# Literary Maneuvers October 2022: Veil Between Realms



## Harper J. Cole (Sep 30, 2022)

*Literary Maneuvers October 2022*​*Veil Between Realms*​Introduction
October is upon us, and so is the newest LM challenge. There's a lot of ways to interpret "Veil Between Realms" - which one will you use?





650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Saturday, 15 October
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2023 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.

Judging

Our judges include* Vranger, Lawless* and *S J Ward*. If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* October 30th,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.


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## Louanne Learning (Oct 3, 2022)

*Madame Mikhailov

(636 words)*

They listened to her. They took her seriously. This was quite an accomplishment because after all she was a mere woman in 1886 New York City. But Madame Mikhailov (not her real name) could communicate with the dead.

It was all the fashion in those days to summon departed souls. The world was haunted and spiritualists like Madame Mikhailov lifted the veil between the living and the gone. It paid the rent.

The autumn brought the shedding of colourful leaves in a dormancy, and a thinning of the veil. Her calendar was full. The darkened parlour furnished with heavy oaken pieces, including a round table adorned with three tall candlesticks, hosted the bereaved in séances that reached to the beyond. Madame in her puff-sleeved gown sat opposite the believers and gave them what they wanted to hear. She considered it a vital service. Grief was a thief and she undertook to return something of what had been taken.

Mr. and Mrs. Montrell, together with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid, came on a Thursday evening. The eldest Montrell child, nine-year-old Francesca, had died the previous year of a bloody flux. Mrs. Montrell pressed the mourning portrait—a photograph of Francesca in her coffin—into Madame’s hands. “I need to know that she rests in peace,” Mrs. Montrell said.

They took their places. Madame lay the photograph on the table before her. Death did not diminish the young girl’s beauty. Madame closed her eyes. Then she spoke. “There is a radiance about her,” she said. “Let us hold hands, and penetrate the energy of the whole.”

They held hands around the table in a circle enclosing the girl’s spirit. The flames on the candles flickered, as did Madame’s eyelids. Her head fell back. Then a voice not her own, faint and lovely, sounded. “Daddy—”

“Francesca, my sweet pea!”

“Daddy, why don’t you let Elmer read my books? Please, give Elmer my books. I hate to see them unused.”

The hands holding Madame’s tightened and she continued, “Mommy—”

“Francesca darling!”

“Mommy, Catherine needs you. She cries herself to sleep most nights. She feels alone. Hasn’t there been enough loss?”

Mrs. Montrell let out a ghastly sigh.

In the ethereal voice, Madame went on, “Grandma Kincaid, why did you stop making your small cakes? The ones with lemon. Elmer and Catherine love them as much as I did.”

“I will make them, Francesca, I promise!”

“Grandpa Kincaid, remember what you told me when I was ailing?”

“What did I tell you Francesca?”

“You said—there is a season for every activity under the Sun.”

“I remember,” he murmured, nodding forlornly. “A time to plant, and a time to harvest.”

Madame’s head flopped forward. She then raised her face, with the most serene expression. In the voice, she said, “Oh, the light is so beautiful.”

Mrs. Montrell searched the shadows with wild eyes. “Francesca, where are you?” she cried.

“There is no Sun, no moon, no stars … but it is the brightest light I have ever seen. It is glorious.”

“Are you afraid, my little one?” Mrs. Montrell asked.

“No, no fear, just … I want to go into the light, there is such peace there, but something holds me back.”

Mrs. Montrell squeezed shut her eyes in a grimace of pain. “Go darling, go into the light!”

The air was electric. “Did she go?” Mr. Montrell demanded to know.

“Do you want it for her?” Madame asked, in her own voice.

In unison, all four of them replied, “Yes, yes!”

“Then she will go.”

Madame crawled weary into bed that night. Francesca, wearing the same dress she wore in the mourning portrait, appeared. “Yes, you can go now,” Madame said to her. “They are ready to let you go. You need not stay dead any longer.”


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## Harper J. Cole (Oct 5, 2022)

One moment of war. (Some offensive language) (650 words)
_by Anon_


“Hey, Schmitty, what are you doing here? Fancy yourself a bit of a fighter, do you?” Banty stood—hands on hips—barring passage through the narrow alleyway.

“Munitions drop to the frontline, Banty.”

“Sir, to you, shit-head.”

“Sir!” Smiddy scowled, gripping the two reins fractionally tighter.

“You an’ your nags better move toot sweet to get to the trenches. Jerry’ll start his reveille soon. Now fuck off!”

Banty moved aside to allow Smiddy—leading the two, heavily-laden, ponies—through.

In passing, Banty voiced one final crack of the whip. “Bloody leading diseased animals through our clean village! Which one you sleeping with tonight then, Schmitty?” Judiciously, Banty ducked back through a doorway and into a ruined cottage.

Smiddy steeled, cleared the alley and led the ponies for a mile, towards the supply trenches. Outside of the village on an exposed road, the early-morning alarm-call kicked off, giving no time to locate cover. Missiles ploughed the ground only yards from his position; explosions, soil, shrapnel and smoke took to the air splattering the ponies and Smiddy.

The startled ponies began skittering and bucking away from the cacophony; the heavy packs they bore, swayed and seemed to drag their legs from under them. Un-phased Smiddy stood firmly between the two ponies and soothed them with his voice. He reached into a pack to retrieve two muslin cloths with sewn-on tapes. Carefully, he draped one over each of the pairs’ eyes and tied them in place. Blind now, the ponies steadied.

“Easy now, Hera, Persephone. Your veils are in place and I’ll look after you.” he spoke softly, with reverence and grace, as he had so many times before. “When have I ever let you down?”

Almost as quickly as it started, the shelling ceased. “They must be running low on ammo, girls.” Smiddy relaxed slightly, stroking and checking the ponies over for wounds. “We’ve been lucky.” That’s when he heard the gong clanging ahead. In the post-apocalyptic mist, a ‘slug-boy’ had detected gas.

Carried on the breeze came the shout that everybody dreaded hearing. “Gas. Gas. Gas.”

Calmly, he found the ponies’ gas-masks and fitted them over their noses. Lastly, he reached for his own ‘exasperator’ and as he fitted it to his face, one finger located the shrapnel-damaged lens.

“Shit. Shit. Shit!” He threw it to the ground in dismay.

The smell of horseradish assaulted his nostrils. Smiddy was in trouble and he new it. Creeping stealthily across the ground, a yellow mist seeped out from beneath the battlefield smog to envelop him.

He screamed in agony as his eyes seared at the gas’s touch. Still, he held firm the ponies’ reins. As his woollen tunic saturated in the mustard-mist, his skin started to blister. He felt only pain… and he was blinded.

“Take a veil and wrap it around your face.” commanded a strange voice.

“I can’t, the ponies need them.” Smiddy forced the words out, even as his throat began to swell.

“You can and must!”

“But—”

Softer now. “Consider it our turn to help you. A veil between realms. Ours…and yours.”

“Who are—”

“The veil now, quickly!”

Smiddy felt about for the tapes that held one of the veils to one of the ponies. Reluctantly, he removed the muslin-cloth and wrapped his own head in it, covering his eyes, mouth and nose in a double swathe before tying it off.

Once in place, he sensed the two ponies gently leaning in towards him, embracing and lifting him, they starting walking. Smiddy, carried along between them.

“Medic? Medic?” A distant shout. “Jesus Christ, mate! How the fuck did you get here?” Closer now.

“The ponies?” Smiddy croaked through the muslin.

“They’re fine, mate. But you look like shit.”

“Medic?” he shouted again.



It’s estimated that eight million equines were killed during the First World War.

Smiddy survived. But he never forgot.


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## Taylor (Oct 7, 2022)

The Living Dead
(649 words)


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## ChudBektop (Oct 10, 2022)

Read Me (263 words)


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## biograph1985 (Oct 11, 2022)

Attached


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## KeganThompson (Oct 12, 2022)

biograph1985 said:


> Attached


Not everyone can open up the file and when stories are posted anywhere on the forum it needs to be a post on WF and not an attachment. Please copy and paste the story so it can be scored


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## piperofyork (Oct 13, 2022)

*The Corrupting*


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## bdcharles (Oct 13, 2022)

*He Could Only Be Got At In His Flowers* (650 words)


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## Harper J. Cole (Oct 13, 2022)

Season of the Witch


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## rcallaci (Oct 14, 2022)

The Bugger Court (650 words*) (Warning! Warning! Salty and wicked language throughout)*

DIE! you mother-fucking cockroach. I felt it squish on the heel of my boot_. Splaaaatt!_ It was quite satisfying. I hated those ugly buggers. As a matter of fact, I hated most bugs: spiders, insects, stickly ickly squirmy little things and most of all: cockroaches. They all give me the creeps. That’s why I made it my life’s work to eradicate those fuckers from the face of the earth. You guessed it; I’m an exterminator, not of the human kind, but of bugs, the best that there is in all the twelve provinces. Ouch, ouch, shit, DAMN! I’m being bitten up by a cluster of cockroach-eating black widows. That’s what a wandering mind gets you; stuck in a hole full of poisonous spider bugs. Now I know how a cockroach feels when being bitten by those eight-legged creepy crawlers. How ironic; I kill bugs and now they just killed me....

I found myself in an empty room. I freak out and scream, “WHERE THE HELL AM I! IS ANYBODY HERE! AM I DEAD, DYING OR WHAT!” A disembodied voice said, “Now, Now, no need to yell, you’re in the Veil between Realms where your worst nightmares become true. Take a seat, the bailiff will be with you shortly.” A seat out of nowhere plopped itself on my ass. I sat and waited. Had I gone stark-raving mad? Am I in hell or a mental ward?

The unbelievable and absurd became reality when a giant cockroach in humanoid form with hairy legs, arms, and claws, came into the room and said: “Follow me you mass-murdering piece of human scum.” Shaken, scared, and massively depressed I did what IT asked. I followed IT into a courtroom full of giant bugs. The sight before me made my eyeballs pop out of my head. Four massive humanoid like bugs in judges’ robes: A spider, cockroach, a freaking fly and a mosquito. I was heaving up my lunch when the cockroach bailiff started speaking:

“The court is now in session. We are here today to pass judgment on the infamous cold-blooded killer, Percival Prescot Pricklemyer, for his massive crimes against the Bugdominion.” “Hold On, wait a minute,” I said, “Don’t I get some sort of trial”. The four judges laughed or what sounded like it. The Spider judge said in one scary spidery voice, “You’ve been tried in absentia. An open and shut case. This is the sentencing. And for the record I and my kind are Arachnids, a quasi-bug but not a bug per se. Your ignorance is insufferable.” I thought IT was about to eat me. I peed myself.

As I stood shaking up a storm while waiting on my sentencing, I started praying to God, gods, or whoever resides in heaven, to let this be some sort of fever dream inflicted by the spider bites. This was too surreal to be real. I was pinching and punching myself to wake up only to be slapped on the head by the bailiff’s cockroach claws.

“Get a hold of yourself human, this is not a dream, oh yes, we can read your pathetic thoughts, they amuse us. That old life of yours is gone forever. A new fate awaits you. While we wait, clean up your piss and vomit off the floor.”

“Hear Ye, hear ye” announced the bailiff, “the sentencing of the Human Pricklemyer, will be announced by the Honorable Judge, Big Bubba Billy Bob Roach.”

The Cockroach judge said,” You have inflicted great harm on my species. You’ve killed millions upon millions of us, nearly wiping us out. But we’re quite resilient. You’re a stain that needs to be cleansed. You will be metamorphosized into a cockroach to live and die over and over again; with your full consciousness intact.”

Well, there you have it folks, my sobbing inducing, heartbreaking origin story.


Stay tuned for further adventures of Percy the Cockroach


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## epimetheus (Oct 15, 2022)

A Most Singular Error


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## Matchu (Oct 15, 2022)

https://www.writingforums.com/threads/lm-secure-thread-october-2022-veil-between-realms.200203/post-2421988


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## Harper J. Cole (Oct 15, 2022)

Bloodline


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## CyberWar (Oct 15, 2022)

*The Cursed City [645 words]*


I sit before a dwindling fire, shivering in cold and terror as a preternatural sandstorm rages outside. Amidst the daemonic howls and roars of the wind, the sound of skittering feet and gnashing of teeth. Lord, have mercy on this poor sinner… Alas, the Christian God has no power here, in this realm of madness and deities older than the world itself.

Not eight months ago, I left the shores of England in the company of one Sir William Arkenstone and fifty-two adventurous men, veterans of the Great War, the many of them. Sir William, an amateur archaeologist and a patron of arts and learning of some renown, was rather insistent that I accompany him on grounds of my expertise in the ancient languages of the Orient. Driven by curiosity and the promise of generous pay, I let myself be persuaded into joining this expedition. Ancient Akkadian and Sumerian languages are hardly the most popular subjects among young academics these days, so I felt my time would be best spent in more practical endeavors of advancing science.

On our way, I inquired with Sir William about his interest in this God-forsaken place. After some hesitation, he revealed to me a most intriguing discovery he had chanced upon his last treasure hunt in the inhospitable Empty Quarter of Arabia, the lost city of Qahtan. A stone tablet, carved in polished diorite, bearing an inscription speaking of yet another lost city of Ixos. Though the signs were so ancient even I had trouble deciphering them, it warned travelers of old to stay clear of Ixos, for foul magic was practiced by its denizens.

Oh, if only we had heeded the wisdom and warning of the ancients! After arrival at the port of Aden and a long and perilous journey through the sands, in which a third of our men and native porters had perished to disease, stings of venomous creatures and under the scimitars of hostile natives, we finally arrived at Ixos, some hundred leagues north of Qahtan. 

No sooner had we started to dig when strange things began to happen. Men would go insane for no apparent cause, running amok and lashing out at everything and everyone until others were compelled to put them down. Things went missing, only to be found at random in the unlikeliest of places. And the whispers… the maddening whispers coming from underneath the sands on quiet nights. Porters began to desert in droves, men grew fearful and suspicious, tempers flared and more than one life was lost in result. Only Sir William remained unfazed. 

Eventually he reached what had once been the city’s main temple. Within it a strange pillar emanating cold green light, inscribed with signs of incredible antiquity. He called upon me to read and transcribe the words. Already terrified beyond sense, I refused, but Sir William who had steadily grown more obsessed and paranoid over the previous weeks would have none of it, compelling me at gunpoint.

As I uttered the ancient words in the long-forgotten cursed language of Ixos as they stood before me, reality itself unraveled around us. Baleful things, abominations whose foulness elude description by words, emerged from the darkest corners of space-time. Before my eyes, Sir William and five others were flayed and turned inside out in an instant. As the eldritch monstrosities descended upon my companions, I fled without looking back. I alone escaped, running until I chanced upon this abandoned hut. But death followed in my footsteps, hidden just behind the veil of a monstrous sandstorm.

As I sit hiding now, I can hear those things pacing outside, scraping at the door. Soon they will find their way inside. I can only pray my end will be swift…

Whoever finds this message after I am gone, I beg of you - do not go to Ixos! Only death and madness awaits there.


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## TMarie (Oct 15, 2022)

https://www.writingforums.com/threads/lm-secure-thread-october-2022-veil-between-realms.200203/post-2422061


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## tonsonenotany (Oct 15, 2022)

*The Letter King *(647 words)

We ran. For good reason. The King cursed us as we fled. We were fast but his kingdom was large, his arm long. The land leapt to his command. The first night his soldiers pitchforked every hay loft outside town. We moved behind the hills like a construction paper wolf in a cardboard diorama.

We reached the end of the royal valley, and thought our way would become easier. But instead the King got craftier. We bought an apple from a peddler and found a letter inside. Later we heard the townsfolk complaining of their apples too.

We ran outward, never back. In each new place something familiar peeled away. Cardamom bread changed to cumin. In a town where they feted strangers I had my first kiss. You watched my back and grinned. In the land of stalwart farm boys you dropped your pack and said it was your turn. A week later one of their heads floated by underneath a bridge.

Our muscles grew hard from pulling stumps. We learned the accent of elsewhere to every place. We sang songs in storms and gales where no one could hear us, though sometimes the next town would be humming the tune when we arrived.

In the beginning we believed the King was toying with us. How else to explain the endless coincidences? Could he be that clever? But eventually the assassins became less stealthy, cruder. They were drunk, or barely older than children. We realized he was disgorging his kingdom, emptying his treasury to find us. His love language was national debts, kamikaze letters. He had no idea where we were. Yet we could not be rid of him. We lived in his vast embrace.

One morning a crisp green envelope lay on our pillow. And every other pillow in town. Birds tore them to make their nests. It seemed the King was nearly dead. And he wished to see his children again.

We argued for the first time in years. We got drunk and sick and sad. In the morning we headed home, each regretting what the other had made them do. We made good time. It was easy now that nothing resisted. I moved quickly with the dread in my heart.

On the last night I broke. I meant to take my own life rather than resolve my position. And the spell was revealed to me. For no matter how I tried, the knife stayed on the table. Once I managed to make it cut a little butter, spread it on bread. I could tap it, like a joke. But even that made me feel uneasy. Like I was not a person at all, but a thing that repelled change like a cormorant sheds water. I remembered his curse, and the letters he loved above all else. But I said nothing.

At last we stood at the door to the throne room. We entered, clearing our throats.

Father lounged on the throne, listless. He clutched a stained handkerchief like a scepter. You pulled me forward. I dug in my heels. I shook my head. I ran. I ran but the doors shut behind me, and the room stretched, and I was pulled toward him. He opened his jaw like a pocketknife and called us home. He droned on about what we had tried to forget, that we were the words he spoke to make this land in the first place. And that soon, there would be another land, where perhaps Wander and Wonder would not be so spirited. This hurt most of all, to know what we were. What in fact, everything was. To know how lonely he was, and that all the world went inside him and then out, forever. I stuck the blade in his throat as we passed through.

We landed in a truck stop in Laramie and have not stopped since.


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## Ibb (Oct 15, 2022)

*Sleight of Heart (649 Cape Twirls and Misdirections) *

I was drunk, naturally, jubilantly lubricated, when the magician dropped the veil and wiggled his gloved fingers. He started: “Behold!” and got on with the aforementioned wiggling, but I was already halfway down the bleachers when he continued, “What wondrous mysteries shall occur in the paradox of unseen realms?” and right up in his face by the time he concluded, “Face your fears, gaze into the abyss, and—ack! Sir! Please, man,” (he whispered this next part): “You’re killing my vibe, dude, what the fuck?” 

“Yo,” I said, very good-naturedly in fact, then yanked the veil from between his pinched digits and revealed for all to see a tablet screen upon which scrolled a motley cascade of symbols and numerical complexities. “Oh…” I went on; “Is this A.I.?” The magician’s mustache slipped a smidge, revealing underneath its masculine facade a youthful upper lip smeared in the fear-borne perspirings of sweat. 

Nearly sobbing now, he whimpered: “Dude… Why…?” right before the tomatoes began to fly, pelting us both in the shoulder-blades, the shins, the beautiful visages and the puckered booty holes. 

“You asshole!” he cried. “What the hell?”

He fled the stage, I after him, and following a bunch of huffing, puffing and screams to leave him alone, we ended up in his trailer, which just so happened to be an RV. “You idiot!” he roared—but sounds had started to take on a visual effect so I squinted against the assault and waddled toward what looked like a kitchenette. “You ruined everything!” He lunged toward me, quite pitifully, nothing magical about _that_ poor posture at all, but I was already halfway through ducking and checking into his mini-fridge for sustenance so that the sad little haymaker went clear over my head. He spun, cried out, fell onto his bottom, and thereafter fell into fitful sobs as I righted myself before him holding a bottle of bubbly lemonade. “You got any vodka?”

As it turned out, he wasn’t a magician, but an analyst, an IT guy, a software developer—whatever. The plan was to travel the country and scan peoples’ faces during periods of anticipation and excitement in order for his A.I. to learn and grow. “Oh!” I said. “Like with those paintings or whatever?”

“Precisely!” The swerve in topic restored his constitution. “It will create symphonies, and films, we could even use it to study eras of economic prosperity to anticipate and curtail future crises before they even occur! A new epoch for humankind!”

I hiccuped, said: “Kewl,” then asked again for vodka. He foresaw in my increasingly crablike movements a portent of dissent and so, unprovokedly incensed, continued to regale me with argument and justification for his A.I. utopia while I stuck my head inside the mini-fridge’s freezer and sighed.

Truth was I’d already heard it all. The artists were pissed. Musicians and literary types were next. The software developers would be on the chopping block whether or not they knew it, and who the hell could guess what was coming? If human genius was just the manifestation of disparate elements astutely observed and reassimilated, what was to say A.I. couldn’t become the same? You can’t stop the future. It’s the same thing Satan probably told Eve. 

“You have to go,” he said suddenly.

I pulled my head from the freezer. “Wha–?”

“The show’s about to start.”

Oh, I thought. Right—the show. 

A small ladder sprouted like a rapidly aged vine from inside the cabin and tore through the roof overhead. I made for it, ascending one rung at a time until pushing past a little curtain beyond which my senses became overrun by clamor and applause. People stood and hollered, the bleachers were packed, I looked down at my feet and saw a crumpled veil. 

Just behind us both, the magician, his mustache fully grown, smiled widely, as though he’d been waiting for me all along.


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## Selorian (Oct 15, 2022)

Bad Pumpkins


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## Harper J. Cole (Oct 16, 2022)

biograph1985 said:


> Attached


Stories should be posted directly in the thread for accessibility. This is biograph1985's story....

Under the Shack
_by biograph1985_

These are the places that stand against time, time that leans hard on fences and blades of grass. This is American prairie land, a desolate cough of dust mingled with autumn sunsets and warm breezes. There are no memories here, only impressions lost. Here Herbert sees the contagion of yawning shadows as he stalks through the plain. His right hand rubs his left, two large, worn partners in a dry and uncertain world. He approaches a small shack and pulls a stubby key from his pocket. The grimy padlock gives with a rough click as he gains entry. The shack is 10"x16" with chains, ropes, tools and rags strewn about. Herbert peels back a tarp on the floor and tugs on a large trapdoor. He peers into the emptiness.

"You there?"

Silence.

"Not talkin', huh?" he chuckles.

"You can only die once, I 'spose."

Herbert climbs down into the hole and lights a match, peering into a corner, searching.

His blood runs cold as he moves the match around, surveying nothing but packed dirt. It's too dark to make out the blood.

He fumbled about the dirt, groping, moving his feet about. It's a small space, but the only way he lost the body... is if someone was here. It did not make sense that he could be caught. Oh, he knew they were looking for him. His desires weren't "socially acceptable", but they were HIS, and he would not stop. And he would not get caught.

But there was nothing here. The body he had dragged in and dropped here just two days ago. No one could have seen him, he wondered. His hands tingled at the thought of wrapping them around the throat of some witness. There are collateral deaths, but he didn't really enjoy those distractions.

Herbert sneezed. His eyes stung slightly from the stirred-up dirt. He clambered out of the hole, the intended grave, and stalked out of the shack, looking around furtively. Who could have seen him, way out here? Maybe someone saw the deed, and followed him?

His breathing became a bit more labored as he entered his small house. He sat down to think, and rocked himself back and forward, running his grimy fingers through the dirty hair on the sides of his head. He had planned to drive by where it happened tomorrow, but that plan, the first of that satisfactory series of epilogues, meant nothing now.

He felt chilled as the reality set in. There was no body. The girl's body was gone. That body was HIS. It was his property, and now it was gone.

Dawn came. A glancing doze was Herbert's only respite, and even that just brought flashes of the broken, pale body he so desired. He felt angry and nauseous. He would have to find another girl. Tonight. Or... now? Before the sun was up fully? No, it was too risky. None of it would make any sense if he was caught. And anyway, what would become of him if he could no longer satisfy this?

He stumbled back out to the shack. Maybe, just maybe, he was confused. Maybe he would look now, and his property would be back, and the universe would again be ordered. In his unsteady haste, he forgot a flashlight, but his lighter was still in his pocket. He practically fell into the hole and turned on his lighter.

Still nothing. The rage builds inside of him. He is not in control. And control is all that there is.

The light drains from this dank hole. Herbert looks up, and to his horror the mouth of the hole is no longer eight feet above him. It appears to be a quarter of a mile above him, and loose dirt is raining down from its unstable sides. He claws at the walls and looks up. Something crushes him, burying him in the dirt.


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## biograph1985 (Oct 16, 2022)

KeganThompson said:


> Not everyone can open up the file and when stories are posted anywhere on the forum it needs to be a post on WF and not an attachment. Please copy and paste the story so it can be scored


Sorry about that — I returned too late, I think. I am out this round but I will get it right the next time.


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## KeganThompson (Oct 16, 2022)

biograph1985 said:


> Sorry about that — I returned too late, I think. I am out this round but I will get it right the next time.


Looks like Harper posted it for you


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## biograph1985 (Oct 16, 2022)

Harper J. Cole said:


> Stories should be posted directly in the thread for accessibility. This is biograph1985's story....
> 
> Under the Shack
> _by biograph1985_
> ...


Thank you, Harper! I will get it right the next time, I promise.


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