POETRY, BOOK ONE. ❝ suddenly i realized, i stepped on the quicksand. she has begun to consume me. ❞ in which a tortoise falls in a quicksand, willingly. ©aishukarthick 2021-2023

Sometimes the things of the past are best forgotten, but when the past is the only place you can go for answers, one must make do with the answers that the past gives, even when those answers are horrendous. In 1981, Samantha Carmichael attended the Atlanta Film Festival but never made it back home. Forty-one years later, Sam's disappearance remains a mystery to her distraught family and friends, who are certain that something bad, something gruesome happened at that festival. All that, however, starts to change when rookie cop, Daisy Atkins, arrives in Atlanta and is immediately assigned as a security detail for the 2022 edition of the Atlanta Film Festival. When Daisy starts asking questions about Sam that no one wants answered and when Vince Gilligan, a man who believes that his wife's death is somehow linked to Sam's disappearance, offers her his help, the duo begins to untangle a web of secrets, lies, betrayal, jealousy, deceit and a deadly love triangle that leaves casualties in its wake and will change Daisy's perception of life as she knew it. Accolades Featured on Stories Undiscovered Featured on Curioser and Curioser reading list by @mystery Featured by Wacky Writer's Community 🥇1st place in The Future Banned Writer Awards 🥇1st place in The Serenity Awards 🥈2nd place on the Vernal mini awards

EPILOGUE WILL BE FREE STARTING JUNE 29TH, 2023! Diana wakes up in pain, tied to a bed and unable to escape. She's been trapped by a group of surgeons with a twisted passion and she's their next victim. ***** Diana Slater, a typical University student, wakes up in pain, tied to a bed and unable to see. After a mysterious figure, known only as Dr. Sweeney, nurses her back to health she finds out the truth. The Doctor has kidnapped her and given her a cat's eyes as part of a larger ploy to turn humans into collectibles. Now she's being trained by Ben, another patient, with the skin of a snake, on how to behave. Diana and Ben are forced to work together to try to escape the murderous doctors - until she discovers Ben might not be the victim he makes himself out to be. The only person Diana can trust is herself, and if she fails, her eyes won't give her another nine lives. [[Winner of the 2018 Fiction Awards for Best Horror Story]] [[word count: 80,000-90,000 words]] Cover designed by Holly Thurston