Serialization Sunday – The Flick: Chapter 1

Every Sunday, Fiction365 presents a new chapter in a previously unpublished novel.  Our first novel, the taut thriller City of Human Remains, can be found in full here. 

Our second novel, Hoodoo, tells a story of visionaries, heretics and lunatics in Utah, centered on a 12-year-old girl who believes that God wants her to have an affair with her guidance counselor, can be found in full here.

Our current novel, The Flick, is the correspondence between a legendary porn star of the 90’s and the girl who got away – and kept going.  Read current chapters here.

Letter I:
June 16, 1990

Dear Phoenix:

At last I have found you.  You covered your tracks well.  Like a professional spy.  I hear you’ve completely cut off contact with all our old friends just to hide from me.  I didn’t know someone could be completely out of your life and still be important.

All right, the last time we met was the utter shits.  But three full years have passed since the screaming match at the funeral ruined our last chance to get back together.  You threw what ever you could get your hands on.  Mostly flowers.  Only the roses hurt, adding to the many pricks that have come between us.  At least we distracted the mourners from their grief.  Gave them something to talk about, beside what killed Jay.

Three years of Jay lying in the vacancy hotel, and all that time I don’t know where you’ve been lying.  Or to who.

Three years.  Has Jay really been dead that long?  What a life.  We exist, then we exits.

I have a business proposition.  Will you let me take a stab at it?

An opportunity comes to hand.  We have a chance to write a movie together.  I have a commitment from a major studio to do a one man show: writing, directing and starring.  Plus complete creative control.  Sound like a masturbation fantasy?  But the contracts are signed.  The money has been set aside.

Are you open to a joint venture?

I’m not interested in making up stories and telling lies to my audience.  I want to be completely honest.  The most powerful experience I ever had was loving you.  I want to make a movie about us.

I hear you’re in law school.  A lawyer??  You?  I hope you will stop wasting your talent and take me up on my offer.

Ignore me, if you want.  I won’t stalk you.  You don’t have to be paranoid.

Are you seeing anyone?  Not that it matters.  Just curious.  This is purely a business proposition.

Love,

(You mind if I use that word?  How about just as a sign off?)

DIETER

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Stuart Hopen’s writing has been published by various comic book companies, including D.C., Marvel, Eclipse, Amazing, and Fantagraphics. His science fiction novel, Warp Angel, originally published by Tor Books, will soon be reissued by the Misenchanted Press in a newly revised edition.  Cannibals, a series of six interrelated novellas, will be available online in 2014.   

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