Author's note:
Hello, everyone. Well, 2020 has been a year, hasn't it? But now we've nearly made it to the end, so here I am bearing a gift, and asking for a favor from my Supernatural family.
The gift is this story. Several years ago, well before the actual show did their own cartoon episode, I wrote a script in the hopes my agent could somehow submit it. After I finished it, though, her sources told her that really isn't the way it works. So I've had this sitting on my hard drive ever since. I've revised it from script format to an actual story. There is this introduction and then four acts, so I'm going to post it one part per night through New Year's Eve, to celebrate the end of a year I know I'm not alone in being anxious to see the end of.
The favor I'm asking is a personal one. The one thing I did manage to accomplish this year was to finish a fifth book. It's a ghost story and a mystery, and it was a story I was reluctant to tackle, but I feel like it's the best thing I've ever written. For personal reasons, rather than submit it to a traditional publisher I've chosen to publish it myself. The upside to this is, I'm able to control all the aspects of it. The downside is, I don't have a publishing house to help me spread the word about it. This is why I'm asking for your help.
For the last five days of 2020 the ebook version of my new book, Julia's Heart, will be available for free on Amazon. You can find a link at my website at sue ross (no spaces).com. If you like my writing, if you like mysteries, please take a chance on it. And, if you do, please consider leaving an honest review. Tell your friends and family about it. Recommend it to independent bookstores and your local library. It will help me so much!
Thanks in advance to everyone who does so, and whether you do or not, I hope you'll enjoy this story. I'll be back with act one tomorrow.
Looney Toons
by
Elfinblue
The old lighthouse rose from its cliff above the sea, long-disused but not quite forgotten. A sign on the wrought-iron fence around it warned away trespassers and a security light still shone dimly between the road and the door. Within lay the remains of an artist's studio. Dust covered the drafting board. Cobwebs floated from the arms of an easel. The floor was littered with scraps of paper and canvas and flattened tubes of oil and acrylic paints, long dried out and useless now.
Drawings covered every surface.
Tattered pages covered with scrawled cartoons were taped to the walls. They were scattered across the dusty surface of the draft table and they covered the floor. Amidst the riot of drawn and painted lines, something moved...
Within the shadows, something moved...
A claw scratched like fingernails across the stones. Scales rippled, blacker than the darkness. A barbed tail swept through the air and a stray moonbeam, coming in a high window, glinted off a sharp fang.
From outside there suddenly came a thump and a muffled curse. All movement inside the old building paused. Something scuttled across the floor and melted into one of the drawings, sliding from three dimesions into two and becoming just one more picture amongst the hundreds.
For an infinite second nothing happened, and then the door crashed open. In the doorway stood two shadows, outlined against the security light, their familiar silhouettes cast across the floor:
It was Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
Daffy stood on the left. He turned his head, first one way and then the other, and dark eyes glinted above his long bill.
Bugs was on the right, his usual bow-legged stance looking relaxed next to Daffy's tense posture. One ear stood straight, the other flopped over. He clutched a carrot in his left hand.
Both shadowy figures carried the shadowy silhouettes of big, bulbous, cartoon-looking guns.
Daffy reached up to the wall on his right and turned a dial. The lights in the studio came up, revealing an optical illusion. Daffy and Bugs were really Sam and Dean Winchester.
Sam, still clutching a lock pick, was down on one knee. His coat,rucked up around his hips, had created the duck shape. He wore a novelty fishing hat, with dark goggles clipped above an outsize bill.
Dean stood with his usual, bow-legged stance. The foliage that had given him the appearance of ears and whisklers faded into the background. The carrot was a beef jerky stick, the peeled-back wrapper no longer looking like dangling greens.
The men both carried big, bulbous, cartoon-looking guns.
Sam stood and they faced the darkened room together. Dean shouldered his gun and took a bite of jerky. He tucked it into his cheek and spoke.
"Meh. What's up, Doc?"