{"id":5469,"date":"2015-01-25T13:30:36","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T19:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?page_id=5469"},"modified":"2015-01-25T14:09:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T20:09:11","slug":"stories","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?page_id=5469","title":{"rendered":"Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writer Unboxed runs flash fiction contests. I entered the piece below that was inspired by the visual prompt of a woman in a cape<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Dark Maiden [Attr: Krakin, wiki creative commons]<\/p><\/div>I am the Dark Maiden, and I live in the forest amongst the great oaks. Animals are my only friends. I have compassion and tenderness for those wounded by the World. I am chaste and I am the avenger. I deliver justice—tempered, when I choose, with mercy. And, when the spell fades, I live in Brooklyn. I am walking at the moment through the snow, three blocks from the coffee shop where I shall meet my agent for the very first time. His name is Julien.<\/p>\n

I clutch my contract, newly signed, and I know that I must impress him. It is a fine line, the line between dressing as a writer and dressing as some crazy woman from the inner city. I must impress him with intelligence, wit, evidence of marketability. I must impress him that I have the mystique to match my web presence, that the woman who has written The Dark Maiden<\/em>, Revenge of the Dark Maiden<\/em>, and my masterpiece, Darker Still<\/em>, not only dresses like the Dark Maiden but thinks like the Dark Maiden—can be<\/em> the Dark Maiden. I cried writing from the beginning to the end of every book of my sad and wonderful and, as yet, unpublished trilogy. ‘Three darks for muster mark!’ I\u00a0will say\u00a0to Julien. A literary joke if ever I heard one. I hope he gets it.<\/p>\n

He doesn’t have to laugh at my jokes, of course. He has one single, valiant quest: To seek publishers and to find one for me<\/em>. I am the Dark Maiden and I am, as yet, unpublished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writer Unboxed runs flash fiction contests. I entered the piece below that was inspired by the visual prompt of a woman in a cape. I am the Dark Maiden, and I live in the forest amongst the great oaks. Animals … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5469","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5469"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5477,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5469\/revisions\/5477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}