WIP Wednesday: In Which I Leave My Body

Ever have one of those moments when you feel like you're living in another person's body?

I read a snippet from Geoff Willmetts brief mention of Triangulation: End of the Rainbow at Stephen Hunt's SF Crowsnest and had just such an experience:

'The World In Rubber, Soft And Malleable' by Aaron Polson has a title you have to love. A small town has a population that is slowly vanishing and one of the local graffiti painting teens remaining decides to celebrate their lives. This story wouldn't have been out of place under the auspices of Ray Bradbury.

Ray effing Bradbury? Knock me over with a feather.

Speaking of out of body experiences, it seems I've won the Whidbey Writers Workshop Students' Choice Award for October with my magical realism flash, "Different Strings". You can read "Different Strings" online. You can also read some curious comments about one of Mercedes M. Yardley's previous entries. Thanks, Mercedes. I wouldn't have entered without your prompting.

Okay, enough of that astral traveling. Here's a piece of my as-yet-untitled WIP:


Here's the truth about growing up in a small town: you tell lies to survive.

I worked in a grocery store in high school, part time on the evenings and weekends. I saw plenty of strange things there: avocados stuffed in a barrel of fresh popcorn left to rot, a co-worker who used an awl to punch holes in the caps of beer bottles, pies marked "Verda's own home-baked" which came frozen on pallets with the Sunday dairy truck. I found a body in the trash bin once, but nobody can prove who put it there.