Doing it for The Plot (Chapters 1 + 2)

A work-in-progress existential, psychosexual cosmological horror novella by Larissa Thomas (2026).

By Larissa Thomas © 2026

This is Chapter 1 and 2 of a work-in-progress existential, psychosexual cosmological horror novella. I had previously posted it in March under the title “Stay on the Line, Little Bird”, but decided to change the direction a little bit and the name. Something felt off when I first posted it because my motivation for writing this and what I wanted to say was kind of murky to me. Now it’s clear. I’ve only made minute tweaks, so if you’ve already ready it don’t worry about a re-read. Chapter 3 coming soon.

Doing it for The Plot (Chapter I)

Drop the eggs in water and wait a few days,

Then see how your Lake Monkeez grow and play!

I

The rope stung as I wrapped it around my uncalloused, pale flesh. Dare I bid the world adieu in such a tedious fashion?
I had to.
Something was missing.
I couldn’t write.
Never had enough time.
I’d quit my job.
Not that it was a real job.
Wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Jobs are for serfs, and I am a writer.
My “friends” had harassed me about trivia nights, baby showers, wine & whines. Somebody was always getting married or treading water in a relationship’s drawn-out dying breath or a literal death or they knew someone who’d died and was fundraising and blah blah blah.
So I’d quit my friends.
Still couldn’t write though.
Joined special interest groups to see if I could plug into some narrative voltage. Learned a bit of tarot (unrewardingly more complicated than it seemed). Took a tantric breathwork class (don’t recommend if you’re sensitive to the scent of systemic gingivitis). Even lurked a BDSM meet-up, which also came with its own host of olfactory issues and was largely populated by bald dudes with hot dog necks in guyliner and barely-fleshed, wilted roses sporting scars like a cheap set of bangles from Claire’s. I’d tried seducing my first cousin one night just to see if I could generate interesting story material. All that manifested was an awkward Raymond Carver type mundane nothing at an eye contact-free Thanksgiving dinner.
Novel still didn’t get written.
I fumbled with the stained, braided yellow nylon. Was I about to make a mistake? The grand finale of mistakes in a one-act play of preventable failures.
My tech bro boyfriend had bemoaned my lack of consistent kitchen duty enthusiasm and commitment to regular subscription television lubrication. Didn’t spend enough “quality” time with him and he didn’t appreciate how frequently I drank (you’d drink too, if he was your boyfriend). Or that I often spent the morning hours unconscious instead of rising with the rest of polite society, preferring to write well past midnight.
“Write,” he would say in air quotations.
So I quit him, too.
With as much force as I could muster, I yanked the rope ineffectually. I was surprisingly weak for such a colossal bitch.
This was the only way.
The noise, distractions, constant chatter and demands of modern life. I didn’t want to be responsible for anything, anyone, for any reason, anymore! How could I concentrate on my book when I had to deal with groceries and rent and birthday parties and work meetings and god the list was endless and I could never get away from it I couldn’t take it anymore!!!!!!!!!
“Fuck it!” I screamed, wrapping the rope around the metal cleat and pushing the boat off the dock with my sparkly vinyl eBay Airwalks.
I had no idea how to captain a boat, outside of some youtube videos I’d watched. But I’d thrown away half my possessions, broke lease and bought a one-way ticket to paradise off some hippie on an internet marketplace. He needed a quick OBO to “move to an ashram in Kelowna.” So the deal was done. Sink or swim.
I’d recorded a voicemail greeting for anyone who might notice my absence and care to check in: “Going away to heal from the trauma of how boring you all are and finish a novel. No signal. Won’t get your messages. You’ll be the last to know when I get back. Bless.”
A lone message came through right before my sojourn into peace and productivity. Chris, the only friend who was allowed to stay (the only friend interested in staying) liked to give me pep talks as if I was his child who kept failing to make little league. I listened as I floated into the future: “You don’t need to blow up your life to write a book. You just need to show up at your desk consistently. All you have to do to write is write, you spazz–”
The signal dropped before he could finish his sentiment. For the best. Not the vibe I wanted to kick off my fool’s journey (that’s a tarot reference).
I embarked in my chariot; a rusty cabin cruiser with Krazy Glue fix-its and tacky, spackled add-ons. The hippie told me the boat was “magic” and held “secret fortunes” and I would have epiphanies and my “kundalini” would awaken. Many symbolic journeys would unlock. I would be transformed, but to be careful. It was not for the faint of heart. He was only letting it go for so cheap because his Ego was dead. He was a new man. Materialism was passé. Rerouting his powerful nut chi for higher callings instead of libidinal leaks. He had a TikTok account to start growing so he could spread the messages he’d learned from his Rock Bottom. He had to let other people in on his newfound secrets.
These proclamations invoked fear that there was some kind of brain-damaging neurotoxin I’d be exposed to on board, but I needed to submerge myself in something beyond the ordinary - even if it came with health risks. The disappointing vessel would suffice if it could hold itself together long enough for me to write my stupid fucking book.
I crossed my fingers.
The cryptic hippie had also shared that if I was to follow the waterways the boat was parked in - which is exactly what I was doing because it required the least effort on my part - to beware the night lights, and never go looking for their sources, just be present and don’t ask too many questions, and he warned me there were a lot of catfishers on the two-way radios. The radio was for emergencies and important communications only. He told me there were voyeurs on water, sometimes closer than one would think. He even went as far as to write me out his little rules on a piece of paper, which I’d stuffed somewhere without reading. It was all quite schizophrenic so I wasn’t too worried anything he said was more than just a metaphor.
The cruiser casually drifted for hours, as I organized my insubstantial provisions, and cleaned the worst of the bohemian slime off the surfaces I knew I’d be touching, until I just gave up. Slumped over what was to be my writing desk made of poorly attached crates and a slab of plywood. It would be here where I would compose my greatest work to date. Really, my only work. Hopefully not my last.
Not sure how long I’d been snoozing (a necessary part of writing), when I finally looked out the cabin window. I couldn’t see land anymore. Was I still on a lake? Migrated through some back channel to the ocean? Mega swamp? I was terrible at geography. Grasping anything mathematical, map-like or common sense was a non-starter. How far could I go off-course? I was in North America. The hippie had left me a map and I was sure I was somewhere on it. Tomorrow’s problem.
Because it was time to write.
But I needed something to get in the mood first. I stood in front of the fluid-specked mirror screwed into the wall. I looked like shit. I was wearing one of the seven nautical dresses I’d purchased to intensify the feeling of being a ‘writer at sea’ but I was serving aged-out, sex-trafficked castaway.
Music. A DJ set to summon a Muse. I’d brought my phone and its many playlists, but as I scrolled for something delivering swamp siren or ocean hottie, I realized most of my songs weren’t downloaded and I had no access to data.
I rifled through the stack of CD’s on the pile of stuff I’d inherited from the transcendent bum. I woefully placed “FUCK MIXXX: BLUNTZ ON THE WATER” in the ghetto blaster and pressed play.
“GAZUNGA! MI AMORE! Blip blop flap slap. Give it to me in the witch slit trap!”
I’d be needing wine tonight, as well. Surprise, surprise. After pouring a decent helping of cheap Cab Sauv into my mason jar, I draped myself over my cot and released an agonized sigh. To write, to write, what was I to write?
Retreating backwards in time made me furious. Flattening grief about the present paralyzed me. The future seemed unknowable in the least appealing way. I needed to conjure something fresh. Unmarred by reality, from the abyssal depths of my imagination.
My first impulse was to write about writing. The absolute height of tiresome cringe. Done to death. By every writer who’s ever existed. What more was there to say? The protagonist attempts to write their magnum opus and goes completely fucking insane? Oh, oh no. Are they haunted by their past? Do the ghosts of their creations cross the fiction-reality barrier?
Yawn.
I would begin my descent into wine-drenched madness once I made sure the two-way radio worked, just in case I needed it.
I twisted the knob, notch by notch. Lingering with each tiny movement, listening intently.
Clicking.
Whirring.
Buzzing.
It appeared to be functional, but to what end.
“Hello..ooo..oooooh,” I whispered sexily into the greasy plastic mouthpiece.
Buzz.
“Any sailors out there? Species-curious mermen?” I said in a fake sea wench “accent.”
Nothing.
“Woe is me. Guess I’ll just have to be sexy all by myself with this big glass of wine. A damsel in ‘dis dress, gonna slip it off cuz it’s so hot.”
I laughed and got up.
It was getting dark, and with no compelling hindrances, it was time to write. Even though it was warm, a thin fog had formed on the surface of the water. Opening the door and gazing out at the endless expanse, essentially a puny fish that could be picked off at any moment by anything with a vaguely predatory instinct.
I picked up my writing accoutrements and headed for the door to the deck.
The radio crackled.
In a baritone, barely audible voice: “…stay…”

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

Doing it for The Plot (Chapter 2)

II

It Comes Upon You Slowly

By Margaret Muggerot

Chapter One

Lyle peered at the tiny colony of brine shrimp floating inside his seven aquariums. They resembled something one might find in a toilet bowl at a gas station; ancient protozoans with miniscule legs and translucent ligaments. Some might wonder how such gruesome creatures would become a popular kids toy, but to Lyle they were the most fascinating specimens he’d ever seen. He preferred interacting with “Sea-Monkeys” to most people. They’d been marketed as novelty “pets” for children since the fifties. Lyle was the purveyor of their knock-offs: Lake Monkeez.

They were the perfect product, in Lyle’s opinion. Compact, emotionally and financially disposable. A simple flush and they were quickly forgotten. Easily controlled. Not too smart. But cute enough to generate novelty.

Lyle harvested, packaged and distributed his product from his small, brick-veneer home. A smallish fish in a smallish pond, surrounded by microscopic crustaceans that relied on his goods for survival. Or so he told himself. He’d been experimenting and innovating lately; playing with altering the brand regionally and to align with trends. He was trying out ideas like Post-Internet Rave Glitchoids from Beyond. N’awlins Nightcrawlers. Maudlin Monkee Mommiez. Sewercidal Shromp-Shromps. Depressed Dingbats of the Deep. Joyful Jesters of the Gelationous Doo-Dad Window-Whatevers.

“No need for messy pets or huge vet bills, enjoy the excitement of one of nature’s greatest thrills!”

“I hate it!” I screamed at the first page of my novel.
The fleeting excitement of a now-dead radio signal was fading. It had, at the very least, jump-started a creative impulse but now the beckoning voice on the other end was all I could think about. I wasn’t sure if I’d hallucinated it, if I’d intercepted a message for someone else, or if it was a meaningless advertisement.
The putrid sodium nightshade scent of mini raviolis I’d eaten out of the can for dinner wafted towards me. I hadn’t thought about what I’d do about dishwashing, eating and whatnot. That would be tomorrow’s problem.
I needed a change of scenery.
“Alright, I’m going outside,” I announced, pausing to see if the radio would speak again.
It didn’t.
I slid in a new disc titled: “COWBOY BEEBOP NIPPLE WAX UNPLUGGED!”
It sounded exactly as expected.
The sky had grown black in the hour it took me to write three paragraphs, so I popped my LED lantern, slopped out more wine and planted myself on the shoddy, moldy fold-out chair on the boat’s shoddier, moldier deck.
This was the first time I’d moved out of a full-body rage kegel in years. I had, by all accounts, gotten exactly what I’d begged for: Silence and solitude. Disconnection from everyone who cared about (or said they did). Zero distractions. An environment to actualize without mundane reality creeping into every orifice and paper cut.
The taste of wine, light breeze on my shoulders, the sounds of slapping and lapping and rhythm of the boat was intoxicating. I’d always wanted to make it on a waterbed. The image evoked 80’s cinematic sleaze and exploitation; illicit non-stop sex in a sketchy one-bedroom apartment in the slums of Montreal in late spring. Wicked delights on feathery duvets and strange creative nascencies generated by the union between a depraved but attractive woman and her odd but devastating young lover.
I sighed, turning my attention back to my freshly broken-in notebook. I felt something meaningful coming alive in this seemingly asexual tale involving shrimp and small businesses.
“Stay…” I whispered to myself.

Chapter One Cont’d…

“What will you do to rectify this abominable service?” A man named Oswald Parkinson screeched at Lyle through his cordless phone. “I do not want a replacement. I want a refund. Your product arrived in a shocking state, and I had to scramble to find something else to give my niece for her sixth birthday! It was a tremendous inconvenience!”
“Yes, sir. I understand,” Lyle said, dragging a chipped fingernail across the glass tank. Each tank was carefully placed around the walls of his living room-office, out of direct sunlight, and at the perfect height for maintenance, cleaning and viewing. Lyle’s bicep-length hair had to be kept in a low-pony to prevent the tips from dipping in the water endowing him with a “swamp aroma” that his sister often mentioned.
The drone of a loud plane overhead startled Lyle for a moment. As there were no airports nearby, it was an uncommon occurrence. The plane was flying close to the ground, emblazoned with a “SnotNot” logo. Maybe there was something out of the ordinary going on in town; a convention.
Lyle clicked and scrolled through invoices with his chapped fingers. A new patch of psoriasis threatened to split open his knuckles. He carefully found Oswald Parkinson’s proof of purchase in his inbox.
“Would you mind sending me a photo for insurance purposes? I’ll have to make a claim—”
“No! If you don’t refund my money right now, I’ll report you to the appropriate channels. I’ll expose you for copyright infringement! For being a terrible person! And-”
“Yes, sir. Very well. I’ll refund your money—”
“Now!” the man phlegm-gargled and hung up.
“Now,” Lyle repeated.
“Now,” Lyle said, plucking a shrimp from the tank and squishing it between the tips of fingers, flicking it back into the water.
“Now,” Lyle whispered.
A couple of the critters investigated, or perhaps mindlessly passed by, the viscera. A comrade had fallen for no other reason than their God was perturbed.
Lyle loved to experiment on the creatures; seeing how temperature shifts affected their behavior; adding “threats” to the environment. A rancid Cheerio or half a cup of hot water; playing music against the wall of a tank; sudden noises; surprise guests; confusing them with strobe lights which caused them to flit around in chaos. He often found himself wanting to escalate the situation once boredom set in. What else could he do to them? Where could he put them? How long could they survive?

The CD restarted.
I had nothing else to say to my pages for the night. I dropped my notebook on the deck and squinted into the surround-sound noiseless void. I’d entered a strange reality. Everything still but ominous in its possibility. It wasn’t what I could see and hear that put me on edge, it was what I couldn’t.
The ambient fear aroused me.
I slid my dirty fingers into my white low-rises and touched myself in time to the waves. Why not? I liked the idea that someone or something might be watching from the nothingness. I’d often fancied myself worthy of an audience for just existing.
“Is anyone there?” I called out softly.
The unseduced waves sloshed against frigid aluminum.
“Anyone there?” Louder this time.
The radio inside the cabin crackled with feedback.
I gasped.
Waited.
The interference stopped just as quickly as it started. A static heartbeat revealing a hint of potential existence; a dehydrated brine shrimp egg palpating itself and then giving up.
“Now you’re imagining a creature from the black lagoon is trying to fuck you through the radio? JUST WRITE YOUR STUPID NOVEL!” I could almost hear Chris’s castigations. “You’re inventing distractions now!”
“Go away,” I hissed.
A terrible sound ravaged the silence. Crispy bones cracking, splintering a membrane, scratching against glass.
I sat up. The hair on the back of my neck reacting to unseen electricity.
Lights flickered far off in the distance as if responding to the screeches.
I stood up and tip-toed to the rails.
This was probably when self-preservation would kick in for a normal person, and they’d run inside and lock the door. But I couldn’t look away. I had to know what was going on.
I peered out into oblivion, but couldn’t tell where the noise had come from, or where the lights were exactly. I was looking at impressions of lights. Shimmering flickers, maybe from the moon, which appeared to be waxing gibbous and almost full illumination.
I squinted.
Hadn’t the hippie told me not to look at the lights? I couldn’t remember. Maybe he was gatekeeping a mystical secret. A lot of spiritual people I’d encountered seemed to enjoy doing that. Taking a basic problem-solution pipeline and rebranding it to make themselves appear as divine vessels inseminated with the sacred fluids of higher beings.
Something splashed in the distance.
“Reveal yourself.” I breathed in as slowly and quietly as possible.
I knew it. I felt it. Maybe it was a merman.
Another splash.
I burst into a fit of laughter. I took a big swig of what was left of my wine. Maybe I’d go for a swim. Why the hell not. Lean in, as they say.
“Coming to getcha,” I threatened flirtatiously. Were mermen supposed to be hot? I assumed so. They had to be.
I slid off my white and navy blue dress and tossed it on the chair. I hadn’t swum in a long time, but you don’t forget how to swim. Yes! This is what I needed!
“I’m coming!”
Then that terrible sound again—
A few feet away from me.
The shape became clearer the more I looked at it, like when I was a child and would see monsters where there was just a pile of laundry and toys.
Only this was in reverse.
I didn’t move.
A blanched, testy creature perched on the rails. Was hard to get a gauge of its size. Bigger than me but balled up and hunched over. Its eyeballs black and shiny as a scrying mirror. Neither bird nor squid, almost human with what appeared to be stringy dark tresses knotted and infested with smaller lifeforms clinging to it for life. Something liminally horrifying. The longer I stared, the more that revealed itself: Wings and gills. Pendulous teets with a milky substance on the tip of each nipple, glistening in the moonlight. The nipples transfixingly raw, as if they’d been sucked on to the point of ulceration.
The beast perched between myself and the cabin door. I would have to pass it to get inside. It seemed to read my mind, opening its beak-like mouth and licking its sharp little teeth.
An unignorable smallness gripped my insides. Anything could happen to me and no one would know. I was a sitting fuck’n’chuck. No signs of the mundane world or its inhabitants for miles.
The lamp flickered as the enraged lifeform released a low gurgling sound from deep inside its belly.
Then the only source of light went out.