TT III Submissions Page 2

Your real name goes here--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your nom de plume (the name under which you write) goes here
Your mailing address goes here
Your current, active email address goes here                            Single space this stuff....
Your URL goes here, if you have one
The title of your work goes here in all caps bold
The approximate word count goes here. Count by the processor will suffice.-----------------

          Your work begins here and will continue to the end of the piece. If you use chapter breaks, place a hard page break at the end of a chapter and begin your next chapter at the top of the next page by centering the chapter title (if used) and number in bold letters at the top of the page.

          What follows is a chunk of a story to give you a feel for how all the details work.

Don't worry yourself about it, just look at what has been done in the presentation and use the same for your submission.

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          The body of your story begins here and will continue like this until it comes to an end. Do not number pages—no headers or footers, please.

          A typical line of dialogue.... “Okay, Mr. Hampton, how did this all get started in the first place?”

          “Well...it all began with a cup of coffee in—”

          “A...a cup of coffee?”

          “Yeah. I was on my way to El Paso to visit my mother and sister—they just bought a new home here. I was tired, so I stopped in Carlsbad to get a cup of coffee and take a leak, you know? That’s when it...um...started. There was a buzzing sound that—”

          “A buzzing...?”

          “Yeah, kinda like Bzzzzzzzzzzz. You know...a buzzing noise...outside.”

          Why does he believe it was outside?

          “What made you think it was outside?”

          “Couldn’t very well have been inside. There was nothing in the restaurant that would make a noise like that. At least, nothing I could see. Besides, all the people in there were crowded around the windows—looking up into the sky, like there was something out there, but they all had their eyes closed—weird.”

          Good God, Talbert thought. Just like all the others. He decided to push for more information from his new patient.

          “What did you think it was?”

          “I didn’t think anything. I just went to the window and looked—you know, like everyone else was doing. I...I didn’t see anything. All the folks in there were pointing and mumbling to each other. So, I asked what they were looking at and they all turned to me as if I was crazy for not seeing it.”

          “Then?”

          “Then one of’em said, ‘Look, Mister. All’s ya gotta do is look inside an’ you’ll see it,’ so I closed my eyes and tried, but I still didn’t see anything.”

          “Why do you think you didn’t see anything?”

          “I know...now. I didn’t see anything because I didn’t know how to look inside. I didn’t know how to get rid of all the junk in my head. I know how now and I can see it just as if it were really there, but you have to close your eyes and feel it. It’s the feeling it that lets you see it. Problem is, I have to stop and look now. It’s...it’s like I don’t have a choice.”

                                                                         * * *

          Out on the street, away from the doctor’s office, Hampton heard it again.

          Bzzzzzzzzz. He closed his eyes, cleared his mind of other thoughts and looked up in the direction of the sound. There it was, plain as anything real. A gigantic metallic ball hovering in the clear El Paso sky. Bzzzzzzzzz.

          After a minute or so, he opened his eyes and walked to his car. He was growing tired of having this vision that few others seemed to have. That’s why he went to see Dr. Talbert in the first place. He thought that maybe Talbert could stop the noise and keep
him from seeing it. Maybe he could think of some way to end the compulsion to look up...to see it. He had tried everything he could think of. Maybe therapy would help, he thought. But, so far, he’d had no luck with Talbert, either.

Bzzzzzzzzz.