Are we doing a Ten Most Bitter list? I can do that.

1 (with a bullet): Lynda with a y, aka Dolly. Same nickname as the aunt who raised me, a woman I cordially disliked. Lynda-with-a-y the Second was the black hole who had everything I wanted, held on to it for all the wrong reasons, and pissed all over it. She won, I lost. Fuck bitter - pass the bile.

2: I finally got to offer payback to #1 in fiction form, and wound up being fair to the bitch.

3. My youth was completely wasted on me, because, as it happens, I was a bloody idiot.

4. Wrong decision, a long time ago. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Still paying.

5. See #1.

6. Ibid

7. Ibid

8. Ibid

9. The fucking NeoCons.

10. Multiple sclerosis.

11. This list goes to eleven.

Your drabble topic is: EAT IT!!!!

No, not really.

Sorry, folks --I was busy blowing things up Monday (because somehow blowing shit up is patriotic....), and today I was fighting with a computer all day (though I finally won, tra la). But I bring you your very late drabble topic, finally!

Challenge #64 (trust) is now closed.

Challenge #65 (and I thought we did this already, but I checked -- we haven't) is blood.

(Yeah, I watched a few too many Buffy reruns over the weekend -- what can I say?)

The First Time

“How old is this quilt?”

“I dunno. It was my grandmother’s.”

My eyes grow big and I get back to scrubbing.

Scrub scrub scrub.

The smell of the detergent and the blood mixed makes almost as nauseous as I was 10 minutes ago. I must get this quilt clean.

Scrub scrub scrub.

The only sound in the room. I’m no longer breathing – breathing will make the stain set. My brain is full of “Get it out. Get it out. Get it out.”

Scrub scrub scrub.

And it occurs to me: Am I trying to clean this quilt or myself?

Scrub scrub scrub.

Oh, Aimee. Damn.

I love that.

Thanks, Deb.

Bad Medicine

I'm eighteen, tough as old boots. Eighteen, and my life is a chronically ill musician, ten years my senior.

Actually, right now, he's with his wife in Surrey, and I'm at our supposed house in Mill Valley. I'm sitting in my favourite rocking chair, his chair, emptying a bottle of tequila: rock, chug, swallow.

He's gone. Again.

I don't know it yet, but later on, when I finish the bottle, I'll fill a bath and take a razor in with me, water going scarlet, bloodletting him out of me, friends pulling me out, interfering fuckers.

Like I told you, I'm eighteen...

Oh, man, Deb. Talk about fucking painful.

Well, I was starting to wonder if my muse had abandoned me. Thankfully, not.

Tainted

It was my first day in Rota and my sponsor took me out for dinner. We sat at a table on the sidewalk. The white-washed buildings crowded the narrow road; when I looked up all I could see was a small square patch of bright blue sky. The air had that gauzy quality that signaled sunset, but there was still so much light. I asked what time it was. Past 10:00, said my companion. Amazing. It was still light out when my steak came and I enjoyed the meal for the surroundings, not the flavor.

I can’t donate blood, now.

ETA: I rewrote this, so if you've already read it, check it out again. I like this much better. More visceral.

These blood drabbles are sharp and painful. Gorgeous.

Jeepers, Sail. We should compare scars, sometime; the one on my left wrist is a corker....