The DNA of DNA

After completing a novel, I always arrive in this abstract place where I can't focus on anything right away. Some might construe this to be a type of recovery, a vacation from thinking; but in my case that wouldn't be accurate. I am unfamiliar with the experience of not thinking. And Recovery implies that something has been negatively altered in you. Writing always alters me in a positive way. 

What happens for me, is more like this: I have created something wonderful that took a long time, was sometimes difficult and even painful, but which has produced something beautiful. It's very much like childbirth. But then, there is the afterbirth (pardon the image). But there is a big mess to clean up. Things need to be wiped down, put back where they go and the room tidied up again. Except all this takes place in my head.

So I ruminate about that book, and several others, think about how it felt, wonder what might be the next thing I do from scratch, consider the possibilities of marketing, that I might want to read someone else's book now, and generally organize the scattered thoughts in my head into a functioning unit again. Once that happens, I can begin anew, to create something else.


~ DNA ~

At the heart of any novel, is the stuff of life. The details are what gives it its uniqueness. Often, the hardest parts about writing a full-length novel are those maddening details.

In my most recently completed book, Also Known As DNA, there was another level, in that it was a sequel. These were characters who already existed in my fictional world. I had to take them through another series of challenges, but also keep track of the facts that existed in the first book, to make sure it remained consistent in the second one. When you write a sequel, there is an amazing amount of detail that has to be recalled or accessed. You have to juggle those details together, and yet be able to separate them and not confuse them with each other.

There is also the usual attention to detail in the plot and character developments that are unfolding in the book you're writing.
Examples:

• That destroyed or lost cell phone in one chapter, cannot magically appear five chapters later.
• The camera someone has cannot have magically been transported into the hands of another character.They have to have made the exchange at some point. 
• That character who had three guns--they have to be accounted for later, when guns are being used.
• That character could not have been at Point A, when she was just at Point B a few minutes ago.

There are other myriad considerations as well. One of them has to do with the psychology of characters. For instance, the villains. There's a hair-thin line between creating sympathy for a character and creating understanding, while still loathing them. I was worried about that one. I wanted to show a theme throughout the story--how everyone can have bad parents and some people will deal with it well, and some people will become psychos, and this result depends on what's organically/ psychologically in place in that person, to begin with.

I don't want to excuse the bad behavior--but I do still explain how, if they were already unstable--experiences can be responded to understandably, but still in a messed up way --(in Character A) or the experiences distorted until the lie becomes the truth in their minds (in character B). 

Kahlil Gibran said, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” My friend Emily C Jones said, "the rest of the quote is And the remaining 98% of sufferers are either dead or traumatized - hard to tell which is which from the massive amounts of scarring.  

[laughing] Fair enough.


~ HOW I BEGIN ~

When writing a new book, I will often start with whatever scene inspired me to write it in the first place. Then I will begin to write dialogue between the characters until I get a feel for them (or in the case of this sequel, until the reader gets a feel for them, since I already understand who they are. New characters, excepted). The story becomes largely a running dialogue, with very little description, unless it's some scene that comes to me later. I believe wholeheartedly in the ability of characters to tell you their story. I am often as surprised as a reader would be when a character says something. But what they choose to say, often guides the plot.

I will also use bits and pieces of notes I've taken about people and places, and filed away. One of these scenes I used in this book. I shared it with another writer-friend at the time i wrote that odd scene, and she said,"Who is that guy and why is he chasing her?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Well, what's the point of her climbing through that window?"
"I'm not sure," I answered.
"Then how do you know what you're writing about?"
"I don't."
That's the point. I knew that scene would be useful at some point in one of my books. 

I write organically, and I want to experience the story as it unfolds, so that I can enjoy it just as a reader would. That way, I have a clear idea of how it might affect the reader, by knowing how it is affecting me. And this method also insures that I will never tire of the process, or get bored with the story because I don't really know what's going to happen, or where it's all going to end. This doesn't mean i don't clean it up and make everything work in concert later, but I just save that for one of the editing passes.

On this book, I initially jumped ahead to a halfway point and wrote a few chapters and then ahead again, to the end. I actually got to the end of the book. I usually don't like that, because, as I said, I don't want to know what happens that quickly (though, having finished the book, the ending took place elsewhere and was slightly different, so it was still quite satisfying, even though i had an idea of what would happen. For this story, it was more about the journey than the end).

Writing to the end gave me only around 100 pages, and naturally that's not enough to make it a book--and it's tempting to say "maybe this is just a long story...or at best, a novella." But I know from experience that it only indicates I have not fleshed it out enough, haven't done the hard work. The story will fill out after I find all the right components to make that happen. I research and I use details about places and people that are largely authentic, as much as possible. In those researched details, more ideas usually emerge. For instance, I found a location, that quite by accident, had the same name as a meaningful word in the previous book. What I call a Happy Accident. And I used it, allowing the character to notice that synchronicity. I wrote about using Google maps when I write my books. There's a reason for that. I can get all the details I need for moving my characters around, and in the process, I gain grist for the creative mill. I trust that process because I've done it so many times.

So--the initial problem, after that first 100 pages, was that the first-person point of view was limiting the story. Somehow it worked for the first book, but this one seemed different. I still did not want to lose that POV, though, because it was such a integral part of the first book--that voice. That main character. So I used first-person with that main character, and when I needed to show the other characters without her in the scene, I would tell their story in third person omniscient, always cuing the reader by using a different chapter each time I did that. That opened the story up immensely, and solved the problem.

Then, I had to start looking for several things:

• were there enough characters to fill out the story? Did I need to add a few new ones? Yes. And I did.
• where are the gaps of time? When that character spoke of the two weeks that had gone by, I had to ask, what did she do during that time?
• How did the new characters interact with the main character, and what's their backstory?
• Can there be an unexpected alliance between two characters? What's that dynamic like?
• are there any Happy Accidents in the text just straining to be explored?

This is, of course, not the complete picture of what goes on in the process, but it is a portion of it.

~ AFTERGLOW ~
So, after I have completed a book, I am beset with a sensation of afterglow. I feel I have just had sex. Good sex. So far, I've copulated 15 times.

The DNA of DNA

Excerpt from Somewhere Else

(book in progress)

~The Color of Confusion ~

Cornelius paused with vermilion loaded up on his brush, about to make a bold swath across the canvas, when he noticed Daelah. Placing the laden brush in his teeth, he reached down and readjusted the position of his wheelchair so he could see her better.
      At the end of the long corridor leading to the kitchen, she stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the ceiling, and down at her hands, and touching her own face.
      Cornelius frowned, a drop of vermilion free falling from the end of his brush onto a dried spot of cobalt blue on his sweats.
      A tapping grew louder and he twisted toward the back hallway leading out of the living room as Jubal made his way toward Cornelius, seated at his easel. Jubal moved the white-tipped cane back and forth in front of him. Tap. Tap. Tap, Tap.
     Cornelius took the brush from his mouth and caught his attention. "Psst!"
      Jubal paused, one hand on the saxophone dangling from a cord around his chalky neck, the other on the cane. His lifting of eyebrows at the sound made his wraparound sunglasses bob upward on his nose. "What?" he whispered back.
      Keeping his voice in a whisper, still, he said, "Have you noticed anything strange about Daelah today?""How would I notice anything about Daelah?" The blind man smirked.
      He swiped a hand down his face, to smooth his Van Dyke style goatee. "You know what I mean."
      "Well, yes. . ." He took a few steps forward, sliding the tip of the cane along the wood floor in front of him. "She smells different."
      "Smells different?"
      "Yeah."
      "New perfume?"
      "Nope. Individual, natural scent is different."
      "Okay, weirdness." Cornelius turned back to watch Daelah who was now reaching toward the ceiling, stretching like a cat, and moaning with pleasure.
      Jubal cocked his head toward her sounds. "What the hell is she doing? Playing with herself?"
      "Just stretching. . .but weird, like she's never stretched before. She seems to be enjoying it too much."
      Jubal took measured steps forward, made a left face, and then moved quietly down the hall, holding his cane against his chest. He paused not three feet behind her, and put the saxophone to his lips, blowing a rude honk at her.
      She jumped, stumbled against the wall and stared at him
      Feigning ignorance, he said, "Oh, is someone there?" He lifted his cane and swept it side to side, comically searching for her.
      In the living room threshold, Cornelius let out a humorous huff. His friend Jubal enjoyed playing the sightless eccentric all the way to the bone. He had embraced his disability with unusual flair.Daelah looked at the tall, angular blind man. Almost-flawless skin, paled from a lack of sunshine. She knew better than to say, who are you? She was aware of several things she suspected she should know at this point, but precisely who this blind man was, she wasn't sure about. "You scared me," she offered instead.
      "Oh. Sorry." He lowered the cane.
      "How can you sneak up like that when—"
      He knew she meant to add, when you're blind. "I have sonar like a dolphin. I can sense the walls and obstacles. . .I can feel the ions in the air, parting for my passage."
      "Right," came the snide remark a short distance behind Jubal.
      Cornelius rolled down the hall toward them and watched  Daelah lean out to see past Jubal toward the approaching wheelchair.
      Jubal cocked his head. "Are you okay, Daelah? You smell funny."
      "What?"
      "Huh?" he responded, just as confused about her misunderstanding as she was about his statement. She knew he had a keen sense of smell. The subject had come up many times before. She knew he noticed the minutiae most people missed.
      Daelah frowned again as the man in the wheelchair stopped beside the blind man. Jubal released his hold on the saxophone to sweep his hand at waist level, toward Cornelius, catching him in the face. "Oh, there you are," Jubal said.
      "Stop it!" Cornelius reprimanded him, slapping his hand away. His antics could be so aggravating.
      Addressing the still-baffled looking woman in front of him, Cornelius said, "You seem weird today, Daelah."
      "I do?"
      "Yes."
      "I. . ." She glanced to her right, up the staircase. "I think I'll go up and lie down for awhile." She turned and climbed the steps, showing interest in the photos on the stairway wall, and glancing back at them as if they were friendly house-spiders, but spiders, just the same.
      As she disappeared around the landing, the two men waited in silence for a moment, then Cornelius spun his chair and rolled back down the hallway toward the living room, the vermilion-loaded brush in his teeth again.
      Jubal followed him, and took a seat in a chair to play his sax.
      Upstairs, Daelah sank down on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her eyes and considered her own confusion.
      For the last few minutes, she had been trying to assimilate the volumes of information that had seemingly been downloaded into her brain. Everything from how to tie her shoes, to the relative merits of clean underwear.
      She was Daelah Murdock. She felt like herself. But something had changed. That much was clear, if only by the reaction of these two housemates. The blind man and the cripple. They seemed familiar, but she didn't know them, as odd as that contradiction was.
      Then, she recalled the dream that had played out in her mind just before she emerged from nocturnal bliss that morning.
      A glowing white essence, shaped somewhat like an elongated teardrop, had told her, telepathically, "Thank you." Daelah had no way of knowing what she, herself, looked like in the dream, but sensed she was also a glowing essence.  She had reached out to grasp the wrist that emerged from the glowing essence—a human wrist, that clenched her own in farewell.
      When the Teardrop Essence vanished, her dreamself noticed a tattoo on her inner forearm of a strange  symbol. Then she woke, and the tattoo was not on her skin, and she sat up to draw the symbol on the pad of paper on the nightstand. Then she had found the bathroom and hurried to look in the mirror, and was stunned by the sensation that the face looking back at her in the glass was not her own. Then she had not recognized the room, and had gone downstairs to look around.
      Now, frowning down at the paper, she sensed that the symbol was important, but wasn't quite sure why. The shape resembled an ankh, the universal symbol of eternal life, but it was like a blending of two ankhs, one upright, the other upside down, and joined at the stems.
      Daelah spent the next few hours roaming around the bedroom, seeking clues to her befuddlement. The bedspread was an aggravating shade of pink, and there was a pink dust ruffle made of lace around the bed. She hated it. Likewise, the matching horridly pink lampshade on the nightstand, had engendered more repulsion. Though the walls were a standard eggshell color, they were festooned with all things pink.
      This could not possibly be her own room, though she had awakened here. Peering down at herself, she  noticed she was wearing a hideous pink nightgown with lace around the collar. She pulled it off her like it was on fire, and hurried to the closet.
      Inside the wardrobe nook, her efforts to find more agreeable attire had met with a nightmarish array of pink, salmon, lavender, and fuchsia. The singular exception was a black T-Shirt, banished to the far end of the clothes rod. She turned it toward her to look at it. A depiction of a bread-like ring bejeweled with fruit and nuts graced the front, and below it in white letters was the word Fruitcake. No doubt this was a gift from someone with a sense of humor who was making a veiled suggestion about the pink-woman's mental status.
The Pink Woman. She had framed it as though the pink woman was not her. But it wasn't her. Yet here she was, being her.
      As she pulled the black fruitcake T-Shirt over her head, snatched a pair of jeans and pulled them on, and added some atrocious pink sneakers to her–no surprise—pink socks, she felt a little more like herself. Whoever that was.
      Emerging from the closet, she stood in the middle of the room and thought about it all. She wasn't herself. Couldn't be. What did that mean?
      Her trip downstairs a few minutes ago, did not garner her much information. The house was like a familiar place from long ago, yet almost erased from her memory. When the blind man and the cripple appeared,  things became even more confusing.
      Sitting back down on the bed, she listened for a moment to the blind man playing saxophone downstairs. She recognized the tune as Patsy Cline's "Crazy." It was a little crazy that she recognized the song, but not the guy who played it—a guy who obviously lived in her house. . .or she in his.
      She picked up the wretched pink purse, and pulled out the aggravating pink wallet. The driver's license read,

Daelah Murdock

72 North Tapioca

Cedar City, Utah.

Tapioca? Who the hell would live on a street called Tapioca? Was Pudding Circle all full-up? Daelah perused the license again. She was apparently female, and 36 years old.

  About the book:
A non-physical soul makes an agreement with another incarnated soul to take over her body. The Walk-in, perhaps too fearless, and too hungry for the pleasures of the flesh, discovers she has inherited the life of Daelah Murdock, a Mormon goody-two -shoes with a pathological attachment to the color pink. As a live-in caregiver for two men--one blind, the other wheelchair bound--Daelah's life seems bland and puerile. Yet someone is trying to kill her.
_____________________________________
Somewhere Else,  (c)Kelli Jae Baeli

Excerpt from Somewhere Else

New Review of my book RAOB

Review of Random Act of Blindness on weRead: 

"I didn't want to put this book down, the characters had me hooked from the start, the erotica so real, I wanted to be there. Its not often I find a book that has me enthralled from beginning to end, Random Act of Blindness is one of the few. I am so looking forward to my next novel by Kelli Jae Baeli." ~ Joanne Cincotta



Excerpts:

 EXCERPTS:

Never, in all her days, had she imagined herself in a position like this. Vivid fantasies aside, Rachel had never considered acting on the impulses that invaded her thoughts throughout the day. They were private affairs stored only in some scurrilous recess of her mind. Yet her mind interacted with other minds, and often, there were fragments of information to be had in decidedly ironic ways. Doctor Bass, for instance, listened to her confession of the scandalous gearshift penetration mirage, and fantasy bondage scenarios and produced a copy of the bondage magazine. While not something Professor Rachel Leeds believed would qualify as a "literary device," it was nonetheless pivotal in the events in which she was now participating. Namely, being on her way to a hardware store to find something to use as a whip on the girl who lay naked and bound in hotel room number 66, the Mark-of-the-Almost-Beast.

Faith. To believe in things not yet seen, they say. Patrice was faithful a long time ago. Then she communed with the faithless, and their cloying demands. She needed evidence because it made her feel foolish. And faith was lost. But the bitterness left her cold, barefoot, detached from the warmth of love and connection. Then she discovered a different faith. One born of her own power, left untapped for eons, swirling, ebullient, joyful. And now, coming full circle, she found herself wholly unqualified, still, to manifest from faith alone. Yet, perfectly accustomed to crying alone, wishing alone. Hope did not float. It sat on the bottom, weighted by its own lie.

New Review of my book RAOB

The Organic Fiction Method

The Organic Fiction Method of writing is a formula that springs from the natural flow as you add to the story; it means not relying on a steadfast outline, but rather, being open to the events and developments that might come from minor and major details that evolve as your story reveals itself.

I am an organic writer. I might begin a story or novel idea with just one scene, one snippet of dialogue, a single image, one idea or concept. These 'seedlings', as I call them, can appear from many different sources, which I will not expound upon in this article, except to say that they can come from conversations you have had or overheard, dreams you've had or others have told you about, news items, personal experiences, and so on.

The plot can be an organic process in that you may not be sure where it's going to end up, or the pit-stops it might make beforehand, but some detail in setting, motivation, or theme will lead to another facet that fills it out. This is where research can be beneficial. If you learn all you can about the subjects you're illustrating, those details alone can often provide you with seedlings that gel (sometimes almost magically) with the other elements of your plot.

For instance, in Also Known As DNA, a sequel to Armchair Detective (which is in progress), I moved my characters to another state. In the first book, the main character drove a '62 Falcon, and it was important in the story; the main character also referred to the other main character's house as "the Manor." So in researching the area for the new book, I discovered a setting i needed, and it was called Falcon Mountain. And then I discovered that the perfect house for them just happened to be located on Manor Lane. All quite accidental discoveries, but significant in more ways than one. And the synchronicities like that which often appear can give your writing process a little boost.

Unless you're basing a character on someone real, whom you already know well and want to use, characters can be organic, too. I never write out personal histories for my characters, as I find that stifling, and frankly, it's time wasted that could be better used in writing the actual story. If you spend all that time getting every detail of your character in place, the process of writing the book will, in my experience, force you to omit those details or change them entirely, so I prefer to just have that general idea and then see what is required. This all depends on your own approach to the writing. Some write from plot, some from character (Hence, the phrases "plot-driven" and "character-driven"). But I allow both plot and character to remain organic and this keeps the process exciting. It's almost as though I am "reading" the book with as much anticipation as a regular reader would, because honestly, I'm not quite sure how it will turn out. I enjoy letting characters tell me the rest through the machinations of the story. Sometimes these things fall together through dialogue, and sometimes in some other mysterious way that has to do with setting, motivation, seasons, unexpected events, or any number of other possibilities.

In one of my novels, a character once appeared whom I had not even created. Two of my established characters were on their front porch in their isolated country home, and "Tilly" suddenly just rode up on horseback and began to reveal herself to be strange and interesting, and I have no idea, to this day, where she came from.

This is part of the exhilaration of being an Organic Fiction Writer. Writing in this way helps insure that you don't tire of the process. The journey is one that you take just like a reader, but you just get to take it before they do.

The Organic Fiction Method

Random Act of Fiction

The book I am working on now is an expansion project. Random Act of Blindness began as a short story for an erotic publication, grew into a novella, and now, I am expanding it to a full-length novel. This project is dear to me because I am trying to do something that I don't think happens very much in the genre: making a truly erotic story rich with all the elements of any other good novel.

I have always wondered why erotica seems to be sequestered in a dark corner, like a misbehaving red-headed step-child. Why can't we have stories that are interesting, filled with three-dimensional characters, and a plot that keeps you turning pages? Why are erotica and quality fiction so often mutually exclusive? I mean, we all know that we all have sex (unless we don't, and that's another subject). So why do we pretend that sexual activity is not a part of our existence? It is at once one of the most motivating factors in our every day lives. It melts hearts, it wrecks marriages, it defines us, moves us, reveals us, and keeps us in touch with both our humanity and our spiritual selves. So why do we pretend, in our fiction, it is only an afterthought?

Perhaps the crux of the issue revolves around the degree to which we describe our sexual encounters in novels. But then, I have to wonder if this is some atavistic mentality that smacks of our historical shame regarding the sex act itself. I contend that sex is not dirty, unless you haven't bathed.

Another challenge I have found with Random Act is that in expanding a story like this, one can only show the characters having sex so many times before it becomes tedious. It has to become, to a degree, less about the sex, and more about the characters and the story. This precarious balance I seek will no doubt make me a better writer, if I manage to pull it off. It remains to be seen if any publisher finds it a viable and respectable offering in the fiction milieu.

Random Act of Fiction

Purple Prose & Metaphoric Misdemeanors

* as usual, these are my opinions, based on my own experience of writing and editing for the last 25 or so years. Not all writers, editors and readers will agree, and that's fine. I offer it as valuable information I learned which made me a better writer, in hopes it will help another writer reach that goal.

Writers, beware: You must NOT fall in love with your words. You must fall in love with your craft. That's the thesis for this entire post, but read on, if you want details.

I am forever mortified by the details that many authors place in their stories, which have no bearing on the story itself--not in the development in plot, nor the development of character. It's just there, because the author was in love with the words and his/her ability to string them together like multi-colored popcorn on a gaudy Christmas tree.

Purple Prose, as a term used in the critique of writing was coined by Horace, the infamous Roman poet, in Ars Poetica. The translation of this into English tells us,

"Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches; as when describing a sacred grove, or the altar of Diana, or a stream meandering through fields, or the river Rhine, or a rainbow; but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?"

Pouncing on the inherent humor to be enjoyed in this subject, the Edward Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest makes a contest out of mimicry of Bulwer-Lytton's penchant for Purple Prose. The famous opening to his novel, Paul Clifford, begins thus:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

It is referenced most often by the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." The contest invites writers to submit their own version of flowery description in the beginning of some fictional fiction work.

A couple of my favorites, incidentally:

The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the toad's deception, screaming madly, "You lied!"
--Barbara C. Kroll, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
--Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)

Enough of the digression....let's get back to the subject matter at hand (as Ellen Degeneres says, "...My point, and I do have one...").

The proliferation of Purple Prose is nowhere more apparent than on the Internet in collections of Fan Fiction.* These copycats are often ridiculed or derided, and there is even a version of Purple Prose now referred to as "urple prose." This intentional misspelling is a satirical double entendre, since so much of Fan Fiction is not only fraught with spelling errors, but also often sickening in its tendency toward ornate and tiresome exposition.

I am still floored by the ability of a writer to pound a perfectly good metaphor into the ground, break it off, and thus render it useless and disappointing.

An example of this sort of metaphoric misdemeanor can be found in "The Gate to Women's country" by Sheri S. Tepper. I have had this book for years, hoping one day I'd find the mood to read it. I wanted to read it. I tried to read it. All the accolades from various reviewers encouraged me to read it. But ultimately, I could not read it. I couldn't get past the second page. The concepts and subject matter in this book was at first titillating. Then when I attempted to read it, it just became Tit. As in another writer at the tit of Purple Prose.

Many readers, I suppose, enjoy flowery overkill, but I do not.

I believe that if you allow yourself the indulgence of an extended metaphor, you run the risk of making that metaphor somewhat of a character, and distract from the characters who should have that focus. When this is the case, writing becomes a stalker's love of language, a sort of masturbation by the author, rather than a story about people, for people, and of people. Call me a hard-ass, but I feel a book should be about something other than the linguistic ego of its author.

Having said that, here's an excerpt from the first and second pages of "The Gate to Women's Country" to illustrate this affliction:

"As usually happened on occasions like this one, Stavia felt herself become an actor in an unfamiliar play, uncertain of the lines of the plot, apprehensive of the ending. If there was o be an ending at all. In the face of the surprising and unforeseen, her accustomed daily self was often thrown all at a loss and could do nothing but stand aside upon its stage, one hand slightly extended toward the winds to cue the entry of some other character--a Stavia more capable, more endowed with the extemporaneous force or grace these events required. When the appropriate character entered, her daily self was left to watch from behind the scenes, bemused by the unfamiliar intricacy of the dialogue, and settings which this other, this actor Stavia, seemed able somehow to negotiate. So, when this evening the unexpected summons arrived from Dawid, the daily Stavia had bowed her way backstage to leave the boards to this other persona, this dimly cloaked figure making its way with sure and unhesitating tread past the lighted apartments and through the fish and fruiterers markets toward Battle Gate.

Stavia the observer noted particularly the quality of the light. Dusk. Gray of cloud and shadowed freed of leaf. It was apt, this light--well done for the mood of the piece. Nostalgic. Melancholy without being utterly depressing. A few crepuscular rays broke through the western cloud cover in long, mysterious beams, as though they were searchlights from a celestial realm, seeking a lost angel, perhaps, or some escaped soul from Hades trying desperately to find the road to heaven. Or perhaps they were casting about to find a fishing boat, our there on a darkling sea, though she could not immediately think of a reason that the heavenly ones should need a fishing boat."

I was looking for my hip boots to wade through this mountain of potpourri. I only made it that far before I tossed the book down, saying "Oh, kill me now!"

It's as if Tepper hides behind her words, rather than stands beside them, with them. This suggests a certain fear of being honest in her craft. Perhaps it has to do with the genre, I thought, but then flowery prose usually belongs to other genres, and this was marketed as Science Fiction. Perhaps the book was mis-categorized. Nevertheless, it suffers from the purple prose often found in second rate fantasy and romance novels. If I want something that flowery, I'll plant a garden, thank you very much.

---------------
*Basically, Fan Fiction is fiction based on previously published work, whether from television or novel, created by fans of that work.

Purple Prose & Metaphoric Misdemeanors

Baggage (excerpt, Mainstream novel)

Excerpt from
Baggage
(c) Kelli Jae Baeli

(*This is my second novel written for a mainstream audience. Most of mine are lesbian-oriented. This excerpt is formatted for legibility on the web)

During Hurricane Katrina, Patriarch Dominic Fontaine meets his freakish demise—the rubble of his “hurricane-proof” mansion all around him—and no one suspects that a vengeful woman came to kill him.

In the aftermath, the secrets held in a safe deposit box spur the Fontaine offspring into a journey of enlightenment and self- discovery as their lives converge with strangers, and the mystery of synchronicity takes over.

CHAPTER 9

AS HURRICANE KATRINA SPUN CLOSER TO THE GULF coast, Sienna realized Dominic's intent to ride out the storm, just as he had in all the other hurricanes. His decision was no marvel to her. He obviously considered himself invincible.

She peeked through the slightly ajar door to the attic stairway. He was, of course, too rich to have a standard pull-down ladder; no, Dominic Fontaine had to have a stairway to his attic.

Sounds of shattering glass came from the foyer. The formidable Katrina was hammering at the front of the mansion, morphing into a beast that clawed at the rafters, pounded at the flooring, and made promises to inflict still more. It was as if God Himself was behind the maelstrom. Sienna had never been in a hurricane, and anxiety crept into her mind. Was it always this bad? Was it only this frightening because she had never experienced it?

She had her own Katrina thumping against her chest cavity. Thrashing in the sea of her own trepidation, she tasted it in her mouth, then recognized it as meaningless. I am going to die anyway. He had made sure of that when he pushed himself inside her and mingled his diseased blood with her own. After all those years of being judicious. All those years when her party-happy friends were taking chances like a capricious vacation in Vegas, and prodding her mercilessly with monikers like Sainted Sienna, Sinless Sienna, Spotless Sienna, and even Snowy Sienna, to imply that she was frigid, rather than careful. Now, she felt the fear slipping away, replaced by her own resolve, her own fury; an apoplectic bitterness that was matched only by the tempest that pummeled the mansion of the man she despised.

Pleased to have placed herself correctly, she saw him hurrying up the staircase, silver briefcase in hand, dragging a yellow nylon rope. Pulling the door closed a bit, she observed him through the tiny crack as he lashed himself to the newel post at the top of the grand staircase that fed down into the foyer.

The compromised portions of the house were revealed with every slap of wind and rain. As the storm bullied on, moaning its feral incantation, the window beside the attic stairs blasted inward, shards of glass spattering to the hardwood floor, as Katrina sneezed into the opening.

Dominic held onto the rope with one hand, and the briefcase with the other, his own features touched by terror.

Shelving collapsed, and she heard more shattering glass downstairs. Pictures leaped from the walls along the stairs, their glass spitting out onto the steps. In the hall beyond the top of the grand staircase, Dominic's fish trophy plaques clattered to the floor. The gigantic swordfish rattled against the wall, as if preparing to reanimate and swim away in the sodden air of Katrina.

She reached down to pick up the small bronze sculpture she had taken from the occasional table at the top of the stairs. Her fingers closed around it firmly, and she waited for the right moment to confront him. As water began to drip onto the landing from above, and a puddle grew near the ravaged window, she pushed the door open and stepped onto the landing.
Raising her voice above the din, she said smartly, "Well, Lincoln Berringer, as I live and breathe-"

He turned to the voice behind him, a moment of keen astonishment and recognition on his features, that had little to do with his joy at seeing her, and much to do with the realization that she knew who he was. His fate became clear, when he saw her holding the heavy statue, saw her raise it high.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the moaning of Katrina, sucking the window frame from the wall. Debris struck her shoulder, and she fell to the slick floor, the statue toppling away.

Steadying herself by holding the door knob of the attic stairs, keeping her head low against the incoming sheets of rain and wind and debris, she watched the giant swordfish drop to the floor, and move toward the hole where the window had been. A shifting of wind, and the monster fish spun, rolled, became airborne, and in mindless seconds, had impaled Dominic's back with its rapier beak. She captured the attic door jamb, to stop herself from being sucked toward the window.

Her attention back on him, the swordfish rocked back onto its tail, as Dominic leaned backward into it, soon limp. The briefcase toppled to the floor, as his arms spread open, his torso propped on the swordfish, its beak protruding from his chest, his waist still secured to the newel post.

Stunned, she stared at him, splayed there like some fisherman's crucifixion. Euthanasia performed by God.

A blast of rain slapped the side of her face and she scrambled to the silver briefcase, which was already being sucked toward her on the sodden floor, snatched it up and ran down the hall to the bathroom, where she grabbed a rectangular wooden table, broke the legs off and huddled in the garden tub, holding the briefcase on her chest, the table over her head, waiting for the end of Katrina's blitzkrieg.

Baggage (excerpt, Mainstream novel)

Armchair Detective (novel excerpt)

,
(Lesbian Sleuth Erotica)
(c) Kelli Jae Baeli

A wannabe Private Investigator has to start somewhere. If that means incurring the wrath of her suspects, then so be it. When Jobeth O'Brien awakens from the floor of her kitchen, her battered face and the memory of an angry visitor tells her that she is close to something important in her investigation. She pulls herself together and goes to run her paper route--a job that pays the bills while she pursues her other vocation. Her romps in the backseat of her Falcon with a wealthy socialite, Phoebe, are a welcome distraction from her excursions into the developing facts of the blackmail and prostitution operation. As the case progresses, Jobeth fends off her growing need for Phoebe, as well as the advances from her barracuda landlady. Amid these challenges, she stakes out her prey and runs for her life, continuing the investigation that pulls her into close calls, unexpected allies, and more secrets. But Jobeth has secrets of her own, and only love can excavate them.


EXCERPT:

The Falcon rested in the alley across the street like a big metal dog. That's how I viewed this paragon of antiquity. It was like the pet I never had. I bathed it, fed it, communed with it, talked to it, even stroked it every now and then, although not when anyone was watching. If it wasn't so big, I'd let it sleep on the foot of my bed.

Hunkered low, I checked that the film was loaded properly and advanced a frame or two, laid the camera beside me and poured myself a cup of brew from Phoebe's green thermos. I loved her coffee. Hazelnut, I think, from fresh ground beans. I couldn't imagine someone like Phoebe dipping grounds from a metal can; it wasn't chic enough. More likely, she had it delivered to her door by Juan Valdez himself.

Halfway through my second cup, I decided it was time for a little evidence-gathering. Hanging the camera around my neck by its wide strap, I stepped quietly out of the car. crossing the street, blending with shadows, until I entered the alley beside the Salon. Behind the structure I found the garbage cans. Smiling, I freed the two full bags and started back to the car. Squinting around the corner, I lurched back when I saw a distinguished gentleman with short-cropped hair approaching the front door of the Salon. I lifted my camera and snapped a shot of him before he slipped inside. A teenaged boy came around the corner and went in soon afterward, and I hurried across the street with my treasures, sure that things were about to become a bit more interesting.

Warming my coffee again, I kept an eye on the front of the shop while I opened one of the garbage bags. I donned a pair of surgical gloves from a dispenser in the glove compartment, and put them on before reaching into the bag. I recalled the scene earlier when Phoebe had found the gloves while searching for a lighter.

"What are these for?" she had inquired with salacious interest.

"Not what you think," I had told her.

"Mmm-hm," she had said, unconvinced.

"But I'd be happy to use them for that. Is it time for an exam?"

She had grinned, "Maybe next time."

Now, glancing up every few seconds, I began to wish I had a partner; I wanted to look through the garbage without missing anything going on at the front door. It could be an advantage, I had to admit, but the bad outweighed the good on that one.

Thirty-five minutes later, the sound of the Salon door brought my attention away from the bags. The distinguished gentleman emerged and hurried into the darkness around the corner, his shirttail hanging loose, holding his coat in one hand. I snapped a shot of him before he got away. A tall, blond man opened the door and hauled another man out with him, gesturing angrily and pointing down the street. He looked like the same blond man that had been talking to Stacey that day. The man he talked to seemed to sigh, shook his head, then turned and headed in the direction of the gentleman.

The blond man lit a cigarette and remained outside the front door, agitated. I tried to get a close shot of him, and decided it would be a better picture if I could move outside the car. I removed the cover from the interior light and pulled the bulb out, then quietly, I opened the door, and kept my head down below the level of the front fender. Lifting the camera, I bumped the wheel well and the camera toppled to the pavement. The zoom lens separated from the body and I stifled the curse that came instantly from my mouth. The lens was history, for the moment. I discarded the injured mechanism into the car, and grabbed the regular lens, hurriedly screwing it on the body of the camera. Pushing the door almost closed, I took a position by the front of the Falcon again, peeking over the fender. He still stood there, smoking. I'd have to get much closer, for a clear shot. I waited until he turned around, then crept over to the blue mailbox at the corner, concealing myself behind it. Ebon cloaked the street, but dawn approached with a luminous mist, and left me with one chance for a clear picture of him.

I tilted out from behind the mailbox and focused. His eyes swept over my area, and then seemed to pause. Click! He saw me then, and threw his cigarette to the sidewalk, breaking into a sprint toward me. The camera firmly in hand, I dashed down the walk and around the corner as fast as my tired legs would carry me. Rounding the building, I cut to the right across the main roadway into another alley and scrambled up the board fence and over.

Landing in a trash can, I kicked free of it and continued down the adjacent alley. I could hear him behind me-heard him climb the fence and continue the chase, cursing as he fell on the same trash can. Coming to a "T" in the alleyway, I found one exit blocked by a Dumpster, and the other by a drainage ditch.

I picked up a piece of concrete gravel and threw it hard toward the Dumpster, producing a telling thwang, then leapt feet first into the shallow water of the ditch. Stooping to enter the concrete culvert pipe, I scurried through, pausing thirty yards later to listen for approaching steps. I waited, catching my breath and listening, certain I'd lost him.

I imagined him pausing at the end of the alley, having heard the noise of the gravel against the Dumpster, and stealthily raising the lid. I also imagined the grimace on his face when he lifted the lid and found only putrid garbage. He would no doubt assume that I jumped the fence. Men can't imagine women doing things like jumping into watery ditches and scurrying through culverts. I used this narrow-mindedness to my advantage whenever possible.

Navigating the concrete piping to its end, my exit was blocked by a barbed wire fence. I climbed through the strands with some difficulty and found myself at eye-level with a yard full of farm machinery. I climbed out of the watery trench and paused by a John Deere tractor to survey the area. The grounds of the co-op were spacious, reminding me of a rodeo arena. The front fence stood about 50 yards across the grass in front of me. Heaving a sigh of relief, I patted the camera smugly and started for the far gate. Near the middle of the grounds, I heard a low growl that made me wish I had stayed inside the pipe.

Turning toward the sound slowly, he came into view. A pit bull of the large killer variety emerged from one of the sheds. The variety that tears the limbs from small children and pulverizes housecats. He dipped his square black head low, baring a set of exceptional fangs.

"Shhhhhhit," I whispered like a slowing steam engine, measuring the distance to the front gate. The phrase from here to eternity erupted in my mind. I turned back to him, placating meekly, "Nice doggie-"

He lunged at me and I broke into a run, making a beeline for the precious, distant gate. The dog caught the bottom of my jeans, and swung me to the ground like sack of Idaho potatoes. From the feel of it, he intended to tear the fabric away first, then slice and dice my bare leg. By the look of his canines, a steak knife had nothing on him. I kicked him hard in the head and swung the camera. It caught him in the eye and he yelped at the thirty-five millimeter infliction, freeing me long enough for me to struggle up and run again. The chase resumed and I stopped to swing at him again, missing as he ducked. Where is an M-16 when you need one?

He jumped and clamped his teeth onto my arm, the fangs piercing the layers of fabric. I growled back at him and knocked him in the head several more times with the camera. Eyes closed, his teeth made contact with the skin below the flannel and thermal shirts, blood appeared on his head, for which I was uncommonly grateful, but it didn't make him let go of my arm.
I kicked him frantically in the ribs, but his mouth rivaled a bear trap, except bear traps didn't jerk savagely at fabric. And they didn't chase you across a machinery yard like some miscreant from the center of the earth.

Desperate, I dragged him toward the fence. Looping the camera strap around my neck, I clamped my fingers on the chain-link, and placed the toe of my sneaker in one of the wire diamonds to pull myself up until the dog dangled in the air. I could feel the excruciating tear of my skin each time he shook my arm, still mauling me from his place in mid-air. Bile swelled in my gut and threatened to rise like green mercury into my esophagus. With one last swing of my free leg, I kicked him in the stomach, and the yelp this evoked opened his jaws enough so that I could wrench myself free as he fell to the ground.

He recovered from his fall without the slightest hesitation and vaulted toward me again, and I barely pulled myself up beyond his reach, scrambled over the fence, to land with a breathless thud on the grass.

Armchair Detective (novel excerpt)

As You Were (Novel Excerpt)

As You Were
(Lesbian Romantic Suspense novel)

(c)Kelli Jae Baeli

Beth and Brittany shared a beautiful home on Red Mountain in Colorado, enjoyed self-employment, horseback riding in the snow-laden hills, and romantic nights in front of the fireplace. But when an average day leads to a tragic accident, and traumatic amnesia, Brittany must return to a life she neither remembers nor approves of. Yearning, revelations, and lurking danger pull at the threads of their once-idyllic life. As You Were is a romantic story driven by mystery and suspense.

EXCERPT:

A swath of morning sunshine fell across Tru's eyes, and she came awake, aware of the sharp pounding in her head, and the television which sat silent, bolted to a steel pole extending from floor to ceiling. She vaguely remembered her decision to get a motel the night before, and wasn't sure whether she had been too drunk to remember to call Brittany and let her know. She pressed both hands against her head, wishing for ibuprofen.

Tru blinked her eyes into painful focus and saw her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Her appearance told her more than she wanted to know about how much she had had to drink the night before. Also in the reflection, a lump under the blanket next to her, and she turned quickly to find the lump was a leg, and that the leg belonged to Travis. His chest was bare, and she immediately discovered that hers was, too. Tru jerked the sheet up under her arms and stared at him, horrified. "Travis?"

He stirred, his eyes fluttered open, and he smiled warmly. "Morning, Sugar." He ran his hand down her arm.

Tru jerked away, grabbing the blanket and drawing it around her as she got up. "What the hell are you doing here?" she rasped, swallowing the cotton that seemed to be growing abundantly on her tongue.

He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his face filled with a boyish grin. "Enjoying the morning after, Sugar "

Tru coughed involuntarily and pressed a palm to her head. "Travis. . .we didn't. . .I mean, I don't--please tell me we didn't-- I don't remember what happened last night "

He lifted one eyebrow in a smirk. "I'll never forget it. I never suspected you of being such an animal in bed. You even--"

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What have I done?!" Tru searched for and found her clothing heaped upon the floor by the bed, and began to dress beneath the blanket.

"Hey, why so uptight?"

"Why so uptight?" she squeaked. "Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what sort of mess this is? Oh, my God. . .she'll kill me, I am dead meat. She'll never understand this, I don't understand this--" Tru dropped the blanket and began to button her shirt. "Travis, you have to swear you'll never breathe a word of this. I was drunk. I didn't know what I was doing--" she babbled.

"You most assuredly did know what you were doing. I can't remember the last time I stayed that har--"

"Travis!" she shouted, groaning and holding her head, then more softly.
"Spare me the sordid details."

"Don't worry, Tru. Your secret is safe with me. I wish you could stay a little longer " He reached toward her and she lurched away, grabbing her socks and shoes and making a quick visual sweep of the room, before she headed for the door, hopping in place as she shoved the sneakers onto her bare feet.

"Where's my Cherokee?" she asked, her hand on the doorknob. And where's my sense?

Travis folded his arms. "Still at the club."

Tru dug in her pockets and came up with twenty five dollars, lifting her eyes to him, quizzically.

"I paid for the room, Sugar," he admitted.

She slammed the door behind her, and hurried to the front office to call a cab.

Travis reclined, his fingers locked behind his head, admiring his reflection in the mirror. He flexed his pectorals and began to sing an old Carole King tune. "It's too late, Baby, now it's too late..." It had been remarkably easy. Remarkably. He checked his image in the mirror again, rubbing his chest with both hands, absently, and he began to whistle.

As You Were (Novel Excerpt)

Interlude

She appeared in the doorway. "You asleep?"

"Nope." Still standing there. "What do you need? A drink of water? A blanket? Cuddles?"

"Yes."

Laughing. "Yes, what?"

"Cuddles."

I peeled back the covers on the "passenger side" of the bed.

She came over and got in.

"Okay," I said, my arm cocked back. "Spoons, or cheek on chest?" She put her cheek on my chest, and I put my arm around her shoulders. In the ensuing silence, I felt her gears turning. "What's on your mind?"

"How do you know there's something on my mind?"

"There's always something on your mind."

She giggled. "You're right. . .I was thinking about something you said earlier. . .you said you think I'm beautiful. . .what did you mean?"

"Um. . .well. . .aesthetically pleasing, easy on the eyes, evolved on the inside. . .engaging, intelligent. . .a sexy heart-shaped mouth. . .all that is beautiful. . ."

"You think i have a heart-shaped mouth?"

I leaned back to look at it. "Yep. There it is. Heart-shaped." Settling back down on my chest, she turned contemplative again. I felt her thinking. I always feel her thinking. "What else?" I prodded, brushing my fingers through the tendrils of hair at her forehead.

"I like you."

"I like you, too."

"How much?"

I held up my fingers to about an inch, and she smacked me on the arm, as we both laughed.

"Seriously. Yes. I do like you. More than I should, probably."

"Why do you say that? "

"I just know you are very dangerous to me."

"I've never been accused of being dangerous."

"Well you are."

"How?"

Now it was my turn to squirm. I cleared my throat and tried to find the right words. "I had a very precise and thorough list of what I wanted to manifest in my life. . .romantically."

"And?"

"And you're it."

"Really?"

"Unless you have me fooled."

"Kiss me."

"What?"

"I want you to kiss me like I'm the one you manifested. . ."

"Why?"

"So I can see if it's what I manifested."

"Oh, you've been manifesting, too, have you?"

"Yes I have."

I sighed. "Now I have performance anxiety."

Interlude

Excerpt from Quintessence (Novella)

I Had a hard time finding an excerpt from this book because most everything would give away too many details. I want these to be saved for the full experience of the reader....so hope this excerpt will give you at least a slight idea of what the book is like.

Excerpt from
Quintessence
 (Speculative Fiction)
by
Kelli Jae Baeli

I moved a little stiffly to the doorway and recognized the living room on the other side of the kitchen. It was the house by the barn. The one I had pilfered food from. It appeared lived-in, unlike the last time I was there. There was no blanket of dust on everything. Someone had cleaned. Moved a few things around, added other things. "I get it. . ." Wow. Just for a minute I thought I was in the Twilight Zone.

Pritchard moved up behind me. "You get what?"

"The tube. . .it went underground and came up here, and it had some gas hose in it somewhere that knocked me out, and you switched my clothes . . ."

The doctor laughed merrily.

"That's it, right?"

He stopped laughing. "Sorry, son. It's significantly more complicated than that."

"Just give me the Reader's Digest Condensed Version."

"I. . .it can't be condensed—"

"Try."

"Very well," he sighed, searching for a simple statement. "I brought you into one of your alternate realities with a device I invented. The tube, the ARM."

I waited. Letting the statement sink in. It never sunk. It just hovered there on the surface, aggravating me, a little frightening.

"If you want to join me for coffee at the table, I'll make sense of this for you."

Ignoring his invitation, I headed straight out the front door, pausing in the driveway, looking for my van. There were three cars in the driveway. One was a silver sedan that had rounded fenders much like the old cars in the 50's. The other two were SUV styles, but altogether odd, compared to the ones I had seen in my lifetime. One brown, and one the color of coffee with cream. I was a bit surprised that they had round wheels, as if this reality had somehow managed to make a vehicle roll on squares.

My attention on the barn, I started for it. Sprinting over to the large door, I grabbed the handle and pulled. It squeaked open to reveal a room just like the room I stayed in before all this got so crazy. There was a large rug in the center, but it was mostly green instead of the blue I remembered. I knew the room was different, too. The hand written journals were replaced by a computer on the desk. But I was only interested in The ARM. I stepped over and kicked the rug away to reveal the circle of light.

The coffee can was not in sight, and instead, I found a small cylinder of comparable size, that had a handle on the top. I assumed this would serve the same purpose. Grabbing it off the desk, I leaned down to press it into the circular indention.

The wood panel whirred upward, the Bank Tube or ARM or whatever, rose to full height and stopped with the airbrake sound. It was not silver anymore, but white.

I pressed a button on the outside and the door slid open. I stepped in. I wanted to go back to my life. The one I understood, the one that made sense. I wanted out of this nightmare reality.

As I closed the panel, I heard Pritchard yelling, "Jason! No!"

That susurrous second of air and then. . .

The panel slid open, and I saw her spin around to face me, lift a handgun and cock it. I flattened myself against the round wall, and hit the panel button again, and the door closed as a shot ricocheted off the housing. The door opened again, and I fell out into the arms of Ethan Pritchard.

"Oh my god. . ." I mumbled.

"Jason!" He helped me stand upright. "Are you okay?"

"What the hell was that?"

His arm came around me as he led me out of the barn.

* * *

(Quintessence is due for release in 2010)

Excerpt from Quintessence (Novella)

House of Escher

(from Brainmatter: Essays, Narrative & Short Fiction by Kelli Jae Baeli)

"Where are the stairs?"
She made a derisive sound.
"Oh, you don't want to take the stairs."

I woke in a strange bed, in a strange room, the previous night of drinking leaving me with a tongue that felt swollen, and an overwhelming need for a drink of water.

My friends had obviously carried me from the car to this bed sometime in the night. I sat up, my head swimming. Where am I? The last thing I remembered was sitting in the back seat of Casey's old Bonneville, with my head in Mindy's lap. Franklin was in the passenger seat. He was the newest member of the circle of friends—an unassuming boy-next-door type. He said he wasn’t gay, but it was hard to tell. It was odd that he'd hang out with a bunch of lesbians. General consensus was that he was in the closet. He did seem a little overly sensitive. At any rate, he had impeccable manners and seemed totally comfortable around us. So we included him in our little road trips. Like a mascot.

I had had a hard day at school, cramming for finals, and indulged a bit too much in the Schnapps, finally passing out in Mindy's lap.
So now, here I was in this room with a small bunk and cinder block walls, and not much of anything else. I had to find a bathroom first, and then I had to find my friends. I stood up and that's when I became aware that I was wearing a set of green scrubs, I must have gotten sick on my other clothes. So they had also changed my clothes at some point too. Great. I really like the idea of that. I haven’t shaved my legs in over a week.

I found Franklin coming out of the bathroom down the hall. “Hey, Franklin, where is everyone?”
“They had to go to a lecture.”

“A lecture?”

He swept a hand around. “You’re in the dorm.”

“Oh. Wow. I should stay away from liquor.”

“There’s coffee in here, in the break room. Want some?”

“Sure.” I followed him into the kitchenette and lounging area, taking the Styrofoam cup he offered, and drinking with zeal, burning my tongue.

He plopped on the sofa across the room and I followed, seating myself next to him. He watched me thumb through a Psychology Today magazine, and eventually, his attention was unnerving. “Why are you staring at me, Franklin?”

He released an obviously pent-up breath. “I was just thinking about how I’d like to do things to you.”

Confused by his uncharacteristic boldness, and his apparent voyage from gayness to straightness, I frowned at him. “What? Are you trying to be funny?”

“No I’m not. Lean back here and be quiet.”

I started to protest, considered even smacking him in the mouth, but then I saw the ice pick he held in his hand. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No. You are. Now lean back like I told you.”

I obeyed, telling myself it was merely a stall until I could figure out how to handle this.

He pressed into me, his breath tickling my face, and touched my ear with the ice pick. “You know, if I jabbed this ice pick into your ear, you wouldn’t be able to hear yourself screaming.”

Okay. Not funny. Scary, now. He was a psycho. It was clear to me that the unassuming, slightly effeminate Franklin I knew last night had become a very dangerous and twisted individual of the serial killer variety. As he held the ice pick under my chin, its point almost piercing me, he ran a hand up my thigh and began to massage my crotch. His intentions were probably rape, torture and murder, in no particular order.

At first, of course, I was terrified. About then, I realized the only way out was to outsmart him. So I said, "Okay, I have a confession. . .you don't have to force yourself on me, because I've had a crush on you since the first day we met. I've always wanted you, I just never thought you'd want me. I couldn't tell my friends because we're all gay and of course, they wouldn't understand . . . sometimes things go beyond gender Franklin, and we have a special connection."

He was taken aback, and stricken a bit speechless. Then he warmed to the idea and reached for me. I said, "Wait. . .I want this to be special. And I also want them all to know. I don't want to hide. We've got to tell them, and then you and I have to go away some-where alone so we can be together properly. . ." I leaned up and kissed his cheek and touched his hair. "It's too special to do it here, like this." I took him by the hand and led him out of that remote room and down the hallway, telling him we had to find our friends and get this over with.

Finally, I found them. They were in this classroom, in the middle of a lecture, just as he had said. I stood at the door with him, still holding his hand, and got their attention. They saw how odd it was that we were holding hands and standing so intimately close. I tried to catch several of them in the eyes and make urgent faces, to let them know something was amiss, but they didn’t seem to notice, and he watched me too much. Through sign language, they indicated that they could not get out of the lecture just yet. It began to sink in, then, that they would never believe what I was eventually going to tell them. . .that he was not who they thought he was, that he was very very sick, and very very dangerous. They all loved him. And then the jig would be up and he would know I knew, and he would play it off and act innocent, and then it would only be a matter of time before he hunted me down.

No, I couldn't tell them. I had to find a way to show them.

My thoughts were interrupted by his anxious whisper. "Let's tell them later, and just go."

I hesitated, but then said, "Okay. . .I guess that's okay. . .we'll tell them when we get back. I know of a great cabin we can go to in the mountains… why don't you go get your car and pull around front, and I'm going to visit the ladies room right quick. I don't want to have to worry with that later, you know. . ." I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

He nodded his understanding and I swear, almost blushed. "I'll meet you out front." I leaned up and kissed him again, for effect, on the lips this time. He seemed a bit confused, but then smiled and seemed happy. He headed for the door, already digging in his pocket for his car keys. I knew he would look back at me, so I made a production of looking at the wall marquee directory for the location of the restroom. When I heard the door open and close, I turned and saw he was gone.

Breaking into a sprint, I headed for the elevators. My attention at the directory marquee had been about finding the location of the elevators, not the restroom.

The elevator had small silver doors, like the kind in old buildings and colleges. I saw it at the end of the corridor. A bunch of people were in there, and the doors were slowly closing, and I was running down the hall, trying to get there, and watching them all ignore me. . . they wouldn't hold the door. A rotund black woman standing with them, elbowed them aside and hit the door open button and got out, grumbling, "I hate that shit. People are so rude."

"Thank you," I said. "But now, you've lost your ride."

She shrugged. "Why would I want to ride up in an elevator with people like that?"

We exchanged a meaningful glance, and I slipped back into my anxiety, wondering if Franklin was at his car yet, if he was waiting in the front, wondering where I was. I punched the button again and we both looked up at the lighted numbers. It was on the fourth floor and holding.
"Sometimes it takes a while," she muttered.

I looked at the stagnant number four as she offered, "It looks like that damn thing is stuck again. And the other one broke down this morning. . ."

"Where are the stairs?"

She made a derisive sound. "Oh, you don't want to take the stairs."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you. But you don’t want to take the stairs."

Still, there was this ticking clock in my brain and I caught myself watching the exit door for Sweet Mr. Serial Killer. "I'll take my chances, where are they?"

She shrugged her resignation. "Okay. Down there, turn left, turn right, and then left again. Look for the green door. You can't miss it."

"Thanks"

I ran. Images of Franklin appeared in front of me, behind me, a twisted, betrayed expression on his features, his hands itching to close around my neck for playing his emotions, his ice pick plunging into my ear as he laughed. Unable to hear myself scream.

I turned left. Right. Left again.

The green door.

I grabbed the knob and pulled it hard, and took a step inside, almost losing my balance. I had to grab the door jamb to keep from falling. There was no first step. The steps began a few feet down, and there was a gaping hole in between. A hole that seemed to lead down into an abyss of darkness. "Holy shit!" I jumped, and as my feet landed on the top step, I heard the echo of the elevator woman’s voice "I told you!"

I turned to look back up at the door, half expecting to see her standing there. No time to consider the oddity, I had to get out of there, Find help. Lose the psycho mascot.

I turned back and took one step down, but halted when I realized that the single stairway had somehow multiplied; Now, there was a collection of morphed stairways, some moving in a sideways pattern and disappearing into the walls, some tiny and leading steeply upward into the ceiling, some leading down and then back up again, and all the steps were now brightly colored in differing pastel shades. I closed my eyes, swallowing, and then looked again. They were still there. I was standing in the middle of a Dali painting, an Escher drawing, a room for traveling clowns with no destination. Is this what the elevator girl meant? Was this some sort of optical illusion perpetrated by bored geniuses at the college?

Shaking off the anxiety now simmering in my gut, I searched for an outlet; some stairway that led to a door. I followed the path of a spiral staircase that rose up over my head and around a corner. That must be it. I hopped over to that bottom step and ascended quickly, turning the corner and smacking into a wall that stood just out of sight. Touching the bruise on my cheek, I shook my head clear and turned around, and—

All the stairs were gone. I was on a step, hanging over the black hole again. I took some deep breaths and tried to calm myself. This prank was not engendering humor in me. I felt I was about to snap, fling myself into the void. But no, I was a survivor and I would find a way out of this circus.

I rubbed my eyes and took another cleansing breath. Lifting my eyelids again, I saw the pole. Like the kind in fire stations. It was only a few feet out. Swallowing any preemptive thoughts, I lunged for it, wrapped myself around it and slid down into the darkness.

My feet met floor only one story down. This had to be the second floor. That meant I might have to maneuver my way through another stairwell with God knew what sort of multi-leveled gaming. I expected a Pacman to come floating through the air: wokka wokka wokka. . .but there was a door on the other side of the room.

Carefully ensuring the floor was still there, I traversed the distance to the door, this time painted bright blue, and pulled it open, stepping out onto the landing. It was the back entrance. I now remember it was the same one I had used when I had entered the building with my friends. But that had been on the ground level, and I knew I had only slid one story. In front of me, and spanning around the building, was the same chain link fence, the same chain link gate, through which we had accessed this back door.

Beyond the chain link, I could see the tiny hardware store we had passed coming in. I remembered it because it looked like something out of the past. It was the kind of hardware store found in remote Southern areas; the kind that carried chicken wire and saddles and hunting rifles, and run by a guy wearing overalls. I tried to recall where I was, and how I could get out of here, out of this city and back to the place I called home, a small but cozy apartment in a quaint tourist village a few counties away.

I checked the perimeter for Sweet Mr. Serial Killer, and hurried to the chain link gate, lifting the metal latch and slipping through. Up the concrete steps into the hardware store, I approached the counter, dodging a wooden barrel of leaf rakes that tried to snag my hair. "Excuse me—"

The man in overalls turned from his stocking, a box of .38 shells in his hand. "Oh, I didn't hear you come in. The clapper on that door bell is broken—how can I help you?"

"Um. . ." I gathered my thoughts. "I'm. . .lost. Can you tell me where I am?"

"You're at the corner of 7th and main."

"No I mean. . .where. . .what city is this?"

"You don't know what city you're in?"

"Well, I rode here in a friend's car and fell asleep, and they. . .took off and left me, and now I'm not sure where I am."

He nodded, a nostalgic smile creasing his wrinkled face, obviously satisfied by my explanation. "Well now, young lady, you're in the fine city of Whitehall."

That didn't help me much because I didn't recognize the name.

Where are these friends of yours?"

"Oh they're taking classes over here at the college."

"What college?"

I pointed behind me toward the old building, "Back here. I'm not sure of the name of it—"
He shifted his weight onto another foot. "Are you talking about that gray building behind the chain link?"

I nodded.

"Young lady. . .that's not a college."

"What? Of course it is, I have friends who are over there right now, attending a lecture. . .I was just there. . .I'm. . .okay, I'm really trying to get away from this really creepy guy who's chasing me, and—" I could see I was only making it worse. "Okay, if it's not a college, what is it?"
He hesitated, squinting at me. "It's. . .a hospital. An asylum."

Then I was profoundly confused. He was eyeing my scrubs. He was also ever so slightly moving toward the phone on the counter. "Let me call some help for you, young lady," he said carefully. His hand was on the receiver.

"Don't do that," I told him. It came out sounding like a warning, I really just meant that I knew what he was thinking and it was not accurate. But how would I convince him now? I didn't know where I was, I was dressed in scrubs, disoriented, and calling a mental hospital a college. I'd have the same thoughts he was having. . .

He picked up the phone and started dialing, his other hand slipping under the counter. I remembered the box he had been holding and I knew what else he was holding now.

I just turned and ran out.

Taking the gravel alleyway that ran behind the hardware store, I just kept running with no idea where I was going. I thought of the college. The surrealist stairs. My friends. Franklin. Had I wound up with a bunch of crazies during my night on the town? No, I knew my friends. But Franklin was new.

A buzzing began in my head. I started to cry. The tears leaped from eyes into the wind like miniature paratroopers.

Something moved at the end of the alley. A figure. It was him. I spun and dashed in the other direction, getting a painful slap in the face from a tree limb, which caused me to stumble. That’s all he needed. He was there, his arms around me like a wrestler, and I anticipated being body-slammed and whacked with a metal chair.

I swiped my heel at the back of his knee, so that his leg folded; he lost balance, and we fell to the ground, where I wriggled free, but then there were two more hands. Four hands? He had help with him. The man in overalls from the hardware store. Some sort of weird conspiracy? Did he hire a lookout for these forays into kidnapping and violation?

A sharp prick in my neck soon ebbed into grogginess and I knew I was losing consciousness.

As a howling October wind created Halloween ambiance outside, Franklin finished securing the straps around her while the other man looked around the room, studying the bizarre artwork on the walls.

“You look really stupid in those overalls,” Franklin cracked.

He turned. “The wife insisted we go as The Farmer and the Farmer’s Daughter. She never misses a chance to remind me how much younger she is than me.”

Franklin chuckled, his attention back on the girl in the bed. “This was a bad one. They ought to change her meds.” He caught the other orderly staring at a picture. “Why do you keep looking at that?”

“I don’t know. I’m drawn to it. But it creeps me out.”

Franklin studied the painting, MC Escher’s House of Stairs.

House of Escher