FM Challenge

After falling a lit­tle behind (I was doing a sto­ry every sec­ond day; it was six days since the pre­vi­ous one) I sat down and did up a new sto­ry last night. The gen­er­a­tor gave me The theme of this sto­ry: trag­ic mys­tery. The main char­ac­ters: con­fused cab dri­ver and pious rogue. The start of the sto­ry: dream. The end of the sto­ry: discovery.

Here’s the start of the story:

I don’t get it,” said Sam­my. Mist rolled away from him in all direc­tions, pale and formless.

There’s noth­ing to get,” the woman said. “Please, I need silence.” She knelt, her body tak­ing on a per­fect still­ness, the breath­less wait­ing of a stone being worn away by the sea. The mist climbed her body like a thing alive, ten­drils coil­ing snake­like across her shoul­ders, her back, the tat­tooed nape of her neck. Sam­my felt a scream crawl­ing up his throat, watch­ing the only oth­er per­son in this dream­scape being eat­en by fog, like some­thing out of a hor­ror movie.

He swal­lowed, hard, and looked away, his gaze search­ing for a hori­zon that was­n’t there. Grey sky, grey mist, and it all met at the van­ish­ing point, a roil­ing noth­ing­ness that had over­whelmed sense and knowledge.

This is a dream, he told him­self. This is a dream, and I can wake up any­time I want–

Only he could­n’t. The form­less scream was claw­ing its way back up his throat. With an effort that was enough to put sweat on his brow, he forced it back down.

For more: The com­plete sto­ry (pass­word-pro­tect­ed: the pass­word is abi­gail <– high­light to read.

4 thoughts on “FM Challenge

  1. The last sequence is very pow­er­ful. I have to tell you, though, I’m biased against the use of dreams in fic­tion. (Not so biased as to avoid it alto­geth­er myself!) Nev­er­the­less, that last scene with Joanne, and your con­clu­sion post-wak­ing, were excellent.

  2. Well, I was kind of forced to use the dream set-up by the gen­er­a­tor, and I decid­ed to fid­dle with it a lit­tle bit (ie, it’s not Sam­my’s dream but some­one else’s). I’m glad you liked the end­ing, too.

  3. Very Jun­gian. The imagery espe­cial­ly. But what else would a dream con­tain? I liked it. Espe­cial­ly that you nev­er know for sure if it was real­ly a psy­cic con­tact or just his uncon­cious mind play­ing on old fanta­cies and insecurities.

  4. The only thing I decid­ed on before start­ing the sto­ry (before even going to the gen­er­a­tor page) was that I want­ed there to be a grove of bones. It seems to fit, IMHO.

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