i fucking love the frighteners.
The WIP meme: post a small snippet from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations.
Tommy Willetts could sense it, even if he couldn’t see the fullness of it. There was a storm cloud approaching, very close now and inches from splitting open with a boom that would rattle you down to your bones. It would rain over this little village like it had never rained before, and he and the others would stand in the middle of it. In the eye of the storm. There’d be no escaping; they could only wait for it to blow itself out. And when the thunder died away, what would be left in its wake?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t know. And it was terrifying. But… The storm was already on its way. There’d be no outrunning it now. They’d summoned it the moment Bob laid his eyes on that grinning, misshapen skull. And for good or ill, they’d have to see this through to the end.
He would have to see it through to the end.
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It should have been raining. Had the universe any sense of decorum, there would have been dramatic, sky-splitting forks of lightning, the kind of thunder that resounded in the molars, sheets of rain that could only be described as torrential.
A damnably peaceful late spring night stared back at him instead. The purple twilight beyond the window was deepening into proper, inky darkness. A gentle, warm breeze rustled through the leaves of the oak tree beside the house, carrying the scents of fresh-cut grass and smoky grills into the room through the mesh screen. The faintest cricket song began in the distance.
The scream silenced the song, made his heart stutter beneath his ribs.
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He tried to untie the corset while kissing her, but that soon proved a futile effort. It was the sort of job that required a pair of focused eyes and a steady set of hands. She lay back and giggled as he carefully unknotted the laces.
“You’re lucky I’m so confident about my prowess,” he said. “The way you always giggle in bed. A less certain man would think he was being mocked.”
“Never ever!” she said quickly through her laughter. “It’s just that you make the most precious faces when you’re concentrating.”
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“I feel the need to point out that you’re handling all of this remarkably well,” Athena said, studying her newest half-brother from across the table with a smile that was a mixture of amusement, admiration, and pure Athena. There was always a self-satisfied air about her; it came from the simple knowledge that she was, unequivocally, the cleverest person in any room and there was never a problem she couldn’t think her way out of. “I can tell you’re a ‘go with the flow’ sort of guy. You must get that from your mother.”