As I receive contracts and final edits from authors, I’ll post a teaser from their story here and on our Facebook page. You know where to get the rest, right? Comments are welcome.
Boll Weevil
By
Nathaniel Lee
Jess drove his truck down the lines in the middle of the road on the grounds that he was drunk and it was safer that way. A half-empty bottle of Jameson sloshed on the bench seat, carefully secured with the passenger seat belt. Most of the rest of the liquor from the ABC store rattled in the truck bed. Jess wasn’t normally a thief, but he figured at this point it was technically just collecting abandoned property. Trespassing, at worst. Either way, he wasn’t spending the end of the world sober.
The lines were hard to see under a rippling carpet of shiny black bugs. The truck’s tires made a constant crunching sound, as if driving over bags of potato chips and pork skins. Didn’t smell nearly so nice, though.
So, why did we take this story? We liked the droll delivery of apocalypse (of a sort). Not much happens, but it happens with panache. Two of us liked it better than the other two, but all agreed it was a nice contrast to stories we had in hand. The original was 1000 words; final edit is 1000 words.
Tune in tomorrow for our next tease. The full Table of Contents is here.
Tight description of the bugs; holy crap. I hate cockroaches.
Congrats on meeting your June W1S1 goals, Steve. We’re halfway there!
Truly, I cannot in good conscience recommend reading my story if you have any kind of squick-factor related to bugs.