Write the first few lines or a paragraph of your wildly successful mystery novel. Set the scene. Invoke emotions. Mold your mystery.
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Mystery Manifestation
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Responses
Why did her face appear so calm? What did the spoon in her grasp mean? What was she doing, thinking and preparing in the moments when her soul encouraged, versus its obvious departure from the cadaver before him?
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Our team was taking sniper fire and an RPG exploded in close proximity of my position. Intense pain and then cold. I could feel my life slipping away as I sat propped up against the partial wall of the building I had been using as cover only moments before. My vision was blurred and the sounds were muffled. Every movement of those around me seemed to be in slow motion. I was hit and bleeding out…
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This did invoke emotions. You put me into a situation as close as I ever would want to be.
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I hope it has not distressed you in any way.
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The witness told me a story about unclaimed redemption before I ended her life. My hands trembled as I lowered my service revolver. Her words did a terrible thing in making me see that I wanted to escape this world. I left her body to grow cold as I paced the empty warehouse. I questioned what place there was for me in her tragedy. That I should ever root around in the past to understand her desperation that led us to this moment. I pulled out my detective badge and questioned its intended meaning. I turned to the dead woman and knelt beside her to stare into her stagnate gaze where I recalled the past 24-hours of our lives together. A tale that would reveal untold police corruption and leave me dead before the final period was written on the page.
Mystery? Dunno. I can’t imagine ever reading or writing for the genre. I guess I lean towards suspense or thriller.
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Mrs. Thomson gently held back the lacy curtain with her old mottled hand as she peered out of the sittingroom window into the expansive backyard. Her pointed nose seemed to tighten even more than normal as she gave a soft snort. She turned her head slightly while her dry brow eyes remained fixed on the scene outside.
“Thomas. It seems that the gardener has lost his head.”
Thomas Thomson carefully placed a golden bookmark that was emblazoned with the image of a muscular dragon between the pages and carefully folder his book closed.
“What has that bastard done now, love?”
Mrs. Thompson slowly lets the curtain fabric slip from her fingers, turns to husband of 48 years and says, “Nothing that I know of, it’s just that his head is separated from his body, dear.”
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Rain bore down on the roof of the car. Henry, who sat in the driver’s seat smoking a light cigarette, was extremely irritated. His car had no air conditioning, and with the rain, he couldn’t put down his windows to relieve the muggy Maryland heat. A thick layer of condensation covered all the windows, and Henry was drenched in sweat.
He had been sitting in a strip mall parking lot for nearly forty-five minutes now. Three cigarette butts sat in their crumpled aftermath in the ashtray, soon to be joined by a fourth companion. Henry looked around the car. Generally, he kept prided himself in keeping both his body and automobile clean, so the textbooks littered around the interior of his car and the severe swamp-ass he was suffering from began to eat at his nerves.
A relatively large bag of marijuana sat in Henry’s cupholder. He sold pot in addition to his part-time job to keep relatively comfortable while attending college. As a clean-cut, well-spoken, and overall pleasant person, he had managed to avoid any sort of police attention. He did this by avoiding common drug-dealer stereotypes, such as leaning in car windows, constantly looking around, and sitting in strip mall parking lots chain-smoking cigarettes. This lapse in his self-discipline irritated him further.
The person Henry was supposed to meet was running late. He was a frat guy, and his existence sort of annoyed Henry. He always wore outrageous sneakers, spoke very loudly (a faux pas in the world of drug dealing), and always called Henry “bro”. Henry couldn’t help but feel intellectually superior to him, followed by feeling guilty for feeling superior over another human, followed by another cigarette.
“Shit,” Henry muttered as he lit another cigarette. He cracked the window and rain began to drizzle down the door and onto Henry’s leg. His patience was wearing thin, and he only stood to make forty dollars profit off of this deal. He looked around the shopping center to see if there might be a place to kill time, or at least get the fuck out of his steaming car. He noticed two men standing in an alley with umbrellas. Relatively well dressed for the crime-ridden area they were in, Henry squinted to see what they were doing. They stood solemn and stoic, and their suits seemed to match. Henry was watching them so intently that he almost missed the white, unmarked Crown Victoria that pulled into the strip mall.
Dismissing the initial urge to start up his car and leave, he put the bag of pot in his glove box and opened his door to pretend to walk into the nearest store. The Crown Victoria began to pick up speed, and Henry started to worry that somebody had noticed him sitting there for so long. He cursed himself for violating his personal drug-dealing rules. His fearful disgust quickly turned into confusion as the Crown Vic headed not towards Henry, but towards the two men standing in the alley. Henry stopped and took a long drag of his cigarette. The car wasn’t slowing down as it neared, until right as it came upon the opening of the alley, it screeched to a halt.
The sound of automatic gunfire filled the shopping center. At first, Henry thought the two men had opened fire on what he assumed to be a cop, but when the Crown Vic peeled out and started flying around the parking lot, Henry noticed the two men laying on the pavement. The cigarette, now put out by rain drops, fell from Henry’s mouth when the Crown Vic circled around and headed towards him. He turned and bolted into his car, fumbling to slam the keys in the ignition. It started, and Henry slid the car into first gear and popped the clutch.
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