Grooviness

Musicians know the groove.  The feeling you have when you are lost in the music and the world goes away. Musicians see the man in the groove and they say “He’s gone.”  And he is.  For a writer the groove is that special and meditative place where the world goes away, that place where the voices are and the voices move the story and you mutter to yourself and space-time quietly goes adrift.  The groove is bliss.  The groove is better than being published, its the real zen.  Its the writers dope.  You have to love the groove.  You have to earn the groove by paying your dues at the keyboard, even on dry days.  The groove is your real reward.  You get the groove by paying your dues.  By courting the madness, by walking in the inner moonlight, hoping for teeth and claws to sprout, by spreading your blanket in the dark for a picnic or a midnight tryst in the light of your personal bloodmoon.

The price for the groove is madness.  You have to live close to your unconscious.  You have to open that cellar door and step through into the dark and the strange smells.  Most of us have a lot of noisy things  with dark wings in that darkness that fly in your face and climb on your skin.  If you walk or finally crawl far enough the lights go out and you know you’re in the presence of demons.  If you stay, you may make friends with them.  They don’t mind that you’re scared, it amuses them.  They won’t take you seriously if you’re not a little scared.  It means you have soul.  If you run, they’ll bring you down like a lion on a gazelle. Or maybe if, whimpering, you try to crawl for the door you’ll morph into some cosmic horror as in a Lovecraft story. Mary Oliver knows that place.  I used to know that place, though my cellar is a little cleaner now than is really good for me.  You have to love the dusty cellar.  You have to love the darkness at least a little.  You have to make friends with the madness and learn to listen with caution to the whispers in your head.

You can look at a painting and know almost nothing about the artist who made it.  Listen to music and know nothing about the composer - unless there are lyrics to go with it.  Ah - the lyrics!  The words.  The lyrics tell you of the artist, not the music.  The language arts are like that.  You get away with less, have to expose your heart more and maybe wring it out in public once in awhile.  Narrative fiction and poetry craft are so much about observation and empathy mixed with your interior world of experience.  You can’t pass judgment on people, especially people who hurt you, because your job is to observe and when possible listen. Losing your temper at someone closes that door and you’ve lost the chance to learn a little more.  So to be a language artist demands some humility.

Absolute and unmixed attention, whether down in the groove or directed to a human being is an act of devotion.  It is prayer.  Prayer and the groove are the same.  Anything might become sacred if you pray to it enough.  This is why the groove is sacred.  This is why we want to court the groove.

You can’t be lucky.  You do not have to be good. But with patience you can prepare yourself to be lucky. You do this by showing up, somewhere at some time during the day or early morning and stepping down into the cellar.  Most days you come up with nothing.  But you show up. That shows character. The groove respects character. You have to know what your problem is and what your problem isn’t.  Your problem is to show up. You do this by carrying a notebook with you in your pocket everywhere you go.  This battered notebook, squashed a little flatter by your ass every time you sit on it, becomes something like a sacred talisman.  A lantern held out to your particular madness, an image of devotion to your particular faith, your membership in the Church of the Holy Groove.  The notebook is your prayer and your key to the cellar door that you are willing to be inspired and more important willing to work faithfully in unrequited dryness and desiccation, like a forgotten houseplant in a window, until inspiration arrives, waters you and finds your blooms fragrant.  It is an act of faith.  So much of creative work is an act of faith believing in the future the way a farmer does under the white nets of winter or the watery dark of spring.

The Importance of Being... J.P. Bowie

Family... I haven't had a family in close to forty years. I lost my parents and both my sisters in a seven year span. You don't really know how important they are until there are no longer there. Yet, their importance lingers. Everywhere I look I see signs that tell me nothing is more important... some people even have it tattooed on their skin... Family First etc.I get a good laugh when I see porn stars with that inked on their chests... Hey Mom, lookit! Thinking of you while I fuck this uh, person.

This is my last post for OGG, so I don't want to get maudlin. And really when I think about it, I have been a lucky so and so for most of my life. Like most gay men and women, through the years, I have found myself surrounded by people I can honestly call friends, good friends, a surrogate family if you will. Forget the old cliche... you can choose your friends, your family is thrust upon you... sometimes your friends choose you, and your family thrusts you away. My family didn't do that, so they live in my memory with love. Again I was fortunate.

The wonderful man I am married to doesn't have such loving memories of his family, yet he remains true to the idea of a warm and caring circle of friends he can call family. It always amazes me that even out of the most repressive upbringings a soul can emerge, eager to forgive those who tried to smother the goodness within, and belittle the kindnesses so willingly given.

That does sound a little maudlin, so I will close with the wish that all of you have found love in some form or another... that there is someone close, friend or family member, you can share your hopes and dreams and troubles with. It's important.

Disciple

By Lisabet Sarai

“Uh—oh—oh—uh—uh—uh, uh, uh—ah—yes, oh, yes, uh—aaah!”

“You all right, honey?”

“Oh...oh, yeah, I’m fantastic. Just need a bit of time to recover. Thanks, Miriam. That was sensational—as always. You’re still the best, after all this time.”

“That’s sweet of you, Sh’muel. We each serve according to our separate gifts.”

“He say that?”

“More or less.”

“You knew him, didn’t you.”

“Very well. Intimately, you might say.”

“So...what was he like? Putting aside the hype and all? How did it feel when you were with him?”

“Cherished. Beloved. Enveloped in warm, nurturing light.”

“You were special to him.”

“Everyone felt that way, Sh'muel. That was his gift. Total, unconditional love. Perfect compassion. It didn’t matter who you were, what you did for a living, what country you came from or what gods you worshiped. What so-called sins you had committed. He loved us all. We couldn’t help loving him back.”

“Even Judas Iscariot?”

“Of course. Poor Judas might have loved him more than anyone. Most of us were too selfish to fulfill the master’s will. We wanted to keep him alive, with us, so we could continue to bask in his incredible light. Even if that undermined his ultimate purpose.” 
 

“It must have been hard to let him go.”

“Torture. I wept non-stop for two weeks. It felt like my heart had been torn from my body, leaving nothing but a vacant, echoing gap. I wanted to kill myself, to tell you the truth, but I knew he wouldn’t approve. It took a long time before I understood that he really wasn’t gone at all. That his light could never be extinguished—unless I allowed it to be.”

“I’m—um—kind of surprised you went back to your old profession. Afterwards, I mean.”

“His mother never liked me. She never felt I was good enough for her precious Yeshua. I don’t blame her. We all have our flaws, our blind spots. Anyway, I didn’t feel comfortable with the direction the disciples were taking. Celibacy just doesn’t suit me.”

“I’m grateful for that!”

“I’ll bet you are, you old goat!”

“So, tell me Miriam—what about the sex? Was it different? Better than with an ordinary man?”

“You want me to kiss and tell? Naughty boy! I keep your secrets—I’ll certainly keep his. But I will say this—he was as lusty and eager as anyone else. Not the pale, emasculated, passionless figure that some of the communities worship these days. He was flesh and blood, full of juice and joy.”

“What do you think? Was he really the Messiah?”

“You know, Sh'muel, I don’t really care. All I know is that everyone he touched was changed for the better. His love kindled ours. We wanted to please him, honor him, and so we tried, in our own poor imperfect way, to be like him. Each according to our gifts. Speaking of which...”

“Mmm—oh, that feels so good!”

“Looks like you’re ready for another round, honey.”

“Oh—ah—oh, God, I’d love to, but until next month’s harvest, I don’t have the shekels to spare.”

“It’s on the house, honey. Because you’re such a loyal customer and such a sweet guy.”

“Ooh—oh, Miriam! You’re a saint... What can I do in return? Can I give one of next spring’s lambs?”

“Just feel my love, Sh'muel. Feel it, and pass it on.”

Demons in White Coats

by Jean Roberta

It’s a vicious cycle: I’m still afraid of being diagnosed with a mental illness, as I was at age 19, after I had been raped. (Supposedly, I was a “borderline schizophrenic,” which seemed to mean that what I told the male doctors after my attempt at suicide was unbelievable to them.) If I still haven’t learned to “trust men,” as I was encouraged to do, and have even less faith in the “mental health” establishment, this must mean I’m still paranoid.

My nightmares about men in white coats are slightly worse than my nightmares about men in uniforms. At least if members of some police or military organization came to haul me off to prison, it would be clear that I was being charged with a crime. And if there was no objective evidence that I had done the deed, I would have at least a slim chance of getting acquitted.

On the other hand, if someone representing “health” and “sanity” came to take me away to get “therapy” or "help," who would support my protests that I like my life the way it is, and would rather go on doing the things I do?

I know what the “experts” would say. If I claim I’m not hurting anyone, they would point out that I’m a danger to myself because I’m out of touch with “reality” as the mind doctors see it. They would claim to be acting in my own best interests. I could explain that I’ve taught English in a university for over a quarter-century, and have had glowing reviews from students who find me knowledgeable, logical and helpful, but none of this would prove beyond a doubt that I’m not crazy. Students as witnesses don’t have a lot of credibility themselves. And mind doctors don’t like to be contradicted. The more I would protest my innocence, the more obvious it would seem to them that my rebellious attitude is a dire symptom.

Over a year ago, I wrote the following short piece and sent it to Alexandra Wolfe, a sci-fi writer who runs a site, The Spec-Fiction Hub. She seemed to accept it for posting on the site (as far as I could tell), but I don’t really understand how or when that was to happen. So this piece is still unpublished.

After the Cure

In 1961, the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee of the Judiciary of the U.S. Senate conducted hearings on “The Constitutional Rights of the Mentally Ill.” Francis J. Braceland testified: “It is a feature of some illnesses that people do not have insight into the fact that they are sick. In short, sometimes it is necessary to protect them for awhile from themselves”
(an actual passage from Constitutional Rights of the Mentally Ill, quoted by Thomas Szasz in The Manufacture of Madness, 1970.)


How far medical science has progressed in less than two centuries. Now, in 2065, “we the people” have outgrown the awkward process of electing a government, supposedly so characteristic of an adolescent state of development. The disease of free will has almost been eradicated.

In my youth, I had a favourite T-shirt that said: “I’d rather wallow in my pathology.” I would venture outdoors with this slogan spread proudly across my breasts. Of course, they took it from me when I was committed.

I hope this message reaches you. I don’t have much time left. I learned that I am scheduled to be euthanized in thirty days. I was diagnosed with Feminine Senescence (being an old woman) years ago, and now it’s been determined that my condition is terminal. There is no point, according to the Director of the Clinic, in forcing me to suffer until I die of natural causes.

What they don’t say is that the government can’t find a use for me, since I can’t have babies who would raise the declining birthrate. No new fruit of my womb will be socialized according to the principles of Mental Health or report all signs of illness in their mother to the proper authorities. I won’t be missed by anyone who counts.

So many of those I loved have gone. Most didn’t go willingly. Some were diagnosed with Feminine Juvescence (being young, immature women), some with hyper-pigmentation of the skin. Most of those I miss were found guilty of sexual perversions, including a desire for sex without a corresponding desire for pregnancy. Those diagnosed with Masturbatory Insanity were euthanized first. Last year, the World Health Organization announced that thanks to an effective educational campaign, masturbation has been wiped out.

I fervently hope I get to see my loved ones again, somewhere beyond the physical world. I don’t really know if there is an afterlife. My willingness to consider the possibility has been written up as a sign of Senescent Heuristic Impairment.

If, against the odds, this reaches someone who has not yet been brought in for diagnosis and treatment, here is my advice and my blessing: believe your own senses, and cherish your feelings. Don’t let them tell you what to think, and what your experience really means. Cling to hope, even when all the evidence is discouraging, and your closest companions tell you (for your own good, of course) how neurotic you are.

As they said in the Dark Ages of universal madness: Where there’s life, there’s hope.
--------------------

Rereading this, I realize that it's not exactly about "personal demons," but about the impersonal demons of enforced mainstream values and social control. However, it's hard for me to separate those things. Moral panics can force any handy scapegoat onto the defensive, and it's really impossible to prove that one ISN'T a psychopath or a terrorist. In a society in which teenage girls can be harassed to the point of suicide simply because they've committed sex (which was debatably consensual), who would defend a much older woman who has done much more? These questions keep me awake at night.

Angels and Demons, Strengths and Weaknesses

by Annabeth Leong

Garce gave me the start I needed for this post by referencing that Tennessee Williams quote: “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.” I’m not sure what Williams meant, but I read it as a reference to how demons and angels can so often be one and the same.

When I was younger, I thought I was in the grip of personal demons, and I spent lots of time apologizing for it. I thought I was crazy because I was wounded. I thought I was fucked up because I couldn’t fit into mainstream narratives of who I was supposed to be and become. I thought I was sinful because I was curious.

I don’t accept those things as demons anymore.

I was raised in a sort of thinking that divided things into good and evil, acceptable and unacceptable. At a certain point, the reality I lived in and observed began to strain out of that categorization. I didn’t solve the problem by simply deciding everything is permissible, though.

Now, what I think is that my flaws and strengths are different sides of the same human coin.

Take lustfulness, for example—a classic member of the traditional list of deadly sins. I’ve gotten myself into trouble over lustful urges. By which I mean I have behaved rashly, without sufficient care for myself or others. I’ve been hurt, and I’ve sometimes hurt others. I used to feel terrible about my inability to control myself, my need to experiment, the fact that I couldn’t seem to settle down and be anyone’s proper girlfriend. That later, I couldn’t be someone’s proper wife.

On the other hand, my curiosity and urge toward exploration has led to so much self-knowledge. I strongly believe that my sexual impulses have led the way toward my becoming a more authentic person, a person who is more accepting of myself and others in all our various mixes of feelings, desires, and needs, and in all our various forms.

It is hard in mainstream society to live with the sort of sex life I have. I often hear about how ashamed I should feel. I often hear my identities and practices discussed by people who don’t realize that someone who “would do those things” is sitting right there in the room with them. But that has forced me to learn courage. It’s a sort of courage that goes against my nature, too.

If it were up to me, I would never cause a ripple in the water. I hate making people feel uncomfortable, and I’ve always been willing to twist myself into knots to avoid it. This, too, is an angel and a demon. I am kind. I am aware of the feelings and needs of others. I love that about myself. On the other hand, I am willing sometimes to let others bully me in the name of keeping the peace. I am willing to suppress myself so no one else has to see parts of me they might not like. Sometimes I hurt people through silence because I can’t bear to face them and hurt them through what I may have to say.

I used to feel a sort of darkness at the idea of myself as tormented by personal demons. Sometimes, I liked that and sometimes I feared it. I used to see myself as a battleground—angels versus demons, sane versus crazy, normal versus weird.

I don’t see it that way anymore, though. I like being a person, not a battlefield. I like seeing things in this complicated way that feels more true to me, where strengths are jumbled together with weaknesses and there is sometimes a fierce and fragile beauty within a thing that looks like a flaw, or a streak of ugliness within a thing that might otherwise be a virtue.

It is easier for me to grow as a person when I feel love and compassion for my whole self, rather than trying to excise a “demon” and later realizing it is my own hand.

Sympathy for the Demon

by Daddy X

My personal demons turned out to be mostly intoxicants. To indulge them responsibly, I  knew one had to venture with respect, caution and consideration, treating drugs and alcohol as you would friends. Making trade-offs with demons, if you will. Taking advantage of working with a colleague rather than battling an adversary.

I understood (to a limited extent) the dangers of certain behavior. During my formative years, the 50’s had been a blissfully ignorant decade when it came to drugs (as well as earlier, evidenced by the likes of  “Reefer Madness” back in the thirties). All hell broke loose after 1960 when many truths, falsehoods and half-truths made their way into popular culture.  Somewhere between naive, accepting, ignorance and Draconian scare tactics lay reality. I found that ‘real’ was a moving target, always morphing, always changing its effects on our perception. We needed quick reactions, staying agile on our feet.

At one end of the spectrum were the junkies and speed-freaks, usually a tougher crowd, though a hard addiction didn’t necessarily mean a bad or ignorant person. After all, the goal of getting high isn’t to writhe in anguish on a motel floor. It’s to have fun. I’d even say that back then, VERY few people who indulged in heroin or amphetamines ever let it get the best of them. Most of us were what the heavies called “weekenders”. We held jobs. We had families.

At the other end of the spectrum, marijuana and natural psychedelics like mescaline and psilocybin enabled us to go inward and discover revelations about ourselves and about the world around us. Obvious things that—funny?—we’d never noticed before! We learned to use our expanded vision.

(Now, LSD lies somewhere in an area of its own. Though acid has great potential in the right hands, it proves too unpredictable without a trusted and experienced guide. Not a drug for someone of fragile emotional constitution. They might experience a brain turn that could prove traumatic. Ditto for whatever ‘boutique’ drugs have made a debut more recently. I don’t have that experience.)

On Monday, Sacchi mentioned Coleridge as an artist who used opium. Who’s to say that any of his work would have ever been imagined without the drug? Same goes for all the arts, from Edgar Allen Poe to William Burroughs to the poignant comedy of Lenny Bruce and the paintings of Basquiat. to the entire jazz scene, which was rife with heroin in the 50’s and 60’s. Would any of that art have been created without views from varied perspectives? From pre-Columbian times to Carlos Castaneda, Native Americans have used such substances to explore alternative planes of consciousness.

Below, a west Mexican stone sculpture I bought and sold some years back, a shaman transforming into a coatimundi.

It shows how closely animist belief systems were woven with their surroundings. A concept like this would require quite a dose to conjure up!

Not that this post is intended to advocate for drugs. I am a realist. Many people lose perspective, and, in plenty of cases lose their lives to mistakes and misconceptions regarding the nature of various substances. Some of my closest friends have been compromised. A few od’d. An old arm-fuck buddy from back east recently had his own liver transplant. I worked a tough bar through the 80’s during the crack epidemic. I saw the worst of the results. Young girls would arrive on the scene at sixteen or seventeen, and age thirty years within six months, selling their scrawny asses behind the bowling alley.

The demons need to be recognized and understood.

Most of my blogmates know of my liver transplant in 2004. Yes, it was precipitated by cancer as the typical result of Hep C, contracted by sharing needles. That and the ensuing year of Interferon/Ribavirin treatment were a singular brand of hell. Momma would come home from work, take one look at my sorry self and say: “Have you smoked any pot today?” I’d mumble something in the negative, my wits and recall stranded in pain and misery… She’d fix a pipe… I’d feel better!

Eleven years ago, deteriorating with cancer, I knew I’d already been granted a wondrous and varied life. If I had kacked back then, I would still have had more unique experience than most people on earth. That’s the way I felt at the time, and the sentiment hasn’t changed in the years since. Drugs still play an important part of my life in the form of medicine. Some of which is now legal in California.

Back in the day, my saving graces were friends. Friends became my measure of when I was getting too close to an edge. “Daddy,” they’d say, “aren’t you taking a lot of (fill in the blank) lately? Think you might want to cool it a day or two?” I may not have been receptive in the moment, but I would remember the exchange. Soon, I’d try and not be such an asshole.

I guess you could say I was in the ‘functional’ category when it came to my demons. I always worked. Seldom lost a day’s pay because of indulgence. I mean it’s not like it didn’t happen, but over forty years of employment you could probably count total days off due to ‘ralph’ on two hands.

I did wind up paying for all that fun, though. Evidence the liver transplant.

Alcohol and drugs formed a common thread throughout my travels with creative people. People who found insight as a result of their ability to view life on multiple levels. Things appear different on weed than booze. Different again with Mescalito as your lens.

And I didn’t kack. Not yet. I went on to two new careers (One of them writing erotica)  since the operation.  (Next step … selling erotica) I’ve had a triple bypass. A little heart attack.  But my tea-totaling friends and people I meet who haven’t done a damn thing but work then stagnate at home? They’ve also had their share of heart attacks, cancers and deaths.

And Momma and I continue to have fun. It’s a covenant we share with demons.

Devil on my Shoulder, a photoessay by Suz deMello

Hopefully this is "fair use."

Despite decades of conscious personal growth, I still have a few demons keeping me company. 

My demons used to be:

image: Manfred Werner - Tsui

and 

from Wikimedia Commons

Here are some of my current temptations:

photo by Steph Laing

image: Ralf Roletschek/fahrradmonteur.de




but most especially

Demon Lovers Do It Better

Sacchi Green

Demons get a bad rap. On the other hand, as embodiments of the sins we don’t want to admit to ourselves, they get more fun. When it comes to sex, as so often it does, we tend to think (and hope) that demons do it better. Or maybe badder, in current jargon. If “bad" boys (and girls) are alluring, demons are irresistible. Who could ask for anything more?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge captures the wild beauty of a demon’s appeal in his reputedly opium-fueled masterpiece, Kublai Khan, when he says,

“A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!”

If I thought opium could make me write like that…

Well, never mind. In any case, we’re supposed to be writing about personal demons here, presumably destructive ones, but I’m having a hard time with that. I know my faults all too well, but at my age I’ve pretty much come to terms with them, even the one that drives me to want to be more demonic to compensate for being actually all too prosaic, and even boring. When I first started writing erotica and became rather close friends with another writer, I got a real charge when she declared that I must have inner demons driving my writing, and meant it as a compliment.

My prosaic side, though, wonders about the origins of the human concept of demons. Yes, they embody true evil, as well as the sins we secretly lust after, but do they also represent the terrifying and despised “other”? William Golding, who certainly knew something about humanity’s own demons when he wrote Lord of the Flies, also wrote a book called The Inheritors about the last of the Neanderthals encountering Cro-Magnon humans infiltrating their territory. By the end of the book the only Neanderthal survivor is a very young child taken up as sort of a pet by a Cro-Magnon chief’s pampered woman, and is referred to as a “demon”(or maybe a “devil”—it’s been along time since I read it) by others in the tribe. Golding made a point of portraying the “modern” humans as being actually more demonic and decadent than the Neanderthals, largely because of their kinky sex habits, but let’s not go there. The human tendency to demonize their enemies (literally), or anyone who disagrees with them (figuratively), is all too true even today.

My writing demons, though, still tend to think that demons get a bad rap, and rather admire the kind that are condemned by traditional religion. One of my favorites among my own stories is “Freeing the Demon” (in Kristina Wright's Dream Lover), involving a high-priced prostitute and the gargoyle outside her window who turns out to be a demon imprisoned in stone long ago. She fantasizes about him, at one point musing, "’Who trapped you? Someone higher up the chain of evil? Or a self-righteous moral bigot? I've known both kinds. There isn't much to choose.’ His pulsing glow seemed to quicken in agreement.”  Eventually she seduces him into breaking temporarily free by masturbating in front of him, and he saves her from her evil pimp by devouring the bastard, and various other nasty guys.
__________

Late at night the demon came to her, in vision deeper than dream. Jayne saw his true form, merely caricatured by the stone carving; a shape more man than beast, long-limbed, graceful, powerful, covered with a thick black fur whose silken touch made her shiver with delight. The curved horns rose naturally from his proud head, extending the line of the pointed ears. His slanting eyes curled into crescents when he smiled, a wicked grin that showed strong, gleaming fangs. She had to smile back.
He held out a hand, cruel talons retracted, and she grasped it with her own. She pressed against him, but after a moment he swung her gently around.
Only then did she become aware of the surroundings in her vision. Walls of smoothly fitted stones, candles smoking fitfully in sconces, hangings in deep colors with intricate designs not quite revealed by the dim light. An ambiance profoundly other, yet vaguely familiar, a scene from a history book, or fairy tale.
He drew her to a small arched window, and she looked through iron bars down into a torch-lit courtyard. She watched, unseen, as a red-robed figure passed by, thick fingers stroking a heavy golden cross; but when she looked for holiness in his face she read only a cruel sensuality she knew all too well.
The demon gripped the bars, bent them with slight effort, then pushed with increasing tension against an invisible field of force just beyond. When she reached through the bars she felt no barrier; it seemed to be devised for him alone.
Ancient magic or future science?  She was distracted by the play of muscles across black-velvet shoulders, back, buttocks...no wings? But the wings were there, sweeping in and out of visibility as he strained against the unseen wall. They faded as he slumped back and turned toward her, face twisted in anger and despair.
The proud head bent, the tall form folded, knelt, until he crouched at her feet like a great dark knot of wood shaped by a master carver.
A wave of compassion swept her, and, in its wake, a resolve. If he asked for her help, it must be in her power to give. In the world she inhabited (however tenuously) they had already cut a strange and bloody swath together; she would willingly challenge whatever world held him captive.
She reached out to embrace him, pressing her breasts against his bowed head; the sheltering mantle of her moon-pale hair enveloped him. "Yes," she murmured, "yes," more certain of the answer than the question. A cool breeze stirred the curtain of hair. She saw brightening sky outside the window, and as she watched a shaft of hazy sunlight came through the window and crept toward them, until, with a convulsive lurch, her lover was gone from her arms and she was left empty, hollow, kneeling on her own floor in her own room in a cold pool of daylight.
__________

Much sex follows, as the demon grows stronger from devouring the bad guys, until finally:
__________

Great hands gripped her shoulders, pushed her back. Through streaming hair she watched him wrestle for control, a harsh moan grating in his throat, drops of blood welling where fangs clenched in his lower lip.
Then his eyes burned into hers, urging, demanding, sending a message she didn't understand. All she could do was what she did understand, sliding the satin gown up above her hips, moving over him, meeting his hardness with her own wild, wet need, sliding down over him slowly, slowly, until the fullness drove her to rise, and plunge, and rise.
He gripped her hips, stilled them, then grasped her shoulders. She was consumed by the need to move, but he pulled her until her damp hair brushed his face; then his tongue came out to lick at one of the drops of blood gleaming on his lip. She remembered that tongue on her own lip, her own blood...
Jayne lowered her head and ran her tongue along the line of drops, then closed her lips around his and sucked gently until her mouth was full of the metallic tang. She swallowed. A tingle spread through her body in a frothing tide, ebbing just as he began to move, at last, in the demanding rhythm she craved.
Then she knew only the driving ache of pleasure, the mounting of the great wave that must break at last into the maelstrom of release. But he held her there, riding the crest, farther and farther, until they spun at last completely out of the world she had known.
The blaze of sensation faded gradually into glowing embers. Jayne became aware of the beat of wings. Still they spun on, ever slower, until at last familiar stone walls enclosed them and all motion ceased. She buried her face in his velvet chest.
He stroked along her hair, and down her back. Her shoulder blades tingled. The sensation grew, swelled--and at last she understood, and felt her own power, and gloried in the unfurling of her own great white sheltering wings.
The red-robed priest might think to hold a demon captive, but he could never resist an angel of seduction, and ecstasy, and death.
__________

That’s my kind of demon. Or maybe I should say instead that one of my faults, my inner demons, is a lamentable tendency to romanticize icons of evil. And another is to use excerpts from the same story for more than one post, but I checked back, and as far as I an tell the excerpts are different ones this time.

The Three-Day Hump

Back in 2009 I submitted a story to Excessica, where it was picked up and published. It was entitled "The Three Day Hump", and looking back I can see how raw it was. At that point I hadn't truly found my voice (though of course, we're all evolving with every day that passes, and my voice now is not the same as it was three months ago, even).

The title is actually nothing to do with the act of "humping". It came from a phrase I heard in the 2004 documentary, "Supersize Me". The three-day hump refers to the theory that abstinence from an addictive substance or habit for a three day period is the biggest part of the battle. Once you're over that particular hump, maintaining the abstinence is supposed to be far easier.

So it was with my story. I pushed two people together who had little in common. They had an initial attraction which was too strong to resist. As time rolled on they got together more and more often and the sex turned dirtier and harder each time. Yet while their physical needs became stronger, they stopped even liking each other. (There was never any mention of love!) The physical relationship between them had become an obsession bordering on addiction.

Their method of beating the habit was to hole up in a hotel room for a three-day weekend, completely naked, with the goal of resisting each other.

The story was in sections, jumping from present day (the hotel room) to past experiences (from the moment they met up until the desperation which took them to the hotel). Present day scenes were written in present tense. Past scenes in past tense.

And even though Lisabet suggested to me in comments that I should work towards new stories and leave aside the old, this is actually one title I'm in the process of re-working for replication. I see great potential in it. I just need to make the reader's journey a smoother one.

So my excerpt today comes from one of the (still raw) present-day sections of that story.

-----

She squeezes the back of the chair, supports her weight for a moment. The expensive material feels eerie without the heat and strength of his body inside it.

She studies him briefly. He looks tranquil as a winter sunrise. She grinds her teeth in pique, steps out towards him, her hands balled as if to hide their quivering. She stops with only twelve inches of air splitting them.

She’s an animal, dripping with urges, stupid with lust. He’s a brute, stinking of musk, pulsing with heat. They’re beasts that have chanced upon each other, nothing more. They greet first with their eyes, barely daring to blink lest a weakness be revealed, or a secret betrayed. Three ragged breaths pass before an uneasy truce sighs down over them. They already know each other’s secrets. They are each other’s weakness. They pore over one another, but learn nothing they hadn’t already known.

He sees the frisson in her fingers and senses his own trembling in sympathy. He rubs his arms, brushes at the ghosts of spiders past and future. 

She itches only on the inside, but it grows every second. Her bottom lip catches the rhythm of her hands. She blinks moistly and it weakens his knees.

He moves first, squeezing the air out from between them, ducking his head until he’s level with her throbbing eyes. He sniffs, a smooth and lengthy pull, hauling in the scents of her hair, her skin, her tremulous breath. He searches for any trace of threat, some other bull’s musk. His blood squeals urgently, petulantly in his ears, demands that he mark her as his own.

He prowls around her skinny, static frame, hoarding her essence. His breath gains momentum as he nears her hair, her shoulders, the feathery curls under her arms. He drops to his knees and grasps at the air around the small bump of her belly. He scrapes a path in the carpet as he orbits her pelvis, gnawing the atmosphere of her slender bottom, her bony hips. Before long he’s right where he fears he’ll lose himself.

She fills his vision. Her dark, thick bush seems to expand before him and he crams his nose with her scent. Like an animal. She courses through his body at the speed of blood, but it doesn’t fill him up. It just pools in his groin and weighs him down.

He twists his eyes closed and falls, finds his humanity swimming around her ankles. He drinks it back in with the smell of kept feet. Sweat and leather. Thick socks and skin.

He pushes away from the floor, sends himself back up into the stance that evolution has forced upon him. His head feels frothy. His blood, so insistent only moments before, weakens to a mere whisper as it claws back up to his heart. He staggers and almost regresses before his mind sops up enough blood to stiffen his spine.

He swallows heavily as she moves in to return his greeting.

Monstrous Obsession

by Giselle Renarde

This fortnight's topic is personal demons. Since I'm practically perfect in every way (HA!) I guess I'll just have to post an excerpt from my demonic possession novella Monstrous Obsession.

Artemis has never relied on a man for anything. When she moves in with her biker boyfriend, she worries she’s losing her independence. The moment she sets foot inside Budd’s big house, she realizes something demonic lives there. Artemis needs help. Can she learn to accept it from the man who loves her... before it's too late?

Until Budd turned out the lights, the atmosphere in the bedroom felt safe and protected.  Once darkness had fallen, all bets were off.  He slept on his side, facing away from her, and she wished he’d roll over, take her in his arms.

Artemis had never, in her entire life, felt so alone.

On top of the aching loneliness, she knew it was watching.  She didn’t know what it was, but she sensed its presence in the room, like a haze. Not a visible mist or fog, but dense, hot energy.  The force made it hard to breathe.  And moving?  That was out of the question.  Its haunting presence held her down.

In her mind, she asked, “Who are you?  What do you want?”

She heard him laughing.  He was inside her head, hearing her thoughts and feeling her fear.  Never in her life had she felt so invaded.

“Get out of me,” she said, panicking, struggling to move. “Get out!”

The laughter grew more resonant, until it vibrated in her belly.  It wasn’t just an impression on her mind anymore.  He’d found a way inside her body.

“Get out!”

This time, instead of laughing, the creature spoke from deep inside her. “Darling, I’m just getting started.”

Just getting started?  What was that supposed to mean?

Before the monstrous entity could offer any clue, it rose from her body like morning mist burning off an open field.

And then the room went quiet.

Not an eerie quiet.  Not a scary quiet.  Just a silent night beside her boyfriend quiet.  No suggestion of anything malevolent.  The air cleared so thoroughly she wondered if she’d imagined it all.  Really, she had no reasonable proof the creature existed.  Maybe she was scared of life with Budd and Vincent, and fear created monsters in her mind.

Artemis sat up, feeling more than a little proud of herself.  She’d defeated a psychological demon.  Good for her! 

Hopping out of bed, she tossed Budd’s T-shirt over her head and went to the bathroom for a midnight pee.  Mmm… his top smelled like him, and she savoured the scent as she grabbed a wad of toilet paper.  When she wiped… well, that was weird.  Why was she so wet down there?  And not pee-wet.  Arousal wet.  It just kept coming.

Artemis gave up and walked back to the bedroom, feeling slick between the thighs.  Very weird.  Not that she had trouble getting turned on, just that her arousal was usually inspired by… well, something.

When she arrived at the bedroom door, Budd sat up against the headboard.

“Sorry,” Artemis said.  “Did I wake you?”

The atmosphere changed in an instant.  An intense dread knotted in the pit of her stomach.  The bedroom made her dizzy, like if she stepped inside she’d get swept into a vortex.

“Budd?” she called to the shadow in bed.  “Are you okay, babe?”

His eyes flashed a venomous red, and Artemis shrieked.  Her impulse was to run far, far away, but her feet wouldn’t move.  They were like blocks of concrete, trapping her in the doorway. Her heart refused to beat.  If she could just keep quiet, maybe she’d become invisible. 

Maybe…

The dark form leapt from their bed, and she tried to see Budd beyond it, but no… the creature closing in on her was Budd.  He heaved his huge arms around her and lifted her off the ground.

“Budd? What are you doing?”  Artemis wouldn’t normally have been afraid of her boyfriend, but this wasn’t her boyfriend. “Put me down.”

The breath on her neck blazed hot as hell.  It smelled like decomposition. Artemis kicked her feet, but no use.  Her toes didn’t even touch the floor.  This thing, whatever it was, had gotten inside Budd. It was using his massive strength against her, and she had a terrifying feeling she knew what came next.

“Stop struggling,” said a voice that wasn’t Budd’s.  Its depths resonated inside her belly, and she tried not to feel that feeling, but she couldn’t help it.  She couldn’t keep him out.  “Hold still.”

He tossed her on the bed, which should have spelled escape, but once she was facedown on the crumpled comforter, she couldn’t move.  Her muscles froze, hands on either side of her head, legs off the bed, feet on the floor.  Her ass stuck straight up in the air…

“Stop it,” she said in her mind, because the words wouldn’t come out her mouth.  “Let me go.  Let Budd go.”

She didn’t know what kind of force she was communicating with, but she knew it wasn’t good. It disregarded her plea and pulled up the hem of Budd’s T-shirt.  “Let’s get a look at your pussy.”

Budd pushed her legs so far apart her hips popped.  The hands were Budd’s, but the touch wasn’t.  She knew what it felt like when he stroked her, when he caressed her.  And it wasn’t this.

When his fingers entered her from behind, her pussy clamped.  He was rough with her.  The way he jammed those fingers—how many, two?—in her cunt made her feel like her body was public property.  It wasn’t hers anymore.  She had no say over what happened to it, what entered it.  The monster made that decision.

In her mind, he said, “You must have been waiting for me.  I’ve never felt such a wet and ready pussy.”

“Stop touching me,” she pleaded, though she still couldn’t speak.

“Why?”  The demonic voice echoed not only through her body, but around the room.  “Your nasty little snatch is begging for it.”

“Who are you?” she asked, desperately.

“Me?”  He feigned innocence.  “Why, I’m your loving boyfriend, Budd.  Don’t you recognize me, Artemis?”

“You’re not Budd,” she growled.  Why couldn’t she move?  Why couldn’t she raise her foot off the ground and kick him in the balls?  “Budd would never treat me this way.”

“No?”  The creature cackled as it removed Budd’s big fingers from between her legs.  “And I’m sure you’d never lie to your loving boyfriend.”

“Of course I wouldn’t lie to him.”  Artemis tried with all her might to escape the monster’s mental clutches, but she couldn’t move a muscle.  She couldn’t even cry.  “Let me go.  Let me move!”

The nameless monster found her pussy with… what was that?  Budd’s cock.  Yes, she recognized the sensation.  He slid Budd’s cockhead the length of her slick, wet pussy lips.  When it connected with her clit, she gasped.  She didn’t want to feel good at a time like this, but her body insisted.

“Oh god!”  She tried to bite her bottom lip, but she couldn’t even do that. “Stop it.”

“You said you were ragging,” the monster chuckled.  “I don’t see any blood between your legs.”

Artemis felt her cheeks prickle.

“You lied to your boyfriend.”

What could she say?  The monster was right.  “I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“And you had to lie?”

Rage surged through Artemis’s chest.  “It’s your damn fault.  You licked me!  You made me feel gross.  So don’t go blaming me, you bastard.  You fearful, cowardly bastard who won’t even tell me your goddamn name!”

“My name?”  He spoke gently, but grabbed her hips, rough as a lumberjack.  “My name is Budd.  I’m your boyfriend.”

“No you’re not!”

His cockhead throbbed at the entrance to her cunt, and the longer he waited to fuck her, the more her engorged pussy grasped it.  Her cunt couldn’t distinguish between the real Budd and this disgusting creature pretending to be him. 

“Your pussy is drooling for cock,” the monster said, mocking her.

“That’s not my fault,” she begged.  “It thinks you’re Budd.  It doesn’t know the difference.”

“But, Artemis…”  One hand trailed slowly across her back, sending shivers down her spine.  “I am Budd.”

He didn’t hesitate after that.  Lurching between her legs, he thrust Budd’s cock inside her waiting cunt. Her traitorous body accepted him with open arms.

“Oh, you like this.  I can tell.”  The creature controlling her boyfriend dipped his swollen tip inside her, dabbling in the shallows, teasing.  “Ooh, your pussy’s grasping for more, sucking me in.  And you said you didn’t want me tonight.”

“I don’t want you,” Artemis screamed, in her head.  “I don’t want you ever.  Let go of me and let go of my boyfriend.”

“That’s not what you want,” the monster said, in almost a soothing tone. “You want more.”

He slammed Budd’s cock in her cunt so hard she found her voice—her real voice—and screamed loud enough that it echoed through the house.

“Now, now.  Don’t wake the neighbours.”

The monster bashed Budd’s body into hers again, jerking her thighs against the side of the mattress.  “Oww, stop!  It hurts!”

This time, the words came out of her mouth. Actual, real words!  She could speak!

“Pain is just the beginning.”  The creature controlling her boyfriend punished her pussy with that hard-to-handle cock.  Budd’s front bashed against her butt so hard she’d be bruised inside and out, come morning.  “Well, now, look at this gaping asshole.”

“No,” she said, desperately.  “No, no, no.  I mean it.”

Didn’t matter what she said.  He wasn’t about to stop.  Drawing pussy juice up from below, he shoved Budd’s thumb in her ass.

“Don’t!” she screamed, but her body was saying something different.

The monster cackled.  “Your asshole is sucking my thumb!  What do you make of that?”

“It doesn’t know what it’s doing,” Artemis cried.  After all this time, there were tears in her eyes.  Finally!  “Stop it.  Please stop!”

“But you like it.  Your body’s telling me so.  It’s telling me it wants more.”

“Don’t listen to my body. Listen to me.”

He shoved a second thumb in her hole.  How was he doing that?  Budd’s fingers were huge!  Artemis screamed as he opened her ass, stretched it wide.  And then he leaned forward and spit in it, spit in her ass.  The slick glob landed right inside, spreading heat down her blazing hole.

“No,” she said, firmly.  “Don’t do it.  I’m serious.  I don’t want it.”

“Not even from your loving boyfriend, Budd?” the monster teased.

“You’re not my boyfriend.”  Artemis struggled to move, but it was no use.  “You think you can fool me?  Well, I know Budd.  You are definitely not him.”

“Oh, ye of little faith…” 

The creature in Budd’s body slid that thick dick from her pussy. It sprang up, like it knew just where to go next.

“Please don’t.”  She was serious.  Budd’s dick was too big.  “Don’t do it.  You’ll hurt me.”

Who was she kidding?  She already more hurt than she’d ever hurt in her life—psychologically, if not physically.  She struggled to get away from him, but she was stuck.  Absolutely couldn’t move.

“It’ll only hurt for a moment,” the monster said, and spit again.  “Then, it’ll feel… you’ll see.”

“I don’t want to see.”  She tried to kick, but nothing happened.  “I don’t want to!”

Budd’s thumbs tugged her asshole wider, and they didn’t let go until he’d lodged his slick cockhead inside.

Then he let go.

When his thumbs disappeared, the elastic ring of her anus closed around Budd’s pulsing cockhead.  She could feel his heartbeat in her ass, and it throbbed wildly—nothing like Budd’s usual regulated pulse.  After falling asleep so many times with her head on his massive chest, she knew what she should hear.  But that creature definitely had a hold on Budd’s heart, forcing it to behave as wildly as his body.

He pushed forward, driving his mushroom head past the tight spot.  It’s not like Artemis had never been fucked up the ass before.  She had.  But by smaller cocks. Artemis shrieked when the monster rammed Budd’s too-big erection deeper inside her asshole.  She wasn’t ready for it.  She’d never be ready for a fuck like this.  Budd was a huge, hulking guy on the outside, but, inside, he was a teddy bear. He’d never just take her.  He’d stop if she said no.

Now it didn’t matter how much she begged and pleaded.  There was a monster controlling Budd’s body, and that disgusting, perverted thing would take whatever it wanted.

“It hurts,” Artemis said, as Budd’s cock stretched her ass to its limits.  “You have to stop. Please!”

“It’ll hurt just as much coming out,” the creature reasoned.  “Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”

“How could I ever enjoy this?” Artemis screamed.  With every word, her ass clamped harder around Budd’s generous shaft.  God help her, it actually felt good.  Not that she’d tell him that.

Of course, she didn’t have to.  The creature could read her mind.  He said, “See?  I told you you’d like it.”

“I don’t like it,” she snapped.  “I hate it.  I hate you, whoever you are.”

“You’ll love me, soon enough.”  He laughed, and his laughter was a wild thing tearing her body, streaking through it as forcefully as Budd’s dick rammed her ass.  “It won’t take long, my darling.  Soon you’ll beg for more.”

“No, I won’t.”  Artemis spilled tears all over the comforter, and not because her ass felt like it was being assaulted by a red-hot poker… because she held such a tenuous grasp on her hatred. “Please!”

“Please what?” the monster asked, like a challenge, like it knew instinctively what she desired.  “Please fuck you harder?  Is that what you want, darling?”

It gave her a chill when he called her darling, but he’d been right when he said it would only hurt at first.  Well, that wasn’t exactly true.  Her asshole ached. It wasn’t used to being stretched so wide.  But…

“Oh god.”  Artemis dried her tears on the bedspread.  She gulped in desperate breaths as he rammed.  “I can’t… oh god!”

“You can’t what?” he growled.  “Can’t breathe?  Can’t move?  Can’t keep yourself from coming?”

She whined into the tear-stained comforter. She didn’t want it to feel so good, but Budd’s body was her favourite plaything, whoever controlled it.

Budd’s hands grasped her hips much harder than they normally would.  She’d be bruised all over, and Budd would probably ask how it happened. 

How could she tell her boyfriend he’d fucked her ass without knowing it?  He’d think she was crazy.

“Come on my crack,” she cried, as the monster rubbed Budd’s palms up and down her cheeks.  He reached under her, then.  Reached under Budd’s T-shirt and squeezed her tits so hard it hurt.  “Oh god!  I’m ready.  I want it all over my skin.”

“I knew you’d come around.” He pulled Budd’s swollen dick from her poor, tortured asshole.

He was right.  It hurt coming out, though not as badly as it had going in.  When his cockhead got close to her ass ring, she clamped down hard, trapping him inside.  It felt so good when she milked that thick dick that she didn’t stop.  She just kept stroking his fat tip with her ass ring until her body burst into climax.

The monster panted.  “You’ll make this weak body come.”

“This one too,” Artemis confessed.

She’d never reached orgasm through anal penetration, but there was a first time for everything.

“Oh god!”  She tried throwing her ass back into the saddle of his hips, but the only muscles she could control were the ones in her mouth and her ass.  “I’m coming.  I’m coming.  I’m… OH!”

Just as her body buzzed with the rampant sizzle of orgasm, a familiar voice emerged from behind Budd’s naked body.

“What did I tell you pervs about closing the door?”  Vincent slammed it shut.  The monstrous spell must have broken in that split second, because Artemis was able to turn entirely around.  As her robe swung on the door’s hook, Vincent shouted, “And keep your voices down.  I could hear you from the lawn.”

“Shit,” Artemis said, though she was so confounded she didn’t know what to think.

Budd gazed at her in the moonlight, his eyes shimmering with humanity and confusion. “What happened?”  He looked down at his naked body.  “Did we have sex?”

Artemis nodded.

“I was asleep, I guess.”  Budd chuckled.  “I don’t remember a second of it.  Was it good?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “It was… yeah, it was really good.”