Dave’s Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #80: “The Witch’s Sniper”

Arkansas regional map

I was born in Arkansas, though my family moved north and I grew up and settled in Indiana; I’ve lived in Indiana and Michigan ever since. My family, all moved back down South but I stayed North. I don’t like hot weather and didn’t want to leave what I knew so well for a different culture (and it is an entirely different culture). But the South is part of my personality even if I didn’t grow up there. From my parents, from spending summers with my relatives, from the stories and tales I’ve heard, that part of the United States is in my memory and in my blood. I don’t write about it a whole lot, but out of nowhere, the idea for the story “The Witch’s Sniper,” came to my imagination.

Sugar Loaf Mountain

Witchcraft of varying degrees exists in Southern culture—a hang-over from the old days. There are people who “charm,” as it is often called. In my story, a full-blown witch lives on the top of a small mountain called “Sugar-Loaf Mountain,” which is a real place, so called because the top of it is rocky, not tree-covered, and does resemble a small loaf of bread—like banana bread or some other sweet bread. In the past, the people of the town were going to lynch her for her sorcery, but three local men argued she ought to be spared if she agreed not to use sorcery against anyone in the region and never come to town. In thankfulness, she sends a letter to the three men who saved her life. The letter states she will never harm them nor their families and kin. And, she says, she’s owes obligation to them and will do what they ask—to their families and kin as well.

James Chastine, the son of one of the men who saved Lucy’s life, and a sniper in the Confederate Army, comes to her to ask a favor. The Yankees are drawn up near-by and there will be a battle soon. Chastine has no illusions about who will win and, taking their cue from Sherman, the Union Army has been plundering and destroying as they recapture areas of the South. He has sent his children away and wants Lucy Butler to give the Confederates a victory so the Grand Army of the Republic does not overrun the region and destroy his farm. She says she will help but wants some in return. Chastine protests.

I saw the letter you wrote to my Daddy. You said you didn’t expect”—he could not think of the word.

            “‘Without reciprocation’ is what I said. That means you don’t me owe me anything—like what Mr. Garrison owed me. I was happy to do favors for your Daddy because he saved me from hanging. But he always brought something when I did magic for him. I’ll do magic for you, and you won’t owe me your soul, but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it for free.”

            He licked his lips. “Times are hard—the war. My family is barely got enough to eat.”

            “I know that. I’m asking you to do something for me—quid pro quo, something for something. You won’t be in the kind of danger. You won’t be risking your soul. I promised your Daddy I would never take the soul of one of his kin and I keep my promises. I want you to do something for me. And what I want you to do is not even a sin.”

Religious Service for Union Soldiers

What she wants him to do is kill an evangelist who is leading a revival among the Union troops. Despite what the novel and movie Cold Mountain presents, troops on both sides of the Civil War were very religious. A revival had swept the Confederate Army early in the war; a similar religious awakening occurred in the Union ranks later on. Lucy Butler feels “squeezed” by a lot of religious people around and wants him to take the evangelist leading the religious movement (his name is Kirchner) out. Since it is war, she says, it won’t be murder. Kirchner is a Union Chaplin and wears a uniform. Chastine doesn’t like the idea but thinks of his farm being destroyed and his family put in danger. He agrees, returns to camp, and gets his sniper rifle ready for the task at hand.

But before he returned to the front he was able to spend a night with his wife. Knowing him, as a wife does her husband, she asks what is troubling him and he tells her. She urges him to do what is right. He sneaks into the Yankee camp, sees Kirchner preaching and takes aim. But suddenly he sees Lucy Butler, who is passing herself off as one of the prostitutes who follows the Union camp, standing, waiting to see the killing. He takes aim—not at Kirchner but at her and, as he is a skillful sniper, drops her and steals back to the Confederate camp.

Lucy Butler

Chastine awakes the next morning to the sound of celebration. His comrades tell him Lee has surrendered and the war is over. Their unit will turn in their arms later in the day and the Army will be demobilized. Although somewhat sad they have lost, the men are elated that the war is over and they will go home. Chastine walks back to his quarters and happens to hear the Union and Confederate commander talking about a woman who was inexplicably shot last night. They wondered if anyone might know who she was. Chastine speaks up saying she was from his area but had no relatives. “She was not a very reputable woman,” he says. The Confederate officer gives authorization for her to be buried. Lucy Butler is dead. The war is over. Chastine, who has done right, will return to his farm, his family, and the way of life he knew before.

The story appeared in a literary journal, Oberon’s Law, no longer published and with no archive. This may be a story to resubmit.

Looking for gifts? Have friends and relatives who read? Check out my Writer's Page for some great books that they will thoroughly enjoy; some very good texts are listed on my Amazon Page.

My main recommendation is Sinfonia: The First Notes on the Lute: A Vampire Chronicle, Part I. Nelleke Reitsma is a world-renown lute player and classical guitarist. She should be good at what she does. She's had 300 years to practice. A vampire story that does not follow the cliches some such tales often fall into. A vampire from the Netherlands who eventually locates in London.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #79: "The Dryad Grove."

“The Dryad Grove” came as a result of a call for erotica. As I write about myth quite a bit, the idea of supernatural creatures who are sensual and ready to dally with humans who are interested in them naturally suggested itself. Examples of this abound in ancient literature. Zeus was always out chasing young women and changing himself into a swan, a golden shower of light, a cow in order to get them. Gods and the lesser deities of ancient Greece went after mortals they thought a lot of, often having children with mortals (Achilles had a mother who was a local sea goddess and a human father). But what about modern times? Are there still supernatural being from ancient mythologies kicking around?

Dryads were tree spirits. They lived in trees but could also take on human form. Trees naturally suggest our modern concerns with ecology. I remember the line by Joni Mitchell, They cut down all the trees and put them in a tree museum. / And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em. Soon the outline of a story began to take shape, vague and foggy but distinct enough that I could begin writing.

Sylvia

Barry Phipps is a lawyer. His firm is working to block development of land with old-growth trees on it. I live in Michigan, which was a big logging state in the 1800s. We are a wooded state, but most of the trees are second-growth (a lot of the old-growth timber was cut down to build Detroit as it grew and to rebuild Chicago after the Chicago fire destroyed so many homes). But there are a few areas that were bought by lumber companies and never exploited. It is amazing to go to those sites and see pine trees 200 feet tall and other massive examples of forestry. Phipps’ law firm is up against a development company that wants the land. The State of Michigan is in debt and tempted to sell the protected land, which is near a proposed walking trail. The case has developed some drama and some notoriety.

He is also attracted to the representative for a group that is attempting to save the grove from development. Her name is Sylvia Collins and she is quite beautiful. She has a degree in ecological management and says she has lived in Michigan all her life. After a meeting at his downtown law firm, he sees her walking, stops, and finds out she is going to location three miles away. “I like to walk,” she explains. He offers her a ride. When he stops before her house, a ranch-style place in a suburban neighborhood, they fall into a romantic and sexual episode there in the car. Phipps feels so overcome he ignores the danger and the possible end of his career if they are seen and arrested.

Sylvia as a Dryad

When the passionate episode ends, he goes home, wondering what caused him to take such a risk. At a bar that night, he meets a girl he has dated on and off, Kristi Deronda. Kristi has met Sylvia as well and felt “something” for her:  She presented their case to a community group this morning. I got picked to represent our school. She’s persuasive and . . . well, I don’t know how to say it. She is pretty. She seems to send out an aura of sexiness, life, energy—it overwhelms you. I sat there and thought, Damn, I’m getting the hots for a woman. But it wasn’t that, exactly. She exudes life . . . vitality . . . I don’t know how to say what she does.”

When he meets Sylvia in a park, another passionate interlude occurs. Once more, Phipps’ better judgment tells him sex in a public park is not a good idea, but he can’t resist her. She tells him she will show him her “true form” and turns into a tree. She also tells him she is pregnant.

The next day he persuades Betsy Lane, a woman with whom he is a regular relationship, whose father is also a senior member of the firm, to take a trip out to the site with him. He has wanted to do this for time, but Betsy and her father have been reticent to make the trip. Somehow she changes her mind. Phipps wonders if the two large queen’s umbrella plants that flank her desk have anything to do with her change of heart. Sylvia channeling her influence through them? He has no way to know.

Once the group gets there, the others, including Betsy and her father, are overwhelmed. Betsy sees a birch tree and comment that she has never a birch that big. Phipps has; in fact, he has met the tree in its more mobile form. He also notices a small sapling near it. Gestation, he thought, must be a lot shorter for dryads than it is for mortal humans.

Her father resolves to win the case so that the grove will not be cut down. He also has he has some political connections in the state legislature and with the governor. He will use these to influence the process. Phipps can see that the grove will survive. Just then, Sylvia shows up and is pleased with what the others tell her. When Phipps gets back to his office, he has a text:  Good You saw yr child I will come to u again Sylvia. He sits back and marvels at Sylvia the Dryad’s beauty and at her power.

“The Dryad’s Grove” appeared in a journal called Oysters and Chocolate, no longer published. You can get the tale, along with several other stories, in the journal Erotique, which published an edition made up entirely of my erotica tales. Get a paperback copy here. The book contains six stories, all explorations of intimacy in many of its forms. 

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

I would love to hear your comments.

And coming soon, from Transmundane Press, After Happily Ever After,which includes my story, "Morgianna and the Coffee-Hating Governor."The trickster slave girl Morgianna helped Ali Baba overcome and capture the forty thieves. They are married and live happily ever after--until a new fundamentalist governor takes control of the city and begins to restrict freedoms. Because Morgianna falls into his classification of people unfit to wield power or influence, he begins to harass her and her husband. He also thinks the new drink coffee is "the blood of the Devil." But Morgianna is equal to the task of thwarting his schemes.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #78: "The Angel from the Dead."

Winter scene in Grand Rapids

Vampires continued to be a subject for my stories.  In their mythology, no one is born a vampire. A transformation takes place. In my supernatural world, one can become one of the undead by being bitten, though the number of people who do is small—one in three thousand (most people simply die from the bite). My character, Jancinda Lamott, enters the world of nocturnal creatures who live off blood one winter night a few blocks from her apartment in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Someone picks her up out the snow and carries her to her apartment. The woman is named Bonita. Jancinda thinks she has been mugged and thanks Bonita for helping her. She asks if she has called the police or emergency. She does not reply. After a while, her boyfriend appears. Bonita asks him if she knows who it was. He replies that it was Julian.

By now Jancinda is growing impatient with their incomprehensible talk. She wants to contact law enforcement to report the assault and wants to go to the hospital because she thinks her assailant scratched or bit her. Her neck is sore and burns. She has cuts or puncture wounds on one side. Bonita still doesn’t answer. She takes Jancinda to a mirror. They stand in front of it. Neither of them has a reflection. Bonita’s cat appears and nuzzles her shins. She picks it up. The mirror reflects the cat but neither of the two women. Jancinda wonders what is going on and wonders if this is some sort of trick. Bontia tells her she has no reflection because she is a vampire now.

Jancinda’s reaction is predictable. She thinks Bonita and Ivor are insane and mean to harm her, bolts for the door, opens it, and makes a break. When her arm is hit by a beam of sunlight, she screams in pain as the couple pull her back inside. Her arm is burned—a red, second-degree burn. After angrily chiding her boyfriend for leaving the door open, Bonita sits Jancinda down. She is sobbing in pain. Bonita speaks to her: “That,” she said, "is what the sun will do to you. You must not go out in the sun—never again. You see what will happen if sunlight even touches you, even for a moment.”

But as horrible and insane as the idea is, Jancinda knows, just from that moment of experience that indeed she is a vampire. She instinctively hates the sun. Bonita hugs her, tells her she is sorry for what happened, puts Neosporin on her burn, and announces that she is Jancinda’s angel. Angel, which in the original language meant “messenger,” is someone who teaches and cares for a newly born vampire, initiating her into the ways of the undying.

Vampire Sorrow

A vampire doctor comes and treats her burn. She begins to find out about her new life and finds it is different from the movie versions. She will not sleep in a coffin but must sun-proof her apartment. There are vampires who do sun-proofing for a living. She must never go out in the sun under any circumstances. She will eat, sleep, excrete like a normal human; she will not menstruate and cannot have children. But despite her intake of regular human food, she must have blood. Normally, this would have been repulsive, but she understands it must be. Bonita takes her out to teach her to hunt.

She and Bonita go to a park where victims are easy to find. They come across some old hippies smoking dope. Jancinda senses prey and feels changes sweep over her: … sensations seized and energized her. Her hearing grew acute. She seemed able to see in the dark. And her teeth felt odd. As she raised her hand to feel her mouth, she saw that their ends had changed from soft pads of flesh and fingernail to hard black talons like those on the feet of carnivorous birds. She ran her tongue over her teeth. Her canines had grown. They had turned to long, sharp fangs. The hunger for blood, too, had risen from deep inside her with unbearable poignancy.

She kills and drinks blood. She realizes she is truly one of the undead. It is not a delusion and not a dream. A new life lies before her—one she would have thought horrible but now seems like a livable future. She and Bonita smoke the joints their victims were toking on. Bonita invites her to visit Dr. Grins, a comedy club where Ivor, who does stand-up, is performing tonight. When Jancinda expresses surprise at this, Bonita tells her that the night belongs to her. There is lots to do, other vampires to meet, a whole nocturnal world that lies before her—a life that will not end.

“The Angel from the Dead” appeared in an Australian magazine called Roar and Thunder, which is, sadly, no longer published. They do maintain an archive, however, and you can read the story here.

If you like reading vampire tales, my novella, Sinfonia:  The First Notes on the Lute is for you. Get a copy here.

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

Comment! I would love to hear what you have to say.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #77: "Julian"

Responding to a call for submissions titled “Vampires Aren’t Pretty,” I reflected on how we make them pretty. When vampire literature began, when authors started to write novels based on the ancient legends of the undead, the characters were evil. Dracula lived only to kill and live off his blood of victims. The earlier vampire tale, Carmilla, by J. Sheridan LeFanu (which predates Dracula by 25 years) centers on a character who is rapacious, treacherous, and deceptive. All of that changed with Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire. Here we see vampires that are violent and greedy but also rather wistful and worthy of our sympathy. And this evolves into the attractive character in such TV shows as The Vampire Diaries. The call for submissions wanted the old-school vampires who were rapacious and murderous. I set myself to the task and came up with a story called “Julian.”

Julian is a character in the spate of stories I wrote for a period of time about Jancinda Lamott, who is bitten and taken into the world of the undead. Julian is the one who attacks her. In my vampire world, not everyone who is bitten becomes one of the undead. In fact, very few do. Most simply die. One out of about 3000, enter the realm of the undying and joins their nefarious fellowship. Jancinda is one of them. The vampire who attacks her is Julian Proust.

Julian

As his name suggests, Julian is French. He has lived about 300 years and been in the United States since the 1800s. Bonita, who is Jancinda’s mentor and adviser in all things vampiresque, tells her friend to avoid Julian, describing him as “trouble,” which amuses Jancinda. “Aren’t we all trouble?” she quips. Bonita is not amused. She says Julian is “trouble to us” and gives the example of how he abandoned Julissa after he bit her. Vampires know at once when a victim will become one of their kind and, on those occasions, is obligated to take the candidate in, shelter them from the sun, and begin the process of education they will need to survive. Julian, apparently, did nothing of the sort for Jancinda but left her lying in the snow. Bonita rescued her. Julian got in trouble for his actions but, as always, came out the winner in the situation. Jancinda meets him a little while later.

He is handsome, has a charming French accent, and immediately engages Jancinda’s interest. She is with one of her mortal boyfriends and he leaves in a huff at Julian’s intrusion. Later, Jancinda learns he has gone missing. She knows Julian has victimized him and chides him for killing one of her acquaintances. She also tells him what Bontia has told her about Julian’s behavior toward her. Julian defends his behavior, giving plausible reasons for why he behaved the way he did. Because she is so taken with him, Jancinda is willing to at least give him a chance.

Jancinda

Eventually Julian worms his way into her heart—and into her bed. He continues to explain his actions and justifies his behavior. Soon she learns he has killed someone else in her circle—not a close friend, but someone she did know. She learns he has done something else too.

Julian lives by selling stocks online. It is difficult for vampires to earn a living because they can’t go out in the day. Jancinda also works online doing editing and grant writing. Before he leaves after a day of lovemaking, she asks, “Did you find anything interesting on my computer?” He is a good hacker, but she knows he has broken into her files. He asks how she knew. She replies:  For one, I heard you get up. And I have some safeguards built into my system that only I know about. You’re a pretty good hacker, but I work online for a living and know how to protect my files. You made the mistake of using your system to scan my password. That gave me all the information I need to drop a very destructive virus into your system. We’ll see how your stock business goes after that.

Julian is alarmed. Jancinda tells him she might send the virus and she might not. He leaves upset and she smiles smugly as she hears him clomp down the stairs of her apartment.

Being a vampire isn’t easy—and often for reasons people don’t consider much. Besides having to hunt for blood, you have to make a living and navigate the complexities of only being able to come out at night. You must navigate romantic and sexual relationships; most everyone has to do this, but, unfortunately, the romantic possibilities you have as a vampire are very limited and you must make due with only a few candidates, some not very likeable.

So it is that the old, driven, evil, one-dimensional vampires have been laid to rest. Many new possibilities exist for vampire tales. “Julian” explored just some of these.

The story did make it into the book. You can get a copy here.

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

I would love to hear your comments.