HOW SHORT STORIES BEGIN

Here's the story I'm reading now. It starts with a vivid description of a lonely, dismal swamp on an overcast day. It's not the kind of place that attracts fisherman or tourists...the only thing it attracts are mosquitoes, dense clouds of them. A deputy drives by and sees a familiar face: Billy, an oddly quiet local boy who doesn't seem to mind the bugs.

That's all I've read so far but I'm amazed that the opening succeeds in being a grabber even though there's not a single original element in it. I guess some situations...the ramshackle mansion buffeted by a lightning storm, the frightened woman walking along a lonely street at night...are innately interesting and are not diminished by repetition. Interesting, eh?

Another story is about a night time driver in rural Louisiana who gets a flat tire and pulls over to the side of the road. He opens the trunk to get his spare tire and discovers...Gasp!...a woman's body. He has no idea who she is or how she got there.

Stranger still, her ID and papers identify her as his girlfriend who he's eloping with.  There's even a photo of the two of them together and that's his signature on the bottom...but how could that be? He's never seen her before.

If he calls the police they'll surely believe he murdered her. If he doesn't call and buries her instead, she'll be discovered and there's not a jury on Earth that would acquit him. What should he do?

The next story is about a suicide jumper in a big 1950s American city. A crowd forms on the opposite side of the street.

Police with a megaphone are unable to talk the guy down so they call his wife and ask her to come out. When that doesn't work somebody gets the idea of calling his mistress. After all, a man often won't listen to his wife, but his mistress...well, that's a different thing. Unfortunately the two women meet and there's only one megaphone.

Here's the last story: A young man breaks a pawnshop window and takes a fist full of diamonds. A passer-by sees the crime, chases the kid and captures him just as the police arrive. The problem is that the kid hasn't got the diamonds on him when he's caught, even though he was never out of the sight of witnesses. His captor doesn't have them either and they're not hidden anywhere. So, where did they go?

I'll give you a hint: broken glass looks the same as diamonds...only there's a lot more to the story than that.

Nifty, eh?