*barges through the front door, panting heavily, hands on knees*

One... minute... Need... air...

*collapses on the floor breathing rapidly*

Man, I'm out of shape...

*looks around to see party guests and straightens back up, smiling widely*

Hi everyone! I hope you're having a wonderful time at the Block Party this August! Many thanks to Kelly for organizing such an incredible event! :D

Goodnight_Saigon here! I'm a Canadian daydreamer in university who hates group work and would do anything for some quiche. My life is consumed by crying over fictional characters and playing the piano. I've got purple in my hair and words pumping through my veins (blood is so mainstream these days). I like horror, adventure, mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, though lately I've been focusing on the scary stuff.

So that's a (very) little about me, but before you read my post I wanna play a game, so go ahead, answer in the comments! I had so much fun with this last party I decided to do it again:

First ten songs that come up when you hit shuffle?

No cheating! I have weird songs too, so put 'em all down. Here we go!

1. She's Got A Way—Billy Joel

2. Accidentally In Love—Counting Crows

3. Bicycle Race—Queen

4. Everybody Loves You Now—Billy Joel

5. Piano Man—Billy Joel

6. Baby Grand—Billy Joel ft. Ray Charles

7. Shameless—Billy Joel

8. Home We'll Go (Take My Hand)—Steve Aoki and Walk Off The Earth

9. Crazy Little Thing Called Love—Queen

10. Temptation—Billy Joel

Damn, 6/10 Billy Joel songs! I'm not surprised. If you know me, you're probably tired of hearing this but—he's my favourite! Hands down, takes the cake. However, I do also like CCR, The Beatles, Bob Seger, Trooper, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Queen, and The Rolling Stones. Give me some music recs! I love anything pre-"turn of the century", but I'm open to current music as well.

Alright let's get to the really good stuff.

For my post, I'd like to share with you a sneak peek of my namesake story.

What's that? you may ask.

Well, it's called Goodnight Saigon. You can probably see why.

I've been turning this story over in my head for years now, but finally brought it to life in the last month or so. It's very important to me and holds a special place in my heart as it's my username.

I hope you enjoy.

*

*Blood and Guts Warning*

*Strong (Censored) Language Warning*

Goodnight Saigon

Crowded copses of trees stretching up into the night sky, thick brush covering the pockmarked forest floor: a dark and menacing cluster of shadows...

"Sh*t! Look at the size of this, feel it—I think something f****n' bit me."

...pale faces the colour of aging parchment, some yellowed, others browned from the sun's scorching rays, still others charcoal-smudged or even blackened as if burnt...

"If I find the d*nk that was nibblin' on my arm, I swear to God, I'll spill 'is guts, and make 'im eat 'em—"

...the occasional orange glow of a cigarette stub, fleetingly dragged on before being put out for fear of illuminating too much...

"Shut yer face, Smithy. Ya want Charlie to hear and bite ya again?"

...the full harvest moon high above, its bloody glow anything but soothing...

"Keep your voices down."

...cold and drizzly eternities spent waiting for the enemy to reveal himself...

"Don't be so serious, Quan. C'mon then, give us a song!"

...the comforting yet terrifying weight of an M16A1 rifle that has never seen the faces it has killed...

"I know a girl, name is Jill, she won't do it, but her sister will. Honey, oh, Baby-Doll!"

...adrenaline coursing through veins filled with ice...

"I know a girl, dressed in black, makes her living on her back. Honey, oh, Baby-Doll!"

...familiar cadences murmured to keep away the stark realities of warfare and the awful feeling of certainty that death is but an inch away...

"Oh, shut it. Jesus, you're makin' my ears bleed with that screechin'."

...quiet nights, end after end, lying in foxholes, dozing fitfully... fearfully...

"Nah, he's got a lovely voice, Kenny. Sounds like your girl back home when I lick her p—"

...the sky opening up, soft drops of icy rain beginning to trickle between the leaves of the canopy above...

"At least my girl ain't f****n' some hot-shot lawyer from outta state. I bet they do it in your bed, Smithy."

...faces flushing, tempers rising, voices growing louder, mingling with the eerie screams of frogs in the dark...

"Oh, yeah? C'mere, you little—"

...a shapeless shadow flitting between the trees, a hoarse whisper...

"Kenny... I saw something moving. Over there. In the trees. I saw something big."

...moisture soaking into fatigues as the rain starts to come down in hard, heavy drops until it seems like the sky itself is shooting at them... hearts thump, thump, thumping in time with the rolling thunder... colour draining from a young face...

"Kenny..."

...something emerging from the trees, something big in front of the sheets of rain driving forcefully into the ground...

"What the ever-loving f*** is that?!"

...a young man with ginger hair, another one, older, with hair as black as the night, beside him, both of their eyes widening in terror...

"Jesus Christ!"

A gaunt, ghoulish face materializing in the darkness, beginning to scream the most horrid sound any of them have ever heard, with a face that is partially blown off, decomposing, dead skin peeling away from the skull, missing chunks of flesh revealing gaping holes, blood spilling from a jagged tear in the throat—

With a harsh and frightened cry, Ken jerked awake, his eyes flying open as his heart hammered wildly in his chest, threatening to burst through his ribcage as the sudden knowledge that he was not alone in his room paralyzed him with dread.

The terrible thing with the pulpy face was crawling up and over his upper body, its sunken eyes burning, dark crimson leaking from ragged holes in its torso, warmly soaking the blankets and sheets of the bed with the metallic stench of death.

A patch of scalp with several hairs still attached slid wetly down the side of the grinning skull while dead hands sunk rotting talons into the tender skin above Ken's stuttering heart, the exposed phalanx bones glowing in the slivers of light coming from the full harvest moon outside the window.

The ghastly, skeletal head drew eye to hollow-eye with him and let loose an ungodly screech before blood as thick and as black as oil began to stream from every damaged orifice, pouring into his face.

A scream of pure, unadulterated terror tore itself from his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, thrashing, yelling, swinging his fists at whatever decomposed flesh he could reach, fighting with all the strength he had left in his feeble, age-weakened body. Something inside his lower abdomen let go and the acrid aroma of urine filled the air.

As rotting hands clawed at his neck, Ken let out an animalistic howl, choking as the taste of rotting meat coated his tongue... smothering... suffocating.

It wasn't going to take him, not like it had taken his friends, not like it had taken his wife, not like it had taken his very mind—

Rain lashed against the windows of the house like a slave-driver's whip, cruel and merciless, and as a crack of thunder signalled the final, fatal blow, Ken sat bolt upright in his bed, icy sweat trickling between his shoulder blades as his breath came in rapid fits, occasional hacking coughs shaking his frail frame.

Tarnished silver eyes wildly swept the small room, searching for movement, but there wasn't any; the disturbing creature had faded away with the last remnants of fitful sleep.

"Just another nightmare," he murmured to himself, breathing deeply to calm his racing pulse, feeling light-headed and abnormally weak.

The digital clock on the nightstand read 2:22 a.m.

Ken reached for his glasses, flipping on the bedside table lamp, which cast a soft golden glow around the tiny, unremarkable bedroom. His hands were trembling violently.

Outside the old house on Harrison Street, just on the fringe of Downtown Portland, Oregon, the storm furiously raged on, hurling powerful gusts of wind against the grimy windows with a vehement shriek as rain pounded the roof in a drummer's rhythm. Thunder rolled up and down the churning maelstrom of black, ominous clouds and lightning leapt from bank to bank in the river of a brewing tempest. The September harvest moon serenely surveyed all from above, watching and waiting unseen, obscured by the storm's dense, shadowy armour.

Ken struggled free of his twisted sheets, cursing savagely as he realized that the wetness soaking the area around his groin was not merely a lingering sensation from the night terror, and subsequently cussing even louder as something metallic dribbled over his top lip into his mouth, nearly sending him into a panic.

He shakily got to his feet, grumbling and spitting profanities. "F****n' pissed myself—f****n'—had a... f****n' nosebleed... Jesus F**k—Christ—just f****n' fantastic!" Balancing the majority of his weight on his left leg, he tore the stained sheets from the bed, balling them up and throwing them as far away across the room as he could, nearly toppling over in the process.

As he was tugging the saturated boxer shorts down and off, his stiff leg abruptly seized. Ken let out a yelp of pain and grabbed for the bedframe, barely catching himself before his knee buckled.

"Sh*t!" he hissed as he groped for his cane, which was always kept leaning against the wall beside the nightstand. Gritting his teeth, he limped heavily to the dresser across the room and retrieved a clean pair of shorts to pull on, before laboriously stumping his way to the small bathroom down the dark hallway, blood from his nose still trickling over his chin.

Corporal Howard Kenneth Fox, formerly of the 2nd Rifle Platoon, C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division, sixty-eight-year-old veteran of the Vietnam War, and recipient of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, lived alone.

It had not always been this way; in fact, the rickety, neglected house had held his wife as well at one point, but she had left him soon after he'd returned from the war, distraught at the stranger that her husband had become after his time spent overseas.

Edith Fox had done her best to soothe his mind, body, and soul when nightmares brought on by post-traumatic stress disorder disturbed their shared sleep; she had tried to wipe away the heartbroken and confused tears that sometimes streamed down his scarred face without warning, but she couldn't understand. And if he was honest with himself, Ken hadn't let her, choosing instead to push away the lone person that had gotten him through those terrifying nights in the Vietnamese jungle.

After all, the only friends he'd had were the ones he needed consoling about.

Rotting floorboards creaked and the bones in Ken's hunched-over spine protested bitterly as he hobbled past empty bedrooms filled with untouched furniture, coated in the dust of nearly fifty years of inactivity. His younger sister would call every now and then to urge him to sell the old place before it collapsed on him, but he refused to discuss the matter seriously, routinely saying that, "If the house collapsed, may God be kind enough to take me with it."

He reached the bathroom and flicked the switch as he crossed the threshold, but the frosted light fixture above mirror merely guttered like a candle's flame before winking out, keeping the tiny, tiled room in nearly-absolute darkness.

"Damn you..." he muttered, letting the breath hiss out from between his teeth.

A chill whispered at the base of his neck, rising up to stir the wispy hairs on top of the greying head. The bathroom window, which had been partially shattered in a fit of nightmare-induced frustration, was letting in a cool mist as rain pelted the screen like a spray of bullets.

A flash of lightning illuminated the room momentarily and Ken saw streaks of something dark on his hands. He'd had chronic nosebleeds since adolescence because of a fist in the face during a particularly heated argument, and on many occasions he had woken up in the middle of the night covered in his own blood. Before the war, Edith would have cleaned him up, gently laughing at his stuttering apologies for staining the bedsheets again... but now it was just him.

The water from the tap was icy cold and smelled slightly sour, but Ken rinsed his hands off and leant against the counter to bend and scoop water to his clean his face. It was at that moment that another bolt of lightning lit up the bathroom and Ken caught a glimpse of himself in the dingy mirror: a pale and wrinkled face stared back at him, dark shadows carving out the hollows of his cheeks and the sunken sockets beneath his dreary eyes, unkempt hair plastered to his skull with sweat, rough stubble peppering his gaunt face.

It was then that the congealed remains of blood smeared across his haggard cheekbones, still slowly oozing all over his lower face from his running nose, caused his heart to creep into the back of his throat. Suddenly, it wasn't Corporal Ken Fox standing at the sink, hands poised to wash the scarlet from his face, but instead, it was the monstrous thing from before, with the exposed skull and the decaying head that had been blown to pieces, skin and muscle alike hanging on by the barest minimum.

The water splashed out of Ken's hands as his mouth opened in a wordless shout of fright, heart thrashing in its cage to escape as the pressure in his chest cavity grew, a tightness seizing his entire body as light-headedness besieged his mind. The horrible face in the mirror grinned, its rotted, blood-stained teeth dangling from the gums by nerve endings, and reached out with a dead, decomposing hand towards him.

"Qu... Quan..." he whimpered, legs threatening to buckle beneath him as his hands shuddered.

A clap of thunder shook the house, lightning brightly forked across the sky, and without conscious choice, Ken was thrown back into the world of his living, breathing nightmare: that godless night half a century ago when his fireteam was decimated by something not of their world, that fateful night that he had never spoken of to anyone after his return home, that horrible, horrible night he thought he had buried with the bodies of his friends a long time ago under the light of the full harvest moon...

*

Hope you enjoyed my little tease! The full story has not been written yet but I'm hoping to have it done soon.

Anyways to end off my post, here is a list of the books on my profile, feel free to check them out.

Feeling D.E.T.A.C.H.ed—An *on-hold* novel about the aftermath of a mental health crisis in the future. The story follows two different perspectives and showcases the bonds between family and friends, while showing how large of an impact mental health issues have on everyone. It does have sensitive content though so make sure that you know your limits. The genre is science fiction and dystopian futuristic.

All in Our Head—A short story that follows Beatrice and Cordelia Bowman, twin sisters with a bond that is deeper than blood. This was written for a contest run by Robert Epstein and it won! This story is also science fiction.

Omens—A monologue about what happens when the sun goes down and you ignore the curfew...

Once More With Feeling—A longer short story that revolves around the concept of time travel and love, loss and sacrifice. I would categorize this story as science fiction and romance.

When Mermaids Cry—An ongoing short story concerning quirky-as-hell Jack Kushner, Spice Girls aficionado and Star Wars tie collector, as he travels overseas to investigate mermaid sightings for his newspaper. I wouldn't classify this as a regular mermaid story at all, more like an account of the seedy undersea-belly of the fishing world.

Roles Reversed—An installment series concerning gender swaps in historical situations and what would differ in each case, yet also what would stay the same.

The Farm—A short story starring Liv Reynolds, a brassy thirteen-year-old with a hell of an attitude, as she's forced to babysit her baby brother at a farm party. However, something's been attacking the animals at night, and when the sun goes down, Liv may find herself more alone than she's ever been before.

Christmas at the Talbot House—A short story for those who don't mind a bit of gore. Sure, it doesn't seem that way at first, but tensions can run high at Christmas, especially if you're Shae Chebet, bringing her Kenyan husband and child home to a racially-intolerant family.

And Then There Was One...—A psychological thriller set in Los Angeles. Be prepared to find out who the real monsters are, and don't be surprised if you find them staring back at you when you look in the mirror.

She's Right On Time—A short story that takes place on Christmas Eve, following the disastrous evening of a young couple who seems to be plagued by bad luck.

She's Right On Time: A One Shot—A short story prequel of how Brook and Rahul met.

Constellation Configurations—I may not always enjoy poetry (sometimes I take a couple swings at it, it calls me nasty names, we both end up in tears), but this is a book of my poems, past, present, and maybe even future. Each chapter is constellation themed because stars are cool. 'Nuff said.

A Childhood Spent in the Cupboards—A non-fiction story about my childhood, dedicated to the memory of my great-grandmother.

A Soviet Doll's House—A retelling of Henrik Ibsen's nineteenth century play set in Stalingrad, Soviet Russia during the Second World War.

Miami 2017—A longer short story about June Flanders, a young woman haunted by memories of her past lives, living in the apocalyptic future. This story was a top ten finalist in the Herculean contest and is the one I'm promoting for the Block Party.

White as Snow, Red as Blood, Black as Death—My first in a series of SCARY-TALES! A revamp of the classic Brothers Grimm Snow-White fairytale.

If anything sounds interesting, I'd love for some feedback! And I'll have more up soon!

Alrighty then, peace out y'all! A quick reminder that my giveaway is an edit and review for three chapters of a work of your choice. Again, thanks for reading everyone and please feel free to pop over to my profile on Wattpad, my Facebook page (@ GoodnightSaigon), or my Twitter (@ gnight_saigon) or Instagram account (@ goodnight_saigon), I would appreciate it to the moon and back!

Signing off!

*awkwardly dances out*

--Kaitlyn (Goodnight_Saigon)

***********

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