The challenge: 100 first-page story hooks in sixty days. Just the first page (or less), and it has to hook the reader to want more. Today I'm 3/4 of the way done. It's been an interesting ride.
The reward (for me): I have two writing notebooks crammed full of story ideas. It occurs to me that here's a chance, with these hooks, to try writing what's in them, just the first page, try it out, see if it has legs. T
Eighty-three:
Brail hit her fourth biker of the day on the way back from work. She might have been more careful--it would have been quite simple to be aware of the shadow coming up on the left, and keep closer to the lane lines--but by this point even in ignorance she had a sense of the invincible. Her bumper caught the back tire of the bike and catapulted the rider onto the asphalt and under the wheels of an oncoming pickup. It slammed on its brakes, tires smoking and rear slewing sideways, but there was no help for it, and the chrome of the fender cracked through the rider’s helmet like an egg being scrambled.
Brail shrieked and pulled over long enough to be sure the rider was dead. There was no question, judging from the hysterical teenager that climbed from the pickup and vomited on the street.
If only she could go back and undo the last...what, ten seconds? Fifteen? Fifteen, probably.
And no sooner had Brail though this, than time scrolled back, rewound, and this time Brail looked at the last second, corrected, and the biker whizzed by unscathed, turned at the next street, and was gone.
Brail whistled something tuneless, and coasted to a stop at the light.
Eighty-four:
Harry flicked the newspaper, straightening it. The Gunners lost again. They were rubbish on the road.
A little girl of six padded into the room, onesie half-zipped, hair still dripping. “Bess, what on earth...come here,” he said, without heat. He zipped her the rest of the way up and scrunched up her hair. He planted a kiss on her forehead, and she threw her arms around his neck.
“‘Night daddy,” she said, and wandered over toward the stairs.
“Goodnight, squirt.”
Ten minutes later, a slim redhead bounced down the same stairs and into the den. She put her hands on Harry’s shoulders and gave them a brief rub. He glanced up at her with a small smile and went back to his paper.
She went to the mantle and picked up a cream-colored envelope, sealed with a scrollwork “H” in red wax. “You didn’t open it,” she said.
“I’m not going to, either.”
“Of course you are. You don’t get a letter like this and not open it.”
He sighed and set down the paper. “I would have opened it,” he said. “I wanted nothing more for most of my life. But now…” He waved his hand around at the small house, the photos on the wall. “You. Bess. I have a job. If they wanted me to come they should have sent that a long time ago.”
~Cristof
P.S. This series is the brainchild of The New Creatives, which challenged us to create 100 of something as a way of attaining mastery of a particular art form (or beginning the process, more like). This is my attempt. #TNCmy100