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my stomach hurts where I've been stabbed - excerpt...
A girl slashed me. I didn't see the box cutter until it was slicing through my t-shirt. At first I thought she'd just cut my shirt, and I was ready to tear into her for it, but then my blood gushed out. She took off running. I stood there trying to figure out where the hot, copper smell was coming from. Me? I remember touching my stomach, and my hand coming away red. I thought, does my skin always hold that much blood inside me? I'm like a bag of fluid, waiting to spring a leak. The skin gave way very easily. Wasn't nothing to it. But it still didn't hurt. It didn't hurt until I squeezed my skin together to try to stop the bleeding. Hurting was nothing new, but having your own fingers mistakenly slide inside your belly brings a new definition of pain. Lie down, take a rusty tin can lid, press it hard into your stomach, pry open the cut and have a young woman wearing stiletto heels stand in your wound and take a piss. That's kind of like how it felt. 692. By the time I stumbled into the hospital my white tennis shoes were red. 696. I have them on today. 697. Now they look like dirty rust. 698. Okay, enough waiting. 699.
"Can somebody help me out here?"
drake speaks...
I enjoy reading these. It's always fascinating to see what little event, news clip or mundane daily activity ignites an idea in a writer's head. Which is why I wish mine was more interesting.
I wrote this story specifically for this anthology, but knowing that I neither despise nor adore my vehicle, I saw no reason to make some deep, eloquent, political statement about our four-wheeled friends. Instead, I decided to place my main character in his car for the entire story and this weird little tale merely materialized. It actually came out quite quickly, with very little revision, and I was very happy with the first draft. Cool. And after a quick word count I realized I was well short of the minimum and had to try to figure out what I could add to. So I added Mikey's counting (I was sitting in my office watching the clock), how Mikey's wound feels (it's how I describe my kidney stone), expanded the Preacher character (a fatter, sleazier version of Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs), added in some other senses (the smell inside the car, how the scar feels) and some other odds and ends. In the end, the word count probably made the story. So no traumatic childhood experiences here, no social commentary, no subliminal injustice outcry; it's just a story about meat. But I really like meat.
drake bio...
Jeff Drake spends his days hunched over his computer writing award-winning ad copy in his office. Jeff spends his nights hunched over his computer writing odd stories, music reviews and movie scripts in his room. His fiction has recently been published on deathbus.com and in the City of Saskatoon's 100 Poems in 100 Days project.
To read more words about him visit http://www.myspace.com/the_drake
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Chimericana Books.
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Chimericana Books.
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