I’d made a declaration of intent last week (excuse that),
planning to get the Story Notes blog post for the third tale in my forthcoming
collection, Occasional Beasts: Tales, out on, say, Thursday or Friday. Last
Thursday or Friday. Well, as I was finally wrapping it up on Saturday, delayed
by internet connection issues here in Rome—just something we have to deal with,
especially when storms hit--one slight misstep zapped the post into cyberHell,
where it remains to this day; well, it’s only a few days later, but you get my
drift.
That’ll teach me! That’s why I am doing as I had done with
the first two posts, typing them up in a file.
Let’s see: “A Declaration of Intent” is one of the most
visceral tales you will ever read. No really. The inspiration behind it was
Brian Evenson’s tale, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,” which I’d read at some
point just before writing it. That and Gary Braunbeck’s stunning, horrific
novel, Prodigal Blues (my favorite by him), which I’d read quite a while ago. Elements of that novel still
lingered within my writer’s brain as a possible path of exploration. The central
connective tissue between those two wildly disparate tales, as hinted at more
solidly with the title of Evenson’s tale is mutilation.
My tale starts subtly:
I am naked, lying
on my stomach on the cool, dark sheets of a bed. Everything in the room is dark, so my
perception about the color of the sheets might be skewed by the absence of
light. I don’t feel right, don’t feel
like myself. I feel smaller. I might be a child, but I don’t think like a
child. I think like myself, as I am
now. Now being relative, as dictated by
the ambiguity of my present condition.
I realize the
sense of feeling smaller might be a feeling of being less than I was before
this moment. Less mass, less me.
Before the scalpel slices deeper:
I am still naked,
perhaps leaner than I remember. There
are markings all over my flesh. A few
quarter-sized chunks of flesh have been gouged out of my body. I glance from the mirror to my body, noting
the markings look to be made with ink.
These are the
blueprints of some thing, of some place, I do not want to explore.
Each
quarter-sized hole is surrounded by dried blood and red, infected skin. Pus oozes around the ridges of some of the
puncture wounds. I get the impression
these holes were done as some kind of testing, perhaps to gauge how my body
would react to…something more being done to it.
The markings on my flesh indicate patterns with purpose. As if something has begun to take
shape.
A new me?
It only escalates from there…
If you’ve read my fiction before, you already know I enjoy
body horror (“Broken Teacup,” anyone? “The Dark is Light Enough for Me”? Riding the Centipede, of course! Even The Wilderness Within, though the body transformation is less horror and is, well, something more positive; wish fulfillment?). I may veer weird, but I’m your Weird writer who
enjoys messing with the body as much as the mind. I like to touch the reader in
all possible ways. Horrors experienced via the physical are something all of us
can relate to, especially if presented in an unflinching manner, as I try to
do. With “A Declaration of Intent,” the slow mutilation with a purpose, as
sculpted into the body, interlinked like puzzle pieces, perhaps—you’ll see; you’ll
Read!--is done out of love. A warped, obsessive spin on love…but love,
nonetheless.
*I believe my love of body horror comes from being a big fan
of David Cronenberg’s movies, of which, as I am sure you know, the early ones veered
deep into the horrors of the body, while still being intellectually complex,
something I like to do with my fiction. Anyway, this thought came to me to earlier
today as Alessandra and I were out discussing such things. š
Here’s the
and
pre-order info for Occasional Beasts: Tales.
And here’s some tattoo art that seems appropriate…
Next up, what could be so haunting about “Dandelions”?
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