UPDATE: TIME’S UP! THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED!
So. Last time we had a contest we had some problems because people were concerned with silly things like “rules” and “things Nathan promised” and “this blog isn’t worth the paper it isn’t printed on, and in fact, if you were printed on paper you wouldn’t be worth the paper you were printed on either, Meanie McMeanieagent.”
Let’s be clear up front: this is a for-fun contest that I conduct in the free time that I normally spend bathing and attending to personal hygiene. Rules may be adjusted without notice, as I see fit, in ways in which you might find capricious, arbitrary, and possibly dangerous to the Baby Jesus. Let’s be clear: no angst this time. You have been warned.
Are we having fun yet?
Now then! You remember how this works right?
1. Please post the first paragraph of any work-in-progress in the comments section of THIS POST. The deadline for entry is THURSDAY 4pm Pacific time, at which point entries will be closed. Finalists will be announced on Friday, at which time you will exercise your democratic rights to choose a grand prize super awesome winner.
2. You may enter once, once you may enter, and enter once you may.
3. Spreading word about the contest is strongly encouraged.
4. I will be sole judge this time. Bwa ha ha.
5. A word on word count: I am not imposing a word count on the paragraphs. However, a paragraph that is too long may lose points in the judge’s eyes. Use your own discretion.
THE PRIZES: The grand prize super awesome winner of the SUFPCx2 will win their choice of a partial critique, query critique or 15 minute phone conversation in which we can discuss topics ranging from reality TV shows to, you know, publishing. Your choice. Runners up will receive query critiques and/or other agreed-upon prizes.
On with the show!
KGT says
Three shadows steal across a field of forgotten seed corn, tripping over fallen husks that lay rotting on the ground; three bent shadows scurry low beneath rough leaves that brush their skins like cow’s tongues. November wind whips hard through misting rain and carves the soft drops to sharp needles that stab at bare foreheads, that cure naked arms to prickling gooseflesh, that send a tingling burn up the spine into the base of the skull. Look: three figures gone wild with trespass, in a sodden cornfield beneath the rain. Look: they stop just before the field dies upon a cul-de-sac drive; they squat on slender haunches to keep their knees from the wet.
bc says
Room Above
If time had stopped at the edge of the forest, the years inside had still continued on in a Sleeping Beauty form of overgrowth. The treehouse was riddled with vines, long green fingers that twisted through it, as if the tree had held it to its breast and dreamt. A bird’s nest, now abandoned, had been built, tucked into the little window. The platform where they had laid out on the top of their sleeping bags, zipped together, on hot summer nights, still stood on old pine boards they had pilfered from construction sites. It had been their room above.
Judith says
A heightened sense of adventure overcomes me every time I buckle a plane’s seat belt and the metal ends click shut. One fall evening in 2006 was no exception as I prepared for an overnight flight to Spain. The routine was familiar since I’d flown there numerous times. My first footprint touched Spanish soil in the early 1980s when I was a budding freelance travel writer and newly divorced. The fit was instantaneous as was the pull to return often. Normally I’d stay a week or so, which was all I needed to write an article. But other visits had different meanings, such as the time I lived in a Madrid residence-hotel for 15 months to rescue and heal my soul. Twenty years later, I sat in a Salamanca classroom that was located in a former 17th-century convent with massive stork nests on its towers. I hoped the brief language course would improve the simple Spanish I mumble. But regardless of the purpose throughout the years, there was one constant pleasure — romance. Whether I simply flirted with men or made love to them, Spain and I understood one another.
Julia says
I glanced at my watch. Kim was already ten minutes late yet I waited eagerly and kept peeking at the street through the glass door. Kim had said she had a pressing plan for me. Twining my hands beneath my head, I paced back and forth in the gallery space then peered through the door again.
Where the heck is she?
jfaust says
b
Cassie says
“Callie? I know this is difficult for you, but you need to try to focus. Did you see the attacker’s license plate number?” Officer Brian Dunphy had known me since I was five years old. I was certain he wasn’t probing my numb mind for any malicious reason. Still, I could not answer his question.
“Small towns. Small, safe towns. Children live across the street. I have a dog. Small, safe, quiet town.” My gaze stayed locked on the dark blue diamonds covering my legs. I would have liked to answer Officer Dunphy’s question. Attacker. But who was attacked? Not here. Not in Vestia. Nobody got attacked in Vestia. Well, maybe a drunken brawl or two.
havah says
I only began this today, so feel free to skip it for those who have real WIPs. I entered for the challenge, the fun, and just to get started. Thanks. 🙂
~*~*~*~
I am in love with a poet, long dead, and with his words, still vibrantly alive. Daily, he woos me; follows me through apple orchards, over pasture fences, and down winding sea swept paths. His words form tiny webs in the corners of mind, ensnaring my thoughts at odd moments throughout my day. He is my inspiration, my masculine muse — pure poetry, raw reality, sweet simplicity. I want to be a feminine him.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down,” he says; and I look at all my walls, and start tearing.
(Quotation from “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost)
lotusloq says
Okay Nathan, thanks for this opportunity! Here goes nothing–deep breath, deep breath–I am not going to hyperventilate. From my WIP “Gifted” a YA novel:
I gripped the sides of my desk until my knuckles turned white. I stared down at them trying to stop the spinning in my head and told myself to breathe. The thrumming in my chest increased, and I was afraid that I might pass out. Mrs. Morris had only asked the new kid to stand and introduce himself to the class, but his voice had struck me with a force so powerful that I couldn’t breathe. It was melodious and deeply resonant. It filled the room with vibrations that seeped into my very cells. I felt warm and cold and shaky. I was caught up in the endless waves of sound that ebbed around me unable to focus on the words he uttered. They were insignificant. The vibrations continued to swirl around me, even after he had stopped speaking. The pulses slowly died away. It was terrifying and exciting. I had heard that with some drugs all it took was that first taste to become addicted. I didn’t know it then, but hearing his voice for the first time was like that for me. I was hooked.
Son says
The smell of crushed beetles was overwhelming. Once lured into breathing the familiar sweetness, they were reprimanded with violent coughing as their bodies tried to expel its pungent sharpness. Galadari was certain that the stench would be with them forever. On still, humid nights it would seep out of their pores. Or perhaps there would be other reminders: a shard of wing caught under a fingernail or the flicker of vibrant blue-green in a passerby’s eye.
Joyce Wolfley says
An irrational urge flooded through me: the urge to jump over the thigh-high ledge, splash wildly through the water, and throw a full-body punch at the man in the dark suit. Only my intense years of training stopped me from surging into action. I stood locked in place, my eyes tracking the man on the far side of Trevi Fountain. A predator stalking its prey.
Mike says
From my dark fantasy work in progress, HELL IN HELL:
She told me I didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t have a cat in the house once a child was born. It would creep into the cradle and suck my poor babe’s breath away in the night. Everybody knew that. So I gave Kit, my little brown mouser, the last of the top-milk even though my man would give me a whipping when he found there was none for his morning pottage, and I cuddled her on my lap, stroking her and crooning to her in a hitching voice, my nose running with tears, until she purred herself to sleep. An hour later, under the accusing light of the moon, I smoothed her silky hair for the last time, my fingers still running blood from where she’d clawed me trying to escape.
Raethe says
Nathan, thanks so much.
Fall, Stars, Fall:
It is nighttime on the cliffs. Down below, too, but that seems like another world, a world of sunshine and people, of dreams and of worries. Here, there are only the stars, an absence of everything but moonlight on the rocks. A world in greyscale.
erinn says
No system at all:
Everyone knew Colin McCaffrey, no matter how hard he tried to avoid attention. The students of Millbrook High School knew him as three things. One, he was that quiet kid who would help them with their homework. Two, he was that kid training to go to Juilliard. Three, he was the younger brother of that guy who got busted selling drugs last year. It was the final one Colin hated the most.
Jaym says
Red Sun Rising:
One nation… The greatest nation on earth, the land of dreams, home of the free, Lady Liberty. She was loved, and desired, a queen and jewel of all that man’s hope and faith could conceive. America. The land of nightmares, the land of war. The great dragon, the Whore. Babylon. For every name given in love, hope, faith and dream, she earned another in hatred and fear and shame. America.
cymberleah says
Everything was going according to plan.
Generally speaking, according to plan does not include being followed by a pack of coyotes through trackless and rugged mountains. Well, in truth I was being tracked by Coyote, and through their eyes he watched me while he tried to catch up on the roads. I was moving towards an unmarked mountain pass, but there are plenty of interstates and highways that would get him where I was going. Let’s face it, wilderness is in short supply these days. As long as he knew where I was, he could catch me. I would have to slaughter every coyote in the western states to get away, and I really didn’t want to do that.
Amara says
First paragraph of a WIP fantasy novel:
The photograph was old, marred by deep creases and crumbling borders. Jonas studied it, again, under the harsh glow of the asylum’s outer lantern, shielding it from the downpour with his fedora.
Rebecca LuElla Miller says
Thanks for holding this contest, Nathan.
From an adult fantasy, The Sword of Secrets:
Jim was lost. Not seriously lost—more like, off course. Downshifting, he eased his Porsche to a stop at an anomalous red light. The driver of the Corvette in the left lane—a college-age kid with a smirk in his eye—gunned his engine. A challenge. A harmless little street-race challenge, but not something Jim wanted to devote his competitive energy to, at least not today. As a way to avoid further eye contact, he reached for his visor and flipped it down, then adjusted his rearview mirror.
Becky
Anne D says
Very much a WIP. (Erotic?) Romantic comedy.
Holy Crap, he’s hot! Like just eaten a whole jar of jalapeño peppers with not a glass of water to be found, H-O-T Hot! The geek next door was seriously built.
At first glance you’d only see the long socks and sandals, bad plaid shirts, and walk shorts. But, if you just so happened to be the neighbor across the street, the neighbor who’d borrowed a pair of binoculars from a girlfriend because at just the right angle from your spare bedroom window you looked right into his spare bedroom window, behind which he exercised barely clothed — sometimes naked — you definitely took a second look. And oh, what a second look it was!
Lorraine says
Put your money down, girl, I want to see some green stuff, is the slut’s mantra. I’ve always liked bad girls with their saucy ways and their penchant for shocking behavior. Maybe, just maybe, they’re on to something that eludes most. New York City is the only place I know of where you fall in love with her because you are able to survive her adversities, and what’s more, to thrive and succeed in spite of them.
It’s the slut’s test.
Walter says
Bang! Then another. I’d like to say this was the first time people had thrown canned hams at me, but my heart wouldn’t be in it. Ping! I didn’t mind their choice of ammo. I recognized one of the shiny cubes as it bounced off my windshield. The protesters had splurged this time and upgraded to the Consolidated Meat Company’s “Premium Label” hams. Hey, in my business, a sale is a sale, even if they don’t bother to eat it.
Pam says
This is still a work in progress and does not have a title yet.
I was walking to my car and it was just past midnight. The parking lot was empty except for my Audi and a dark SUV parked a few spaces away under the flood light. I took my keys out from my jean pocket and began to bring my car key to the lock when I heard a blood curdling scream. I quickly turned around and dropped my keys in the process. I scanned the very dark lot trying to see where the scream had come from. Even with great night vision, all I could see was darkness and the dark SUV. I tried to move towards the vehicle but I seemed to move slowly forward. A dark haired boy staggered from behind the SUV. As I started to get closer he starts shouting at me. “Get out of here!”
John Shellshear says
Stop, move, stop. Look. Nervous now, as my breath in ragged gasps streams from my mouth, and I fight to control my breathing and lower my heart rate. Sounds of the night surround me, the rhythmic sound of cicadas in the darkness fill the air with their nocturnal song, and I slowly shake my head, somehow disturbed by the noise, by it’s undulating rhythm, my malaise of late again afflicting me like some malicious disease, slowly removing all of my sentient faculties one by one… My only fear is back, like an unwelcome friend once more here to haunt me. “I am in control…” I whisper to myself mentally, repeating my words like a mantra, trying to calm and fortify myself for the long night ahead.
baxtermania says
A farmer killed every animal I’ve ever owned. Matilda was the first. She bumped into everything and hobbled around on three legs but still managed to deposit mice on the front stoop each day. Farmer Glass flattened her with his empty seed truck. Mother said he didn’t stop, just smiled as the wheels thumped over Matilda. Mother used Sir’s shovel and scraped her off the road into a burlap sack. She was waiting for me when I got off the bus, sack in one hand, her favorite gardening spade in the other.
Anita says
20 young men stood around the fire. All of them with cojones of steel. They’ll need them, I figured, to make it through a year of pilot training and everything else the Air Force dishes out in years to come. What I didn’t understand, what I couldn’t know as the fire danced upon our faces, was how much those guys would also need each other. Just to make it through the night.
maya9 says
The three prostitutes entered Raoul’s cafe off the night streets and I immediately thought of some triple goddess of suffering. The guys at table three hollered for more pie, calling me ‘fruit-loops’ because of my hair–never make dye decisions on the rebound–but that was cool. They were pumped from whatever movie they’d just come out of, rah rah, I’ll take testosterone with that and side of violence–but they were big tippers, so cherry pie, coming up. I bumped hips with Tracie going the other way, doing our waitron dance, gathered plates from table five, collected a tip from table two, five bucks, not bad. Then wham, the three women got my attention again, forming a perfect tableau around the formica rectangle. Pie would have to wait.
Tracy H says
Boston. What better place to start a revolution? After all, it’s the home of Paul Revere, the Boston Tea Party, and the Battle of Bunker Hill. While I wait for my webpage to load, I tiptoe around my attic lair, careful not to wake my parents in the bedroom below. I power down every electronic device sensitive to power surges except the wireless modem and the server I’m willing to sacrifice for the greater good. When I’m finished, I settle into my gaming chair and pull the laptop closer. I have one more blog entry to compose before I set my plan in motion. My fingers dance ghostly pale over the keyboard in the monitor’s thin light. I preview the text, then click upload. Only few more keystrokes and then I’m ready. My index finger hovers over the “Enter” key while the computer’s clock rolls from 02:59:58 to 02:59:59. When it flashes 03:00:00, I whisper, “For you, Chad,” and let my finger drop. The world goes black.
Jordan says
Good luck getting through all these!
My first paragraph:
—
Sure, they’d have to fool the press, eight million New Yorkers and the international art community–but it was only a little hoax.
pjd says
Life is fragile as a dime store cap gun. One good crack with a smooth tumbled river rock, and it’s all over. I suppose that’s when it began, the day Ian got all up in my face for losing his best Lego storm trooper when he knew damn well he’d lost it himself in the Thompsons’ ivy. We were only seven–he was turning eight the next day, but he was going to be held back in second grade. Ian couldn’t count the consonants in his own name.
scheherazade says
After the army, all the colors look wrong. The city is camouflaged in neon, corporate reds and whites and blues. Light bounces off the surfaces of buildings. Not like in the desert, where at night every light you shone would vanish into the darkness, eaten by quicksand. Back home the only thing dark is this black hole inside me.
Javamugboy says
What do you do with a 45-foot, 6-inch dead guy? That was the problem that plagued my team, as well as the San Francisco Police, the EMS and the FBI. Awesome Larry’s body laid sprawled out on the pier next to the Liberty Ship U.S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien. At first glance, Awesome Larry looked peaceful, but upon closer inspection one could see that a rather large projectile had gone through his head. My team and I stood around his massive corpse and tried to hold back tears, but for some of us the pain was just too much. After all, he had been a Jive Cat.
Anonymous says
Coffee woke Anjen from her early-morning daze. It did nothing for the electrifying screams.
Katy says
She started to run, her fist clenched so tightly that her nails cut through her soft skin like butter. With each step she took, her hair flew wildly behind her, dancing in the cool October wind.
She did not see anything around her as she flew down the street. She did not see the families in the window having dinner, the cars whipping past her, close enough to make contact. She did not hear their horns, their shouts of annoyance or concern; she just looked into the abyss in front of her, always running, never stopping – never.
Betsy says
Pfft-pfft-tt-tt-tt-tt. Pfft-pfft-fft-TT-TT-TT-TT. We could hear them, but we couldn’t see them. Even after our eyes adjusted to the dark of 11:55 p.m., we couldn’t see them.
“Where are those stupid sprinklers coming from?” whined the buxom brunette next to me. I had met her in the hotel lobby before we walked out the door and already forgotten her name.
taralazar says
Middle-grade novel, WIP
The summer I accidentally lost my two front teeth I became the first girl ever to win the annual Watermelon Thump seed-spitting contest. I catapulted my seed through the wide-open gap in my mouth, sending it 19 feet 3 inches past the reigning champion, ten year-old Georgie Spunkmeyer. When Sheriff Humphrey presented me with a crown carved out of watermelon, Georgie smashed his slice into the ground and vowed to lose all his teeth for the next competition.
Dan says
She barreled into Charlie’s office space like an old man driving through a farmer’s market, scattering secretaries to either side. Charlie watched her as she stalked towards him; the building management had removed his door two weeks ago to replace the hinges and had never bothered to bring the door back up, despite Charlie’s pleadings, threats, and meager attempts at bribery. He now conducted all of his phone business at an absolute whisper so that the secretaries couldn’t hear him; they thought he ran a small business importing rugs from Uzbekistan. Since nobody Charlie knew had ever even seen an Uzbek rug, he figured he was safe from any casual enquiries.
Mayzee says
Ok. I’ll enter. Nothing to lose I suppose.
“You be right quiet now.”
Neville Stubbs wound his gangly arms around his prey like the tightening coil of a boa
constrictor, wiry muscle and sinew and raw adrenalin undulating beneath the surface of his pocked, flaking skin. One bony hand clamped over the child’s mouth. Inflexible. Airtight. Steel.
Desperate, panicked breaths drew up the narrow straw of Ricky Brunt’s nostrils, making a slight, buzz-like gurgle as the air forced its way through a thin layer of snot, the kind that every freckle-faced ten year old boy in existence seems to produce on his face in abundance.
“Mmmmph…” Ricky wanted to shout. “Dad! Daddy! Stop it! Let go! My dad will beat the tar outta you, Mister!”
– taken from WIP “The Man Behind the Curtain” by Hazel May Lebrun
Creighton says
Licking the wretchedness from his jaws, the tiger looked at her as if to say “that is enough of that”. Haley couldn’t have agreed more as she stood blankly watching the blood drip from his mouth. She just wasn’t sure what to do next. Shocked, she felt something she had never felt before – free. Here she was on a simple stroll in the park with her mother when out of nowhere a tiger appeared and then no more mother.
ddelozier says
barry@sowowme.com:
Screams in a children’s hospital usually come from children, ones in pain or afraid of something about to happen (or occasionally, frightened by the sight of their food as it’s uncovered). On this particular day, however, the shouting in room 304 at Wickles Pediatric Hospital was coming from a full grown man having a temper tantrum – not because he was in pain or about to be poked with a needle – but because his ego had been badly bruised. All Billy Castleberry could do, stuck in the bed on the other side of the curtain, was sit there and listen to him rant.
abc says
OK, here we go. From my YA WIP.
The plane takes off in Chicago and I close my eyes as I always do during take-off. Only three more take-offs and landings to go until we reach our destination twenty-four hours into the future: Adelaide, South Australia. And then we will get into a car and drive another hour and a half until we arrive at a little town on a river far away from everything I have always known. “Open your eyes”, says my little brother. “You’re missing everything!” It’s true. Not just about the view outside the window, but a whole year of my life is going down the drain–and in reverse because I’ll be below the equator.
SPMiller says
Beregil knew he shouldn’t lust after his best friend, but he couldn’t help himself. And her trying to convince him to join her in the river wasn’t helping. Why had she taken him here? She gave no explanation, and that wasn’t like her; she had a reason for everything she did.
Priya says
Hello,
Here are the first lines of my historical novel, The Orange Girl. Although it looks like a play it is really just a theatrical prologue inside a novel.
Mrs Nelly Gwyn: (whispering in the wing, hands folded, eyes closed).
Take a breath. Count three. Curtain up. Now.
(Curtain rises. Enter the Actress stage left.)
Mrs. Nelly Gwyn: Here I am. Back by request: for one night only, at his behest. (Deep court curtsey to KING CHARLES II seated in the royal box). What a lark and what a loss that such things are no longer fit for one such as me. How impossible is my unlikely luck: For here we are for one last night: to whirl like a dervish, and dance in delight,
To look round and round at the faces bright, brightened still by candlelight. And then the curtain will fall and the thing will be done.
(Noisy sigh). So if it be now: Goodbye to you and goodbye to me. To what we’ve loved and what we’ve been. To the villains punished and the good set free and love scenes played under the apple tree. There. Done it.
Nina says
The shiva callers appeared hungry and wet, and despite the communal sadness at the loss of Phyllis Bloom, the moment friends and relatives arrived at the front door they tossed their umbrellas and walked towards the corned beef for their well-earned feast. Jill Bloom, who had managed to reach the age of thirty-one without making a single shiva call or even attending a funeral, watched her mother’s mourners with a mix of awe and disgust.
Regan says
Thank you very much for providing us with this opportunity. I am submitting the first paragraph of Desire Can Kill, my paranormal suspense (with strong romantic elements).
He watched the woman he planned to kill from the roof of her two-story townhouse. FBI Special Agent Petra O’Shaughnessy—an ostracized immutable and Rule One criminal. She stomped through the snow on the sidewalk toward him. Should he go with the toxic bug bomb accident or the leaky furnace plus defective carbon monoxide detector? He kept leaning toward bug bombs even though they would generally raise suspicions in such a cold climate. The inside of her house was a construction nightmare with partially demolished plaster walls, exposed insulation, and a near-carnival of insects begging for blame. But no one set off bug bombs at 10 p.m. on a work night. That scenario would have to wait until the weekend. Should he wait? Or would O’Shaughnessy try to run by then, forcing him to use aggressive execution? Decisions, decisions.
C A says
With a shotgun in one hand and a cattle prod in the other, Jim leaned forward in his blue-felt pilot’s chair and surveyed the landscape. He moved at a good clip now, the winds carrying the Darwin Award due east. Above him a balloon popped out of sheer spite. Without shifting his eyes, he slammed his heel into a sandbag until it fell free.
lizperk says
It was colder than a meat locker that morning as I scraped the windshield, stomping my feet to keep the circulation going. I decided to take a more scenic route than the interstate afforded, at least for a while. The old highway meandered through the mountains, snaking its way through some of the most breathtaking views on the planet. I had just purchased the car, a daring, sporty number, and had been itching to push it a bit more than allowed by law. It handled like a glove, taking those steep curves and inclines as a thoroughbred sweeping over obstacles. I was just telling myself what a lucky mucky-muck I was, when I slid around a curve at an absolutely exorbitant speed, those tires hugging the road like polyester pants with static-cling.
Derrick Hibbard says
It’s a love story.
When I was I child, I always pictured my death as something glorious—a metaphysical reality that transcended anything I’d every thought of or experienced. Many times, I would daydream about my death—entertaining the idea that I would be some sort of hero, saving someone or sacrificing my own life for the good of another. I would dream about these things in the middle of class, or while brushing my teeth, or while eating my bowl of cereal at breakfast.
Bob McCarty says
“K-man! K-man! Wake up! We’ve gotta go!” Waking to those words from Master Sergeant Charles Detmering, Josh Kastens knew April 2, 2007, was about to get serious.
Cora Porter says
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed as she looked into eyes the exact same speckled golden blue color as her own, eyes she had loved and hated all at the same time. The eyes she once trusted and the eyes that betrayed her. They were the eyes of her father.
Anonymous says
The old witch stopped at the river, the basket held up, close to her chest. She turned back and looked around, scanning the trees for some movement. “I dare you”, she mumbled. She took the kittens from basket and threw them in the water, one by one. There was no time to sink them with rocks and besides, she needed the basket. The for meatballs went below and above water, their mouths opening and closing without sound. Every time one would show its head, she would push it back under with a stick. It wasn’t much different than in the previous years and in few minutes she was done. She threw the stick, turned to leave and froze in mid step. A heart start beating in the water and the sound came in waves louder and louder. She bit her lips, her heart sinking. How did she failed to recognize it? That was no ordinary cat. from Nine lives and a witch
Kryshia
A Fam says
The pitch-black night suffocates me as an evil presence permeates the air. “This is not my dream,” I clench my teeth with determination. “And I can’t wake up until she does.” My dread grows stronger, and my legs shake with each trembling step. I am walking towards something treacherous, but I can’t stop. I won’t stop. “Go back,” a sinister voice whispers to me, but my feet won’t obey my fear. I must find her. I just hope it’s in time. Something brushes past my arm. Gasping in a sudden breath, I jerk away then freeze in the middle of a blanket of black. Finally, up ahead, I see her. My mind races with desperation as she looks deep into my eyes. Her horrified face grows frantic. She reaches out to me and mouths the words, “Help me!” As her limp body goes off the edge of the cliff, I am propelled with her.