I'm In the Zone

Ever written anything that just gelled? Where you felt you were able to paint exactly you wanted exactly the way you wanted? I'm loving this scene.

On the third pound, the door was opened by the ugliest man Raven had ever seen. Well, the ugliest one he'd ever seen in a dress, a sleeveless number in virulent turquoise that showed a huge expanse of shoulder stubble ill-concealed by pancake makeup. Raven wasn't sure what was holding the dress up. Perhaps the beer belly.

The creature grunted. "You Raven?" The voice was like gravel. Given the unlit cigar clenched between the man's teeth, Raven could guess where he got it.

Raven scooped up the bag handles. "I am. Is this 13C?"

The man grabbed his arm and gave him a yank inside. "I hope you brought beer. Lucy didn't bring nuttin' but wine."

"Sorry, no. I did bring milk."

The man narrowed his eyes at Raven. "You some kind of crazy?" He shrugged his stubbly shoulders and turned away. "This way. Hey, watch the train!"

Raven took care not to do so, as he didn't want to find out what would happen if he tore the apparition's dress, and stumbled into a living room full to bursting with men in feminine garb.

"Raven, darling!" Lucy exclaimed, mincing forward in a one-piece pantsuit of electric blue lamé and silver sandals with six inch heels. "We've been having such fun. Let me introduce you. You met Phoebe. This is Norma Jean, Priscilla, Carla and Bella Blaze. Isn't that dress something?"

As Bella was dressed like a flame in red and orange sequins that made the most of his chocolate colored skin, Raven had no hesitation in saying, "You bet." Raven was no connoisseur when it came to professional cross-dressers, but he suspected he was looking at a room full of the elite, Phoebe excepted. If he had not been quite so perceptive, he would have seen a room of fine-looking, if rather lanky, women. Lucy was undoubtedly the star, but several others were nearly as stunning, if on the flamboyant side.

"Hey, Suzy, would you take these into the kitchen?" A graceful sprite with startling purple hair took his bags. "Isn't he thoughtful, girls?" Lucy was hugging Raven's arm as he led him 'round the room. "That was Suzy, of course, and this is Cha Cha and Antionetta, then this is Lana, and, of course, you know Chloe. We gave her a make-over."

Raven had found nothing to complain of with her appearance, other than a dearth of body fat. After a professional level polish, however, she was only an iota short of the glamour when she was projecting power in every direction. Raven had to swallow. And it took him two tries.

She was dressed in blood-red with a cowl neckline that dipped between her magnificent breasts (the only natural ones in the room). Her tiny waist was picked out with a wide black cincher, laced with a red ribbon in the same shade with a black belt over it, dripping with draping silver chains. Below was the briefest of black skirts, slit up one side, with black stockings—and he could see they were stockings because he could see the top edge of them through the slit— that covered impossibly long and curvy legs, ending in black pumps with a strap across the ankle.

He gave himself a moment to appreciate the length of the legs and the gorgeous body before he found her face. Her hair was up in the sexiest little bun that left curls to frame her face and another burst of curls at the apex of the bun. His fingers ached to wrench through her hair and send her pins flying. A velvet choker with an enamel rose, in the same blood-red, circled her slender throat. Her lips were tinted the same color, making their full kissable shape hard to miss. Her huge shimmering brown eyes were framed by sooty lashes of improbable length. Raven could hear his breath back up in his lungs.

If he hadn't been surrounded by curious men—in more than one sense of the word curious—he would have... Oh, Hell. Screw 'em.

He was to her in two strides and plucked her from her perch on the arm of a sofa. His fingers did not tear out her hair pins, but one hand buried itself in her hair as his mouth descended on hers to plunder. His other hand slid to the small of her back to jerk her against him and he groaned as her softness impacted on his hardening body. Her hands, flat against his chest, slid almost immediately around his neck and into his hair. Then fisted.

This is a mistake, the irritating part of his brain said, but the rest of his brain was standing down and his body wasn't listening. Actually, even the irritating part of his brain wasn't talking very loud or he just couldn't hear it over the ragged sound of his own breathing or the pounding of his heart.

But he heard Phoebe. "Whoa, break it up! Don't make me turn a hose on you two." Whether he would have responded, Raven couldn't say, but Chloe took the decision out of his hands by stepping back out of his arms, her cheeks blazing. She sat back on the sofa arm with the air of someone who was too wobbly on her legs to stand. Raven was more than a little light-headed himself and sank into the chair Suzy placed behind him gratefully. He even took the glass Phoebe handed him without noting what was in it. He regarded Chloe bemusedly. Even with all the color kissed off her now swollen lips and her hair beginning to tumble down, she looked fantastic. Perhaps even better.

Bella hovered over Chloe with lipstick, but Lucy waved him away. "Don't bother, Bella. It will never last." Lucy favored Raven with a sly look. "And it's already served its purpose." Turning to Chloe, Lucy fidgeted with hair pins and said sweetly as Chloe's sleeve slid off her shoulder, "Fix your blouse, darling, or we'll have to put Raven on a leash."

Raven actually blushed and tried to cover by taking a gulp of wine, then choking as he was unprepared for champagne. Phoebe helpfully smacked him on the back.

"Told you you shoulda brought beer. You ain't going to look at Chloe like that all day, are you? My old lady's out of town and you're killing me."

"You—You're married?" Raven gasped. "But I thought..."

"That all trannies are gay? Not hardly. If I wasn't already taken, I mighta taken a shot at Chloe myself. Cha Cha and I are both ladies' men and many trannies are bi. We just like to be pretty." Phoebe neatly kicked his train into a beefy hand and sat down, chewing on his cigar.

"No kidding?" Raven said faintly.

"No kidding," Bella said with a wink. "Cha Cha's got nine kids. His wife is a genius with stage costumes. I'm so jealous!"

The muscular queen with blue feathers in his hair—Raven thought his names was Antoinetta—said, "So, tell me, I've been dying to know. How did you get a name like Raven?"

Lucy clapped. "Excellent question! I've been wondering myself."

Raven shrugged, taking a more careful sip from his flute. "Dad named me something horrible. Some of my on-line gaming buddies took to calling me Raven because that's what I always named my characters. When I got old enough, I had it legally changed.

"To Raven?" Bella said, throwing up his hands. "I love this guy. What was it before?"

Raven blushed again. "Not sayin'."

"Even better. Lord knows I love a mystery," said Norma Jean. "Was it Clarence?"

"No."

"Tiberius?" Lucy asked. "Was your father a Trekkie?"

"No and hell no. Though I liked all the versions, even Enterprise."

Suzy and Lana looked at each other and said, "Lame," at the same time.

"What about Quinby?"

"Nope." Raven decided that, as champagnes went, it wasn't that bad.

"Hogarth?"

Raven clenched his teeth.

"Hogarth, really?" Norma Jean said, "That doesn't sound too bad."

"Try going to school on a Navy base as an undersized shrimp ahead two years with a name that begins with 'hog.' By the time I got through with them, they were calling me Raven in self-defense."

Silence greeted this. When someone spoke, it was Bella and not in the affected falsetto he'd used earlier, but a vibrant baritone that would have been the envy of many an opera star. "Try getting caught by the rest of the basketball team slipping into a lacy pink thong after practice."

Couldn't top that, Raven decided. There were nods all around the room. Chloe patted Cha Cha's shoulder comfortingly while Phoebe burst into tears. "Kids can be so cruel," he blubbered, and several of the others offered him dainty hankies to mop his eyes.

"State boxing championship," Suzy explained.


"Adults, too, I wager," Raven said. He opened up his barriers and looked at them with his inner sight, not surprised to find that they were all, to varying degrees, much like Lucy—kind, tolerant, helpful. "Pity. You're such lovely people."

"I knew I liked 'im the moment I saw him," Phoebe sobbed. "Even if he didn't bring no beer."

Admittedly, it's not for everyone. But then, I do love to make people think.