stillsostrange

I would like to finish a short story in 2010. Maybe even two. And so I turn to the 1st-line meme.

"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.

My Prufrock's revenge story. Mainly stalled because it's set in 2017, and also because it might require reading Dreams of Shreds & Tatters for it to make sense.

Untitled Queen-in-her-tower Story

She watches from her tower as the sky burns.

Ash rains from scabbed clouds, drifts in grey-silver sheets toward the broken ground. Razored black rock cracks again, leaking flames and the hot blood of the earth. Once gardens grew there; once fountains played and people laughed. Now their bones are charred to dust. Heat seeps through her windows, shimmering against etched glass, and no matter how much incense she burns her room still reeks of the end of the world.

Someday I'll figure out why the world is ending, and then maybe I'll finish this.

"Flood"

Nan doesn't mean to fall asleep--she never does. But Evie's soft breath and the steady creak of the ceiling fan lull her, till her eyes sag and the worn paperback slides from her fingers.

Crazy girl vs. Tindalosi. So damn close to being finished, yet it balks.

"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.

Lesbian (potentially YA) zombiestravaganza. This is the one that threatens to be a novel, but luckily I have no idea what happens Audra runs off with her zombie.

"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.

In which nearly being eaten by a lamia saves Our Heroine's rocky relationship. Stuck because I can't translate that into actual plot.

"Snakebit"

The horses are restless.

The sound of snorts and hooves tangles through Lanie's nightmares, familiar dreams of fire and smoke. She wakes with a start, sweat sticky on her neck and back. Beside her, Merle stirs with a muffled curse as one of the horses whinnies.

AU Near Dark fanfic. I make no bones about this.

"Waiting For the Train"

When it's raining here, you hear the trains. You 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.

My lovesong to John Hiatt's "Wrote It Down And Burned It". It needs a real title.

"Mud and Dark"

I wait in the mud and dark for the oracle to come.

My blind mermaid story, on hold until I can figure out how to turn fishsex and Asenath Waite's search for her mother into actual plot.

"Teneral"

"Take off your mask," the arachne tells me.

Little Miss Muffet and the Spiders From Mars. Stalled because my narrator is a liar and won't tell me what's really going on.

"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 timer behind your right eyelid.

The hard life of an arcology sexbot. Stalled mostly because I'm panicky about writing SF. Possibly I should get over that.

"Bone Garden"

They found the girl unconscious on the back doorstep an hour before dawn.

Boywhores vs. oracular demons. Stalled until I figure out what the oracular demons want.

"Spell 81A"

Someone had left flowers again.

A Shadow Unit episode co-written with