Contest

Contest UpAuthors has announced the contest winners for their First Chapter contest.  I am proud to say they chose my first chapter for Les Gens:  Into the Night as the winner for the genre:  Urban Fiction/Horror.  They also chose it as the over all winner. I am honored beyond measure.

Thought I'd share the chapter:

Les Gens:

Into the Night

By P. E. Kassees

Everyone died, Clint knew this, understood it since serving two tours in ’Nam.  Death could come fast, or slow and agonizingly brutal.  He always prayed that when his time came, it would be quick.  Looked like he was going to find out; not in ’Nam, but somewhere deep inside Tallahassee’s blood-red earth.

The air was freezing, so frigid, the lightening-bolts of pain which earlier had lanced through his shattered shins were now numbed to mere knife-pricks.  It would help if he could see, but there was nothing except a vile, moist blackness reminding him of a gook tunnel he’d crawled through during the war; and the air—it smelled worse than a cesspool.  Clint figured they’d put him here, wherever the hell here was, right after they’d murdered Mark. 

Clint remembered trying to help his buddy when one of the fiends knocked him out as cold as the hard ground he now lay on.  Odd that he’d lived through the hell of Dak To in ’67, only to end up alone in the goddamn dark with his legs snapped in two.  At least they didn’t do to him what they’d done to Mark.  Not yet, anyway, and not if he could help it.  Someone had to let the world know what was going on, and he planned to hang on as long as he could. 

  Clint pulled his body along the floor.  It was imperative to find a way out.  His right palm slid into something wet and slimy.  Cursing, he sprawled in filth—a sticky putridness that wriggled and clung and buzzed.  He felt a hand, and relief flowed through him that someone else was there.  He grasped it, and with a soft thlop, the appendage landed in the goo beside him.  An epiphany soaked in horror flowed through his body, and he knew: unless someone found him, death was going to be a long time coming.

From www.upauthors.com:

 "OVERALL WINNER:  If there is such a thing as a perfect first chapter, P.E. Kassees wrote it."