...but I decided to tweak the story by removing all appearances of the V-word, and changing Ray’s line “So you bit me” to “Show you showed me.” Maybe it’s just me, but I think the story reads a little better now that it’s not quite as thuddingly explicit. (And let’s face it, between the biting and the staking it’s not like there’s a dearth of clues to what’s going on.)
So this is probably, like, cheating...