“It what? Reminded you of Bud?”

“That man took everything from me. And I just...couldn’t help it.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You don’t think so?”

He shook his head.

“I want to show you something, Ray.”

The game bag they had hauled in together was just within reach. She tugged it several inches closer and loosened the drawstring.

“I think our luck is finally going to change.”

“Oh, now you’re the optimist?”

“It’s gonna be better from here on out,” she said. “For both us. You don’t have to keep killing him over and over.”

“Why’s that?”

Ariana reached into the game bag, pulled it out, and set it in Ray’s lap.

For a moment, he was speechless, and when he finally found his voice, it quivered.

“What did you do, Ariana?” He touched her hand. “What did you do?”

“Life is so hard. Things. They just...”

“Change you.”

“Exactly.”

“Is this really happening?” he asked.

“Yes, Ray, it’s really happening. After all these years.”

She put her head on his shoulder and for a long time they just sat there together in the freezer, staring at Bud’s severed head.

“I have one more thing to tell you,” she said, reaching into her pocket.

“What my love?”

She pulled out his grandmother’s wedding ring and slid it onto her finger.

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I will marry you.”

The End

INTERVIEW WITH BLAKE CROUCH AND SELENA KITT

Blake: So, Selena, people are probably wondering how and why you and I hooked up to do a short story, particularly since we write in different genres.

Selena: Yeah, seems like a stretch doesn’t it? I feel like I’m the odd-one-out on a Sesame Street sketch: “One of these things is not like the other...” since I’m pretty well known almost exclusively for erotica writing...

Blake: And I’m known for writing thrillers, horror, and suspense.

Selena: But in my defense, I’m a big horror fan! And I actually do have an erotic horror collection out there called Shivers. I’ve been reading and writing horror since I was a kid. Little known fact about Selena Kitt. :)

Blake: I first came to know you through the ebook community. Even though I wasn’t an erotica writer or reader (I grew up in the Bible belt of North Carolina where SEX IS DIRTY AND BAD!) I was in awe of this ebook empire you were building.

Selena: I can sympathize. I have fundamentally religious folks in my family too. But I was already going to hell anyway. How much worse could it get? Anyway, in terms of ebooks, I got lucky. I was in the right time at the right place. I started Excessica (my little erotic ebook empire, so called) because back in the day (wayyyyy back in 2008, before Kindle rocked the ebook world) when the biggest ebook retailer was an outfit called Fictionwise, you couldn’t get your work on there unless you were a “publisher.”

Blake: Hard to imagine a world before Kindle and Nook.

Selena: Isn’t it? I’d been writing all sorts of things all along through the years, but I happened to have a glut of erotic material from a contest on Literotica called Survivor. I just wanted to see if I could put it all out there and make a little extra supplemental income, so I gathered a group of writers together and we all published under the Excessica moniker. The birth of the first publishing co-op. And before I knew it, things had snowballed, Kindle came along, and I was making $10,000 a month. I thought I’d been in a tornado and had woken up in Oz.

Blake: Do you remember how you met me?

Selena: Of course! How could I forget? I found you through The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. I posted a lot on Konrath’s blog, and you, of course, were friends with Joe. I was kind of mad at him. I’d been doing this whole ebook thing for years, saying all the same things to people—but no one was listening to me! We erotica writers, we’re the red-headed stepchild of the publishing world.

Blake: I remember, you provided some really amazing feedback on a couple of my novels, and I could see through our exchanges that you were a helluva writer. One of my other co-writers, J.A. Konrath, and I have a monster series where four writers work together on a single book. It’s loads of fun. The first book was called DRACULAS (written with F. Paul Wilson and Jeff Strand). We were beginning to think about the follow-up, which will be about werewolves, and knew we wanted to work with some new writers. You came to mind instantly for a couple of reasons. First, you seemed really cool over email, and life’s too short not to work with cool people. Also, you’d written a lot, and of course, we thought it’d be fun to cross-pollinate with our respective fan bases. In other words, all of the straight horror/thriller crowd that reads Konrath and Crouch would be introduced to your work. And vice versa.

Selena: Very smart! And you say I’m the marketing guru? You know, it was Konrath who gave me the courage to actually post my sales numbers. And when I revealed the huge amount of books I was selling per month, he made an off-the-cuff joking comment: “If you ever want to collaborate, let me know!” I’d just read and reviewed DRACULAS, and I couldn’t resist emailing him to say, “If you’re not kidding, I’ll take you up on that!” I can’t tell you how glad I am that he did! I loved collaborating with you on Hunting Season and I’m so looking forward to our big project together.

Blake: Collaborating is a blast, but like lots of things, you want to do it with the right people. Compatibility and all that stuff. So before we all jumped in headfirst, we thought it be a good idea to take a test drive. To go on a date. Just to make sure you liked the way we work and we could work with you.

Selena: They should have a match.com for writers. “Mystery writer with procrastinating tendencies seeks organized collaborator...”

Blake: That would be a scary site. So I emailed and said let’s write a short story together. Got any ideas?

Selena: I did! I pitched you one about a butcher and a trophy wife... kind of a horror love story. I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what you were gonna think...

Blake: I loved it immediately.

Selena: And that’s when I knew, it was a match made in heaven!

Blake: Same here...You kindly gave me the option of which character to write.

Selena: So you wrote one opening section, while I wrote the other.

Blake: Which was all great, but there was still the issue of writing the third section in real time together in a Google doc. What were your thoughts on collaboration going in?

Selena: Oh my god. I was having panic attacks the night before. Talk about performance anxiety. Do they make Viagra for writers? I was wondering how in the heck I was going to write this thing with someone else. We’d done the first parts separately, and that was pretty easy. I guess it was the fear of the unknown. But you promised you’d be gentle with me, and that it would be fun... (where have I heard that before....?) But thankfully, it really was! Once we got started, I couldn’t believe how easy it was, how well things came together. It was exhilarating!

Blake: Collaboration is pretty thrilling, especially in a solitary profession like writing. You took to it amazingly fast.

Selena: Should we explain what a Google doc is for those who don’t know? I’d used them before, but I didn’t really understand how they worked for collaboration. It was quite an education!