Poem:

Later, she would discover it was all done with mirrors, (no title or stable name yet)

Stories:

In the dissertations, I'm called HIR 445. Humoral Immunity Response experiment 445. The scientists called me Alexin. (Substance sensibilisatrice, stable name Glad)

Amy liked to fall asleep to old movies. They gave her the best dreams, she'd found. She liked to think they were dreams of past lives. She'd never believed in past lives when she was younger, but after the accident, after the heart transplant, it started to make a little more sense. (Stable name Miracles)

My father will be dead after tomorrow, the letter says. Smooth, creamy, polished paper, like a wedding invitation or a graduation announcement, only terminal, not commencing. I may come home, if I wish, and say good-bye. At sunset, he’ll climb the ladder, so if I have anything to say, I must do it now. I don’t know how I feel about this. (This Vale of Tears, stable name Hoc Vale, except when it's vice versa.)

Once, when the earth was still young, Coyote lost his woman to the Monkey King.

That isn't strictly accurate. Coyote starts all of his stories that way. I think it's mostly that he tends to forget the date. To put it in more recognizable terms, some time not long after the start of the 21 century, Common Era. Last year. About 7 months, more or less. (Coyote and the Monkey King)

She was hitchhiking when I found her. The car swept around a curve, and the high beams lit up her pale clothes and fair hair. I flipped the beams to low, and pulled the car over to the shoulder just ahead of her. All I could think of as I waited for her to climb in was the ghost story, the one with the girl hitchhiking back to a home that no longer existed. I had an urge to touch her, to see if my hand would slip through her loose sweater to the back of the seat. (Light Up, Light Up, stable name Run.) (This one is due for a complete overhaul due to the fact that I end it by having her get eaten by bears.)

The old man in front of her in line dropped a quarter while accepting his change. It rolled to a stop by her shoe, face up.

“I’m not playing anymore,” she told it. “You can’t make me care.” (Significant Change, stable name Sehkrit Love)

When the saw teeth sank into her side, she thought she'd die. She was sure she would. Part of her even looked forward to it. Instead, she found herself standing off to the side, watching the fall, the crash. They stripped branches from her sides, more pain echoing through her. But the pain felt hollow, separate. (Like Rain, though the sky is clear.)

Novels:

Sometimes, the point of a trip is the destination, and sometimes the point is the journey. And sometimes, but not very often, the point of a trip is finding the heart that your boyfriend's ex-fiancee stole from him and buried in a box in the middle of the ocean. (The One True Thing Fairytales Teach Us, stable name Pricks) (this is presumably my working first line, as I am still only like 5000 words into it.)

The sky had lit up, and the ground had shook, and the first thing I'd thought was if there was a particular way to frame a lighting-struck tree for the best shot. Cameras change the way you look at the world if you carry one too much. (Vengence, stable name Falling)


Titles:
The Kid Who Made the Man Who'll Leave You
(previous title posts are here. I may actually be getting better at starting things, not just collecting titles. Of course, I still suck at finishing them.)

Tags: "first line"