Adrenaline: Excerpt from Whispers & Fangs

I haven't been around on my blog much the past year, but I've spent more time writing in 2017 than I have in a long time. In total, Nine of my pieces won or were accepted for publication, one of which, a poem that saw its first draft from my national poetry month challenge, has been nominated for Best of the Net 2017. Nomination is honor enough.

I also did my first team writing experience for Writers Workout. My team, Sneaky Little Scribes, took first place, and a number of my acceptances are team stories that have appeared in the 2017 edition of 72 Hours of Insanity.   My most recent solo piece, though accepted over the summer, just saw publication this month in The East Jasmine Review.  The other authors in this online magazine are amazing and you should really check them out.

Even one of my rejections came with a lovely note about how I'd been short listed, and I wrote a guest post that I rather quite enjoyed.

So while of the thousands of words I turned out this year not many made it here, they have been finding good homes.

There is one project that I sadly did not get to complete however, and so I'd like to give it a little extra love this late Friday evening in December.

The print edition of Whispers & Fangs fell victim to my writing surge, and when I did not make the late October deadline, I tossed it on the back burner for 2018. The e-edition is still available though, and this is not by any means an abandoned endeavor. So, since I've been told I don't share enough of my fiction as is, and since my blog has also been a touch neglected (though I'm sure it is used to it at this point), here is a fun little piece from the collection.

I'm not sure Enjoy is quite the right word... but, read on dear reader, read on.

"Adrenaline"

Your heart was racing, and your palms were sweating, and your face was a little bit red because things like the Buckerman’s party just didn’t happen to you. This party didn’t even really happen to you. Well, you weren’t invited, but crashing it seemed to make you more nervous, more excited. You had . . . What was the term?

Adrenaline. 

The music pumped through the soles of your feet, vibrating your soul. You couldn’t hear a thing. So when the girl with the low cut dress motioned for you to take her somewhere quiet, you did, or she did, or at that point, it was hard to tell who was following whom. Maybe that’s how those types of things always work? You didn’t know. These types of things didn’t happen to you.

Not to you. 

Her dress was white with little pastel flowers, and though you couldn’t place her perfume, it smelled familiar. Like cookies. She opened the basement door, and when you hesitated, she reached up on her tip-toes and grabbed the front of your shirt. You thought she was going to kiss you, but instead her mouth went to your ear, and what should have been a whisper became a yell over the music and crowd: “It’ll be worth your while.” You were shaking because she let you go ahead of her, but the lights were off and it was not a good time to admit to a beautiful girl you feared the dark, but at least the music was finally muffled, and in the after shock, you hardly heard the click of the lock. 

Did the pounding come from you or the floor above? You didn’t know. You were too busy searching for the light switch with trembling hands, and though it was dark, very suddenly things seemed much darker. 

Then brighter. Too bright. 

A light was burning your eyes, and when you tried to move, you couldn’t. Your vision was spotty, and as the girl smiled down at you, she seemed as if she was underwater. You tried to say something—her name—but you never got it. Then you tried something else, anything at all. A strained wisp of air escaped your lips, and you realized you couldn’t move them, couldn’t move anything. That’s when you saw the knife. 

Things like this just don’t happen to you. Right?

The girl was talking about excitement, fun, something about the music. It was difficult to concentrate because you were putting all of your energy into trying to thrash around. Then she touched you with the cold side of the blade, and your skin screamed, but you remained silent and still, and the girl laughed, knowing you could feel it, saying she knew, saying how fun tonight was going to be. She was going to change your perspective on life. 

Then, with some effort, she sliced off part of your toe. 

In the searing pain that followed, you couldn’t help but wonder when she took off your shoes, and though you couldn’t look down, you realized you were naked, and you saw the blood, though you didn’t really see the blood, but you’d seen enough movies to see it anyway. Next she sliced off a bit of your heal, mumbling something about the original “Cinderella” story and what the stepsisters did to themselves. “And people think our culture is violent,” she said with a laugh. This statement you remember perfectly; she said it right to your face before kissing you, and your eyes filled with water, and whether it was from pain or because that was the first time a girl ever kissed you, you couldn’t tell because she swung the knife at your ankle immediately after. And again and again, and you passed out.

You surged back to life and your body convulsed. And she laughed and laughed, and the music pounded, and the lights swirled, and she shook her finger at you with a twisted smile and tapped an empty vial.

“Adrenaline.” She planned to party as long as they—her finger pointed toward the ceiling—did. 

As she continued her work, you adapted a new understanding of the meaning of pain, and you chided yourself for flinching over paper cuts, or crying when you fell from your bike when you were ten, or declaring your broken leg—the break you earned falling from a fight on the school’s bleachers—the worst pain imaginable. You were wrong, and you didn’t need to imagine anymore. 

Sometime before the pounding music turned into pounding feet and the bass tone of police officers, the girl was shouting at you because she could no longer sense the fear in your eyes. She even smacked you, desperate for a reaction. You could give her none. Though you couldn’t yet pass out physically, you had checked out mentally. You were gone, somewhere else, your mind abandoning your body, no longer interested in such base physical pleasures as a racing heart and sweaty palms.

Or, what was the word?

Adrenaline. 

READ THIS AND OTHER STORIES IN WHISPERS & FANGS.