About This WIP: Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Something curious happened last month (Feb 2026): a fantasy story sneaked up on me, A SUPERNATURAL NOIR.

I'd finished writing (and was already editing) The Rest is Silence: A Jazz Age Noir (it's a Hamlet retelling set in 1929 with, spoiler alert, no traditional ghost), when I spotted that week's vssmystery prompt: heavy. The vss365 daily prompt was also interesting: lambent.

So I wrote a little snippet - very much in the spirit of Hammett and Chandler:  

I got home late. Rain was pounding the windows. It sounded like a heavy man in a hurry to get in. Mrs. Malone[1] had neatly stacked two weeks of mail on the sideboard by the whiskey: a selection of bills and assorted trash. The bottle's lambent smile wormed its way up my brain, making warm promises to wet bones. The mail never stood a chance.

[1] She didn't have a name in the original post.

Nothing to indicate any supernatural inclinations there, right? That snippet could be about anything, anyone, anywhere.

Then, I wrote another tiny snippet:

Halfway through the second whiskey, the telephone started to wail. It pierced the rain like an augur foretelling new wounds. 

I glanced at the black bakelite monster and waited, hoping it would grow tired. It didn't. 

The glass went with me to the gossip bench in the hallway. The handset hadn't slimmed in my absence. I picked it up but said nothing.

And a third one:

"Mrs. Gabe?" It wasn't really a question.

I recognized the thin male voice on the other side. My blood curdled for half a second. Not because of him. He was just an echo.

"No," I said. The answer had nothing to do with my name, either.

"We sent you a letter, Mrs. Gabe."

The neat stack of mail was out of sight, untouched on the sideboard, next to the decanter. I glanced at the whiskey left in my glass, wondered if taking a gulp would be heard through the line, and let it go.  

"I don't care," my words finally came out, voice as flat as I could manage.

"Read the letter, Mrs. Gabe," the voice pressured. "Just... Read the letter first."

Okay, so now we know the first-person narrator is a "Mrs. Gabe" (allegedly). Still, nothing screams supernatural there. It's just Noir being Noir, with a female protagonist.

Full disclosure: I knew the protagonist was female since the beginning; there's nothing supernatural about that, either.

But this next snippet definitely sealed the deal for me:

Why? I wanted to ask, but didn't feel like begging for an answer that would never arrive. So I let the silence fester, listening to the pale newt on the other side breathe as he grew something akin to impatience, not a backbone tough enough to question or hurry me.

The rain was still pounding the windowpanes, demanding to get in. The whiskey left in my glass kept on sneering at me next to the telephone. I thought of you - the only one who mattered, the one I'd die and kill for - and closed my eyes for a moment.

"We're sending you a Mike," the voice finally said, breaking the silence like a rock through the window.

A hunter. They were sending a hunter. Again, no point in asking why.

"When?"

"In the morning. Eight o'clock?"

"Fine," I said, sounding like a warm body with no pulse. "Anything else?"

"Goodnight, Mrs. Gabe."

I stared at the black bakelite monster for a while after replacing the receiver. Then, I took the whiskey back with me to the living room sideboard, ransacked the neat stack of mail, found the letter "they" had sent me, and went to bed. The whiskey never left my side.

That's it; the story of how a fantasy WIP sneaked up on me in four snippets. 

And, dear fellow writer/reader, if you've spotted why that last snippet propelled the whole story into the supernatural side of storytelling for me, you are, without a shadow of a doubt, my kind of person!

My plan now is to finish writing the first draft of "Grime and Shadows, Mrs. Gabe: A Supernatural Noir" in the next few months. Mostly because I can't stop thinking about this story. I'll also be writing micro poetry about this WIP on a daily basis - because, again, I am obsessed with these characters, their story, and how it sneaked up on me.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this very long post.

Your friend in Noir, 

CE