Thursday, May 6, 2010

BAD GIRL Blogfest: Ms. Black


This is a BAD GIRL SCENE from The Devil Gave Me Autumn, currently being considered for publication.

Ms. Black. Oh my God, how I LOVE Ms. Black.

From Write Runner's Bad Girl Blogfest: click

- Eric

***

Dylan glanced over his left shoulder, checking his blind-spot, and saw a stunning face in his window: a black-haired woman, smiling, wearing a satin brown blouse and black skirt, floating next to his car. The woman's black hair and blouse were unblown by the wind. Glancing down at Dylan, her arms folded across her chest, the woman glided with Dylan's Mercury down Highway 66.

"What the fuck!" Dylan instinctively pressed his foot against the accelerator, and the Mercury surged forward at an incredible speed, well beyond the aging engine's capability, slamming Dylan against the seat.

The floating woman suddenly became animated. Her well-manicured fist shattered the driver's-side window. Broken glass sliced into Dylan's cheeks, and hot summer air rushed into the car as the woman touched Dylan's steering wheel with one long finger, steering the car to the right as Dylan was about to cross the bridge over Lake Ray Hubbard, clipping Villanova's Civic before his Mercury launched off the pavement.

Dylan's Mercury missed the bridge railing and bounced down the embankment. At the bottom of the slope, the Mercury wedged into the muddy bank, then the momentum flipped the car upside-down into the shallow lake water.

Shaken, locked by his seatbelt into his overturned Mercury, Dylan disentangled himself from the airbag, and saw the black-haired woman, upside-down from his point-of-view, still floating next to his driver's side window, hovering over the mud. "What the fuck are you!" Dylan asked the woman.

The black-haired woman gripped Dylan's chin, holding his head beneath the water as his body dangled feet-up from the seat.

"I'm no angel, dear. Now hold still."

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the last line... LOVE it. :)

Damn... FOUR??? No pressure... Writer's block is kicking my ass over here and some dude has turned out FOUR??? lol... Well done. I liked them. Good point about not writing victim characters- self-pity is not appealing.

Thanks for the pointers on my story... They were really helpful... :)

Jemi Fraser said...

Yikes! Interesting stuff :)

dolorah said...

No, not a bad girl. It's his fault he was distracted. And, I'd have to read on - or the previous scenes - to know whats really going on.

But, you've definitely got my attention.

........dhole

dolorah said...

Ok; I read them all, and commented on them all.

I write victims; I write victims overcoming their circumstances. We would work well on a collaboration. Your women are empowering, heroic, really kick ass.

I gotta say again though; not bad girls. But you're making me re-think my own bad girl post; I want to make sure the character is all for herself, with no redeeming characteristics at all.

Hmm, thanks for polling so early.

......dhole

Lola Sharp said...

LOVE that last line.

It won't hurt a bit!

About Me said...

Also LOVED the last line. Nice excerpt from start to finish.

Eric W. Trant said...

Heh! I knew yall'd love Ms. Black. Gad, I love her so much. She gets sexually suggestive (not explicit) in the story, an evil tease. You can tell I got infatuated with her.

D: You said she's not a bad girl, but you need to read the rest of the story. She's a bad, bad, BAD girl, trust me, the worst kind there is.

F&M: Yeah, victims aren't real interesting. Flawed characters, yes, embattled and beaten, maybe, but victimized and weak, no. At least, they're not interesting to me.

Crimey, Lola, Jemi: THANKS for the nods!

- Eric

Theresa Milstein said...

He survives all of that and now he's going to drown! That IS a bad girl!

Amalia Dillin said...

The last line is great! Actually, everything after the first paragraph is well done-- that first paragraph though is rough. It REALLY slows the whole thing down and left me feeling like I had read the same sentence four times for one image. But she's a pretty fun character, for sure, and the rest of the scene picks up quite nicely!

Kristie Cook said...

I'm with Amalia on the first paragraph. But the rest is great! Especially the last line. You could have used it for the Last Lines Blogfest. =) Oh, and if Dylan had a Ferrari, he would have survived. ;-)

Andrew Rosenberg said...

Hee hee.
How did he speak with his head underwater?

She sounds bad to me!

Roland D. Yeomans said...

That last line is indeed the kicker. And the first paragraph can be smoothed and quickened. Good job. And I hope your bad girl gets picked up ... by a publisher! Roland

Eric W. Trant said...

Took the advice and edited the first paragraph. I deleted stuff I had added in, actually, thinking there wasn't ~enough~ detail.

Gotta watch the flow, eh.

THANKS for the comments and critiques! Keep em coming.

- Eric

Elizabeth Mueller said...

Getting chills here. Creepy and Wonderful and intriguing! I really hope you get it published soon! :D

Olivia J. Herrell, writing as O.J. Barré said...

Boy. Sounds like bye bye Dylan, unless he has some super tricks up his sleeve. Wicked Bad Girl! I'm wondering what he did to deserve THAT!

Olivia ;)

sarahjayne smythe said...

Hee! I love Ms. Black and I very much love that last line. :)

Eric W. Trant said...

Elizabeth, I hope this one will get published. It has a GREAT twist at the end. One of my readers said it hit her so hard she cried.

Olivia: Dylan's not a bad guy, he's not evil. But, he's not going to Heaven, that's all. Some folks are like that. One publisher said they couldn't get into the story because Dylan was not at all likable, and I said, "That's the point." The only likable character in the story is a tangential one called Villanova (she has a Villanova sticker on her car).

Sarah: Thanks! Everybody liked that last line. I shoulda used it for my last line blogfest entry, I guess.

Thanks all! Keep the comments coming. What a fun blogfest this has been.

- Eric

EJ Fechenda said...

And I thought I had road rage issues. LOL! This is terrifying and Dylan seems helpless against the attack. Is this random or does he deserve it?

Good luck!!

Eric W. Trant said...

EJ, he deserves it, and it is by no means random.

- Eric

Raquel Byrnes said...

Wow. She is one nasty treat. Poor Dylan, I thought at first, but then I figured he probably deserved it. ;)

Thanks for the tips on dialouge. The writer's conference went well...lots of fantasy and non-fiction so my romantic suspense might have a chance.

You should try going to one...putting a face with a name and story really helps.

Phoenix said...

DAMN.... (and that's a two syllable "damn" for you, sir, oh no, one syllable would just not do)

Whatever did poor Dylan do to deserve a death like that? Either way... I'm digging this!!

Jean Michelle Miernik said...

Creeeeepy. She's worse than finding a spider in the car, for sure!