Three Summaries

And the voters have spoken!  Here are summaries of three stories I have played around with in my head.  There are bits and pieces written for each of them, but I'm not sure which one I should attempt next.  Vote to the right, and tell me which one sounds the most intriguing to you!

The titles are working titles - no telling if that will be the final title or not.  They are in no particular order.  Let me know what you think!

Aasimar

On top of the barrier between worlds he stands in ever-present vigil, keeping watch over our side of Hillcliff, the wall that separates the land of humans from the creatures of the night.  His strength is beyond human, his power incomprehensible.  Without him, the creatures beyond Hillcliff would descend upon the city and destroy us all.

But even an Aasimar can’t live forever.  Eventually, another must take his place.

I have been chosen – chosen to mother the child of our next protector.  Though I have never laid eyes on him before, our wrists are bound together in matrimony, and he leads me to the turret on the wall – the place that will be my home until it can be proven that I am with child.

We don’t even speak the same language.

Strangely enough, there are those within the city who do not want the wall to be protected.  Some have sided with the darkness beyond, and who will stop at nothing to make sure my child is never born.  To kill one of his kind was nearly impossible, but to destroy me and my unborn child was an easy task.

How can he defend the wall and me at the same time?

The Gladiator’s Slave

Since the death of my father in the arena, I had been alone in the Ludus Dacicus.  I spent every day preparing to kill or die in the great Colosseum of Rome.  Every night, I prayed to the gods to give me a reason beyond the blood.  

As the Champion Gladiator, I was favored by both the common and the elite.

As a slave, my life was not my own.  

As a man, I thought I only wanted one thing besides victory – a woman untouched by another man.  

She would belong to me alone, and no other man – gladiator or Roman – would be allowed to touch her.  She would wait for me in my bed at night after every victory in the arena.  She would be beautiful, and warm, and above all else – she would be mine.

Though bought with my own coin, she owned me from the moment we first lay together.

Truffles and Treason

Each and every one of the culinary delights is perfectly formed – perfectly shaped.  I follow my own, precisely constructed recipe to the letter.  When I’m finished, I eat only one.  The rest are carefully packaged and placed in the break room at work where people wonder who crafted such delicious desserts.

Part of me wants to tell them I made them, but I don’t do well with social interactions.

Trapped in my own mind, I stay in the shadows and away from the contact of other people.  I sit in my cubicle, I do my job as a database administrator for a large government contract, and I don’t make waves.  I come to work and I do as I am told, even when what they tell me to do doesn’t seem quite right.  They are the authority figures of the company, and I do what they say.

People came to my door in the middle of the night with FBI printed on the back of their Kevlar vests, and they put guns to my head.  Something I did at work wasn’t right.  Something I did got people killed.  I was only doing what they told me to do, so how can I be on trial for treason?

How does a man who can barely speak defend himself?