Category: Some Girls Bite

I visited the wonderful Magical Words again this week to discuss character development, and that time Merit was in a band…

I’ll let you read the MW post for the details, but basically in a very, very, very early (Mary Sue) iteration of Merit, she was in a band. Malik and Mallory were her friends, and a certain Mr. Greer was her vampiric enemy. Kind of. 🙂

Since I ‘fessed up about her early origins, I thought it would be fun to take a look back.  So below, without further ado, is a never-before-seen chunk of that first story, which I’d named THE DEVIL YOU KNOW.  I think you’ll recognize some names, and at least some bits of the characters. 🙂

Enjoy it in its campy awfulness!

 

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

The clock on the wall ticked ominously, and I raised my head to see that it was finally 3:50. Class was over.

I waved my hand. “Thanks, everybody. We’ll finish this on Monday, and I want to see a copy of your outlines.”  Nearly a hundred of our nation’s future leaders grabbed their books, stuffed their satchels, and padded down the lecture hall’s carpeted stairs and out of the room. No stragglers today, apparently, so I erased the board where I’d scribbled a few notes, picked up my folder and bag, and followed them out.

A deep baritone echoed behind me as I entered the classroom building’s hallway.

“Hey, teacher.”  I turned.

Standing behind me was my ex-roommate, Malik Cleary.  Malik was a graduate student like me—his work was in Biochemistry, mine in English. We’d roomed together our first year of graduate school—both responding to the Graduate Studies Department’s Roommate Finder Services—until he’d met his fiancé, Sarah, and left my apartment for hers. He walked toward me, tall, coffee-skinned, beautiful.

“Hey, M. Your hair’s getting longer,” I said, pulling at the end of a dread. His hair was fashionably shaggy, in tight dreads that just skimmed his shoulders. “What does Sarah think about that?”

He gave a grand smile.

“Kate, with so much man, that’s the last thing she worries about.”

Did I mention Malik is an unreformed flirt?

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