title: Friends of the Dark: 8 stories for children who sleep with the lights off
author: Matthew D. Shuck
description: Matthew D Shuck is a fiction writer from Salem Oregon. His stories run the gamut from dark horror to comedy and science fiction. His wife and children put up with the nonsense that goes with his writing as best they can but won't let him quit his day job.
zlib_text: > Bright Young Things
  
  > Anna Martin
  
  Copyright © 2020 Anna Martin
  
  www.annamartin-fiction.com  
  © 2020 Anna Martin  
  All rights reserved.  
  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from
  the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.  
  First edition November 2014 (Dreamspinner Press) – released as Les faits
  accomplis  
  Second edition June 2020  
  Characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real
  persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.  
  Any person depicted on the cover of this book is a model and is not affiliated
  with, nor do they endorse, this story.
  
  ![](Images/image00142.jpeg)
  
  > Bright Young Things
  
  > _by Anna Martin_
  
    
  
  > Prologue: The Bet
  
    
  
  New Harbor, Washington State, USA
  
  September 2014
  
  9:15pm
  
  Adam swayed his head in time with Snoop and tapped his bare toe to the beat of
  the music. He was hazily high and sexually satisfied—some closeted kid had
  blown him in the linen clos