And, I’m sure you might have noticed that I finally tweaked the styles for the site. The small white text made me dizzy, so I made it bigger and took down the contrast. I also added red accents ! So hopefully it’s easier to read. Enjoy.

And don’t worry, more will be coming.

So, expect to see revised versions of the already written stuffand some new stuff (yes, I have been writing too) this weekend. :D

I’ll be putting up the stuff I wrote over Thanksgiving later today. And there’s a bunch of it. I’ll also keep posting as I write here, though it may be a little less frequent now that NaNoWriMo is officially over.

Maybe next year

Of course Winford hated beer, so he spit it right out and went back to the sofa (which he dragged all the way from his old apartment to Dimitri’s) and then turned on the TV, which Dimitri was powering with all his generators. Of course there was nothing on so Winford turned the TV off and said that Benadryl does strange things to your head and some days writing just doesn’t work.

With that said, Winford died. It didnt take him long, he just rolled over and died. The end. Really. Then the writer gave up for the night and decided to play video games because this stopped making sense before it even began. TTFN.

Lucy crouched over the body on the ground and rolled it so she could see the face, tears coming to her eyes. She looked down at the mangled body of a young boy, bite marks all over, laying in a pool of blood on some weird type of symbol on the ground. She nodded up to Chris and Karen. Karen burst into tears and buried her head in Chris’ massive chest as he held on to her trying to comfort her.

“We should bury ‘im.” Lucy said, fighting down the tears. With Jeb dead and Tenney missing, that left her in charge and she had to hold it together. Chris nodded to her and he put his hand on Karen’s shoulder. Karen nodded and wiped the tears from her eye, sniffling.

“He always liked the arcade, so let’s do it there.” Lucy said looking around for some type of blanket or something they could wrap the body in. In the end she gathered up all their coats and put the body on some planks which she secure with the coats. Then she and Chris carried Jeb’s body down the street to the arcade that he had loved back when things worked.

By the time they finished the burial, both Chris and Lucy were covered in sweat and tired out. Lucy tried to do a brief eulogy, but instead broke into tears. Chris just said “He was a good kid,” then bowed his head in respect.

When they finished they sat down to have some dinner, some cold stew from a can that Lucy had in her backpack. After a long, silent dinner where none of them ate much, Lucy finally broke the silence.

“I’m leaving,” was all she said. Lucy started crying and Chris shook his head. “I’ve gotta find Tenney and I can do it better alone. Chris, you need to watch out for K. Please. If I find him, I’ll come back, but this might get messy and I don’t want to drag the two ‘a you into it.”

She stood up suddenly, reached in her pocket and pulled out a coin and tossed it to Karen, who caught it despite the fact that her eyes were filled with tears. “My bro’ gave it to me. I can’t say it’s brought me luck, but it’s somethin’ I want you to have it.” She turned away so they didn’t see her crying again, waved to them and set off.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading. I have some fun ideas for what to do with this when I’m done. But for now it’s just write write write…

001

The wind howled through the cracks in the wood, whistling like a teapot just beginning to steam. In the shadows of the dark, deserted attic, a teenage boy huddled shivering. His arms were wrapped around his legs and his messy hair hung down over his face. A squirrel chittered from one of the rafters and scurried down its nest on the other side of the attic. Outside sirens wailed and then faded into the distance, racing off to some distant location.

Winford tried to shed tears, but they wouldn’t come and he hated himself for it. A loud scratching startled him as the wind blew the limbs of a tree across the broken walls. Another siren went by and Winford lay over and curled up in the fetal position, pulling his hoodie close. The musky scent of neglect an dust surrounded him, but he paid it no heed as he fell into a light and unrestful slumber.

When Winford woke, it was evening and he couldn’t feel his feet. His breath formed a mist in front of him as he tried to warm himself. Part of him didn’t care if he died, but his body just went about it’s business anyway. He rose to his feet and stretched out and nearly hit his head on the old rafter. The squirrel scolded him with a noisy chatter. Winford walked to the hatch and lowered the old rickety ladder down.

When he was younger, the neighborhood kids had called the place haunted and told many stories about ghosts and monsters that lurked in it. Winford had believed every one. But then one time when he was a teenager, a group of his friends had dared him to go inside. Well, dare wasn’t the right word, more like threatened him into it. That day Winford swallowed his fears and went inside.

Of course, the building was no more haunted than any other house and monsters didn’t really exist, so Winford soon came to like the little run-down house and would visit it when he wanted some alone time or when he wanted to escape the bullies. He had even on a few occasions, scared away some kids by making phony ghost noises and rattling furniture.

So really it came as no surprise that the first place Winford retreated too when his mother died was the old haunted house. The unfortunate part was, that he couldn’t stay. He knew that others would be coming for him soon. Coming to take him back to the nasty oprhanage as he wasn’t yet old enough to live on his own and there was no way Winford was going to let that happen

It might take them a couple days before they questioned one of his classmates who could surmise where he was, but Winford wasn’t going to wait for that to happen. So on that cold autumn night Winford left his home and his special place and began the first of his many walkabouts.

“Demon, put that down this instant. You have no idea where that thing came from! Stupid mutt…” Father Parkinson scolded his dog, who had run off with some scrap of something that he had found. The beagle ran and hid behind a trash can munching on his find, totally ignoring the Father.

“I swear, I’m going to leave you one of these days, you dumb dog.” he continued as he rounded the corner and approached the trashcan. “I don’t know why I bother…” he sighed then reached down to grab ahold of the dogs collar and pull him off whatever he had. The dog turned on him and bared his teeth in a growl, blood dripping off his lips. The Father stepped backwards startled and almost tripped over the trashcan. Demon, meanwhile went back to his chewing.

Against his better judgment Father Parkinson persisted. Over the last few weeks, he had actually grown attached to this dog and he didn’t want it dying because it ate some rotten animal it found in an alley. Besides, who knew what these monsters were made of anyway and if dogs could actually digest them. So the Father picked up a stick oof the ground and banged on the trash can as loud as he could, sending the dog jumping nearly two feet in the air before it bounded away leaving a bloody mass behind on the ground.

Parkinson looked down at the pile of flesh and gagged when he realized what it was. There on the ground in front of him was the side of some poor unfortunate person’s face, half-chewed by his dog. Fighting back nausea, he used the stick to pick the thing up and toss it into the trash can. By now Demon had found some scent or another and was cocking his leg on the side of a building.

Father Parkinson left him to do his business and went back to the building where the dog had found the vile thing. If there was part of a person, there was likely to be more, hopefully there would be enough left for him to bury (sometimes these monster left little more than a stain).

“Oh dear God,” the Father proclaimed as he swung open the door where the dog had gone. There, tied to a chair was most of a person. Pieces of the person were scattered on the floor along with small bloody footprints. The corpse looked to be wearing the tatters of what had once been a black robe, which the Father recognized instantly as one of the robes that the priests of darkness wore. He was tempted to just leave the body where it was, but he knew he couldn’t. Even the wicked deserved a proper burial at least.

He crossed himself and then muttered a prayer asking the Lord to give him strength as he went to work untying the body and preparing it for burial.

By the time he had finished preparing the body, Father Parkinson was a mess. His hands and robes were covered in blood and what remained of his lunch was in a puddle over on the side of the building. The body was wrapped in a couple trashbags he had found inside.

The grave he dug out back near the trash can in a small patch of browned grass. He didn’t dig it deep like some of his others, but it was still deep enough that other animals wouldn’t dig it right back up. He dragged the body into the grave, covered it with dirt and offered a small prayer.

For a while, Winford was able to survive on the money he had taken from his mom’s secret stash (not that she would be needing it any more), but that eventually ran out. When it did, Winford had to resort to stealing or begging or trashpicking. And for the most part it was the first choice that he chose.

When you’re young and have only the clothes on your back to hinder you, it’s really not that difficult to steal what you need to survive. It started with small things like a soda or candybar from a gas station, but pretty soon, Winford was sneaking into houses to steal food, drink and the occasional shower.

By some stroke of luck, or by the sympathy of any number of his victims, Winford managed to avoid getting caught for over a year. Of course, Winford’s luck had never been anything to write home about, so eventually that ran out too. About two weeks after his 16th birthday, Winford got caught.

For a couple of weeks, Winford had been staying in an abandoned hunting shack in the woods near to a small suburban town. Every couple days he would go out, find a house with no one home, take what he needed and then go back to the shed.

He knew he would have to get moving soon. He didn’t want to hit too many houses in one town or someone would catch on, but it had been a while since Winford had a place where he could get shelter without having to worry about being found by the police. So, Winford tried to space out his hits and stretch out the time he stayed where he was.

The first thing Winford had found out about robbing houses, was that despite what movies or books told you, the best time to rob someone was in the daytime, not at night. At night people were home and on guard. During the day, most people worked and the times of stay-at-home moms were a thing of the past. The biggest problem for Winford was the truancy effect. If he dressed right, he could pass for 19 despite his beard-growing deficiency, but that usually meant wearing nice clothes and that was not an easy thing to do when you were homeless and living in a shed in the woods.

On one particularly nice spring morning, Winford set out to make a hit. He had had his eyes on a few houses in one out-of-the-way neighborhood and he figured he would be able to hit one of them that day. So that morning he began his jogging routine (one of the many different guises he had assumed). He started at one end of the neighborhood and jogged to the next. When he got to the houses in question, he would discreetly look to see if they were empty and that there was no one in the neighbor’s houses either. If there was, he would just keep jogging, if not. He would stop to tie his shoe or something and then duck behind some bushes.

That day, the first two houses were annoyingly not vacant. The first house still had a car out front. Probably a sick day or something. At the next house it was one of the neighbors.

The third house on his little route was a bit out of the way. Winford had earmarked it because the driveway was lined on both sides with bushes which also obscured the house from the view of the all the neighbors except the one across the street. So when Winford got there and found the place empty, he stopped to tie his shoe then disappeared into the bushes.

The first part of his heist went without a hitch. He managed to get in and get his backpack stocked up in half an hour. He was just getting ready to go when he got distracted by the library. It had been a while since Winford had been able to read more than the dumb romance novels people toss out with their trash, and he figured he deserved a book or two for the road before he left this town and moved on to the next. So Winford set about finding a couple books.

He was about to grab a collection of Poe off the shelf when he heard a cough behind him followed by a voice.

“Ah, Poe, a good choice. You’re a man of good tastes. But I’m afraid I must ask what you are doing in my library and whether I should call the police.”

Winford dropped the book and swung around, preparing to bolt. He abruptly stopped when he saw a man in black with a shotgun pointed right at him. Winford raised his hands and looked at the man in front of him.

“Well? Do I have to call the police or are you going to explain yourself son. Or should I call someone’s parents…yes I’d say that may be closer to the truth.” The man waved the gun at Winford and looked at him skeptically. Winford noticed a small square of white on the neck of the man’s collar and recognition passed through him while the man continued. “No answer. Well if that’s how it’s going to be then——”

“Um, please don’t…” Winford started, then added a “Father” after figuring that politeness would probably be the only way he could get out of this one without ending up in foster care.

“Well, that’s a little better,” but you’re going to have to do more than call me “Father” if you want to get out of this one,” he replied beckoning Winford to the seats on the other side of the room. Winford, seeing no other option, took off his backpack and sat down. The minister pulled up another chair and set the rifle across his legs.

“Ok. Spill it. And I don’t want any lies. I am a minister after all and I can tell these things. And don’t think of trying anything funny either. Just because I’m a minister doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use this thing.” he pointed at the gun and the looked at Winford expectantly.

And then before Winford could stop himself, everything came out in a rush and he told this complete stranger his story. From his mother’s car accident, to hiding in the “haunted” house, to not wanting to go back to an orphanage or foster home. When he finally finished he was crying on the man’s lap, the gun set aside on the desk nearby. When he had finally stopped crying, Winford wiped his face then went back to his chair and sat down.

At that point, the minister stood up and motioned for Winford to follow him. “Come, you must be hungry, my wayward son. Let’s get some food in your belly then we can figure out what to do with you.” Winford smiled and followed after him happily.

Dinner was amazing. The minister apparently was quite the cook and Winford wolfed down every last bit of what the minister prepared. In no time, they were talking and joking happily. Winford didn’t even mind when the conversation turned religious and he even prayed with the minister, though he was not ready to “let Jesus into his heart” as the minister would have liked. But the minister wasn’t worried that would come with time.

That night Winford slept in a real bed for the first time in a year and a half. Here was someone that cared about him without asking questions that wasn’t afraid of him or didn’t want to send him to a foster home. Winford went to bed happy and hopeful.

The next morning he awoke rested and cheerful and went downstairs to find two social workers and a police man having breakfast with the minister.

For a while, Winford was able to survive on the money he had taken from his mom’s secret stash (not that she would be needing it any more), but that eventually ran out. When it did, Winford had to resort to stealing or begging or trashpicking. And for the most part it was the first choice that he chose.

When you’re young and have only the clothes on your back to hinder you, it’s really not that difficult to steal what you need to survive. It started with small things like a soda or candybar from a gas station, but pretty soon, Winford was sneaking into houses to steal food, drink and the occasional shower.

By some stroke of luck, or by the sympathy of any number of his victims, Winford managed to avoid getting caught for over a year. Of course, Winford’s luck had never been anything to write home about, so eventually that ran out too. About two weeks after his 16th birthday, Winford got caught.

For a couple of weeks, Winford had been staying in an abandoned hunting shack in the woods near to a small suburban town. Every couple days he would go out, find a house with no one home, take what he needed and then go back to the shed.

He knew he would have to get moving soon. He didn’t want to hit too many houses in one town or someone would catch on, but it had been a while since Winford had a place where he could get shelter without having to worry about being found by the police. So, Winford tried to space out his hits and stretch out the time he stayed where he was.

The first thing Winford had found out about robbing houses, was that despite what movies or books told you, the best time to rob someone was in the daytime, not at night. At night people were home and on guard. During the day, most people worked and the times of stay-at-home moms were a thing of the past. The biggest problem for Winford was the truancy effect. If he dressed right, he could pass for 19 despite his beard-growing deficiency, but that usually meant wearing nice clothes and that was not an easy thing to do when you were homeless and living in a shed in the woods.

On one particularly nice spring morning, Winford set out to make a hit. He had had his eyes on a few houses in one out-of-the-way neighborhood and he figured he would be able to hit one of them that day. So that morning he began his jogging routine (one of the many different guises he had assumed). He started at one end of the neighborhood and jogged to the next. When he got to the houses in question, he would discreetly look to see if they were empty and that there was no one in the neighbor’s houses either. If there was, he would just keep jogging, if not. He would stop to tie his shoe or something and then duck behind some bushes.

That day, the first two houses were annoyingly not vacant. The first house still had a car out front. Probably a sick day or something. At the next house it was one of the neighbors.

The third house on his little route was a bit out of the way. Winford had earmarked it because the driveway was lined on both sides with bushes which also obscured the house from the view of the all the neighbors except the one across the street. So when Winford got there and found the place empty, he stopped to tie his shoe then disappeared into the bushes.

The first part of his heist went without a hitch. He managed to get in and get his backpack stocked up in half an hour. He was just getting ready to go when he got distracted by the library. It had been a while since Winford had been able to read more than the dumb romance novels people toss out with their trash, and he figured he deserved a book or two for the road before he left this town and moved on to the next. So Winford set about finding a couple books.

He was about to grab a collection of Poe off the shelf when he heard a cough behind him followed by a voice.

“Ah, Poe, a good choice. You’re a man of good tastes. But I’m afraid I must ask what you are doing in my library and whether I should call the police.”

Winford dropped the book and swung around, preparing to bolt. He abruptly stopped when he saw a man in black with a shotgun pointed right at him. Winford raised his hands and looked at the man in front of him.

“Well? Do I have to call the police or are you going to explain yourself son. Or should I call someone’s parents…yes I’d say that may be closer to the truth.” The man waved the gun at Winford and looked at him skeptically. Winford noticed a small square of white on the neck of the man’s collar and recognition passed through him while the man continued. “No answer. Well if that’s how it’s going to be then——”

“Um, please don’t…” Winford started, then added a “Father” after figuring that politeness would probably be the only way he could get out of this one without ending up in foster care.

“Well, that’s a little better,” but you’re going to have to do more than call me “Father” if you want to get out of this one,” he replied beckoning Winford to the seats on the other side of the room. Winford, seeing no other option, took off his backpack and sat down. The minister pulled up another chair and set the rifle across his legs.

“Ok. Spill it. And I don’t want any lies. I am a minister after all and I can tell these things. And don’t think of trying anything funny either. Just because I’m a minister doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use this thing.” he pointed at the gun and the looked at Winford expectantly.

And then before Winford could stop himself, everything came out in a rush and he told this complete stranger his story. From his mother’s car accident, to hiding in the “haunted” house, to not wanting to go back to an orphanage or foster home. When he finally finished he was crying on the man’s lap, the gun set aside on the desk nearby. When he had finally stopped crying, Winford wiped his face then went back to his chair and sat down.

At that point, the minister stood up and motioned for Winford to follow him. “Come, you must be hungry, my wayward son. Let’s get some food in your belly then we can figure out what to do with you.” Winford smiled and followed after him happily.

Dinner was amazing. The minister apparently was quite the cook and Winford wolfed down every last bit of what the minister prepared. In no time, they were talking and joking happily. Winford didn’t even mind when the conversation turned religious and he even prayed with the minister, though he was not ready to “let Jesus into his heart” as the minister would have liked. But the minister wasn’t worried that would come with time.

That night Winford slept in a real bed for the first time in a year and a half. Here was someone that cared about him without asking questions that wasn’t afraid of him or didn’t want to send him to a foster home. Winford went to bed happy and hopeful.

The next morning he awoke rested and cheerful and went downstairs to find two social workers and a police man having breakfast with the minister.