Still Halloween, yays!

[cleolinda]

For some reason, a second story came to me today. It's a shade longer than the other one, so: here you go. Now that I'm back upstairs for the evening (and I spent an hour or so this afternoon practicing), I'm going to record both stories later, but it'll have to be after our few treaters have trickled away, or else we'll have doorbells on the audio file. "Strength," by the way, is in the title because it occurred to me that the story kind of played into the reverse of that tarot card, and that it would kind of be fun to write a series.

Strength (Bell Donner Gives Her Word)

That fall a number of people in Chesterville were mauled to death by some kind of wild dog or wolf—the kind that apparently wasn’t too afraid to go right up to people as they took out their trash at night, or went to get their paper not too long after dawn. But it was a small town out in the sticks, verging on farm territory: quiet. Not like a wild animal was marauding up and down Times Square or anything; not like it was in plain view. So people started being more careful—not venturing out alone until midday, or not venturing out at all without a loaded shotgun—and things were all right for a while. Then, in late October, the animal came back, and this time, someone survived. An old lady by the name of Edna Mayhew—well, yes, she lost her arm from the elbow down, but she came out of it a damn sight better than any of those who’d come before her. And she said that it was definitely a wolf, but that it had come at her on two legs, and when she had smacked it in the face with a veiny little fist it had held her down with two arms and bitten her forearm clean off. The only thing that saved her, she declared, was her neighbor Bill “Thursday” Thurston, who had heard her screaming and come out with both barrels blazing. He claimed that the thing he saw ran away on four legs, but that it was, in fact, Goddamn Huge. This was about the time that that new photo of Bigfoot lumbering around on all fours came out, which several professors and scientists swore up and down was just a bear with mange. Eddie at the Red Brick saved it out of the paper and the next time Thursday came in for a beer, he said, yeah, the thing he chased off Mrs. Mayhew kinda looked like that. Maybe it was a wolf with mange. Mange was a terrible thing, after all. He’d managed to hit it with at least one shot, though, so he didn’t think it’d trouble people too much after that.

So, going into November, that was where things stood. Whatever it was, it had mange, and it had probably gone off and died quiet somewhere. Bell Donner wasn’t terribly worried about it when she went outside that morning a couple of weeks later to get more wood for her kiln. She threw artisan pottery out on a little farm a few miles to the west of Chesterville anyway; whatever it was, it and its mange were not likely to bother her. Or so she thought, until that morning when she was piling kindling into the crook of her arm, looked up, and saw it standing at the edge of the yard.

It didn’t have a human face, but it was standing—on two long, lanky legs that curved back into a point like a dog’s, not forward into a human knee. One—arm?—was held close to its belly. Probably protecting wherever that man Thurston shot it, thought Bell stupidly. She was trying to dredge up an appropriate reaction, but her brains felt thick and logy. It didn’t have a human face, but it did have a very human expression—desperate, she thought, and cranky, maybe resentful, even. And hungry.

Bell put down her armful of kindling and picked the axe back up. The thing staggered forward a step or two. It was still a good twenty feet away. “Go on, now,” she said. “Get. Ain’t nothin’ here you want.” The thing gazed at her, its eyes watching the axe; it almost seemed to calculate. She’d seen it, after all, and it was hungry. A human criminal wouldn’t have let her live, and this wasn’t even human. She hardened her voice and rode over a quaver like it was a speedbump: “Go on now. I won’t tell nobody if you just go.” It was on the tip of her tongue to offer it some food—she had a pot roast from the other night, and she was still knee-deep in leftovers—and then she thought, You dumbass, you feed it once and you’ll never get rid of it. “G’on now,” she said, her hands tight on the axehandle. “Just get. You got my word. I won’t tell nobody.”

It was still standing there, calculating. And then it stepped back, making a tactical withdrawal into the brush at the back of the yard. She saw it drop back down on four legs and lope away awkwardly towards the thicket out behind the farm, a scrubby bit of forest that led into some of the foothills. Probably some good caves in there, she thought. The wolf-thing wasn’t the only one out there who could calculate. And when the attacks started in Chesterville again, and then moved a bit north—northeast of Bell’s farm, and then back down to Chesterville, and then southeast of her farm, and then back to town again—she knew it was being careful. It knows better than to shit where it eats, she thought to herself. Or eat where it slept, more precisely, but the saying held the same. There were some people at the sheriff’s office who probably would have given a lot to know about a thicket in the foothills west of Chesterville, particularly since Edna Mayhew was still the only survivor. But Bell Donner had given her word, and she valued her word almost as much as she valued her life, and they were pretty much the same thing in this case, she decided. After all, it’s one thing to know where something lives; it’s another when something knows where you live, and a deal was a deal where Bell Donner came from.

P.S. Regarding the previous story: I like the tension of open endings better than resolving things in stories this short, but if you go back to the previous story, I did actually use a word, a single word, that should give you an idea of exactly what the woman found in her house. The story isn't really about "Ooo, guess what it really was"; it's more about, "Okay, so that's what it really is, and there's nothing she can do about it."

Comments

[girlalmighty]

Ooh, I like it. You've got some great lines in there, and the mood holds really well throughout.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee, thanks. It's interesting--I looked back over it, and I think the voice suddenly started up around the Edna Mayhew line (unlike longer things, I actually tend to write short-shorts beginning to end, in that order). I don't know that I actually started out with it in mind at all.

[golden-d.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I really like this one :) Not that I didn't like the other, but there's a mystery to this one that the other doesn't have (mainly because what the woman found in her house - if I'm right - occurred to me pretty early on in the story). But also, the first one doesn't have lines like:

He claimed that the thing he saw ran away on four legs, but that it was, in fact, Goddamn Huge.

Happy Halloween!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee, yeah. I think this one has more humor in it. (Thanks!)

[adaorardor.livejournal.com]

Where the first one filled me with a pretty pleasant suspense, this one made me actually jolt a little when the thing showed up. *grin* Actually, it kind of makes me want to draw it.

Thank you for posting these, they're great!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Aww, you're welcome!

[londonsparrow.livejournal.com]

I really liked both stories, though I think the first one will stick in my memory more. Your journal is always so good around Halloween. (I've been reading faithfully since 2004 after the Troy in 15m! Under different lj names, though.)
As for voice recording, was the last time you did that when you went on that trip and it was very, very hot? And you finally understood Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire, right? How I remember this, I don't know.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee, I did. I think that was actually the first and only time(s) I did voice posts, the posts on that trip.

[demonqueen666.livejournal.com]

I really like the "voice" you wrote this in. Very rustic and gruff and matter-of-fact. It sort of reminds me of Cherie Priest, if you've read any of her stuff.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Cherie Priest sounds vaguely familiar, but I haven't read any of her work--anything in particular you'd recommend?

[demonqueen666.livejournal.com]

You may or may not have heard of her because she's also fairly popular here on the LJ as cmpriest (I believe she may also have a blog).

In any case, in the past few years she's published a trilogy of Southern gothic horror novels: Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers. I've read the first two, and the third is totally going on the Xmas list, since I am currently suffering from a dreaded affliction of the broke.
In brief, it's about a young lady named Eden in the south that sees ghosts. In un-brief, it's...a lot more complicated than that. Family curses, ancient legacies, voodun, the Civil War, Indian burial grounds, and haunted hospitals. The second one isn't *quite* as good as the first, but that may be because the first blew me out of the water so completely.

She also has a book out called Dreadful Skin, which I also haven't been able to read yet but really, really want to. It's about a nun with a gun hunting a werewolf on a riverboat. No, really.

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

Southern Gothic werewolf story with a nun? I am *there*. Thank you for pointing her out!

[sea-of-tethys.livejournal.com]

Hee, I thought this was like Cherie Priest as well. I'd strongly recommend her :)

[the-bumper-car.livejournal.com]

This is creepy - the sense of melancholy and gloomy horror in the story is quite hard to pull off. I also love the way you make it seem that there are only 2 ways this story can end for Bell Donner - that she either panics into a useless state and gets eaten, or that she goes all Xena Warrior Princess in the creature's face - but surprise us with ending # 3, where she comes to a stand-off with the creature. Nice!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee, you make it sound so calculated on my part. Which is funny, because if this had been part of a novel, I would have calculated the hell out of the buildup and the outcome and the effect on the rest of whatever, but with short-shorts, I really just get a single image or idea (in this case, "Go on, now, just get outta here") and run with it on autopilot, which usually works, for some odd reason.

[the-bumper-car.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes winging it gets better results than overthinking it... I should probably try this out in my next work.

[gannet-guts.livejournal.com]

I totally feel the small town-ness of this story. And I kinda feel sorry for the wolf thing, hah.

[jacques-louis.livejournal.com]

This is so. Awesome. "Awesome" gets its own sentence, that's how awesome it is.

Love the voice, love that instead of cliffdangly look-over-your-shoulder horror, it's matter-of-fact andconversational. And awesome also, did I mention that?

[lyn-thorne.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed both of the stories, it was nice to have some 'Halloween Moodiness' for today.

Also - Happy Birthday to your LJ!

[kelcea.livejournal.com]

This gave me a shiver, which is unusual for writing. I love love both of the stories tonight. Thanks!

[deepfishy.livejournal.com]

I loved both of these stories - Hot Door because eventually, once you know about the stairs, you can't live in the house and not open the door, and she'll have to make her decision. And Strength because there's so much wrapped into that last line ("After all, it's one thing to know where something lives; it's another when something knows where you live, and a deal was a deal where Bell Donner came from.").

Mind if I rec them?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hey, go for it. I'm just glad you'd want to. : )

[quasar360.livejournal.com]

Is it weird that I totally pictured the Russian wtf when you described the wolf thing? I really like the voice you used in this story!

Like all good scary stories, both of these are thought-provoking. Would I be more freaked out by the knowledge that I had an evil door in my house or that a vicious wolf-thing was stalking around my area? I honestly don't know, but it sure is fun to think about it! (Well, I guess the door - you can hide from wolf thing, but how do you hide from your own curiosity and irrational terror? Particularly when it's justified? Wow, I'm overthinking now, aren't I. See?!)

[trede.livejournal.com]

I really love it, and the other one you posted earlier as well. I've just recently become really interested in horror fiction, I've been catching up on all the Stephen King I should've read in my teenagehood (currently 300 pages into The Stand and loving the hell out of it), and looking for other good horror authors too (if anyone wants a recommendation, I suggest China Mieville's short story collection Looking For Jake - really good and often gruesome horror/fantasy).

Do you have more of these stories floating about? Ever sold them to magazines? Ever consider putting together a book of short stories?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

If you're reading Stephen King, get thee to his short story collections immediately. I grew up on those--as a teenager, I mean. Off hand, I can remember Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, Everything's Eventual, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes--Four Past Midnight and Different Seasons are really more novellas, although the latter is seriously excellent. The first four I mentioned, though, have some wonderfully short stories.

I have a few short-shorts--I've actually never sent them out. My sending-out heyday (in which I never sold anything) was a long time ago. I do have an idea for a couple of collections--I think the tarot idea could be interesting, and I have a theme idea for a different collection as well. Really it's a matter of writing more stories and collecting them, which will probably take a while. : )

[trede.livejournal.com]

Ah, I've already read half of Night Shift, all of Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes and Everything's Eventual, three stories of Four Past Midnight and one of Different Seasons. :)

I heard Hearts In Atlantis is his other short story collection, despite also being a novel.

[rahrahmah.livejournal.com]

Hearts in Atlantis ROCKS!....while he's talking about the Vietnam war and the boys in college playing hearts. the beginning and the end are tied into some other novel I don't know about, apparently (you know how he likes to do that), and I just found it kind of obscure and confusing. There's very little supernatural going on in the middle if I remember correctly, though it's been a few years, and I remember being surprised that King could do what was essentially plain fiction so well.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I don't really think of Hearts being a collection, but I suppose it could be. All I remember is that I couldn't put it down, and I was in CUBA at the time. Like, I stayed in the hotel room to read one night instead of going out. (To be fair, I was jet-lagged and worn out from a walking tour.)

[kanzenhanzai.livejournal.com]

I just read both this and 'The Hot Door' - whew. I love that neither of them has a concrete end or spells out what'll happen after the story on the page is done. Very creepy!

[rahrahmah.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I loved everything about that, the title the narrative voice, etc. But that's not what I came in here to say. I came to say: HOLY CRAP, WHY HAVE I NOT SEEN THAT FREAKY BIGFOOT THING BEFORE!? There is no way that's a bear with mange. LOOK HOW LONG IT'S LIMBS ARE!

(heh..."whatever it was, it and its mange were not likely to bother her")

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee! The article had just come out the day before Halloween or so, I think. I was going to put it in a new linkspam and then just wrote it into the story. And yeah, the limbs kind of throw a wrench into the mange theory, unless mange does a lot more than I've heard. Which was kind of why I kept going on about it in the story. : )

[melayka.livejournal.com]

Welll... a simple Google search for "bear mange" comes up with this lovely image, among others (sorry, I suck at teh coding):

http://www.jesseshunting.com/photopost/data/503/2204bear-black-mange-fla-2002.jpg

and here's a site comparing the ManBearPig images (with some pretty conspiracy-crushing *baby bears* ambling around just minutes before):

http://www.bfro.net/avevid/jacobs/jacobs_photos.asp

I have to admit, even knowing 100% that the bear in the first pic IS a bear, he's still pretty freaky-looking. I can see where the confusion comes in. If I happened to see one coming toward me in the dark woods at night, you can bet your candy-lovin' ass I'd be running in the opposite direction. XD

[auriatetsukai.livejournal.com]

Wow, fantastic! I love short-story horrors rather than novels (which explains why I just couldn't make it through The Shining) because there's a lot of suspense already built in, and I think you harnessed that suspense well. These were nice to read between doorbell-ringings. ^^

[jennnk.livejournal.com]

so I started reading Neil Gaiman's blog, because of you, and now I'm intrigued with him as a writer, but I have no idea where to start. I never read much fantasy as a teen, other than Dean Koontz because my mom had a collection of his stuff, so I'm feeling pretty lost. I tried to read a bit of others because of a friend who LOVES fantasy, but I was never all that impressed. What would you recommend, as a perfect starter Gaiman, for someone who prefers tragic realist post-modern contemporary British fiction?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I really haven't read all that much by him--three books and his blog. I don't know if you'd like Neverwhere or not, but I have a good feeling about it. I loved Stardust, but that's definitely straight fantasy. So... hm. Try Neverwhere, or possibly American Gods, which has a realistic setting, at least--basically, what if gods of all different mythologies really lived, disguised, in the modern world.

[jennnk.livejournal.com]

what if gods of all different mythologies really lived, disguised, in the modern world.
THAT sounds intriguing. It's on my library hold request list now, thanks :)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad to be of service.

[gannet-guts.livejournal.com]

If a rec from a total stranger means anything, American Gods is my fave Neil Gaiman. :)

[cosette-esk.livejournal.com]

I actually liked that one better than the other one, although they we're both great. This one seemed to have more closure, which I like. Although I'm still wondering what the thing was, which I'm sure you intended ;)

[bigeyedrabbit.livejournal.com]

Love it. You are, as ever, made out of win.

Linkspam

[unheardpublic.livejournal.com]

Cleo, I know this has nothing to do with anything remotely close to your awesomeness, but I was wondering if you could linkspam this for me:

Chipotle, the mexican fast food restaurant chain, hosted a 30 second commercial spot contest for universities around the nation and they just announced the 12 finalists. Well, I happen to be one of them. The rules are that the video with the most views on youtube wins, so if you could link my video in your spam, I would SO appreciate it (you have no idea how much more I will love you). The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygkz9XcZM3k . I actually think you might like the ad. Well, I hope you do. Enjoy and thanks so much.

Your humble servant forever and EVA.

Z

Re: Linkspam

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Done! Or will be, once I hit post. : )

Re: Linkspam

[unheardpublic.livejournal.com]

If I could love you more, I might explode.

Thank you so much.

Z

[theendofallthat.livejournal.com]

I thought you might enjoy this STEAMPUNK LAPTOP. CRAZY. (http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm)

[cosette-esk.livejournal.com]

Nooo! The file! It is forbidden! Must see!

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

Hey you! Would you mind posting a link for me in your next round-up?

After Neil mentioned the idea in his journal, I started a Flickr group for Neil Gaiman-inspired costumes and creations. It's here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/inspiredbyneil/

Also, if people are not Flickr members and want to upload to the group, I'll do it for them. Info on that is here:

http://www.flickr.com/people/inspiredbyneil/

So if you could let people know so they can join the group or send pics to post, that'd be great. Thanks!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Sure thing. I'm kind of tied up at FW with the Lexicon thing at the moment, which is why I haven't posted in a few days, but I will in the next post. : )

[foresthouse.livejournal.com]

It's cool. Thanks!

Re: Lexicon, I can see why JKR is suing. I mean, it IS her copyrighted stuff. Just because she's been nice enough to let people fanfic about it doesn't mean she doesn't still hold the rights to publish it. That's my take. But I'm pretty conservative on the copyright issue - artists own it first! Unless they officially sign it away.