Serialization Sunday – The Flick: Chapter 24
Every Sunday, Fiction365 presents a new chapter in a previously unpublished novel.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 previous chapters here.
Letter XXIV
November 17, 1990
Dear Die:
John Holmes read your letters. He said, “I felt I had to read them. I hope you will forgive me. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was looking for a clue…”
“These letters are very personal.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you like them?”
“I read the letters because I was worried about you being in some kind of trouble. Now I’m worried for a different reason, I guess, you could say I’m worried about a different kind of danger. Can I be frank? About the letters, even though I had no business reading them. I think you should lay off this script for awhile.”
“I can’t. There are too many questions unanswered, too many conflicts unresolved in my past.”
“This past is trying to reinsert itself into your present.”
“Jealous?”
“I want to help you.”
“You think I’m going crazy. If that’s what you think, you could be right.”
“Your old boyfriend makes you crazy.”
“That’s the way he likes me best.”
“He’s trying to get back at you.”
“Die knows better than to try to revenge himself on me. He and I have been through multiple cycles of retribution, and it has ceased to be gratifying.”
John suggested a theory to me, a hidden agenda on your part, Die. He thinks you are trying to pull me through the screen, into your world. Do you aspire to recruit me to be your co-star in this movie, as well as co-author? Would you try to resurrect the old Phoenix, for the old Phoenix might have been capable of such daring? Would you stir her ashes?
Is that what you are up to?
Phoenix
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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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