Hooks; let's write 'em.

He lay, half buried in the snow, with the message still in his hand. He wanted to move - he wanted to be able to get up and continue his assignment, to deliver this vital news to his commander - but his treacherous body wouldn't let him. Already, he couldn't feel his arms or legs, and his vision was already blurring into a haze of whiteness. As he desperately tried to get up, he became aware of booted feet standing next to him, and a painful glance upwards brought the point of a sword into his field of vision, but that was the last thing he saw.
 
The man was dead; John wondered how. Was it his fault? He looked at the blood-stained sword in his hand. He couldn't remember.
 
He had waited his entire life to be asked onto this television gameshow, and now that he was actually there, in the studio, he couldn't believe the kind of things that went on behind the scenes. Surely someone should be informed about this!
 
[FONT=&quot]It was pitch dark and cloudy, about [/FONT][FONT=&quot]3 am[/FONT][FONT=&quot] in the night when Mohan Nagpal woke up as he stumbled against the garden swing in a strange villa. This was crazy. A man who is 22 years old, otherwise sane and healthy and leading a fairly boring middle class existence is not supposed to sleep-walk. Some juveniles were known to sleep-walk, or mental patients. Then he looked down at his bare feet. All sleep vanished. He had blood stains all over his pajamas, and his feet, as though he had walked through a pool of blood. He turned and saw that he was standing in the marbled porch of a strange house, his bloody footprints coming towards him from somewhere inside. Panicking, he opened the gate and fled into the darkness, with a backward glance towards the gate whose lit letter-box proclaimed[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]VIKRAM ARORA[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]735 SECTOR 48[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]NOIDA, U.P.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]He had never been to Sector 48 Noida in his waking life and never met Vikram Arora. May be he was going mad. [/FONT]
 
As a private detective, he was used to taking on a wide variety of cases, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, but as long as the pay was good he was willing to overlook the eccentricities of his clients. However, he was thinking of changing his longstanding rule. It wasn't every day that a woman claiming to be a goddess turned up at his door (although, there had been a few times when someone claiming to be the Queen of the Fairies had arrived in his office). Usually, he turned them away, but something compelled him to at least hear her out.

That was when his troubles started.
 
Oh my gosh, Talysia. That sounds so very close to the story I've written. Looks like we got on the same wave length. Very nice job with the hook. As a reader, I'd giddyup on that one.

Tri
 
A nice easy Christmas job, they said.

Just to help us deliver some of the extra mail at this time of year, they said.

Extra cash for presents, they said.


What they didn't say, was that I had to deliver to that house.....
 
There are some days I really hate being insubstantial. Today is one of those days.

I floated along behind the current resident of my former home and wished I could talk to him, or at least tap his shoulder. He needed a warning in a bad way. There was an assassin waiting for him in the kitchen, gun ready, finger on the trigger. If he died I'd have to adjust to a new owner. I didn't want to adjust to a new owner. I was attached to this one. Besides, he was kind of cute, and he didn't deserve to be assassinated.
 
Whoa, Sassee, no beatin' around the bush. You got me on that one. I'm intrigued to know what/who this gal is. Might be a ghost, eh?

Oh, if I'm not mistaken, I recognized you from Absolutewrite. Hello! And welcome to Chronicles.

Tri
 
One is never really prepared for one's first encounter with magic, or with magical creatures, and this is exactly how it was with me. When the faery landed lightly on the top of my pen as I wrote, peering down at the words I had written, I stopped in complete shock. I was even more surprised when the faery then went on to scold me in a tiny yet musical voice that more words weren't flowing onto the page. Evidently, these creatures were fond of stories, so I made her a promise. I would make a story about her kind; one especially for her and her sisters. I gathered that she was pleased with this, as she flew about my head several times, singing joyfully in my ears. She settled down on the rim of my inkwell and I began to write.

This is her story.
 
Okay, let's do a horror story, I thought of this one last night:

As I was struggling to get to sleep last night, I heard the neighbour's pig squeaking extremely loud and wretched as if it was being slaughtered. I cursed and changed position once more, even though I knew deep inside something wasn't right. Then I suddenly realised I lived in New York.
 
Forget Batman. This winged terror of the night can track you down without the use of gadgets, and knows without a bat signal that something is amiss in the city. It can hear your thoughts, it knows your fears, and it has an appetite for sinners. This winged terror of the night...

Is me.
 
My headache started with the first blast of plasma. It melted through my kitchen window at an angle, burnt a hole in the ceiling, and incinerated part of my down comforter. I rolled over and covered myself in the remaining sheets. A second blast destroyed my dresser, and then a third took out my mirror.

I sighed, grabbed my gun, and threw off the sheets. Apparently I wasn't going to sleep in today.
 
Call it women's intuition but I knew the girl didn't belong there, in that room, with all those rich, egotistic over weight men, smoking their cigars and drinking their expensive brandy. I never notice anyone when I sing, only the man on the keys the man I love, but her long blonde her took my breathe away, her big blue took me somewhere I haven't been for a long time, I was lost. She sang the song back to me I couldn't hear her but in my imagination her voice was just as beautiful as her. She was dead the next day, murdered.
 
Scorcio, I hope you won't be offended by this. But when I read the piece, I feel like it's just thrown on there. Hair=her 'eyes' is missing somewhere and so on. The idea is fine, but there's a part of 'hooks' and a part of 'let's write 'em'. Try not to forget the writing.
 
Ever since we bought that old mirror from the antique shop, strange things have been happening. Every time I walk past it and catch a glimpse of reflection, I see a face that isn't my own, but when I look closer at it, the other face disappears and I see my own again. Everyone thinks I'm going crazy, but I know that there's something supernatural about that mirror. I can almost feel the presence of the one within it...
 
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