I cannot help but wonder if I penned this tale throw up to WDC, how may comments I would get about the ending? I can hear some of them whining now, “I don’t get it.”

It not easy to find a balance of lightly telling a story and allow space for a reader to think and fill in some bits for themselves and spoon feeding it to them.

I personally like a story that wants you think.

(SPOILER ALERT)

I don’t think Ellen was sleeping with the real estate agent. In fact, I believe the agent is either a demon or the devil in human form, whom in exchange for that wonderful house, requires Ellen to join a cult and kill small animals(cat and dog) and then work her way onto human sacrifices. In the end, you know Roger’s going to get gutted and offered as a sacrifice just like the rest. I think Ruth might have joined the cult and may have been posessed or gone mad, thus explaining as to why she was trying to seduce Roger.

But then again, from listening to the last bit, (where Roger locks her into the ‘Well Room’) Ellen might have just been mad from the beginning. There may have never been an evil real estate agent. But you just know Roger’s going to end up in the attic…

(SPOILER ALERT)

I think the idea is that the real estate agent was a normal human scuzzball who likes to get women to do degrading things for him in exchange for good deals. Ruth just had sex with him (and apparently enjoyed it quite a bit too), but Ellen was too ethical for that. So our faceless freak of an agent asked her to do something even stranger. The story is ambiguous as to why; maybe he was into the occult and really believed it would do something for him. Or maybe he just thought it would be extra traumatizing to her, and therefore extra fun for him. Since she turned him down for sex and all.

Just my speculations.

Seller’s Market…this didn’t really impress me. I think it may just be Joel Arnold’s stories in general. Turista and Mother’s Day really didn’t hit me, and neither does this one.

Don’t get me wrong–it started out wonderfully. A little pregnacy craving, an evil best friend, and a house with an odd storage space. Perfect recipe for disaster.

But then, all of the sudden, the guy gets it into his head that his wife is having an affair. Not even a slight build-up to it, and after that the double-entendres start.

After that moment, the story degenerates into a collection of loose threads. What was Ellen’s deal that has do to with those corpses in the attic? No idea. Robin fades away into the background, after having a major part in the story. The evil real estate agent…no explanation as to his motives, or if he did the same thing to Robin. And then, finally, the narrator locks Ellen in the basement room because he thinks she might kill him. And the readers/listeners are no closer to figuring out what’s going on than we were at the beginning of the story.

So that’s my opinion. Having said that, if someone happened to like the story, more power to them.

Hey, everybody — read Scott’s free PDF — then BUY THE BOOK on Amazon.com on April 1st, darn it!

(He didn’t pay me to write that — or even threaten me with a pair of poultry shears!)