Let It Bleed

To my Sweet Saturday Sample readers my apologies. I forgot I had this guest blogging event going on. But you can still get a great sample...just not one of mine. Check out S.L. Schmitz excerpt of Let It Bleed.

 S.L. Schmitz has re-released the second edition her novel Let It Bleed through Dark Continents Publishing. Let It Bleed fits into the Mythpunk Supernatural genre, and is written in the elaborate and hypnotizingly poetic prose common for that genre. The novel is currently available in e-book format, and will release as a soft cover in the next few months. For more information, visit her website at www.slschmitz.com. Follow her on twitter @slschmitz and ‘like’ her on Facebook. Emails and comments are always welcome to Stephanie@darkcontinents.com

The following is an excerpt for Let It Bleed:

She sighed... eased into a trance and did not open her eyes again until the fourth and last band of the evening began to lug their gear on stage. Transcendental deity, always asleep at the wheel. Novice, porous, the breathing crux, the lapsed withdrawal, detoxification, Incantatrix beholden to the silence from within.

In ancient times the warriors knew how to fight off disease of the body and soul by beating their drums, chanting, singing, making deep noises to thaw the darkness from taking over the world, prevent the incestuous night from taking away the dawn. Modern tribes having lost the ability to surrender, to reconstruct, modern teenagers having forgotten how to bend their knees, lower their shields in the shadow of the One God, feel warmth and security and love.

“Who will be my _____?”

Therefore, the only choice left becomes the choice between disintegration and disenfranchisement. Acoustically speaking, disintegration can best be done by peeling the ribbons of sanity one by one from the flesh; she was thin and determined. There is a fever brought on only by tasting the blood of a transcendental gothic symphony. In this dim indoor lighting, she has lost so much more than seven veils.

It was highly unoriginal and non-dramatic when she first set eyes on the Razorblade Boy. He jumped onto the raised platform (altar) with the rest of the band and assumed the position by the lead microphone. He was tall, lean, intense, brooding, as all lead singers must be. He perched his right foot onto an amplifier as the opening riff of the opening song echoed all the way to the back of the room where the Dead Girl stood, transfixed.

The Outhouse was a small one-storey building in the middle of a cornfield. The single room was illuminated by the sound of a lead pipe being beaten rhythmically against another lead pipe, sultry music hall alive with thrashing bodies, music that surrenders all that is daylight, rich medieval tapestries of primal imperialism woven into a drum roll of sartorial gravel. The Razorblade Boy with his voice converging in a fist of mass hypnotism, producing a tune so bereft of romance, erotic to the point of suicide. A boy and his band, an expansion of disease, gauzy background vocals, the Autumnal Girl twisting her bass in an assimilation of blood vessels that easily railroaded the existing scars and permanent body art. He writhed, his steaming harlequin face tranquil in the descent of a Victorian novel. Oh, to be inhaled! To be sucked into the crowd’s lungs and mixed with tar and beef and glue and nitrous oxide! To be dissipated into chromosomes, genetically altered at the balcony of perfection, to be cast under the layers of mucous, coughed up, hacked up, spit out in thick androgynous strings of distortion. Able to take a song and chew it into unrecognizable shreds, masticate on the lyrics, bleach the needle words and inject the feedback!

Anarchy bred in sour chimera. She stood in whispered tendrils. She was awake, alert, slave to the endangered chorus of a high-speed god, motionless in a mockery of spinsterhood. When the spotlight hit her just right, it appeared as though a pair of strong-jawed men with long hair and perfectly tailored black suits flanked her on both sides. In the fleeting strobe light, she sidestepped the two men and began to make her way towards the stage. The men remained where they were standing, with their hands folded in front of their jackets. The next time the thin light passed through the back of the room, they were gone.

She moved slowly, purposefully through the celebratory crowd, unaffected by the stifling heat or the press of bodies, moved effortlessly through the mosh pit without a single one of the non-discriminating pit bulls attempting to bruise her glowing skin. Once she reached the center of the riotous crowd, she paused. For one burning moment she locked eyes with the Razorblade Boy, and then thickly, heavily she raised her arms up into the air, her hands floating as if she were pressing against living waters. It is unknown where the spark came from--whether she ignited the flame from the chipped strobe light or whether she gathered the illumination from the Holy Spirit of all present, but high over all of their heads a gleaming, spinning ball of Light took shape. Her arms stretched, welcoming the Light as it began to descend, her spidery fingers pulling at invisible strings as it floated gently to rest in the palms of her trembling hands. She held the multicolored ball of fire, cradling it in her arms, kneading the heatless mass into the shape of her heart, lips moistly parted, eyes narrowed, her fingers manipulating the sphere until she was satisfied with the shape. Again, she raised it over her head, her actions neither seen nor recorded by any of the two hundred people present, murmured an incantation in a forgotten tongue while opening her fingers to free the energy created. The flame traveled with the speed of a galactic curve ball over the heads of all the spectators and slammed straight into the bare chest of the Razorblade Boy. He felt the impact, but never saw the flame. With the vaguest of alterations of his heart rhythms, he squinted his eyes and looked out into the pit, followed the trail of glittering stardust, and suddenly his world shattered…

He was Zeus on stage, Adonai mutating. He watched the gates of sublimation open and he stared at the beauty of the gatekeeper with awe, witnessed her unspoken doorway to the stars, unlocking opposite dimensions, poor human relation to the universe with the password divine.

“Thy will be done,” she said just before the two strong-jawed men wrapped their arms around her and covered her in their outstretched wings.

Wow! SL great excerpt. This is a totally new genre for me. Thank you for sharing it. And for my Sweet Saturday Sample Peeps please go back here to check out more.