A piece of my novel

Okay, so a special treat today for you faithful readers.  This is a piece of my novel-in-progress.  It's an intense moment, when the narrator, who is a ghost, is killed.  I may take it off of the blog in a few days so it's not floating around out there-- I do kind of want to publish it one of these days.  But I wanted to share a part I really like. 

What do you think?  Critiques welcome.  Is there something you don't like?  Pacing?  Want to read more?  :) 


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I can see it like it is happening right now.


Someone grabs me from behind. I am still laughing, looking at Tony’s face, and he suddenly stops laughing as strong arms go around my neck. I don’t realize what is happening at first and then Tony’s smile falls and he steps forward and then stops moving. His face goes hard, like a cowboy in a movie and I’m about to make fun of him for that and then the guy behind me (I had somehow thought, for a second, that it must be someone I knew, someone there to congratulate me on the engagement, because I couldn’t be being robbed; I didn’t have anything worth stealing.) But no. He, the guy behind me, not Tony, he says “look, if you just hold still no one has to get hurt” and he’s not laughing, not congratulating me, but he’s holding something really hard into my back, on the right side, just above the small. It hurts. I can feel it poke my spine a little as he wiggles it some. He stepped out of a doorway, out of the dark, and since I was walking backwards looking at Tony, I don’t even see his face. Tony does, though, and what he sees there makes his eyes go flinty; they go dark in a way I’ve never seen them. I mean, we were going to La Villita! There are tourists everywhere, but not tonight. For some reason, we seem to be in a bubble of space and time and there is NO one there to help us. No cars, no walking people. I think of La Llorona, for some reason, and the kids at the railroad, but I know they aren’t here to help. No one is. No one drives by, no one laughs. We don’t hear any footsteps come up to help us. Just this guy behind me, and I can smell his aftershave a little bit, like on a first date, and I think it might be Drakkar Noir and I think how funny that would be, to be robbed by someone wearing Drakkar Noir, for God’s sake, and I start to tell the guy that my purse is right here, take it.

Tony is holding his hands up, holding really still, saying something like “Okay, man, chill, it’s okay” and for some reason, the guy behind me gets nervous, breathes out sharply, and then holds me even tighter, jamming HIS gun into my side ribcage even harder. I can’t believe I was just a second ago laughing and looking at my golden butterfly ruby ring. And we were going to La Villita! I can still taste mint and sugar on my lips, and I lick them again, because I seem to have gone really dry, and I feel 100% sober, too.

I hear a noise back behind Tony somewhere, like feet scuffing, and I guess the guy holding me thinks someone is coming or maybe he had something to prove to whomever was making that foot noise and before I know it, Tony is trying to step towards us and I hear this crack, and something hits me, hard, in the middle of my side. I don’t really feel anything other than this whack; it’s kind of like falling off a merry go round when I was a kid. Falling on my back and the breath whooshes out and then I’m left staring up at the sky waiting to breathe, to breathe. Except, it doesn’t happen. I don’t catch my breath.

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Ars Poetica

When I was a senior in college, up at the lovely lovely Bellingham Washington campus of Western Washington U,* I took a "Critical Theory" course. It was summer, and the warmest it ever really got in Bellingham was the mid 80s. The sun was like the friendlier, more cheerful, less vengeful cousin of the one here in the South.

A group of us took this course together, taught by one of the profs in the department who, while he exuded professor-ly-ness, was also a really nice guy. (Not that those two things are mutually exclusive, but this one was particularly neat.)

We started with Plato, ranged through the years up to Showalter & Fish & Derrida. It was super interesting. A lot of writers write about their "Poetic Arts" and those writings become theoretical grounds for other artists. I think that a dominant trope still for most artists (at least the ones I come into contact with) is the Romantic idea of the artist as someone in a fluffy poet shirt who quaffs red wine and communicates directly with the Muses (or perhaps angelic women with too white face & rosy cheeks).

Anyway. The point of this is: what is my poetic art? I love to write. I love poetry, the confessional poetry is my favorite, probably. Anne Sexton, in particular. I wish I crafted my poetry more, created sonnets, formal verse. I usually don't, and I write too many poems about writing poetry. For my fictional art, I am really interested in a type of Magical Realism. I thought I was going to write Urban Fantasy, but this summer, I've been reminded of the roots of my favorite things, and what I want to do is a lot more like what Alice Hoffman and/or Charles De Lint do. This kind of dreamy reality where it's entirely possible for the dragonfly buzzing around you to turn into a fairy, but that fairy doesn't necessarily then want to "do you." (Which is kind of the "urban fantasy" place that scenario would often go....)

My short short fairy tales this summer were partly inspired by a book Alice Hoffman wrote, called The Story Sisters. In it, she frames chapters with a fairy tale version of the real characters' lives. I often write about myth and fairy tale in my poetry (see. there's a connection intended in these paragraphs) but I felt less like shaping these journeys into poems than I sometimes do.

In Bellingham, the campus was just lovely. Up on a hill, towers peeking through tall trees. There was a small road that went through part of the campus, but I think the only thing that drove down there (if I'm remembering correctly) was the city bus. In front of the bookstore. There was a steep slope, and at the bottom, a bank of trees. In the middle of that bank of wild looking trees was an old fashioned street lamp. It truly looked, for all intents & purposes, like a waystation to Narnia or some other faery land. I used to imagine seeing someone magically appear beside that lamp. Perhaps, someday, I will, and I'll find my fictional place nearby.

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*And it never snowed when I was there, and this picture isn't exactly the location I'm writing about-- it's quite nearby. You can see one of the lamps I'm talking about, though, and this is such a cool picture I had to put it on here. Such a nice campus. Looking at pictures of it just now reminds me and makes me super nostalgiac.

Heat

I'm thinking about poisons. The type that go on apples, the type that go on spindles. Or perhaps the best kind are the curses-- you don't have to put a stopper in those, add the skull & crossbones. They are ultra portable, no?

Curses. Spite. They're always part of fairy tales; bad faeries seem ready to drop one at the slightest offense. Leave me off the party invitation list, will you? My RSVP will be on its way as a few words that will blight your fields, leave you asleep for an aeon, keep you from being fruitful.

But then, too often, the poison comes back to you, doesn't it? The stepmother swings from the heights in her red-iron-hot shoes. Dancing to the victor's music. The mirror is smashed. The dwarves dig, and dig, and dig, and the wicked fairies find themselves bound in iron and salt water and tossed deep. Deep.

The spite that gets unsaid, though, that poison eats at you. If you keep it inside, you find it resurfacing, so often you need a warning label on your own thoughts. Easier, perhaps, to let a young couple into your house, pretend to linger near the oven door, let yourself be pushed in. Easier to surrender. Let your wickedness finally be a cautionary tale to others.

Who, after all, really mourns the wicked?

Sleeper

Even as long as she had been asleep, her eyes still moved with dreaming. What could you dream about after 100 years of sleep? Did she dream life, that she was awake, brushing her hair, doing the dishes? Ah, but princesses never do the dishes.

Perhaps in their dreams? If serving girls dream of life in the top floors of the palace, is it the opposite for those who have never touched real, hard life?

Probably not. She probably dreams of balls, dancing. Champagne in crystal glasses and kisses stolen on close embraces. Softness and furs and the flash of a chandelier.

Fine music, laughter. Or maybe spinning thread, fine silk, over and over into cloth. Into tapestries of history, life, unicorns in woods, or tigers dancing. Lovers meeting under apple trees while white peacocks look on, aroused. Life. Fate.

If she wakes from her dream, will that universe end?

Wicked (Step)Mother

Us
Anne Sexton
I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your
feet dry with a towel
because I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o'clock night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested

I am only human. And not really all that old, as time is reckoned. And once upon a time, I was a princess.

You laugh. All you can see are the crow's feet, the blotches on my hand from too much sun. Hair with a few white streaks, right there, where I always said I wouldn't dye. Say, of photographs, "that can't really be you."

Men lay at my feet. Wrote my name on walls with spraypaint. Beat their chests as I gave them up. I was worshipped; a goddess.

Now, I see this girl, who looks like me. So much like me but better. No Oil of Olay could ever get me back there, no Age Defying makeup slant my eyes or highlight that color.

And this girl, I love, with an ache that eats my heart. Licks its fingers afterwards. Leaves me alone in a woods with wolves and red cloaks if I even imagine her not smiling at me. A tiny piece of me; the best bits.

What am I to do? They made me a step-mother. A little distance, makes it seem easier.

I avoid mirrors. They are only out to lie. I don't speak to fairies. All that wing-span makes them flighty. I sew buttons; I sew tapestries; I sew the entire history of my people. And I watch as she replaces me.

And I smile. Because, contrary to the Grimmest interpretation, it really is okay.

Out of the Woods

After a long time, the princess made her own way out of the woods. Perhaps she no longer attracted the attentions of unicorns, and she had not worn flowers in her hair in a very long time. Her hair was not entirely red anymore and the wine in her basket for grandma was long gone. She carried her own pack, and knew that often, the heroes with the shiniest armour are the ones that can be trusted least. She knew how to handle wolves and never danced in fairy rings at night. She even knew that woodsman can sometimes come to your aid but more often than not, it's better to have an axe handy yourself.

When she made her way to the village she remembered as a girl, it was smaller, somehow, and there were heartsick memories lurking in shadowy corners. She ignored them and kept moving.

She didn't expect any fairy godmothers to help her. They were busy with their own lives, figuring out how to stop their wings from drooping, how to clean pumpkin carriages, or the best key for a song to get mice to sew little garmets for themselves. That sort of thing.

She found the house of her mother, long empty, cleaned it, chased fat dimpled spiders out of corners, lit a fire, mended curtains, cooked stews. A cat that had been living off the mice in the nearby woods took up a perch on her stoop, courteously ate rodents, sometimes leaving a bit of tail for the princess in payment for the scratches he deigned to let her give him.

If, sometimes, a young girl came to visit her, and they drank tea and talked of possible futures with handsome strangers and fate's change, if, sometimes, those young girls took away vials of hope and left a little money behind, well, that's small business for you. Time spent in dark woods with wolves and heroes will teach you a lot about fate, and futures, and the comforts of a small house with comfortable chairs.

But she never, ever, fed them gingerbread. That sort of thing only leads to trouble.

Fairy Tale 2: The Rain

When the rain started, the world was dry. The plants surged upward, grateful, basking in the needed moisture. Children splashed in the puddles happily, kicked water on their parents, who laughed.

But the sprinkly storm turned heavy. The heat was moist, like a laundry room. The rain did not refresh anyone; people stopped splashing playfully in puddles and instead, began to fill sandbags with mucky brown grit. The domesticated flowers began to droop from too much water. Their leaves grew yellow, then brown at the edges, then, inexplicably moldy and finally, turned to mush.

It kept raining.

Vines dormant since the age of dinosaurs started to grow. Tiny green shoots, at first, they covered outbuildings, eclipsing their square shapes, then crept into the yard. Nothing had sharp edges anymore-- it was all soft, green, masses of tendrils. The tendrils grabbed at the children's ankles as they ran past, on their way through the downpour into the rapidly growing smaller houses. These vines had beautiful, giant flowers that smelled heavenly to the small birds and insects-- who hovered near and were snapped up, eaten by the flowers, slowly digested in slimey juices.

Still, it rained.

People forgot what lawnmowers looked like, left them to rust in the yards. The gasoliney smelling machines began to look like old art projects as the vines covered them, turned them into topiary of an ancient world. New indoor lives were found, forgetting the heat of summer, the heat of lemonade and ice cream and beaches and dry sand that sticks to the backs of legs.

The rain did not stop.

It dribbled. Drizzled. Poured. Torrents came down and then became gushers. Ditches filled up, overflowed. Sidewalks became small rivers. Doghouses floated away, some with the dogs, forgotten, perched on top of them, howling.

And the water and green kept flowing, flowing, flowing, until people forgot the words for "dry" or "dusty" and even "desert."

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time a young, redheaded princess found her way into the woods. It doesn't matter which woods, it doesn't matter how she came to be there. What matters is that these woods were dark, and the paths were unclear, and there were small animals hiding under low branches as she passed. There were larger things, too-- the reason the small animals were hiding.

The redheaded girl did not wear a red-cloak, carry a basket for her grandmother, smell gingerbread, or hear fairy music leading her on. She simply walked. She was alone, and at first, she was not very afraid. She figured she would find her way out, and knew she had a good head on her shoulders, and reasoned that where she had been lost she would eventually find her own way out.

There may have been monsters. There may have been encounters with magical beasts-- perhaps dragons, with fiery red eyes. Perhaps unicorns, lulled by the sound of her singing into resting their heads upon her lap. Perhaps there were heroes so entranced by her beauty that they threw themselves into her service and found her to be worthy.

Perhaps not. Perhaps she was just lost, and never found, in a woods far from home.

Which story would you write?


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p.s. this is not a metaphor for my life. It is fiction. Don't read anything into it. I'm just thinking about fairy tales.