Selected Excerpts of My Works

Chapter One

Red lights pulsed in the night, bathing the forested back road with harsh hatred.
A police cruiser sat behind a beat-up, blue car that rocked in the headlights. Grunts
and moans came from within. Man’s legs protruded from the backseat, feet grinding
in the dirt, police uniform slacks pooled around his ankles. The man laughed in the
darkness, a heavy metallic smell in the air.

The rocking stopped. The policeman heaved himself from the backseat, his groin
and hands covered in blood. He stuffed a woman’s legs back into the car and closed
the door leaving behind four red smears. In his other hand, he held chains with
charms of various materials and sizes: a woman’s necklaces. The policeman
duck-walked to a bucket filled with sudsy water sitting next to the police cruiser and
cleaned himself, stripping latex gloves from his hands, scrubbing his face, groin, and
arms, careful to remove all traces of her.

When he finished, a fleck of blood still adorned his pale cheek, but he didn’t notice. He pulled his pants up and patted his legs,
smacking dust out of the fabric. After dumping the bloodied water onto the graveled shoulder, he placed the bucket in the trunk,
rubbed his hand over his black, Marine style hair, and got into his cruiser, a sneer plastered to his face. The red dome lights
circled in the darkness, lighting his face with malice. With a satiated sigh, he pulled away from his mess, his taillights diminishing
to pinpricks before disappearing around a bend in the road.

The moon shone down on the abandoned car, the night hiding the dark secret inside. The wind settled and everything was still
and quiet. The air grew heavy and something rumbled in the distance, but it was a rumble felt more than heard.

Then a loud crack split the silence. A dark form materialized, a woman swathed in shadow shifting toward the car, feet
crunching through gravel. Her matted hair untouched by wind, her naked body covered in scars, she moved with the darkness, of
the darkness. At a touch, the passenger-side back door opened. The woman’s legs uncurled from inside covered in blood and
new bruises. The body inside lay motionless, eyes staring. The shadowed woman laid her hands on the legs hanging from the
back seat. The moment she touched the woman’s legs, blinding light seared the night, radiating from inside the car, illuminating
for one brief moment a torn picture on the dashboard of a smiling girl with spiky, black hair and haunted dark eyes. A man’s hand
rested on her shoulder, just inside the tattered edge. And then the light was gone. The shadowed figure stood. As the wind blew,
she became as immaterial as the darkness and vanished. Nothing remained of her presence accept the open car door and the
legs protruding into the night.

Once again, silence pervaded the back road, the only sound the Car’s engine ticking as it cooled. Indifferent stars went on their
nightly course overhead and the trees swayed in a new wind. From the forest, yellow eyes glowed in the shadows between the
trees. The eyes disappeared as a howl cut through the silence, wavering at its peak before it trailed off to mingle with the other
night sounds. A large, gray wolf emerged from the forest and trotted to the car, circled it then rested next to the open back door.
It sniffed the dead woman’s toes then howled again. Several howls came from the trees in response. Five smaller wolves filed
out and took their places around the car. Once they formed a circle, they sat and threw their heads back in unison to howl once
again, the dominant male’s howl lasting longer and louder than the others’. They grumbled and growled and huffed air out their
cheeks. A chant with almost recognizable words and meaning. The largest wolf’s fur glistened in the moonlight, rippling with a
light of its own. The leader’s eyes remained fixed on the woman’s toes hovering above the ground, dripping blood. The toes
twitched. The wolves stood and walked back to the forest.

The woman’s toes twitched again, making her leg jerk.

Blood dripped from the backseat of the car, soaking into the gravel on the shoulder. The blood came from between the dead
woman’s cold legs, saturating the cushion she died on. Her torn shirt exposed her breasts. Hand shaped bruises marred her flesh.
Semi-circle wounds covered her belly and shoulders. A gash on the side of her head oozed, the blood cold and tacky. On her left
ear, a silver rose dangled, entangled in her spiky hair. The right lobe split and smeared red, matching earring gone. Her arms
rested above her head, crossed at bruised wrists.

But her face, dark and haunted, was unmarred. Vacant eyes gazed at nothing, glazed with death's kiss. The shadows cast from
moonlight made her face a foreign landscape, her pointed nose a possible mountain, her lips the foothills, eye sockets the
valleys. Black makeup caked her eyes and streaked down her face in tear stains. Her slack mouth exposed a small overbite,
white teeth gleaming in the dark.

Camilla sat up and screamed, a drawn out, whistling sound.

“Get off me, get off me!”

Body tense, she splayed her arms to either side, bracing herself against the seats, drawing her knees to her chest. She pushed
herself against the closed door. Darting glances out the back window, the open door, the windshield, over her shoulder, moaning
deep in her throat, the girl pawed her face, head, breasts, legs.

"Where is he?" she whispered. She checked the windows again and murmured to herself, her voice high, strained, the words
spilling over one another, eyes still searching. "Where's the cop?” No red lights, no cruiser. Quiet. All around. Alone in the dark.

She felt her chest and neck. “My necklaces. Took my necklaces.” Breath coming in harsh gasps, she moaned deep in her throat,
the precursor to tears. But she wouldn’t cry, now. Tears were useless, now.

She fluttered her fingers over the cut in her head and winced. She felt her breasts and cringed and then her fingers slipped to
the place between her legs still bleeding. Her fingers slipped inside a slit much larger than it should be, made larger by the cop’s
knife. As she pulled her fingers out of herself and looked at the bloody mucous draped over her fingers like string, she shuddered,
remembering his grin as he cut her open. She pulled her torn shirt around her, leaving bloody smears on the white fabric and
scrambled for her pants, hands shaking so badly that it took her a couple tries before she could get her feet into the correct holes.

"I’m alive,” she whispered.

She scrambled between the two front seats, eyes wide, leaving red traces of herself on the upholstery and plopped into the
driver’s seat. She didn’t dare venture outside. Not after what happened. The scent of cherries wafted around her as she turned
the key in the ignition with a shaky hand. The car wouldn’t start. Slamming her palms into the steering wheel, she screamed,
“No, no, no!” After a minute, she got control of herself and took a deep breath.

“Okay.” She looked out the window. “Okay, okay, okay.” She took three short breaths the way women do when giving birth just
before pushing. With her last breath held, she opened the car door and stepped into the windy night. Still. Waiting. Listening. No
one there but her.

“Okay,” she said again. Blood soaked her jeans. She looked at her crotch and touched the fabric. Wet. She needed help, or she
would die. There was a town up ahead. She could hitchhike. Maybe no one would notice all the blood in the dark. Or maybe they
would and know she needed help. Either way, she needed to get to a hospital.

She walked away from her car, surprised by the lack of pain between her legs. So much blood. She was probably in shock. Her
jeans squelched and felt disgusting. Rocks bit into her naked feet. Her duffle bag, full of clothes, sat on the floorboards, forgotten.
She hugged her body. Her open shirt fluttered in the wind. Bloody footprints marked her passage. Headlights stabbed through the
darkness as a car approached from behind. The first car in hours. She stuck out her thumb and stopped walking, turning toward
the vehicle, a half smile on her face, eyes lit. The driver didn’t even slow down. A look of shock on her face, her hand dropped
and smacked her leg in its descent.

“Fuck!” She kicked the ground leaving a red smudge in the dirt. “Dammit!” She hugged her chest, covering her breasts and
shuffled on. Her small, slow steps didn’t get her very far. How long was this back road, anyway? She passed a couple dark houses
and what appeared to be a boarded up market, but nothing else.

The sun rose and set on two days. Camilla took to twisting her belly button ring up and down as she walked, shoulders hunched,
head drooping. Her matted, black hair stuck out at odd angles, the gel she’d used to style her hair from days before still there,
holding the basic shape of her textured spikes. Another car approached from behind. She didn’t raise her thumb, but instead
extended her middle finger at the dwindling taillights. She’d had too many cars pass without stopping for her to get excited
anymore.

She stopped and thought back over how long she’d been walking. Her brown eyes lost their focus as she looked inward, her lips
moving as she counted under her breath. “Three nights,” she whispered. Three nights without stopping. She’d been shuffling
along this back road without rest, without food. The town looked a lot closer on the map. How long until she came to civilization?
She looked around the ground then into the forest. “I should be resting.” She stepped off the shoulder and toward the forest in
search of a place to sit.

Finding a mossy patch at the base of a tree, she reclined, back against the rough bark. The darkness swarmed around her,
choking out the light, but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes, heaved heavy sighs, and shuddered. Her body tensed as she tried
to relax, back arched, neck straight, head against the tree. Camilla wrapped her hands around her knees and hugged them close
to her chest causing more blood to ooze from between her legs to soak through her jeans, staining the moss beneath her.

Bats chirped, insects buzzed, wind soughed through the trees. She closed her eyes, listening. Then a different noise caught her
attention. Heavy breathing next to her cheek and the smell of thick air, rotten breath. She opened her eyes and gasped. Large,
golden eyes stared into hers. The wolf panted then growled and took a step back. It sat two feet in front of her, its tongue lolling,
tail batting the ground, and threw its head back ululating into the dark, the sound echoing around them.

Camilla screamed and clapped her hands over her ears.

Five other wolves lunged from the trees and nipped at her. She flinched away and yipped like a pup every time they got close
enough to bite, but they didn’t touch her. Then they stopped and sat, watching her. She stared at them, panting, calming herself
down. They began grumbling and huffing and growling. She scrunched her eyebrows and cocked her head listening. There were
words in those grumbles, words telling her to get going.

“Okay,” she said, and stood up. The large one snapped at her ankles, its teeth grazing her enough to hurt but not enough to
draw blood. “I’m going,” she said, no longer afraid. The wolves watched as she walked back to the road. Once she reached the
road, the wolves walked back into the shadows. The night ended as the sky grew lighter in the west.

After less than a mile, she saw what they said would be there. Just over the next hill, a city sprawled beneath her, only a few
miles downhill. She ambled along, glancing over her shoulders every once in a while. She no longer tried to hide her breasts
with the tattered remains of her shirt, her mind on finding a hospital rather than concealing her nakedness.

Morning-gray lit the sky from behind the city, marking the start of her third day walking. She smiled for the first time in a few
days as she made good time going down the hill. Soon, she would get the help she needed. A question flitted through her
mind—why hadn’t she bled out yet; why wasn’t she dead?—but she pushed it away knowing it did no good to think on these
things. Her pants squished as she shuffled toward town. The smell of cold hung in the air.

In the city, streetlights cast orange pools on the sidewalk. She walked through the cream -cicle glow of each pool as she
followed the road signs directing her toward the hospital. The sleeping town nestled around her. It didn’t take her long to reach
the hospital. In front of it, she stopped and stared. The building was two stories high. She looked down at her bloodied jeans. A
mess. She hugged her breasts again when she noticed people moving around inside.

“I made it,” she whispered. A man walked past her in the parking lot. There she stood, bleeding, clothes in tatters, and he didn’t
even ask if she needed help, didn’t act alarmed, just acted like she didn’t exist. She glared at his back and sighed. Something
was severely wrong with people in this area. Were they demented? No one seemed to care about a woman covered in blood
standing mostly naked in the road. She walked across the parking lot without pause, head held high, shoulders back.

“I won’t cry,” she said and took a deep breath. “Be strong Camilla. You’re a big girl. You can do this.” She braced herself and
walked to the front doors. A yellow sticker on the door cautioned her that it was automatic. She walked into it, bumped her nose
and breasts against the glass then bounced back.

“What the fuck,” she said rubbing her nose. A nurse came up behind her, walked right past her, and up to the doors. Camilla
raised her hand, a warning for the nurse on her lips when the double doors slid open and the nurse walked inside. Camilla
stepped in before the doors could close on her. She looked back at the doors now smeared with her face and body prints and
blood, shrugged, then went to the nurse’s station, wrapping her arms around herself again and trying not to make eye contact
with the patients waiting in the emergency room lobby. At the front desk, she looked up at the closest nurse typing on her
computer.

“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice came out in a squeak. The nurse didn’t look up. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I
need help,” she said, louder this time. The nurse still didn’t look up. “Hello!” She snapped her fingers in the nurse’s face. The
nurse sighed and turned around, impatient, irritated.

“Mary, do you have the file on Brian Clark? He’s the one came in with the broken foot.”

“Hey, Bitch! I need some help here,” she yelled.

Still, no one acknowledged her.

“Mommy,” a little girl to Camilla’s right said. “Mommy, what’s wrong with that lady?” The little girl, her brown eyes large and
teary in her pudgy cheeks, her black hair hanging lank and tangled around her face, pointed with one chubby finger at Camilla.
“She’s bleeding, Mommy. What’s wrong with her? Look.”

“Don’t point, Britney. That’s rude.” The mother pushed her daughter’s hand down, but Britney still stared at Camilla.

“Someone help me!” Camilla called out to anyone who would listen.

“Help her!” Britney yelled and began to cry. Her mother held the little girls finger. It was wrapped in a bloody bandage.
“Mommy, she’s scared. Someone help her.” The little girl buried her face in her mother’s chest and sobbed.

Nurses ran in to see why Britney was yelling and crying. They tried to calm her down. She pointed in Camilla’s direction again
and said something indistinct. The nurses turned and stared past Camilla at an old woman hunched in a chair with an oxygen
mask over her face. They cooed to the little girl and told her that the old woman needed the mask to breathe.

“That’s not the lady I’m talking about,” she said. “She’s right behind you,” the girl wailed. The mother, panicking, rocked her
daughter back and forth as the girl tried to curl into a ball. The nurses looked around the room apparently not seeing the bloody
woman frightening the little girl.

“I’m right here, you fucking idiots,” Camilla whispered, unable to put the force in her words. “What the hell is going on here?”
She sank to her knees. No one but the little girl looked at her. The nurses brought the child a mild sedative and she relaxed
against her mother, the stained bandage on her finger now a brighter red. One of the nurses walked past Camilla and knocked
her to the floor, never turning to see who she’d bumped into.

Camilla allowed herself to fall back. She drifted. Her eyes fluttered shut and all went dark.

***

A nurse came through a door and called a patient’s name. She looked into the lobby to see who would stand up. Then she
screamed. Her pale skin turned pasty and she swayed on the spot as she stared at the bloody woman sprawled on the lobby floor.

“What’s going on?” the head nurse bellowed. She came around the corner, saw the body and gasped. She stood for a moment
with her hand cupped over her mouth, eyes wide. “Someone call the doctor,” she yelled then turned and ran through double
doors to come back with a stretcher. Two orderlies helped her lift the bloody woman onto the stretcher. The doctor arrived out of
breath and checked for a pulse. The people in the waiting room moved away, all panicked, no one sure why they hadn’t seen the
body there before. People huddled together staring at the strange woman’s body.

“She’s dead,” the doctor said, his face sagging as he glared at the head nurse. “How did this happen? Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” the nurse said. “No one saw her come in.”

They covered her with a white sheet and rolled her to the morgue. After writing what they knew about this mysterious woman,
they strung a Jane Doe tag over her big toe and placed her in one of the coolers.

“What happened to her? She’s all bruised up and those are bite marks on her shoulders and stomach,” the pathologist said to
her assistant as they left the room.

Chapter Two

Around the room’s perimeter, counters held iodine and other bottles exhibiting exotic, sterile sounding names, like bleach, and
formaldehyde. The beige linoleum floor reflected the harsh glare from the florescent lights. In the center of the room, the floor
was stained a darker brown and carried scratches filled with grimed-in matter. Above the stained portion of the floor loomed a
large, stainless steel table. A tray with various sharp and serrated instruments sat beside this table. The bright light above brought
even the smallest details into view.

Atop the table rested a very large, naked man, his flesh surpassing the width of the table, hanging over the sides. The skin on his
face sagged toward his ears and his jaw hung open as he stared with sightless eyes at the ceiling. His toes pointed outward like a
duck, his manhood all but lost in his various folds. Libitina Flesher stood over the man wiggling her gloved fingers over his gut
looking like a wicked witch gloating over a great find. Her scraggly black hair tied back in a ragged ponytail, the large zit on the
end of her nose, and her thick, black rimmed glasses combined to make what might be an attractive woman appear homely,
someone most people wouldn’t take a second look at on the streets.

“And now to start,” she whispered, the sound of glee lilting her voice. She grabbed the scalpel. With a sigh, she placed the
blade next to his right clavicle and made a diagonal incision to his sternum, giggling as she did so. She repeated the process
from the left clavicle, meeting her first line in a V. She then dragged the scalpel through the flesh, down his belly to his groin
turning the V to a Y. Only a little blood oozed from the large Y etched over his chest and abdomen.

Libitina slipped a hand into the cut along his gut, wiggling her fingers down past the fatty tissue. Then she made her hand flat
over his muscles and moved it in small, circular motions under the flesh.

“Oh my,” she said in an hysterical tone, “An alien is about to burst through.” She turned her hand palm up under his fat and
poked her middle finger upwards, giving the appearance of something trying to beat its way through his body. “Everyone, run for
your lives,” she squealed, trilling her R’s. She giggled, cleared her throat, then became more serious as she continued to loosen
the flesh.

A small noise from outside. She looked at the door, at the closed blinds over the door’s window. “Gotta go faster,” she said as
she placed her hands back to back and put them once again inside the incision and pealed the flesh back, exposing his red
muscles and white bones. “Very nice,” she whispered. “Now to get you open.” After cutting his sternum, she grabbed the rib
spreader and positioned it ever so carefully around his chest. When the ribs cracked open, she giggled again, then glanced over
her shoulder at the closed door, lips pressed tight. Still quiet. Back to work.

As she cut the membrane covering the organs, she whisper-hummed The Star Spangled Banner. The first organ she reached for
was the corpse’s enormous stomach. When she grabbed it, a loud belch boomed from the corpse’s mouth. Libitina jumped,
clapping her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream threatening to escape. Eyes wide, she stared at the dead man’s face for
just a moment, than she clapped and laughed, blood and fluids flying from her fingers, the red smears left on her cheeks
reminiscent of feathered wings. She hopped as she laughed like a child playing with its favorite toy, then she jabbed the dead
man in the shoulder with one bloody finger, the red smear a harsh contrast to his bluish skin. “You got me, you little joker.”

She reached back into his abdomen and cut loose the stomach. She weighed it and said, “Whoa, big boy,” as if looking at his
enormous body wasn’t proof enough to this fact. “So, what was your last meal?” She cut the stomach open and inhaled over the
fumes emanating from within. “Ahh, junk food junkie,” she said as she examined the orange goo inside. “Oh, and here’s a piece
of pepperoni. Let’s look at your heart next. I bet I can guess at your cause of death, Mr. Fatty.”

She’d started taking out the stomach’s contents when she heard footsteps and jingling keys from the hallway beyond the closed
door. “Shit,” she said as she scrubbed her hands over her stained lab coat and then grabbed her clip board. “Shit,” she said
again as she observed the shadowed head bobbing in the window. She scuttled to the door, her head down, clipboard tucked
under her arm, bag slung over her shoulder as the door swung open.

She bumped into the tall man coming through the door. Already tall at 5’10”, Libitina looked up at him with her dark brown eyes
and grinned.

“Not you again!” he yelled, then he got a look at her bloody face. His features twisted with disgust, and he stepped back.
“Security,” he hollered down the corridor. “She’s here again, come quick.” She tried to shove past him. He grabbed her wrist.
“Not this time, you sick, fuck! You’re coming with me.” He glanced into the autopsy room at the opened corpse. “Fuck! What the
hell’s wrong with you?”

Libitina giggled and brought her knee into the large doctor’s crotch. His eyes grew wide as his mouth dropped. He sagged and
grabbed his abused testicles.

“Sorry, gotta run,” she said as she shoved him back. She sprinted in the opposite direction the doctor had looked when yelling
for security and reached the elevators before the men in blue came around the corner. “Not fast enough,” she whispered as she
slipped into the elevator. It closed before they saw her.

When the doors dinged open on the lobby floor, Libitina trotted toward the front doors.

“Hey,” someone yelled behind her. The voice carried a heavy tone of authority. She didn’t turn but fled instead to the exit, never
looking back. She jumped into her black SUV, jammed the key into the ignition, started it, then backed out, speeding off. As she
pulled out of the parking lot, she chanced a glance in the rearview mirror in time to see the same security guard from the morgue
come barreling into the parking lot.

“That was too close,” she said laughing as she headed to the back roads that would lead her home. Through the forest, she sped
along, listening to Mozart, thinking about the fat man she’d been autopsying. If only she could’ve looked at his heart.

After driving for over an hour, she reached a long driveway in the middle of dense woods and turned onto it. Her house loomed
before her, an old cabin. The white paint cracked and flaked. Weeds choked her garden and her front yard. She went inside, a
slight stomp and pout to her walk. Just inside the door, a large armoire stood against the wall, the hand carved oak covered in
numerous scratches and dings. She opened it. Mirrors hung on the inside of the doors, reflected her greasy image. She grinned at
her ugliness then grasped her hair at the roots just on the widow’s peak and pulled, ridding herself of the scraggly wig to reveal
red hair beneath held up in a bun. She placed the wig on one of the mannequin heads. She then peeled off the large pimple
protruding from her nose, the adhesive looking like strands of spider web before snapping, and placed it in a basket full of other
scars. Her thick-rimmed glasses went into another basket full of a myriad of spectacles. She took out the colored contact lenses
and put them in a container next to other contact lens cases.

She grabbed the face cleaner and wiped the oil from her skin, taking away the shine. Free of her disguise, her blue eyes looked
watery, a slight shadow casting the muted light of sadness across her features. She closed the armoire and went to the kitchen.
After making a sandwich, she went to her room.

A black Chihuahua greeted her when she came through the door.

“Good afternoon, Cerberus, my little baby,” she said to the wiggling dog. It yipped at her and bowed to nip at her toes. She
giggled and swooped up the dog. “I think I know how that fat man died,” she whispered to the dog. “Yes, I did,” she said in baby
talk scratching Cerberus’s belly. The dog wriggled free and grabbed a toy from its toy basket. “Not now, baby. I’m thinking.” She
tapped her upper lip with her index finger, eyes far away. Then she went to her bookshelves.

After searching through the medical books in her mini library, she chose one with a cracked spine, the paper over the hardback
pealing and fading in different places. An advanced autopsy book written for the medical student looking to determine cause of
death.

“At first, I thought maybe it might be food poisoning, since he was such a porker.” She tapped her foot and flipped through the
book mumbling. Cerberus yipped at her heals and pounced on her toes. She pushed the dog away with her foot, but the dog
grabbed it with his front paws, hugging it as Libitina brought her leg back down. “You silly,” she said to her dog as she scooped it
up again. “Doggy noogies.” She raked her knuckles in a loving, aggressive way across the dogs head between the ears.
Cerberus’s tongue lolled as he panted and wagged his tail, grinning the most fantastic of doggy grins.

“Okay,” she said setting Cerberus down. “Mommy has to get back to work now. Go be a good boy.” She opened the bedroom
door and he romped out ahead of her, turning to make sure she followed just as she closed the door. He whined and scratched at
the door a few times then huffed and lay against it, his collar making a soft scraping noise as he settled.

She opened the book to a color picture of a distressed heart. “Man, I wish I had more time in there. I wanted to see if his heart
looked like this.” She ran her finger over the glossy page. With a sigh, she slammed the book closed and shoved it back onto her
shelf.

“Okay, time for a walk, little man.” She grabbed the dog’s leash from a hook on the wall and headed for the front door, Cerberus
panting at her heels. She leashed him and walked out the front door. Green light filtered through the trees dappling her long
driveway.