Erasure
After I completed The Life of Larry, I still had a few days before NaNoWriMo was over, so I started writing Erasure. It's a novel about a sophomore in high school, a boy named Bobby Johnson, who has a History assignment to find a gravestone, research that person, and write an essay that is historically accurate. The gravestone he chooses happens to be a woman believed to be a witch. There's not much in the historical records about her, but what he does find leads him to believe she was murdered by a prominent town father. In his endeavor to find the truth, he ends up losing himself. He's got to make it right before he can get on with his life.
Erasure is the second novel I completed. The first draft of Erasure was finished on January 17, 2007 with 86,306 words.
Bobby Johnson didn't sleep well that night. He dreamt that he was traveling by horseback at night. That seemed odd to him because he'd never ridden a horse before, and certainly not at night. After some time, he came to a farmhouse and dismounted. There was someone there, a man he didn't recognize, who took the reins and tied the horse to a hitching post. He got into the saddlebag and pulled out a package that was wrapped in cloth. He didn't open it so he wasn't sure what the package contained.
He could hear a woman screaming and crying. He turned toward the house and stepped up onto the porch. The door opened before he got to it, a black woman was holding it open for him. As he entered, the woman pointed to the stairs which were right in front of the door. It was odd that she didn't say anything, she just pointed.
He walked up the stairs and could tell that that was where the screaming woman was. He didn't seem to have control of his movements. He was drawn toward the screaming woman. It was almost like he had done this before. He opened a door and saw that it was a bedroom. There was a large four poster bed that dominated the majority of the room. A half a dozen candles lit the room. There were women in the room; two of them. They were on either side of the bed looking at whoever was lying in the bed.
The closest one looked up at him when he walked in and jumped up to take his coat. It was strange for a coat. It seemed to be a single piece of cloth with some kind of frilly design on it. There were tassels all around the border, kind of like you would see on old tablecloths. She also took the package from his hand.
He walked closer to the bed and saw why the woman was screaming. Her legs were bent at the knees and spread apart. Her back was elevated by several pillows behind her. She was sweating, her hair matted and nappy. She was pregnant and giving birth.
The woman on the other side of the bed blotted the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. She looked relieved that Bobby had arrived.
He seemed to know what he was doing. He felt her stomach with his hands, feeling for the position of the baby. The baby's position didn't feel right. Bobby didn't know how he could tell that, but he could. He went to a basin and washed and dried his hands and arms, only they didn't seem to be his hands. They seemed smaller, more delicate.
Without hesitating, he got down on the end of the bed between the woman's spread legs. She was naked from the waist down...