Sticking The Landing

What the heck...from my Sci fi fantasy tale, The White Room:

What if it WAS just a dream? What if none of it ever happened? What if I'd just slipped and hit my head, and the rest was a concussion induced hallucination?

Then my phone rang. I recognized the number immediately. And the voice on the other end:

"Well hello, my love."
 
I have always thought that, other than your opening, the last lines of a story are the most important. They are the final impression your story leaves on the readers.

I’m really not sure this is my forte, but…



Perhaps I was still a little girl in my own mind, but I was now David's little girl and I was wanted.

- Wanting To Be Wanted



A brown bag was lying next to us.

"Open it and take a look angel."

I pulled out what looked like a harness. Attached to a plate at the front was a dildo that looked longer and thicker than my trusty vibrator. Holding it in my hand, it was slightly bigger than David as well. I turned to David and smiled.

"My turn next time?"

David simply nodded.

- Because I Deserve It



Now I'm going to open wide and take you in my mouth. I won't be able to talk any more, hun. But I can't imagine you are going to complain too much. Guys tell me I am pretty good at this, let me show you. If I make you feel really good, maybe you can give me a special drink as my reward. I'd love that. Now just relax and let Emily make you cum.

- On My Knees

 
I agree the ending is as important the start. Shakespeare knew this, sometimes using a narrator to tie up the loose ends. Often it's read at a moment of grief - if we've just finished a beautiful book and here's one such 'That this time - please, just this once - it will leave without us.' I'll let you guess that but here's some of mine.

"So you don't mind then - about the fuck?" Hannah spoke with a little smile at the corner of her mouth.
Paul pretended to give the question some thought.
"I can live with it."
Under Your Spell

"I said 'Here is my first step, shall we take this road for a time together?' Now we are both on that road, lets see where it takes us."
Under Her Breath

A few minutes later, I watched Tom's big hand held aloft in my rear view mirror as I turned onto the road once again. I wished I'd had something more for breakfast. Fort William 26 miles.
Jane goes to Scotland

"You bring the worst out in me, Vicks. Got me sucking dick, now I'm fucking crying. Fuck's sake, look at me," Lotte snorted a laugh.
Then Vicki laughed too and they both hooted, doubling up with unchecked laughter and stumbled together, shoulder-barging and boisterously making their way home.
Goalposts Pt 01
 
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare
From The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1
 
Just one more:



I closed my eyes, smiling and relaxed. I assumed that they would get round to unbinding me at some point. For now I simply enjoyed the feeling of a warm, full stomach.

- You Spin Me Round
 
From Forever Bound, a story about a reluctant dom husband finally fully accepting what his enthusiastic sub wife needs.

We lay together then, Master and Slave, husband and wife, and, although we didn't know it yet, father and mother. She curled up against me, and we spoke of nothing but our affection for each other for a long time. Soft kisses and laughter filled our bedroom.

We made love gently later. She went to remove her collar as I usually asked her to, but I stayed her hand, and she almost broke down in tears. She touched it occasionally as we coupled, her eyes filled with happiness as she told me how she loved me. My ministrations were gentle and kind instead of the rough taking I had subjected her to earlier, the one she had begged for. But for once, it didn't feel like the two were separate parts of our lives. Just different. Both part of us. Both part of Linh and me. A promise of what I would be for her, and what she had always wanted to be for me.
 
From "One Night in Gormaz."

"I'll lose the battle some day," the Red Witch told the dead man, "but it won't be this day."
 
One of my favorite endings

Just like you, the light of love is in his eyes. Just like you, he loves me tonight, for always, for ever. Just like you, I know he'll only love me while his moment of pleasure lasts. I'll give him my body, I'll give him the pleasure he desires, I'll give him everything he desires, all the time knowing that just like you, he'll only love me until the morning sun drives the romance of the night away.

I know he won't love me forever.
He won't love me tomorrow.
Only for tonight.
Like you.
 
And this one still makes me cry, every time.....

I smile back, for I know that somewhere, Martin still loves me and he's there, waiting for me and soon, very soon now, we'll find each other and this time, he will be strong. There will be no father, no family, no friends to come between us. He'll see me walking towards him, then running, as I did back then when I was young and eighteen and so freshly in love. He'll smile at me as he's smiling at me now from our painting. He'll take me in his arms and we'll be together again, together as we once were, but this time, this time it will be forever.

This time our love will never end.
 
Okay, one more of my own that I really really like, it just seemed to end the story so well

I welcomed that flood, I welcomed those throbbing emissions, for our son conceived this night would unite the Mongols and the Xiongnu as one, and all the tribes and peoples of the steppe would bow to him -- and he would bring the world trembling to its knees before him.

My sex spasmed on his manhood, and I cried out as the Khagan emptied himself.
Milking his rigid length, I bucked, and I kicked, and I wailed my pleasure.
Knowing in my heart that I had been taken as I desired to be taken.
Surrounded by the bloody bodies of the men he had slain.
Made his midst death and cries of ecstasy and pain.
My sobs and cries carrying far into the night.
Giving honor to the Khagan's prowess.
As he ravished me in the old way.
Midst blood and slaughter.
One night in Xanadu.
 
A script-reader for a Hollywood movie company told me about how she "top-and-tailed" the tens to hundreds of scripts she had to read daily.

Since then, I've always imagined an impatient reader doing that with anything I write. Basically, I try to thrust the reader into the story to give them enough impetus to climb the narrative hill, and then reward them at the end with a final nudge, with the rather vain and arrogant hope that I've changed the readers' life trajectory a tiny bit.
 
Sometimes, a whole story builds up to its end.

A final sentence like



doesn't tell you much.

Zooming out a little further



may start to make you wonder.

But it really takes the whole story to grasp, and to appreciate, the meaning of those final five words.
Another interesting exercise - write a story backwards! Actually, that's not such a daft idea - maybe it would be a useful device for conjuring a plot?:unsure:
 
Here's one that followed me around for a month until I sat down in one pass and got it all out. Then I used it at the end of a eulogy for a family member, so two-birds-one-stone sorta deal.

Love is the Last:

I believe the magnificence of life is in the way that it ends, like his did, thinking of love at the last.

I believe love is the last thing.

I believe that's because it is the only thing we are able to take with us when we go.
 
"You're going to get fabulous arm muscles from pushing up this hill, you know."

She stood and folded the chair so I could lift it over the threshold for her. "All the better to spank you with, babe. Or, should I say, my bloody Valentine?"

(Ending of my Valentine's story, Wheelchair Bound?)

Some secrets needed to be taken to the grave. Like how good my brother felt inside me. So wrong, but so, so good...
Just One Bed, Again!

Actually this is my favourite. A couple go on holiday to Istanbul, so in between the debauchery there's every other character trying to sell them a carpet, but they manage to refuse every time:

That night is more sedate, as Dan and I let my arsehole recover.
Course, when we get home the following evening, London is still cold and damp, and the marble floors of my flat are fucking freezing.
"Darn," Dan says. "We'll have to go back to Turkey and buy a carpet."

Turkish Delight
 
From "What Dreams May Come" -

"Hello, my love," I heard behind me, up and to my right. My heart thrilled at the sound of that voice that I had missed for 47 years. I turned toward the voice, tears in my eyes. I had so much to catch up on ... and forever to do it in.
 
Not sure this is really my forte, but I like the end of The Pornstar Experience:

Friendship. It was more than I could have wished for. It was more than enough... probably for always, definitely for now. I shut the door behind me and walked back into the warmth and back into her bed.
 
Not sure this is really my forte, but I like the end of The Pornstar Experience:

Friendship. It was more than I could have wished for. It was more than enough... probably for always, definitely for now. I shut the door behind me and walked back into the warmth and back into her bed.
Wow! Just realized I used the precise same intro text back in Jan. I am so unoriginal that I even plagiarize myself 😬.

Em
 
I thought of the next stages for us, how fervently felicitous they would be.

I wanted to please her. I also wanted to torture her. The two are not always that far apart.
 
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