[Untitled] – Magical Realism Novel (Writing in Progress)

Excerpt: “Fix that trellis already?” Jack asked, trying her best not to use an accusatory tone, even though she knew there was no way he had in the few minutes he’d been out there.

Chris jumped at her voice, quickly pausing the video he’d been watching, though not before Jack overheard a man saying the word “females” with the same tone one might say “rats” or “horse manure.”

“It’s fixed,” Chris said defensively, though Jack noted that he avoided claiming to have fixed it himself.

On closer inspection, Jack was surprised to see that the trellis she’d marked as broken that morning was in order. Based on what she’d seen, she knew there was no way Chris had fixed it, but she also had no idea how it had magically fixed itself between her morning rounds and now.

“Well then, head back inside and help Grauntie with the pastries,” Jack said, trying her best not to sound discomforted by the unharmed trellis.

Chris grinned and jogged a little too eagerly back toward the orchard’s main building.

“And don’t go sniffing around Evella St. Clair, she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

Chris gave no signs of having heard her. Once he was out of sight, Jack turned back to the trellis. Not only was it completely fixed, but there was also no sign that its wires had been repaired recently. Deciding that she must have noted the wrong spot earlier, Jack decided to take another walk around the fields in search of the broken trellis she’d spotted on her initial walkthrough.

Jack made her way through each row of trees, becoming increasingly disconcerted as each one revealed nothing but functioning trellises. She was just about to head back to the house when the sight of someone at the end of her current row stopped her dead in her tracks.

Evella St. Clair was doing something to one of the apples on the tree at the end of the row. The first thing Jack noticed was that Evella looked different than she had remembered. Jack had been sure that she’d had a large scar on her neck from a spider had bite, but perhaps Eve had covered it up with makeup, or else used her TV money to get some fancy Hollywood surgery and cover it up.

The next thing Jack noticed was what she assumed to be Eve struggling to pick an apple, but that didn’t make any sense. Even a spoiled starlet had enough strength to pluck an apple from the branch. After a few moments, Jack realized that Eve was trying to balance an already picked apple back on the branches of the tree. Once she got it to sit there, she turned to leave.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jack called out, unable to stop herself.

“Trying to get your attention,” Eve said, smiling infuriatingly. “Last time you just ignored me, so I figured I’d do something that I knew would make you mad.”

“Oh, well, so long as you were trying to piss me off, that’s fine then. Here I thought you were just stealing from me.”

Eve let out an exasperated “pffft.”

“Steal from you? When you’re charging double the amount per pound that I’d pay at the grocery store for apples?”

“You’re paying for the experience,” Jack said angrily. “And for the people who don’t know how to do things proper and cost us apples. Just put that in your basket and pay for it at the front, and I best not find it out here when I come out later.”

Jack turned to leave but was surprised to feel a hand gripping her upper arm after just a few steps. She turned to find herself face-to-face with Eve, whose wide desperate eyes had started to well up with tears. Unbidden, Jack’s heart began to race, though she forced herself to sound calm when she spoke.

“Eve, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m going to need you to let me go.”

“I can’t,” Eve said, sounding distressed, “at least not until you hear what I have to say.”

Up close, it was easier to see the girl Eve had been and not the woman from all those cringeworthy ads for her recently canceled CBS show. Jack almost let her guard down, after all, how long had it been since she’d had someone outside her family to talk to. Then she remembered that Eve was partially to blame for that. Eve had basically disappeared after Jack’s parents passed, and now suddenly here she was, and only because she needed something?

“I can’t think of anything you could say to me that I’d care about,” Jack said coldly, wrenching her arm free of Eve’s grasp and beginning to stomp away.

“On the contrary darling, you can’t afford to ignore me,” Eve said with such confidence it gave Jack pause.

“Spit it out then.”

“Well, not here, I’ll be honest, it’s going to make me sound a little crazy, and I’d rather we talked somewhere more private. Maybe that little tool shed where you set up that quiet space for yourself?”

Jack frowned.

“How did you know about—”

“I will explain everything, I promise, come on.” To Jack’s surprise, Eve began walking directly towards the shed that she should have no business knowing about. It hadn’t been there last time Eve had been to the orchard, and nobody knew that Jack had dragged an old loveseat in there for when she needed to hide from everything for a little while.

“You have five minutes,” Jack said flatly, following Eve.

“Oh please, for a story like this? I’ll need at least an hour.”

“Five minutes. And start from the beginning. I don’t want any of that fancy Hollywood crap where you start in the middle.”

Eve pursed her lips, looking indignant. But eventually, she nodded.

Full First Chapter

Night Owls – Horror Novel (Editing for Querying)

Excerpt: It only took the paramedics a few minutes to get there since the roads were mostly empty this time of night. They put Sarah on a stretcher and wheeled her into the elevator. Jessica joined them, so worried about her friend that she barely had time to be afraid of the ride down.

“I’ll be okay, just get some sleep,” Sarah said after one of the EMTs told Jessica she wasn’t allowed to ride in the ambulance with them.

Jessica stood and watched the ambulance all the way down the street until she couldn’t see any traces of red light.

Turning back to the lobby, Jessica instinctively started for the stairwell. However, when she reached into her pocket, she realized she hadn’t brought her keys. She had been too caught up in making sure Sarah was okay.

It’s okay, she tried to reassure herself, but her heart was already starting to pound louder. Just ride up one floor, it’ll be okay.

The stairwells were only locked on the ground floor to keep strangers from wandering up there during the hours that the security desk was unoccupied. Luckily, there was a keypad on the elevator that residents could use to enter a code and get up to their dorms after hours. All Jessica had to do was get to the second floor and she could walk the rest of the way.

Still, when the elevator doors dinged open, Jessica’s legs suddenly felt too heavy to move. She waited so long that the doors began to close, prompting her to push the button a second time. When the doors slid open again, Jessica took a deep breath and stepped in. She punched in the code and pushed the second-floor button, squeezing her eyes shut as the doors began to close in front of her.

How long does it take to get to the second floor? Jessica thought. It felt as though she should have been there by now. Sneaking a peak at the display, she saw that she was already passing the fifth floor. Frantically she slammed the button for the sixth floor, and then the seventh, but the elevator kept going.

Jessica began pressing the button for eleven as quickly as she could, not even caring that her acrylic nails were starting to chip as she did. She pleaded with the elevator to stop at her floor, first in her head, then quietly out loud.

“Stop, stop, stop!”

The elevator kept rising until it came to a great shuttering halt at the top floor. The doors didn’t open.

Jessica shut her eyes again. This wasn’t happening. She had fallen asleep on the couch and would wake up covered in drool any second now, and Sarah would make fun of her like she always did.

She willed herself to wake up, tried sucking in air the way she normally did when she woke up from a night terror. All she managed to do was make herself light-headed.

Her heart was pounding in her ears, louder than she had ever heard before. Desperately she hoped the same strange energy that had appeared before would help her again. She needed it to be real, to help her. And it came.

She could feel it as though it poured from the ceiling, coiling around her like thick tentacles of fog. She breathed it in, felt it filling her up.

Jessica willed the elevator doors to open, but nothing happened. She tried harder, reaching out to the strange power, letting it pour itself into her in hopes that it would be enough. She shut her eyes once more, feeling it course through her.

Then, suddenly it dispersed, as though shooting out of her every pore and spreading itself out around the small, enclosed area.

An odd red glow illuminated Jessica’s eyelids. She threw them open, hoping that the doors had opened and the glow was from the exit sign to the building’s roof. What she saw caused her to scream in terror.

The elevator wall had become a pink fleshy mass. It pulsated rapidly, and Jessica realized that it was beating in rhythm with her heart.

Instinctively, she stumbled back, accidentally running into the opposite wall. It too felt moist and fleshy, and Jessica could feel it pulsating around her. She tried to move away from it but found that she was stuck fast.

As Jessica strained to free herself, she realized she wasn’t just stuck, but the wall was pulling back on her. Her entire upper body was being pulled back toward the sinewy wall, its pink tendrils unwilling to release their grasp on her clothes.

She felt her hair being pulled from its roots as her screams of terror were only enhanced by the pain. She felt her skin on the underside of her wrists begin to split like wrapping paper stretched too thin over a flat box…

Full Prologue