If you could imagine a ship dragging its wake behind it, I sort of liked the way that sounded. The "wake," in this case, is the serrated flesh of a messy knife wound, which is why I wanted it to be jagged and frozen, hence 'gnarled, petrified.' But much gratitude for telling me exactly what was not perspicuous, I wonder how I can express it better without losing the good visceral feeling that image gives me.

EDIT: And thanks for the support! I am much too intimidated to mess with plot or characters just yet, so I'll stick with whatever this is for a while. The other good commentators seemed to think it was a bit pointless, and they're correct, but it was basically a freewrite that I double and triple backed over for clarity.

p.s. I think "bitch-slapping" came from a discomfort with all the 'pretty' descriptions; next time I won't chicken out.