Sorry for the long delay between installments. The next installment will probably be slow in coming, as well, because of events in real life, but I’ll do what I can. ~~~ It occurred to me that it was probably useless to expect real answers out of a madman, but I…
I took a sip of the tea to distract myself. I had never much cared for tea, and this didn’t change my opinion of the burnt water. I couldn’t ask Aura any of the questions I desperately wanted to without causing a scene, so I sat waiting for someone else…
I walked carefully, wanting to approach as quietly as possible. At the door I listened. I heard nothing. I felt Aura’s impatience–or imagined she must be impatient. I knocked. A cry answered, not a scream exactly, but a strangled sort of noise. I stepped back and waited, heart pounding. I…
I thought I could sense the nameless girl in my head considering. I don’t know. It’s a big deal. “I could just call you Girl.” Really? How thoughtful. “I mean, if you didn’t want a real name yet.” She didn’t have to get mad at me. I was trying to help….
The girl stopped talking. Despite the crashing of clouds and the thunder of the ocean, her voice had been the most distracting and dissonant, like listening to a symphony on earbuds in the middle of Brazilians cheering for the winning goal. A certain peace fell upon me and I felt…
Once, for reasons beyond my comprehension, I ran a half-marathon. That’s 13.1 miles of running. The .1 matters. I’d trained a little. I could do a 5K without dying. So, the first 3 miles weren’t bad. The second three were tolerable. And then I realized I wasn’t yet half done….
My hand and arm tingled for a moment, then the sensation was gone. I raised my arm and studied it as best I could in the dark. Lightning flashed non-stop behind me, and the boom and rumble of thunder joined with the rain and sea. In weird shadows I twisted…
Here it is, part 2, of the craziness that is/will be/should be The Wandernell! Enjoy! ~~~ I turned on the light. What was that beeping? It wasn’t the smoke detector. I didn’t have one of those fancy surge protectors with the battery back-up. The computer was off. I didn’t own a…
Experiment time — I wrote this as a start to a off-the-cuff, keep-it-moving, stop-thinking-and-write sort of story. I’ve got a few more installments ready and am half-tempted to dedicate my lunch breaks to pumping out this light piece of stream-of-consciousness. Would you read more? If so, tell me! I’ll keep…
In the fall of 2008, I was missing my old friends in the Story Project. (And by “old friends,” I mean the characters I had written during 2005 and 2006.) Inspired, I decided to start writing the journal of Britney Bontrager again. Britney Bontrager was an intelligent, stubborn, quirky, selfish, outcast of…
“Molly. Molly. Come on, talk to me, Molly.” “Shh! What part of radio silence don’t you understand?” “I’ve never been that keen on silence.” “Oh, don’t I know it. Can’t talk. We’re going in.” Clint tried to get another word in before the line was cut. No luck. He leaned…
Just beneath the control room, Clint took out the hallway cameras before Molly had a chance to tell him herself. The image-commands were thin and chaotic now, as if Arturo didn’t know what the next move should be and kept trying out options. Finally, three words occurred to him, surfacing…