Spooky Reprint- Murder Room

Originally publised in Sex and Murder Magazine.

TW: violence of course.

The room is destroyed, fragments of a life busted open like a piñata are scattered around. The lights are flickering, what lights there are left, just that single bulb in the kitchen, its weak yellow light no substitute for the big bright floor lamp that lays in a twisted heap in the corner. It would be more fitting if it was raining but, Mother Nature isn’t known for excellent timing.

The room is still and silent, waiting for your gaze.

The room serves as a rich tableau of spent violence. If you look more closely, splotches of still wet blood dot once white walls. There is hair stuck to the wall in a fleshy, bloody clump. You don’t want to think about how the pillows got strewn about the small room. You don’t want to think about what their spilled innards say about what’s gone on here.

Throbbing silence burns in your ears; you can almost feel it against your skin as if the ghost of the violence that took place here is rubbing itself against you. There is pressure, an insistent push to look further. Look beyond the disturbed living room and sad empty pillows, past the splashes of brown and red. You don’t want to. You know that there are forty-two other things you’d rather see and rather do but you’re drawn inextricably to it.

Down a short, demure hallway you can see more blood, sodden little pools of gelatinous crimson. The distance between you and the horror is too short, you want to beg but there’s no one to listen. Remnants of the horrors perpetrated here flash across your conscious like heat lightening you can’t weep; you can’t scream you can only move forward.

The small bathroom was once pink with black and white accents; a decrepit little jewel. The tarnished silver fixtures with their abstract fleur de lis patterns, they are sullied; smeared with gore and death. Your eyes are dragged to the mirror, it is the only thing whole in the room. It is an old thing, slightly warped and ugly but it gives you a moment of respite.

You are really in it now. The abattoir stink of butchered meat seeps into your entire being; it has you.

Your eyes follow the smell to the mess in the bathtub. You don’t know if it was man or a woman, black or white, now it is just the mess in the tub. You wish it hurt; you yearn for some signal that there is something beyond the vision. There is nothing but the suck of violence.

You know the violence, the hate intimately. You cannot separate teeth and torn viscera from each other. This is the apotheosis of memory as visceral experience. Fall to your knees. Despite the rarified terror that pulses under your skin, the arousal and triumph rolls up your spine. Your hands find the bestial arousal between your infidel thighs.

Your body moves, your eyes are riveted to both the present image of cold death in the pink tub and the overlay of blurred nightmare that flashes over it in your imagination. Victim/Victor, Monster/Innocent, you are everything and nothing with one foot in the hard cold world of this room of death and the other in the ether where the monsters roam freely.

Orgasm brings death. The French had it right all along.

La petite mort.

Release of soul and tears and blood and at the end a life you had nothing to do with—a death you enjoy vicariously.

In the end as you retreat from all of it, experience melds with memory that melds with reality that melds with the unreal—

It will never settle. And you will never again touch anything so beautiful and horrifying. The experience will live in you long after the death is gone and those small silent rooms are cleaned up and released from the event.

Tiny Fictions- Microprose From my Phone

I have been writing microprose on the memo function of my phone. Below find some plucked from my archive.

#1 We never left that golden moment. We knew then, how to be immortal. If only: for a minute.

#2 You’ll know them by the shadows behind their eyes and the blood in their breath. They are the quiet ones.  You’ll know. We all know.

#3 Through the heavy morning. The sun still wants what she wants. She wants I feel her own heat taken in and returned with glory. She wants to kiss my skin like the lover she will never know. She wants to know the sweetness of brown skin and hair that reaches for her too. I tilt my face up. Watch her burn the clouds and smile.

I’m hers. I am always hers.

#4 We see her, all of them. We know them, we Innocents who will not see, we Innocents who must not believe know how her. She walks with q switch in her hips and death in her eyes.

We know. We refuse. It is our right and our demise.

#5 He died.

He’s still dead and I’m still mad. He never saw me confidently reading poetry or heard me drunk and singing dirty blues. His hand still sits on mine sometimes, when I write things that hurt. He’s gone but not.

Occasionally when I write something a little lyrical I hear his shy voice, singing low the way he liked to sing to me on the phone.

But, he died.

~

Short writing lesson babes.

Don’t be afraid to play with microprose. Try a new voice, try a POV you don’t usually use. Try out vocabulary you don’t usually use. Try out, abandoning the traditional Western idea of a story and do something else. Make it like a poem.

Micro/super short flash is a really great way to do this. I also recommend doing it to limber up like stretching before you work out. Sometimes I also use these when I want to write a new story. So remember my loves, don’t throw that shit away.

Your turn, give it a shot.

First draft funsies. CW VIOLENCE. SERIOUSLY.

No really. Violence, allusions to sexual violence. Murder.

This is some srs business.

If you’ve known me for a long time, you know I love a good Dark Violent Femme revenge crime story. The first one I ever wrote way back in 2011 is here at The Flash Fiction offensive. Yes, for real content warning. That shit is violent.

What I’ve put below is a pure first draft. I was noodling and wanted to play.

I had some very specific aims here but, to find out about it you’ll have to wait until Saturday where I will do a follow up and deconstruct what I was doing, how I might edit it, etc.

SO AGAIN

LAST CHANCE BRO.

THAR BE VIOLENCE AHEAD.

About 1600 words, unedited. Right from my brainpan.

#

Two things. Had he been smarter, there would be no story. Second thing, the wrath of a woman with ideas about behavior modification is truly a beautiful thing. Let’s set the scene, shall we? 

Our players: 

She: Brown. Braids. Lip-gloss. Booty shorts. Books. Cigarettes and a mysterious coffee cup. 

He: Brown. Bald. Tragically unaware. Lacking game. Doomed. 

Setting: Quiet street in the hood, around 3 AM. High summer.  

~ 

She always sits on her stoop late at night in the summer, a book in one hand, coffee cup at her elbow and a steady chain of cigarettes until she’s done or tired or whatever she does. She knows He prowls. He’s new, not one of the hood dudes. Not one of her neighbors or somebody’s cousin. Not the him she waits for at night. 

He skulks. 

He creeps. 

She knows. 

She ready. 

He makes his approach She sitting in her usual spot, in her usual cute booty shorts, her Timbs unlaced, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, lookin’ like a whole ass snack.  

“Hey, how you doin’-“ 

She shakes her head, not bothering to look up from the book in her hand. 

“Nah man. Go on.” 

And so, He is curved and salty about it but, like any apex predator he’s patient. He can wait. He’ll shoot his shot another time. 

Days and nights pass.  

He is swift enough to understand that She is a night owl. He can see that his opportunity will come.  

He skulks. 

He creeps. 

She knows. 

She ready. 

He knows from asking around that she ain’t strapped. A few men give him vague warnings about her being crazy but, it doesn’t matter. He knows how to handle a woman.  

Tonight she’s posted up, no Timbs this time, pajama shorty shorts on and flip flops. She reaches to her left and her long fingers grope, then flutter on a soft pack of cigarettes. That drags her attention away from her book and she looks down at the empty pack like it insulted her Mama. 

“Fuck.” 

He smiles. 

He waits. 

He is ready. 

She rises, leaves her coffee cup and book. He watches her walk, her booty almost claps and he wants her right now. He waits. Nobody is around, the bar is closed, the baseheads are all off having basehead dreams. The only light around the corner is the little bodega, the mouth to the alley is ready.  

He is ready. 

The thing about not being from the neighborhood is that, you don’t know shit. Not where the drop pieces are, not where the head stash is, not who might be up and who might not be.  

She knows. 

She ready. 

He sees as she exits the bodega, she throws a peace sign over her shoulder and calls back. 

“No fuck you Gordo. You still owe me ten from the last time. Man, don’t make me tell your Mama.” 

The whisper of profane Spanish and Gordo’s laughter trails her as she walks back up the block. He waits in the mouth of the alley, rubbing his fingertips together. He can smell her, cocoa butter, smoke, coffee, Black girl deliciousness.  

He is fast, not basehead fast but fast enough to grab a handful of her braids just as she passes by. He holds the knot of hair at the back of her neck like a guide and turns her into the alley. 

“Don’t be so rough.” 

Her voice is raspy tonight, husky. Her breath is warm, she likes her coffee sweet and it makes him feel good.  

~ 

Two things. Had he been smarter, there would be no story. Second thing, the wrath of a woman with ideas about behavior modification is truly a beautiful thing. Let’s set the scene, shall we? 

SETTING: Alley. The witching hour. She is looking up at Him. If he were a smart man, or a film man he would recognize the look. The villain emerges through a downturned chin, upturned eyes and the prettiest wet pink flicker of plump tongue. 

He sees the wet on secret wet and thinks, yes. He turns her loose and she walks further into the alley. 

She doesn’t turn around while she tucks her cigarettes into the waistband of her shorts and peels off her tank top. She lets him admire her back as she walks deeper into the shadows.  

He is hard. 

He ain’t ready. 

He is too busy following the idea of a tramp stamp riding her lower back to see what she’s doing when she bends over and reaches under a pallet.  

She moves like a shark. This is her night, her hood and the bat in her hands feels like home. She is Queen Bitch and she plants her feet and swings from her wide hips.  

By the time he registers the low arc of the bat, his right knee explodes and he folds like a paper bag. The pain is enormous, it radiates from his knee to his hip to his balls and he howls.  

No one comes.  

She ready. 

She smile. 

“Listen baby.” 

She licks her lips and lines up for another swing. He swears he can hear the bat whistle as it goes over her head and crashes down onto his hip. He can see her bounce of her pert, chubby little titties and the titanic jiggle of her thighs as she hits him.  

When the pain registers, it is a raging ball of fury that takes his breath and makes him cry for the devil. The pain obscures her fine titties and the idea he started with. The pain rolls through his pelvis like lava, dripping into his balls and making his bowels loose and his asshole clench. His teeth chatter and he can hear sound coming out of him but can’t identify it. 

He is watching her watch him, her head tilted, glossy lips screwed up. 

“You an old head, you know what they say.” 

She swings again and his ribs, dear Jesus his ribs. The breath runs out of him as if fleeing the pain. He can’t breathe, he can’t speak and all he wants is for someone, anyone to save him. 

We could have saved him, had he been a wiser man. 

“Don’t start none.” 

Another blow, she breaks his arm.  

“There won’t be none.” 

She steps back and her pretty face is lit from within. Glee and malice give her a glow under the fuzzy dim light. He sees her teeth, she’s smiling. Everything is going to be fine. 

For her. 

While he writhes he manages to get through his pain and tears to speak. 

“Please, I got money.” 

He paws at his pocket, he’s got a roll. He had planned on treating himself to a bottle after they were done, maybe breakfast later. A little for rent and a few other necessities. She nudges him onto his back and he wails, she squats with her thighs wide open. 

Her shorts pull tight into her crotch and the plump outline of her pussy is clear and close.  

“Go ahead and look. That’s what you wanted.” 

He looks, even in his state of extremis he has to look. 

“Listen, I ain’t gonna kill you.” 

His relief is shaky and he starts to cry.  

“Thank you, I ain’t mean nothin, I was only playin.” 

She laughs, sweet and high and joyful. 

“Oh I know. But, I still don’t like it.” 

She straightens up, drops the bat and pulls her shirt back on. Grimacing she rolls her left shoulder, lip curled. 

“Softball injury. Well, bye boo.” 

He relaxes. He knows once a little bit of shock sets in he can crawl to the bodega and maybe get some help. That is not to be. 

We know what her whistle brings. 

It is late, but not late enough for all of the night creatures to be in bed. We know that the worst of the worst of night dwelling. She knows him, everyone knows him. He is fucked up, a walking burn mouth corpse but, he is from their neighborhood and knows his place. He eases out from behind the dumpster, jiggling foot to foot. 

“Hooo boy you fucked with the wrong bitch boy, I tell you what.” 

He whimpers, confused and uneasy. She looks at the stranger. 

“I was nice once. You got this?” 

The man, the new man, the scabrous oily creature with the perverse gleam in his eye nods.  

“For real?” 

“For real.” 

They smile at each other.  

We see that the man with the evil smile, is the thin burnt version of her. Her smile is not quite that evil, hers has an edge of fun. Mischief. Prettiness. 

“Yeah. I can keep the money?” 

“Course. Get rid of this shit and I’ll see you at home. Come home today. I’ll make you chicken and waffles.” 

She opens her cigarettes and they smoke together while he begins to understand. Let’s watch him, he knows he has met his death. He should have stayed home. What we know, he is learning. Too late, of course.  

She walks away, her booty almost clapping. Holding her dirty hands away from her still clean tank top. The man on the ground looks up at the Grim Reaper. 

“I-“ 

The Grim Reaper shakes his head, we shake our heads, around the corner Gordo shakes his head and she walks into her house smiling. 

“That’s my fuckin’ sister man. My. Sister.” 

His eyes close.  

Our eyes are open. 

What he should have known, we know. 

~ 

Two things. Had he been smarter, there would be no story. Second thing, the wrath of a woman with ideas about behavior modification is truly a beautiful thing. Let’s set the scene, shall we? 

Our players: 

She: Brown. Braids. Lip-gloss. Booty shorts. Books. Cigarettes and a mysterious coffee cup. 

He: Brown. Bald. Tragically unaware. Lacking game. Doomed. 

Grim Reaper: The one she waits for at night. 

Setting: Quiet street in the hood, around 4 AM. High summer.  

Yeah, Write Entry # 233- Into the World

Into the World 

by

Shannon Barber

I put my headphones on before I get on the bus. Most nights I put on soaring beautiful vocals that make me close my eyes and rock.

If my eyes are closed and my head is full of Maria Callas or Marvin Gaye, I can’t see them.

Tonight, none of my usual playlists will work. I shuffle albums with crackhead concentration. Opera? No. Delta Blues? No. Old country? Not even the voice of the dying Johnny Cash can save me. .

While I wait for my bus I see them fluttering at the periphery of my vision. Shadows darker than the night as gossamer as silken draperies. They are bold tonight, their edges glide across my face, they tug at my braids. I close my eyes, trying to will the music pumping in my ears to do what I need it to do.

I switch stations, Billie Holiday crooning so sweet and sad won’t do it. I frown down at the screen of my phone, scroll faster through noted playlists. Killing Time. Buried under Etta James and my Bad Girls Twerk Forever playlists.

My Father told me once that we carry the blood of mythic ancestors. He claimed that we came from bloody Haitian rebellions. He told me violent extravagant stories about The Ancestors. He taught me about machetes and graveyard dirt.

While the shadows writhe and start to whisper I duck behind the bus stop to get ready.

My Mother taught me too. From her I learned the quick and dirty magic. We spent many afternoons cuddled together on the couch, her teaching me the stories of peoples from all over the world and how to spot the truths.

I screw my earbuds in tight and tuck my little mp3 player into my bra. I stash my backpack under a bush and squat a few feet away to pee.

Always pee before going into battle. Mama’s cardinal rules. Never go in with a full bladder or hungry. Always warm up at least a little if you can.

After I finish peeing I slip out of the world and into The World. It is so easy for me now, the words come almost unbidden to the beat of 2Pac speaking in my ear.

All I need in this life of sin…

In The World my swords are stashed right where I left them and the shadows look hungry tonight. I say one more prayer and let the thousand names of my ancestors ring in my ears while I pull my blade across my palm. I smear the blood across my face and hit my stance.

“First blood mother fuckers. Come and get it.”

###