About Manifest

by Julia Talbot
15 pages / 3400 words
Ebook zipped file contains - html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub

Craig is on a mission. He needs monsters for a movie, and he’s heard of a guy in New Orleans who makes the most original masks and statues out there. Etienne is way more than a weirdo who makes monsters, though, and Craig finds himself willing to face his own fears to get to know the hottest guy he’s ever met.

Sample

The shop came highly recommended. Supposedly it had the best masks and monsters in the south, and considering how many places there were in Florida, that was pretty impressive. Oh, sure, New Orleans had always been known for Mardi Gras type masks, but this shop was special. Different.

This kind of different was just what Craig needed. He needed some monster effects that no one else had ever used on screen, something that would really set his low-budget, hopefully the next Paranormal-Witch-Project blockbuster apart. Something had to, because he was going to be damned if he was leaving Austin to go back to small-town Colorado and watch his horse-whisperer of a brother run the family ranch with a skill Craig had never even begun to have.

The shop was in the French Quarter, but off on one of the more quiet streets back toward the Faubourg Marigny. Craig found it by heading down Royal, past the Mona Lisa, with its fab pasta and cute gay waiters, then turning off through a maze of smaller streets. The shop was unassuming, with a simple window sign proclaiming, "Masques Monstre", and a display of Venetian style Don Giovanni stuff.

If he hadn't heard such great things about the artist, Craig would have turned around and gone back to Mona's to have some pizza and wine.

Instead, he tried the door. There were no hours listed, and he hoped to heck this wasn't a by appointment only place, or a place that closed before dusk.

The door opened easily, soundlessly, really, which for an old place in the Quarter was quite a feat. Wood tended to swell with the damp and doors stuck. Craig loved NOLA and went there as often as possible, but his Colorado skin had never gotten used to the humidity.

Inside, the shop smelled of leather and glue, and at first glance there was nothing unusual. Oh, the crystal-crusted ladybug mask was different enough, he guessed, and the twisted leather green man had a real artisan look compared to the mass-produced crap so many shops peddled, but it was nothing to put in a horror movie.

Where the hell were the monsters?

The air to his left moved, and suddenly there was a lean, dark man standing next to him, deep brown eyes watching him intently. "May I help you?"

His instinct was to open his mouth and say, "God, I hope so," because that café au lait skin thing was a cliché from books, but in this case it was true. Top it off with wavy black hair, those deep eyes and a pair of tanned, scarred hands, and the guy was exactly the kind of help Craig craved at three a.m. when porn just wasn't going to do it for him.