II. SHORT FICTION
Blake-Plock’s short fiction often experiments with narrative frame, meta-fictional structure, and the intrusion of the unreal into ordinary settings.
“Marie, Jake, and Gertie Play a Game”
350 words
Three friends play a game where taste becomes morality, and one player takes the rules to their deadly conclusion.
“The Final Cat”
760 words
The Salisbury Killer is no match for the dander of a fluffy murderer in this story that everyone who lives with a cat will feel in their bones.
“Dead Ball”
2,700 words
Over the course of a minor league baseball game, it slowly becomes apparent to the coaches that something is very wrong.
“Manifest”
4,000 words
A mystery novelist finds herself on a commercial flight where all of the passengers are characters from her own stories.
“Casting Call”
600 words
The casting call for a student film reveals a recursive system where identity, violence, and paranoia may be producing real-life deaths that are then reenacted as on-film deaths.
“Walk a Mile”
400 words
Zoe wants to know what it feels like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. But first, she’ll have to figure out how to make the shoes fit.
“Downjackers”
1,500 words
A story about addiction, intimacy, and shared consciousness set in a mundane world where jumping into the minds of strangers is the ultimate high.
“The Slow Translator”
1,000 words
During a prison interview, a translator loses the ability to disambiguate his own thoughts from those of a serial killer.
“Interview with the Gill-Man”
3,100 words
A former movie monster, now living in suburbia, recounts his life and times—revealing idiosyncrasies of identity, fears of obsolescence, and an unexpected beauty found in ordinary family life.
“Williton Fyrd”
3,900 words
A researcher studying a forgotten 1970s folk record discovers that the album’s strange production history may conceal something far more sinister: a dark ritual encoded in music.
“Burial Plot”
4,500 words
Two characters trapped in separate horror stories discover they can speak across their narratives and begin searching for a way to survive the plots that were written to destroy them.
“The Inside Outers”
4,200 words
While a small town prepares for an attack by mysterious figures, fear and rumor turn the town’s defenses into the instruments of its destruction.
“Child Star”
4,500 words
A failed spaceflight traps three former sitcom stars in a society of children who treat their old catchphrases as sacred law.
This document is periodically revised as new work appears.