First Story.

An administrators dark secret, a travellers dismal blink, and a criminals oasis. Between the three existed something slightly warmer than hell. To Katya, this meant a mixture of things-mostly unchecked, unnoticed, disregarded murder.

It seemed like any other night. The road. She got out of the car as instructed. She stood motionless as instructed. She didn't dare breathe. From the far end of the lot, she watched, as the crowds packed indoors. Whispering trench coats, heels and laughter. J-handled umbrella's closing at the doorman, in a kaliedescope of muted tones- barely color against the oppressive hue of things. It was the grey lands. Everything was ugly against the green.

The inner city's new venue of popularity, gathered crowds,-that's for sure. Lights blinking distant. A spastic, drawing, welcome. To no one but the lowlaying structures surrounding it. Like some 'B' movie Vegas desert outpost. A beacon to it's wanderers.

Neatly situated between it's capital of 'Oh Limpy Me' and the beurgoning metropolis of the 'Sea Attled', LIES 'To Coma'.

It had long been known that 'Oh Limpy Me' itself wasn't exactly sure about the goings on in 'To Coma', and as fate, destiny, and the 'travel of information flowing upwards' claus would have it, neither was anybody else.

She'd never seen the building quite like this before; from this position, for this length of time. Standing there, abstractly gazing at the distant door, as the rotten night changed it's phases. What had been a barely bearable chill quickly turned ice laced--like whiplash. Awkward.

Built in a subtle fashion and marketed to appeal to a crowd greedy for cheaply funded ba-ling-a-blang-blang; it were, essentially, the proverbial Nevada Casino meets-Circus Circus-meets Disco-in-a-maze-with-cheese-pizza. If you wanted to flash 500$ shoes in a cardboard pizza happy land, situated in a trailer park-this was the place to climb that social latter, that year in 'To Coma'.

-Where were the stars...

Too add to her oppression, an angry, incessant, and incessantly angled wind, spat wet hellos in waves. They weren't nice hellos, either. Cautiously, she risked to wonder about it's meaning, disturbed. No good. No good, at all. As a quick response to her thought, broken torrents of side hitting splatter.pressed her raggedly thin, down jacket against goosebumped skeletal skin. There was no use in pulling it away. She tried.

Thinking forward to a far off after Christmas school day, wondering if she'd see it; she began the process of hypothesizing a conversation with an imaginary school mate: "What did you get for christmas?"... "Goosebumps and a friend shot. You?"

...Thwawump!

A hand plopped down on her skull cap. Her knees buckled. Heavy and disgaurding. Painful. She waited for it to leave, then felt up. Nylon and wire.

A bent, dollar store, witches black hat now sat atop her head.
*oh boy*, she thought, where did he come up with that?
"Shouldn't I have a cape or something?" she reacted out loud.
"What?!?"-movement-
*flinch*
"It's halloween, you gave me a hat...."
An ice-picked glare was the only response from the looming pair of beady black eyes. Their emptiness had often perplexed her. Way up there. Hollow.

*Uh oh*. *Hold your breath and look...devoid*. *wait for the hit*.
That usually worked....to avoid one.

Surprisingly, he didn't take that moment to pistol whip, inject, or manually nerve her to quick and blackened silence, as had she become accoustumed. They *were* actually far enough out into the dim, that no one would notice her fall. A pumpkin got more notice in 'To Coma'.


So there they stood. She rather. Sopping wet, in wet chilled hand-me-downs and a wet bent witches hat, dwarfed beside two well dressed asian men in black silk suits, and a white woman in 3 inch heels. All cozy warm, fed, and dry, with their umbrella's and high noses.

It doubled, per design, this place, as the quick and easy round up for the cataloging of the wealthy, the weak willed, and the children-for their probative value and use. Behind the scenes, on this particular occassion, it were doubly utilized as the hiding place where your not so typical, minority, monster on the run, could safely hide *within* the dark matter of the dancing statues. Safely.

Yup Chucklie Cheapsies -Where your kid can be observed-, where you, through your assests will be plotted for extortion, where your monster likely will have been framed for murder, handed his freedom, and subsequently captured--all by by the same national security risk asset; Mr. Black Eyes.

Next to Diss-Me-Land there was no better place for a warm hearted monster to hide but within those dancing marianettes; full sized and shaking, and blazing welcome to the crowds. Community service-meets hideout-meets energy absorbtion. Plush deal. That was the gig. Freedom from persecution in exchange for community service to the childrens souls.

And the show began.
Happily musical monsters on stage, conveying that their only purpose in life was to genuinely, truthfully, and wholeheartedly, please and uplift the crowds before them. The girl felt happy for a change, as she watched. Genuinely happy.

And sadly, she'd soon see why. But, no one else would.* Not even her. She didn't know it'd be him. She didn't even know why she was there. She hadn't even known he was a monster until 20 minutes from getting the hat plopped on her head. This was going to be the most horrible Halloween ever-almost.

And the monsters played.. Screaming and gunshots arose to stage right. The monsters kept playing. She looked, and Mr. Black Eyes was stabbing a woman. The monsters played on. When Mr. Black Eyes went at HER with the knife, The Monster stepped off stage. Drawing his sword, 2 more stepped down with him. Just then the side door swung open, and amoungst the bloodshed, men with handhelds stepped in...looked, and fired. Electric blue flashes. Each of the three disapeared towards and into the devices held by the men.

Quickly, these men began to gather the panicked crowd for *discussion*- To the disco lighted maze, she fled, hoping to stare into the flashing light and make it go back. Spotted while rounding the corner-she ran. Mr Greasy. She saw him see her-and hoped he would forget. Sadly, his head peeked round the corner, and *snap*-a flash, and not from the box on the wall.
This is not a Halloween she'll remember...



[edit on 26-10-2008 by HugmyRek]

This is my first attempt at a story outside grade school assignments, ever.
It is a free write that I dabbled with over the past few days.
I had to tremendously butcher it from it's origional, and pop it up as fast as I could, losing the origional thread, and hoping to not miss the deadline.

I need some severe work in the mechanics of paragraph writing and story writing. Plot development, ect.

For a story off the cuff to make a contribution to halloween-I think I did alright in that context, in the contribution sense. My biggest disappointment with myself was that I couldn't whip up a halloween mind to make a true halloween tale. I lack the ability to construct, 'horror'. I don't have a horror mindset. I can't watch a horror movie.

My next biggest self disapointment is that I completely lack the educative specifics, on hand, of the mechanics of story writing. I lack when I need it, the motivation to research those cues.

As well, afterwards I noticed the characters of the second asian male and the white woman that I didn't develop at all in the cut version of the story.

This tale is my springboard to get on the ball and research those methods-so that if people have the kindness to read my post--at least it will fall within some of the conventional means and understood flows of story telling-rather than be so choppy and undeveloped.

GRAMMAR:
I tried to edit words "Kaleidoscope" and "Burgeoning"--
I really wanted to make a story, and fast. If I sit with something too long--I loose concentration.
I wrote in notepad what I thought was a short enough story--but it ended up to be 2000 words too many. I quickly butchered.
After some hours of drama to get things cropped down and inserted into ATS, I proceeded to attempt the polishing edits. My last attempts to 'save as draft' were unsuccessful.

When I selected these words for edit, the screen would Jimmy, bounce me to the bottom, and totally freak me out; I didn't want to lose my work, as it had evolved to become a puzzle between notepad savings and ATS character number testings on different screens. Tired and losing patience, not being able to think through finding the origional Halloween2 thread, nor a quick link too it; I risked losing all my work. It took alot of effort just to freeright and somewhat get it condensed, so that I could say,


"Yay! I did it!"
~thank you for the opportunity to write and have fun~
This experience was way fun, very filling, and excellent freak therapy.
cheese!

Self critic over. What do you think?

[edit on 26-10-2008 by HugmyRek]