Once There Was a Nightclub - STORY PROMPT

Hello Readers,

First off let me assure you that we have not forgotten about the Ogre story we have been writing of late on the blog, it's just been delayed in the conclusion. The final installment should be up on the blog in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we are publishing our first Story Prompt, the first of many more to come we fervently hope. Here's how it works.

First, we write the short beginning to a story, then we post it on the blog. You, the reading corps, read the story at your leisure, and then, get to complete the story yourselves.

How do you do this, you ask? By simply writing the rest of the story as you think it should go in a word document and then attaching that same document to an email, and sending it to our gmail account at vertex249@gmail.com. We get to choose whose conclusion to the story is the best, and, once the judging is completed, we post that document for all to read!

Rules: we would prefer you to, as much as possible, stay within the parameters of the story as begun by the first post. For example, don't turn a Wild Western story in a thrilling tale of kidnap and Piracy on the high seas. Wherever possible, please keep the story going in vaguely the same direction as it started in. Of course, you are permitted to write the story in whatever way you like, it will be entirely your ending, but also, please don't bomb the story. As much as possible, don't simply make everything blow up and everyone die before anything really happens.

Hope you enjoy and I can't wait to read the endings!

-T. Baner

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Searching for a murderer in a nightclub is something like trying to find an individual pimble on a teenager’s face: there seem to always be just too many to count. Of course, my job was slightly easier for me, because this was no ordinary man I was looking for, and there would be signs. Why, you ask? Because these things always leave signs.

I made my way slowly through the crowd, elbowing a path in between the hordes of people gathered around the gambling tables, careful not to rub too close to anyone in case they feel the the sharp edges beneath my jacket and wonder what I was carrying concealed there. I ignored the roar of mingled disapointment and rabid approval from the table next to me as the winner of a round is called, doing my best to shut out as much unnecessary noise as possible as I made m search.

I detected the smells powerful deoderent, ciggarette smoke, liquor and body-odor, but all of these smells mask what I was really looking for.

Pausing for a moment in the midst of all the bustle, I once more attempted to smell out my prey, taking a deep, searching sniff of the air.

I gagged, choking on the sudden odor I detected in the air: brimstone, something like copper too, which meant that I was very, very close.

I turned slowly on the spot, searching for the signs. I’d found the smell, now I needed the actual thing.

Most of the people here are well dressed, so that theory went out the window. Quite a few of them had an odd look to them too; a man in jeans that seemed to have been alternately torn, stained and burned, and a shaven head with inky-black tattoos so thick and dark crawling all across his face that the features are barely distinguishable, a young woman with almost translucent white skin and hair and yellow eyes, who puffed ceaselessly on a bamboo pipe, and a woman in a leopard-print dress with slit-pupils to her eyes. Implanted lenses maybe, or maybe not.

But none of these people really held my interest for long whether or not they are actually as human as they are pretending is a matter for another department to deal with. I skimmed over the majoity of the people around the gambling table until at last; my eye falls on one man.

He was standing at the far side of the table, people flocking around him on all sides as he tosses the dice once more. Another roar of approval from the man’s supporters and a grin from the man himself that pulls his lips back to reveal large, straight, very white teeth. He was neither extremely tall, nor short in any way. His hands were large, with long, delicate fingers and his face seemed to be at once, extremely expressive, and guarded, his yellow eyes sunk deep in his head, were lit with a ravenous glee. The features of his face were finely chiseled, and his hair was dark and styled, gelled and spiked, and opaque black.

But his clothes were what interested me most. His suit was made of some sort of animal skin, scaly and rough and some indefineable color, spiky here, gnarled there, obviously tough, yet, from the man’s movements, seemingly cumfortable.

It was him, I knew it with an unnerring certainty, the kind that always proceeds a kill.

Slowly, casually, careful so as not to draw notice to myself, I slid one hand inside my jacket, and found the hilt of my concealed blade.