I have been writing prose, both fiction and creative nonfiction, for most of my life. As a child, writing was an escape from the dark things that threatened to overpower me. As an adult, writing became a tool through which I empowered myself to face the darkness. I have always been an avid horror fan, and while I tend to branch out into several subgenres, horror is my preferred medium. Coming Summer 2009, I have two short stories that will be featured in horror anthologies, and will definitely post and promote the details as more are made available to me.

Below are a few excerpts from stories I have had published recently, along with a link to the full story so you can finish reading.

FICTION

Black Velveteen

Elite model Number 33B, a Cybernetic Service Unit that called herself Velvet. Milk-chocolate skin and honeyed gold curls, her lips were a bubblegum kiss of pink paradise curved into perfection. The precision measurement of her body had produced sky high legs and perky, round breasts that accentuated both the graceful length of her neck and the slender curve of her hips. Clothed she was a masterpiece, but the real artistry lie beneath fabric and behind closed doors.

“What the hell is it doing here?”

“She’s a murder suspect,” Hank reached into the
breast pocket of his shirt and took out a box of mints. He popped two into his mouth and offered the box to Dean, but Dean held up his coffee and shook his head.

“Oh yeah? Murder suspect, huh,” Dean’s jaw jutted outward, his lower lip enveloping the top one during the thoughtful maneuver. “A bit unusual isn’t it? I thought all Cybs were programmed for nonviolence.”

“So did I,” Hank started, “but that little beauty right there’s our only suspect in a child homicide.”

“Jeez Louise!” Dean laughed, “Talk about a black sheep!” He cuffed Hank on the back. “Get it, Proctor, black sheep.”

Hank’s face curled into the warped kind of mug that came from a lifetime of late nights and twisted crime scenes, uncooperative suspects and bad diner food, but mostly from jackasses like Dean Koch who thought working for the city gave them something in common and made them friends.

“You’re a regular comedian, Koch! A real John Cleese.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. He was before your time.”

“When you gonna question it,” Dean asked. “I got a couple questions for it, let me tell you,” he went on. “I’ve been dying to get close to one of those things, but the Missus…”

“Not a chance, Koch,” Hank stepped away from the observation window. “I’m waiting for a CSU Specialist from Henway. From there on out, it’s just the spec and me.”

“You’re no fun,” There was a definite hint of disappointment under Dean’s mock playfulness. “At least let me at it when you’re done with it.”

“You know precinct policy on tampering with evidence,” Hank smirked.

“Awe, come on, Proctor. It only takes one second to look the other way,” Dean’s face drew gaunt with the implication of his desire. “Come on, ten minutes.”

“I ought to write you up myself for that,” Hank warned, but never followed through as the steady click of heels on tile ended the threat with nothing more than a curt glare. “Now get outta here.”

Hank turned over his shoulder to glimpse the suit making her way toward them. She had a file-folder tucked neatly into her right arm and a posh briefcase swung from her left in perfect rhythm with her deliberate step. Her tightly piled russet hair was pinned into place with a sterile silver clip, and horn-rimmed glasses perched just on the tip of her nose. The silver nameplate pinned to her navy-blue dress suit identified her as Henway Cybernetics Specialist, Rita S.
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Call of the Selkie

Despite living in the middle of farm country Pennsylvania, all of my father’s paintings were of the sea in its many guises. Each painting was a tiny piece of him that he’d left behind, the only goodbye note before he mysteriously disappeared that afternoon while I was at school. Every night after he left I sneaked into his studio, stood in the half-dark of the setting sun and tried to decipher the messages he’d left me. Orange slices of sunset slanted through the blinds behind me as I watched the raging sea roil inside the canvas. Alive and overwhelmingly real, in the silence I could hear the distant call of gulls as the waves smashed like fists upon the shore.

Eventually my mother put a lock on the door and gave me a stern lecture about putting the past behind us. She did it just to punish me. She was jealous that the paintings spoke to me, but more afraid that I might discover some hint about where he’d gone. Maybe she worried that I would follow and forget her just like he did. She hid the key so well that entry was impossible. I didn’t cry, or fight her though I needed to. I wanted to scream and tear the smug look from her face, but instead I acted like I didn’t care. She took away from me the last physical connection I had to my father, and for that I could never forgive her.

It wasn’t long after she locked the door that I began to dream myself inside the paintings. Drifting from wave to wave, surrounded by a host of sleek, grey seals, whose joyful song soared high above the waves. Around and around the seals swam in an ancient spiral dance, and then my father appeared from the edge of the circle, young again, younger than I’d ever seen him even in photographs, but his eyes always gave him away. He smiled, and it was a real smile.

“It’s time to come home,” he said.

He held out his hand, and I grasped his fingers, but as he disappeared beneath the water, the waves pushed me upward every time I tried to follow. I couldn’t follow where he went, as though the sea itself kept spitting me out. One by one the seals all disappeared and darkness drew the sun away. Alone, buoyant, wave over wave of salt musk and hundreds of miles between me and dry land, I laid back and floated beneath the endless stars while moonlight rippled silver sheets over my ocean bed.

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NONFICTION

Manhunt

“Who wants to play Manhunt?”

Manhunt was a game only similar to flashlight tag in that it involved hiding and then seeking with a flashlight. The older kids told us the stakes were higher, and had never allowed anyone under fourteen to play in the past.

“We’ll play in teams of two,” Matt announced.

He had hypnotized simply by asking us to hang out with him. He had always been a center for us to gravitate to. When we were small we often sought him out for answers to complicated gaming questions, or to help us create new games. Unfortunately his games often involved violence and cruelty, while he oversaw the results from far enough away to not be directly associated with things if somebody’s parents came along.

Much to my surprise he had paired himself with me. All of the teams were opposite gender, “To even out the odds,” he said. Was his teaming up with me a vendetta, an opportunity to get me alone and knock me down a peg after having discovered him during flashlight tag.

“So who’s going to be it first?” Hands on hips, Eve tossed her hair in a boyish, flirtatious fashion. She’d been paired up with Ed, whom she’d had a crush on since the third grade.

“Do your stupid bubble gum game, Eve.” Matt smirked.

She had to feel stupid kneeling down, “Bubble-gum, bubble-gum in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?” She had stopped on Gary’s shoe and he answered five. “One-two-three-four-five, if you want to stay alive hope that I don’t count you out, ‘cos you are it!”

There wasn’t enough money in the world that could have forced me to purposely humiliate myself in front of Matt like Eve had done. Most times I felt like breathing was humiliation enough. I glanced down at her finger tapping shoe-tops, waited for the extended version that landed the tip of her nail on top of her brother’s shoe just after, “. . . who will be the next one, and you are it!”

“I’ll fucking kill you, Eve.”

“You said to do it, Matt!” She hopped up.

Under ordinary circumstances, I’d watched him pummel her for being cocky in the past, but instead he shrugged and said, “You better hide good. If I find you, you’re dead.”

The partners huddled close and disappeared whispering into the blue darkness. Matt and I watched, and for awhile I could still hear Eve and Ed’s voices and then nothing except the first frog songs of spring. I was Little Red Riding Hood all alone with the big bad wolf. I glanced toward him and felt my stomach twist inside with nerves. He leaned against the wooden support beam of the pavilion, head back, and I thought his were eyes closed.

He was so cool, even cooler than Han Solo. I hoped he’d never find out, or else it might swell his already enormous ego.

“Come here.”

Was he talking to me? I moved toward him, taking small, awkward steps. He reached out to grab my arm and drew me closer. I nearly fainted when his arms looped around me, one lowering slowly down my back in repeated strokes, “How’s that?”

I swallowed, “Fine.”

“You’re freezing,” warm hands brushed across the bare skin of my forearms. “Move closer. Do you want my sweatshirt?”

My vocal cords were paralyzed with shock. Within seconds he had tugged off his sweatshirt and draped it over my shoulders. It had all happened so suddenly that only one thing seemed able to explain it: I was dreaming.

“You’re nervous,” he lowered his face to mine, and the warmth of his breath sent shivers through me. “You’re shaking.”

The greater part of me wanted to pull away and run home because this wasn’t Matt, at least not the Matt that I knew. The Matt I knew would never help Steve win a game of flashlight tag, or offer someone his sweatshirt. In fact, earlier in the summer he had convinced me that the character Madeline Usher, in the movie Fall of the House of Usher, was going to reach out from under the chair I was sleeping next to and strangle me in my sleep because my name was Jenny. He’d chased me around for hours repeating my name in zombie tones.

“You’re intimidating,” I said.

“Intimidating?” He laughed and held me out at arm’s length. He had probably enjoyed my admission; intimidation had been tactic of choice. “I won’t hurt you.”

I wanted to believe him, so I relaxed and as my body loosened he drew me closer. “Shouldn’t we be counting, or something?”

“I am counting,” he looked into my eyes. I could tell that he was calculating something, whether it be the number of minutes they’d been hiding or something else.

“When should we look for—”

His mouth pressed against mine in a silencing kiss and I stiffened against him. He hadn’t been my first kiss. Earlier that summer all the girls in the neighborhood had taken turns kissing David’s friend Greg. Matt was the first kiss I’d dreamed of since I’d come to know that kissing and cooties had nothing to do with each other. His slow arm moved along the length of my spine, instigated relaxation. Trapped in his arms, I should have been in heaven, but instead I felt like a rabbit just out of reach from a vicious dog’s chain.

And then, just as if nothing had ever happened, he pushed me to his left and said, “Let’s go.”

Manhunt was originally published in “Watershed: The Journal of the Susquehanna.” If you are interested in obtaining a copy contact their staff at: river@bloomu.edu for more information.