Magical Elk: a Novella

Academy Award winning actor Jim Lasher is secluded in his mountain cabin far from his Los Angeles home obsessed with writing a screenplay about bloody, ritualistic war with nonhuman beings, a screenplay he thinks will revive his flagging career. He desperately needs another iconic role to save him from financial and relationship disaster and to avoid another relapse into drug addiction.On a night of summer smoke and a bewitching moon, Jim is deeply absorbed in chronicling the nonhuman invasion, his pen smoldering across the paper, when a knock sounds on his cabin door. It’s a California Highway Patrol Officer come to visit. Or is it?This visitor is a creative piece of Jim’s soul and dislikes the direction of Jim’s screenplay. He lunges at Jim with a knife, and Jim reacts viscerally: blood, guts, emotion, the bedrock of story, the stuff that won Jim the Academy Award for Best Actor. This visitor takes on a real, visceral presence in Jim’s life as Jim’s screenplay takes on a deadly new direction, culminating in a terrifying car trip with an ominous last stop.Includes an excerpt from The Ribs of Man, an upcoming novel from Jason Durant.