Entry for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest - Annette Matrisciano © 2001

It was a dark and stormy night and unleashed specters tormented the innocent with the guilty of Wrightwoode, sending them panicked and running pell-mell from their homes and shops and drinking establishments, and everybody was yelling so loud that no one could hear the giant waves crashing far below against the cliffs that had borne up the tiny township which had sat perched like a beacon facing, yes, it must be said, even defying the tumultuous sea for 200 years but which were now dissolving like sugar cubes against a saltwater wrath not known since the earth splintered into five tectonic plates but that was a couple of billion years ago and now was the moment when, if in deed history survived at all for the disputed length of time that we say we've 'known' it, then it would record these events of Biblical proportions as the inhabitants of Wrightwoode poured into the slogging rivulets of sucking mud that caught up the weak like a lame zebra or something from a Wild Animal Kingdom segment of a documentary about some inhospitable desert or perhaps a seething jungle where it's "man eat man", or "beast eat beast", as the case may be, and the weakest of body or mind, or those with just bloody bad luck, seem to prove Darwin's point again as they were swept away as though caught in a lava flow, only colder, much, much colder, even Polar-like in the final analysis where the ultimate chill, that final throat-clenching freeze claims the mortal vessel and sends the soul to wherever it is deserving of admittance to in the penultimate judgment, where Wrightwoode's struggles and the struggles of all species finally come to rest, perchance to dream dreams that we may or may not wish for, as no one really likes a nightmare, a scary movie maybe, but not a nightmare because you really think it's happening, and there's no popcorn to give you a reality check.