Just let some ho put her hands on my man. There will be a killin'.
LaRanda talked like that, and we all knew
she wouldn't really kill a human being. She was a champion of the downtrodden and campaigned for the impoverished children in our midst. Where others turned a blind eye or blamed the poor for being poor, LaRanda rallied people to march on the capitol and demand help for the needy--and less pork for the PACs and politicians.
Three husbands gave up on LaRanda, or she gave up on them. Even in a town as small as ours, we never really know what goes down in someone else's home, but the first husband left her for another man, and I don't know who among us saw that coming: Raging Rod was a flag-waving, redneck wrestling champion, the most macho of men. Next came this cute blue-eyed ginger guy of obvious Celtic origin. Scotland ancestry runs thick alongside the Cherokee and other exotic tribes in our region. The guy used to batter LaRanda and leave her raccoon-eyed, until ran off with some girl half his age after knocking her up. The third husband was even sexier than the Celtic dude, but by now LaRanda was suffering some medical condition and putting on weight, so the SOB cheated on her and ridiculed her for "letting herself go," and we don't know for sure who let whom go. Mutual, we presume. He never did marry again.
LaRanda started looking like a train wreck, but then she met a guy online who got her into herbology and yoga, and she quit the doctors, the pills, the medical bills, and she even quit marching on the capitol and demanding "humane" governance or some such.
This fourth guy.
He had a funny accent and a boatload of money and he got LaRanda out of the country, until her daddy died and she came back with Mr. Lightning, or whatever his real name was, for the funeral--and Kitty Lou set her sights on this rich dude with the awesome accent.
Just let some ho put her hands on my man. There will be a killin'. Sure, we'd heard LaRonda talk that way, but who took her seriously?
The sword was her daddy's. He'd gotten it from a Nazi during World War II, along with a Ruger which he inexplicably traded for some lame American-made revolver. Maybe it was easier to get bullets for, but LaRanda was livid over that one.
FIVE MINUTES WENT BY
Kitty Lou was a total bee-yotch who married old men for their money and they died mysteriously. While she never married LaRanda's daddy, there were sightings of her leaving his house, and things disappeared not just from his house but his bank account. Kitty Lou needed to go down, but she owned every old man in town from the banker to the coroner who declared her conquests had all died of natural causes.
Young men, she didn't have to kill. She just blackmailed them. What men see in Kitty Lou, we never knew. Beauty is only skin deep, so why can't they see through her?
For all her charms and her 36-24-36 figure, Kitty Lou didn't get far with Mr. Lightning. Things got kinda loud and kinda ugly when he rebuffed her. Kitty Lou said some nasty things about him and about LaRanda and we all knew it was because Miss Kitty had finally met her match. A man who saw right through her and told her where to go.
Kitty Lou was ready to draw blood, as soon as she could do it without actual bloodshed, we knew. Nobody had proof of what she could do, but we were all rooting for LaRanda this time, even if she was a loudmouth who raised hell about how we live and how we raise our kids.
By the time we found Kitty Lou's body, cleft in two, neck to groin, guts spilled over the gully, LaRanda and her man were gone again. No sign of them has been seen in the years since, but my neighbor Janet won a trip to Iceland, and she says "I swear to God I seen 'em there," at some coffeehouse, but by the time Janet alerted the authorities, LaRanda was gone again.
That LaRanda. She finally put our town on the map, but not the way she'd intended.
She always did have a temper, that one.
Established in 1984 by Berglind Guðbrandsdóttir and Sigmundur Dýrfjörð, Te & Kaffi has since become the pioneer of specialty coffee in Iceland.
Day 825: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: cleft
This freewrite goes to show where a story might go if we start writing for five minutes straight and let the subconscious mind take the reins, as opposed to the ideas we started out with.
Cleft
made me think first of a Sylvia Plath's epic poem "Daddy":
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who...
I always loved this line:
Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart ...
And of course the final line:
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
"The poem reaches its crescendo with this line and, if it was a rock concert, this is where the guitars would be smashed," writes someone (I searched in vain for an author) at shmoop.com.
The blunt, bold beat of John Donne
was also on my mind before I wrote this:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bend
Your force to breake, blowe, burn, and make mee new.
I, like an usurp'd towne, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I,
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
This poem, written using the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet form, sees Donne calling upon God to take hold of him and consume him, in a collection of images that are at once deeply spiritual and physically arresting. interestingliterature.com