It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: An Anthology

By Trevor White, Wyatt Eller de Miranda, Ike Riva and 2 more

Written by Trevor White, Ike Riva, Wyatt Eller de Miranda, and Matthew Brooke
with a foreword by Francis Bass

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terragenesis Collective
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005068462

Trevor White

Indie scifi/horror author, photographer, YouTube & Twitch content creator, and world traveler based in the PNW! University of Washington 2013, Cornell Law 2016.

Book preview

It was a Dark and Stormy Night

Published by the Terragenesis Collective as organized through the TGC Anthology Club Distributed by Smashwords

Foreword Copyright 2021 Francis Bass

Repocalypse Copyright 2021 Trevor White

Ex-Scission Copyright 2021 Ike Riva

Imago Hominis Copyright 2021 Wyatt de Miranda

The Familiar Weight Copyright 2021 Felix Twingrin

Repocalypse (Illustration) Copyright 2021 Trevor White

Ex-Scission (Illustration) Copyright 2021 Jason Patrick Jenkins

The Familiar Weight (Illustration) Copyright 2021 Miranda White

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Contents

Foreword by Francis Bass

Repocalypse by Trevor White

Ex-Scission by Ike Riva

Imago Hominis by Wyatt de Miranda

The Familiar Weight by Felix Twingrin

About the Authors

Foreword

It was a dark and stormy night opens the novel Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and since then it has been an iconic first line for all the wrong reasons. It is a byword for cliché, for overwrought romanticism—it even inspired the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which entrants attempt to compose the worst opening line possible.

That said, Paul Clifford is the rare instance of a novel whose first line is more well-known than its plot. As much as writers may obsess over them, first lines are cheap. A story with an immaculate first line, followed by tired plot and slack prose, is no good. A story with a cliché first line, followed by inventive storytelling and skillful writing, is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (for example. This was where I first read It was a dark and stormy night, and I would guess this is where most readers today encounter it.)

This anthology proves that writers need not be precious with their first lines—the second, third, forty-fifth and six hundredth lines may be far more crucial in compelling the reader onward. Each writer in this collection has used the stormy dark night as a gateway into a wholly original story.

In Repocalypse by Trevor White, the stormy night explodes into a cataclysm—just one of many; in Ike Riva’s Ex-Scission, the storm sweeps the protagonist into a decrepit villa, deep into its labyrinthine interior, so deep the rain and thunder become inaudible; in Felix Twingrin’s The Familiar Weight, the storm is an oppressive force, churning around the main character as he embarks on his vengeful task; and in Imago Hominis by Wyatt de Miranda, the night is at first just a biographical detail, discarded as the story describes the lives of a few entomologists, until another dark and stormy night arrives to disastrous effect.

The storm casts a foreboding gloom over all the stories, but this pervasive dark imagery highlights just how much the stories diverge in setting, plot, character, and genre. No two are alike. All four reveal singular visions just past the familiar opening.

Francis Bass

September 2021

Repocalypse

By Trevor White

It was a dark and stormy night when the world ended again.

That’s often how it went, but not quite like this. The heavens slowly blackened over a week, casting oily shadows on the land, until a single great, umbral cloud eclipsed the planet. Then the strikes started, like a thousand lashing whips, an unyielding epilepsy of energy batted between ground and atmosphere.

When a bolt finally got me, I was on my deck, watching behind plastic sunglasses as the town below burned. Then, before I even heard it, my head was full of light and dynamite. My last thought was confusion over whether the pain in my palm was my martini glass shattering or thunder erupting from my fingers like cauterized razors.

And then I awoke. 6:00 A.M. The quiet sunrise through my blinds begged me to just flip the pillow and hit snooze, but, sooner or later, I had to figure out what month it was, and what clothes were even in my closet.

The first time, I was about twenty-three. Whether it’s how things were always meant to go or I’d slipped into someplace else the evening prior, some cosmic metamorphosis decided that was my moment. That morning, every volcano must’ve erupted simultaneously; rocky debris rained from a scorching sky, and lava oozed from the withering grass like hot pus. Pulsing panic squeezed my eyes and chest, like my blood was concrete. Soaked palms, dilated pupils, feet frozen in the middle of a public park, unable to tell its trembling from my own.

But when the smoke engulfed me, and darkness suffused me, it didn’t hurt. It was more… uncomfortable. Like growing pains, or the flu. Unpleasant