Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #33: The Horror Zine, "The Chamber"

I had published in The Horror Zine (an award-winning ezine I highly recommend) before (and I recommend that particular journal highly). I've said several times, I'm not real big on horror and find it difficult to write. I always stray into the habits of literary fiction—slow character development, more inner conflict, plot focused on philosophical or ethical questions—rather than following Stephen King's advice and writing on one of the three levels of horror:  mayhem, horror, and terror.  Now and then, however, a story is able to bridge the gap, and "The Chamber," with some editing help from the Horror Zine's editor, made it into this very fine, high-rated horror magazine.

If you haven't read King's formula, found in his book on horror writing, Danse Macabre, his sketch of what he believes are the different kinds of horror writing goes like this:  Level 1 is mayhem:  slasher stuff, blood and guts, people dismembered—well, you get the idea; Level 2 is horror:  something  or someone—a monster, a predatory animal, a serial killer—is chasing you—you know what is after you and it's something scary; Level 3 is terror:  something horrific is happening, something is trying to get you, but you're not sure what it is or what you can do to get away from it or what it will do to you, though you know it will not be pleasant.  In King's formulation, terror is the best kind of writing, followed by horror, then by mayhem. The final quote he gives on the topic is memorable:  “I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”

The story I came up with for The Horror Zine was "The Chamber"—a bit more on the terror side, or at least I like to think so. Talaith, a girl living in rural ancient Greece is suffering, with her family and everyone else in her village, through a famine. Rain has not come and food is scarce. One day as she kneads bread, she remembers than in ancient times the villagers offered human sacrifices—usually an unmarried girl—to appease the gods and bring rain. She shudders at the thought. But even she contemplates this, a delegation from the village appears at the door of her family's house. She knows why they have come.

Talaith

Victims are killed by being sealed in what is called The Chamber, a room in the Temple of Artemis that, when wax is put around the edges of the door, is airtight. The sacrificial virgin suffocates.

Talaith is sullen and tells Modthryth, the priestess, who is preparing Talaith and enjoying her helplessness, that she doesn't want to die, the matter is not fair, and she thinks that if the goddess Artemis is above human beings and expects humans to behaved morally, the goddess would behave morally herself and not demand the life of an innocent girl. The priestess rebukes her and says she has absorbed heretical thoughts from Pythius, her brother, who has studied with the philosopher Heraclitus and has new ideas. Still, she is quiet. No use in fighting. No use in blaspheming or cursing the priestess. She is sealed in The Chamber.

She feels the air begin to thin and then feels her lungs ache as the oxygen in the room is used up. Just as she is about to die, she looks up at a thin ceramic portrait of the goddess. It is glowing. She fears at first, but then realizes it is glowing because the moon is shining through it. Just then it shatters. Pythius has come and broken the window at the deserted temple and saved his sister.

He wants them to run away, but Talaith has an idea. She tells him to leave, uses a shard of broken clay to cut her dress so it is above her knees, and unties her hair. She waits. As she waits, she hears the rain begin to fall.

When the villagers come to retrieve her body, she steps out of The Chamber. Her short skirt and loose hair make her look like the Goddess Artemis. Everyone, including Modthryth, gapes at her. She says the goddess appeared, spoke to her, and made her the new priestess of the temple. And Talaith has some plans and thinks of the changes she will make as the new priestess. She will stop the sacrifices and she will appoint her brother to teach the children of the village a new way of thinking.

Her ruse works. The people proclaim her Artemis's messenger. Even the sadistic priestess bows down to her. As the rain falls, she goes home with her family, the danger at an end, the prospect of change a certainty.

I hoped I at least achieved a bit of terror in this. The creepy idea of slowly suffocating, the fear that she might have blasphemed and Artemis might appear to drag her down to hell, go through the girl's mind as she waits to die. For all horror writers, terror is something to shoot for—or horror or mayhem. We're not proud.

You can read "The Chamber" by clicking here. The way the story is set up, you'll have to scroll down just a bit. The story was reprinted in the Horror Zine's 2011 anthology, What Fears Become (also highly recommended). 

For a Christmas gift for adult readers or fantasy lovers, get a copy of ShadowCity. For additional titles that will make great gifts for horror, fantasy, and paranormal readers, check out my Writer's Page.    

                         

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #32: Writing on Religion: The Stylite

BuddhistNuns

Some of my writing follows religious themes. I am constantly intrigued with what people believe and how religion affects their lives. I try not to be partisan. My religion is Christianity, but my writing recognizes a wide system of belief or lack of belief. One of my characters begins a prayer, "Lord Buddha, you know I don't believe in you." Religion takes many forms and includes many varieties and stripes of belief, from cool to lukewarm to overly-zealous. I am not hostile to religion, but then again I see the problems too much religious fervor brings about. Fundamentalism of any sort—whether it is a Baptist fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell or an atheist fundamentalist like Richard Dawkins—is not a good deal. Yet religion can make for interesting stories.

The next story in my publishing history was one about religious, titled "The Stylite."

Saint Simon the Stylite

What is a stylite? It's really weird. Stylites were monks who live on the top of platforms. That's it:  they lived on platforms set on poles up to forty feet from the ground. People sent food up to them and they lived on the poles in all kinds of weather, praying, meditating in their solitude, sometimes so many that the areas they lived in were called "forests." These were some of the excesses of piety that existed in the early days of Christianity—unbelievable to us but historically true.

Myrna is a devout girl who belongs to and identifies with the Orthodox Church. Her world is turned upside-down when her brother, Stephen, who lives alone in a house a short distance from where she lives with her parents, declares his intention to become a stylite. The family is alarmed when they can't talk him out of it. They call in the priest who says such behavior might have been a proper expression of devotion in the second century, but now it would amount to spiritual exhibitionism and would become a scandal to the church. He promises to talk to Stephen.

She goes to school the next day. Her friends ask her what her brother is doing. She hopes their priest has altered his inclinations, but when she drives home, she finds a crowd of reporters at his house. The story is all over the internet and on television. With horror, she realizes what this will mean for her at school, where she is popular. Her enemies will use it to brand her as weird. She will topple from her high place on the food-chain there. She despairs, not understanding why her brother would do such a thing. He has been loyal to the church, but never overly devout or pious. She, in fact, is the one who has stayed for different periods of time at convents and seriously entertained the idea of becoming a nun.

While contemplating this, she—like many people in the Bible and throughout Christian history—has a revelation.

Myrna has a date that night. Because of her commitment to religion and to perhaps becoming a nun someday, she has remained a virgin. She asks her boyfriend for a kiss before they head out to a barn dance. He notices the miniskirt she is wearing and says he better not because it might make him try to violate what he calls her "underwear rule"—meaning that underwear will not be removed—in other words, she does not intend to have sex with boys she dates. Myrna simply replies “Tonight you don’t have to worry about my underwear rule. I’m not wearing any.”

The next morning she goes to her brother and sends a note up to him. She will not be a nun, she tells him:  Stephen—I understand. I won’t go to the convent, ever again. I can’t be a nun now. I’m disqualified. It happened last night. I think you know what I mean. Please come down. She watches with relief as a rope comes down and her brother climbs it to the ground, abandoning his place on the stylite platform.

Religion is good in many ways; still, I can't help but thinking that when it leads to extreme asceticism—self-denial and the abrogation of pleasure in life—it isn't helping itself or anyone else—the very thing Stephen is trying to show his sister. Benjamin Franklin, whose views on religion were controversial, said he was in favor of people having faith as long it did some good for the human race. John Milton said he could not praise "a fugitive and cloistered virtue." My views lean toward this. Living on top of a platform is not the best way of showing your devotion toward the Divine—but there are a lot of other ways of showing devotion that are also wrong.

"The Stylite" appeared in a journal called Five Fishes, no longer in operation, but, happily, with an archive. You can read the story here. Some poems are featured first, you will need to scroll down to get to my story.

Read my latest book, Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to die for, served up by the Angel of Death.

I would love to hear your comments and questions.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #31: "Wolf Moon," Writing About Werewolves

If you write paranormal fiction, you will eventually deal with werewolves. Some really high-up people wrote about them. Rudyard Kipling had a story called "The Mark of the Beast," where a British guy defiles a Hindu temple and turns into a werewolf; but the other British guys torture the priest and he turns the guy back to a human. Great colonial story! Frank Norris, a socialist writer from the turn of the century wrote a story called Vandover and the Brute, about a businessman who periodically turns into a werewolf. So some major players in the world of literature took the genre on.

For me, it was movies starring Lon Chaney:  The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters. Later came The Howling and, of course, that classic, An American Werewolf in London. Maybe the best one of them all was the 1957 film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon. I had never tried to write anything but then the idea for a mixed genre story came to mind and I started composing "Wolf Moon."

Michael Landon as a teenage werewolf

Werewolves, like vampires, are tormented by what has happened to them. They don’t' want to be caught up in a life that turns them into a monster, but they don't know how to get out of the situation. So they are lost, tormented souls who are very nice guys sometimes, but when the full moon emerges, watch out. There's a scene in Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters where Bud is tied up by Dracula. Lawrence Tabot shows up to rescue him, but just then the full moon comes out from behind a cloud and he transforms scene. Bud is okay and at the end of the film Talbot the wolfman plunges into a lake after getting his vengeful hands on Dracula, who has just transformed to a bat.

"Wolf Moon" is the story of a group of alien slavers who capture some Terrans living on a remote planet. The captain of the ship is a little puzzled over them. They are the only humanoid inhabitants of the planet. They live in small houses and have modern accommodations but no communication equipment and supplies that look like they have been dropped off by a government or other agency. There are many more men than women.

The crew of the ship wants a woman and he gives them one. They plan to take her to a house on the planet they have landed on to refuel. The full moon on the wintry world makes the night bright, but the minute the crew of three drags the woman outside, she rips them apart and disappears into the frigid landscape.

The planet is part of the Italian League. In my sci-fi universe, there are still nation states on Earth and some of them maintain colonies. Italy is one of these. The Italians tell the slavers they need to leave at once, threaten to kill them if they won't and tell them the Terrans are werewolves. The captain doesn't understand the word, though he recognizes the word "wolf" in the compound. When he comes back on board, the other Terrans have escaped. They send him out to find the woman, saying they can't go out in the moonlight themselves. When he asks if this is a religious restriction they laugh at him. He finds the woman in a cave. She attacks him and tackles and scratches him before he is able to stun her with a blaster.

He wraps the naked woman in his coat and carries her back to the ship, wondering how she has survived the cold and wondering why, when he first saw her, she looked like a bear or some other upright-standing animal. The other Terrans care for her. Their leader tells him he will be required to take them back to their home planet. They also notice a scratch on his neck.

The captain is a Housali, a race with blue skin. The physician among them wondered if he will transform, but their leader reminds her that some of their numbers are not Terrans but come from other planets. She wonders if he'll have blue fur and starts to clean his wound. The ship is sealed up so no moonlight can get inside, but the Housali feels a wild stirring in his blood—something savage he had never felt before. He knows it lies outside, waiting for him, something frightening but also oddly appealing.

The journal in which this story was published is defunct. It does not have an archive. I've been marketing it to other journals, but with no success so far. 

A scary non-werewolf tale, Le Cafe de la Mort, 

is available from Amazon. 

 See more titles on my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments!

What's your favorite werewolf movie?

Where did the legend originate?

Werewolf is from Anglo-Saxon, but the legend goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. 

Revision note!  A journal called Grey Matter will be printing "Wolf Moon" in the near future.