Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #40: Horror Once More: "City Limits"

 

I have a love/hate relationship with horror. I'm drawn to the genre. As a pointed out in an earlier blog, my first story to appear in a print journal was a horror story. I've tried to write them and, sometimes, succeeded in getting such stories published. But my record is spotty. I don't like "dark horror." To me, the dark side isn't more powerful than the side where the light shines. I don't like to write about horrific things happening to innocent people. So I write "soft" horror. Usually the good guys (and girls) win out in the end. Evil, the twisting of good, does not have an ultimate ontology—which is to say, it is derived from good, and does not have an existence in and of itself.

Umberto Eco

 But I wanted to get a little more horrific and came up with the idea for the story "City Limits." Like all stories, it is derivative. I hear people say how William Shakespeare "stole" all his story lines. One writer said C. S. Lewis "stole" the idea of the kingdom of "Numinor," which he mentions That Hideous Strength, from Tolkien. But the idea of "stealing" is not exactly right. Story lines are public property. Italian novelist and critic Umberto Eco wrote, "Books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told." This story had some ideas from other authors.

One I got from Deep Rising, a horror film which involves an attack from creatures who live six miles down in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean. At one point, someone asks if these creatures eat humans. Someone replies, "They don't eat you, they drink you"—meaning, they swallow you whole and then digest you by sucking out your body fluids—blood, lymph, everything. Not a nice way to die. This tied in with the idea in C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters that demons in hell drink and eat people—not physically, but spiritually. A quote from the story explains:  If … you can finally secure his soul, he will then be yours forever—a brimful living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please. Sounds pretty gruesome. But the idea of being drained—of your "precious bodily fluids" or of your spirit—came to be the center of this story.

My ongoing character, Sossity Chandler, accepts an invitation to play for an old college friend, Melinda, who now lives in a small town. She remembers how Melinda and how she got messed up with drugs and occultism in school and ended up dropping out. They are reunited, but Sossity is trouble that she is constantly followed by a creepy-looking guy who is friendly and cordial and identifies himself as a friend of Melissa's but always seems to keep Sossity in in sight as if he is guarding Melissa from her.

Later, she goes to her old friend's apartment. A pale-skinned woman joins them and Melissa murders her. Sossity is horrified, but Melissa cuts the girl's arm to reveal how a milky fluid runs in her veins instead of blood. She—Melissa—is a prisoner to a group of the undead who live in the town and feed off the people they have captured by enchantment. Melissa says she only occasionally is drained of her soul, but when the undead find out she has destroyed one of their number she says, “They’ll absorb me. I’ll live inside one of them. They’ll transfer me from time to time and leech the life out of me slowly. The way things are now, I at least live my own life most of the time. If they absorb me, I’ll never see the light of day. I’ll live until I die inside their gross, stinking bodies.” Melissa mentions that this has already happened to another girl named Caitlin.

Sossity comes up with a plan and the two of them manage to escape—and to rescue Caitlin. Once they are out of the city limits of the town, the undead cannot use their magic and they are free. But Sossity wonders if there are others, if the undead have a network, and if they will eventually track down Melissa, Caitlin, or even her. The turmoil of good and evil, of freedom and bondage, of parasitical life and genuine life, are themes in the story. It is horrific for us to think of being devoured or absorbed and of being helpless as this is done—which is why stories about giant spiders that trap someone in a web and then suck out their life is so disturbing to us. In my story, the women get away and are not absorbed. But will the story end there?

"City Limits" appeared in a book called Anthology of Ichor II put out by Unearthed Press, available through Amazon. It is one of my more horrific horror stories and the anthology is a good read.

 I would love to hear your comments on horror. What is your favorite horror novel or story? Do you like hard or soft horror? Do you write horror? Leave a comment!

 

For some horror right of the New Testament, read The Prophetess. 

The girl mentioned as a demoniac fortune teller in the Book of Acts has a backstory. 

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

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!