Starting My First Novel

It was a dark and stormy night.

[No.]

The night was dark, so very dark, and quite stormy. ... It -- by which is meant the night -- was stormy and dark. ... The darkness of the night was so dark, and the storminess made the darkness seem that much darker and more nightlike.

[Yikes. It just gets worse.]

Dark and stormy, the night screamed like a ravished virgin. ... The dark, stormy night ranted madly in a barometric tantrum.

[Ugh.]

It was an ebonic nocturnal tempest. ... The stygian typhoon of eventide...

[No, no, no.] 

Prosopopeic fuliginous Nyx, enceinte as it were with lachrymal lamia farouche as Hecate, disbosomed upon her terrene demiorb an empyreal borasque.

[Huh?]

Dark storm roiled through the night, stirring up ghosts untroubled since pagan times

[Pagans?! At least it isn't pirates.]

Dark the night was, and stormy -- aye.

[Dang.]

O Thou, Night of Dark Storm, whither goest? -- whence cometh thine exudations of witching Strife?

[Unbe-freakin-lievable.]

It all started on a dark night that was stormy.

[Um ... no.]

I never would, or could, have dreamed, or believed, that anything like it could ever have had happened, to somebody, anybody at all, really, such as myself, but, man, oh, man, believe you me, it really, truly, did happen, and not too very long ago, either, and, not only that, but, also, what’s more, it happened to me, too, one dark, and stormy, night!

[Ack!!]

"Take me! Take me now, you big man!" moaned Stormie Knight darkly as she threw herself panting and naked onto the hot wet sand.

[Hmm. I'll deal with this later.]

The night swayed into my office on dark clouds like your mother never wanted you to see. A lacy froth of storm just barely held back the thrusting silky light of the soft, full moon. Brother, could I feel the wind rising, and how.

[How ... noir.]

Dark, stormy night rolled madding over the wuthering moor, heedless of the heather blooms.

[Yeah, great -- and here’s Heathcliff wending soulfully through the tuffets.]

Darkness muffled the stormy night, damping dreams as well as earth.

[...and breeding lilacs out of the dead land.]

It was the best of dark and stormy nights, it was the worst of dark and stormy nights.

Once upon a dark and stormy night dreary, while I pondered weak...

To be a dark and stormy night, or not to be a dark...

Let us go then, you and I, when the dark and stormy night is spread out against the sky... 

Call me a dark and stormy night.

Mother died today, or maybe last dark and stormy night -- I can't be sure. 

These are the dark and stormy nights that try men’s souls. 

In the beginning, it was a dark and stormy night.

~~~~~

It hadn’t rained for months, and the hard bright sunlight streaming all day through the window was harsh enough finally to kill the fat angry fly that clattered around in the dry air like a broken shopping cart. But now the sun had fallen, and night with it. Somewhere out of the Pacific, storm clouds crept through the darkness and laid hold of the sky. 

Rain was falling. 

It was almost comical, slopping down in a deliberate drench. I could picture the dark fairies hidden just above the backdrop of the clouds, giggling and snorting to each other, gleeful with malice, scooping out great wooden bucketfulls from the waters of the firmament. You just don’t expect government workers to try so hard. A light mist, a drizzle, maybe even a few scattered showers. The minimum, just to meet the quota. Certainly nothing as exuberant as this. 

I smiled. Odd, how we smile outloud. Even when a man's so sick of himself he can barely breathe, he still acts out his little pantomimes. No one’s there, no one watching, no audience. Yet he talks to himself, smiles when he's alone. His inner life spills out, overflows, too much to be contained. Witness me, O Creation! I’m so interesting! 

No one’s watching. No flies, no peeping toms, no fairies or angels or demons or ghosts. I didn’t see any. Well, maybe ghosts. 

And still the rain falls. 

I was in my office. I’d just wrapped up the Svenson case, and for the past few days I found myself with nothing to do. I was out of whiskey. I lit another cigarette. It was a dark and stormy night. 

A knock sounded at the door. Goodness, who can it be at this late hour? ...



J

My Detective Novel (finalie)

from: The Mystery of the Snake in the Grass Case


Chapter THree: The End of the Mystary!!!


"I suppose your wandering why I gathered you all here?" I said mysteriously, in this room.

"Yes, we all are," said professor Van Allen Belt, as he elegantly screwed his monacle into his eyesocket. "What is the reason for which this meeting is occurring, my good man?" he wandered aloud.

"Well you might ask. For the reason is because I have solved the mystery of the murders and have gathered you here again all in this same room at the scene of the crimes!" I revealed excitingly. They all gasped! The professor, and his daughter who had the hair like spun gold, Velma, and the gangster who had the little thin mustache named DeSoto in a pinstripped suit, and the fatman, Augustus Figg, as he licked his fingers with chicken grease from the sumptuous banquette from which he had but shortly decamped, and the hot babe singer at that nightclub The Tropical Banana that was owned by de Soto who had long luscious mounds of golden hair like spun gold in a slinky dress that was painted on her like a thin coat of liquid paint all over her sexy body and throbbing bosoms that undulated like pulsing things ready to burst out in sexiness, Carmenina, and the suspicious butler, and the funny guy who always made jokes named Slappy.

"Yeah, said Slappy, we was wandering what it was all about. Cuz ...... I'm missing my beauty sleep!" he quipped wittily.

"Don't worry about it then," Slappy, I bantered gaily, with an appealing grin, to let him know I got the joke, and everyone else to. "So here is the answer to the mystery that the newspapers have all been wandering about!"

But just then, the lights when out, and there was .... a gunshot! Slowly, sllooowwwly a hand crept to the light socket suddenly, and switched off the light switch! But I knew what was going to happen, and I ducked, just in time, and I felt a bullet zing, quickly, by my head, but it missed, because I duct ...... just in time!

"Nice try ..... Killer!" I exclaimed.

Then the lights went back on, and everyone was standing just in the same spot that they had been before, except that I noticed a tiny clue that only I saw. Me ........ and the killer!

De Soto sneered, "You will never find the identity of the killer, for he is too clever for you," he hissed.

"Ah, deSoto .. at last I come to you!" I said. "You had all the motive in the world ..... and motive is the reason people commit crimes! The victim owed you alot of money, didn't he. Didn't he?"

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he did.' Confessed the gangster clubowner Desoto. "But that don't prove nothin'. For if I killed him ...... then I would never collec! Ha! So much for the great detective, Mr. Jake Hatch the great psychological detective! Who is so smart and handsome, detecting and always gets the girls!"

"Flattery will get you ...... everywhere," quipped Slappy wittily, and a bunch of people laughed. They laughed because it broke the tension of the moment. Its a psychological response, commonly observed under similar circumstances of emotional or other tension, as is well attested by noted authorities in many prestigious psychological journals. I nodded appreciatively at the witicism in Slappys direction, and continued my interrogation of the crimeboss De Soto.

"Now where were we," I said, to distract him. "I already thought of that. And I recognized your sarcasm to. It is a common sign of insecurity. You should see a headshrinker about that!" He looked really embarrassed then, and shut his face up. I said headshrinker instead of pshycologist or analyst so that he would know what I meant.

"And then we have the fatman, August Fig! Or should I say ..... Dr. Ludwig von Krupp! Yes, that's right, Hair Dokter! For I know you're secrete! You thought you could get the secret formula for the scientific invention that would give a certain foreign government with expansionist ambitions! ' But the fatman lunged at me, and I dodged on my catlike feet and I whipped him across the face with my rod. "Not so tough now, toughguy, are you, with your master race!"

"Oh no, please don't hit me, I will confess to anything you want!" he whined pathetically as he groveled before my feet on the floor like a little worm!

"Oh yes, for no one can ever overcome free men and liberty always triumphs! For loud are the drums of war and the leader who bangs it for the citizenery who gives up their freedom to dictaters! It is a double ax, that chops both ways, like Conan the Barbarian! And my blood is hot! Hot, I say, boiling with hatred of the emotions and patriotism! And how do I know all this true stuff! For I am ..... master psychological detective Jake Hatch! But don't worry, for I know that it was not you. I will hand you over to your countrymen, and they will punish you sufficiently for failing in your evil scheme!"

"No no, he moaned, but my heart was stoney as a gravel quarry before his pitiful please, for he was so fat and evil."

"So what then? who is the killer?" said the professer screwing his monacle? "YOu'll never guess it!" he said with scorn in his tone of voice, showing desrespct for me.

Then I said something really funny and witty, that shut him up and put him in his place. Because he had just disrepsected me.

"I have the answer! It is ......"

And then the butler ran to the door, but I had locked it, and he turned and faced me like a rat. "How did you know?" he panicked. "Everyone knows that the butler never does it!"

"But you are not a real butler!!!" I revealed, dramatically! Take him away!"

"Noo! he said, broken-heartily."

Oh Jack, said Velma and Carmenina. "You are so wonderful."

"Oh shucks, girls, it's all in a days work!" I said modestly. "And so all the loss ends are tied up neatly in a bow! For the butler was a chemical genius who figured a way out to make clothes out of nitroglycerin, which in small doses is very good for the heart, but too much of it is violently explosive!"

"Then Slappy said something funny." He said, "That's right, girls ..... .now who wants to .....woo-woo!"


The end


J

My Sophisticated Novel (excerpt)

from:

To 'Scape the Serpent's Tongue:
a novel

by

Jack Haaversham

"I am so bored with you, do you hear me? Bored. Bored. Bored."

"Oh darling, you bore me so with your speaking of being so bored."

He stood, leaned against the mantle, one arm draped casually about the alabaster bust of Cato the Elder -- c. 234-149 BC, a Roman statesman, surnamed the Censor (Censorius), Sapiens, Priscus, or the Elder (Major), to distinguish him from Cato the Younger (his great-grandson), who came of an ancient Plebeian family who all were noted for some military service but not for the discharge of the higher civil offices, and was bred, after the manner of his Latin forefathers, to agriculture, to which he devoted himself when not engaged in military service but, having attracted the notice of Lucius Valerius Flaccus, he was brought to Rome, and successively held the offices of Cursus Honorum: Tribune (214 BC), Quaestor (204 BC), Aedile (199 BC), Praetor (198 BC), Consul (195 BC) together with his old patron, and finally Censor (184 BC), and died by cutting out his own guts -- that he had purchased from a wizened Jew in San Moritz. He tugged casually at the satin cravat knotted casually about his neck in a four-in-hand knot. The heat of the room was becoming stifling. He wondered if he would ever be cool again.

"My, aren't you the cool one though," she observed from the low, satin chaise-longue she had purchased during her last tour of the Casbah. She fingered the priceless strand of matchless pearls strung casually about her neck.

"Yes, I tell you again, I am bored with you."

"And I you."

"My boredom knows no limit."

"Not half so limitless as my own."

"You are tiresome," she snorted, her mocking laughter ringing like breaking crystal.

"Your words are hurtful."

"You dare speak to me of hurtful? When it was you, you who tore my beautiful gossamer negligee in my boudoir that Coleen my chamber maid laid out on the eider of my canopied bed last night?" It had been a gift from the Maharajah of a land locked principality on the subcontinent on her last tiger hunt.

"Indeed, and I am glad, glad do you hear me, glad that I did! And I will tear all your negligees to pieces, again and again, forever do you hear me, forever!" And he laughed madly, removing his elbow from the alabaster bust of Cato and placing it to his hip, laughing madly in merriment. "And now you must pardon me, Agnes, for I must go and vote."

"Vote?" Her scornful laughter tinkled like breaking glass. "Oh my, you are such a naif. But don't you know, my darling, how foolish such is? For beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. For it both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what my very father the Commodore has done. And I am ... your wife, Agnes!

"'My wife Agnes.' Ha ha. I laugh, laugh at the very idea! For no wife are you!"

"Oh, what woman could be a wife to you? If you were a real man it would be easy, but you are contemptible, contemptible do you hear me?"

"Your contempt bores me."

"No, it is you who bore me."

"I am leaving you, Agnes."

"Good."

"And I am taking Philomena, our young blonde daughter, with me."

"No! No you mustn't, you can't."

"Oh but I can, Agnes, I can and I shall! For here are the very documents, proving how unfit you are!" His voice cracked like broken pottery with triumph and emotion, and out he pulled a large sheaf of documents from beneath the voluminous folds of his satin cravat. "All signed and sealed, by my father the Chief Justice! And there is nothing you can do about it!"

"Is there not! More fool you! For I shan't allow it!" And out from under the delicately embroidered cushions of her chaise-longue she plucked the pearl-handled derringer pistol that had been given to her by the deposed president of a small Caribbean nation.

"No! No, Agnes, you mustn't! Think of our small blonde daughter Filomina! The scandal of it!"

"But I am, Frederick, I am!" And with a cold glint in her feminine eye, she carefully aimed her derringer pistol and ... fired!


End of Chapter XXI


J

My Scifi Novel (exerp)

The Son of ...
HITLER!!!

BY
Jack Hell

Chapter xxliiv; The Answer to it ALL


When the lights came back on again I was lying all spreadeagled out on this metal table and strapped down with leather and metal chains.

"Ugh," I exclaimed.

There was a scary sounding laugh that came from behind me, at the top of my head because I was flat on my back, so it wasn't really technically behind me then. It was above me, but not above somebody who would be standing.

"Ha ha!" -- the eerie voice entoned scarily. "Ha ha ha!"

"Who is that!?" I wandered out loud.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" said the scary voice disembodiedly?

"Yes, I would. That's the reason that I asked," I retorted smartly.

"Very well then, I will tell you who it is! And boy will you be sorry and surprised! And you would never have guest, in a million years! For, you see, I am none other then ... the Son of Hitler!"

Man was I ever surprise! That was so surprising. Never had I suspected that the archfiend who had been causing all those humongous tidal waves that destroyed the great megalopolices of the mighty nations of the Planet Earth.

"Well your right. I was surprised," I gasped in surprised amazement. "But I wasn't sorry!"

"No, not yet you weren't, but you will be so sorry." He entoned in a slobbery slurpy sucking voice.

"No I won't be!" For no son of Hitler would ever again pollute the world with tyranny and oppression, where free men breath and walk across all the generations of mankind unto the last recorded syllable of recorded time!"

"Oh yes, Doctor Van Hellsing, you are a fine one for making stirring moving speeches that are so eloquent, heroic, and articulate. But you have finally met your match! For, I, the Son of Hitler, shall continue to conquer the world as did my honorable Father, Adolph Hitler, the der Furor, before me. None may withstand before the might of my articulate eloquence!" he entoned. "For beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. For it both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am ... the Son of Hitler! And my mighty army of reborn Nazis shall march by my side to conquor the world once more unto victory! And nothing shall ever stop me and my Nazies, once the infrastructures of the Planet has been destroyed by my climate control devise. Here, would you like to see it?" It was right there, in a little box.

"I kept on wondering about were all those Nazies were coming from."

"Well now you know, for I just told you. Here is my revifivication machine, where I put dead bodies into it here and they come out live nazis there, at this other end."

And he showed me a giant machine that looked sort of like a meat grinder, but with flashing lights all over it like a scientific machine, and some buttons and knobs and those needles that bounce around and make a noise.

"That's very interesting, I said." But I was stalling for time, because I was practicing an ancient bone stretching technique that I learned a long time ago, when I was a mysterious stranger living in the tallest mountains of the ancient civilization of India! And then I burst forth from my broken bonds of metal, and leapt to my feet!

"Very impressive, Dr. Vanhell!" said the Son of Hitler! But your amazing talents are of no avail here, deep in my lair within this extinct volcano! Guards! Size him!

And they did no matter how powerfully I struggled. But then I saw what he looked like!

He had tenticles growing out of his face! And he wore a black uniform with those red armbands like a nazi! And instead of a hat he had a skull on his head!

"Let me go!" But the giant guards wouldn't.

"And this is my Climate controlling device, the key to my whole plan, with which I control the climate and melt all those icebergs, as my father the Furrier did before me! I bet you wish you could break it! But my guards are too powerful and nobody before has ever broken out of their mighty grasp! It is impossible!" And he laughed maniacally, with his tentacles flapping in the foul wind of his fetid breathe!

But I broke free and grabbed the device, and threw it to the stoney outcropping and smashed it beneath my boots! The very same boots that I had gotten from that weird mysterious old man at the beginning!

"Noo!!!" The mighty Son of Hitler entoned! "My plans for world domination! Ruiiiiiiiiiiiinnnned!"

"Ha ha!" I laughted, and ran up the escarpment. And then when I reached the outside of the volcanoe there was an explosion, and the whole mountain caved in. But I was miles away, standing on a high cliff watching, and as the sun set redily in the distant horizon, I sighed a heroic sigh of relief, knowing that once more the World would never again face the tyranny from ... The Son of Hitler! And the hot girl was with me, that I rescued.

"Oh Jack," She said, "You are so wonderful."

But deep within the broken bowels of the mighy volcani, there stirred a hideous form, with testacles all over its face!

The End?

J

My Crime Novel (excerpt!)

From "My Gun Is Hard!", by Jack Hammer: from Chapter 23: "The Interrogationroom!"


The room was really big. It had alot of furniture and stuff in it. The big room had a man in it.

“Look!” I said. “I have a gun and you will tell me where the girl is!” I said with my gun.

“No I won’t!” he said.

“Yes!” I said.

"No!" he said.

"Yes you will!" I said.

"No! Never! Mendosa the drug boss will kill me if I do!" he said. He was bald, and very fat. "You damn ugly jerk!"

“You ugly bald fat pig!” I said, “Now you are going to regret that!” And I beat him up. And then he was panting and begging me to stop.

“Stop, I quit, your beating me up and I will tell you what you want to know!” he said.

“Then tell me then, stupid!” I said.

“What do you want to know?” he said.

“Where is the girl that I want to find?” I said.

“Oh, yes, you asked me that before,” he said.

“Yes I did,” I said.

“The girl is in the...” he said. But then he died! There was a gun shot, and he died. There was a bullet hole in the middle of his bald head! There was a smoke trail of blue smoke that was coming out of the round bullet hole! It was so bloody and really exiting!

I spun around on my catlike feet!

"Damn you, Mendoza!" I said. I fell to my knees and raised my fists dramatically to the heavens and shook them! "Noo!" I said. Running after the masked gunman that was running away, I sped quickly through the big room with all that furniture in it. There were scary shadows on the walls. A black cat was sitting on a table. Not a plastic one, a real one. The big clock that was on the walls ticked ominously! It was a priceless King Lois the Sixteenth antique.

"Ha ha ha!" he laughed over his shoulder as he ran away. "Now you will never find her! Never! Ha ha ha!"

I was so angry. My feelings were like a roaring ocean of raging blowing stormy fast wind. It was dramatic! I ran through the big room some more, that had stuffed animals, like bears and lions in it. The shadow on the wall was scary. I fired my gun at the fleeing figure of Mendosas' back, that shot back at me. Hot gobs of lead flew everywhere. The priceless antique clock that was ticking ominously on the walls was shot and ruined! Then as I ran I jumped over a table like a gazelle! Then I got to the door that was shut and locked now. Mendoza the masked gun man had shut the door, and locked it from the other side.

"Damn you, Mandoza!" I said. I did not know yet that Mendoza was really the girl! The one I was looking for! I would not learn that until the end of this book!

But then I shot at the door with my gun that I had pulled out from my coat and shot the door open! And I ran through the door.

A car was racing at me in the dark with its head lights blazing like bright suns or moons at me! I jumped heroically over the car hood as it raced under me so fast, like a rocket! I landed on my catlike feet and fired my gun at the blazing red tail lights that raced away from me in the dark down the dark road!

"Mandosa!" I said. "Damn you!" I was so angry because he (but its really a girl) had shot that guy in the head and I thought that I would never find that girl that I was looking for (that was really Mendoza the crime boss, which is her middle name, like with a hyphen the way they do sometimes, like its the last name of the mother).

And then I skulked back into the big room. But one of the giant stuffed animals was really a real animal, and it roared and ran at me. I shot it with my gun. Because earlier I had reloaded outside, after the death car had raced at me with its bright lights that I jumped over. It fell down at my feet, dead, letting out a mighty death roar when it died!

"That was scary," I said to myself, and chuckled bravely. "He certainly was over bearing!" Because it was a giant bear. "I wonder what other exciting things are just about to happen?" Little did I know!

The End (of the chapter).


J

My Sex Novel (excerpt)

from "Can't Stop all that SEX!!!"
By Jack Hard

Ch. 146

"Oh baby you are so hot!" he hissed, his big muscles rippling.

"Yes! Yes!" she hissed, her big breasts bursting out of her tiny wet teeshirt.

"Let's do it right here on this kitchen table!" he suggested, grabbing her with his big strong arms and kissing her passionately with his lips.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, gaspingly.

"Uhng! Uhng!" he said, his manhood swollen like a big hard long thing.

"Oh! Yes!" she moaned, as she wiggled her buttocks provocatively and sexily,and her big breasts too.

"Oh! Baaaaabeeeeee!" he shouted as he was overwhelmed with his sexual urges.

"Uhng! Yesssssssss!" she gasped moaningly, her hair flying around like there was a big wind.

"That was so good, having sex with you the way I just did!" he opined, while smoking a menthol cigarette.

"Yes! You are such a big man!" she observed, looking with her eyes at his big muscles and body parts with admiring lust.

"Oh! That's so hot! Let's do it again, and this time on the livingroom floor!" he suggested urgently, his big muscles heaving.

"Oh! Yes!" she exclaimed, naked and shining with sweat on her nude body.

Just then there was a knock at the door.

"My, who can that be?" she wondered.

"I'll go see!" he said, with his bulging underwear.

It was the pizza delivery girl. She was so hot, with big breasts that you could see through her tight little hot sexy shirt.

"Oh, goodness! I'm three minutes late. That means you get this pizza for free. But then my boss will be mad. Is there some way I could get you to pay for it?" she sexily wondered.

"Why sure little hot lady, I'm sure there is! Let's all have sex here on the floor!" he purred.

"Oh, but I've never had sex with a big strong man like you before! But will you be gentle with me?" she wondered.

"Sure," he assured.

"And me too," she said.

"Oh, the three of us having sex like this is so hot and satisfying and arousing to me!" he said.

"And it is also very sexy too for me too!" she said.

"And I am also enjoying this hot sex with you, you big stud!" she said.

"Uhng!"

"Oh!"

"Yesssss!"

Just then there was a knock at the door. It was the poolboy and his hot twin step-sisters.

"Oh! Goodness! You are all having sex on the livingroom floor. Let's all have sex now like that with each other here!" he said.

"Yes!" he said.

"I like that idea too," she said.

"OK."

"Yes."

"Me too!"

"And me."

And they all were having hot sex on the livingroom floor, which was so sexy and hot. Just then there was a knock at the door. And it was some more people, and they also joined in on the sex too. And then they were all done for a while, and all very happy that they had all had all that good sex.


J

Starting My First Novel

It was a dark and stormy night.

[No.]

The night was dark, so very dark, and quite stormy. ... It -- by which is meant the night -- was stormy and dark. ... The darkness of the night was so dark, and the storminess made the darkness seem that much darker and more nightlike.

[Yikes. It just gets worse.]

Dark and stormy, the night screamed like a ravished virgin. ... The dark, stormy night ranted madly in a barometric tantrum.

[Ugh.]

It was an ebonic nocturnal tempest. ... The stygian typhoon of eventide...

[No, no, no.]

Prosopopeic fuliginous Nyx, enceinte as it were with lachrymal lamia farouche as Hecate, disbosomed upon her terrene demiorb an empyreal borasque.

[Huh?]

Dark storm roiled through the night, stirring up ghosts untroubled since pagan times

[Pagans?! At least it isn't pirates.]

Dark the night was, and stormy -- aye.

[Dang.]

O Thou, Night of Dark Storm, whither goest? -- whence cometh thine exudations of witching Strife?

[Unbe-freakin-lievable.]

It all started on a dark night that was stormy.

[Um ... no.]

I never would, or could, have dreamed, or believed, that anything like it could ever have had happened, to somebody, anybody at all, really, such as myself, but, man, oh, man, believe you me, it really, truly, did happen, and not too very long ago, either, and, not only that, but, also, what’s more, it happened to me, too, one dark, and stormy, night!

[Ack!!]

"Take me! Take me now, you big man!" moaned Stormie Knight darkly as she threw herself panting and naked onto the hot wet sand.

[Hmm. I'll deal with this later.]

The night swayed into my office on dark clouds like your mother never wanted you to see. A lacy froth of storm just barely held back the thrusting silky light of the soft, full moon. Brother, could I feel the wind rising, and how.

[How ... noir.]

Dark, stormy night rolled madding over the wuthering moor, heedless of the heather blooms.

[Yeah, great -- and here’s Heathcliff wending soulfully through the tuffets.]

Darkness muffled the stormy night, damping dreams as well as earth.

[...and breeding lilacs out of the dead land.]

It was the best of dark and stormy nights, it was the worst of dark and stormy nights.

Once upon a dark and stormy night dreary, while I pondered weak...

To be a dark and stormy night, or not to be a dark...

Let us go then, you and I, when the dark and stormy night is spread out against the sky...

Call me a dark and stormy night.

Mother died today, or maybe last dark and stormy night -- I can't be sure.

These are the dark and stormy nights that try men’s souls.

In the beginning, it was a dark and stormy night.

~~~~~

It hadn’t rained for months, and the hard bright sunlight streaming all day through the window was harsh enough finally to kill the fat angry fly that clattered around in the dry air like a broken shopping cart. But now the sun had fallen, and night with it. Somewhere out of the Pacific, storm clouds crept through the darkness and laid hold of the sky.

Rain was falling.

It was almost comical, slopping down in a deliberate drench. I could picture the dark fairies hidden just above the backdrop of the clouds, giggling and snorting to each other, gleeful with malice, scooping out great wooden bucketfulls from the waters of the firmament. You just don’t expect government workers to try so hard. A light mist, a drizzle, maybe even a few scattered showers. The minimum, just to meet the quota. Certainly nothing as exuberant as this.

I smiled. Odd, how we smile outloud. Even when a man's so sick of himself he can barely breathe, he still acts out his little pantomimes. No one’s there, no one watching, no audience. Yet he talks to himself, smiles when he's alone. His inner life spills out, overflows, too much to be contained. Witness me, O Creation! I’m so interesting!

No one’s watching. No flies, no peeping toms, no fairies or angels or demons or ghosts. I didn’t see any. Well, maybe ghosts.

And still the rain falls.

I was in my office. I’d just wrapped up the Svenson case, and for the past few days I found myself with nothing to do. I was out of whiskey. I lit another cigarette. It was a dark and stormy night.

A knock sounded at the door. Goodness, who can it be at this late hour? ...



J