"The Johnny Depp Thing" is one of my most fully immersive tales. Clocking in at 5600 words, it's a gnarly descent into deeply weird circumstances laced with drugs. Lots of drugs. Sex and violence trim the edges. Anyway, it had slipped my mind that I have two versions of this tale. The tight and taut--well, for 5600 words--version, as well as the original, that stretches out to 6800 words.
Editing out stuff we love is part of the deal. The shorter version is more on-point, while the longer version is...fun? The details edited out are mostly from the beginning. I'll show you with examples from both. It's a reminder for all the writers to just put down everything in a first draft, then edit appropriately. Mind you, the 6800-word version was what I thought was final, until I remembered a tale I'd sent to a magazine that went defunct before it ever published, and how they loved my tale, "Dandelions," and were going to make it the focus of their debut issue...but they said, "hey, you do know, the tale doesn't start until page four.?"
Page four!
This made me look at what was going on and, yes, I might enjoy everything up to page four, but what is NEEDED to get the story rolling? Right. I edited that opening sequence, even as the magazine folded.
But it's a thing we all do. Write a lot, whittle down to what we need, what the story needs, more so.
Here's an amusing example, though, because I like both versions, yet completely understand the shorter one is more what's needed to tell the tale.
But, again, the extra details in the longer version, they were a lot of fun and perhaps--probably--helped me get to know the two characters better. You'll see.
First up, the final opening sequence for "The Johnny Depp Thing," short and sharp.
***
Erika Jonkers heard the mosquito buzz
first, the alphabet stuck at zzzzz, before she watched it land on the back of
her boyfriend, Ransom’s, sweaty left hand.
Watched it a beat, two, three, as it punctured his flesh, before he
smacked it to smithereens in the palm of his right hand. He glanced
at the smudge of blood and insect debris and smiled.
She turned away, and in the turning, the
audio reception shifted from the buzz and smack to something outside her
apartment door she couldn’t quite make out.
Something moving around or being dragged.
Erika looked back up at Ransom, distracted
by his throaty expression of satisfaction, and hoped he was done with her. She slowly raised her thin fingers to her
cheek to rub out the sting, only to have him raise his filthy right palm at
her. She finched, set her hand back onto
the hardwood floor she’d just landed on, and waited for more violence.
Ransom only snarled at her, caught in that
limbo land of dysfunction where the bliss of the heroin high hindered the
possibility of sex. He stood naked, with
half an erection feebly attempting to prop up and point at her, his always
circling temper his only line of fire when the habit brought him down, down,
down, and Erika’s most persistent efforts couldn’t coax him up, up, up any more
than half mast. He blamed her for his
failure. Blamed her with an open palm
and the red imprint that singed her cheek.
As bad as it was, he’d end up sleeping it
off and fucking her later, which she wouldn’t really mind. Erika once told the guy who worked at the
methadone clinic she thought of Ransom’s violent nature as foreplay. He told her she needed to get out or, at the
very least, get to the battered women’s center next door.
Instead, Erika mulled over escape routes
but knew that was useless. This was her
apartment. This was his dumping ground. He’d taken much of her stuff already. If she left he’d claim it all was his and fuck
you!
She sighed and the passage of air was
matched in inflection by the sounds from outside her door. As if whatever those sounds were, they could
hear into her apartment.
Erika shoved her curiosity aside. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Forty-five rising up like a cobra about to
spit venem and leave her swaggering to a too early grave if she didn’t figure
out what she wanted for real, damnit.
She was no spring chicken.
She thought again about getting up and
leaving, but knew he’d find her and, again, this was her apartment. Didn’t want to lose all her stuff to this
fucker. Her boyfriend, lover, and bane
of her existence. She thought about at
the very least getting to the bathroom as she wanted to rinse the salty tang of
his dirty cock from her mouth. At least
it didn’t taste like pussy. Sometimes it
did, but he told her it was her imagination, he loved only her. She figured she was just being paranoid.
***
And here's the extended version, one of the few I've actually kept and quite enjoy.
***
Erika Jonkers heard the mosquito buzz
first, the alphabet stuck at zzzzz, before she watched it land on the back of her
boyfriend, Ransom’s, sweaty left hand.
Watched it a beat, two, three, as it punctured his flesh, before he
smacked it to smithereens in the palm of his right hand. He glanced at the smudge of blood and insect debris and
smiled.
She turned away, and in the turning, the
audio reception shifted from the buzz and smack to something outside her apartment
door she couldn’t quite make out.
Something moving around or being dragged.
Erika looked back up at Ransom, distracted
by his throaty expression of satisfaction, and hoped he was done with her. She slowly raised her thin fingers to her
cheek to rub out the sting, only to have him raise his filthy right palm at
her. She finched, set her hand back onto
the hardwood floor she’d just landed on, and waited for more violence.
Ransom only snarled at her, caught in that
limbo land of dysfunction where the bliss of the heroin high hindered the
possibility of sex. He stood naked, with
half an erection feebly attempting to prop up and point at her, his always
circling temper his only line of fire when the habit brought him down, down,
down, and Erika’s most persistent efforts couldn’t coax him up, up, up any more
than half mast. He blamed her for his
failure. Blamed her with an open palm
and the red imprint that singed her cheek.
As bad as it was, he’d end up sleeping it
off and fucking her later, which she wouldn’t really mind. Erika once told the guy who worked at the
methadone clinic she thought of Ransom’s violent nature as foreplay. He told her she needed to get out or, at the
very least, get to the battered women’s center next door.
“What you lookin’ at? Evidence of your inadequacy as a whore,
whore?” Ransom laughed, obviously amused
by his crude insult. Erika wondered, as
she often did, why she loved him.
She figured it was because he was right,
she was inadequate. Not feeling too
pretty most of the time, either, what with the constant reminders of his love
often decorating her skin. Punching bag
tattoos. She always felt this way around
the men she loved. Strong men, like her
father. Sometimes crazy, too, but she
figured that was just a man being a man.
Erika had started to contemplate it all a
bit deeper than surface level ever since she began taking classes at the adult
school six months ago. Her mindset was
to better herself and get a real job so she could afford the drugs and what-not
that kept Ransom happy and her sane and able to deal with him. Hell, she’d already bought him another bass
guitar to go along with the one he had when she met him at Blister, the punk
club in the city. Fell in love then and
there, more so lust, but whatever it was, it was the way her world worked. As usual, though, here she was again,
crawling away from him as he simmered in confusion over what the fuck she was
doing, or perhaps what the fuck she was.
She expected she looked like some kind of freaky animal doing a funky
crab-like shuffle from the hardwood floor of the kitchen to the carpeted floor
of the adjacent front room.
It wasn’t much of a front room,
though. The whole apartment was tiny and
tinier still because it was crammed with Ransom’s shit. Bass guitars and amps, leather and denim in
piles. His CD collection and what he’d
already confiscated from her collection, claiming it was his. “You know I brought all the Fear CDs with me,
right? Right?” As if she could deny it with his eyes glaring
and his fists clenched. Some vinyl, too,
same as the CDs: “This Fang record’s a fave,” and slipping her LP into his ratty
cardboard box, one of five, full of similar late 70s to present punk, hardcore,
thrash, and anything else aggressive and usually cranked up loud enough to melt
brain cells into oatmeal. Big names and
names nobody ever heard of—eBola Milkshake, Blasted Heath, even his own band,
Pus Junkies—filled the boxes to bursting while Erika’s collection and
wherewithal dwindled with exponential speed.
Why
did she persist to fall in love with capital L Losers like him?
She always ended up reaching a point where
a momentary gob of good sense would hit her square in the forehead like a
loogie lobotomy, dismantling her love for another punk rock, hardcore asshole
who only showed his love with his scarred knuckles, expecting the world and
mostly her to cower at his feet. Jerks
made of testosterone and attitude, scraped off the shoes of those who made
careers out of the lifestyle, while all they did was flounder and blame
her.
Any number of hers, really.
“What the fuck you doing, baby?” Ransom almost sounded loving, though barely
sounded human. Where did that come from?
At least he wasn’t slinging whore or
bitch at her, again. Christ, what was
she doing with him? With any of them?
Erika mulled over escape routes but knew
that was useless. This was her
apartment. This was his dumping
ground. He’d taken much of her stuff
already. If she left he’d claim it all
was his and fuck you!
For now, her only gameplan was to be as far
away from him as she could be, under the circumstances. So she finished crawling toward the wall next
to the front door and pulled her knees up to her chin. With distance, she could massage the sting
from her cheek. He only watched,
dumbfounded or just dumb, as he slumped into the ripped brown recliner her
friend, Mike the Spike, had brought to her apartment a year ago, saying he was
tired of sleeping on her floor whenever he crashed there, so hey, how about
this?
Mike the Spike didn’t pursue sex or drugs,
just drink. The nickname was not a drug
reference, he just molded his hair into greasy spikes like those that rode
Godzilla’s spine. He simply enjoyed the
shows in The City By The Bay and made way over the bridge and back to the East
Bay afterwards, where he led a normal life with a steady job and a girlfriend,
Maxie, he was madly in love with. He
just enjoyed punk, Maxie didn’t. Late
nights with more than reasonable alcohol consumption meant crashing at Erika’s
apartment. They’d known each other going
on twenty years. Only in this capacity,
though.
Erika thought about how that relationship
didn’t bring bruises or welts, yet in all their time together, dozens, hundreds
of shows, that’s all she had from him. The
shows. No substance.
In one way or another, all men failed her.
She sighed and the passage of air was matched
in inflection by the sounds from outside her door. As if whatever those sounds were, they could
hear into her apartment.
Erika shoved her curiosity aside. She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Forty-five rising up like a cobra about to
spit venem and leave her swaggering to a too early grave if she didn’t figure
out what she wanted for real, damnit.
She was no spring chicken.
Ransom groaned, punched the arm of the
recliner. “Fuck you!” he said, as he grabbed
the remote control for the TV that no
longer worked from on top of the open box of LPs to his left and tossed it with
ferocity toward her. She ducked as broken
plastic and batteries rained on her head.
“Damnit, Ransom, honey…”
She immediately brought a hand up to her
face, eyes wide with understanding. She
knew what was coming before it slammed into her like a fist, though it wasn’t a
fist, not this time. Just Ransom leaping
up from the recliner and hovering over her, his erratic erection becoming more
engorged.
“You bitch about anything, bitch, and I’ll
tear you a new asshole and fuck it to Texas.”
Erika
could barely contain a snort of derision, even under the precarious
circumstances. Over the eight months
they’d been together, he’d rage-fucked her to Japan, New Jersey, Barcelona...Bumfuck,
Egypt…hell, she’d experienced the world at the tip his angry erection. But she didn’t snort, laugh, or make any
sound. She kept it under lock and key as
she knew that might inspire physical abuse or worse, whatever that might
be.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d
experienced worse.
That would have been Daryl from Psycho
Blight. Yes, another punk boyfriend,
ex-punk boyfriend, more so ex-psychobilly madman. He was incarcerated in Pelican Bay State
Prison up north for murder, taking out his drug-induced sexual failure
on a homeless man sleeping outside of Erika’s former apartment complex one
brisk September morning and beating him to death with his bare hands. When he came back inside, he had her bandage
him up before he beat her in a drug haze.
Erika remembered staring at his blurry figure as he exited, saying he’d
be right back, for what, she had no idea.
He’d done enough damage. Moments
later, she heard barking from one alpha-male to a handful of like-minded frothing
dogs dressed in blue. She listened to
the tussle, heard the swift crack, crack, crack of a baton, heard Daryl’s
bleats of pain and protest. She figured
the cops were checking out his bloody handiwork staining the sidewalk when he stepped
outside. The details didn’t matter to
her. She was glad he was deleted from
her life pronto, which wasn’t soon enough.
Ransom hung over her, a Leaning Tower of
Pissed Off, veins pulsing, arms flexed, while his cock went limp. He scampered back to the recliner and said,
“You leave and you’re dead,” before instantly dropping off to sleep, mouth
hanging open and drool coating the four-barred Black Flag tattoo on his chest.
Erika thought about getting up and
leaving. But she knew he’d find her and,
again, this was her apartment. Didn’t
want to lose all her stuff to this fucker. Her boyfriend, lover, and bane of her
existence. She thought about at the
very least getting to the bathroom as she wanted to rinse the salty tang of his
dirty cock from her mouth. At least it
didn’t taste like pussy. Sometimes it
did, but he told her it was her imagination, he loved only her. She figured she was just being paranoid.
***
Ha! If this was a much longer piece, I might have kept it all, what the heck?
Anyway, the final version of "The Johnny Depp Thing" can be found in my expanded reissue version of Autumn in the Abyss, called Autumn in the Abyss Redux. <<--that's the link, click it and see for yourself, buy a copy for maximum enjoyment!
And here's some quirky art featuring the many faces of Johnny Depp.