10/17/07

Scare-Your-Pants-Off #1

Erin soaked the stain five days: brownish red, spilled over the right leg of her jeans. Each day she pulled them out of the bucket, inspected, scrubbed. Brown particles floated away from the fabric, but the stain remained bright. She went online and looked for stain remedies: Blood: soak in cold water. Use hydrogen peroxide for stubborn stains. She pulled out the hydrogen peroxide and dabbed some on. White foam fizzled, bubbling until it spread over her hands and wrists. “Out, damn spot,” she muttered to herself, scraping off foam to see if the peroxide had faded the stain. But the foam grew back, creeping up her arms, edging towards her neck.

7 comments:

Rachelle Christensen said...

Intriguing paragraph but I'm a little concerned. Either I can't read or someone decided that the "D" word isn't a swear word anymore.

No swearing or graphic gore. Set the mood with your WORDS, not with hack tricks.

Anonymous said...

Does quoting Macbeth still count as swearing?

Josi said...

Macbeth--right, I knew that. Of course I did.

Janet Kay Jensen said...

Reminds me of a cartoon I saw. It's in a castle, and the queeen is ordering the dog outside.

"Out, out, damned Spot," she says.

And I think Shakespeare said "damned" instead of "damn."

WM said...

This entry receives my third and final vote.

Anonymous said...

Made me want to say "eyeeew..." The one short saying of the character spoke volumes!

LDS_Publisher said...

This one has some good imagery. I can clearly see her scrubbing on those jeans. I like that the peroxide goes up her arms--hinting that there is blood there as well.

When referencing a literary piece, make sure you quote it exactly or it doesn't quite have the same effect. "Out, damned spot."

I would be intrigued enough to read on.