So as a rule I try to write at least 300 words a day. It's like a basketball player taking 100 free-throws or a baseball player going to the batting cages, the idea isn't production so much as staying in the swing of things. 300 words doesn't seem like much but on those days when facing a blank Open Office document is as much fun as an improvised root canal the 300 gives you an out, a way to know when you have done the bare minimum.

Today, as sometimes happens, I got a bit carried away. That's always the hope, a few of my larger projects started out as 300 word grinds. I was experimenting with noir, putting down a scene I'd had in my head of the grizzled police detective and the mob boss having a drink over the cops retirement, and the mob boss feeling less safe now that it won't be the detective who kills him.

This lead to the detective, post-retirement, visiting the Mobster's mansion after he is killed, where he finds a murder scene, the start of an investigation. Him being old and grizzled, I expected him to be cool, collected.

He wasn't. He was terrified. I watched in amazement as the words appeared on the screen before me, as my "seen it all" veteran fled the scene like a rookie, running out and walking in the rain, trying to calm his nerves.

The murder scene had involved words written in blood on the wall. I didn't know what they were, my character didn't read them out loud right away, didn't until his final musing at the end of the section. They caught me by surprise, because I know what they mean even though he doesn't.

Ia, Ia, Cthulhu fhatgn.

Holy crap, a Cthulhu cult in my short story. I saved the story as "Cthulhu Noir" and, after I write this, will head to bed. Tomorrow I'll get writing again and see what else I can uncover, but stories like this rarely end well for the protagonist. I hope he makes it, though. He's getting too old for this shit.