Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #55: New Testament Horror: The Prophetess

Drusilla

This is a double entry. The work I'm going to talk about was published as a story but then as a novella. It based on is one of the oddest narratives found in the New Testament. It is the only work of fiction I've ever written that was inspired by a sermon. The story is The Prophetess, a novelette-length text. It first appeared in the now-defunct journal Fantasy World Geographic. After the journal folded, I let the story sit for a few years but didn't want it to be lost forever, so I began submitting it and also marketing it as a book-length story. Two years ago it was published by eLectio Press and is currently on the market. The book is The Prophetess.

I've marketed it as a New Testament horror story. You may not think the New Testament has any scary stuff, but it does, especially when Jesus Christ encounters demons—evil supernatural creatures who can, in various ways, take control of human beings. One man who is insane has thousands of demons living in him; Jesus casts them out and they go into a herd of pigs; he encounters these beings at other times as well. The encounters are always a little creepy—and sometimes a lot creepy. In the Book of Acts, the Christian preacher Paul comes across a young girl who is possessed by demonic forces. The text says several things about her. First, she is a "young girl," the original language suggesting 10-15 years old. She is a slave and a successful fortune teller who makes a lot of money for her owners. When Paul and his team comes to town, she starts following them and shouting out, "These men are servants of the Most High God and have come to bring you the message of salvation." Paul eventually orders the demon to leave her body—it does, but her owners don't like it and cause trouble for him.

Drusilla shouts after Paul

Now some things puzzled me about that story. First, how did a young teenager get possessed by a demon? In The Exorcist the little girl is fooling around with a ouija board where a demon lurks. No explanation in this story. Secondly, I wondered: if the girl is controlled by a demon, and if demons are evil and always do wrong, why is this demon telling the truth? It was true, at least in the New Testament text, that Paul was a servant of God and had indeed come to give the message of salvation. If a demon, who would be prone to lie (Satan is called "the father of all lies" in the Bible) tells the truth, what's up? This got my imagination working and The Prophetess began to take shape.

The girl in the story I named Drusilla. She is sold to pay a debt and her owner takes her Delphi in Greece. Delphi was where the temple of Apollo stood and people from all over the ancient world went there to receive prophecies. The priestesses, who were like nuns and lived secluded lives, would go into a trance induced by drugs (or, some think, the gas fumes that drifted into the temple) and utter prophecies, predictions of the future. Marius, her owner, pays a large sum of money for her to enter the enclosure where the virgin prophetesses live and be possessed by

Priestess of Apollo

one of the spirits who give them the gift of prophesy. He tortures her and warns her that if she refuses the daemon (he calls it this) he will torture her even more and then sell her as a whore. Drusilla obeys. She is possessed and begins to tell fortunes. Marius grows rich.

The story goes on from there. She meets Lydia, who is also mentioned in the Bible and begins to have a fascinating relation to (not with) the daemon. One of my friends said he was her favorite character in the book; I wouldn't call him a character, he is more of a presence, but his behavior is fascinating. When Drusilla sees Paul and his party of evangelists, the daemon in her reacts in the manner described above. I won't go into the particulars (you can read these for yourself) but the plot thickens with violence, danger, and hard choices.

 

You can get a copy of The Prophetess through Amazon. It is a story of the ancient world, of slavery, and of the New Testament culture represented in the book of Acts in the Bible.

For additional titles check out my

Writer's Page. 

I would suggest too, my newest
novella, The Sorceress of Time.
The key to the future lies in the past.


I would love to hear your comments. 

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #54: "Angelique"

Angels have always been a topic of interest for the human race, from the Bible days onward. They came as messengers of God or the gods (our word angel is derived from the Greek word angelos, which means "messenger"). They carried messages from Heaven to Earth. In the Bible, people almost crapped their pants when they saw an angel; messengers from heaven are scary! C. S. Lewis once commented that angels in the Bible always said, "Fear not," when they first appear; but in the popular depictions of angels one sees in Victorian literature, he noted, the angel looked as if she should say "There, there." And angels, by the way, were always male, not female, in sacred texts. But what about a quirky angel—one that was quite different from stereotypes? An angel who is a little edgy? Thus came the story "Angelique."

"Angelique" is not about an angel. It is about a young man who meets one and she is quite different from how he imagined angels would be. Tyler Foreman is in a relationship with Pella, who has repudiated a strict fundamentalist upbringing and lives with him. He works at software firm; Pella is trying to make it in the very competitive world of freelance photography. And Tyler has an attraction to Goth girls. Pella is not Goth and he has never dated such a woman, but he likes photos of them in his cubicle and as screen savers. He finds one he hangs as a pin-up:  Angelique. She has jet black hair, blue lipstick, heavy eye makeup, and is nude from the waist; rings piercing both nipples; tattoos covering her upper arms; black rose tattooed on her stomach; fishnet hose, long nails painted black, rings on all her fingers and both thumbs. That she is topless earns the censure of some of the female workers he knows.

Angelique

One day, after a long staff meeting, he returns to find the photograph of Angelique changed. She is now wearing a halter top and her tattoos are gone. Her sultry expression is gone and she seems to be smirking at him. He stares for a long time, assumes someone stole the picture and photo-shopped it, but does not try to get it back to its original state. And, as in Oscar Wilde's classic novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, the photograph continues to change, and not in a small way. The model changes from a woman of European origins to an Indian woman with brown skin, large, lustrous eyes, and long black hair. He keeps waiting for his friends, whom he is sure have sabotaged the photo, to come out of hiding, laughing, and admit the prank. But they don't.

Pella

At the same time, Pella eventually begins to experience unexpected success. The editor of The New Yorker wants to use two of photographs. Soon after informing her of this, he picks two more and wants her to send him a portfolio. And, for the first time in her career, she is paid a substantial sum of money for her shots. Pella quips, "I think my guardian angel hasn’t left town after all.” They go out to celebrate. While they are dancing, Tyler suddenly gets an overwhelming impression that he should go to a local hotdog place called Yesterdog. He excuses himself and goes there. Angelique, Pella's guardian angel, is there waiting for him.

She does not fit the stereotype. She is not blonde and fair-skinned (as angels are usually depicted). Here is a little of their encounter:

“Angelique?” he asked.

“You were expecting, maybe, Alexander’s Ragtime Band?  I thought you’d never get here. Sit down.”

            He slid into the seat across from her. He noticed she had two hot dogs and an A&W root beer. Three dogs and a Canada Dry Ginger Ale (his favorite soft drink) sat on his side of the table.

            As she stuffed the end of a hot dog in her mouth, he studied her face. No doubt about it. She was the girl in the photograph:  the brown skin, lustrous black hair, brown eyes—only she wore a white minidress and white knee-boots, like a go-go dancer from the sixties. The white costume made her skin more lovely, her eyes more full of mystery and depth.

            She pointed to his hot dog. “Eat,” she ordered. He obediently ate one and then another. She wiped her mouth.

            “If you’re an angel,” he began, but he stopped.

            “Why am I not a white blondie with wings and a halo? Stereotypes. Since a lot of white people started believing, there are more ángeles blancos these days, but that’s only been in the last fourteen-hundred years or so. Prior to that, believers were almost all from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and I came along in your year 694, back when most of us guardians were fashioned to resemble, as you say today, people of color.”

            “Guardian? You’re a guardian angel?”

            “You said it yourself.”

It seems that though Pella has repudiated her childhood faith, her guardian angel has not repudiated her. Tyler asks if she has come to protect Pella from him. She tells him, to his astonishment, no, she has come to protect him.

She explains this and also why she altered the picture. Tyler's liking for Goth girls, she informs him, is symptomatic of his need for a "back door"—something to illustrate to him he can leave Pella if he needs to, though he doesn't want to now. That however, may change. Pella, Angelique says, is on the verge of fantastic success as a photographer. She will become one of the wealthiest and most famous photographers in the world. He will have the role of her husband. Because of this, he will be tempted to leave her. He thinks Angelique wants to protect her from this, but she tells him it will be worse for him and that, if he stays with her, new and beautiful doors will open for him. He is a little miffed at learning that he is secondary to Pella in talent and potentiality, and when Angelique gets ready to leave he sarcastically asks if she's in a hurry because she's going off to get laid. "I might," she said. When he expresses surprise that angels can unite sexually, she tells him, “There’s a lot you don’t know about us. Read Milton. I’ve got to go.”

She leaves him there alone. After a while, he returns to the bar where he left Pella. 

It was a fun story to write. It appeared in Indigo Rising, a journl that ceased publication, but it looks like it has relaunched. I'm trying to get access to an archive and, if I do, will post a link.

For more titles and more great reads, check out

my Writer's Page. You will enjoy reading ShadowCity, a fantasy novel about a parallel world; Strange Brew, about a rock star who suddenly finds a powerful witch in love with him--not a good situation; The Prophetess, about a teenage girl who is able to become a fortune-teller because she is possessed by a demon, but then things turn in an unexpected way. Many others.

 

And my latest novella,

The Sorceress of Time.

The world of wuxia, Asian martial arts bred many legendary figures. One of them, the Princes Jing Lin,

used her considerable skill as a warrior to assure freedom and independence for her people. But

when her father wants to make an

alliance with China and marry her off to one of the Emperor's family, she is troubled. For one, she is in love with Chen and wants to marry him. And she does not trust the man to whom she is betrothed. Sorcery though, is available. They key to the future lies in the past.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #53: "Guitar Blues"

I play blues, and because of my taste for that type of music the story "Guitar Blues" emerged from my imagination. It arose from certain questions:  What is the appeal of the blues? As a musical form, why does it endure despite a limited audience? Why was it so influential on rock and roll music—why, for instance did guitarists like Keith Richards and Eric Clapton work hard to learn the blues styles of Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy? Why did popular groups in the sixties do old songs like "Love in Vain" (a Robert Johnson song the Rolling Stones did) or "Back Door Man" (a song by Willy Dixon done by the Doors)? What is the perpetual appeal of the blues? Why does it never emerge as a dominant style of music and yet never seem to go away?

 

I tried to go back to the origins of the genre in "Guitar Blues." I could not go back to the most remote origins of the music. According to writer LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) in his book Blues People, that particular genre of music started with the "field hollers" of slaves in the first or section generation of the black diaspora. These shouts, related to African chants, entailed one worker shouting out a phrase with musical intonation—shouting it twice. The other workers would respond with a one-line chorus. This formed the basic structure of the blues: line, repetition of the line, another line that responds to the previous two. Later musicians, who probably had forgotten the African origins and probably even the birth of the style in the "hollers," would add a distinctive musical structure to it. So the blues came about.

The music had existed many years, but in the thirties people began to notice it. In my story, Noah Copeland is thankful to have a job after the stock market crash. He works at a dairy on the edge of the black district. His parents don't approve of his working there, but he keeps his job and begins to know the customers. His ideas on "colored people" and the stereotypes his parents have told him begin to change. When one of the customers finds out Noah plays guitar and likes jazz guitarists like Eddie Lang and Django Reinhart, he gives him some blues records.

Chloe

Noah is fascinated, charmed, and confused by the music. He has learned classical guitarist and is interested in jazz. His parents don't like his learning jazz. One evangelist from his church warns him that it is "jungle music" and derives from the rhythms of African paganism. He is incredulous, begins to learn the style, and finds out a fund-raiser featuring blues players is scheduled in his town. He meets a young black woman named Bess and is startled when he finds her attractive. He doesn't know Bess well enough to ask her out, but he meets Chloe Fettman, a Jewish girl in his school, finds out she likes the blues and that she is going to the concert. She asks Noah to meet her in the soda fountain of a hotel. They will go to the concert from there.

Chloe is quirky, wears short skirts, and is what in that era was called "Bohemian"—hip, quirky, pushing limits. They have a soda together but then she invites him to a room she has rented. They both lose their virginity there (Chloe's idea). They prepare to attend the concert, which Noah finds out will feature Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson.

Eddie Lang was a white guitarist who played jazz but who had the distinction of being the first popular musician to do an album in which a black and white musician played together. He did it with Lonnie Johnson, who was black and considered the "governor" of the blues at that time. They did the recording, but his record company feared backlash if they released an "interracial" record. So, they bill Eddie Lang as Blind Willie Dunn. Noah is elated about seeing his favorite jazz guitarist do a gig with the "governor" of the blues. He and Chloe set out for the concert hall.

 As they do, they encounter a group of protesters. They are posted at the entrance to the venue where the concert is to be performed. They are carrying signs that say JAZZ:  A THREAT TO PUBLIC GOOD, STOP THE EVIL INFLUENCE, NO JUNGLE MUSIC, KEEP THE JUNGLE TUNES IN AFRICA. Among the protestors are his father and a pastor from the church he and his parents attend.

Chloe suggests they go around to the back door and slip in unnoticed. She doesn't care about being spotted but is concerned for Noah. At first he agrees, but when he thinks about blues, Bess, the racism and misrepresentation that is going on, and his parents'  attitude, he decides to enter through the front, in plain sight of the protesters, including his father and one of the pastors from his church. He sees Bess there. Things have changed—or are changing for him.

The story was published in a journal called Cave Scribbles, which is no longer published and does not keep an archive. I might try to market it so people can once more read it.

If martial arts, sorcery, wuxia, and historical fiction are your cup of tea, check out my latest novella, The Sorceress of Time.

For more titles, check of my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #52: "The Texas-Illinois Motel."

Sign for the Texas/Illinois Motel

Every story has its genesis, and the genesis of a story can be from some monumental, soul-shaking event or it can be a common mundane thing of little consequence. "The Texas/Illinois Motel," came from a childhood memory. My family came from Arkansas, a southern US state, and, when we would visit relatives there after we moved north to Indiana, we would pass the Texas/Illinois Motel, so named because it lay, supposedly, halfway between Texas and Illinois. Truck drivers on a trek north could bed down there halfway through their journey. And quite a few did, at least when I was very young. The place always seemed full. It sat on a stretch of road that ran from Little Rock up to the northern reaches of the states. Lots of trucks and cars would park there and in front of it stood a sign with the name of the place emblazoned and outlines of the two states. Then a new highway went through.

Abandoned motel, still standing

After the interstate highly bypassed it, travel on the road slowed. Pretty soon the Texas/Illinois closed. It decayed and stood a ruin. For some reason, no one tried to reopen it and no one demolished the site. It stands, a testimony to what had passed away around the Arkansas towns of Searcy, Bald Knob, and Judsonia, where my parents had grown up, where most of my relatives still live. It is a sad ruin and a sad testimony to the economic decline that put so many places out of business.

Deserted motels are creepy. You wonder if the ghosts of people who once stayed there might stop on whatever journeys ghosts might take. That gave me the idea for a story about Sossity Chandler. She has just achieved a level of success as a singer, has had one or two hits, is in the money and building her career—not a superstar yet, but has a good chance of becoming one if she plays her cards right. She is on tour, opening for a hard rock musician named Davis Clark. She does not like him and does not approve of his exploitation of groupie girls and other aspects of his life, but touring with him makes for good publicity.

Once she played the town in which they are staying and decides to take a sentimental journey that will recall her days of struggle. She eats an old restaurant she ate at back then and plans to drive over to the Texas/Illinois Motel, where she stayed during that time. A man in café tells her it's abandoned because a girl died there. A lot of people, he says, think it's haunted. Sossity drives there and sees a girl in a smock standing barefoot in the snow. Thinking she is homeless, maybe addicted, and lives in the abandoned site, she offers to drive her downtown to a shelter. "What if I'm a ghost?" The girl says. Sossity lets her in the car and, through things the girl tells her that only a supernatural creature would know, finds out she is telling the truth.

And more:  the girl, Joetta Holland, was a groupie of Davis Clark and claims he murdered her by deliberately giving her an overdose of heroin. She convinces Sossity, who buys her clothes and food and listened to her story (ghosts have bodies for a short while around midnight). She wants revenge and will not be able to go to her rest until she gets it. The two of them hatch a plot. She wants to haunt not Clark's house and not his car, but his music.

It's tricky, but Sossity manages to get Davis Clark to come to the motel. When he does, Joetta appears to him as he is playing his guitar. She hovers near him and then her phantom-like shape breaks apart. Clark is glad she has vanished and thinks she is gone. Sossity knows she has entered his music and will live in it, torment him every time he picks up his guitar and plays, ruin his career, and finally kill him.

 The Sixth Sense told us the old truth that ghosts want something. They are ghosts because some traumatic event has attached them to a site or a person and they cannot go on to their reward, to the afterlife, until they resolve the conflict that has anchored them to an earthly spot. Joetta has to deal with Clark's deception and revenge herself. Sossity is willing to join her in her plot because she wants to see justice done.

 The story appeared in a journal no longer being published but with an archive. Read  "The Texas/Illinois Motel" here.

Non-Western fantasy, martial arts,

wuxia are all found in my latest 

novella, The Sorceress of Time. 

For more titles, explore my Writer's Page.

 I would love to her your comments.