Stone 2 Stone (ONC 2024)

[ONC Longlist 2024 | A Medusa Retelling.]

Sydney 2112.

Young men are disappearing without a trace. On the other side of town, an up-and-coming sculptor's works eerily resemble the missing men. Can the Inspector solve the riddle before her son joins the collection?

***

Keya Sapkota needs to create artworks for her first sculpture exhibition at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Arts, but a recent date-gone-wrong has left her a mess. She has no memory of what happened, but a feeling that something horrible transpired that left her with broken lips and bruised body. Keya hides in her loft, chipping away at her marble columns on autopilot. The more she chisels the more lifelike her statues become, ones she can't remember carving, but does she care? She needs exhibits for her show and the strange figures may as well be her pieces.

The new Stone2Stone sculpture exhibition at the MCA catches the eye of Inspector Reina, who is desperately searching for her son who disappeared from a nightclub on his twenty-first birthday. Reina can't put her finger on it, but the sculptor, Keya, seems strange. Then there's the eerie marble statues that share their likeness with young men who have recently disappeared. Inspector Reina is determined to find answers before her son's sculpture turns up in the artist's collection.

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ONC Prompts:
60. "Look what you made me do." -Tayler Swift
3. Your greatest fear is monsters in the dark. The last thing you expect is to become the Monster in the dark.
5. Horror is in the eye of the beholder.
95. "I will become as monstrous as I must."

Features:
- @paranormal - Investigations & Academies (Sept 2024)
- @action - Thriller (Aug 2024)
- @APIFantasy - API Fantasy & Science-Fiction Entries (March, 2024)

Trigger warning: Slight depictions of SA. Please read at your own discretion.

[Strictly no copy, translation or adapting of this story in part or whole is permitted without the author's permission.]