potential nightmares on paper

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If the circumstances turn out a certain way,

this is every woman's nightmare.

I come in to her small ranch outside Vegas and find her in an empty hot tub, huddled and in tears. Daddy is bleeding from his eyes. She doesn't look at me or acknowledge me and my camera. "Daddy's bleeding from his eyes, like tears, dark, burgundy." I can't say anything, you never can, but I sit on the edge of the tub and she reaches up her hand to touch. "I know it's impossible, Blue, since it's only been two months, but I can feel it kicking."

The baby.

No way. She says she can feel it trying to come out. Daddy is dying, and she is pregnant, giving birth. "It's like a race. I have to win," she says, and she repeats this a dozen times. I can see her belly and thighs straining, and I tell her to relax, that she will win the race only if she relaxes, and this gets her out of the tub and into bed, where she's asleep seconds after lying down. She sleeps until the next dawn, when the caw of some bird wakes her up in fright. I smile, she smiles, and the fright flies out the window.

Daddy will be happy to see you, she says. Maybe, thinks me.

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This little passage opens a novel publicly written by Blue in 2009. You can catch it in action right here. And for more of the Raindancer in images and some small words, go here.