Dave’s Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #121: Writing As Revenge: “The Science Teacher

Illustration from "The Cask of Amontillado"

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can use your stories to take revenge of people who have wronged you in the past. You can write them up as characters. One meme on the internet read, “Don’t get on my bad side or I’ll write you as a character in my next novel.” True. People have done this, the most egregious example being Philip Pullman, who grew up in a religious home, became an atheist, and then gleefully kills God in the His Dark Materials trilogy. I did not set my sights that high, but I did go after a science teacher who did me a bad turn in seventh grade science class. He got turned into a character.

This particular teacher could not teach—like the coach in the Tank McNamara comic strips who cannot teach and does nothing but show films in the class, this particular teacher could not teach and also depended on films; that, reading in class, and his going on and on about taking notes, which you had to turn in once a week. “Taking notes” to him meant copying out of the book. In the story I say, the science teacher is one of those people they used to hire as teachers who were not qualified but got a job in a school because the baby boomer generation was crowding classrooms and anyone with a college degree who knew the basics of a subject could get hired to fill the gaps. This was also the case with my teacher.

I ended up disliking him because he yelled at me in class once for talking to a girl. I always loathed him after that. Thus the story evolved.

Lynda

Gary Parker wants to get revenge on his science teacher for yelling at him in class. The yelling, however, has more serious consequences than it did in my case. Three guys who don’t like Parker because he has long hair and plays in a rock band pick a fight with him over the incident. The parents of his girlfriend, Lynda, who have just been looking for an excuse to order her to break off the dating relationship, pounce. They split, Lynda meets another guy, ends up pregnant, goes to California to have the child, finds herself in an abusive marriage, and eventually commits suicide. Parker will go on to succeed as a popular singer. But he never forgets Lynda and he wants revenge. He remembers things he read in school:  Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” about revenge; and the lines in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Vengeance should know no bounds.” He learns that one of his former musicians, who had to leave the band due to a drug problem, is working for the teacher, helping to pour asphalt on driveways. He formulates a plot.

He gets his old friend, Frankie, stoned. The teacher returns from lunch drunk, as he usually does, and starts shouting at the stoned Frankie to dump the load of asphalt. Impaired by opiated hashish, Frankie pulls the lever too hard and dumps the whole load on the teacher.

Parker’s idea was that the teacher should be splashed with hot asphalt, maybe get some burn scars, and have those as a remembrance. Things turn out worse. He is not killed by the load of hot tar but is partially buried in the onrush of it and loses both of his legs. The danger of the situation catapults Frankie out of his drug-induced lethargy and he rescues the teacher. Frankie performs so capably no one imagines he was stoned; and witnesses who saw it happen testify that the teacher was drunk, yelled “Dump it!” and excoriated Frankie with racial slurs (Frankie is black). No punishment falls on him. Like Montresor in the Poe story, Parker is revenged “with impunity.” Frankie feels badly about what happened. Davis helps him kick drugs, get back in the music world, and he ends up succeeding as a session guitarist and recording artist, marries, and settles down to live comfortably. The science teacher goes back to work teaching. Parker says, at the end of the story, I’m satisfied with that. I like to imagine Lynda is as well. 

The story appeared in Indiana Horror Review, 2013. Order a copy here.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

Ever get even with someone? Tell me about it in a comment.

Happy reading.

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, #8: The Ghost of Christmas Present, or Taking Ideas from Famous Stories

After I published five stories in a row about my ongoing character, musician Sossity Chandler, I decided I needed to do something else. Ongoing characters are common. W. Somerset Maugham wrote several stories about Ashendon, a British spy. Not many people know that Mark Twain wrote two novels about Tom Sawyer after the publication of the initial book on him. Other authors have done the same, but I thought maybe I ought to branch out a little bit lest I get caught in a rut.

The Christmas holidays were approaching. Christmas is many things, but to those who read a lot it is also Dickens' famous novella, A Christmas Carol. Soon I had an idea for a new story.

Doing a spin-off story was nothing new for me. I said in an earlier blog that the first story I published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake," was modeled on a Henry James story, "The Aspern Papers." But this would be a little different. It would reference a well-known piece of literature. It would continue the creative "conversation" on the piece. I had seen some spins on the story. The made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol set the story in the USA during the Great Depression. Everyone from Mickey Mouse to Mr. Magoo to the Muppets had been included in versions of the story. This story, however, would employ elements from the Dickens ghost tale and go off in a different direction from the original.

Doing this sort of thing is an old tradition. I often 

hear people talking about how Shakespeare "stole" all his plot lines from other authors. I once heard a poet tell about how William Wordsworth "stole" the idea for the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" from his sister, Dorothy.  But the idea that every story must be original is a relatively new development. In the past, authors took elements from other stories, used plots, tropes, characters, and ideas freely. And even modern writers do. My favorite story, W. Somerset Maugham's "Mr. Know-All," borrows plot from "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant. Examples could be multiplied. But if you're going to communicate with an existing 

work of literature (I like this term better than "steal"), 

you'd better do it with a little bit of skill.

The story, "The Ghost of Christmas Present," appeared in a British magazine called Neonbeam (no longer published). It is about a lonely, down-and-out guy, Jerry, who receives a visitor on Christmas night. The young lady says she has no place to go. He assumes she is homeless. She is dressed retro (1960s) and doesn't know what a computer or bottled water is. Finally, she confesses that she is a ghost.

He looks up her story and finds out she was murdered after a rock concert some time back. Once it is established she is a ghosts, she quips, "I guess I could be the Ghost of Christmas Present."  He remembers how as a child he had thought this meant "present" as in "gift" and that the ghost brought people Christmas presents. Jerry goes to bed that night thinking he can't even score with a ghost girl and this Christmas will be like the others in his adult life:  lonely and disappointing. In the middle of the night, however, the girl materializes in his bed. She informs him that from midnight to about 3 a.m., ghosts have bodies and the two of them make love. She also tells him why she is a ghost. Pretty and sought-after in life, she led many young men on. One ended up committing suicide after she dumped him and, when she is later murdered, she can't go to her rest. Being with Jerry makes her realize that to "go on" she will have to do good. The good is showing him love, giving of herself, and then being willing to face the consequences (whatever they are) when she goes on to her reward.

Shakespeare also informs the story. She haunted the theater where the concert after which she was murdered was held. But when a church rented the place for a Christmas celebration, she was driven out and had to flee. At the beginning of Hamlet, when Horatio and his friends are speculating on whether or not they've really seen a ghost, one comments,

                                       Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
                                    Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
                                    The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
                                    And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
                                    The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
                                    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
                                    So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

Something about Christmas and ghosts doesn't jive. So the girl, whose name is Bari, is driven away and has to seek refuge in Jerry's house. Here is another instance of "stealing." But for writers, using other texts is par for the course.

Bari is able to go on—though she's not sure 

what awaits her later in the afterlife—because 

she has done good and shown love to someone. In the morning, Jerry gets a call from the only girl he ever dated inviting him to spend Christmas day with her. The Ghost of Christmas Present has indeed brought him a gift—the gift he wanted most of all.

Stories that reference familiar works of literature are risky. The author has to walk a fine line, not borrowing too much from the story, not crassly appropriating another author's content, but making, in a sense, a commentary on the possibilities an existing story opens up. "All books speaks of other books, and every author tells a story that has already been told," novelist and critic Umberto Eco once wrote. Stories have already been told, but they lead to innumerable tales that can proceed from the original. "The Ghost of Christmas Present" was like this. There have been other "takes" in my writing career. Appropriating ideas from well-known literary works, revising them, and recasting them is a great exercise for any writer to do.

Take a look at my newest book, Mother Hulda, a science fiction story based on a tale by the Brothers Grimm. 

Check out my Writer's Page for more titles. 

Comments are always welcome!