Opening Lines

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We are delighted that Bill Carito let us use one of his fabulous photographs that he took in Key West. Bill took this using his iPhone.

Bill OpenLineJessie: It wasn’t waking up in an alley that bothered Frank. It was waking up in a purple alley that gave him the creeps.

Liz: It was the only place I could practice my painting without anyone else bothering me. The only place in the world I could have purple walls without having to hear about it every damn day.

Barb: The purple wave crested through the alleyway, leaving the walls bathed in a violent violet. “Wait!” I called to the kid’s retreating back. “What exactly did I take?”

Julie: She called it the alley of hope, painted after the never-ending winter of 2015, designed to be a happy place all winter long. The dead body took some of the happy out of the place.

Sherry: I raced down the alley, police hot on my tail. The ladder I placed there earlier was essential to my escape plan. I tossed the box of full of cardboard behind me as I skirted the trash cans, knocking the last one over. I hoped I’d remember which rungs were sturdy and didn’t land on one of the ones I’d cut through.

Edith: Thank the Goddess for the ladder. But I was never going to get Jake’s body up that thing. I guess I’d have to leave him to rot right here in the alley. The color he’ll turn,  he’s going to match those walls perfect.

Readers: Add your opening line!

Published by Sherry Harris

Sherry Harris is the author of the Agatha Award nominated Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery series and the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Mystery series.

15 Thoughts

  1. I pried my gummed eyelids open, “purple haze all in my brain.” I was living in a Jimi Hendrix song. An old woman wearing an overcoat like a pup tent sat next to me, crooning “‘scuse me while I kiss the sky.” The sky was a vivid blue, the sun stabbing my throbbing head. “Is it tomorrow or just the end of time”?

  2. It wasn’t the purple shadowed walls that drew me down the alley that morning, but the way the sun lit up the pale colors of the back corners and the nearly turquoise sky. Oh, and the ladder leaned up as though to escape. Whoever left that was thinking ahead, and I thank them to this day.

  3. I just couldn’t resist when I spotted the ally. The purple walls and the junk were an interesting combination. What could it hurt to take a few minutes to walk down and explore.

    The answer? Finding a dead body definitely hurt when I tripped over it.

    (And Jesse, you had me laughing.)

  4. Everyone else saw the walls as purple. Bill saw them as blue. It was like that damned dress on the Internet that made everybody crazy. The others were wrong. The walls were blue and he took the photo to prove it.

    It was the last photo Bill ever took.

    (Sorry, Bill.)

  5. “Where’s Ramona,” she asked. “Teach?” I replied, “She saw the ladder down the alley and got this squirrelly look in her eyes. ‘Escape’, she said, rubbing her hands together. Last I saw her, she’d climbed over the top screaming, ‘no more f*&(!ng Yahoo Group posts and uploads!’

    Hope this doesn’t mean I flunked the class, Ramona.

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