Sexy Southern Gothic

My very sexy short story “Silk Purses” is soon to appear in Goodreads.

I have written some very black humor twice, but this one really was.  In fact I wrote the whole thing in a drawl, the kind I heard in North Carolina last year.  I loved it there.

I’ll give you a taste of the intro but I don’t want to spoil the read…

Silk Purses

by Valentine Bonnaire

Copyright 2014 Valentine Bonnaire

Smashwords Edition

first ran at Erotica Readers & Writers Association

“What you doin’ there, girl?”

That’s the first thing Grady done said to me when I was tryin’ to get that house I loved.  He’d followed me up the road that was so damn deep in the country nobody could find me ever again.  Lord, I wanted that house.

“Nuthin’ Grady.  I was just lookin’ around and thas’ all.”

He was known around town for being one of them mean ol’ boys.   We knew how to pick them out from the time we were just little.  Them loudmouths were the worst.  Just because Grady was a sheriff didn’t give him no right to follow me.

“Leave me alone.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m askin’ you to.”

“Jolene, you look right purty in that dress with all them flowers all over you.”

“Grady, go on home to your wife and kids.”

I had brushed up against the jessamine that curved around the columns of the porch and Grady was staring at me like he always did.  Like he was tryin’ to take a piece of somethin’ that didn’t belong to him.   The way he looked at me was like his eyes were snakes crawlin’ all over me until I almost got the willies from that look of want he had.

“Jolene?”

“Go on home, Grady.”

Them short ones like him were known for the way they assumed they could sneak in a squeeze when they felt like it.  I knew he was going to try.  How many of them had been just like him in my life?  Them with the beady little eyes always tryin’ to grip onto somethin’.  I wanted him to go, but I could tell he wasn’t going to.

“Ain’t you got a little sugar for Grady?”

“Leave me alone, will ya?”

“What you been doin’ lookin’ at this old place anyway?”

“I like it.”

“It’s so old.”

“I know.”

“Must be full of ghosts in there, Jolene.”

The side door banged in the wind near the old camellias and made me jump all of a sudden.  I couldn’t tell if it was the wind or if it was Grady but my nerves had been on edge for a long time since my brother died.  I wanted the old homeplace I’d found because I wanted solace.  I wanted to plant me some roses like my grandmother had, and this ol’ place had the best fertile dirt in the county.  It just felt like somebody happy had lived there.

“What makes you think you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?”

I shook my head at him, back and forth, and let out a sigh.  He’d never understand.  He’d never be able to understand me.  None of them did.  Not one of them country boys in Curratuckin County.

I waved him off with my hand and climbed up on the porch to sit under the perfumed flower clouds the jessamine made.  If there were a place called Heaven it was under those pearly flowers.  It was pink jessamine planted a hundred years ago or so.  It had to be that old given those thick trunks on the vine.

“Go on home,” I waved him off, trying to shoo him out of my life for good.  I could see him slowly heading towards his jalopy of a car, shaking his head as he went.  Once I saw the dust kick up and heard his brakes squeak on down the road I knew I could relax a little.  Off he went on home where he belonged, but not before telling me what a fool I was not to let him touch me…

xxoo!

from me…