Excerpt: The Half-Finished Stories of Sarah Lewis; or How I Learned to Throw Caution to the Wind and Write a Novel in a Month

(some typing errors included.)

About ten minutes later, Sarah was walking along the beach not able to see more than twenty yards in any direction. The fog was thick enough to block out the signs of civilization around her and what she could see, and hear left her feeling as though she could have been in any time period in any place. She could just barely make out the waves as they came back and forth, tickling the sand. She walked to where the waves came and let the waves tickle her toes. The water was cold but she didn't mind.
She spent some time dancing in the waves, being careful not to get her clothes wet, but also moving around more and being quite sillier than she usually would be, being confident that since she couldn't see anyone because of the cloud, no one could see her.

she gave up her dancing when her pants got wet.

Tired, and feeling sore at the waves for getting the best of her, Sarah retreated to a grouping of rocks, to sit and contemplate her story. From where she sat, she could no longer see the waves, but she could hear them loud and clear. It made her smile.
Then she imagined sailing on and old ship, exploring the coast and shores of California. Or maybe she was in the Caribbean instead. The Caribbean was more fun, more mysterious to her, plus the Caribbean was full of pirates. She was a young lad on a pirate ship. They were lost at sea in an unnatural fog with no way to know where exactly they were, only the compass told them what direction they were headed. She was supposed to keep her ears open for the sounds of waves crashing on the rocks. That way they could steer clear of any land masses and would keep from accidently running aground in the unnatural fog. She could her the sounds of waves, but they were way off in the distance. Surely there was no reason to raise the alarm yet. The ship rocked in the water, the way ships do, and the far off rhythm of waves lulled her to sleep.

She awoke when the ship ran aground.

The hull had been damaged by a large rock. it would take some time to repair. The unnatural fog still clung to them and the ship, and this island they had crashed into. It all gave her the heebie geebies.

They say that a fog like this, this unnatural, thick, clingy fog, had some evil in it. And evil that turned people to zombies and drew them into it's center. It was an evil, zombie cloud. The worst thing she could think to find in the zombie cloud were zombie clowns.

Zombie Clowns?!?

Stupid television. An old childhood show was creeping back into Sarah's mind. It was a show she liked a lot, but a cloud that turned people into clowns had no place in the Caribbean. The alps maybe, but not the Caribbean. No, it was a zombie cloud. A zombie cloud that made zombie ninjas.

Now, that too, was something that made Sarah laugh. How could ninjas be zombies and still do their cool ninja moves. Everyone knew that zombies moved slow because their undead bodies were in so much pain, they could never move swift enough to be ninjas. Unless, by zombie, the cloud meant that the ninjas were only mindless, but not undead, and therefore could still do their swift ninja moves.

This concept did not bode well for the stranded pirates. In this thick, unnatural fog, the zombie ninjas could be on top of them before they would even know it. And if there is anything in the world a pirate hates, it's a ninja. Everyone knows this.

And suddenly, pirate Sarah was alone on the beach, a fog covered jungle to one side of her, and the sounds of the fog covered ocean to the other. She could hear nothing else so she knew the ninja that stalked her was a good one. If she could see or hear the ninja, she was in trouble because she had a ninja after her. If she couldn't see or hear one, then she was already dead because it was a well trained ninja after her.