justified

Gone
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 14, Story 2 | 1834 words
Ambuscade

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It's been four months since Jenny disappeared.

I honestly thought she'd be back by now. She had a job waiting for her, and she was never the flaky type. But she went to the Allegheny Horror Con in June, and apart from Instagram updates the first two days, no one had heard from her since.

Jenny and I weren't super-close, but if I'd been a better friend, I'd have gone looking for her months ago. Now, at least, I was able to take some vacation time to fly to Pennsylvania. I hoped I would find some answers.

I got in late Friday night, and drove to the same Airbnb where Jenny had stayed. Jenny had gushed over its quaintness in her posts, but it didn't look terribly interesting in the dark. The inside was old-school gothic, with spooky candelabras and a color scheme built on deep red and black. I would have called it murky— we were in the LED age, but the lighting was all low-watt incandescents.

Maybe it just fit better with Jenny's Addams Family aesthetic than my mid-century modernism.

It was a small two-bedroom house, and yet there was an actual parlor filled with wingback chairs, a fireplace, and dusty portraits. Different eras, different priorities, I supposed. The bathroom had a claw foot tub with a shower head and a curtain. The main bedroom had scrollwork furniture and an honest-to-god four-poster bed.

I put down my suitcase and took in my surroundings. Gloomy, I thought, and kind of creepy. But for Jenny, it was probably perfect.

Jenny had been a horror fan for as long as I could remember. She read it, watched it, and breathed it, in perpetual contrast to her sunny personality. She'd been looking forward to Horror Fest since buying her ticket in February, thrilled with the chance to meet some of her favorite authors. Beneath her wholesome blond exterior beat the heart of a woman who hoped to someday write like Catriona Ward.

Was Catriona there at the conference, I wondered. Did you get a chance to speak to her? I knew Jenny had gone to a couple of movie panels and met a lot of other fans, but most of the writers' events were on the last day and she'd stopped posting by then.( Read more... )

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halfshellvenus

Second Chances
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 14, Story 1 | 1253 words
A nail is driven out by another nail

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Lee woke up into excruciating brightness—white lights, white walls, white sheets. The room was hostile and glaring.

He couldn't remember exactly what had happened. One minute he’d been sitting at his desk holding a pen, and now he was here, wherever here was. And my god, he ached! He couldn't remember ever feeling pain like this before.

He’d never been so groggy, either. This wasn't like getting up in the morning—he was slow and stupid, and he could hardly move. Why wouldn't it go away? And why was he so tired? The room seemed to be fading away at the edges…

It was still bright the next time he woke up, and he still didn't know where he was. He could hardly think, and the pain was unbelievable. What the hell?

A bunch of people came in and out of the room, and from listening, Lee gathered that he was in the hospital and he'd had some sort of major reattachment surgery. No wonder things hurt!

It would be a long road back, they said, and moving would be hard at first. Lee soon discovered that was a huge understatement.

This thing called rehab sucked. It was so hard. Everything was kind of numb and tingly, and it didn't feel quite right. Mismatched nerve endings, the people said. Foreign material. He would adapt to it, but he had to give it time.

Well, it wasn't like he had a choice.

Lee worked and worked, day after day, slowly building strength. He still felt clumsy, but it was getting a little better. Everyone seemed pleased with how far he'd come, so he guessed he was doing pretty well? But it still didn't feel like his own body. He wondered if that would ever go away.

What if it was always like this? Like part of him didn't belong? ( Read more... )

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