The guillotine blade glinted, lodged halfway through her shoulder.
It’d been quick, and not nearly quick enough. For a heartbeat shock caught us all by the throat, and squeezed.
The first scream rang out.
It ricocheted off the floor, the walls. The dark room spun like a carousel, my shoes squealing against the floor and frigid air rushing by me. Something battered against my back – or I battered into it, my fingers scrabbling at cold, smooth glass.
Something black poured through my veins, opening up a pit inside of me. This was not how the night was supposed to go.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ There’s Something Fishy About My Boyfriend by Gloria Duke
With the phone cradled between my should and my ear, I squatted down and sifted through the contents of the lost and found box that we kept behind the front desk. At the Sunny Side Bed-and-Breakfast, we’d learned to save everything left behind that wasn’t perishable, illegal, or off-the-charts gross.
Sunglasses… swim trunks… hear extensions…
Aha!
“I’ve got a pink sweatshirt that says bitch in black letters,” I told the woman on the phone.
“No!” she cried, getting distraught. “It’s a black sweatshirt. And it says bitch in rhinestone studs.”
As I dug around and did another quick search, Casey, my parents’ big, shaggy rescue mtt, strolled over and poked his nose in the box to help.
“Sorry,” I said into the phone. We don’t have it.
From the way the woman groaned, you’d have thought she’d lost a valuable family heirloom instead of a novelty item that could be purchased at any T-shirt shop along the Jersey Shore. “Thanks for nothing,” she said in a tone befitting the moniker on her missing shirt.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Moonhaven Chronicles #1: The Last Wolf by Rob Biddulph
Tonight, the world is afraid.
Shapes shift in the shadows as huge clouds sail through the darkness, jostling for position above desolate streets. Cars sit empty in the driveways of silent houses. Curtains are drawn. Shutters are closed. Doors are locked.
A gently wind stirs as the object of fear emerges from behind a cloud.
The full moon. Round. Resplendent. Unapologetic.
Meanwhile, something is happening in Tranquillity Park.
Movement.
There shouldn’t be movement.
People.
There shouldn’t be people.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Odessa by Gabrielle Sher
Frieda was underwater. Her muscles contracted, shocked from the cold, and she was reminded suddenly of giving birth to her children: the way her own body had been a stranger to her, knowing things she had never learned, moving without her command. She opened her lips and exhaled, forcing her muscles to relax. The pain turned to pleasure. Miriam’s warm hand pressed gently on the top of her head and she opened her eyes, seeing her own pale hands illuminated by thin veins of light in the dark water.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes
If the world had carried on as it was, I might have given Pastor Dan a second chance after he showed me his demon collection. He was handsome after all, and I felt safe with him since he was a pastor. Most of the women at church wanted to marry him because marrying a pastor was a quick and relatively easy way to raise their social status in our group of friends. I felt so embarrassed for him, though, about his demon jars.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Spiral Key by Kelsey Day
It’s not that I want her to suffer. I don’t even need her to apologize. I just need to stop seeing her, because every time she breezes past me in her thousand-dollar Prada boots, every time I hear her laughter fluttering down the hallway, every time I see her sitting in the courtyard surrounded by bug-eyed admirers, I want to burn the school down.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling
In fifteen days, there will be no food in Aymar Castle.
She has done the arithmetic forward and back. They have been down to strangled rations for weeks now, and there have been mistakes. Thefts. Impulsive, desperate gorgings. Even if every soul in Aymar Castle keeps to their allotted portion – and Phosyne does not think that is likely – every soul in Aymar Castle will run out of food in fifteen days.
And though Phosyne is one of the few outside the Priory who can work sums, everybody else is bound to realize this soon.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ The Last Resort by Erin Entrada Kelly
There was a corpse in Lila Clement’s bathroom.
Not human, mind you.
No, this was much worse. This was a spider corpse. Eight disjointed legs stretched toward the ceiling, like they were reaching for Lila herself as she stood there, brushing her teeth, minding her own business.
She’d just squeezed a dollop of paste onto her brush when she saw it from the corner of her eye.
She hated seeing things out of the corner of her eye. There was always that moment between curiosity and terror.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Twin Tides by Hien Nguyen
I lie in the bottom of the riverbed. My eyes are shut as I pretend to sleep, but my skin, punctured and tattered, feels everything. The wake of fish zipping above. Tiny, microscopic beings. In the bowels of the river, the bed load layer is full of heavy grit and gravel too coarse to float. The sharpness grates along my skin. Here, the velocity of the water is slow, so whatever makes its way to the bed load is in for a lifetime of languid rotting.
I know this water well. It’s my home.
First Chapter First Paragraph Thursday Intros ~ Dreaming of a Cowboy Christmas by Ann Einerson
“Is there a reason you have two ten-inch dildos in your carry-on?” the TSA agent asks, holding one up with his gloved hand as if it’s evidence of a crime.
My cheeks flush as several travellers whip their heads in my direction, judgement screaming from their expressions. It doesn’t help that the agent dumped the bag of toys I meticulously packed into a pile next to my suitcase, adding to my public humiliation.
Two nuns who’ve just passed the security checkpoint look at me as if they want to douse me in holy water, and a mother shields her toddler from view while she waits for her bag to be checked.
I don’t blame them.
