“Mary Margaret…” I screamed.
Her body flailed back and forth on the altar like a fresh trout in a beach bucket.
“Are you in there?”
The jerking stopped. Mary Margaret Hogan looked straight through me. Her eyes, glazed, jaded…green. I held my chest.
Five months ago the Valdosta Daily Times wrote an article about a little boy whose parents made him live in a coat closet, because he needed to be disciplined. By the time the police found him, his face was green, jaded, and dead.
Mary Margaret sat straight up. Jack-in-the-box. And growled. “She is not here, Anastasia Foster.”
I felt a drop of urine in my underpants.
People aren’t always what they seem to be. And yes… There are green monsters in my closet.
*
In my short story Sugar Rum Halloween I used horses, a screenwriting term for collaging subjects, in order to build a solid theme. Each theme or horse grew stronger and stronger until the reader understood that this story was about secrets, mercy and identity.
Go to the message board to see how to you can create horses to drive your theme. And tell me what kind of stories are bridging your theme.
Dee
2 comments:
Good excerpt! It gave me a chill!
Really...i hadn't gotten to the scary part yet.
How do you show theme in your novel? And have you received any word about your manuscript?
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