Tag: 1000 words

Dead Obvious

Pavowski11 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: the Subgenre Mash-up. My mixed up genre? Zombie Whodunit.

I can remember, once in my youth, reading an Agatha Christie book, and I am sure it was nothing like this.

Dead Obvious

It’s all anybody can hope for in this world, to leave it without knowing whence the end comes. A surprise, like breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day or something. Surprise! You’re dead. And in that way, I was fortunate, because I didn’t see it coming. Middle of a dinner party. Excused myself for two minutes, and then it was lights out.

But here I am. Dead. And Alive. Which means two things.

One, somebody I know is a zombie. And two, that somebody didn’t exactly do an outstanding job covering his tracks. Just a nibble, I’m sure he thought (or she, I guess, the virus doesn’t discriminate, but it just feels like a guy’s lack of consideration), and then a total failure to kill me properly. You know, to ensure I didn’t come back.

I can feel it now, the bite on my shoulder, burning like a brand, spreading out like a fiery web. My head could be splitting open for the pain I feel; somebody must’ve clubbed me but good, to try to kill me before I came back. Nice job, that. My heartbeat sounds like the thumping bass at a rave right inside my ears. The burn is spreading. Whole body on fire. On fire with hunger.

I find myself wondering: Why the shoulder? Seems like too much sinew and bone up there to really get a good bite. Somehow, I feel like an expert in anatomy. The thigh is what I’d target, lots of muscle and fat and blood, inches of it before you tangle up in bones. Nice and soft, too, chewy and moist and…

They’re staring at me. I know this because I can feel their heat, smell their blood, hear their hushed whispers and slightly panicked breathing. All of them shocked. How could this happen? At our dinner party, no less? Right before the dessert course? Well, guess what, idiots? I may be dead, but there’s another zombie out there waiting to get you, too. It could strike at any moment.

I open an eyelid with a tiny squishing sound and they all jump. Not astute enough to catch wise to the zombie in your midst, but you don’t miss me sneaking an eye open, do you? Bunch of short-sighted jerks.

Okay. Everybody’s here. The biter is hiding in plain sight.

Could it be James? The snot-nosed trust-fund baby who’s here in a suit that costs twice the average monthly salary for a blue collar worker? He’s clinging onto the waist of his date, Barbara, like he’s more scared than she is. And she, the daughter of a hotel empire, wearing more furs than a snowbound wolf, screaming vacuously into his ear, like I’m about to get up and eat her face. Actually, that sounds rather tempting. I try not to think about how her skin would disintegrate between my gnashing teeth, how her blood would cloy in my throat, how…

Man, the bug works fast. All of them look delicious, in fact, especially tubby Vera, who’s crammed herself into a dress three sizes too small to accentuate her curves for her date, a man she hopes to ensnare in order to rescue her from the one-bedroom flat she shares with her sisters. Too bad he’s gay. Tobias there, lending her his elbow in order to keep up the charade even though he keeps sneaking glances at Francis, stands to inherit millions if he’d only marry a nice girl like Vera and give his mother some grandchildren. Poor woman knows she’s got a better chance of being eaten by zombies now than of seeing her son breed — there’s not much hiding his condition with the spangly tie, the perfectly coordinated pocket square, and swooshing sashay of his walk — but it’s nice to hope. Much like I hope to suck the meat from his fingers, slurp slurp slurp like chicken wings, and…

I slam my eye closed again to shut out the visions of devouring my ex-friend, and collectively they sigh in relief. Dead after all, they say, and shuffle from the room. Francis, the one Tobias has been eyeing, comes over to check my pulse — I know it’s him because he reeks of his cologne, smelling like cut grass and musk and cognac and spinal fluid and… maybe I’m just daydreaming a little, but he smells intoxicating — and determines that I am, in fact, dead. He announces it to the rest of the guests and they sigh in relief and move the party to the parlor. No sense hanging around in here while I lie in a pool of my own blood, going bad like the hors de’ouvres, ruining the evening the way my murderer has ruined my three-piece suit and my skull.

But wait. Francis. He’s the internet dynamo who founded a dozen different companies before he was thirty, and has been married almost as many times. Could he be my killer? It’s almost too much to imagine: as much as he’s been in the tabloids for dating this or that supermodel, that he might be the country’s highest-profile zombie to boot. How salacious. Everybody knows you can’t tell if somebody’s a zombie by checking their pulse, after all. Well, everybody except the people at this party, apparently.

Or maybe it’s Carol, who, after everybody else leaves, stands in the door frame hugging herself tightly, like all the heat’s been sucked out of the room. That’s not the room, dearie, that’s me, going cold over here on the Spanish tile. She thinks she loves me — or rather, loved me — but everybody here knows she could have done better than a third-rate investments agent. I could have bought her the mansion and the yacht, sure, but not the vacation home on the coast that she really has her heart set on. But I don’t think she could have killed me. She’s too innocent, and sweet, and delectable, and her face just looks like it would melt in my mouth, and… And there she goes.

All of them gone. Maybe now I can sneak to my feet and…

Arnulfo. The butler, of course. Pretending not to speak English so that he can simply nod and serve our drinks without a word. That ever-so-subtle limp that we all assumed was a scar from his troubled life in the third-world country of… wherever he claimed to be from. He lingers by the door, his smarmy, faintly clouded eyes lingering on me, and wipes a drop of my blood from his lip. His lip falls off, and he quickly replaces it, tamping it into place with clumsy fingers. That sneaky son of a bitch. His face contorts like he’s trying to giggle at me, or maybe he’s just moaning with the eternal torment of the living dead; it’s hard to tell which. He slips out the door toward the others.

I have to stop him before he kills again.

Shit. Did my blood congeal into glue or something? My face is stuck to the floor with sticky crimson, my limbs feel like they’re strapped with lead sleeves. I haul myself to my feet, but I feel shaky, unstable, like my body is made of jenga blocks balanced on a rope bridge. I splay my legs unnaturally to better hold my balance, throw my arms out in front to counterbalance my ungainly torso. That works. I hobble to the next room, throw the door open —

They all gasp at the sight of me, even Arnulfo, that treacherous swine. In a flash, Carol collapses in the corner with Francis, Vera starts screaming at a high C with Barbara in perfect harmony, Tobias grabs a chair and brandishes it like a medieval greatsword and James draws a little pistol from his coat pocket quick as a cobra. But that’s okay, I’ve figured it out, and I can explain it all to them in an instant, and we can kill that prick Arnulfo together.

I hold up my arms, take a shaky step toward them, and state my case: “Grrraaaaaaaaaarrrgh. Uuuuuuuuhhhhh… HmmmMMMMMMMMaaaammmmfffff.”

That’s odd. I try again: “Rrrrroooooooooooorrrrrrzzz. Nnnaaaarrrrssssshhhhhhhhhhh. Ffflllllllleeeeeeeeeeeccchhhhhhh…”

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Out of the corner of one eye, I see Arnulfo’s hand fall off. I scream at them all to look (“Blaaarrrr, BLLAAAAAAARRRRRR”), but he grabs it and shuffles out of the room, unnoticed, while they’re all staring at me like I’m some kind of monster or something.

Everybody’s shouting at me now. The girls are crying, the guys are advancing on me with their weapons, and it’s all a big mess. Still, all I can think about is eating their brains to save them from their own stupidity. I figure it’s worth a shot, so I lunge at Francis, he of the sweet cologne and flesh smell, and that’s when I hear the meat of James’s finger tighten on the trigger.

I hope he hits my brain this time.

Search History Stories

Pavowski5 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: Tell a story using search terms.

Sounds weird; is weird; is also tons of fun. I wrote one, then while thinking of something completely different, another one struck me. So here’s two for the price of one, and I might just return to this format.

Make your own honey
Amateur beekeeping
Increase beehive productivity
decrease beehive productivity
controlling beehive population
webMD how many bee stings are fatal
webMD buzzing in my sleep
webMD urge to eat sunflowers
how to attract a mate through dance

meteor shower viewing
identifying a meteorite fragment
webMD strange rash on hands
webMD rash on entire body
are meteorites radioactive?
visions of the future are they real
biggest lottery jackpot america
private islands for sale

Collector’s Item

Pavowski1 Comment

Chuck’s challenge this week: Literary Mash-Up.

I’m not sure if I’ve properly grasped the concept… I end up literally smashing the stories in question together rather than combining elements of each story’s genre, but this is a fun exercise, regardless.

Anyway, my mash-up victims were The Great Gatsby, which I love, and Pulp Fiction, which I double love. Let that serve as a warning that here there be gratuitous violence (thanks Pulp Fiction) language (thanks Pulp Fiction) booze and debauchery (thanks Great Gatsby) and possibly a deeper meaning hinted at but not in the least delivered (thanks BOTH).

Here, then, is Collector’s Item.

Collector’s Item

“We should have Tommyguns.”

Bruce propped one hand on the wheel and leaned his other elbow against the door, letting his fingers massage his bald scalp. Against his better judgment, he answered. “How many are there?”

“Six or seven, what I heard.”

“Hmm.” Bruce didn’t know how he felt about busting into a room with six or seven guys hopped up on moonshine and god knows what else, but he trusted Mr. G., even if Fitz was edgy. He changed the subject. “Where’d you get those shoes?”

Fitz had on a pair of wingtips polished to a blinding sheen. He angled his leg to get a better look at them. “Gypsies.”

“Get the hell out of here. Gypsies.”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m cryin’, sport. Band of gypsies.”

“Where did you find gypsies around here?”

Fitz sniffed and leaned back in the bucket seat, cupping a match to a cigarette and taking a deep drag. “Couple miles outside of town. They have a camp set up out there. Well, had a camp. Moved on since then. Wherever the fuck gypsies go.”

“And how, if I may ask, did you get a gypsy to part with a pair of shoes like that?”

“Gave him my .38.”

Bruce fought back the urge to slap Fitz across the face. “You traded a gun for a pair of sissyfied leather shoes?”

“I traded my old gun for a pair of designer alligator-skin shoes. One of a kind.”

“One of a kind, made out of hundred dollar bills, I don’t care; you don’t trade a fine piece of equipment like that for some shoes.”

“You do, if you have any taste. Look at your feet, man. What are you wearing, dime store loafers?”

“I promise you this: when I’m dropping bullets into somebody’s head, the last thing they’re thinking about is what’s on my feet.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. A man looks good, he feels good.”

Bruce shook his head and wiped a trickle of summer sweat off his brow. Fitz would argue the point until the moon got tired and went home. “This is it.”

The lights of the Hilton rose up like a luminescent palm tree in the night. Bruce maneuvered the car around to the service entrance, and in minutes, they had taken the stairs up to the 12th floor. There was some big event in the ballroom keeping everybody occupied; nobody even looked sideways at the two men in black, or at Fitz’s alligator-skin shoes.

“What I don’t understand is,” Fitz continued, having hardly stopped chattering all eleven flights up, “how big G makes all that money in such a short amount of time.”

This again. Fitz was always asking questions about the big boss. Whenever he did, Bruce could feel snakes sliding along the back of his neck. Boss had eyes and ears everywhere, and you didn’t go talking bad about a guy like Mr. G. Not if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders.

“Do you get paid?”

“What?” Fitz wasn’t a child, but he could damn sure act like one.

“Do … you … get … paid?”

“The hell kinda question is that?”

“We’re on this job. Pays a couple hundred. Now, whether that comes from Mr. G. or from Sweeney or from whoever else, those couple hundred spend the same. Who cares where they get the money from? Long as I get my cut, I’m happy.”

“All right, all right.” Fitz spread his arms out wide, the classic gesture of a man showing you he’s unarmed and means no harm. The twin holsters revealed at his belt as his jacket flapped open belied the gesture somewhat.

Bruce flicked his watch up to his face.  “It’s time.”

Fitz knocked on the door. That damn “shave and a haircut” rhythm: tap, ta-ta-tap, tap… Thick door. Heavy. Maybe oak or something, Bruce didn’t know. Smooth green paint, numbers in gold, fancy carpets all lush underfoot. Nice place to spend a weekend, if you could afford it.

A blaring trumped assaulted their ears as the door swung open on a scene straight out of a … what was that word…

“Can I help you?” The smarmy-looking guy who opened the door leaned in toward them in a haze of booze and cigarette smoke. His eyes drifted in and out of focus as he swept his gaze back and forth across them. Guy was as hammered as a carpenter’s bench.

“Hey, we heard you all were having some kind of party or something,” Fitz said, turning on a positively magnetic smile.

“You heard right, partner! Come on in, the more the merr–” he hiccuped violently then, almost losing his balance. With a grand gesture he flung the door open and stepped aside to allow Bruce and Fitz in.

“Bacchanalia,” Bruce whispered, the word finally coming to him.

There were no less than a dozen people around the room, in various states of drunken disorder. In the middle of the room, one couple danced violently and out of time with the music. Near them, collapsed on the floor, was another couple ignoring the music entirely in their attempt, apparently, to devour each other’s face. The breathy sounds of their kissing and moaning could be heard above the penetrating music. One armchair held a woman drowsily staring at a spot about five inches in front of her face. The couch held two fellows in shirtsleeves passed out on each other’s shoulder. In a poorly-lit corner, one nervous, parrot-eyed man hung on the arm of a woman who looked as bored with him as she probably was with the world, given the clattering assortment of priceless jewelry adorning the arms folded across her chest. All of them, besides the unconscious ones, had that stumbledrunk heaviness to their movement.

The man who had greeted them beelined to the bar, a grand affair of mirrors and gold trim, hosting a litany of bottles with expensive-sounding monikers, all very English sounding. He uncorked a bottle of clear spirits and poured three glasses at once with a swirling of the bottle, splashing booze everywhere. He proffered one to Bruce, who waved it away with a curt flash of the hand.

“I don’t imbibe.”

Undeterred, the man shifted toward Fitz with the drink.

“Not tonight, buddy.”

“More for me, then!” With a mad grin, their host slammed back one of the glasses at one gulp, dribbling about half the drink down his rumpled shirtfront. Then he turned and sashayed back into the madness.

Bruce, meanwhile, had found the record player and dragged the needle, silencing the music with that unmistakable scratch. It was as if he had pulled the plug on a carousel; all the motion in the room ground to a jerking halt. Fitz, meanwhile, hit the lights, and the partygoers blinked in the sudden blinding whiteness.

“Don’t get up,” Bruce said, in a not-exactly-friendly tone, to one of the sleepers, who had woken and rose toward him. Wisely, the man sat down. Every eye in the room followed Bruce as he stalked like a panther among the drunks. He came to rest in front of the only man in the room who wasn’t drunk, a broad-shouldered affair with a weaselly look despite his lustrous blond hair.

“You must be Tom.”

“Who wants to know?” This the man said confidently, smugly, stroking the back of the woman sitting on his knee. Her hand rested daintily on his chest. If Tom wasn’t recognizable by his size and his stare, the woman was recognizable in that she looked as if the angels themselves had set her in the midst of this den of debauchery. Her golden curls tumbled past her shoulders, diamonds festooned her fingers, and her expression was flighty, bemused, and a little otherworldly. Daisy.

Bruce smiled, sliding his hands into his pockets; just chit-chat, here. “I thought so. Great party. Was that Duke I heard before?”

“I don’t know much about music. More important things on my mind.”

Bruce’s eyes glinted, and he pointed a knowing finger at Tom. “Like the way you think, Tom. Like your taste in booze, too, though I don’t drink myself. But I can tell you’re an individual who discerns. Only the finest.” He flicked his eyes momentarily at Daisy.

Tom nodded, cool, in control, but his mouth curled in a sneer. He didn’t care for Bruce’s eyes on his wife.

Fitz had glided soundlessly to stand with his back against the front door, hands resting lazily on his belt. Bruce glanced his way and Fitz nodded the most imperceptible of nods.

“Well, Tom,” said Bruce, “there’s no easy way to say this, but you’ve got something that belongs to my friend, Mr. G.”

“Who the hell is –“

Like a cobra uncoiling, Bruce drew his pistol and fired into the face of the man he’d asked to sit down. His brains and blood fountained all over the other man on the sofa, waking him up. There was an instant of cacophony in which everybody in the room began to scream, but Bruce shot the other man and things got deathly quiet.

“I don’t think we need to pretend, Tom.” Bruce grinned around his gun arm. “You’re smarter than that. We’re here to collect Daisy.”

“Over my dead –“

“Careful, Tom.” Bruce drew back the hammer on his pistol for effect. “She’s going with us. Whether you’re alive or dead when she does is up to you.”

Through all this, Daisy wore a horrified look pasted across her wispy features, but her eyes registered something else entirely, like she knew how she was supposed to act but couldn’t keep her excitement from bubbling through. She yelped when Tom swatted her on the bottom and nudged her up from her perch.

“I guess you’d better go on with… I didn’t catch your name.”

“Didn’t give it,” Fitz chimed in, smiling that winning smile from the door.

Dammit.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Tom spat, and his bulk unfolded itself, springing out of the chair and throwing Daisy aside. He reached for the pistol at his belt but three bright blooms erupted from his chest – BLAM BLAM BLAM – and he staggered back into the chair, blood and spittle flying from his lips.

The men in the room, who’d seemed a bunch of harmless drunks before, lurched into action, reaching for concealed weapons or diving at the assassins. Intoxicated, though, they were woefully slow. Gunfire thundered off the walls of the little room, and ropes and sprays of blood mingled with the abstract artwork, soaked into the plush white carpet.

Daisy, her blond hair now red with blood, her newly crimson gown clinging to her body, stood trembling in the midst of a mass of death. The few other women in the room were screaming, the shrill sound echoing and magnifying itself in the small space. A dull thwack thwack thwack pounded on the edge of his consciousness; his heart pounding in his ears. It didn’t have to be this way.

With a heavy sigh, Bruce holstered his weapon and looked around for Fitz. Fitz knelt, his weapons spent, pounding the butt of his pistol into the ruined shape of one man’s head.

“Fitz.”

Thwack.

“Fitz!”

Fitz whirled, his gun above his head, mid-swing. A manic glee boiled behind his eyes. “Yeah?”

“We happy?”

Fitz smashed his gun into the man’s head one last time and shoved himself to his feet, sniffing derisively. “Yeah, we’re happy.”

“Miss Daisy,” Bruce said, holding his hand out for her with a little bow. Dreamlike, she took it, and allowed herself to be led from the room.

Fitz shoved his gun back into its holster and cast one last appraising look around the room. “We should have fucking Tommyguns.”

The Immutable Mr. Jenkers

Pavowski18 Comments

Chuck’s challenge for the week: The Opening Line challenge. I took a few weeks off from the flash fiction game, but it’s time to saddle up again. The task at hand: choose an opening line from another author and build it into a 2000-words-or-less story.

I took a line from a guy calling himself Nicholas. The first line is his. The rest is all me.

The Immutable Mr. Jenkers

The 3rd time I killed Mr. Jenkers I knew i had a problem.

Not because he came back to life. That happens all the time. Once is rarely enough when you start talking about quantum murder. Sorta like fixing a wobbly chair. You shave a few millimeters off one leg, then it’s wobbling the other way. Go back and try again. Or like swatting cockroaches. Sure, you get that one, but there’s a thousand just like him in the walls just waiting to pop out. That’s why there aren’t too many guys working solo like me anymore. Murder’s one thing, but that’s one universe, one reality. You want somebody well and truly wiped out, it takes legwork. Timelines have to be rewritten, sometimes memories have to be wiped, hell, I once had to take a two-hundred-year detour to make sure this one woman didn’t date any men from India, so that her descendant’s bloodline could be clean enough for her to marry into a rich family. People ask for the craziest things. And I’ve been back and forth across time so often, sometimes it feels like I’m older than the dirt itself.

Certainly felt like that after Jenkers. Who hires a hitman for a cat, I should have asked. Why not just, you know, stop feeding him, or drop him off across town. But it’s a hard thing to say no to a hundred thousand credits. And besides, how hard could it be?

I should’ve asked around before I took the job. I did, after the fifth try. Turns out, this cat’s been around for over three millenia, and maybe longer — they just don’t have good records going back past ancient Egypt. And no, I’m not making that up. Best I can make out, there have been over 800 documented attempts on the life of this particular feline; most of them successful. But like a bubble under a static sticker, you squish it down, it just pops up somewhere else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The owner’s this sweet old lady. ‘Bout 60 or so. All white hair, glasses on a chain, looks like a librarian except for the dark circles under her eyes and the smell like she hasn’t bathed in a few months. And she wants Mr. Jenkers whacked. “Do it humanely,” she asks. On account of she still loves him, despite the fact that she’s pretty sure he’s eroding her sanity. Those were her words. “He never sleeps,” she says. “He just watches me all the time. Like he’s accusing me of something. Like I had tried to kill him and he knew all about it.”

I know, right? She didn’t get the irony, and I guess that’s fair. I didn’t get it right away either, but of course she was trying to kill him, and he absolutely knew about it.

I’m getting ahead of myself again. It’s a hazard of the job.

Protocol says you always go the straightforward route on the first try, because you never know when once will do the trick. So — that afternoon, picked up a cat carrier, came by Harriet’s place (her name is — was — Harriet). Jenkers in the carrier along with a couple of bricks, and into the river he goes.

Next morning, he’s back. I fire up the ReClocker and arrive at her house a day earlier. No frills, just a hammer to the back of his head. Get back to Now, the cat’s still there. I try this a few different ways, go back a few years on the cat, come to find out she adopted him fully-grown from a shelter. So I go back further. Try to kill him every time, naturally, but sure as the sun, there he is every time I go back to Now. Trace him back to another family. Two kids, picket fence, and this psycho-eyed cat. Thing is, though, I’ve gone back five years now, and the cat looks exactly the same. Killed it over a hundred times, now, and every time, he’s back. Mr. Jenkers. Orange stripes, big chunk missing from his ear, eyes sparkling like black diamonds. And now, Harriet’s words are in my head, and I feel like when he looks at me — in the past, you know, not in the Now — he knows what I’m doing.

I go back ten years, and there’s Jenkers. Same as ever. I go twenty years back. Same old Jenkers, same old scar on his ear, same evil eyes. He’s living with some World War 2 vet, and I can’t bring myself to kill him in that timeline, so I go back even further. Thirty years. Then fifty.

When you first suit up in this line of work they tell you not to go getting crazy notions in your head about drastically altering the flow of history. Can’t go back and wipe out Hitler, for example — something’s broken on that guy’s reality and he always comes back. Can’t scrub out Mussolini, or Pol Pot, or Rasputin, or any of those guys that the history geeks would really like a crack at, right? Thing is, those guys — and I’ve gone back and messed with them, who wouldn’t? — they at least exist in a normal timeline. They’re born, they turn into big world-altering jerks, they die. And you can’t erase them from the Stream, but at least they’re just little contained pockets of horror and atrocity.

But not Jenkers.

This thing is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, beyond anything the Bureau’s ever seen, and maybe beyond anything the universe has ever seen. You go back to the Renaissance, Jenkers is there scratching at the edges of a Botticelli painting. Go back to the Middle Ages and Jenkers is chasing plagued rats down alleys. Ancient Egypt, like I said, was a good time for the old boy — they worshipped cats back then, you know, and with his eyes like eternity, well. You think cats get spoiled now when they end up with somebody like Miss Harriet, it’s nothing on Egypt in the pyramid days. He had his own entourage.

Suffice it to say, as far back as we can go — and we can go pretty damn far — I can’t find an origination point for this cat. For all I know, he’s existed since life first crawled up out of the swamps. He can’t be killed. Can’t be erased. Can’t be unmade. He’s like a scar in the fabric of the universe.

So what else could I do?

I adopted him from Miss Harriet. Took him back to my house. Bought a bunch of toys, you know, feathers on strings, little jingly balls. Found this guy on the internet who sells catnip by the pallet — god knows Jenkers will go through all of it.

It was unnerving at first, coming home every night to those empty black eyes staring at me like death itself. But he grows on you after a while. I always laughed when people said their cats had personality, but Jenkers… he’s got a sense of humor. Like, he’ll run under my feet when I’m coming downstairs in the morning. As if he were trying to kill me, to get back for the thousands of times I killed him. But it’s all in good fun. Late at night, he sleeps on my feet. When I’m reading, he’ll nose under the book and demand to be petted, with that one floppy, chewed-up ear.

I still kill him at least once a week. Just to see what happens.

But he always comes back. Dependable as the Sunday paper. Watching me with those eyes like midnight at the bottom of the ocean.

Some Stories You Should Read, 2nd Ed.

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Over the past month, I’ve been taking part in a round-robin writing challenge over at TerribleMinds. Week 1, we all started open-ended stories, and every week thereafter, each participant was tasked with continuing a different story.

I’m happy to say that most of the stories I had my hands on managed to complete an entire story arc, and saw finished versions. It’s a funny thing… as the weeks went on, there were fewer and fewer participants, and a lot of the stories just kind of trailed off into the void.

I’ve done my best to track down all of them, and when possible, to provide links to the websites of the other authors whose hands touched these stories. It’s been an enlightening experience.

1: Cold Blood. Contributing authors: Catastrophe Jones, Helen Espinosa, Lauren Greene.

2: Bart Luther, Freelance Exorcist. Contributing authors: Josh Loomis, Paul Willett, Henry White.

3: Wasteland. (Unfinished as of now, sadly. My chapter was the last.) Contributing authors: WildBilbo, Angela Cavanaugh.

4: Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. Contributing authors: Peter MacDonald, J M Beal, Liz Askew.

In short, if you’re on this site reading my fiction, you owe it to yourself to check out some of the links posted above. There’s something of a common thread binding all of us together, and this writing exercise has made those threads a little more visible.

Thanks to everybody who picked up pieces that I worked on, and for laying the groundwork for the stories I continued. This was a lot of fun!