copyright Jay Russell 1996. May not be reproduced without permission.
Reproduced below is the "censored" prologue to Blood. I have,
in the past, made rather a fuss as regards issues of censorship
in media, so what gives here?
Basically, Raven Books expressed concern to me about the
somewhat over-the-top nature of this prologue, and fears that
some booksellers might prove reluctant to stock the book
based on a casual read of just the prologue and not the rest
of the novel. Given that the prologue is (by definition) the first
thing most readers would look at, Raven was worried that
distribution and display of Blood might be hindered simply because
of the explicitness of the prologue.
What to do?
Raven never insisted that the prologue be removed, but asked
me to consider their concerns. I understood where they were
coming from and agreed that the prologue might be a tad...extreme.
I wrote a toned-down version of the prologue, but frankly it turned
out merely to be extreme in a slightly different way. I toyed with
writing a different prologue entirely, but didn't like the results.
In the end, I decided simply to drop it from the published volume.
The fact that I believe the book works perfectly well without the
prologue suggests to me that perhaps it was always superfluous.
On the hand, maybe I've just been cowardly and am rationalizing
hypocritical, chickenshit behaviour.
I don't know.
In the end, the decision to drop the prologue was more a marketing
decision than an aesthetic one (and involved complexities which I
am not disposed to expound upon publicly). I admit that worries me.
But as fans of the genre probably know, horror is in a truly dire state
these days. It is now difficult to get horror fiction published in the UK,
and almost impossible in the US (complexities, complexities). King
and Rice and Koontz continue to sell like ice cream in summer,
but the rest of us struggle like double-glazing salesmen in hell.
I am trying ("Try not; do or do not. There is no try." Fuck you, Yoda.)
to make a living as a fiction writer. In order to do that in the
mass market, some compromises have to be made -- that's a simple, if
unappetizing truth. I believe that Blood is still a strong,
visceral, entertaining novel, and a work of integrity. In a perfect
world, I admit the prologue would have been included. Turns out
this ain't a perfect world.
Censorship is an insidious thing. Had Raven demanded that I remove the
prologue, I don't know how I would have reacted. The fact that the choice
was mine -- was it? -- made it seem easier. I fume and fuss when I see
censors demand that works like Crash and Natural Born Killers
be banned. Such censors would, I'm sure, be equally outraged by much of the
content of the published version of Blood. Yet, ultimately the book was
censored, albeit by me. I do believe there is an important difference
between censorship imposed from within and without, and I remain
adamantly opposed to any restrictions on content imposed by the State.
But should I have done it? I'm still not sure.
You tell me.
Prologue to Blood
Titus groaned.
The fat lady pumped furiously at his thick penis, nipping
sharply at the head. She popped one, then both testicles into
her mouth and rolled them on her tongue, applying gentle
pressure with her teeth. She slid her other hand underneath
him and slowly inserted two pudgy fingers up his ass.
Licking her way back up the shaft, she swirled her lips
and tongue around the circumcised, strawberry head. She
lightly fingered his balls with her free hand and took the
entire length of his penis into her throat. If she was put-off by
the small, tumor-like growths around the base of the organ
she gave no indication.
Her head bobbed up and down as Titus clenched and
unclenched his toes. As she inserted a third finger in his
asshole, he grabbed her by the flabby skin on the back of her
neck. He pulled her off his cock and shot his load directly
into her eyes. He dabbed at the sticky tip of his penis with
a handful of her curly brown hair then pushed her aside.
"Goddammit," she said mopping her eyes with the sheet,
"My contacts!"
Titus laughed. He glanced at the naked blond woman lying
on the floor at the foot of the bed. She smiled faintly,
looking distant and drugged. Her pubic hair was matted and
damp, and a line of liquid glistened down her muscular thighs.
Titus pointed at the fat lady with his chin. "Want
some?"
The whore was a great fleshy thing with meat enough for
two good-sized women and a little girl to spare. With every
move she made, seas of flesh ebbed and flowed against each
other like coupling jellyfish. Mounds of fat ringed her
midriff in loose concentric circles, obscuring the deep cave
of folded skin leading to her cunt. Immense bovine tits
flopped on her chest like lipid mountains, the nipples big as
baseballs. Her thighs were skeins of cellulite corduroy, the
loose flab on her upper arms a patchwork of purple stains and
legions. She finished adjusting her eyes and stared at the
blonde who blankly appraised her.
"I'll just watch," the blonde purred. "For now."
Titus shrugged. He slapped the fat woman on the stomach,
watching waves of pockmarked flesh crash at her sternum.
"Ready for more?" he asked.
"Anything you got," she said.
Titus picked up two leather straps and secured them
tightly around the fat lady's wrists. He tugged her meaty
arms over her head and looped the bonds through a steel
manacle imbedded in the middle of the ebony headboard. He
spread her squat legs and fastened each fat ankle to one of
the wooden posts that supported the bed's missing canopy. He
reached for a hypo of Tunnel on the nightstand and kissed it,
then slid the silvery needle into the soft skin between the
whore's sausage-sized toes. He eased down on the plunger and
watched as the trussed woman closed her eyes and soared away
on the golden fluid.
Titus threw the needle aside. Grabbing handholds of
flesh at her waist, he mounted her. He pushed aside the hairy
drapes of skin and entered her as sharply as the needle. She
opened her eyes and giggled slightly as the drug lit up her
nervous system. Her lips parted and the thick slab of her
white-coated tongue lolled over her chin, a dribble of spittle
rolling down a puffy red cheek.
Titus poked her fat breasts. He rubbed his hand across
the broad expanse of her stomach as he plunged in and out of
her. He found a doughy fold around her solar plexus and
twisted a sharpened nail into the skin. The woman groaned
slightly at his prodding and pulled at her bonds. Titus dug
his finger deeper into the incision as a small pool of blood
began to spurt into the chasm of flesh.
The whore garnered some sense of her situation and
started to complain through the Tunnel haze. She struggled
more forcefully, but the straps held fast. The pain grew
intense and even over the fleshy swell of her breasts the
woman could see Titus' finger inserted in her stomach beyond
the second knuckle. She mumbled an incoherent complaint, but
Titus just laughed and thrust the rest of his finger into the
wound.
The blonde got up now and knelt on the bed beside Titus
as he pulled out of the whore. He disengaged his blood-soaked
finger from her stomach and held it up to the blonde who
licked the blood off, slurping loudly. The blonde
then climbed over the prostrate woman and forced two fingers
into the small opening in her belly. She tensed her muscular
arms and pulled at the hole. The flesh tore like newsprint
and the fat woman started to scream.
Titus closed his eyes and listened to her wail. He
grabbed her enormous, soiled panties from the floor and
stuffed them in her mouth. The blonde lapped up blood from
the torn flesh while rubbing furiously at her own cunt. Titus
watched as she brought herself off, his cock still hard, then
roughly pushed her off the bed. She tumbled to the floor and
rolled onto her back offering a contented sigh as she licked
her fingers and smacked her bloodstained lips.
Titus again straddled the moaning fat woman and viciously
inserted himself in the gash in her belly. With every brutal
plunge of his cock a small cascade of blood geysered up from
the wound, splattering his thighs. The whore tossed her head
from side to side, issuing a high, thin, barely human sound.
Titus thrust harder as the skin stretched and ripped and
chunky viscera began to poke through the shredded opening. He
forced himself deep enough inside her to rub the engorged,
clitoral tumors at the base of his cock against her tattered
flesh, grunting savagely with the contact and panting like a
thoroughbred at the wire.
By the time he spent himself in the whore's gut, the fat
woman had stopped moaning and the bed was awash in red. The
whore's pinpoint eyes saw only blackness, and the blood slowly
ceased gushing from the ragged wound extending across her mid-section.
"Didn't even sing," Titus said to no one in particular.
He lapped briefly at the mixture of cum and blood still
oozing from the wound, then crawled over to the blonde who had
fallen asleep on the floor. He sat beside her and gently
stroked the side of her cheek with the back of a bloody hand.
She woke up and smiled at him like a babe at a church picnic.
She lapped the blood off his cock and balls and tongued
the small tumors ringing his groin back to tumescence. Titus
growled with contentment and fingered the cancerous growths
that formed a solid ridge just below the blonde's coccyx.
The night was young.