WELCOME!
This is DAY THREE of the release tour for my newest book, Temporary Anne.
Temporary Anne is a horror story about a woman so desperate to avoid Hell -- the fate for the evil she's done during her life -- that she makes things infinitely worse after her death.
To celebrate the release, I'm doing a blog tour in which I'm writing a short story, LIVE, with your help! At each stop, I'll do an installment of the story and you can suggest where it goes next!
Below is PART THREE of the story.
PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, PART TWO on Andrew Leon's Strange Pegs, and if you didn't catch either, click here to read PART ONE and HERE to read PART TWO.
PART ONE appeared on Tina Downey's Life Is Good, PART TWO on Andrew Leon's Strange Pegs, and if you didn't catch either, click here to read PART ONE and HERE to read PART TWO.
This Is How I... PART THREE:
"YOU!" she says again, and I see her.
She is a vision -- not least because she is glowing, not least also because if there is anyone as sexy as her, anywhere, in the entire world, then I've never met her.
Technically, I've never met her, either, although this is the third time she has shown up in these... visions? They're not visions anymore, not now that Stephen King's lifeless body is being picked up and flung at her, not now that seven security guards are dead and I can hear the police sirens outside and even... is that a helicopter? Helicopters?
Perhaps I should be leaving, too, but the monsters have never paid any real attention to me, just acting out their horror shows in my mind and then in phantasms before me and now for real, but even the idea that maybe this time I will have more than a box seat at the show is not enough to make my legs move, to tear me away from the podium.
I do crouch down a bit as she -- dressed, for some reason, in a band outfit from my old high school, this time -- runs full speed at the Beast, who meets her with a gallomping, salivating ROAAAAAR!!!!, tenta
Tentacles grab her, mouths bear down on her, muscular scaled arms throw seats at her, and she pays them no mind as she pulls at the brim of the hat and widens it, stretches it beyond what it could possibly reach, and I watch as one two three chairs disappear into the hat that is suddenly wide enough to take them.
The Beast gives another ROAAAARRR!! but this one seems weaker -- frightened almost, and I see the Drum Major grin and jump at him. Her hands, one on each side of the hat, pull it even wider, and the tentacles that had been reaching for her are sucked into the hat's empty opening.
The sound went something like this:
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE
Kind of.
As the hat sucked the Beast into it, and suddenly the Drum Major was crouching on top of her own hat, in the midst of the wreckage of what had been a Nobel Prize ceremony, the hat writhing and struggling and muffled roars coming from it. It had shrunk back down to regular size, nearly, but was clearly stuffed full of something -- stuffed full of Beast!-- and she let out muffled grunts as she pushed down on it.
The doors to the auditorium burst open.
"Don't just run! Stand there!" she yelled at me.
I turned and started to run as voices from the exits yelled at us and the sounds of sirens and screams was overwhelming. Drum Major was just behind me as I got to the edge of the stage; just a few feet past the curtain when I looked back, she had her arms wrapped around the still-struggling hat.
"Do you need help?" I shouted over the din as soldiers -- soldiers!-- poured into the empty, devastated cavernous space.
"Didn't you hear me?" she yelled back. "I said stand there!"
Then...
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What happens next? USE THE COMMENTS TO HELP LIZ DECIDE, and watch for the next installment:
The Tour Dates:
1. Life Is Good: Friday 9/132. Strange Pegs: 9/16
4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/206. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/268. Jess' Book Blog 10/310.PTDilloway.com 10/10
The FIRST REVIEWS ARE IN: "It's fascinating. If you like horror, this is definitely a book worth reading."-- Andrew Leon
"Another chilling tale from the author of The Scariest Thing You Can't Imagine. ...Pagel's style reminds me a lot of Vonnegut's work in that while the narration seems jaunty with its humorous asides and such, there's a lot of hidden depth to that narration."-- PT Dilloway.
"Another chilling tale from the author of The Scariest Thing You Can't Imagine. ...Pagel's style reminds me a lot of Vonnegut's work in that while the narration seems jaunty with its humorous asides and such, there's a lot of hidden depth to that narration."-- PT Dilloway.
If you didn't already get it, "Temporary Anne" just $0.99 today, so click this link to download this excellent horror story.
As an added bonus, for today only I am making my sci-fi/horror classic book ECLIPSE free today! Click here to download the amazing story of Claudius: he wanted to be the first man to reach the stars-- but it was murder to get there.
I froze, standing stick straight as uniformed men funneled around me, fixed on the Drum Major's steely eyes. A sucking sensation tugged at my gut, curling upward, like the smoke essence of my very soul leaking through our connected stares.
ReplyDeleteThen? I don't know. Let me think. Then, Stephen King's headless body starts killing everything that moves - which is fine because our hero(ine) is standing still.
ReplyDeleteThe soldiers, not so much.
But I'm still thinking the tentacle monster is good. There is another layer here that hasn't been revealed yet.
I think there is a big diagram on the floor that the story teller didn't see. You know, like a pentagram but not a pentagram because, again, why be so cliche? But he's standing in the middle of it and, by running, he's going to leave it, which would be bad.
ReplyDeleteI have more, here, but I don't want to come up with -everything.- :P
WOW. These are all really good. Maybe I just turn over the writing to the three of you, and sit back and collect the profits? There will be profits, right? Somehow, free books= profits, that's what I have been told. I don't really understand economics.
ReplyDeleteCrystal: you're new to me -- so I'm gonna go check out your blog. Rusty and Andrew? OLD NEWS. I already know what THEY say. (Andrew says I'm ungrammatical. Rusty says he's smarter about science than me. Than I. Than whoever. See? Andrew's right.)
He has to stand there because The Drum Major (love a sexy female drum major, btw. We always had males. Not that they weren't sexy, but it seemed a bit like discrimination...) can see what he can't see which is that the stage has melted and if he moves he's going to fall into some sort of abyss. Yes, Andrew, it's like your idea. That's because I really liked your idea but you said no pentagram, so I made up the abyss instead. Besides, I like that movie.
ReplyDeleteTina @ Life is Good
Tina:
ReplyDeleteI liked "The Abyss," too.
These are all great suggestions. They beat mine. Mine was "they all go home and watch 'Gilligan's Island" reruns." It's scary because THERE'S A GORILLA IN THAT CAVE GILLIGAN!
It was much scarier when there was a SPIDER in that cave Gilligan! But, then, a pigeon, basically, chased it away. Maybe you need a giant spider in this story. I hear that all great fantasy (of whatever kind) requires a giant spider.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the abyss is really a giant spider's lair...then we could have a big gaping hole AND a big scary spider...but let's not lose the SEXY drum major. Or the storyteller...
ReplyDeleteTina @ Life is Good