Hello,
Book and story ideas pop into my head more often than is comfortable. When one really sticks it’s like a piece of popcorn in my teeth and I don’t get full relief until I get it out on paper.
A Proof of Concept is kind of like a trial run. It’s me wiggling the popcorn (story) with my tongue.
This would be the third in my LGBT+ Romance / Northern Ontario Horror novels, along with Copper Tarnish and Parabiosis which I think will need a new name.
“Why the hell do you smell like antiseptic?” screamed my mother. I didn’t wait for my dad’s reply and closed my door. It was an open secret that Mr. Zelan had built himself a still and was selling alcohol from the back of the pharmacy.
It had been less then a month since we’d moved here. Somehow my parents thought that after ten years of fighting, cheating, and just generally being bad at being married; that moving into an experimental green community in the middle of nowhere would save their marriage.
I was extra pissed because I’d believed them and instead of doing my first year of university at Western or U of T like I wanted, I was stuck two hours northwest of Big Falls Ontario.
Aeter Aerospace had been around since they broke off from Door Technologies in 2004. It had since made a name for itself in every aspect of space travel technology. It created everything for both space missions and consumers. Because everyone needs space-worthy airfiltraion and aeroponics.
Aeter had decided that it needed a testing and development facility. So came the idea of creating The Community of Tomorrow. Build an approximation of what you’d need on Mars or the Moon and then fill it with two-thousand of the brightest, most gullible minds and their kids.
If the first month of this place was any indication, it was a damn good thing they didn’t try it in antarctica or actual space. There has so far been a murder suicide, two people escaping into the wild, and history’s lamest black market.
Not to mention the power outages.
I could hear my parents yelling even through the thick ‘space’ door. Everything here was space or tech or something that sounded like it was named by a middlegrader. The power went out and they didn’t stop fighting. If anything, it got worse.
I stormed out of my room. I’m not sure what I was going to do; yell, scream, tell them to get a divorce? Any thought I had left my mind when I saw them. Standing there yelling, but not moving, just standing with their arms at their sides, no emotion on their faces. Nothing was moving, but their lips.
That’s when I saw the thing for the first time. It unfolded itself from the shadows with a series of cracking noises that sounded wet. Its legs and arms were too long and it looked like it didn’t have any skin. What still keeps me up at night was its face. It looked like a skull with silly string oozing all over it and teeth in every hole.
It’s teeth chittered at me like a squirrel run through an autotune and then the power came back on and my parents started moving normally.
Okay. I’m liking this one. No idea when I’ll write it, but I look forward to it.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Stay safe and be kind,
Éric