to do this, Sid.”
Sid’s focus never left his driving, his hands never loosened their grip on the wheel.
Alicia turned in her seat toward him and tried again. “If you let me go, Jerry would never have to know.”
“Gotta do what the boss tells me,” Sid said stolidly.
“But Sid—“ Alicia dragged in a deep breath, decided on a different tack. “Listen, I like you a lot— you know that, don’t you?”
Sid nodded. “Yup.”
“And you like me, right?” Alicia waited for Sid to nod a second time. “That makes us friends, Sid. Friends don’t kill friends, do they, Sid?”
Sid’s brow furrowed as he considered the complexities of Alicia’s statement. “But I gotta do what the boss says.”
“Maybe Jerry didn’t know what good friends we are. Maybe he never would have asked you to… well, you know… if he’d known.”
Sid started gnawing on his lower lip, his hands strangling the wheel. “The boss is pretty smart, Miss Alicia.”
“Sure he is, Sid.” Alicia put a tentative hand on Sid’s tree-sized arm. “But maybe he just made a mistake this time.”
Sid’s mouth dropped open, then he shook his head vigorously. “Nope, nope. Boss doesn’t make mistakes.” Then Sid leaned forward slightly in his seat, shutting Alicia out of his one-track mind, his focus back on the winding twists of Highway 101.
Alicia sighed and settled back in her seat. Anxiety bubbled up in the pit of her stomach, and she tamped it down ruthlessly. Somehow she’d get out of this mess. Somehow she’d convinced the kindhearted, but addle-brained Sid that Jerry Trent didn’t truly want his beloved fiancée dead.
SFWriter says
[Unitled]-Fantasy-100,000 words
The odd, alien shape of the vessel streaked across the bottomless void of night, lighting up the arcane pathways so familiar to Valek. But where only his spirit could travel, this craft found its way in material form, carrying its lone passenger…
Valek’s spirit reached for her. Her essence burned with a power he’d never seen in mage or warrior, let alone in a woman.
She didn’t sense his presence in her sleep. Muttering, she turned over and pulled up her covers.
He tried to take a step.
The vision paled, but he resisted the call to come back to his reality. He’d never before reached out to a being this far away, out beyond the boundaries of his physical world.
Voices calling his name intruded. Valek’s vision shimmered and faded more.
Your Highness!
Valek!
“Wake up!”
A slap on his face drew a grunt and a feeble gesture.
“Come on.”
Metal and sweat-soaked leather… Fahim leaned close. “Valek.”
He squinted and forced himself to focus.
“She’s watching.”
Valek looked over Fahim’s shoulder while the sword master helped him sit and held a water skin to his lips. On a balcony two stories above the practice grounds, a glittering female figure stood under a shade held by a semi-nude servant.
“Rukmini,” Valek said, choking on the name.
Fahim pressed the water skin against his mouth. “Yes.”
Valek drank obediently. “She’s been here long?”
“She always watches the practices.”
He blinked and tried to move, but his body wouldn’t obey. “What happened? Did someone hit me?”
His master-at-arms chuckled. “No, Highness. They did try.”
Valek grunted. “What then?”
“You had a vision.”
Gritting his teeth, Valek stared at his sword master. Fahim still wore his training armor. His fit couldn’t have lasted long. He glanced up without lifting his head. If indeed Rukmini had been watching from her balcony, she was gone now.
He shook his head. “I don’t have visions.”
He’d learned to control them. Learned to call them down on himself, when he could be surrounded by men he trusted. But he didn’t let them happen by chance anymore. Not in plain sight, in the middle of a practice.
A flutter of bright silk rushing from the shadows of the palace barracks drew his attention.
Nabildash, his personal servant, his friend, slid to his knees at their side, heedless of his finery.
“Highness!”
Valek tried to wave him away. “I’m fine.”
“Certainly.” The impudent youngster ignored his master and slipped an arm under Valek’s shoulder to help him to his feet.
Valek swayed and blinked away motes of darkness.
Fahim supported him on the other side. “A bath, and food. I shall send Saifullah to see you.”
Valek tried to shake his head, but the motion threatened to upend the world. Instead, he peered towards the barracks where his men had retired after a morning’s harsh training session.
“The men know you have the Sight.”
Valek sighed. “Very well.”
candidcam says
TUESDAY
My mom is the kind of lady you expect to see in line at the grocery store, wearing $300 Lucky jeans and a plain white t-shirt, with a shiny red Coach bag tossed over her shoulder. You expect to run into her at the coffee shop, dressed in the Juicy Couture warm up suit she wore to an appointment with her personal trainer.
Mom is 44, five feet nine inches, a perfect size 6 with genuine, never-seen-a-knife, C-cup boobs and a pair of extremely long, muscular legs. So far, the only traits I’ve inherited from her are the legs and the height, which means that although I turned 16 yesterday, I look more like an extremely tall fourth grader than the supermodel my mom could have been.
My mom has a complexion that glows without a drop of makeup. There isn’t a blemish on her face and, no, she’s never had plastic surgery. She is the kind of lady who can juggle a happy marriage and four happy kids, a part time job as a Real Estate agent and volunteer work at both the church and the school. She attends every one of her kids’ soccer games and still finds a way to play in a women’s tennis league.
We don’t have a housekeeper.
Mom is the kind of lady who can’t stroll down Main Street after lunch without seeing fifteen people who know her on a first-name basis. You expect to find her in the mall between errands; you expect to find her helping out as a reading tutor for elementary school kids; you expect to find her bringing meals to new parents or to the gal pal who’s just had a tummy tuck.
But my mom is not the kind of lady you expect to find where I picked her up yesterday.
My mom is no match for a jail cell.
Kristin says
Untitled Paranormal Suspense – 85,000 words
Joel Hatcher grabbed the phone book, flipped it open, and searched for a heading called “Curse Removal.”
Finding nothing under Curses, he flipped ahead to Spiritualist. Maybe they would have had some experience with someone like him. He scanned each advertisement. None of them mentioned curses. And then, he saw what he had been looking for.
Madame Eugenie – Palm Readings, Spiritual Guidance, Curse Removal.
Madame Eugenie it was.
He ripped the page out of the book, opened his cell, and dialed the number. He hoped she had late hours. Very late hours. He glanced at his watch. Midnight.
When he caught sight of the pustules all over his wrist he had to look away. The oozing, cracked skin disgusted him. Not only that, just looking at them made them hurt more. He tugged his sleeve down.
Five rings.
Six rings.
No answer.
Pick up!
On the seventh ring, a chipper female voice filled his ear. “Madame Eugenie…”
“Hello? I need help. Can you help me?” Joel ducked his head. It started to rain. He should get back in his car, but the reception was better here by the broken pay phone next to the gas station.
“…is here to help you with your spiritual needs. 24 hours a day. Leave a message, and she will get back to you soon.”
“Goddammit!”
Beep!
A homeless man, drinking from a bottle hidden in a paper bag, strolled by pushing a shopping cart. Joel pulled up the collar of his denim jacket and turned away from the streetlights, but a car drove by at that instant and the headlights illuminated his face.
The homeless man locked eyes with him. His face lit up with horror, and he dropped the bottle. It hit the sidewalk with a smash, liquid flying everywhere. The man took two steps backward, stumbled over the curb, then fell into the street.
Joel instinctually stepped forward to help.
“Get away from me!” the old man yelled, holding up a hand. “Don’t touch me!”
As he backed away from the frightened man, Joel spoke into his cell, “This is Joel Hatcher. I desperately need your help. Could you please call me…”
There was a click on the other end of the line. “Hello? Are you there?”
The man began to yell, pushing his cart pell-mell down the street.
Joel turned around and ran towards his car, parked under the shelter of the gas pumps. “I need to see you. Now.” He scanned the dark gas station, making sure no one else was watching.
“Who is this?” asked the woman on the other end. “Have you been to see me before? My appointment hours are between eight and…”
“You said on the message 24 hours a day.” Joel tucked his cell phone under his chin, opened his car door, and slid into the driver’s seat. Bluto meowed at him from the back seat.
“Yes, well, for my regular clients I am…”
The cat meowed more piteously.
Helen says
Of Rats and Men
She calls me at night.
“Kay, have you heard that the male gene’s defective?”
“Ha?” I ask, checking the time. 2.50 A.M. “Male jeans?”
“They destroyed Y chromosome in rats, and the beasts turned into females, because the X gene is stronger than the Y.”
“It’s 2.50 A.M.”
“A friend of mine, that gal from Bazanne Labs, she says she made a laser that can bust Y chromosome in people. Wouldn’t that be great? Blast a woman-hater—and whamm, he is one of us!”
I know where this is going.
“And our senator—”
I knew it. Our beastly senator closed the last abortion clinic, made contraceptives so expensive that it’s cheaper to go through therapy and become a lesbian, and drowned Susan, the last abortion provider before the end of the reproductive freedom in our state, in legal troubles. Susan does not like him.
“Susan, listen. It’s too late…or early. Could we talk tomorrow? Love you. Bye.”
Tomorrow, however, I become much more interested in turning an occasional man into a woman. It happens after they hand me a leaflet that says, “Hello! A convicted child molester will live next door. By how much do you think your house has just depreciated?”
I show the paper to Dave, but he’s just started writing a new thriller and does not even properly knows who he is at the moment—my husband, a sexy blonde detective, or a corpse found hanging from the Golden Gate Bridge. I tell Jamie that she has to stay at home until mommy finds out if our new neighbor is a bad Martian in disguise. And I watch.
The guy next door, short, plump, and evil-faced, is easy to watch. He’s almost always at home. In his yard, to be precise. When does he work? Or do they pay pensions to people like him, because who would employ a convicted sex offender? I would have even felt for that guy if I wasn’t thinking about all those girls, or perhaps boys, he’d hurt.
We install more locks, load the rifle, and talk about buying a dog. Jamie wants to play outside, and the blonde detective finds out that the corpse was a pedophile and shoots him just to be safe. That’s when Susan drops in.
“It’s medically safe. Like abortions. One ray and…” She snaps her fingers with a dry ominous crack.
I walk to my husband’s closet. We don’t have enough rooms, so Dave writes in a closet. “Dave, is it illegal to turn a man into a woman?”
Before writing legal thrillers, Dave was a bad lawyer. Bad in the sense that he’s making more money with his books than he was while working at a law firm. And as any writer knows, that’s saying something.
“Mmm?” Dave mutters, his fingers rushing over the keyboard. “With that laser beam? Technically, it’s not illegal. Meaning there is no specific law against it. Seeing as there’s never been a precedent. Just one more sec, honey.” And he is back with his blonde.
wonderer says
THE MENORAH, THE VAMPIRE, AND THE VELVET ELVIS (urban fantasy WIP)
I parked the Lincoln around the corner from my parents’ house, as always on a Friday night. Chaim scrambled out before I could stop him, slamming the door. I winced as I got out and closed mine gently, then walked around the car to him and inspected the handle. It looked pristine, save for a few fingerprints that I wiped away with my sleeve.
Then I turned to Chaim. He had a grimace on his face, clearly expecting to be scolded, but my mind was already on Shabbos dinner.
“Come on,” I said. “Your grandparents will be waiting.”
He took my hand with a shy smile and we began to walk, Chaim skipping along beside me.
“Now remember what we talked about,” I said.
He nodded solemnly. “But why do I have to say that? You don’t still live with Mom and me. So why do I have to say that you do?”
I sighed. “It’s complicated, Chaim.”
His lower lip stuck out, a gesture I recognized as a very bad sign. “But it’s not true. HaShem says we shouldn’t lie.”
“I know He does, but please, just trust me?”
He studied me carefully, then nodded.
My parents’ house loomed before us, seeming bigger than its cramped post-war size; I could sense the stifling feel of it even from the foot of the lawn. I took a deep breath and was struck by the urge to take Chaim and leave, maybe sneak out for a nice kosher dinner somewhere else. Before I could, he had let go of my hand and was pelting up the sidewalk, shouting excitedly for his grandparents.
The door opened and my mother knelt down with open arms to embrace Chaim. I hurried towards them, trying to overhear what he was saying, but he was talking so fast that all I could hear was something about dinosaurs. Well, maybe that was all right. Once he got going on dinosaurs, you couldn’t get him to shut up about them.
I mounted the steps, smiling brightly, and touched the mezuzah on the doorjamb out of habit. My mother embraced me too. My father, standing awkwardly in the dark hallway behind her and backlit by the warm light from the kitchen, smiled at me from behind his beard, and I smiled back over her shoulder.
“How are you, Benyamin?” my mother asked. “And where’s Rachel?”
“She’s not feeling well tonight,” I mumbled, trying to keep my voice too low for Chaim to hear.
“Oh, that’s terrible, poor girl. Maybe I should send her a little something.”
“No!” I realized I was yelling and hastily lowered my voice again. Chaim was pulling off his shoes and seemed not to have noticed. “She’ll be all right. She just needs a little peace and quiet. The house is pretty busy with a four-year-old around.”
My mother gave me a conspiratorial grin. “And it’s about to get even busier, is that it?”
Ruth says
TAKE WING — 90,500 words
“Why don’t you take a walk, dear,” my mother said. “It’ll clear your head.”
As if I were a child. As if a simple walk could cure this vacation.
“But I’m watching Ava—”
Jon interrupted, “It’s my turn.” My husband said this with the air of a freshly-minted adult, one who expects responsibility to be easy. At his age there’s no excuse.
Our daughter was busy scooping sand into a bright blue bucket, oblivious to the family drama. I looked at my husband, carefully avoiding my sister, who stood beside him. The two of them were dripping wet, and a minute earlier had been laughing. I could feel Lydia looking at me. Any minute now she’d make a joke—
I scrambled to my feet and headed down the beach, not even stopping to grab a cover-up.
The sand was soothing sandpaper against my feet, and my calf muscles tugged slightly with each step, a pleasing pain. After a while I was calm enough to look across the expanse of water beside me where waves rose and fell, each one small enough to be neatly contained in its trough. But I smiled to myself, knowing it wouldn’t take much wind to stir the shallow waters of Lake Erie to fury. Wishing I could stir them.
Seagulls flew past using their attention-getting tricks but I ignored them, searching for a larger bird. Ospreys fly with the same m-shaped lift to their wings as gulls but their coloring is more dramatic. They’re different in every other way. Superior. You can’t compare a lone bird of prey with a fish flopping valiantly from its beak, to a pack of scavengers squabbling over spilled popcorn. Seagulls might as well be leashed, for all the life they choose to lead.
I was well past the swimming area now and could see, out in the water, platforms that the Park Service people had erected to court the osprey. Some of the platforms were mounded with sticks. The inelegant shapes of the nests stirred me, their marriage of utility and freedom and promise.
An osprey came into sight and I followed its progress over the water, dipping, then rising. Yes, it had allowed itself to be wooed, but it still seemed untethered.
I turned and headed back to my family.
Lydia and Jon were on the sand with Ava. My sister had knotted one of my towels sarong-style over her bust. A Big Bird towel should be laughable on someone her age, but the orange beak spread strategically across her chest and emphasized the red highlights in her dark hair. Lydia has always known how to be alluring in unconventional ways.
As I watched, Jon upturned Ava’s sand bucket with a flourish, and I could see that he was attempting to make a castle. The sand poured out of the bucket, collapsing into a cone. Didn’t he know the sand had to be wet? Ava’s face wobbled and Lydia moved in quickly.
Jane Kennedy Sutton says
Reigning Cats and Dogs
An odor Bobbi couldn’t readily identify assaulted her nose. She sniffed. Decaying body parts? She gagged; bile burned at the back of her throat. Please don’t let that smell be coming from me, she prayed opening first one eye and then the other. Although painful, she turned her head. Blinking several times in rapid succession did not cause the scenery to change.
Okay, why am lying on a dirty slab of concrete near a garbage dumpster, instead of in my bed?
The violent throbbing in her head was incompatible and out of beat with the roaring in her ears. If this is this the mother of all hangovers, why don’t I remember being at a party? She placed her hands against her ears and pressed hoping she could keep her head from exploding.
Her desiccated tongue darted back and forth across her parched lips but lacked the ability to moisten them. She opened her mouth wide then rolled out her tongue several times trying to expel the balls of cotton she felt sure must be wedged in her cheeks and throat.
“Ow!” she yelled grasping her right side when a deep breath resulted in an intense shooting pain. She gasped and resorted to quick shallow inhalations.I’ve been stabbed.She forced herself to look, relieved and surprised to discover no blood and no nasty knife wound.
She sat up slowly, hoping the feelings of nausea and dizziness would quickly vanish. She scooted on her butt until she was able to lean against the dirty brick wall of the building behind her while she tried to assess her situation.
Where her prone body had been moments ago lay a red stiletto shoe.That explains my sore back. She reached for the shoe and noticed its mate still attached to her right foot. She studied that foot by turning it side-to-side and flexing. Then she turned the shoe she held carefully in her hands, inspecting it as if it was a prized piece of crystal, while whispering, “This is most particular. I’ve never owned a pair of heels, much less red stilettos.”
She looked down at her soiled clothing, confirming the jogging suit she wore was definitely hers. Not that she jogged or participated in any sort of exercise; she simply liked to be comfortable and wore the suit proudly as if it were a uniform. I may not have good taste in wearing apparel but I’m bright enough to know sneakers go with my current outfit, not some slutty looking heels.
She looked around for her purse expecting to see a matching sequined bag instead of her black crocheted handbag. She didn’t see either.
A victim of a mugging explains my position in the alley, but does nothing to resolve the riddle of why someone exchanged my well-worn sneakers for flashy heels.
She glanced at the dumpster, wondering if it contained her purse.The way I look and smell, was in once in there too?
Straka says
Untitled – 103,000 words
You will not like what you’re about hear, but it’s the fucked up truth.
Here’s the catch; if I told you straight out you’d fucking judge me. You’d have no context and call me a fucking evil bastard. And my context was all sorts of fucked up bullshit. Imagine this: that schoolyard bully who keeps pushing you. With each shove you get madder. The pushing goes on for weeks, and in my case the pushes were bullets.
I refuse to use the word ‘evil’ in the description of my actions. I’d call myself vicious, but semantics are bullshit when you’re talking about killing people. Yet on that day, in the ruins of some borough in Pittsburgh I saw the worst of me.
It’s amazing what you can do with a loaded Uzi submachine gun.
We kicked in the door, threw in grenades and proceeded to kill everyone in the house. Every last one of those religious zealot motherfuckers that had been shelling and shooting at us for weeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept for more than a few hours that weren’t interrupted by the thump mortar rounds or the crack of gunfire.
A trigger pull of my Uzi meant a vomiting out of bullets at kids wielding pistols. One fell to the ground screaming for his mother and one of my team members pumped a shotgun round into him, painting the floor with like a Pollock in red. We had stopped taking prisoners a long time ago.
We worked like madmen, clearing each room with the blast of a grenade and the pull of a trigger. Like a SWAT team storming a crack house the violence of our attack was such that they were unable to resist. We kicked in doors and shot up closets as we worked our way upstairs. The battle outside continued to rage on as more shells started to fall around the house.
“Fuck it Andrew,” cried one of my guys, a Jiminy Cricket in my ear. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“No,” I said. “There are still more upstairs.”
I loaded another mag in the Uzi. Hand to hand. Just like they had taught me.
I walked up the last flight of stairs and heard scuffling above. I pulled the pin on my last grenade, waited, and tossed it up to the third floor. I waited for the blast then rushed upstairs, Uzi ready.
It was in the smoky mist that I saw her. With red hair and a torn shirt. I couldn’t believe who I was looking at. As she looked up dazed and confused, a stream of blood dripped from her nose down to her chin. I walked over to her and spotted a silver necklace with the Cross resting on the side of her breast. I grabbed her collar and ripped the shirt the rest of the way off and whispered, “Where’s your God now?”