Hybrid, House of Slide 2nd edition rewritten.

I have done so much work on what I thought would be a quick edit. I rewrote a good third of the thing. I hope that it's an improvement and helps my readers connect better with my characters and the story. I ended it a little less cliff hangery (I am ignoring the red underline). Ah. Now I want to sit back and sew a softie, or two.

Here's an excerpt that I'm pretty silly happy about.

I reached a hand towards the shadows, tentatively pushing through the warm dampness that swallowed my hand in shadows. I felt nothing as I moved my hand down, although there should have been a car seat somewhere halfway up my wrist. It was as though shadows and other stuff didn’t really take up the same space, somehow they switched places. I scooted closer towards him, until with a start he wrapped his hand around my wrist and gave me a sharp tug.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a voice that sounded almost amused, still firmly holding my wrist. He wasn’t made out of mists anyway.

“I thought if I had more mists, closer, then I wouldn’t be able to smell the monster and throw up. Your mists are really potent. I don’t see how you can smell or sense anything else with so much wrapped around you.”

“You get used to it,” he said shortly, then after a moment’s pause. “You actually want to get closer to me? I don’t recommend it, but it wouldn’t bother me.”

I found myself pulled into the darkness, falling forward as gravity ceased having any kind of meaning, swallowed up in the warm, damp world until I found myself touching a shoulder with the hand that wasn’t still held by his. The smell of the mists was so encompassing, so rich, dark, and sweet, that I forgot about the other scent, the other world that had so recently occupied so much of my mind. I felt my heart slow as I relaxed, lost for a long moment in a relief so heavy I felt buoyed by it.

There was nothing to see, so I let my eyes close, not trying to see or make sense of a world inside of my world, a world where there was the Nether, dark and dangerous inside the steaming mist that soothed every ache I had. There was a distinct lack of pain before something shifted inside of my mind or intention, and I realized then that the skin under my hand was bare, wet and slick. My hand slid over the shoulder, down a chest, a stomach with rippling muscles until his other hand came firmly over mine, stopping my progression any lower.

I opened my eyes, startled, but there was nothing to see, although the darkness seemed to caress my eyes, soothing the strain I’d had trying to see in the dim light. I pulled back, suddenly.

He didn’t resist, letting me slip out of his grasp like a fish in a stream until with a choked cry and a disoriented lurch, where I ended half off the seat, I was back in Satan’s car, staring horrified at the shadow across from me while a monster breathed through the glass behind my head with an awful smell that was almost comforting.

“Are you naked?” I shrieked. 




Hope you had a great 4th weekend and a productive catch up Monday.