I feel badly about abusing my hypothetical readers with poor quality, emotionally disturbed writing from my teenage years earlier today. So I have a treat for you: pure, unfiltered sap with two of the novel's cutest couples. For those who don't know them: Trent is a hybrid therianthrope, while his girlfriend Sreya is the matriarch of a werehyena clan. And Gabe the werebear has his heart set on the vampiress Evelyn, a former fighting animal he helped rescue from an illegal preternatural pit-fighting operation.
1. Gabriel and Evelyn
Evelyn turned to walk away and Gabe reached out, grasping her wrist gently but firmly. Her skin was clammy against the heat of his palm.
"Don't do this, Evelyn," he pleaded, dark brown eyes scanning her face in hurt confusion. She stared back cooly, the black voids of her large pupils unrevealing.
"We're just kidding ourselves, Gabe. This can't work. I'm not human." She choked out a pained laugh. "I can't even take a walk in the park with you during the day time."
Gabe snorted.
"For the record, I hate the park. Nothing but pigeon shit and and homeless people." he grinned. "Besides, I'm not human either. Or did you forget the whole "turns into a ravening bear on the full moon" part of our relationship?"
"It's not the same thing," she replied with a scowl, jerking her pale, slender wrist free of his grip with ease. "I'll outlive you, probably by a hundred years. You'll grow old and die, and I won't age a day."
"So I've got a few more years of being the lucky dude with the experienced older woman, and when I'm 80 I get to be the dirty old man with the hot young girlfriend?" He wriggled his brow, silver hoops dancing up and down. "Sounds good to me."
"Is everything a goddamn joke to you?" she replied with disgust, aggressively pulling the door open. Gabe countered, slamming his palm against the wood. It closed so forcefully that it shuddered on its hinges. Evelyn turned around with an exhasperated sigh and was surprised to find a great intensity of raw emotion in his young eyes.
"You are not a joke to me." He reached out brushed the pale, cool skin of her cheek with the back of his dark, hairy knuckles. "Evelyn... I want to watch the sun set behind the Bitterroot with you. I want to walk along the creek in the moonlight, see the stars shining in those beautiful black eyes of yours like a reflection of the night sky. I want to hunt with you, hear the rush of your wings above me." He cradled her chin with his other hand. "I don't want a human, or another therian, or anything else. I want you."
He pulled away, straightening out his posture, folding his muscular arms over his chest stubbornly, and gave a sly smile.
"And because you just made me say something that fucking lame, you're stuck with my until I'm a toothless old pervert."
2. Trent and Sreya
Although it was sufficiently warm this late in the summer for my t-shirt to cling to my back with sweat, the breeze coming off of the lake was crisp and cool. It smelled like freshly melted snow, sharp and pure. The mid-day sun sparkled on the water's surface, choppy from the wind. It made reflections of the mountains looming high above distort and ripple, like their vast, craggy peaks were melting away. A few well-worn tree trunks and pitted glacial erratics broke the surface at staggared intervals by a shore of smooth cobbles. I could hear the water softly lapping at the stones.
Sreya had abandoned her backpack, jettisoned her hiking boots, discarded her socks in a crumpled heap by the water's edge. The tan flesh of her smooth, muscular calves prickled into goosebumps as she waded out ankle deep. She grinned over her shoulder, raven-black hair falling over her face strand by strand in the wind.
"It's so cold!" she remarked, sounding pleasantly surprised.
"It's fed by run-off from the glaciers." I pointed to the network of narrow streams and waterfalls cascading down the steep, rocky prominences all around us. She shielded her eyes from the sun with one hand, face a mask of wonderment as she scrutinized the towering walls of granite and the scruffy little trees clinging desperately to the rock.
"This is fantastic. I can't believe I've lived in Montana this long and never came here!"
She planted her hands on her hips as if readying to scold herself for such a transgression, then looked back to me. Her khaki shorts were smeared with dirt, her dark green shirt damp with sweat where the backpack's straps had crossed her shoulders. Her hair was billowing in a wild, unruly tangle around her face, cheeks still flush from the strenuous climb. ...And damned if she wasn't still positively breathtaking.
"Will you take my photo? I want to remember today," she asked with a beaming smile. I was rummaging through my pack for the camera before she could finish the sentence; I wanted to remember today as well.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Drive Safely
More old stuff: the blogger's solution to an utter lack of inspiration.
With all of the lights flashing red and white, it would have been festive. Would have, if it wasn't just the constant flash of alternating tail lights and break lights in the stop-and-go hubbub of the town. The cars were clotting up the roadways like cholesterol in a trouble-bound aorta, every new set of tires hitting the street just a build up to the bursting point.
It was always like this around the holidays; instead of spending time at home with their families, everyone was cursing in bumper to bumper traffic, cutting each other off and running redlights with a predictable regularity that made the offenses boring and run of the mill. It stripped each of these life-threatening acts, these callous moments of disregard, of every bit of shock value until it was just another asshole endangering someone's life. Half of the time the folks running red, children in the back seat, weren't even quick about it, didn't even look sneaky or ashamed. The new unspoken rule wasn't that we'd all abide by the rules of the road, but rather that we'd stop and look both ways before daring to go on green.
I was pressing the tip of a Marlboro to the red-hot coils of my car's cigarette lighter. The tobacco ignited in a flash of brilliant orange, curled black paper dissolving away like the tender alveoli of my lungs. I brought the thin white stick to my lips, using the other hand to press the horn at an SUV who was sticking half of the way out into my lane, insistent on edging his way into the tie-up so he could wait somewhere else. As I inhaled, I could feel the hot smoke curl down my trachea and blossom in my lungs, more satisfying than air and yet somehow less substantial as well. As twin plumes of pale grey curled from my nostrils, I fancied that I had become the traffic dragon, some surly beast laying in wait until one more idiot incurred my fiery wrath.
When the light turned green, I inched up to the bumper ahead of me, eager to get through this time around. I was midway through the intersection when my peripheral vision caught a flash of motion to the left. It was the only warning I received before the Chevy collided with the driver's side door. I remember thinking how funny it was; something that crumbled like a ball of tinfoil on impact made so much noise! Steel shouldn't collapse like that, so it must have been something else - paper, aluminum - than hit my side so hard that I found myself in the passenger side a moment later, head pressed against the window and elbow jammed between the seat and the frame.
I don't know if I blacked out or what, but in what only seemed like seconds later, there were sirens in the distance. My side felt strange, too many angles and fluidity all at once, like I was a leaky plastic garbage bag filled with broken bottles and their former contents. I could feel the cigarette, still pressed snugly between my index and middle finger, littering ash all over my skin as my shaking hand attempted to lift it once more to my lips. Something was wrong though; my elbow was stuck, my wrist felt strangely limp.
So I lowered my head, feeling for the first time the gritty sensation of the safety glass pressed into my cheek and scalp, glued in tight by coagulated blood. When I finally was able to clumsily close my lips over the Marlboro, I couldn't get the suction I wanted, the smoke just leaking in - unsatisfactory. And when I tried to exhale, I was no longer the traffic dragon, but something different - an incense burner, with little tendrils of smoke rising from the dark red patches on my broken-bottle side. When the lights started flashing in the distance, reflecting off of the dark blood pooling in the side-door ashtray that I'd dropped my cigarette into, I again found myself thinking, how festive.
With all of the lights flashing red and white, it would have been festive. Would have, if it wasn't just the constant flash of alternating tail lights and break lights in the stop-and-go hubbub of the town. The cars were clotting up the roadways like cholesterol in a trouble-bound aorta, every new set of tires hitting the street just a build up to the bursting point.
It was always like this around the holidays; instead of spending time at home with their families, everyone was cursing in bumper to bumper traffic, cutting each other off and running redlights with a predictable regularity that made the offenses boring and run of the mill. It stripped each of these life-threatening acts, these callous moments of disregard, of every bit of shock value until it was just another asshole endangering someone's life. Half of the time the folks running red, children in the back seat, weren't even quick about it, didn't even look sneaky or ashamed. The new unspoken rule wasn't that we'd all abide by the rules of the road, but rather that we'd stop and look both ways before daring to go on green.
I was pressing the tip of a Marlboro to the red-hot coils of my car's cigarette lighter. The tobacco ignited in a flash of brilliant orange, curled black paper dissolving away like the tender alveoli of my lungs. I brought the thin white stick to my lips, using the other hand to press the horn at an SUV who was sticking half of the way out into my lane, insistent on edging his way into the tie-up so he could wait somewhere else. As I inhaled, I could feel the hot smoke curl down my trachea and blossom in my lungs, more satisfying than air and yet somehow less substantial as well. As twin plumes of pale grey curled from my nostrils, I fancied that I had become the traffic dragon, some surly beast laying in wait until one more idiot incurred my fiery wrath.
When the light turned green, I inched up to the bumper ahead of me, eager to get through this time around. I was midway through the intersection when my peripheral vision caught a flash of motion to the left. It was the only warning I received before the Chevy collided with the driver's side door. I remember thinking how funny it was; something that crumbled like a ball of tinfoil on impact made so much noise! Steel shouldn't collapse like that, so it must have been something else - paper, aluminum - than hit my side so hard that I found myself in the passenger side a moment later, head pressed against the window and elbow jammed between the seat and the frame.
I don't know if I blacked out or what, but in what only seemed like seconds later, there were sirens in the distance. My side felt strange, too many angles and fluidity all at once, like I was a leaky plastic garbage bag filled with broken bottles and their former contents. I could feel the cigarette, still pressed snugly between my index and middle finger, littering ash all over my skin as my shaking hand attempted to lift it once more to my lips. Something was wrong though; my elbow was stuck, my wrist felt strangely limp.
So I lowered my head, feeling for the first time the gritty sensation of the safety glass pressed into my cheek and scalp, glued in tight by coagulated blood. When I finally was able to clumsily close my lips over the Marlboro, I couldn't get the suction I wanted, the smoke just leaking in - unsatisfactory. And when I tried to exhale, I was no longer the traffic dragon, but something different - an incense burner, with little tendrils of smoke rising from the dark red patches on my broken-bottle side. When the lights started flashing in the distance, reflecting off of the dark blood pooling in the side-door ashtray that I'd dropped my cigarette into, I again found myself thinking, how festive.
Scene from a Nightmare
This is actually old writing, but I figured I'd cross-post it here because a. I haven't put out anything new and b. it's reasonably well written, if not a bit disturbing. It is very literally a scene from one of my nightmares; I had some really twisted dreams after my best friend was raped (by a friend of mine, no less), and this was one of them.
"This would be a lot easier," I say, "if you would just stop screaming."
Not really, not physically at least, but my ears wouldn't be ringing, and I'd be able to focus better. I mean, it's bad enough that his head is almost completely shaved, just this nasty coarse stubble that gets slick and impossible to grasp with all the blood, even with my hand spread wide and my fingers digging in. There's nothing to grab on to, no fistful of hair to twist into a handle. I have to use this belt instead, crammed into his mouth and fastened until his doughy creeks droop over the leather and the veins in his temples throb like an orgasm. With one hand controlling his head like he's some unruly stallion on the end of my reigns, I'd really only have one hand to work with if I wanted to keep slamming his face into the curb, and at my weight, one hand doesn't really cut it, especially with his slippery, grainy scalp.
But really, I didn't wear the right footwear for stomping, so the whole thing is taking much longer than it should.
I have these stupid, smooth-bottomed Walmart shoes that are coming apart at all of the seams and have faded into a grungy beige over time. The soles are a death trap in the rain or mud, so if I'm not careful, I'll be the one coughing up teeth on the curb by the time I finish. The balancing act is bad enough; one arm pulling up on the belt to keep it nice and tight and controlled, one foot forcing down hard on the back of this squirming, screeching head. I think the poise demanded of sociopaths is severely trivialized. Balancing all of my weight on this one grounded leg, and wagging my grimey rubicund free arm around like some really twisted tightrope walker, is all I can do to keep from falling flat on my ass.
The curb is starting to look like one of those precautionary snuff films they show you during defensive driving courses. Three hours of staring at big crimson stains and little wet erubescent chunks, wondering if you're the only one getting off. This guy, his face is starting to look like there's more of it on the curb than on the bone. The concrete is a thick, slick mess of blood and snot and tissue, a rainbow of just reds ranging in color from "clot" to "connective tissue."
The little bits of broken teeth are making horrible grinding noises every time another forceful kick drives them against the hard, uneven conglomorate. There's that walking-through-mud squelching of his raw face against the pulp of everything that made it raw spread out all over the sidewalk. Sometimes, there's a wet snap or pop when the cartilage in his broken, mashed up nose shifts or breaks.
I'm sure he thinks the pain is the worst part, but really, it's the sound.
"This would be a lot easier," I say, "if you would just stop screaming."
Not really, not physically at least, but my ears wouldn't be ringing, and I'd be able to focus better. I mean, it's bad enough that his head is almost completely shaved, just this nasty coarse stubble that gets slick and impossible to grasp with all the blood, even with my hand spread wide and my fingers digging in. There's nothing to grab on to, no fistful of hair to twist into a handle. I have to use this belt instead, crammed into his mouth and fastened until his doughy creeks droop over the leather and the veins in his temples throb like an orgasm. With one hand controlling his head like he's some unruly stallion on the end of my reigns, I'd really only have one hand to work with if I wanted to keep slamming his face into the curb, and at my weight, one hand doesn't really cut it, especially with his slippery, grainy scalp.
But really, I didn't wear the right footwear for stomping, so the whole thing is taking much longer than it should.
I have these stupid, smooth-bottomed Walmart shoes that are coming apart at all of the seams and have faded into a grungy beige over time. The soles are a death trap in the rain or mud, so if I'm not careful, I'll be the one coughing up teeth on the curb by the time I finish. The balancing act is bad enough; one arm pulling up on the belt to keep it nice and tight and controlled, one foot forcing down hard on the back of this squirming, screeching head. I think the poise demanded of sociopaths is severely trivialized. Balancing all of my weight on this one grounded leg, and wagging my grimey rubicund free arm around like some really twisted tightrope walker, is all I can do to keep from falling flat on my ass.
The curb is starting to look like one of those precautionary snuff films they show you during defensive driving courses. Three hours of staring at big crimson stains and little wet erubescent chunks, wondering if you're the only one getting off. This guy, his face is starting to look like there's more of it on the curb than on the bone. The concrete is a thick, slick mess of blood and snot and tissue, a rainbow of just reds ranging in color from "clot" to "connective tissue."
The little bits of broken teeth are making horrible grinding noises every time another forceful kick drives them against the hard, uneven conglomorate. There's that walking-through-mud squelching of his raw face against the pulp of everything that made it raw spread out all over the sidewalk. Sometimes, there's a wet snap or pop when the cartilage in his broken, mashed up nose shifts or breaks.
I'm sure he thinks the pain is the worst part, but really, it's the sound.
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