Tooth and Claw: Chapter Five, part two

Prologue; Chapter Five, part one

                Jerry and Keira dine in silence.  Their son has left for dinner with friends, and Jerry’s smartphone monitors his every movement with the in-plan tracking service from their provider.  The device is tilted against an unlit candleholder on the dining room table – Jerry watches a dot, color-coded for “Virgil” according to the legend, move South through the North Las Vegas streets.  They’re going to the McDonald’s on Bonanza, about a mile away.

                “Yeah, sure,” Jerry had said wearily when Virgil asked if he could go, after providing the details (who was driving – “Ryan’s mom” – who would be there – “Ryan and Chris and Billy from school” – how long they’d be gone – “I don’t know, dinner-ish time?”).  It was good for him to be around friends, and the empty house left his parents time to process their own emotions.  Win-win.

                Except all Jerry could do was watch the screen of his smartphone, scrutinizing the luminous display for any sign of trouble.  And all Keira could do was watch her husband, scrutinizing his illuminated countenance for any sign of worry.

                They had developed something of an unspoken agreement for avoiding eye contact during meals:  Keira would look down at her plate to take a bite, and Jerry would look at her.  Then, when Jerry looked down to take a bite from his own plate, Keira would hear the scraping of utensil against dish and look at him.  Virgil had sat across from Della, and so was able to look straight ahead through phantom blinders – focusing on the kitchen island one moment, the stove the next, the clock on the wall after that, then the refrigerator, and back to the island – anything but the empty chair right in front of him.

                Jerry and Keira did not avoid eye contact because they blamed each other for the death of their firstborn – quite the opposite, in fact.  They each felt singularly responsible, and neither could bear to look the other in the eye.  It was only in bed, in the dark, that they would honestly turn to each other for comfort:  the day’s long labor done, they drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms.

                The killing irony was this:  if Della could have seen the desperate rift her absence had torn through the family, she would have instantly repented of every insipid, entitled thought about “specialness” she’d ever had.  Doubly so, had she also heard the sobs and speeches at her funeral, seen the tear-streaked faces at her vigil.  She had left a Della-shaped hole in the lives of her friends and family, and the only reason she couldn’t see its size and importance was because she had gotten used to living in it every day of her life.

                Virgil’s phone turns East from North Pecos Road onto Bonanza, and there they are at McDonald’s.  Good.  Jerry breathes a sigh of relief as Keira watches; she then looks down to cut a tender bite of grilled salmon steak that she could swear tastes exactly like hot buttered cardboard.  Right on cue, Jerry looks up and says, “They’re at McDonald’s, safe and sound.”  Keira nods as she chews, swallows.

                “Good,” she says, raising her head as Jerry sections off some rice pilaf with his fork.  “Thanks for the update.”

Tooth and Claw: Chapter Five, part one

Hey, folks!  I haven't quite finished it all, but it's been a few days, so I figure I ought to at least post what I've got.  Here that is.  I'm also at 22K words (22,417, to be exact), so maybe I ought to save something if I want to have anything to do during National Novel Writing Month!  (I won't cheat, my goal will be to write 50,000 new words during November.  That will count and everything, I promise!)

Prologue, Chapter Four

                Della lands flat on her back with an indelicate thump.  Rage reaches up from her throat, but she squeezes her eyes shut and chokes it back down.  She shakes her head to clear it, opens her eyes, and sees Jamie reaching down to offer her a hand up.  She takes it, and is pulled swiftly back to her feet.

                “OK,” Jamie says, “What happened there?”

                “You knocked me down.”

                “But how?”

                “You – ” Della pauses.  She had thrown a punch, but then her foot – of course.  “When I stepped forward to punch, you pushed my foot even farther with yours.  That put me off-balance, so you only had to do a little to knock me down.”

                “Right.  Now come at me again.”

                Della smoothes out her gi, takes a deep breath, and drops into her stance.  She and Jamie begin to circle each other in the ring.  Della pays closer attention to her footing – in order to close and strike, she needs to first commit with her foot, unless she can draw Jamie out.  So she hadn’t thrown a punch and then her foot was moved, she had stepped to punch but was interrupted before she could even swing.  OK, so do better next time.

                Della steps in with her right foot, a straight punch on its way – Jamie once again goes to kick it out with her own leading right foot, but Della has feinted.  Instead of putting her foot down, she lifts her knee and turns her hips for a roundhouse kick.  Before she can snap, though, Jamie pops a single knuckle into her quadriceps, right above the knee.  Della’s leg goes wobbly, and Jamie slides in, her left biceps under Della’s leg and her right elbow coming to a halt within two inches of Della’s face.  Dell’s eyes go wide, then Jamie lifts her leg a tad more and dumps her on her back again.

                “And there,” Jamie asks after helping Della up once more.  “What was that?”

                “You hit my leg,” Della says, replaying the exchange in her mind.  “And it stunned me, so you moved in.”

                “Good.  So, try again.”

                Della smoothes out her gi, takes a deep breath, and drops into her stance again.  She and Jamie begin to circle each other once more.  So it’s not just my footing, she’s got a second line of defense.  Della waits until just before Jamie is mid-stride – an easy task, as she is stepping slowly and steadily – then darts in with a quick right jab, feinting again.  Jamie goes to block it, but blocks across her body with her own right hand, so Della follows up with a left hook.  Jamie blocks high, easily, her right arm already in position – exposing her torso to a left roundhouse kick.  Just as Della had planned.  But as Della turns her hips, Jamie steps in with her left foot and shoves an open left palm right into the joint where Della’s left femur meets her pelvis, sending her off balance again.  Della recovers, though, and reaches for Jamie’s gi.  The two grapple briefly, and Della kicks out one of Jamie’s legs, then sends her tumbling to the mat – and then Della is pulled right along with, watching in slow motion as Jamie tumbles smoothly out of the throw and sends Della to the mat face-first.  The holds are released, and Jamie helps Della up yet again.

                “OK,” Della says.  “I got it.  Learning how to take a fall, learning how to step, learning how to place your hands – yeah, I got it.  They’re all important.  Fine.”

                “Good,” Jamie says with a  nod.  “Shall we continue the lesson, then?”

                “Yes.  Please.”

"Desserts got nothin' to do with it."

This was a thing I was going to post a couple Christmases ago.  I decided not to.  But then a friend posted something that made me think of it... so here it is.

Tooth and Claw: Update!

Added two pages to chapter four, because I remembered that Hey!  I was gonna cover Elias' initiation.  Then I went and didn't.  Stupid.  S'all better now.  :)  You can Ctrl+F for "apology accepted" if you don't remember where the last version ended.

Ugh.  I'm starting to hate Della.  Mainly because of stupid teenage angst - not that the specifics are hitting close to home, just the general idea that the world owes me something.  You had that feeling as a teenager, right?  Going back to that just makes me feel... dumb, I guess.  The sheer ease with which I can dredge it up makes me feel like I haven't made much progress after all, so of course I take it out on a fictional character (that makes me even more grown-up, right?).

One of these next two chapters will be back to Della and some bloodkin secrets and stuff; the other will be about Hunters.  It comes down to how much time I feel like narrating over.  We're just getting to June, so the next bit with Ferraille won't be for another like three weeks (book time).  I just have a little more background to lay before things get into full swing.

Oh, also:  fun things that I felt stupid linking at the time, but totally have to tell someone about otherwise they don't count.  There's a freakin' place called "Hellhole" in West Virginia, I looked up a list of caves then opened up tabs on the ones with the coolest names and then picked the one with the best features (namely, "not fully explored").  Hellhole was the one that fit the bill.  Yay!

Plus, the Olympic torch really did go out.  It turns out that this happens a lot, actually.  They carry spares and everything.  One of the times it went out was due to water (on a river, of all places!), but I picked one where it was just wind, and it happened to work out.  Yay again!

Even better, there actually was an eclipse the day before the torch went out.  I found this out because I was like, "Hmm, I need to put something here in this part, what would've happened in their storyline the day before?  Let's see, what moon phase was it?  Oh, there was an eclipse!"  Yay again, again!  It's like the damn Universe wants this book to be written, and it's just throwing material in my face.

Also, the meteor crater is a real place, known as Barringer Crater.  I have been there, it is awesome in the literal sense of "gives you some awe to ponder."  They have the Holsinger meteorite just out on display, it's not secured or anything (because it weighs 1,440 lbs, or 650 kg), you can touch it and everything.  I believe they called them (the meteorites) "diablo stones," because of the nearby Canyon Diablo, but I might be making that up (plus, Googling "diablo stone" gets you all kinds of irrelevant shit).  So I go and look the place up to build the pack's territory around it, and I see that it's right near Winslow, Arizona - and I just had to go for the stealth pun/reference.  I had to.  (Also, I decided to make Elias a trail guide before I looked up the town, and Google-maps-ing Winslow puts you right at the intersection near the Old Trails Museum, which was a little too convenient...)

OK, that's enough outta me.  Bedtime!

Tooth and Claw: Chapter Four

Prologue, Chapter Three

                A little over a week past his first journey into the Spirit Wild, Elias Rodham was going through some changes of his own.  He had not been overweight, since his job was to lead hikes in the desert (supplemented by a small woodcarving business he had on the side), but he had certainly been soft since his only real exercise was long walks with light gear.  Now he went running with the pack every evening, always with Uma and Tajo, usually with Carter and Willy as well.  Every other night, he would lift weights at the gym which Carter owned and where Willy worked.  The changes were slight, shy of two weeks in, but noticeable thanks to the intensity of his training regimen.

                All in all, he was happier; living somehow felt more alive, everything seemed more vivid even when he wasn’t in the Wild.  The joie de vivre he seemed to have lost during his teenage years, gradually replaced by the resigned boredom of adulthood, was back with a vengeance.

                Now it was Thursday, the thirty-first of May.  The Moon was gibbous, Rufio’s moon, soon to be handed down to Elias.  Tonight, in fact; and then Elias would be going through changes of another kind entirely.

Lineages and Stuff!

I started writing another chapter in Tooth and Claw, after tacking on another half-page to the last chapter which didn't quite feel finished, but I got distracted.  Distracted by what?  Well, a few things.  There was this comment thread over on Daylight Atheism, and there was a Facebook conversation that I got tied up in, and another Facebook conversation that resulted in an email.

For those who might be wondering, I follow the "Can I Punch You in the Face?" rule for Facebook.  This rule follows the question, "Have I ever had the opportunity to punch you in the face?"  If so, we can be friends on Facebook.  If not, we cannot be friends on Facebook.  If I've been able to punch you in the face, and wanted to friend you on Facebook, I would have done so by now.  Double-promise.  :)

Anyway.

The tying-up-Facebook conversation was with a Libertarian friend of mine, and he's kind of an asshole, so I'm not gonna bother with that.  But I have hope for him, because he is ruthlessly logical!  (And yet I despair, because his fundamental premises are so flawed!)

The e-mail conversation ended up being to one Doctor Dick Dawkins (the triple D sounds so much better, doesn't it?), and I'll just post it here in its entirety, because I should be getting to bed soon and... well, really, I've grown into a responsible adult and so that's reason enough.  Right?

Tooth and Claw: Chapter Three

Prologue, Chapter Two

                Seven stories underground, Della awakens with a deep breath.  She can feel the changes more and more.  Foremost among them is that she is now acutely aware of her own heartbeat, the “thump-ump, thump-ump” of systole and diastole, and the rhythmic flow of pressure throughout her bloodstream.

                She is also ravenous – not quite hungry, she doesn’t feel so much as a tingle from her stomach, but she is positively desperate to feed.

                Della sits up in bed, turns to set her feet on the carpeted floor.  Faint echoes bounce off the walls and return to meet her ears, subtle sounds she has never heard before.  Her sense of smell is keener, too – she wrinkles her nose at the myriad unfamiliar scents of her own body as she draws back the covers.  She rises to her feet and walks to the small bathroom to set about her morning routine.

                Evening routine, even, she thinks to herself as she brushes her teeth.  Her face was a blurry smear in the mirror, like the glass was distorted wherever she tried to look at herself.

                The simple pleasure of a hot shower is not yet lost on her, though she notices with brief alarm that her sunburn has vanished without a trace.

Company!

Entertaining this weekend.  Next chapter up Monday or Tuesday.  Cheers!

Tooth and Claw: Chapter Two

Prologue, Chapter One

                Uma leans against a lamppost on the corner of 3^rd and Kinsley.  She scratches her jaw just below her right ear, rolls her shoulder a couple times before folding her arms again.  The Sun’s getting to that position in the sky – it’s about closing time.

                She sighs, and it turns into a yawn.

                She stares lazily out at the pedestrians and motorists passing by.  So many people.  So many places to be.  So busy, busy, busy.  She drums her fingers on the biceps of her left arm.  Scuffs at the sidewalk with the thick treads of her dusty trail-running shoes.

                Then she smells something else on the air, under all the exhaust and sweat and sun-baked pavement.  Breathes deeper.  That’s him, no doubt about it.  She looks down toward the Old Trails Museum, sees Elias climbing into his red pickup.  He starts it up, adding his own note to the stinking symphony of the downtown atmosphere.

                Uma unfolds her arms, hooks her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans.  Elias spots her as he pulls up to the corner, turns the steering wheel a little more to his right, and rolls down the passenger window.

                “Well, aren’t you a fine sight to see,” he says.  “Hop on in.”  She cocks an eyebrow at him.

                “Flattery will get you nowhere,” but she climbs in anyway.  “Turn left.  Unless you’ve got someplace better to be.”  She shuts her door and buckles her seatbelt.

                “Not anymore,” he says with a grin, and hits his blinker before turning onto 3^rd Street.

Tooth and Claw: Chapter One

Prologue

                Della Swain walks through the streets of North Las Vegas, her head weighed down with thoughts.  She was trying to draw what happiness she could from the last few days she would be able to enjoy, but her mind turned constantly to how wrong everything in her life was going.

                When she was a child, she had felt special.  Her parents were devoted to her, busy though they were, and she had relished their attention.  She was something extraordinary, then – or so she had felt.  Then her little brother had been born, and she saw with bitter jealousy that they raised him with the same care and attention with which they had raised her.  “Of course you’re still special, my love,” her mother had told her.  “But Virgil is special, too, in his own way.  You both are.”  She found in time that everyone was special to their parents – and if everyone was special, then no one was.

                And so her parents’ love had been stolen from her.  Oh, they still loved her – of course they still loved her – that hadn’t changed.  But what had once seemed to make her special was now tainted with the dulling ordinariness that threatened to swallow everything in her life.  She had read some of the child-rearing books on her parents’ shelves, attended some of the seminars where they learned How to Be Good Parents, and found that no matter who she was, no matter how she turned out, they would have treated her with the same care and love regardless.  “Praise” and “attention” were “positive reinforcements” that were part of a “strategy.”

                That wasn’t special, that was so ordinary it was a slap in her face.

                She went through puberty, and all the attendant changes it brought, and boys had begun to look at her in that special way.  But when she watched more closely, she saw that they looked at other girls in the very same no-longer-special way – not just other girls, but all girls, and men were no different.  That lusty, appraising gaze wasn’t for her, it was simply how men looked at women.  Nothing special there at all.  She got the undeniable impression, whenever a boy would ask her if she was going to a ballgame or a dance, that she wasn’t being asked for who she was but only because she was a girl.  Any girl would do, and that wouldn’t do for Della.  She wasn’t just any girl, and so she made up her mind that no boy looking for any girl would stand a chance with her.

                Nevertheless, the world seemed Hell-bent on treating her like any girl, the same way it treated every girl:  sit down, cross your legs, hands in your lap; don’t speak too loud, it’s unladylike; go here, do this, just like all the other girls.  Wear makeup.  Buy perfume.  Smile.  Just like all the other girls.  She was determined to be unlike all the other girls, but no matter what she did, it seemed that someone else was always doing it, too.  Even the girls who didn’t want to fit in with the “mainstream” managed to fit in with each other, and what was that but another kind of mainstream?  Come on down and be the first to conform to the brandest-newest style of non-conformity!  No matter who you are or what you do, you fit in somewhere, and Della didn’t feel like she fit in anywhere.  You’re into boys?  That’s normal.  You’re into girls?  That’s normal.  You’re into both?  Also normal.  Don’t like either?  Don’t worry – you’re still normal.

                She didn’t want to be normal.  She didn’t want to fit into any category, she wanted to be beyond them.  She wanted to be beyond them all, to be utterly unique, she wanted people to know when they looked at her that she was absolutely unlike anyone else they had ever seen.  But no matter how she dressed, or spoke, or acted, the world always seemed to have yet another place for her to fit in to its horrible, ugly, every-day normal.

Tooth and Claw: Prologue

Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies,

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law –

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek’d against his creed.

 - In Memoriam A.H.H., Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,

While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.

 - Budget of Paradoxes, Augustus De Morgan

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

 - The Nameless City, H.P. Lovecraft

Prologue:

Beginnings from Endings

May 21, 2012

                Thomas Morgan slaps his own face, dragging down his hand with exaggerated care.  A hush falls over the crowd seated opposite him, as if he had struck a gavel and called for order.  Edward Cochran stands, alone, facing his judge; Edward, alone, remains deliberately standoffish.

                “You don’t get it, Edward,” Thomas says at last.  “We have these rules for reasons, reasons which are borne out not only in long-standing tradition, but also in our research literature.  Your callous disregard for our ways and your victim’s well-being has put them both into jeopardy:  now we must deal with the legal ramifications of your actions to protect our way of life, and we must figure out what to do with the young Miss Swain.”

                “I don’t see why she can’t join our society.”

                “That is not the issue, Edward.  Of course Miss Swain will be taken into our care – your foolhardiness has necessitated that already.  But she is in for a difficult life.”

                “Della knew the risks,” Edward replied.  “I explained everything to her.”

                “You told her what she wanted to hear,” Thomas says in a deliberate monotone.

                “Uh, yeah, because it appealed to her in the first place.”  Thomas folds his arms at Edward’s flippant delivery.  “She wanted it.  You can ask her, even now.”

Four and Four: Some Mood-Setting Bits

Not by me, I must say.  But still, inspirational, and/or related.  The first half is an excerpt (OK, four excerpts, but conjoined as one) from an old and epic poem.  The second half is Canadian swing.  Dig it.  :)

In Memoriam A.H.H.
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
(Queen Victoria said that this was her sole comfort, aside from the Bible.
I'm not so sure that's a solid recommendation.
But hey, what do I know?  I just think it's rad.)

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death, and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him:  thou art just

Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.