Excerpt from RedWingBlack in Day-to-Day

      I’m a masochist. I walked a thin line along the barrel of a magnum, staring down a tiny magnifying sight that looked like a flashlight shining reflected blue eyes against my face. I deflected the hollow-point rounds she offered between her teeth. I saw no difference between her terror and rage, and perhaps for her, they were the same; her eyes welled up neon blue, walled up, closed off. Opened up. Replaced by people. Person. Self. I pushed against the hard softness of her stomach with the tensile strength of braided wire, corded and layered like Kevlar under her skin, pushed against the hastily rebuilt muscle like warped, supple steel, scraping along the thinnest skin I’ve ever felt my entire life, curled my knuckles against her compression-arms flexing, studied the reptile-like muscle biting up her back with imagined tink tink tink of plates opening. She devolved through years of armament and arming, broken pieces falling away as she re-emerged between her shoulder-blades, pushing against me with the trembling hands of a woman moaning. Her discarded shell replaced by sheets and covers.
     I shielded the greatest machine-soldier with the crawling coward of a man, begging to be beneath that reworked skin so bad I cried. Weakness curling around strength. She a great tree. Me an orchid twisting. Fingers along her hair, brushing sweat away from bruises healing. She never grunted once, never winced, so complete was her focus she didn’t make a sound when she came.