So I started thinking about this story back during the Foolish comp, when I had the idea of two people fucking in the radioactive red zone of Chernobyl. Yeah, I know, a spectacularly weird and unsexy story idea. I abandoned it.
At the same time, I've been boring my friends and my family and my poor, long-suffering wife about this huge comet--the biggest one ever discovered--that's about 10 years away from its closest approach. I kept coming up with story ideas, none of them were any good.
Then this comp came along, and most of the Chernobyl story fell away, except for the ending and the overall sense of horniness and doom. I added in the comet and Quetzalcoatl and set everything in NYC. And THEN I had a story, but it was way too long, and seemed to have too much plot to ever be a flash. I almost abandoned it. Again.
I edited this Damned Thing for a week, cutting a word at a time. The woman's backstory, gone. The description of the comet, gone. How the world got this way, gone.
A plane crashed into the Chrysler Building in the first draft. Gone.
They died as they were fucking in the first draft. Gone.
I've probably blown through five different titles.
This is what's left. I worked my ASS off on this story. There's not a wasted word in what remains left, except for that "anyway" in the third paragraph that STILL bugs me when I look at it.
Anyway. Let's call the genre Apocalyptic Erotica. I am very proud of this story. Please give it a read!
Comet Q:
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/exhibitionism/-comet-q-.aspx
Easily amused
Tintinnabulation - first place (Free Spirit)
Comet Q - second place (Quick and Risqué Sex)
Amnesia - third place (Le Noir Erotique)
. But I appreciate the kind words from the reigning comp winner! I’m not sure I’ve ever sweated this much over 1000 words before.
