![\"Cottage](\"https:\/\/hometeamproductions.tv\/wordsworks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Cottage-on-Church-Lane-001.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWHAT IF?\u00a0 Real life starts to find its way, fully transformed, onto the page.<\/p>\n
REAL LIFE:\u00a0 The convent next door is suddenly vacant, our good friends the Sisters of Mercy replaced by a pair of perfectly nice young women who are renting the space.<\/p>\n
IMAGINATION OVERDRIVE:\u00a0 The nice gals next door morph into “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” a sinister married couple who are rarely seen, but their presence is felt.\u00a0 Throw in Shepherd, a former Green Beret turned church caretaker who quotes poetry, lies readily, and gets Sunny drunk in the afternoons.\u00a0 He also introduces her to the mysterious old utility tunnels under the church grounds that may or may not be real.<\/p>\n
And finally, WHAT IF you’ve gotten three quarters of the way into the manuscript only to discover that your working title, “THE SOUL COLLECTORS,” is a recently published book?\u00a0 All in a day’s work.\u00a0 As it turns out, THE DARK SIDE OF TIME is, well, a scary perfect title.\u00a0 But you’ll have to read the whole thing to find out why.\u00a0 Meanwhile, here’s a teaser.\u00a0 Be afraid.<\/p>\n
A hot breath in Sunny’s ear whispered in a language that had little to do with human speech and in fact could not be described in terms that<\/strong> were human; not quite music, nor even sound, it bubbled endlessly like a spring in a forest, and though it was a soft sound she knew it to be unimaginably evil and that whatever it was saying was rapacious and seductive and insistent and it would have her, she could feel it caressing her in the dark, the undulant form pressed to her, a smell of burning hair and meat, and some dark spice not found in the known world.<\/strong><\/p>\n Beside her, leaning back in the bed, drawing on a cigarette, Shepherd said, “We don’t want to kill you.\u00a0 We just want to fuck with you.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Sunny switched on the light, blinking.\u00a0 It was two in the morning.\u00a0 The monitor now showed only the sleeping child in her nursery.\u00a0 Shepherd, however, was still in the bed with her; he was using an empty whiskey glass as an ashtray.\u00a0 He was himself apparently naked.\u00a0 The sheet casually flipped over his groin, his powerful upper body corded with lean muscle.<\/strong><\/p>\n “Are you wit’ me?”\u00a0 Shepherd asked her.\u00a0 “You know what the man said.\u00a0 You’re either wit’ us or against us.”<\/strong><\/p>\n Sunny said, “I don’t know what’s going on anymore.\u00a0 Who are<\/em> you?”\u00a0 Her own voice tinny and unfamiliar in her ears.<\/strong><\/p>\n “All will be revealed,” the giant told her.\u00a0 “In the fullness of time.”<\/strong><\/p>\n “I don’t like to leave him alone,” Shepherd explained.\u00a0 “At night.\u00a0 He don’t like it.”\u00a0 He stretched a long arm to scoop Sunny into a partial embrace, her head resting against his shoulder.\u00a0 “I feel that way about YOU, Querida,” he told her.\u00a0 She sighed, settling back against him, breathing his not unpleasant jungle smell, nicotine.\u00a0 Her throat closed, her eyes stinging.\u00a0 MY house.\u00a0 My HOUSE.\u00a0 <\/em>She may have slept.\u00a0 It was hard to know anymore.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sunny opened her eyes reluctantly.\u00a0 She lay in darkness.\u00a0 The clock face just turning four.\u00a0 The monitor showed Bunny in placid slumber.\u00a0 The doorbell rang in a single note, a vibrating gong that boded ill.\u00a0 With deepening apprehension, Sunny rose.\u00a0 Andrew lay asleep on his side of the bed, undisturbed.\u00a0 On the landing she peered down the stairwell; a dark figure was visible through the windows flanking the front door.\u00a0 Shit!\u00a0 Shepherd?<\/em>\u00a0 She made her way down the stairs in the dark, slid the chain on, unlocked the door and cracked it open.\u00a0 It was then that she saw the cop car idling in the lane, red lights flashing hypnotically.\u00a0 Two cops on the porch.\u00a0 A walkie talkie crackled something not understandable.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 “Ma’am,” one of the cops said.\u00a0 “We were notified of a domestic disturbance?\u00a0 A dispute?\u00a0 Can you open the door please?”<\/strong><\/p>\n Sunny said, “No.\u00a0 No domestic dispute, you’re mistaken.\u00a0 Who called you?”<\/strong><\/p>\n “We can’t tell you that, Ma’am,” the young cop said.\u00a0 He looked all of eighteen.\u00a0 “Only that it was a neighbor.”<\/strong><\/p>\n The other one chimed in.\u00a0 “They said there was shouting and screaming for hours,” he informed her.\u00a0 “Things breaking and a woman crying.”\u00a0 He looked closely at Sunny.\u00a0 She shrugged, giving up, and slipped the chain free, opening the door, flipping on the porch light, the light in the hall.<\/strong><\/p>\n “I can’t imagine why anyone would have said that,” Sunny told them.\u00a0 “You can surely see for yourselves that everything is perfectly OK.\u00a0 I’ve got my husband and baby sleeping upstairs.”<\/strong><\/p>\n As if on cue, Andrew called, “What’s going on?”\u00a0 He appeared at the top of the stairs.<\/strong><\/p>\n “We come in please?”<\/strong><\/p>\n Sunny stepped aside finally, gesturing them in.\u00a0 “I would really appreciate it if you’d not wake the baby,” she told them coldly.\u00a0 Andrew came down then, hair spiking in every direction, puffy-eyed and yawning.\u00a0 He wore only a pair of sweats, and next to the uniforms bristling with cop gear he looked naked, peculiarly vulnerable.\u00a0 No one sat.<\/strong><\/p>\n “I don’t know who made that call,” Andrew said.\u00a0 “But I myself have been asleep since the ballgame ended, before that really, if you count the boring parts.”<\/strong><\/p>\n The cops were fidgeting uncomfortably.\u00a0 The young one cleared his throat.\u00a0 “Nobody heard anything?\u00a0 Like, maybe could it have been another of your neighbors involved in um, a dispute, argument?”<\/strong><\/p>\n On impulse, Sunny asked abruptly, “Does this house have a history of violence?\u00a0 On police records?\u00a0 That would be accessible to the public?”<\/strong><\/p>\n The cops glanced at each other.\u00a0 The young one cleared his throat again.\u00a0 “Ma’am, I wouldn’t know.\u00a0 You’d have to call Public Affairs.”<\/strong><\/p>\n “You’re sure everything is OK here?”\u00a0 From the other, the taller, older one.<\/strong><\/p>\n “What can we possibly say to convince you?”\u00a0 Andrew asked.\u00a0 He showed them out the door. From the porch they all spotted Mrs. Baccari, three doors down, slip like a shadow back into her house.\u00a0 The convent swathed in total darkness, seeming almost to breathe.\u00a0 The sky to the east paling gradually, limning the enshrouding branches of the tall old trees.\u00a0 Back inside, slipping the chain into place again, Sunny realized that she was wearing only an old tee shirt and a pair of Andrew’s boxers; this was the least of her concerns.\u00a0 As her husband climbed wearily up the stairs, she saw with shock that his back was covered with angry crescent shaped wounds, bruising at their edges, emerging from the waist of his sweatpants all the way up to his hairline, like horrid little bites.<\/strong><\/p>\n Something half-remembered, but gone immediately.\u00a0 <\/em>“What happened to your back?”<\/strong><\/p>\n Back in a bed devoid of heat or comfort, they lay far apart and very still, their eyes open, staring sightlessly into the obscure gray wash of the coming day.<\/strong><\/p>\n *\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n DISCLAIMER: <\/span>\u00a0 Stephanie Silber owns the copyright to the foregoing and gives permission only for the writing sample herein to be distributed free of charge, and without alteration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “WHAT IF” is the springboard from which fiction writing leaps.\u00a0 WHAT IF the economy tanks and your hard-won, well-loved career as a documentary filmmaker has slowed to a crawl?\u00a0 WHAT IF you turn a problem into an opportunity and set … Continue reading <\/a>She was not dreaming.\u00a0 With that realization she sat straight up in bed.\u00a0 “Andrew!?”\u00a0 She knew without looking that Andrew was gone, as was whatever had been fondling her.\u00a0 She turned with terror to the baby monitor.\u00a0 She saw not the nursery, but a high-ceilinged room she did not recognize; the ornate bed, however, she did, and she likewise recognized the occupants of it.\u00a0 Andrew, naked, struggled with Mrs. Smith, bucking and rolling.\u00a0 Their panting ululations audible.\u00a0 From beneath him her dark unfathomable eyes were trained on Sunny’s.\u00a0 The cushiony crimson lips curving into a mocking smile.\u00a0 Receiving Sunny’s man unto her.\u00a0 Standing in the shadows, Mr. Smith watched, fully clothed, masturbating himself with an urgent hand.\u00a0 His sunglasses covered his freakish eyes, and as Sunny stared he slowly lifted them off to gaze at her without expression.\u00a0 From his thin mouth extruded the flickering tongue of a snake.\u00a0 He beckoned.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>A rustling sound from the foot of the bed, below Sunny’s line of sight, and before she could respond, the dog Bachelor had leapt upon the bed to lie facing them, great white paws splayed, little eyes alert in its broad face.\u00a0 It shook its teratic head and its viscid saliva liberally splattered the linens.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>“Yes?”\u00a0 Sunny asked them.\u00a0 She kept the security chain in place.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Sunny was struggling to reconstruct the night as it had progressed.\u00a0 She remembered only dinner clearly, and that had been pacific enough.\u00a0 Admittedly it was odd that Andrew had somehow divined her audition, whimsy wasn’t like him.\u00a0 They’d shared the bottle of cabernet.\u00a0 Things got fuzzy here — perhaps because she’d taken a Sonesta before bed.\u00a0 (Something about the Smith’s wine…had she not thrown it out?\u00a0 Did Andrew drink some?\u00a0 Blank.)\u00a0 <\/em>She recalled Andrew kissing her goodnight before going up to watch the game while she sat reading in bed, and the next thing she knew the doorbell woke her.\u00a0 Could they possibly have fought?\u00a0 But why?\u00a0 And when?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a>Andrew stood in the bedroom, studying his back in the mirror, touching the parts he could reach.\u00a0 “I don’t know,” he told her finally.\u00a0 “It doesn’t hurt at all, though.”
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