Hereafter
Chris Stanchek
(Independently published, March 24, 2018)
Matt Chancellor’s senior year wasn’t supposed to start this way. His mom wasn’t supposed to get sick. She wasn’t supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to lose interest in school and his friends and feel like he’d suddenly lost everything else as well. But when his school’s drama club announces that they will be performing MACBETH, his mother’s favorite play, Matt knows he can honor her by earning the lead and dedicating his performance to her memory. He knows that in doing so, he’ll finally find a way to heal. Until they give the lead to his best friend, Duncan, instead. Matt's world shatters under him. Frustrated, ignoring the warnings of his other friends, Matt makes a deal with the Garvin sisters, infamous identical triplets with the social sway and power to help Matt accomplish one thing: to get Duncan to quit the play so that Matt can take the lead. By any means necessary. Consumed and twisted by his quest to honor his mother, Matt's world begins to mimic Macbeth’s own, and even those closest to him may be too late to save Matt from himself.