Posts
Challenges
Portals
Authors
Books
beta
Sign Up
Challenge
Novel Beginnings Challenge: The Novel Beginnings Challenge is simple. Each week, a new novel will be chosen and it's first few lines will be posted. Take these lines and make it your story! Take in a new direction, change it up, be creative! You can find the lines in the description. BONUS: Try and guess the novel! I'll let you know through pm if you got it right. :) Don't forget to tag me! @infiniteflame.
My nightmare started like this. I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned. Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.
Cover image for post Left In My Wake, by sandflea68
Profile avatar image for sandflea68
sandflea68 in Fiction
187 reads

Left In My Wake

My nightmare started like this. I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned. Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.

A man came swiftly up behind me and grabbed me roughly by my right upper arm, dragging me forward as I stumbled on the wet road. “What are you doing out here? Didn’t you know a hurricane was coming?”

I yanked my arm out of his grip and fell forward into a teeming puddle which was running in crooked channels down the sidewalk, skinning my knees in the process. I looked up and saw the man standing over me threateningly. I was horrified when I noticed he had a knife in his right hand as he gestured for me to get to my feet.

I looked around to see if anyone was around but the idyllic little beach town was empty and forlorn. Anyone with any sense had scurried to shelter. There weren’t even any rocks on the ground for me to defend myself, just windblown sand plastered to my body.

“Who am I?” I wondered, as I saw my wavy reflection in the puddle. I was running from someone but as hard as I struggled to remember, no awareness came to me. I just knew the man was malevolent and I had to escape this uncertainty.

All of a sudden, I felt like a lightning bolt had hit me as the past came flooding back. This was my husband who had followed me from Maine to Florida in order to kill me for the large insurance policy he had taken out on me. I was so frightened that I forced myself to wake up from my nightmare and opened my eyes wide to the realization that this was no nightmare.

I kicked him as hard as I could in the crotch, causing him to double over and fall on the knife. I watched in horror as his blood mingled with the driving rain in crimson splashes.

I jumped to my feet and ran as swiftly as I could down the little empty street, trying to escape my past. Feeling powerful as my pounding footsteps mixed with the roar of the seething ocean, I could never have known that he was not dead as I kept sprinting, trying to outrun his anger and boiling venom. The struggle would last for many years as more bodies would be left in my wake. I have to admit that I was no angel and there was a lot more to my story which will gradually insinuate itself into my narrative in little staining drops of pure evil.

17
6
3