Monday, February 28, 2011

Story Opening Contest Begins Now!

PRIZES TO THE WINNERS

The First Pop Lit Story Opening Contest has started.
-200 words maximum length.
-One entry per person.
-Contest ends Monday March 21 @ 11:59 pm.

HOW TO ENTER:
Simply post your story under "Comments" via the link at the bottom of this post.

---Please use a title and give your name as well---

Judges:

-Allie Dresser has been fiction editor for sixteen months for Gloom Cupboard-- http://gloomcupboard.com/. She writes on various sites like Fictionaut, among others.

-Frank Marcopolos is the former editor of the critically acclaimed literary zine, The Whirligig. A trained voice-over artist, he is currently producing audios of public-domain short stories on his website, http://frankmarcopolos.com/.

-Lynn Alexander is the founder and managing editor of Full of Crow Press and Distribution, producing print and web based content such as Crow Poetry, Fiction, Prate, Chapbook Series, Blink Ink, Fashion for Collapse, and more. She is also fiction editor at Red Fez and producer of MUST zine.
www.fullofcrowpress.org

IMPORTANT: See the previous post on this blog for prize details. I'll be doing commentary about the contest on that thread, including discussion of any glitches or problems. Post all suggestions about the contest, or reaction to the story openings, complaints, and so on, there.

Thanks! Good luck.

28 comments:

  1. Thank Heavens For Fuckups
    by Wred Fright

    Looking back, I think my girlfriend decided to dump me once I started watching professional wrestling on television regularly. Wrestling had been on cable tv only for years and I didn’t have cable so I didn’t see it, but then they started running a new show, Thump Theater, on the broadcast channel that the evangelist Huck Heavenly ran out of Akron. Huck also ran a huge buffet restaurant called The Neverending Supper that I always wanted to go to but my girlfriend always vetoed the idea and I was afraid to go there alone because supposedly Huck would make the rounds of the tables and if he thought you had the devil in you he would heal you by placing his hand on the back of your head and pushing your face into the mashed potatoes or ice cream on your plate. Then everybody in the restaurant would stand up and sing a gospel song while you were clearing the food out of your eyes and nose and mouth and then you’d be cleansed of sin. The worst part was of course that they filmed the whole thing for Huck’s daily tv show.

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  2. Polygamist’s Better Half.

    OK, so accidently, I fell in love with identical twins and foolishly promised each that I’d never love them by less than half. Renalda, lived on the first floor. She loved the way I parted my hair. Griselda, who lived on the second floor, said I sang sweeter than a mocking bird. It was an embarrassment of riches. You can imagine my surprise when they each declared they wanted to marry me. Jeez, I thought I was seeing double. Of course, there was only one glitch: I had to divorce my fist wife, first. No problem there. Everyone knew I was her better half.

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  3. Storm Lake
    By
    Len Kuntz


    The month my brother returned from prison, girls went missing again.
    We were new in town and kept to ourselves on purpose. Our house sat up a hill with a long sloping lawn. Everything was arranged so we’d be hid.
    In the place we lived before, three teens disappeared in the same month. They were all similar in build, blonde, closer to the pretty than plain. They all resembled me.
    There was no concrete evidence linking Daryl. His crime had been a drunk driving murder charge. But the day he was jailed, the abductions ended.
    Worrisome for me was his bedroom wall of posters: blonde cheerleaders and blondes wearing school girl tartan, hundreds, all identical to the missing girls and then, down on the bottom, pinned at an angle was a picture of me the summer Daryl and I went canoeing on Storm Lake.
    Daryl had wanted to go skinny dipping, and so I agreed reluctantly. In the water, he came upon me fast, much like a shark might. He said he was only kidding, just tickling me, but I know a tender touch when I feel it.
    Now Daryl’s home and it feels like Storm Lake all over again.

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  4. Aspect Enhanced
    by Mike Whitney

    Carefully, I removed the sunglasses covering the gauze bandages over my eyes. My newly-implanted corneal camera was invisible as I stared into the bathroom mirror. I had half-expected to see a terminator style big red eye. The implant surgery had altered my facial configuration and eye color had been changed in both eyes to compensate for the automated lens functions. My pale blue eyes were now dark brown. Camera commands were based on blinks: two to start filming, one to stop, three to play the last seven seconds, blinking both eyes twice to zoom in on the image or person before me. Side views were accomplished by rotating the left eye independently and simply looking sideways without turning my head. This would be useful, but it presented a strange appearance to anyone looking me in the face, so I would wear shades with transition lenses.

    In the mirror, I smiled, and he smiled back. We smiled together. I winked at him twice, and I smiled first. I smiled twice and he had it. This was new. The eye cam seemed to be learning, reading my pre-thoughts and staying in perfect digital synchronicity. My cell tooth buzzed, "Yes?"

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  6. UNDER THE DOME OF NOONAN
    by Salvatore Buttaci

    Dad ignored the dead pedestrians cluttering Blaise Pascal Road as the Newton lifted over them, skirted around them, whizzed by towards Computville.

    "What's with Denver?" Gottfried asked him because bad-smelling human litter always puts his nose out of joint. In a very old novel text-screen he had once read that in the time of Twentieth Century Americans, dead squirrels, oppusums, and stray cats were a common sight for early morning drivers on their way to work. But, damnit, here it was already noon and the hovervans were nowhere. The bumper sticker on the rear of the shiny new Fermi in front of them read in tall blood-red script: "I DON'T BRAKE FOR DEAD FOLKS."

    He could handle the baking-hot noon outside his passenger window as long as he took shallow mouth breaths. Death smelled. Holy Truth, there were so many bodies! So, focusing his eyes upwards at the Plasthick Skydome, Gottfried tried to alpha himself down to a real low insensitivity. He managed to shrug off the grotesquely mangled bodies of children as if they were all red-paint-streaked broken dolls that accidentally had spilled out the back doors of a speeding van.

    "Well, Son," Dad finally said, "Denver is Denver."

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  7. Princess
    by Frank Tas

    She was a princess -- whenever we fucked on the couch she'd ask me if I felt that quarter under the mattress that dug into her ass cheek. When I hugged her her skin would turn a crimson purple that didn't go away for days. In bed, sleeping together, she would keep me awake complaining about the dust mites that were defecating all over her face. I stopped holding her hand after the third time I broke it. If I kissed her too hard she would get a bloody nose and if I pushed her arm she'd ice it for a week.

    One time I put a rock underneath our mattress and she almost lost a kidney. The next night I put a piece of glass there and she bled to death. The bump put a hole through her back, all her blood drained and she kept screaming, but I ignored it. Her corpse gave off a scent of flowers and potpourri. I poked her belly and broke through the skin like tissue paper. I placed her body on the curb with the rest of the recyclables and I never received a call or anything.

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  8. Rapture Zombies By Daniel Stine

    Rapture. If I’d thought it was real I’d been a better Christian. Now I’m suffering the Tribulation with the rest of the Left-behinds.

    Persecution by those taken up. God, in his infinite humor, took their souls and left their perfectly functioning bodies behind. Zombies. Just like in the movies. Except these guys weren’t dead, just soulless.

    The thing about the soul is it animates the body. It makes us Human. Bodies without souls are just animals; intelligent, carnivorous, animals.

    Ironically, we Left-behinds bear the Mark of the Beast. You can tell a zombie by it’s efficient body language. They move with a perfect triumvirate of purpose: to eat, procreate, and dominate.

    It’s bad enough the zombies eat our dead and rape our women, but when they start trying to play boss, that’s a line we don’t cross. Zombies die like any other animal, and contrary to the movie lines of yore, they do not resurrect. Dead is dead.

    The Left-behinds are organized. We hold this city. The “Angels” may try to purify us though God’s idea of Holy Tribulation, but we’ll not go to Hell without a fight.

    As for the Deity, I’m saving a bullet for him.

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  9. Kate Mahoney - The End of the World

    I wonder, when the world ends, as I know it will, if I will able to laugh still.

    I wonder if I will ever be able to summon a smile to my face again. They always mocked me, because I could find the humor in the darkest of situations. I could take on the world and find something to laugh about in it.

    I cannot recall the last time that I laughed.

    I cannot recall the last time that I smiled.

    My hand clenches tight around the handle of the coffin as we walk. I am careful to make no eye contact with any of the other five. We have all known each other for years, yet there is no desire in my mind to have to see the lies hiding behind their eyes.

    One of us was responsible for his death. It wasn’t me. We were his closest friends and we were the only ones who knew the precise details of his schedule. Someone killed Vasily or leaked the details to someone else.

    It wasn’t me.

    There is no one here that I can now trust. I am not a trusting person by nature, but this has not helped.

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  10. The Side Effects of Sleeping
    -Koty Neelis

    It was a Tuesday afternoon the last time I saw her. We talked in a yellowed living room that held rotting furniture and a stale odor. As I sat squirming in a seat many men had laid naked on before I listened to her, although she seemed to be talking to someone else; anyone else but me. Children in tattered clothing adorned all sides of her while she ranted about her previous week in jail, an assault and battery charge for beating up a man in a country bar on the east side of town. He looked at me wrong, she said, and I believed her.

    There was always a reason for a man’s ultimate misfortune. Somehow she had power. No one ever really understood it. I don’t even think the men she slept with understood what she was doing to them. Yet somehow she would lure them out of every cent, every marriage, and every child they ever reared. She was able to take their life and slip it quietly under the covers hoping they would never remember it in the morning.

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  11. Gita Smith -- The Killer Brides


    Pain licked at my face and ribs. The woman who rolled me into the room lifted a sippy cup to my wired jaw. She gestured that a translator had arrived. I didn’t know this place, yet I sensed that, at last, I might be safe.
    The first to introduce herself was Locator, the scarred gray-haired woman who’d rescued me. My translator took up the thread, and I willed myself to stay alert.
    Several tired-looking women, dressed as I was in loose-fitting robes, gave their code names and facts of their ordeals. I had been given a code name, too: Ponytail. To use my real name was forbidden.
    It was Yellow-Hair’s turn to talk, the one I’d shared a ride with to this shelter. “Imagine that you are happily married,” she began. “Imagine that you are in love, trusting, ready for a joyous life.
    “Then imagine that your new husband comes home one day with a strange woman and her suitcases, moves her in and says, ‘This is Natya. She’s Russian, and I ordered her from an online catalog to be my wife. The two of you will have to work things out. I can’t afford to ship her back.’”

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  12. Confession

    By Mike Handley

    The Crown Vic’s light bar looked like a miniature cityscape under the sodium vapors. Even without its silhouette in the yellow haze, or the glow of a dying Marlboro outside the driver’s door, the parked cruiser would’ve been noticeable to anyone except Charlie, when he was taking his meds. Without pharmaceutical help, he’d see men in white coats behind every corner.

    Charlie parked his momma’s Buick in the Piggly Wiggly lot and, bearing a bottle of wine, skipped across the street to the newspaper office. It was approaching midnight on a Tuesday, and he knew I’d be alone and putting the finishing touches on that week’s edition. That I would smoke and drink with him, chicory-laden coffee to his choice of poison, was the reason he had a crush on me.

    “Hi, handsome,” he chirped. “Bet I know what’s the top story.”

    “I’ll just bet you do, Charlie. Don’t call me that.”

    A local girl had not arrived home after a high school dance, news worthy of 70-point Helvetica in a city of 3,514, where car wrecks and oversized vegetables routinely merit the front page.

    “Can I see what you wrote?” he begged. “I promise I won’t touch you.”

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  13. A View of the Harbour

    by Ian Rochford


    When my brother Owen returned from the war you could still see the harbour from our front door, all around to the bushy headland known as The Whale. There we had played war games in which we died and were reborn a hundred times, lives lost as casually as the toys and clothes we left behind at the end of the day and found again the next. However, what Owen had left in Vietnam was lost forever and my parents began to absorb his numbness as their own. Their joy at his return was transmuted into a realisation that they had lost him after all, to something that resembled death in all but its cruel continuation of mobility and subsistence.

    Occasionally he would walk down to the water. One day, after he had spoken to a group of schoolgirls playing truant to smoke on the old wharf, the Police were called. That night my father fastened a padbolt to the side gate. Owen was confined to the boundaries of our house and yard. By day he was a spectre, drifting through rooms but never inhabiting them. At night we would listen to him howl as his nightmares tore him apart.

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  14. Title: 3
    by Tom Hendricks
    First Paragraph:

    The stars that were shinning at the beginning, were the same stars that were shinning at the end; and though to the casual observer they looked unmoved, they had in truth been traveling at incredible speeds: some caught in the orbits of others, some colliding in gargantuan explosions, and some crossing the paths of others , separating, and moving on.

    Three people were gazing at those stars.
    The first was....

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  15. YOU'RE NOT GETTING IT
    By Emerson Dameron

    See it’s funny because…

    Well, you know…

    Shit, I HATE to have to explain myself, but…

    No. That’s not what I meant. That isn’t what I meant. AT ALL…

    No, you’re still not getting it…

    How hard is it to…

    I mean, Jesus! Come on now…

    OK…. Yeah, sure; that makes sense…

    So we can agree that…

    No. Not at all…

    Well, no. No, I don’t. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all…

    Wait. What the hell are you talking about? I thought we were…

    You’re not making any sense now…

    OK. OK. Just put that thing down.

    ReplyDelete
  16. John Bobst
    rabblemonster@theforceofnature.net

    He scans the large clearing from the roof. A lonely tree conceals his location from the light of the moon. He hears a large set of wings beat above him and then feet gently touch down behind him.

    “What are you doing here,” she asks.

    “No.”

    “No?”

    “You’re here to convince me to leave, I’m not leaving, so, no.”

    “Why are you doing this? She wouldn’t do the same for you.”

    “……………..”

    “Are you even listening to me?”

    “She’ll die if I don’t. Quiet, they’re coming.”

    “How many?”

    “Five.”

    “Five isn’t so bad. You could have handled this on your own. Why did I even bother coming?”

    “To harass me remember. Five doesn’t seem right, there must be more somewhere.”

    “Look, behind that line of trees.”

    “I don’t see anything.’

    “Another 5 at least, probably more. Guess it’s a good thing I came along.”

    “’Came along’ implies that you were invited. I don’t need your help, you should go”

    “I’m not a helpless little girl like she is……………….Fuck, did you see that?”

    “Yup.”

    “Is that…”

    “Go inside, grab her, and go.”

    “I thought you killed him.”

    “Apparently he’s more resilient than I thought.”

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  17. The Diadem
    By Anthony Jones

    It was just like every other day in the land, full of darkness and evil. The evil king sat at his throne, thinking of what to do to the citizens next that would give him pleasure. At that time, a man dressed in black garments ran into the great hall. He didn’t waste any time.
    “It’s been found!” he yelled. The king’s eyes grew wide. It was the very thing he had hoped to never hear. He stood up quickly and looked all around. He shook his head in fear. He thought he had hidden the diadem well. Such a good hiding spot, that even he had a hard time remembering where it was.
    “Who has found it?” the king asked. “How much time do we have?” It had been long told that he who found the lost diadem would have the power to overtake the king. He would have the power to rid the land of evil and become the most powerful man ever lived. He knew it was only a matter of time.
    “A boy,”
    “A boy?” the king asked. Laughter filled the great hall. He sat back down and seemed to relax. There, he continued to laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Toraloo
    by
    Sean Patrick Reardon

    "KG is a fucking force," I tell Layne, who's more interested in his iPhone than watching Kevin Garnett slam home an alley oop pass from Shaq.

    "Best move they ever made getting KG,” he says, fingers still moving around on the touch screen.

    The Celtics are crushing the Kings by twenty-six with six to go. The spread is more than covered. Layne’s up a grand and happy about it.

    We’re down from Jay, Vermont hanging out in our room at the Crown Plaza in Nashua, New Hampshire. Layne’s waiting for a Facebook status update from Shannon that will let us know if our game is on for tonight.

    At ten-thirty it comes and Layne comments on her status to acknowledge receipt.

    “It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some people are,” Layne says, walking toward the bathroom. “What the fuck was he thinking? This Little Chucky dude sounds like a real fucking pissah.”

    “If his picture is any indication, yeah, I’d have to agree. Stupid and ugly is a tough cross to carry through life. The odds were stacked against him from day one.”

    Layne laughs. “Fucker does look like that psycho doll though, deserves the nickname.”

    ReplyDelete
  19. Spells & Guns (Magic vs Science Series)
    By Daniel A. Roberts - kroberts89@cox.net
    ~~~~
    It's one of those disgusting mornings. The kind where your head is thick with sleep and everyone around you has nothing but bright cheerfulness to bludgeon you with as they walk by. I swear if I see one more craptastic smile floating past my face, I'll yank my blaster pistol and fry the overpaid grunts.

    "Sergeant Chet," Harold calls out. I turn around. The moron doesn't know how lucky he is there's no smile on his face. "You got a package in your locker. Came in last night."

    "Yeah," I hear myself growling. My feet take all the time they want in getting to my locker. What the hell. It's my disgusting morning; it felt right to stretch out the misery.

    The ship's locker senses my arrival thanks to the stupid chip in my dog tags and it slides open.

    My mouth drops open in complete shock while I fall to my knees. Eight months in space without my love and joy nearly got the whole deck crew killed. Now they're saved. I'm saved. I reach into the locker and hug my brand new large can of Folgers coffee. Thank God!

    That's when the frigging red alert went off. Shit.
    ~~~~

    ReplyDelete
  20. Title: Glas
    Author: XXXXXXXX

    I’d almost forgotten I wanted to keep an eye out for this certain customer after having seen him at a restaurant with his wife and kids two week prior—he walked into the store and I nodded hello before I’d even looked up. It was him, certainly the man from the restaurant. He lingered around the new release wall, then slyly ducked through the curtained partition into the adult section.

    I let Teresa take her break before me, waited almost half hour for the guy to come out with the usual stack of six pornos—three newish ones, three random older ones. Norman Wynol—he looked just like his name, smelled like his deodorant and the fabric of his suit. Wedding ring still on the hand, which I’d wanted to confirm, then I got a glimpse in his wallet that there were photos of his kids, younger than they’d been at the restaurant, two boys and a girl in department store portrait.

    As soon as he was gone I pulled his account back up, scribbling down his telephone number, address. I pulled up his history, hit print, nervous that Teresa might ask me “What’s going on?” if she noticed the machine spitting out papers before it got through.

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  21. John Dorian Marshall "The Mix Up"

    “There was this beautiful blonde going steady with, dig this, two different men! Same time! And she’d been writing letters to both of them one afternoon – she’d say ‘Neal my only love, meet me at Joyce’s at 2 o’clock’ and to Dean she’d say 4 o’clock! Now, a couple days pass when she’d already stuck the stamp on the letters and sent them away and she’d realized the letter to Neal had read ‘Dean, my only love’ and for the other cat his name being Dean, his said ‘Neal, my only love’ and now she was flat out bug eyed and she was racing over to Dean’s apartment to make sure he hadn’t read the letter and she was running and running and running – finally gets there, and to her surprise Dean’s as happy as a schoolgirl in ’54. Now, when she walks in the apartment, get this, she sees the letter sitting on the kitchen table and it hasn’t been read yet so blondie sneaks it in her purse, gives old Dean a kiss and tries to get the hell outta there! But Dean catches her by the arm! Asks her what’s going on and she has to explain the whole bit – Dean loses it! He kicks her out and blondie’s balling, but she figures she has another man anyhow so she runs over to Neal’s apartment – banging on the door – making a scene – Neal opens the door, a cool cat this guy, and turns out he’s already read the letter! Matter of fact he’s reading the letter! And she falls in his arms, crying – tears flying all over – she explains the mix up, she asks for forgiveness, and boy can you dig it, he kicks her out too! Throwing the letter in her face and as she reads it she realizes there wasn’t a mix up at all!”

    ReplyDelete
  22. The End of Their Forks
    By David Biddle

    There are October days on the Outer Banks when the waters of the Atlantic still glint with liquid flashes of sun even though summer is long gone. Clouds explode in white smoking bursts, stilled just slightly by the strange heat of the watery autumn sky. Pelicans and sea gulls continue to coast on the wind, but tourist shops advertise sales. Waitresses go one more button down on their blouses and bend just a bit more across tables. During the week, businessmen on vacation escaped from Manhattan, Washington, and even Chicago, drink beer before breakfast and masturbate in the luxurious shower stalls that trick out the giant vacation rentals of Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, and Nag’s Head. Divorcee mothers tow small children in new red wagons down to the beach, take off their shoes, wonder if they should feel happy to be free from marriage, put the little ones down for their naps, yearn for a tryst with the itinerant businessman renting next door who sits reading on his porch, drinking a daiquiri in the sun. The youngest of the divorcees are usually the most feral.

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  23. Bob's Escape

    We had already been three days in this hell; buried in this cave but not quite dead. Each of us knew our own turn would come, the only question was when. We had even stopped trying to talk to each other. We only waited.

    Soon, it would happen again. There would be a clank of metal-on-metal at the door, and it would swing wide open. A shadow would stay back while two captors would enter, grab one of us, and leave. The door would shut, another clank would sound, and we would be alone. To wait. Again.

    There were four of us left. We learned early on that if you struggled when they tried to take you, they would still take you, but you would be unconscious. If you rushed the door, the shadow had a gun; and the door was the only way out. When we started, there were eleven of us.

    I decided to get up and move myself closer to the door; maybe improve my chances of being selected, of ending the waiting. As I sat, Bob stood up and said, "I figured out how to escape".

    ReplyDelete
  24. Bad Things Rising
    By
    Greg Harman


    Lupez was sick that day and the service was going to be really short since they couldn't find a parson willing to preside, what with the beloved being a theosophist and all, so I thought I should start work early. It's important for the hole to be done, 3x7x6, before the mourners arrive, so they don't have to pass somebody digging, all in a hurry, flinging up dirt and cursing when he hits a rock or powerline while his partner, Lupez, leans on his tool eyeing the women in their tight, black lamentation outfits.

    I was down 4 foot when a young man walked over with a spade in a hand and The Old Number 7 in another. His looked down at me, took a long swig, and then showed himself to be no gentleman, despite his nice suit and fingernails, by not passing the bottle over and instead pouring it out in front of me. Then he stuck his spade into some loose soil and began filling the grave, me in it! I can tell you that I hadn't been that mad since that time someone had come up on me while I was digging, unzipped his fly, and

    ReplyDelete
  25. Uganda Lost
    By Caitlin Chock
    captaincait@hotmail.com

    I awoke with a start to the blast of semi-automatic gunshots. Although aroused from the deepest of sleep, I was instantly up and on my feet, for I knew what those dreaded bullets meant. The rebels were coming, if not already here. With no time to gather anything within our tiny wooden hut, I began desperately shaking my sleeping brother and sister to alert them to the fast approaching danger. Mama suddenly rushed into the house, and despite only the meager slivers of early morning light seeping past her, I could see the terror that gripped her face and knew that my own countenance must be a mirror of that same emotion. With a single look passed between us, we were able to convey the message without a word. We must get out.

    Although small for the age of ten, my younger brother Jesop was a prime captive for the rebels. He may be the only one among us to escape alive, but his future would be nothing to envy. Taken and brainwashed against his own people, he would become yet another one of their vessels of destruction. Our only hope for survival was to flee before the rebels overtook

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  26. Sorry, left out the title.

    Finding My Escape
    Prologue
    by Fran Yoakum Veal

    He looked down at the knife in his left hand, dripping in blood. Pausing from his task, he listened to the sound of labored breathing coming from the other room. The gasping became slower and heavier until they stopped. Charles Jordan was dead. The killer laughed.

    Back to work.

    He turned his head toward the woman splayed on the kitchen floor in front of him. He’d hit her pretty hard, but this gal was tough. Grabbing her tangled hair, he jerked her into a sitting position and placed the bloody knife under her throat.

    “Tell me where you hid the chip.”

    “No!” she gasped. The man watched as Liz Jordan’s dark eyes darted wildly at the clock.

    “Where’s your daughter Liz?” he hissed in her ear, pulling the knife ever so slightly into her throat.

    The woman’s eyes grew wide for a second, but quickly veiled again.

    “She’s spending the night with a friend.”

    “You’re lying!” He dug the knife deeper. A drop of blood trickled down her neck and dripped on the white tile floor.

    “Tell me where that chip is, or I’ll kill her, too.”

    “Okay, I’ll tell you, but pl..please," she sputtered, "I’m begging you…

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  27. Just Over in the Glory Land
    by Dennis Hogan

    I awoke at the foot of the stairs. I had hit my head--hard. I was concussed. I needed a drink.

    Laying on the floor, I tried to figure out how I was going to stay awake. You're not supposed to fall asleep when you have a concussion--if you do, you don't wake up. I got up off the floor, collected my things, and went to the table where there remained another three or four shots in the bottle. I poured them and sat down.

    I felt exhausted and there was no way I was going to stay awake.

    "If this is it," I thought, "if I don't wake up, either I drift off into nothingness, rot, and all of that, or else I meet Jesus."

    I prepared myself for the latter possibility. I knew that if I met Him, it would be too late to ask for forgiveness for my abandonment of Him, my failure to live anything resembling a Christian life. I would burn. But not before I told the bastard just what I thought of Him. I would not repent, in this life or the next; I was prepared to die like a good atheist.

    Anyway, where was I going to find a priest at this hour?

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  28. Running down the street, the man choked on a sob. He wasn’t prone to crying, but today was an exception. Time had unfortunately discovered his secrets, his evasions, his sneaky ways.
    This man could no longer live how he had routinely lived for the last thirty eight years of his life. They were after him. And soon—very soon—they would halt his breathing on cold truth residing in a suspicious neighborhood of snobby, well-to-do middle class. Many of those accusing red envious eyes glaring forth from neighbor’s windows revealed a corrupted soul beneath. Among that cannibalistic pack of wolverines, this smaller and utterly alone pup of a man stood barely a chance at all.
    He was dead by the time the first rays of pink dawn spread over the morning sky.

    ReplyDelete