cross me over

@notchainedtotrauma bullied me into saying nice things about my writing, so here are ten of my favorite lines/paragraphs that I’ve ever written, ever.

You can read all these stories on FLUORESENSITIVE, my website.

(1) LAVENDERS: So desperately do I wish to be this man, this shapeless and awkward stranger. I want to be the reflection, not the source, but the mirror is distorted, and anyways, I cannot see myself in fine silver.

(2) PICTURED: MARY MAGDALENE AT THE TOMB: Where did she go? wondered Janine. She went here. She went here, to her bedroom, and she was an extraordinary girl with an extraordinary mind. Janine expected for there to be an overabundance of religious imagery, but there is nearly none. Atalanta lived very simply—her bed with its soft sheets and blanket, her dresser with her modest clothes, her nightstand heavy with the miscellany of teenagers. There were some posters on her wall—some of a Korean boyband she liked, a clipping of the Sacred Heart, and a flyer taped above her bed announcing the time and place for auditions for the Catholic school’s production of ‘Grease.’ A smile touched Janine’s lips. She remembered Atalanta coming to her with the script, pestering her to sing “You’re The One That I Want” with her and then, realizing she didn’t have the range to play Sandy, switching over to Rizzo’s “There Are Worse Things I Can Do.”

(3) JUST A LITTLE SNACK: [The two of them left an hour later, her mother with advice to keep in touch with Dr. Ojo, and Diane with a handful of pointed remarks about prioritizing herself, resisting strange urges. The moment after she closed the door behind them, Heather returned to the living room, straightened couch and throw pillows, rearranged the magazines on the coffee table. She fiddled with the strings of corduroy on the central sofa. Centered a picture. Then, finally, Heather removed her gloves and bit her left-hand pinky finger down to the knuckle. ]

(4) IN WHICH TWO WOMEN KILL A MAN: [And all the while as Fillion waited and waited for the girl to come and finish him off, he hoped and wished for her to be terrified of him. To be afraid of it; the act of killing, the grim and joyless reality of execution. He hoped the affair would turn her oh-so-delicate stomach, that her hands would tremble as she cut him. She’d have no crowd to cheer her on, no doctor at hand to revive her with smelling salts if she fainted. A woman, thought Mr. Fillion, should be little more like paper, thin and easily transformed. If he must die at the hand of one of these creatures, let her be a waif. Let her arms quaver, let her lose her supper and fall weak at the sight of his black and brackish blood free-flowing over her pale hands. If it must be a bitch, good God, let it be a mild one. ]

(5) BLUEBEARD: Her final entry said, I think about the other women he’s had, if they were all his wives or girlfriends or lovers, or just women he picked up for the thrill of it. I think of him going into town, even now, and watching the streets for his next kill. I think I am Bluebeard’s wife, looking into the lock and seeing nothing but red.