Are you afraid of the dark?

This is the last day of the I'm Hearing Voices blogfest. My flash fiction below is supposed to invoke an emotion. I want you to feel fear.

Once on the main floor, he checked the front door, and found it still locked and bolted.  He moved through the living room, past the grand piano, toward a light in the kitchen.  He saw Mrs. H. standing with her back to him, making a sandwich.  She had on a flimsy white night gown.

He tapped lightly on the door with his left knuckle to get her attention so as not to startle her.  She still jumped and then put the knife down and looked over at him.  Jordan folded his arms across his smooth bare chest and leaned against the door frame.  “Thank God it’s just you,” she said, going back to her sandwich.  “You hungry?”

“No,” he stated.  “I thought I heard a noise so I came up to look.”

“Well that’s why I came down the stairs.  I heard someone walking across the floor.  What were you looking for anyway?”

“It wasn’t me,” Jordan said.  “I just came up the stairs a second before I knocked on the door here, and Rob’s asleep on the bed.”

She set her knife down on the counter.  “If it wasn’t you and it wasn’t Rob and it wasn’t me…there’s no one else in the house Jordan,” she said.

           Jordan glanced around in the dark, looking a bit uneasy.  She did too, moving her eyes from off of him and into the shadows that lay beyond the halo of light emanating from the under cabinet fixtures.


Excerpt from SLIPSTREAM

Have a great weekend.

An intro to character using only dialogue

Today is the second day of the I'm Hearing Voices blogfest. We are supposed to use only dialogue, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. So I hope mostly dialogue works. Anyway, here's my less than 250-word attempt at it:

“Sorry.  So, why does warm water freeze faster than cold?” Brianna asked him.

“It’s spread over a huge surface area; this causes it to experience intense evaporation which creates an endothermic chemical reaction.  Think rapid cooling that forces a bond with the existing surface area.”

She turned to the counter, “I’ll take one ‘Eggs Melissa’ and I’ll pay for whatever he’s having.”

“—oh, you don’t have to do that,” Jordan said.  “I’ve got money.”

“I know—I just want to.”

The clerk rolled his eyes.  “Want the Sunrise again, Jordan?”

He nodded yes.

Brianna passed over a $20 bill and while she waited for her change, she glanced over at him.  “Is that a good sandwich?”

“Yes. W-well…I’ve tasted it before and it’s delicious, but it really isn’t for me.  I buy one for my boyfriend so he’ll have something to eat when he wakes up.”

Brianna raised her left eyebrow.  “You—have—a—boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

She nodded her head in slow motion and muttered, “Awkward…” They stepped off to the side to wait for their orders which were being freshly prepared.  He thought he should have said something but was at a loss for words.  “So…,” she said, beginning again, “would you like to trade phone numbers with me?  Cornell is a gargantuan campus and it can be difficult to meet people when you’re on a busy schedule.  I thought maybe we could catch a snack sometime…you know…on the quad?”

I'm pretty sure I failed this exercise because I included non-dialogue tags to give me direction. But, without those, it just became talking heads. And I can't stand talking heads. But, I think you can tell a lot by the characters from the dialog which may have been the point. I have no idea actually.

I'm Hearing Voices Day One

It's time for day one of the I'm Hearing Voices blogfest. Go here for details. I will be interviewing my main character from my upcoming book.

SLIPSTREAM is on Goodreads and shall be published in May.

Please go HERE and mark the book "to read".

Have a great Monday.