I've gotten all your emails asking when Josephine The Outlaw King will start back up again. I've been re-arranging and re-writing Josephine to be a novel. My process is a bit different from most authors, though. I've started a new site (www.myspace.com/josephinetheoutlawking) for the sole purpose of writing the book. With all of you. I'll be posting chapters, editing, re-editing, taking you through the fire and horror that is writing.... with me! So if you're up for it, Go here: www.myspace.com/josephinetheoutlawking Jeannette Josephine lives....

 
Nail.  That was his name, yep.
He was a little person.  He was mighty.  Everybody at The Chambers called him Nail.
 
Nail had talents.  He could play golf like that Tiger fellow only with more pizazz.  On the green, he was known to be quite fancy. 
He spoke 6 languages fluently and Josephine was quite sure that if you dropped him deep into any unknown  he'd be gathering stories in the native tongue in no time.
 
That was Nail.
 
The Pennybrides were quite taken with him.  Not your ordinary security guy but as safe as one should be.
He knew what to do and how to do it.  Nobody questioned him.
 
He liked one Pennybride in particular.  Her name was Candida. She was one of the fire heads, red and tall.  She was kind and loud.  She talked a streak that led all the way back to Nail every time.
She had a thing for him, too.
They'd talk late on the porch after they'd both bounced a full night of it.  They talked about everything and he even got the watermouth to listen every now and again.
It was sweet and odd just like all good relationships are.
 
Nail had some secrets.  Candida had none.  She noticed the way he held back but never pressed.  Odd for the talky miss.
He'd tell her one day..

 

 

Everybody called her Dirty Alice. Yeah, pretty much everybody. She sat outside the bodega and people assumed the tatters begged beggar. Dimes, nickels, pennies and other tarnish magnets bent the air towards her daily.

She collected them, of course. They sat next to her treasures behind the brick wall, never spent. Everybody called her Dirty Alice. Everybody. Except Josephine.

Josephine addressed her as Miss Alice and all the formalities that went along with the respectful prefix followed. Whether it mattered to Miss Alice or not, nobody knew. Nobody. Except Josephine.

She knew.

Josephine wouldn't scold anybody who used the Dirty, but her furrowed brow was enough to get them to shut their cake holes. At least in Her presence.

Miss Alice would be addressed with respect and Josephine would create the habit gently.

That's the only way to enforce such things.

Miss Alice had that story you'd expect. She was alone now but had somebody once. A wonderful somebody that was taken away suddenly. She loved too big, too fast, too much and she rolled the dice one too many times.

Snake eyes.

Josephine tucked hundies inside wonderful pages she knew Miss Alice would enjoy. She gave her voucher wrapped hamburgers for a nights stay inside. She'd never offer them outright. That wouldn't be dignified. It might embarrass Miss Alice and Josephine would never do that.

Miss Alice looked forward to the swaggering sillhouette of her patron. It wasn't the discreet gifting but the look and the smile she looked forward to.

Josephine did not dare ask or address Miss Alice and Miss Alice appreciated every silent nod. Besides, she'd never leave this spot. She'd never go far from it. The cement sucked the some life from her love and from her one night. Random acts are the cruelest, yeah?

They shot, he went down. They rolled his rumple and took the twenty he had on him and ran. Cowards. She'd not leave this spot. It pulled her down like a giant sad magnet and it held her bones heavy.

There was no poetry in her incident. No great flowery scent of something deeper. Just random cowardice, another couple caught in it's crossfire.

Josephine despised the cowards hiding behind potent, stolen steel. It raised her temper which made her boil big even more.

Did the same simpering mice pass her each day? She wondered. Sometimes, just every now and then, Josephine would watch to see if an eye knowingly looked down at Miss Alice. If a stupid word ever came out of a stupid mouth towards the twisted hair of the gray woman.

That's what really happens, you know. When life drains, gray remains. Your outlines fade and your cheeks wipe. Miss Alice would never leave this spot.

Josephine would never stop passing it.

 

 

 

 

 

Where's your hips?

She cocked her head and looked at the gangly, skinny thing.

Young.

Where's your thighs?

She circled her.

She'd felt this on a much bigger scale. This was nothing.

The owner's of the bars and the men behind the bad scenes. They all told her to lose it all. To get rid of anything but the skin and the bones.

Who sold her such a bill of goods?

She'd given up her Selma for a Sienna.

She looked dried out from the inside, she looked like a brittle little old lady.

Josephine rubbed her chin and shook her head.

Who told you this was a good thing, a sweet thing, you're thing?

They tricked you into getting rid of what what owns them, did they? You're weighty loveliness, all gone now. Traded for all the wrong angles. Trading something for nothing, never a smart deal.

She looked like she had bad breath. All the starving do. It made Josephine a bit mad. Mad, indeed.

Who wrung you out?

The girl once named Fatima was now called Heather. Once named after a powerful apparition of the Virgin was now called by the same name given to a whispering weed. They wanted her reborn weak.

Josephine took her by the shoulders and looked into her starving eyes.

She was so hungry. Hungry for an excuse to like herself. She didn't need an excuse.

Josephine spoke her given name and pulled her to the strong beating of the truest woman. Fatima sunk in like she was folding into down.

Josephine smelled warm and she felt right.

Fatima touched a ghost inside that embrace and felt an old power she hadn't felt since all of those wrong schools got her graduated.

Feel me.dear. Come back to this place.

The hips of a woman are full and soft. The thighs strong, the arms round.

Your hair that's been stripped of it's luster can be fixed, you know. This white skin of yours will glow under your patent locks again.

Let's fill you up.

Work here or not, let's get you filled again.

Fatima. She said her name over and over. She'd never utter the Heather brand, she'd never take a name that wasn't hers. She'd never answer to the wrong call and she'd never buy anything that didn't fit exactly.

She'd eat and drink and be nourished by a Mama she never had but should have.

She expanded into such a beauty, boy did she. Her hair back to black. Her powdered white skin was smooth again. Her face was softened and with it a smile bloomed all rosy.

She had full breasts, who knew?

Look at the in and out on that girl, I tell ya, and she'd wink playful with the girl.

She carried herself lighter than she'd ever done and she strolled, yeah, that's what you call that walk, a stroll.

Fatima took that stroll all the way back to where she came from. The puzzle complete and all put together.

Josephine brushed a kiss on each cheek and let her go.

Never an easy thing for Mama to do, you know.

..

Deeper into the desert is where she had to go. Toward the guilty and away from the saint.

Needing money, Josephine finds a red den. New at something again, she was never comfortable with that. For the babies, she rationalized and reasoned. It crashed against the stones of "no" she'd kept in her head since forever but the banging would be a necessary distraction if she was really going to go through with this.

He came in, eyed them all and chose our snow white. The banging in her head grew louder as he parted his thick drape of a mustache and leared through capped teeth, spurting from a fat cheek.
Thick with entitlement, he was. Expensive clothes and shoes a lucky life had brought him, undeserved she could tell. She sniffed no kindness from him, just twat covering cologne that seemed unfamiliar but not unknown.

She walked ahead of him to the angry room and he smacked her heart shaped ass through the doorway, swinging his hard, hairy arm like a croquet mallet.

That stinging swat ignited something unexpected. Passed repulsion and pride. It conjured a vision of sizzling wives, so powerful and too pretty chasing these cowards all the way here.

Exposing a phoney crown, strutting like Dukes, they were. Sauntering and pointing filthy sausages at their quest for the evening, their latest escape. I'm no sovereign cave, Josephine spat at the rocks rolling in her head.

The sting lingered as it spilled everything over she'd held in to keep tight and sane. If only they knew how everything they do here makes everything they own small. Falsely crowned and head of nothing.

He grabbed at her and tried a kiss. It was hard and punctured her cushion lips like a prick naturally would. He squeezed and pulled and pushed and tried to get passed the pale steel.

She hadn't lost her senses and they hadn't dulled yet, either. Something lit up and started to burn in her cavities. Uncontainable. A new logic appeared.

Her reverse was not what he'd paid for. Full speed ahead is what he wanted but this might be fun if she can keep it up without flattening his puffiness.

He lurched forward and pulled his smooth, manicured hand back slapping her fine bone. He'd convinced himself this was the game and she'd play no matter what. He'd laid down the card to make sure of it. He'd signed with no amount given.
This was better than he thought.
Better than he bought.

Josephine had felt the slap before, this wasn't new. It wasn't as loud as the ringing of the stones, anyway. The new logic became clear. Take your skin back, dear. Take it back and don't forget to leave full.

The vintage pitcher looked close and it looked heavy, hearty and inviting. It almost smiled with a shiny answer. He was sweating slime now, hard and showing. He tugged his pants away, his undertrow, pushed down and off with the shoes, the socks. He pushed back the unbuttoned shirt as if to bare a real man's chest, only to reveal a simple baboon.

She couldn't help but stare. There it was, his reason for living, leaving, loving and lying. He looked proud and he felt the power she always ignited in the lesser. False to the cruel, true to the kind. That's how it affected all. Finally she found a use for it. On this night, she found a confounding calling.

Take back your skin, dear.

The pitcher splintered against a sharper toothed chair except for the finest shard that jutted from the handle still in her hand. It was smooth in it's entry and re-entry. He still greased over, still stayed hard as he crumpled at her feet. A true king had cum in him. How does it feel, darling?

"Do you like it"? she whispered, brows arching over the center of her royal nose. "Do you like when I fuck you"?

"You're killing me", he sputtered and she nodded like an aristocrat. "I'm taking back my skin, dear".

He passed and she showered in the room that he paid for. She gathered herself and his wallet and strode out as if covered in golden robes and dipped in marble.

A new logic was needed, wasn't it. How else would you be able to go deeper towards a familiar danger and still stay intact?

The stones had stopped slamming, not even a tap.

Deeper in the desert, the three of the them rode. The Royal Family of Rock and Roll.

..

Josephine was small but not frail by any means.
A figure like two hearts. One right side up, one upside down.

She was pale pale. Black, silksoft hair that licked the top of her breasts when she bounced over her filled thighs if you were ever lucky enough to witness this feat.

And that vehicle always snapped back saluting, reporting for duty sir, even after both babies.
Maybe because she kept it encased in a steely-white skin that only seemed vulnerable after it freckled in the sun. She never questioned the payment, owning it like it was bought and paid for.

Both her children favored others. They shared her knowing eye but the shape and color glowed differently. Her boy was golden and blue, tall and beautiful. She wanted to raise him a gentleman and it was working.
The newborn was moonfaced with the same blue eyes neither their father's or mother posessed. Josephine's eyes should've been dark but they'd faded to hazel after too much exposure to the flash of an exposed life.

She'd gather them up and take them with her. A false absence will serve her well, at least halfway. She'd find the jealous one and end him with her own weapon.

She knew her love would mind his path and not try to join her. She hoped he'd stay far from this last battle.
Another sacrifice for innocence,
so it seemed,
so it goes,
so it will be done.

..

Well that woman thing didn't love him. She couldn't see how he mattered in this world.

That thing sensed it. That's why she was attracted to him. She could almost taste something worth eating but she wasn't good enough to define it, nurture it, appreciate it, love it.

She came to him with damage from a badly timed birth. She was too much of a coward to address it so it just sort of mutated into some very obvious behaviour.

He knew all of this and still loved her. His heart was good. His soul was, too. He was all he should be and humble enough not to feel complete.

He was young.

She was young, too, but so effing old the cracks swallowed people within two blocks of her. She hid it with her own special pancake and it worked most of the time.

He believed her when she said she'd jumped over the divides, why wouldn't he?

She figured she'd get some of his sweet rub-off if she could at least have his name. So he gave it to her. Why wouldn't he?

She took it. She took it and wore it when she met other men in the hole she couldn't fill no matter what, who, why or where. She showed it proudly as if it were HER secret but it was never whispered in her ear. It was never shouted from his rooftop, either. She still owned nothing that resembled an answer. She wasn't bad but deep down, she knew she wasn't good enough for him. How long could she hide that?

Not very. It seeped out on the sunsetted honeymoon. It swirled for years as he paid her angry debts, loving his duty while still loving her. This made his worth even more bewildering. He did not crumble when he learned of her "sharing". He merely faded away. The worst thing she could think of and yet she had run to that ruin as fast as the ring could roll.

It was his damage repaired that made him pulse. A boy who became a man by growing his heart big, growing his heart well, in spite of the bully of life. He held that heart open.

It's light grew strong shoulders. It made tender hands. It gave him generous ears and sincere actions. It gave him his strength.

She couldn't love him, that thing. She couldn't see how he mattered in this world because she doesn't know what really matters.

But Josephine did.

She could see him and god damn. . . he could surely see her.

That Josephine. What a lucky girl.