Hmmmm. So ... just for argument's sake ... what if there were signs of a struggle? Hmmmm ...

Ah, then we have to figure out the nature of the struggle. If we posit someone doing the long dance from the main beam in the center of the room, but the potted aspidistra over in the far corner has been knocked over, then our victim was either murdered or is a very bad housekeeper. Or has a cat.

Honestly, any policeman walking into my house would say, "My god, World War III happened in here!" Especially when he saw all the swords.

Well, you know, you don't get to pick the vic. The inverse is also true. Like my mother would never voluntarily be without dental floss. But I'd sound like a freak saying "You don't understand, Detective Pembleton. There was no...lovely dental floss." Timmy would believe me. Munchkin might dig the quote.

I am such a big schmoop. I was reading one of my own stories, one which I wondered, in a cynical mood, if it was too manipulative, and I ended up getting teary-eyed. Does that happen to anyone else, with their own stuff?

Sometimes. But mostly I get turned on by my own sexy scenes.

That has been known to happen too.

There's one scene in what exists so far of my novel that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. I love it when I'm funny.

I'm sure that when iI get mushy, if I do it well, I'll make myself cry. I'm a sap.

This week's Open on Sunday is illness/sickness. I just did two of them.

Vignette, with Sex and Death, 18th Century

Don't do this please please don't

Angelus has her by the throat. He's got himself in the other hand. One pleasure he never denies himself is a hard brutal rape. Nothing like penetrating a victim in multiple places at the same time.

oh merciful God don't no

She's barely struggling. He's got her skirts up, he mounts her, rubs his teeth over her throat. She's odd warm, oddly weak.

don't don't

He stops, seeing the telltale blue buboes just under the breastbone. Cursing, he backs away and leaves her.

Even beyond death, fear of the plague is hard to overcome.

Earshot

There's illness, and then there's this.

bet she doesn't wear panties ooooh he wants to be a study partner

She doesn't bother trying to block it out; the infection that is demon power running under her skin, through her bloodstream, crowding all the incohate voices in all the world into her consciousness, can't be stopped with sonics or headphones or balled fists. She's dry-eyed, hot to the touch, on the edge of screaming.

forgot my homework hate them all new shoes you don't know what to do about the math test

This is power as ultimate sickness. And it's mortal.

Same theme different fandom...just because(You didn't think I could resist this long, did you?)

Frank Pembleton expected betrayal. From lying braindead witnesses, his partner, who still acted wet behind the ears half the time, and, hell, even from God when He failed to keep house in the Pembleton standard. But he never expected to be his own betrayer, brought down by some piss-ant blood clot. That clot couldn’t match him in the Box, and yet it did what few suspects could. Left him lying flat in his own domain. That clot would fucking *pay*. At the hospital they ask him to count, and their voices are a little too loud. A little too helpful. He pictures himself drawing that out, the way he could in what Mary calls his God voice. Aren’t we help-ful? But it sounds like grunts.He tries to give them his “Please don’t be an idiot. Thank you,” face when they ask him if he knows where he is, but the words get mixed up. Detective Pembleton is afraid.

Oh, MAN, Pembleton's stroke. That episode nearly killed me.

Remember him coming back to work, standing in front of the building, afraid to walk in, with the Cowboy Junies playing in the background?

Damn.