Some stories come out easy, like a crack whore's fifth bastard. This was not one of those. For awhile I thought I might have to use forceps, or maybe even perform a c-section to get it out of my head.
I first began thinking about this about three years ago. Like a lot of the stories I was writing in those days, it was based on real events, and real people. When my daughter was a little younger than the girls in this story, maybe nine or ten, she introduced us to her new friend, Laura. Not long after, Laura had her first sleepover with us.
It didn't take long to discover that Laura was not like any other child I had ever been around. She was hyperactive, and way too physically demonstrative for a girl her age. She had no hesitation at plopping down in my lap if she wanted to ask me something, and some of her actions, although quite innocent, could easily have been misinterpreted as being seductive by someone with a slightly perverted point of view (Me, Me, cries the weirdo in the back of the room).
When I took her home the next morning and met her mother, it went pretty much as I described in the story. I thought I smelled pot as soon as I entered the house, and Laura's mother was acting either high or drunk. I talked with her for a few minutes while Laura showed my daughter her room, and in that short time she offered me a joint, and even made a pass - and this was at ten o'clock in the morning.
Needless to say, my wife and I discouraged that friendship, even though somehow Laura did end up spending the night once again a few months later. Shortly after that, she and her mother moved, and even though we never saw them again, they did stick in my mind.
When I began writing stories, I knew that at some point this would be the start of one of my dirty tales. My first attempt used the first-person pov, and it was pretty much just a narrative of what really happened. Needless to say, that wasn't nasty enough for an SOL posting. I started adding stuff that didn't really happen, and got about halfway through it when I decided to switch to third-person, because I wanted to get inside Susan and Laura's heads as well as Rick. I fiddled with that off and on for quite awhile, and almost gave up on it a couple of times.
Then a few weeks ago, I took another look and decided that the story was all about Rick, so why not let him tell it? I switched everything back to first person, and added the last couple of scenes, and finally -there it was.
Like I said, delivery is not always easy.