Taking shape

For me, writing is about getting it right the first time. I know. There are lots of folks out there who do quite well by spitting out thousands of words over a short period of time, then going back and editing. That's not for me. I write a few hundred words. Then pour over those words again and again. I hack and whittle, expand and add. This is the second rewrite of the opening of Born Fighting - dedicated to two very dear folks. If you look at the post below this one (or not: I don't really give a fuck) you'll see the first draft. This is the second. It's closer to where I want to be with the work, though there are still rough spots to which I must attend. Weekends are good for that.

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Born Fighting - Vicious Vampire Erotica

“Sage fucking Ravenwood. Sage FUCKING Ravenwood!”

Larry whipped the drivers license across the room and kicked off his stool. The latter skidded across the cabin's wooden planks, and then tipped to the floor. “FUCK!” He stood as rage shook him. His bandy legs trembled. His eyes were bright and bulging. Spittle sprayed from his mouth as he cursed.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know she's a fucking mute!” Larry stood shaking and stared at the ceiling, open to the rafters, before he grabbed fistsful of his thinning hair in both hands and shook his head wildly. “Fuck!” He stomped back and forth across the planks, slamming each foot down and executing a sharp spin at either end of the small room.

“Fucking mute. Fucking deaf and fucking mute. Jesus fucking Christ!”

Larry thrashed his head wildly, elbows akimbo. “Goddamnit!” He kicked the stool, and it flew wildly across the room where it smashed against the cabin's rude walls. "She can't fucking hear me. She can't fucking talk! How is she going to appreciate my fucking art?" Larry stomped and shook his head. It was starting again. The insects. The fucking insects. Crawling, swarming his body, from the in-fucking-side! It was like ticks and beetles and fucking-ants marching through his guts scurrying along the inside of his skin, holding little fucking bug-meetings in his brain. In his goddamn brain! He could hear their twitters, feel their antenna stroke the gray curls and whorls of his brain. His fucking artist's brain!

And somehow, Larry knew it was her. That fucking Indian woman. He didn't know how Sage Fucking Ravenwood had squirmed into his head. But it he knew it was her. Her and her eyes, her big fucking chocolate eyes. Sage Fucking Ravenwood kept those eyes wide open and staring, as Larry worked his artistry across her skin, her mouth stretched in silent screams. It was just the beginning for her, when he scraped her skin smooth, not that dirty brown, but red and bright, like Chinese porcelain. Those fucking Chinese. He'd had a Chinese girl once. That girl's voice was high and sweet, and she knew his art. She fucking knew it! That little Asian girl had sung his glory in that birdlike voice, twittering in Cantonese. Until he tasted her tongue - boiled it like a fucking cabbage, with carrots and taters and peas. She had porcelian skin, too, by the time he was done. Stripping it. Scraping it. Loving it. The fat that he scraped from the back of her skin was sweet and needed no spice. The skin itself crisped up like bacon in his old, iron skillet. Her fingers and toes were like popcorn, cracked free at the knuckles and charred over an open flame. But it was the Chinese girl's hair that Larry loved must about the girl. Black and straight, it hung to her waist, then to her knees, then to her feet, as worked the girl's body down to a manageable size.

Sage Fucking Ravenwood had long hair, too. A fucking black river of hair, undulating like a water moccasin skating across a cedar swamp. That black hair was smooth in his hands. In his mouth. In his way. In the way of his art! Of his high fucking art! And Larry brushed that luxurious hair again and again, washed it and brushed it till it shined, and then combed it out in great clumps until 49 strands clung to her scalp, weaving like snakes.

Goddamnit, he knew Sage Fucking Ravenwood was in his fucking head, and she had been for the last two days and nights, ever since he snatched her sweet ass off the streets of Pleasantville. An Indian – a native fucking American who shouldn't have been out on the fucking streets in the middle of the fucking night any-fucking-way!

“Jesus fucking Christ!” He screamed the curse and let go of his own hair long enough to sweep one arm across a table. Tin cans, a plate and a scattering of silverware jangled across the floor, a bright cacophony of metal and glass in the cabin's single, dark room.

“How can she appreciate my fucking artistry, huh?” The room, but for Larry, was empty and dim. Two windows set deep in the cabin's walls, were crusty with a build-up of grease and filth. What light filtered in was weak and piss-yellow; it reached tentatively into shadows and dark corners.