I'm returning to the first-line meme, to remind myself that I do have short stories I could be working on, even if they all hate me.
Works in various stages of progress:
Pinion
A night with no moon, and nothing exists beyond the cone of Reese's headlights. Dusty asphalt, hard red earth bleached grey by darkness, cactus and tumbleweed and worn fence posts strung with barbed wire. Occasionally the husk of a barn or derelict gas station ghosts past, breaking the flat horizon. The hum of the tires and rush of air through the windows drowns the radio, the static and intermittent bursts of Tejano or Christian that seem to be all the old Impala can pick up. The wind tastes of dust and oil and desolation and dries Reese's sweat in a grimy film on her skin.
Prayers to Broken Stone
Springtime in Paris, the cruelest month come and gone, but storms still linger. Tonight rain washes the city, speeding the Seine in its rush to the sea. In the Left Bank, it pours from the gutters and drips from curling wrought iron balconies to splash against the cobbles below. Moisture darkens white walls, new paint and plaster over centuries-old bones. Pigeons sleep beneath the eaves, fat on café crumbs, violet-grey wings folded tight against the chill. And in her apartment on the rue du Dragon, Holly sits beside an open window and watches the rain.
The Bone Palace
Death was no stranger within the walls of Erisín.
Dreams of Shreds and Tatters
Halloween night, and parties staggered along Granville Street--clubs full of sequins and feathers, costumes and paint. People wearing shiny new skins, hunting for opportunities to take them off. Groping hands and sticky candy kisses, tricks and treats in darkened corners.
No costumes here, in the loft over the Morgenstern Gallery, no sweat-fog and throbbing speakers. Soft music and laughter and conversation instead, the only decorations the shadows that dangled like bats from the rafters. Blake leaned back against the couch, watching the lights from the street below push the shadows back and forth and breathing in the smell of wine and wax and Alain's hair.
Mist & Chill
The Terminal is never beautiful.
Even in the lands of flesh it's just a dive, a ratty little brick and cement place with a cheap, precarious stage built in the back to hold cheap, precarious bands who can't find any place better to play. Tattered fliers plaster the walls, crumbling and drifting like autumn leaves.
On the other side it's all that and worse. Cold and stale, air tasting like the bottom of an ashtray. Daylight trickles chill and grey through grimy windows, painting everything shades of rust and bone.
The Terminal is never beautiful, but today it's an abattoir.
Spiral
The sky hangs dark and swollen overhead, scraping its belly over the spires of Prague. Bianca pauses to wipe her boots on the mat, groceries balanced on her hip. The rain has slacked, of course, now that they've reached the apartment. Water trickles through her hair, warm by the time it drips down her neck and under her collar. She really should buy an umbrella.
"Bridle" (working title)
This isn't my scene. I like leather as much as the next girl, but watching middle-aged pony boys trussed in harnesses pulling sulkies for corseted middle-aged women is only good for a laugh. And after three hours, I'm running out of laugh.
"Music From a Farther Room"
Alex found his wife waiting on the threshold, at the divide between memory and dream. He was used to finding her here, one of the many memory-ghosts to haunt these halls. But this was different. The door she stood in was one he couldn't cross.
"Needlepoint"
You wake crumpled on the floor, legs folded awkwardly and one arm twisted behind your back. The room is dark and still, except for the green blink of the clock behind your right eyelid.
The pulpstravaganza that will not be called Diamond Dogs
The nightmares came with the fog, rolling off the harbor, creeping through the streets and seeping damp beneath doors and windowpanes. No charm or ward Jack knew would keep them out. Whiskey worked, though, some nights.
"Red is the Color"
I wake with the taste of storms in my mouth, and screams echoing down the hall. Slow and dream-sticky, and for a second I don't know where I am, but I'm still on my feet with my gun in my hand before my eyes are all the way open.
"Serpentskirt"
All Souls Night and the gutters still brim with shed Hallows skin. Broken glass crunches under Jane's boots as she carries an amp to the van, glittering beside limp feathers and cracked sequins, tattered black and orange fliers. One hell of a party, she heard--Sixth Street is still subdued and sleepy. But even for the day after Halloween and a Monday to boot, the crowd is still better than last night's in Dallas.
"Shoggoth With Grace Notes"
Tuesdays were music lessons.
"Snakebit"
The horses were restless.
The sound of snorts and hooves tangled through Lanie's nightmares, familiar dreams of fire and smoke. She woke with a start, sweat sticky on her neck and back. Beside her, Merle stirred with a muffled curse as one of the horses whinnied.
"The Tenderness of Jackals"
The train chases the setting sun, but can't catch it. Not even an ICE can catch the sun, and the steel-sleek serpent slides into the Hannover Hauptbahnhof as purple dusk gives way to charcoal. In the hum and whine of its wheels, Gabriel hears the wolves.
Soon, they whisper.
"Teneral"
"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.
"Waiting For the Train" (needs a better title)
When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You can hear them other times too, with the tracks so close, but the dusty heat of summer bakes the sound out of the air, till it gets buried under cars and trucks and TVs and voices and all the other small-town noises. But when the rain comes, and the trains come, the whistles carry all over, low and mournful and rumbling in my chest.
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