Hey, I finished that thing at work that was taking up more than a reasonable amount of time. It went well. Yay. But it also means that I’m spuh-ent (sorry, having Sesame Street Electric Company flashbacks now…the bit with the two mouths on opposite sides, like a late Beckett play on TV only more cheerful).

So without further ado or parenthetical references to educational children’s programming and Irish playwrights (unless I can’t help it: Electric Company Sesame Street! Sean O’Casey! Schoolhouse Rock! Oscar Wilde!), here is my Week 2 story excerpt:

After another late night at the office she stood in a grocery store, listlessly considering her frozen vegetable options. She didn’t see the vampire reflected in the freezer door, but she felt her, standing behind and to the right.

“Chocolate,” the vampire said, leaning close. “Bring the cart.”

Mariah followed her to the baking aisle. The vampire watched in silence as Mariah selected chocolate, mostly dark and bitter.

“Spices,” the vampire said.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

In the dim light of the bar the vampire had looked almost ordinary, not so different from any other object of desire sitting on a barstool. But the bright light of the grocery store slid off the vampire’s waxy skin, and Mariah understood that the fluorescent fixtures in a grocery store could just as easily hang from the ceiling of a morgue.

The story is on track to go out tomorrow, by the way — I just need to make one last pass through it. Hooray! Reading Rainbow! Brian Friel!