Damsel. (Director's Cut w/ Alt Ending)

[e11even]

"oh, the blood! The humanity! Who would do such a thing?!"
The dazed widow paced ever so frantically, a medley of shag carpet rings.
Oh, what will I ever do? I should call the polce! "Emergency please!"
The silence unbearable, her mind slowly sinks... --...such a sweetheart to me!--

Pending the authorities' arrival, clutching a bible... she searches for clues...
that same bible Ben would use. "Something will happen for God to get into you!"
He always joked about it... my love for that bag of shoes... His mangled chest cavity fumed.
Flies and an odor that could deter a pirate from jewels... his attire his occupational proof.

My beloved slain used car salesman! fighting april showers in June, she wipes the foundation that oozed...
Next room, trudging through the struggle's site to the place where she'd pruned; her haven on lonely moons at the right...
white marble counters and spotless masonry... Mr. Clean wouldn't gripe. But he'd have a stroke this night.
An obnoxious smear caught her sight, the bright red and burgundy gore glinting in the light...

"FOR WHERE JEALOUSY AND SELFISH AMBITION EXISTS..." Ben once quoted this line...
The bible study had just finished it's rites. The deacon told him this with, "Say this to your wife."
And so he did. But it made no sense! Sigh, is that deacon the reason you died?
Ben! Just come back! You're supposed to be alive! She snaps to at the bedroom closet light.

Flips the switch. There's a crimson pooling coming from inside.
Hands shaking vigorously, she tries for the handle close-eyed and blind.
KREEEEKKK! Another body. She cries out, "Someone help me!" Tears drop, making the plasma divide.
Body was the bare, feminine kind. Long, slender jab wounds along the neck and the spine.

There's a glimmer of a memory's page... bloody prints of a runner unscathed...
... leading to the side lawn where a body, gutted, now lays... she gasps,
The O'Malley girl used to bring us her bakes! Chocolate chip cookies and cakes!
She approaches the teen... Oh, but what a mistake!! seeing a bloody gnome near the rakes
Trying to remember the haze...

She touched the throbbing mess above the nape of her neck.
Saw an apron, two gloves, an uncased cigarette...
the foul odor from the entrails left a taste to regret,
So she backtracked to escape, lest the brute wave take her breath.

You should calm your nerves, Glenda... "A square for a square wife." She puffed.
Ben waited for "real life" while she wanted to be his ideal perfection, realized,
She scoffed, "How will I ever feel life if my love is dead?" Open your ill mind...
The quote is the key... Glenda froze, the stale cig inhaled had her choking to breathe.

"What?!" In a fit of terrible disbelief, rattled nerves and scared, chattering teeth
the recall began... the key turning the knob, you entered the suite...
went straight to the kitchen from work, knowing he'd praise what you gave him to eat...
"No..." You heard a noise... nagging and repetitive even... apron equipped, you would seek...

"NO!" Glenda grabbing her ears, as if to make the voices stop, breaking down to one knee.
The good wife, and anxious to be, you investigate the realm of your intimacies...
"Stop, please!!" The feeling unbearable, she goes to open Ben's bible to read...
Only to find that receptionist straddling slease... the very kind you married... and went on a spree...

"That can't be true!!" Panic ran through her, trembling in an extreme state of unease...
Read it! She opened the book, butcher knife spilling out, staking the floor in front of her bloody feet.

"GASP!" She dropped the hollow book in the loudest of shrieks... "My bag of shoes had all control over me!"
Your mind isn't yours as you supposed it would be, but listen... she shrunk in defeat,

...THERE WILL BE DISORDER IN EVERY VILE PRACTICE! A terrible grin surfaced...
"Oh, Ben. What has become of us? You've hurt this union... your SOUL is worthless!
I Tried! I really did! And was that that fucking kid that always delivered her baked works as gifts?
MY FAULT?! You know in crime movies there can be no witnesses!"

BOOM BOOM BOOM! Ramming at the door. She lifts the murder weapon,
"What have I stepped in? Did you love her? Was hurting Glenda worth this reception?!"
She paused as if awaiting a reply. "Nothing to say?? Let me ask one more question..."
Posed over the thoroghly penetrated corpse, she raises the knife over Ben's forehead, suspended.

"I loved you Ben! We both did! How could this be the way it ended?!"
BOOM BOOM BOOM! Cheryl threw her cleched fists back for the final finish.
WHOOOOM! Just as the knife came down, she was injected, pinned and submitted.
"This is a damnable mess, Doctor" Said the Police lieutenant, frowning as his weight shifted.

"This is the third time Amy escaped. She stalked him for a year after she was first admitted."
The officer choked on the dead air as he examined. "Looks like this broad completed her mission..."
"No" Replied the Psychiatrist. "She has men attached to the other personalities... this is merely her intermission."
"Damsels in distress just got a whole new definition"

[Certain]

You have shades of David Lynch in your storytelling style. The franticness and bleakness mixes with your writer's voice, which takes on a third-person limited view to further that franticness. Your ambition is enormous in the story but doesn't extend beyond that: Rather than build up a purpose to the story, the story is the purpose here. You also love a MacGuffin, which is a difficult device to use in this format, particularly with line limits in place. This verse stumbles around a bit with plot, and those MacGuffins (the bag of shoes, the Biblical quote and cigarette) reinforced how difficult this plot was to follow. I'm going to break down how I interpretted things and would love if you could correct me or help me to better understand the story presented here. Obviously, that's up to you.

Let's start with what I know: Ben and the O'Malley girl were messing around and murdered viciously for it. Ben was married to Glenda. Amy is a mental patient who escaped and is responsible for the murders, as she became obsessed with Ben and stalked him.

Here's where I'm struggling: Three corpses are mentioned in the story, but one is never clearly described or identified. Amy may or may not be Glenda or someone named Cheryl, who is mentioned only once, near the end. What is a bag of shoes, and why is it so important?

My guess is that much of this story is occurring within the head of Amy, who may or may not be Glenda or Cheryl, as she attempts to figure out all she's done. I did enjoy the mystery of it all, even the bag of shoes. Those little details made the resolution more clouded but the path to it more enjoyable, so I wouldn't recommend you strip down your story too much. I think where you could use the most help is drawing out a plot with a degree of detail before launching into a story. When you're not trying to tell the story (and rhyme on top of it), it's easier to pick apart plot holes and unclear points. The inclusion of the name "Cheryl" simply made no sense to me, for instance.

As a piece of text rap, this verse had a similarly up and down feel. There were too many simple end rhymes, many of which were not helped much by internal schemes. You'd drop off on a multiple-syllable rhyme, then pick it back up later, by which point its momentum was gone. The length of some lines doesn't help.

But there were stretches where the rhyming and writing as a whole was very strong. I liked the first couplet and the stanza beginning with, "She touched the throbbing mess." I also liked the section in which Glenda (or Amy or Cheryl or whomever) realizes what she's done. That was emotionally resonant and a good use of italics, which I generally am not a fan of.

There was a lot going on here, but I've come to expect nothing less from you. In some ways, I preferred the pared down version you used to get under the 48-line limit, as it stripped the ending out. That ending was a challenge because it tossed aside a lot of what we had learned in the verse and made the questions about Glenda/Amy/Cheryl even more obvious. Also, I'm afraid the last two lines were lost on me. They didn't seem like real dialogue, for one, but the doctor's ambiguity kept the door open when it didn't really make any sense to do that.

This was a good verse, distinctly your own. I liked it in many ways, but I was frustrated in others. Thanks for the story.

[e11even]

Awesome feed Certain. My constraints were line limit and time management as they always are in my case. I wasn't able to plan it correctly due to my still very flawed brainstorm process. All my thoughts rush in at once. This verse was meant to carry more and be more complete; satisfying even.

Amy is the girl's real name. Glenda is the personality Ben was married to, a naive young woman who appears to have had a wholesome, sheltered upbringing. She represents the younger, pure side of Amy.

Cheryl is the sum of all Amy's imperfections; the reason they're divorced. It was supposed to come out in the end, but I never rewrote this for OM. I just posted the original intended version. The body in the closet was the receptionist from Ben's dealership. The O'Malley girl happened to catch the murders in progress and got the brunt of it.

The bible verse was about infedelity(Ben) and jealousy(Amy).
The 'bag of shoes' was Glenda's way of explaining her personality disorder.

Beginning to the middle was intended to be set in 1958. The end just unraveled. My inspiration was the series of murders commited in that decade span 55-65, hence the names and a few other details I failed to explore. I hope this clears up some things.