The Murder After: Preview
The Murder After: Preview
From chapter one. Terrance calls 9-1-1 to report a dead body belonging to his roommate Jacqueline. If you like what you read, go to the book's profile below. And before you ask, nothing happened.
I would like to joke that waking up next to a dead body is the best hangover cure ever.
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Dispatcher: “9-1-1, what’s the address of your emergency?”
“There’s a dead girl on my bed!” But it’s her room, stupid.
Dispatcher: “What’s her name?”
“Jacqueline. Luna.”
Dispatcher: “What does she look like?”
“Brown hair, really really pale- “your voice cracks- “but-but she has a big cut on her neck and-and blood on her pillow! That wasn’t there before!” It keeps cracking, but tears aren’t falling.
Dispatcher: “I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath.” You do.
Dispatcher: “Do you see any weapons?”
“No.”
Dispatcher: “I’m going to send an officer to check on the situation. But first, I need to know your name and address.”
You give your name then leave the bedroom and run down the stairs, worsening your headache. You go to a coffee table in the sitting room. There is an envelope from yesterday’s mail. It has your townhouse’s address and door number, so you read it aloud.
Dispatcher: “Okay, the officer is on their way and will arrive as soon as possible. Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
“Well, I was drunk, and Jacqueline took me back here. She was alive when I passed out, but when I woke up, she was dead!”
Dispatcher: “That will be all. You can hang up now.” You hang up. Then, the realization clicks.
More Posts from Mx-field and Others
Reanna: I wish my headmates had the luxury of thinking about their stories without possibly annoying others like I did. But they get to have collaboration and make suggestions. I didn't have that before the phalanx.
Carnival: Preview
From chapter one. This is the Call to Adventure. If you like what you read, go to the book’s profile below.
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Lakewood, Colorado. In an apartment unit, a dim lamp lit the upper right corner of the front room. Brain, Caleb, Jackie, José, and James sat on a grey couch right of that lamp. On the carpet floor lay Chaz, too sad to notice his friends. They glanced at him, then at each other, unsure how to comfort him.
“Why?” Chaz whispered to himself, “why, why, why, why, why?” A moment later, he said, “no use crying now.” He sat up, wiped the tears off his face, stood, and noticed his friends. They stared at him.
“Why are you staring, and how long have you—”
James stood, “you killed her, didn’t you?” Chaz blinked, “what?”
“You heard me.” He smirked.
“Phoenix is dead,” José whispered. He stood, but Brian pulled at his t-shirt. So, he sat back down.
“What makes you think I killed her!?” Chaz said. James shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t trust anyone—”
“I trusted Rebecca- “Chaz pointed at him- “and you know it!”
“Yeah, right. So, you decided to—”
“No, I didn’t.” He clenched his fists. “They said there was a leak in her car’s gas tank! I was here when it happened, and I didn’t know until Brian told me!”
“You probably poked a hole in it,” James said.
“I didn’t touch Rebecca’s car when she left!”
He pointed at Chaz, “you did something to her car to make it explode—”
“No, I didn’t! Why the fuck are you accusing me in the first place!?”
“You—”
“I DID NOT! WHY WOULD I WANT TO KILL HER!? I LOVED HER!” The room fell silent.
Chaz felt shaky, so he lay on the floor again. He cried again. James sat on the couch and lowered his eyes.
"Happy now?" Jackie whispered to him.
Brian stood and walked towards Chaz.
“Don’t touch me.” He found a box of tissues and placed it next to his friend instead, respecting his vulnerability.
Ten awkward minutes later, Chaz took a deep breath, sat up, used a tissue, stood, and turned to face Brian.
He said, “you said the police won’t investigate because as far as anyone knows, the explosion was caused by a gas leak from a bad fuel tank.” Brian nodded (as if it weren’t said earlier.)
“But they didn’t see any body!” Jackie kicked José's leg.
“Let’s go to Lakeside and find Rebecca ourselves.”
Terrance (to others): They say a watched pot never boils, but they never said anything about a saucepan.
Reanna: I made three posts about my anxiety, but I decided to delete them. This should be more private. Sharing in detail was probably making it worse. I thought it would help, but it didn't.
I am feeling better now. Have a good day!
Reanna: What do writers have to do to get some attention around here!? We'd like people to buy our books and give them a chance.
Do we need to parade our minority status?
We're bigender!
We're Mexicain-American!
We're plural!
Do we need to share our discourse opinions?
Like we're gonna do that.
We don't want discourse.
That's not why we're here.
In our pinned post, we have a link to a master post listing the books we self-published. But no one seems interested in them. What are we doing wrong!?
SL: The flowers we got our mum yesterday have roses, so F.M. and I plan to remake the cover of The Year After with one of them. We already took the picture.
The current cover has a white carnation with pink stripes. It represents love that wasn't shared. We only used it because we got the flower on our birthday.
But a red rose represents true love. The Year After is a romance after all. Plus, we used a rose for The Murder After (a yellow one representing friendship.) Here's a link to that cover.
I'm glad we can use roses for both books.
SL: You know what I should have done for The Murder After? I should have shared Terrance's notes from his exercise book, so the readers could have seen the clues he found. It would have been much better than sharing chapter one of The Year After.
Reanna: You know what? We're not going to share the playlist for Carnival. You're just going to have to buy the book to see it.
This is our cat Mia. Mia wants chicken. He might be part Maine Coon. That's all.
