This year’s October fiction project is a short middle-grade horror novel. The working title is “Turning Leaves,” but that will probably change.
Here are the rules (which I am making up as I go along!):
- Write every day.
- Write about a thousand words every day.
- Write words the same day the characters would be writing them, for the most part (that is, Oct 1 words in the story = Oct 1 words in real life).
- Don’t plan ahead.
- Don’t quit.
I don’t have an outline or even a plan.
It’s been a while since I wrote middle-grade fiction. This should be fun.
…
October Fiction Projects to Date:
2017 – October Nights – General flash fiction short horror-ish stories.
Website – Ebook
2018 – Tales of the Normal – Twilight Zone-style surreal stories.
2019 – Crime du Jour – Short crime stories.
2023 – Turning Leaves – Middle-grade horror.
Website – And sign up for the newsletter to get updates about the final ebook!
Turning Leaves (Working Title): October 8 - That's weird, right?
October 8 – Jayla (first entry)
Is it my fault?
I chewed off all my fingernails last night.
When we got back home from the library, Mom was broken again.
In the basement on the couch. Wrapped up in blankets.
October 8 - Lola (first entry)
Something is wrong with Jayla’s family.
I don’t know what.
I didn’t have to go home right away after the library. I texted Dad and he said it was fine, I could walk with Jayla to her house as long as it was okay with her. I texted him Jayla’s address and their landline house phone number.
Jayla doesn’t have a cell phone. Her Stepdad Dave has a cell phone, but she’s not allowed to give out the number. Her mom doesn’t have a cell phone either.
That’s weird, right?
RIGHT?
But it’s okay to call their home phone, she said, and gave me the number.
Dad called and left a message introducing himself and giving them our address and phone numbers. Nobody answered, even though Jayla said her mom was home.
Even you have to admit that’s weird, right?
That her mom doesn’t have a cell phone?
By the time we got done talking to my dad, the sun was getting so low that the shadows seemed to stretch sideways, gold stripes on the road between the brick buildings on the other side of the road, gray stripes everywhere else. Two people walking down the sidewalk along Main Street appeared first as shadows without bodies, because they were hidden by the t-shirt shop at the corner.
The two people’s shadows walked separately, then merged, then separated again. The shadows crossed the street before the people even showed up. Two people, adults, one woman with a baby stroller and the other with a glittery pink travel mug that said (I think?):
YOU ARE FABULOUS!!!
I was still thinking about The Stepford Wives, though, so I didn’t give the woman a thumb’s up, which is what I usually do when I see someone being all pink and fabulous!
I may go back to giving thumbs up to people who are being pink and fabulous, but I think I’m done giving thumbs up to people who have glittery pink accessories but who are not actually fabulous.
October 8 - Jayla (second entry)
Lola walked with me to my house, even though she had her bike with her. I got to the library first, so I didn’t see her bike until it was time to leave. As soon as we came outside, I knew which one was her bike.
It was pink.
And glittery.
With a chunky black tires with white sidewalls in the middle, with pink tire rims.
There was a basket of fake roses in the front.
The roses were sprayed with glitter, too.
Even the bike lock was pink.
There was no way that bike could belong to anyone else.
“Did you bring a bike?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Do you have a bike? Are you allowed to go places with it?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, no I don’t have a bike.”
“Do you know how to ride a bike?”
She didn’t ask in a mean way, just a regular want-to-know way.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t have one now. And if I did, it would be black with Halloween skeletons glued onto it.”
“Ooh,” she said, looking up toward the clouds. “You should make it so the bones move when you pedal.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, look it up on YouTube.”
I laughed.
She was wearing a pink and white puffer jacket. She zipped it all the way up, then started pushing her bike on the grass on the side of the sidewalk.
We walked to my house, following two women with a baby stroller. They turned right at the end of the next block and we crossed the street. The sidewalks on one side go away, and there are pieces of muddy grass and broken asphalt that are annoying to walk through.
We walked past a bunch of brick apartment, past the yellow Chamber of Commerce building (whatever that is), past the big red house with the flag on the light pole, past the big creepy white church that looks like it came out of a Stephen King movie.
Then we crossed the street again and walked down the alley to my house.
We had to walk all the way around the house to the front door.
I said, “Nobody uses the back door.”
Lola tilted her head to the side. “Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s Stepdad Dave’s house, so it’s Stepdad Dave’s rules.”
She didn’t say anything. I hadn’t told her about the back kitchen. Or about a lot of things. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted she wanted to be my friend yet.
If I told her things and she decided not to be my friend, then she could use them to be mean to me, like Paige.
If I told her things and she freaked out, she might not decide to be my friend.
She put the kickstand down and said, “Can I come in?”
October 8 – Lola (second entry)
Jayla let me go inside her house but I could tell she didn’t want to. She seemed scared when I asked her if it was okay, so I asked her if it was really okay.
She swallowed. “I’m worried about my mom. Just pretend nothing is wrong, okay? Even if things are wrong.”
I felt bad. I was being pushy and trying too hard to be friendly and vivacious.
I was the Welcome Wagon lady all over again.
I almost gave up then, said sorry, and went home. But Jayla looked sad and scared so I didn’t.
“I can do that,” I said. “Just kick me if I’m being too annoying.”
Jayla gave me a fake smile, then walked up the two cement steps and opened the black screen door, which creaked loudly.
She has an old-fashioned house. My mom and dad would hate it. They like everything to be new and clean and white. Dad would have taken one look and said, “We could freshen this up with a new coat of paint in one weekend!”
My dad LOVES to paint. He even goes over to his friends’ houses to help them paint. Then he comes home and talks to mom for like an hour about why he didn’t like the colors that his friends chose.
Mom just giggles.
Okay, my dad is funny.
The first room inside the house was tiny, and covered with plain wood panels from top to bottom with a sliding wood-panel door to the rest of the house. There is a big coat rack for coats and a big black plastic tray for shoes and a big rubber rug to catch snow and mud. It was pretty clean, though.
The rest of the house was super quiet, no TV or music or video games or talking. Jayla put her black backpack on the floor and took off her Crocs, so I did the same thing with my backpack and shoes, because Dad says that’s the easiest way to be polite, to copy whatever other people do inside their own house.
“Mom?” Jayla called.
She sounded worried.
“Stay here,” she told me. “I’ll be right back.”
She went into the next room, to a hallway with stairs up and a bunch of other doors leading away from it, some open and some closed. She ran upstairs. I heard doors opening and closing, and the creak of wood floor as Jayla walked around, looking for her mom. The house smelled like bacon. I leaned out of the door and saw into the kitchen, where a shaggy gray cat was sitting on the counter, licking the grease out of a pan on the stove.
“Get down!” I said.
The cat looked at me with yellow eyes, the cutest little evil demon eyes I ever saw. I had to put my hands over my mouth so I didn’t squeal out loud. I said, “Awww…okay, sweetie honey pie cuteness darling lovey lovey puss puss, you can stay there for now. But don’t make yourself sick, okay?”
The cat looked down and started licking the pan again.
Jayla ran back down the stairs, then opened the door under the stairs and ran downstairs into the basement. “Mom? Mom. Oh, Mom.”
After a few minutes she walked back upstairs slowly. Her shoulders were down and her face was glittery with spread-around tears.
“I’m sorry, you have to go home now,” she said.
“Do you want a hug before I go?” I asked.
She made a terrible face. I gave her a hug and rode my bike home.
Today has been pretty boring. I did my homework. Then Dad got into a Mario Kart battle with me while Mom and Sally went shopping.
When they were gone, he said, “Are you okay?”
I said, “Dad, I’m worried about my friend Jayla. And I feel icky because of something I read in a book.”
“Tell me all about it.”
So I did. We agreed that The Stepford Wives was a scary book. He said, “I encourage you to keep reading it, but I have to warn you that it never gets less scary. Only more.”
I’m not sure if I want to keep reading it or not.
