"The Cooing" is the shortest tale in the collection. The idea came to me...while Alessandra and I were on vacation a few years ago, somewhere in the middle of Italy. We were wandering around, as we do, and I heard a bird. A bird that did not sound well. I mentioned this out loud. I heard it again. It was a strange, uneasy sound.
As you know, sometimes, that's all it takes.
A couple, Magdalene and Sam (Samantha), end up in the middle of nowhere, investigating an abandoned house. Sam is a photographer and finds the desolation fits her mindset, while all Magdalene wants is to get away from the place. Weird bird sounds commence. Things turn ugly. Oddly enough, as I wrote this one, perhaps swayed by the title, I thought of it as a very British horror tale...yet it takes place in the southwest of America.
Also of note: the Alberto Savinio quote you'll find in the sample(s) below was something Alessandra pointed in my direction when I was writing the tale. It fit perfectly with both the tale and Magdalene's mental state, so I had to use it somehow. I love how it snuck into the finale.
When the tale was accepted for publication by CM Muller for the debut issue of his excellent anthology series, Nightscript, he wanted me to tone down the ending a bit, give it more subtlety; pretty much, to lose a paragraph that went further than he liked. I took his suggestion and made the change, which I really liked. That said, I held onto the file with the original, extended and more gruesome ending, which I will present to you here.
I will post the published version first, and the original second, for comparison.
The published ending:
Sam gasped, breath released, surrender at hand. Her legs gave out as she stumbled backwards,
landing hard on the wooden chair at the head of the table.
Magdalene started to whimper as a passage from one of her favorite
books, Alberto Savinio’s Lives of the
Gods, flashed within the dimming light of her thoughts: “Don’t judge me by
what you see now; I don’t take care of myself, my sufferings have sharpened my
beak, and I do nothing but laugh.” She
pulled her legs even closer, a taut, trembling ball, and tried to make herself
smaller. Tried to disappear.
“Coo, coo,” it said, a throaty, ugly sound--wrong as Magdalene had
suggested; as she had known--as it stepped into the room…
And the extended, more gruesome version:
Sam gasped, breath released, surrender at hand. Her legs gave out as she stumbled backwards,
landing hard on the wooden chair at the head of the table.
Magdalene started to whimper as a passage from one of her favorite
books, Alberto Savinio’s Lives of the
Gods, flashed within the dimming light of her thoughts: “Don’t judge me by
what you see now; I don’t take care of myself, my sufferings have sharpened my
beak, and I do nothing but laugh.” She
pulled her legs even closer, a taut, trembling ball, and tried to make herself
smaller. Tried to disappear.
As shocking as the figure was, though, the matter of appearance took the
back seat to what it held in its peeled flesh, bony fingers made to look like
talons. In its right hand, hair clumped
in the fist as three recently severed heads dangled limply. In its left hand it gripped the severing
weapon, a huge knife still dripping blood to the wooden floor.
“Coo, coo,” it said, a throaty, ugly sound--wrong as Magdalene had
suggested; as she had known--as it stepped into the room, raising the left
hand, intent on adding to its collection.
Y'know, I could go either way with which one works best, haha...
Occasional Beasts: Tales will be published in less than three weeks. Here's the pre-order info. Order up. Please and thank you!
Print <--via Omnium Gatherum
&
Digital <-- via Amazon
PS. Yes, the print version will eventually make it to Amazon.
Here's a surreal piece of strange bird art courtesy of Savinio…
Next, we have a tale of transformation, "The Occasional Beast that is Her Soul." Actually, many of these tales contain an element of transformation... Hmmm...
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