While Be Thou My Vision is being read by my proofreaders, I am finally catching up on a few other writing projects that I had started, but set aside for the final push with Be Thou My Vision. The last week or so, I have worked on two short stories for a contest on the Pen Help blog. These stories need to be entered by October 1st, so I am kind of pushing it closer to the deadline than I would like. However, both of these short stories need to be less than 10,000 words, so I should be just fine.

Both stories, Reunion and Satan’s Plans (working title), have been written and just need a little editing. I will be editing them both this week and then sending the stories in to the contest. 🙂

Since I couldn’t come up with another post that wouldn’t take me all day to write, I thought I would share a few snippets of each story with you as well as the plot concept from both.

Satan’s Plan (Working Title)

Plot Concept: A demon tells how he has single-handedly destroyed God’s plans. He ends by telling about the worst day of his life.

After the murder of Abel, my demons and I worked on making the human race so evil and corrupt, that God would see His failure and hand control of the universe over to me. Except that He didn’t.

* * *

Ha! So much for Your perfect people and kingdom, You pathetic excuse for a God! You thought you could keep Your precious nation free from the influence of other gods? Not if I have anything to say about it!

* * *

As the world grew to be more and more Christianized, I knew I needed to do something. It was time to start getting world domination. Of course, I had already tried that with Alexander the Great, but the deviant life-style I’d given him had cut his life short.

Reunion

Plot Concept: A middle school student uncovers a scandalous conspiracy among his school teachers.

Two more feet. If I reached out, I could have almost touched him, but my arms refused to work. One more foot. He stopped and tears sprang to my eyes as his good arm reached out toward me. I took a shaky breath and took the final step toward him.

* * *

Another September, another first day at school. But today it was even worse. Today was the first day of the last year of my life. Okay, I’m being a little melodramatic, but seriously, I felt that way on that fateful day.

* * *

“Daria, I know I’m an hour late, but Timothy stopped by and told me everything. What was I supposed to do? Tell him to wait and hope he still had the courage to tell me later today?”

I looked up toward the tree house and waited. After the second longest minute of my life so far, I heard something scrape against the tree house floor and then the ladder dragging. With a whoosh, the end of the ladder slipped down toward me. Thank God for small miracles, including one incredibly stubborn thirteen-year-old not being too terribly stubborn today.

I climbed up the swinging rope ladder. “Thank you, Daria.”

“What did he tell you?”

Then again, maybe she was going to be incredibly stubborn. “Look, Daria, I know I promised to meet you here this morning over an hour ago. I know I didn’t make it and I didn’t call you or anything. I got a slightly late start and then Timothy wanted to tell me everything about the Gilson Society. I knew by then, it was too late to call you and your brother doesn’t know where the tree house is. If he did…”

“We would get no peace from him,” Daria interrupted.

“…I would have called your mom and asked her to send him to tell you I would be late,” I finished.

I hope you enjoyed the snippets and I look forward to sharing more about these stories at another time.