Welcome to Fictitious Filigree

My portal for fiction starting with NaNoWriMo 2023

Hello readers of Thoughtless Opinions and welcome to Fictitious Filigree!

I’ll cut to the chase, I decided very late to do NaNoWriMo this year. I don’t really have a solid idea of what I want to write or how it’s going to pan out, but it will hopefully be fun. So to keep the regular newsletter space clean in case I ever go back to writing on any sort of regular basis, I started this section to house NaNoWriMo and any future fiction stories that may come tumbling out of my head.

Please feel free to criticize these words as you read them. The goal is to get them down on a page so it will likely be quite free flowing. Leave comments about how you’d like see the story play out. And most of all enjoy!

Beyond the horizon, past where the lighthouse beacon could no longer overpower the thick coastal fog, sat a dilapidated vessel, bobbing in the unusually warm fall air. The ship was barely twenty feet long, barely noticeable in the vast ocean on a sunny day, but in the fog with it’s lights turned off it was all but invisible. The gentle creak of shifting boards as the captain of the vessel paced from bow to stern were drowned out by the lapping of the waves against the side of the boat.

He’d been there for far too long now. Staring at the hour hand on his watch push past 2:00am he continued to pace the ship. He knew he should have been docked before the fog had gotten so thick, but he was also aware that he couldn’t leave. The captain double checked his coordinates to make sure he hadn’t drifted too far as the hours had grown long.

“They should be here by now,” he said to the wind. As the fog grew thicker so did his impatience. He fumbled with the boat keys in his pocket, letting the key slip between his fingers as he contemplated the repercussions of starting the engine and getting the hell out of there. His hand began to pull the key out when a faint light and the murmur of an engine filled his oceanic void. The approaching boat was drenched in shadow as the tiny bow light flickered with every bump of the water as though at any moment a big enough wave would knock the bulb from it’s socket and leave both vessels engulfed in darkness.

Finally, as the boat turned into position to board the captain’s vessel, the light pushed beyond the ship and the shadowed figures began to take shape. Without a word the boat threw rope to the captain which he dutifully tied, connecting the two ships together while they carried out their business.

As the captain pulled the final knot, the hairs on his neck stood up. Something was different. He looked at the boat he’d just anchored to his own, and while expecting two other men to be staring back, only one pair of eyes gazed down the barrel of the 9mm now pointed in his direction.