abracanabra | Dining on a Dead Girl's Dime (Reply)

I successfully wrote a short story yesterday, despite all the wedding prep and bachelorette craziness. Mind you, it's very short, about 500 words, as is required by the terms of the contest (http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2008/07/26/weird-tales-writing-contest/). It's sort of a murder mystery and sort of an accepting loss story, and I tried to work in some Orpheus & Eurydice references, but I don't know how well that worked. It turned out I committed literature. Again.* Would anybody be willing to critique this? The kicker is that I need the comments back this Sunday.

A dead girl invited Mathias to dinner. He got her message in a crowded bar when he checked his email as he waited for his band's set to come up. "Happy Birthday! You have an e-card from Erin!" The beer he'd been holding slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor. He opened the email.

* This is a bad thing. Makes it much more difficult to sell. And if it doesn't get published through this contest, I'll probably throw in some sci-fi trimmings just to make it genre publishable.