Another Forker-- Big Hands, Bigger Feat

This whole post starts here-
Here is Fork II - B, written out (with a dash of A thrown in for Stucco).
Uh Oh... I had trouble again and wrote another fork. All votes matter.
A or B?

II

Hank held her four limbs above her body until her adrenaline bled out and just before he tired and cramped beyond his own capacities.

The woman’s limbs fell like bones to the bed and she curled in on herself like a burnt spider.

Hank was contemplating what his next moves were. She had no place to go and he sure liked having her here when she was normal. The sex was fantastic and she didn’t make much noise, sauntering around the house in her under things- pretty things, too- all sleepy and smiley.

When she was normal she’d ask him if he was thirsty and bring him something to drink. She’d try to cook things up in the kitchen, sometimes making something that tasted quite almost right, and she’d ask for things while she lay limp and satisfied in a hot bath. Hank would bring these things to her happily, and he’d linger and stare.

“Damn,” he would think. “She sure is pretty.”

Now he didn’t know what to think. He could see a pattern emerging and he didn’t like what he saw. Fear of these horrific moments was seeping into his mind like an explosive gas. He feared the consequences of his reaction to her violence, knowing his patience would somehow thin and rend itself in one sudden flash. Someday soon he’d blow, he knew, and he‘d do something he would have to live with. But damn. The sex was just too good. At his age, where was he going to score this kind of action with this kind of babe?

Hank covered the shivering woman with a blanket and then reached down and pulled up another. This he wrapped around her neck like a cape. He fought the desire to pick out strands of coarse black hair stuck to her face and make her more appealing. She was quiet. She would soon fall asleep. When she woke, she’d be back to normal and he could put this moment behind them.

“Sleep sleep,” he whispered to her. “Sleep sleep.”

Hank shuffled about like a lost patient in an old folks home- naked, then a pair of socks, boxers, deodorant from a chalky stick. These moments after her episodes were hard to come down from. Adrenaline had injected into Hank’s veins in spite of Hank’s external demeanor and it had been given little to do. Hoist a girl with one hand and stroke her spitting face with the other. Hold her until she went limp. Hold her longer to be extra sure. Cover her. Let her sleep. Relax. After these episodes, there was nothing Hank could do but to shuffle around.

He picked up bits of a trail where this all started. His pants. Her shirt. Two pairs of shoes. He moved these from place to place, but did not put them where they belonged. He just moved them because they needed to be moved. He needed something to be done, and so he did it. It was all as nonsensical as her behavior, surely.

Crazy, it was. All of it.

A vague shuffle and Hank was in the bathroom. He stood and staggered with a gaping pair of threadbare boxers on. There were nine hours of night still left to get through, but he was ready for the day already. In the mirror, he dabbed at scratches and mottled skin where he had been attacked.

Cold water was drawn in a ritual Hank was unaware he had formed. He splashed his face and neck where welts and scratches rose.

“Damn crazy girl. She’s gonna get my eye one time.”

Hank dipped his hands in ceremony, lifting water from the basin cupped in his large paws, and dipping his face into the cold.

“But she sure is pretty.”

Water was leaving Hank’s face tainted with blood from scratches and dripping down his aged, freckled and hairy chest in a single rivulet, passing through a valley formed by fatty breasts, splitting around his fleshy belly button and then rejoining, wicking into his boxer waistband like a red-dawning sky. There was no sleeping now. He would have to finish the book he started last time she went crazy like this. He would have to sit at the foot of her bed and watch her sleep, reading pages two or three times over to consume the story he was using to occupy his mind.

She would sleep all night and wake wondering why he was “over there”. Hank would put the book up and his feet down, and crawl his way to her like a well-trained ape, crawling in next to her, smiling as he put his forehead up to hers and met her eye to eye, touching noses, matching her smile.

“It would all be like it usually was in the morning,” Hank told himself. “It always usually was.”

III - A

There was no explaining what made Bettina turn inside herself like she did. There was no “event” that she could point to, say- “That’s what did it! There! That man! That time! That Place!”

There was nothing like that she could remember. There were only the normal times and the times she felt herself getting lost and the anger growing down around the base of her spine and circling in her hip bone cavities and her fighting within herself and always losing- unable to rein it all in. It was like a shock was building- was rippling up her spine and agitating her brain- it had a current to it. She was convulsing but she wasn’t. No. She was raging. Rage shot up her spine and poured out of her in feral fear and she was unable to hold it back.

In her normal moments, she was often glad she was thin and frail and could not hurt those she tried to hurt when she was acting other than herself. Before she lost full control, she saw herself hitting those who loved her and cared for her and this frightened her and made her try all that much harder to hold on to the self she knew. How could she get this far out of control and how could she be so vile?

Doctors told her to come in “for treatment”, but this always meant for incarceration and tranquilizers, in a facility, and this made her feel crazy even in her sane times. No. This was better. A man who adored her, who could tolerate her darker side. This was much better than Muzac and pink walls and condescending nurses and doctors who wanted to “try” things on her- doctors as clueless as she was on how to get a handle on what she knew was a medical ailment sedation-treatable but irresolvable.

Hank was a simple man, but she could live with him. He made her feel like a princess in their good times together, and he let her get away with not doing much of anything. If she could just stay here, with this man, she’d be OK. If she could just keep him happy so he didn't throw her out it would all be better than it had been for as long as she could remember.

III - B


She would lie there with her face right up against Hank’s face. Her smell would be all up in Hank’s nostrils. Her breathing would be gently blowing across Hank’s cheek. At some point she would see the welts and scratches and pull her face back, grabbing Hank by the chin, shaking her head as if to say “naughty naughty” and then placing a kiss over his wounds to make them go away.


She would want them to go away- Hank would know this. She would be embarrassed. She wouldn’t want to talk about it and Hank would just have to let it all go.

She would begin kissing him and they would work this into a session of making love. Hank would touch her places and she would feel really really good. Hank would be patient with her. He would give her two or three before he satisfied himself. Hank would be a good lover to her, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his age.

Work would be hard to get to on time, and Hank would be both late and irritable for the rest of the day. At Hank’s age, it was all so hard to try and turn down something he hadn't seen or felt since the passing of his wife, almost twenty years ago.

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A or B?