Hello again, my purvey sistahs in all things twisted, tormented and titillating. Once again, we’re spotlighting YOUR favorite moments in YOUR favorite Dark fics. Today we have ourselves a delightful treat covered in rich dark, chocolate…mmmmm…with a dollop of whipped cream. The hauntingly awesome,
agreed to be part of the mayhem of my Friday segment (oops, Saturday this week). Two of her biggest fans, and loveliest review whores, MoreThanMyself and Burntcore, fell prey to my irresistible charm. They agreed to participate, choosing their favorite scenes from two of Nitareality’s kickass fics, making her answer the age-old, million-dollar, winner-gets-all-Cullen-men-at-the-same-time question:
Where in the name of sparkly peen
did you come up with this scene?
1st scene from MoreThanMyself: Little Red Riding Hood – Chapter 3
Then, before her eyes, he began to tremble, then curl into himself. She closed her eyes against what might be happening. She opened them when she heard a horrible growl, expecting to see maybe a bear approaching, sure to give her captor a fright. Instead she saw her death.
There was a wolf in front of her, teeth snarling and snapping. Jaws dripping. He lunged at her, his mouth closing around her throat, his claws tearing down her body, ripping her torso open from breast to her innards. She was still conscious as the wolf ran from her, looking down at her rended body, parts of her insides hanging from the slices in her belly.
She tried to scream, panic only now registering with her, but all she could produce was a gurgling liquefied moan from where her throat had been shredded.
*******
My very favorite story from Nitareality, hands-down, is Little Red Riding Hood. The story exudes dark sensuality and sexual tension with a raw edge of danger and a healthy dose of horror. I love Nita’s ability to create images in my mind that stay with me long after I finish reading, and she does it in a way that leaves the reader’s mind to fill in most of the graphic, violent details. In my favorite dark scene in LRRH, Lauren is attacked by the werewolf.
In the three, short paragraphs detailing her death, the word ‘blood’ is never once mentioned. Yet, somehow, there is no doubt in the reader’s mind that there is blood, copious amounts of it. When the reader encounters the portion of the scene detailing Lauren’s brutal disembowelment believing it will be the pinnacle of the horror to be endured, it’s understandable to expect that Lauren’s swift death will follow. And then we learn a detail that changes the focus of the scene: Lauren is still conscious enough to acknowledge and understand her injuries. With that small detail, what was a scene of brutal violence, becomes an example of gruesome psychological horror.
Nitareality’s response:
This is very much what came out of my head as I typed. Graphic scenes, for me, are always written with my eyes closed, seeing what happens. In my head I have a sparse outline of what needs to happen, but I let my mind see what comes, and usually go with it. Here, it was very much "Okay, this man had his way with me, tied me to the tree...wait, what?"
I don't necessarily leave out certain descriptors. I was shocked to learn that I hadn't used the word "blood" here. I do try to focus on *** the detail with the most impact. So here, would it be blood or intestines? Blood or shredded skin? Blood or the gurgling scream?
I think that people, in horror, will fill things in with their worst fears, making your story more frightening for them. The less you give, while still painting a complete picture, the more license they have to run with their nightmare.
In this one scene, just regarding the insides hanging from her belly, the reader could be squirming for any of a multitude of personal fears. Is it worse that her hands are tied and she can't hold her insides to her belly, or that her intestines may be sliding slowly toward the ground, getting dirt all over them? Maybe it's worse that she knows she'll still be here, maybe alive, as ravens come to peck at her insides. Maybe someone *does* fear the massive blood loss most. It's not for me to say. I would be a fool to dictate what the reader should fear most. Letting their imagination run away with them is so much better.
***Focus on my salad. Pop culture reference. Martha Stewart on a morning show when invited to make a salad, but was being badgered about her criminal charges. "I'd like to focus on my salad."
2nd scene, from BurntCore: This Woman’s Work, o/s
Bella steeled herself. He was standing behind her, his eyes burning into her spine. He sighed, the same exasperated sigh she'd heard every time she had failed him over the past decade.
"Bella you cannot possibly be surprised by this. You don't even try."
She lifted her head, keeping her eyes on the grain of the wooden cabinets in front of her. "Shut up." Just a whisper.
"What? I can't hear you when you're not even looking at me. Bella could you at least turn around if you want to say something?"
Her voice cracked, but she managed to find it. "Shut up."
"You're fucking psycho, you know that Bella? What the fuck, it's like you're mentally ill, seriously."
Bella started to laugh. Her eyes landed on the knife rack in front of her. She slowly reached for her favorite tomato slicing blade and pulled it off the rack.
Mike sighed a puff of air through his lips. She didn't need to turn around to know he'd rolled his eyes and was shaking his head.
She turned slowly, keeping the hand with the knife behind her. Her eyes pouring tears, her mouth turned up in a sarcastic grin. "Ya think, Mike? Do ya think that's why I take all those meds?"
She laughed as she watched his jaw set in anger.
She watched as he started to open his mouth to speak.
She slid her hand from behind her and in one fluid, word stealing moment, sliced his throat open.
Mike crumpled to the floor. She kicked him in his chest, knocking him onto his back as his mouth moved, but no words were issued. All that came forth was a gurgling noise.
She straddled him, yelling, laughing. "What's that Mike?" She plunged the knife into his chest, the blood spraying up into her face. "I can't understand you!" She stabbed the knife into his stomach with each word.
She stopped abruptly, looking at the mess before her, her near dead husband's horrified eyes paralyzed, staring at her. She curled down and put her face on his chest, her breaths coming out in wailing screams. After a few minutes her breathing had slowed and her cries stopped. She drifted off, vague thoughts about picking up her kids from their weekend at Grandma's house going through her mind.
*******
Retribution is a bitch, isn't it? For anyone who had been picked on, under appreciated, taken for granted, overlooked, this is their moment. This is the moment when we feel the collective "Fuck you!" to those who have trod up on us. The majority of us can't do what Bella did... at least not without ending in a pysch ward or in jail. But we can delight when a character in a story does what we cannot. Revenge. Retribution. Results.
I was picked on as a teen, and while I never wanted to harm my classmates, how many times had I wished I had the strength to fight back and stand up for myself? How times I had I been brought to the brink? Bella went there and went beyond it. Perhaps she was a little (or a lot) unbalanced, perhaps we all are to a certain extent. I cheered when she finally spoke up to Mike. A part of me was shocked when she pulled that knife out and sliced his neck with it, but I couldn't stop feeling some sense of exultation. She broke free. She may have snapped a little when that happened, but it was done.
This was my favorite part of Nita's work because I could relate to it, even in its darkness, especially because of its darkness. We all have darkness inside of us somewhere. It's just a matter of what we choose to do with it that separates us. I wrote. Bella... well, she didn't.
Nitareality’s response:
It's hard to address this question in many ways. This story simply doesn't get read a lot, so I'm always a little self conscious about it.
The knife rack is real. The counter is real. Too much of that is real. I'd like to say I regret publishing it, but to be honest, it felt like getting poison out of my system to write and publish it.
I wrote this for the Beyond the Pale contest. We were given picture prompts, and had to choose one to write to. I wrote for two prompts.
This prompt was a picture of a woman sitting in the middle of a road, hands bloodied, obviously distraught.
The honest truth, is that what in the sparkly peen I was thinking, at the time, was very real. Much of the dialogue here is word for word, exactly what was said. To someone. Once upon a time.
I saw this picture and saw, in one instant, how a woman could wind up there. The story actually started with the end (LRRH did too, see a trend?). The first thing I wrote was
"She looked down at her hand, finding it was wrapped tightly around a knife,
almost in a lovers caress of an aroused cock; a knife firmly implanted into the life-source of her victim."
In this scene, I allowed myself to be at that counter, in front of that knife rack, being that demeaned, frightened woman. I allowed myself to feel, not think. I ran with my most base instinct and this is what I saw. I wound up here, slashing his throat, throwing his words back at him, laughing at the stupidity of them.
Bella is so disconnected from the reality of what she's done for a bit here. She's just focused on making him shut up. Hopefully it comes through, but in her relationship with him, she's asked him to shut up in a million nice ways, some not so nice ways, and he never does. So after she whispers it, and he keeps talking, she feels hopeless, helpless, doesn't know any other way to stop the barrage of verbal missiles she feels are being thrown at her.
It's not, in her head, about murder, about ending his life. In that one moment, she just couldn't take one.more.word. from him. She's not thinking of him as her children's father, not thinking at all. She's in so much pain that she just acts on her most base instinct.
As far as the imagery, it scares me a little that both scenes picked have these awful throat slashings! lol. I want to lighten things up, maybe do a cock slashing or something. (NO! NOT THE SPARKLE PEEN!) I've seen hundreds of slasher films. I'm also a huge fan of any tv show where crime scene analysis is a focus. Hopefully I've learned a thing or two lol. Putting myself in a blood soaked environment is fairly easy for me, then it's just a matter of describing what I see.
I'd like to think that being an artist has helped. When painting you have to pay attention to things like the slant of the sun and it's effect on shadows, how it changes the color of an apple from blue red to orange red. Details. Those things are in my head, like it or not, and hopefully they translate in my writing.
The reality of this, I wish there was some kind of twitter transcript thing... It took five people cheering me on, telling me I could finish this, to do it. I had holed up in my room, had the song (This Woman's Work by Kate Bush) on a constant loop, and cried the entire time I wrote the end of this.
Of course, I couldn’t let Nitareality go without probing the depths of her psyche just a bit more for all of you, our DT readers, not to mention I’m a nosey bitch.
Where do you get the ideas for your fic? Out of the blue? Family members? Nightmares? Alcohol? ;D
Bloody Choices was born out of my obsession with all things related to plague. The minute I pictured all the illustrations from that time, of the narrow streets and dismal environment, I saw Edward striding down the street with his cloak flowing behind him. What I knew of that time period seemed to support a rich atmosphere for exploring morality, how people make their choices and how the consequences, expected and not, play out. It all just came together then.
Shattered Dawn was a direct response to my disappointment with certain parts of Breaking Dawn. Namely the Renesmabomination. It was also a Beyond the Pale entry, a response to one of the prompts.
This Woman's Work is the only published piece of mine has a huge piece of me in it. This was my answer to a prompt in the Beyond the Pale contest. I looked at the picture, a woman, bloodied, sitting in the middle of a road alone, and said “how did she get there?” It took about 5 seconds for me to say “wait, I know just how the fuck she got there!” This piece is the hardest for me not to speak endlessly about, so I'll shut up now lol.
The Caretaker came, plain and simple from my love of 70's horror, and my love of urban legends. I took about 3 legends local to where I grew up, and smashed them with some camp horror themes and had fun. It was for the 30 days of Em, and I just knew I had to have a dark Em.
Little Red Riding Hood is a FGB piece. It was supposed to be a one shot, but fuck knows I'm a wordy bitch. After I had kids, we were reading all these classic tales. At some point I stumbled on a collection that had the originals in them, and was amazed at how gruesome some of them were. After I started writing, I wanted to push them more.
The comic smut factory? I can't shut it down. Show me a picture, and I'll come up with some cockamamie story for it, and sometimes other people might think it's funny.
You have mostly dark fics, but one you describe as “Comic Smut”. (Mmmm, Chip likey). What do you love most about writing Dark? i.e. the ability to manipulate characters, stepping out of your personal realm of experience, going to the darkside in general, etc.
I like exploring how far I can push, for sure. Even though it's scary when I post a chapter and wait for the pitchfork brigade to get me. I get a rush when what I've written actually scares someone, grosses them out, makes them feel the rage or confusion of my character, or makes them feel the loss of someone passing. I like to explore why people kill each other; when it's okay and when it's not. Likewise, I'm curious about forgiveness. How far is too far to be forgiven?
I have this undying curiosity as to what scares people. Why is it this thing for me (clowns) and something else for another person? (Chip: Holy shit she said clowns! ME TOO! Hate the fuckers!!!) It's the same pondering I have when I enter a haunted house with a group. There's always that person who's scared to go first, and always that one who will freak if they're last. I like poking at that, seeing if I can get everyone scared with one story.
Inside my sunshiny twitter exterior is a twisted and dark individual. I love all things macabre, violent and monstrous (and fictional). I love putting myself in the heads of very disturbed characters. I feel at home in the dark.
What one character thrills you to your bones to take to the darkside?
Bloody Choices Edward. I connect to Cloakward in a way that probably isn't healthy for a girl. (wait, connecting with the sparklepeen is healthy, right?) He's the only character who really takes over me, where when I'm writing him, I'm actually up, speaking out loud. I just really feel him. (twss) (Chip giggles and nods.)
Would you like to share anything new that you’re working on/going to post?
I have some Bloody Choices outtakes going into the FaDV compilation. Alice's POV of the beginning, and of the “blood incident” among other things. Jasper's POV of the first dining hall scene.
I'll be part of the Fandom Fights the Floods comp, the Foxy Fics for Parkinson's comp and the FGB Autism Speaks comp.
The Caretaker and Shattered Dawn have both spawned second chapters. They will not be huge multi chapters.
I had the crazy idea to do a New Years Writing Challenge, and talked a bunch of people into doing it with me. We have goals set, and our completion date is 3/22. My list of WIPs and bunnies was 21 items long, and these are just the items that were fleshed out. My goal in the challenge is to finish or start them by 3/22. There's a lot of darkness there, but really, the stories run the gamut from rom com to pure, heartbreaking angst, with maybe a serial killer thrown in.
For sure one is an AH period fic set in the great depression/dustbowl era, 3 are fairy tale based, twisted up in the same way as Little Red Riding Hood.
Well there you have it, lovelies. The beautiful inner-workings of the mind of Nitareality, seemingly a lovely place to visit. *smirks and hums “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”* Us gals here at DT, especially me, thank her and her lovely review whores, MoreThanMyself and Burntcore, for joining us!!
So, you know what to do. Go read. Leave some love. Tell her DT sent ya.
Until next time, may your Darkest Temptations be served.
*lyric in mah head: Hotel California – Eagles
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