Half Man: A study in brutal authenticity

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Your life is an accumulation of choices you make along the way, small to large. Some you sense will be impactful. Others you have no idea. And then some things are beyond your control and they set you along a particular course. These things could be curses or they could be blessings.

In a sense, your fate—where you end up—becomes determined (preordained?) by all these choices.

This idea is captured by the six-episode TV show Half Man.

Before I get into describing and dissecting Half Man, a quick detour. I started the first episode blind. I got about ten minutes in and I was like, what the hell am I watching. I had to stop and do a little digging. Half Man is written by and stars Richard Gadd. He’s the guy behind Baby Reindeer, which came out a few years ago. I’d never seen it. Baby Reindeer was a huge hit, and I knew it was autobiographical, so rather than continuing with Half Man, I switched over to Baby Reindeer. I needed to know who the hell this dude was.

Baby Reindeer, which Gadd also wrote and stars in, is based on his real-life experience with a stalker. It was strange and great. Having dealt with a stalker myself, it left me unsettled. Like Gadd, I’d blamed myself for her actions, even though I deserved no blame, and I pitied her, even though she didn’t deserve it. In Baby Reindeer, Gadd shows pure human messiness. When I finished it I went back to Half Man.

Half Man is the story of star-crossed step-brothers—Niall Kennedy and Ruben Pallister, whose mothers are lovers. The first three episodes focus on younger Niall and Ruben (Mitchell Robertson and Stuart Campbell), and the last three focus on them as adults (Jamie Bell and Richard Gadd). It follows Niall and Ruben from their teenage years to adulthood. Along the way, they become enmeshed and entangled, for better and for worse. Mostly worse. They have a genuine filial love for each other, but they’re also toxic due to Ruben’s control and Niall’s envy, and as their awful life choices compound, this toxicity turns to poison. Their fates catch up with them.

First, the acting. I can’t say who among the four is best. They’re all gripping, and the transition from younger to older is seamless. Jamie Bell and Richard Gadd are an interesting pairing. Bell, who plays Niall, is slight and disheveled while Gadd as Ruben is hulking and full of swagger. It’s jarring to see Gadd in this role following Baby Reindeer. It’s such a physical transformation, and it’s more than him just bulking up. I don’t understand how actors can pull that kind of transformation off.

I’ve watched Half Man twice now. The first go-around was brutal. Niall’s the main character. We walk through the story alongside him. We meet him at 15. His father died when he was a child and he lives with his mother, Laurie and her girlfriend Maura. Niall is nervous and frail and gets bullied. When he learns that Maura’s son, Ruben, is getting out of juvy and will be living with them, he panics.

Soon enough Ruben bursts on the scene. He is imposing and controlling and magnetic. Niall, who is just beginning to realize he might be gay, is drawn to Ruben, though not just physically. He’s terrified of Ruben, rightly, but enthralled by his bravado and presence. He craves Ruben’s attention. Ruben, in turn, becomes protective of Niall, though he insists everything be on his terms. This dynamic sets the course of their lives.

Niall is one of the more difficult protagonists I’ve seen in fiction. He’s needy, desperate, self-serving, and conniving. I don’t particularly like him. I can’t relate to him. But I can’t turn away from him. And Ruben is an asshole. He’s brutal, both physically and verbally. He’s so wounded that all he knows how to do is lash out.

What’s fascinating is their bond. On a surface level it can be read as homoerotic, especially since Niall, throughout the show, struggles to come to terms with his gayness. But their bond is deeper. They complete each other in a sense; each has what the other lacks. They know this on some level, which leads to a magnetic pull for closeness that’s ruined by envy and control.

Like Romeo and Juliet, Half Man is a tragedy. My first time watching it was all I could to to keep my heart rate down. The rewatch let me appreciate how Gadd cleverly constructs this story. For example, when Ruben first appears, he struts into Niall’s classroom. What is the teacher lecturing about? Romeo and Juliet, a foreshadow of what fate has in store for them.

Gadd leaves hints throughout the series. Early on, you know that something is very wrong with Ruben. I figured it was either one of two reasons: he’s either gay and in full repression mode, or he was molested. Turns out it was the latter. Gadd dropped these hints here and there, subtle but unmissable, so that when the reveal comes, it all feels earned. During some of Ruben’s violent outbursts, especially at the climax, you can even see Ruben perpetrate elements of his own abuse. Gadd makes it all feel real. And, strangely, he makes you feel some sympathy for Ruben.

Niall, too, is not without sympathy. Yes, he is so incredibly selfish that it’s hard to root for him. Either consciously or subconsciously, he deviously undermines Ruben. He’s self pitying. An eternal victim. At one point Ruben calls him King Rat. It fits. But Gadd also shows us how utterly alone and terrified Niall is. His mother Laurie is a textbook cold fish. While not cruel per se, she’s lacking in maternal instincts. Having that as a mother, having lost a father at a young age, and being bullied at school would naturally leave Niall at a severe deficit.

This ambivalence is a hallmark of Gadd’s writing, and maybe why I connect with it. Even in the relationship between Niall and Ruben, Gadd weaves the good with the bad. On one hand, Ruben threatens violence on Niall (and inflicts it). Niall schemes and lies to get back at him. But they also share a genuine closeness. On a school test, Niall cheats for Ruben so he won’t get sent back to reform school. Ruben teaches Niall how to box. Later on when Niall is down and out Ruben pays for his expenses, In another world, they could have been good for each other. But then Half Man wouldn’t have been half as compelling.

The writing consistently is terrific, and while I won’t go through all of it (watch it instead and see for yourself), I’ll cover the ending.

Even though you know they’re poisonous together, you want them to work things out (they come so heartbreakingly close). But with Ruben’s rage and Niall’s self-destructiveness, it can only end tragically. I can’t say the ending left me sad. No. Strike that. It did leave me sad. It didn’t have to be that way, but with the shitty hands they were dealt compounded by the shitty choices each of them made over several decades, Half Man could only end the way it did. Not every story earns a happy ending.

That calls back to the common thread I see in Gadd’s writing—he’s not afraid to portray ambivalence and ambiguity. People aren’t always 100 percent right or wrong. They’re complicated. Motivations, actions, impressions, all can be inconsistent. People and life can be messy and confusing. Gadd shows all of this. There are no easy answers and very few easy people.

Some of the press surrounding this show framed it as an examination of toxic masculinity. I hate that term. It’s a dismissive blanket statement, dismissive not just of men but of human experience. Yes, Half Man focuses on men and masculinity, but it’s a human story about how fucked-up people can end up fucking up other people, and each other. Sex/gender doesn’t matter. If Ruben had a better childhood, maybe he wouldn’t have been so brutal. If Niall could’ve been more self accepting, maybe he wouldn’t have been so destructive. To say that their toxicity is connected to their maleness doesn’t make sense, because they are males, so that’s the frame in which they can operate.

A final thing about Half Man. One of the themes Gadd touches on is loneliness. He gives us two boys who’ve suffered abuse and abandonment and are isolated. A lot of us have felt lonely in childhood and adolescence in one way or another. Both Ruben and Niall did, for different reasons. And like a lot of us, they struggled to fill that void of loneliness. Unfortunately for them, they each filled it with the worst possible person. Despite the tragic ending, I appreciate that Gadd was able to present this loneliness in such a relatable way.

The writer in me is impressed by what Gadd created in Half Man. The brutal honesty, the subtlety, the complexity, even the subject matter of a close and toxic relationship between two men. The viewer in me was drawn to a story about the need for connection, and how even if it all goes so horribly wrong, that doesn’t negate the need. Half Man is dark, it’s difficult, and it’s human.

Anatomy of a story: Sueños

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Where does artistic inspiration come from?

There’s one theory on this for writers. Writers either draw inspiration from their inner worlds, or from the world around them.

Why not both at the same time?

For my story, Sueños, which was published here in the journal Empyrean, I used my own experience, and the outside world, to create this story.

First, what’s it about? 

Dylan is a young soldier stationed in El Paso who has to drive across Texas for (…spoiler…)  the funeral of his brother. Along the way his pickup truck breaks down and he’s forced to detour to the small town of Sueños, where he’s brought to a strange house for the birthday party of an unnaturally alluring woman named Veronica. There, he’s given a tempting choice: abandon his grief forever. But, of course, there is a price.

So where did the external inspiration come from?

Some years ago a friend loaned me a book of essays by a Mexican writer named Juan Villoro. Essays aren’t my typical thing, but his were great. One in particular stood out, his recollection of him as a young soldier. While going home one weekend, he gets sidetracked and ends up at a strange party where he meets a beautiful girl. It’s a story of idealized love captured in a moment of time, a story of endless possibility without the messiness of reality.

The story captivated me. I HAD to do something with it. Revisit it. Rework it. Repurpose it. I saw in it  something hidden, something darker. Something supernatural, so I set about re-interpreting it through that lens. In the arts this is called interpolation, where an artist takes an existing work and fashions it into something new and different. Music does this a lot. If I was profiting off this story surely I’d be giving Señor Villoro a chunk of my earnings, but alas, zero divided by anything equals zero. (Don’t go into writing for the money.)

In terms of my interpretation, I added layers of menace and danger along with hints of vampirism. Who doesn’t love a good vampire tale? But I also chose to not be heavy handed.

What about my internal inspiration?

Ten years ago my father was killed in a plane crash. He piloted a small plane that failed upon take-off. Ironically, before he died I wrote a story available here about a guy who was left rich and rudderless after his parents died in a small plane crash. Obviously the worry was there in my mind before my father actually died. After his death I knew of course that this event would surface in my writing, but I never intentionally set out to write about it.

There was one strange thing that happened when my father died, and this is what I chose to focus on. At the time I was working in Manhattan. My mother gave me the call. I made it home to Jersey City and then got in my car to drive the 40 minutes to my parents house. On that drive it still wasn’t real to me. It was just a phone call. There was this great gulf of distance between me and the death, and my thinking was, as long as I am not at their house, it isn’t real. It didn’t even happen! I told myself that maybe I’d had some kind of psychotic break and made it all up (even though I knew that wasn’t true.) That distance gave me distance, which was exactly what I needed at the time.

It was all real, of course. Afterward came the usual stuff associated with a death in the family, the wakes and funeral mass and burial and the visitors and the paperwork and the concerns about the future and all of that. But for a 40-minute drive, none of it was real. I was living in a zone outside of time and life. That’s what I wanted to write about, that blessed denial you know isn’t true and won’t last. That’s where Dylan exists in Sueños, in a land of dreams, and whether he chooses to wake up or not, there will be a price. As one of my characters tells him, there’s always a price.

So my advice for writers out there is to study great writing and storytelling. Learn from it. Read, please. And don’t feel like you have to excavate the tragedies in your life, but don’t keep them buried either.

Power Prompts: Episode 10

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The challenge: write a short story in 20 minutes using the following:

Characters: Haunted house historian, Dumb blonde

Genre: Steampunk

Setting: A church

Trope: Curse of the pharaoh

POV/tense: 3rd/future

The result:

Veronica Cespides will fume with hate for her hair. She’d gotten it dyed by a new woman in her salon, a woman who apparently was too afraid of burning Veronica’s scalp, so instead of platinum it was more like yellowish with a tinge of fire hydrant red.

No one would take her seriously now.

Not like it mattered.

She’ll stand at the entrance of Saint Mary’s of the Sky, one of the oldest churches in the city, ensconced in a blimp soaring above the river. She’ll adjust her bustle and check her pocket watch.

He’s late, she’ll fume silently.

Just as she’s about to power up her jet-pack and steam back to solid ground a hand will tap her on her shoulder. She’ll turn and stare into the eyes of a balding man in an ascot with a monocle. Not stare into his eyes exactly but more like stare down at his eyes.

“Hello, I am Rupert Kenmore. You must be Veronica.”

“No, I am not Veronica. I am…” she’ll fumble for a moment. “I am Mary Skyship.”

He’ll laugh. “Ah, that’s a good one. No, seriously, you are her. I’ve seen your daguerreotype. But I thought you were blonder.” His laugh will falter at her stony reaction. “Well,” he’ll say, “not the best start to a blind date.”

“Blind?” she’ll ask. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were blind. It’s amazing how you can train your eyes to look directly into mine. Did they teach you that at blind school? Or is it a hearing thing.”

He’ll laugh with more certainty. “I love a woman with a sense of humor. Then he’ll loop his arm around hers. And what is it you do again, Veronica, aside from looking so effortlessly stunning?”

“I spend a lot of time on charity work. Mostly dogs and cats that are missing a paw. Paws for Pets. They make the most stunning mechanical limbs for our furry friends. Really it’s amazing. And it’s heartwarming to know that I’m making such a huge difference in the world.”

He’ll clear his throat. “Yes, yes, that is amazing. You must be well positioned in life.”

“If you can call it that,” she’ll say. “My father was on one of the expeditions to the pyramids. Apparently there was some sort of curse in one of the tombs and that nasty pharaoh did a job on my father. He came back and fell ill. He swelled up like a rotten potato. Then, boom. He exploded all over the hospital. I was in tears for days. But he set me up for life. So now I can help those poor poor pawless pets.

Rupert will get excited. “Curse of the pharaoh? You have to tell me more. I’m so interested in such supernatural occurrences.”

“Are you? Really?”

“Yes of course. Didn’t your friend tell you about me?”

“She said you were taller. And had more hair.”

He’ll brush her words aside. “Such superficial matters. Anyway. I’m a haunted house historian. I travel the country seeking out the strange and unexplained. I’ve even seen a ghost.”

“A real one? What was his name?”

He’ll laugh. “Ghosts don’t talk. They only moan.”

“Oh, that’s so disappointing. Tell me, Rupert, why did you ask to meet me here at this old abandoned church of all places?”

“To explore, of course. Abandoned churches are the best hunting grounds for ghosts. Especially this one. Did you know why St Mary’s of the Sky is abandoned? There was a satanic ritual that was held here. Four people sacrificed on the holy altar. And I’m here to investigate.”

“Oh that sounds so thrilling.” She’ll look at Rupert with slightly different eyes. “He’ll seem a little taller, and his hair, well it’s more distinguished.”

“Promise me this, Rupert, if we find ghosts here, can we ask their names? I’ve always wanted to talk to a real live ghost.”

Diving into the layers of Obsession

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Obsession is one of the most talked about movies in recent times. What’s left to say about it?

I’ve got a couple things…

First, the basics. Obsession is an indie horror movie written and directed by Curry Barker, produced for $750,000 that could hit a $300 million gross. Insane. The premise is straightforward and not particularly original. Bear has a massive crush on Nikki, a childhood friend, coworker and member of his friend group. Unable to admit his feelings for her, he makes a wish using a novelty toy called One Wish Willow. His wish: that Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world.

It works.

Almost instantly, Nikki becomes obsessed. Bear finds it odd and hard to believe, but he goes along with it. Naturally, hijinks ensue. By hijinks I mean horror.

As I alluded to, there’s not much particularly new about the premise. Obsession is a classic monkey’s paw tale, where a wish leads to horrible consequences. Plotwise nothing surprised me. And I could see the jump scares from miles away.

What makes Obsession shine is Barker’s level of craft. The world feels real, in the most tangible of ways: the sets, the look, the feel, all of it had a richness and a sense of claustrophobia. The acting was uncanny. How the hell did Inde Navarette prepare for her role as Nikki? The things she could do with her face and body and voice were chilling and funny and heartbreaking, sometimes all within a space of a minute. Michael Johnston as Bear had a tougher role—he’s the straight guy. The “victim” (though not really). His role was more reacting to Nikki’s antics. Plus he’s playing basically a loser. How do you inject sympathy into that role? I don’t know, but he did it. You might not be on his side, but you can see his side.

At least in the first act.

In the aftermath of this movie’s surprise success (Is anyone shocked that people don’t want another franchise garbage film?), there’ve been dozens, hundreds, thousands of podcasts and x posts and Substacks analyzing Obsession.

So, of course, why not one more?

Most of what I’ve seen focuses on things like Bear’s selfishness and Nikki’s lack of consent and what these say about modern culture. That bores me. Politics mostly bores me.

What interests me is the human condition, and Obsession tackles two.

The first is loneliness.

One of the media’s current bandwagons is about the so-called male loneliness epidemic. Here’s a tip: avoid bandwagons. Anything I’ve read on the topic turns out to be a backhanded way to bash men and masculinity. Instead, we should view loneliness not through a male or female lens but through the lens of the individual.

Obsession uses Bear to highlight this issue of loneliness. The opening scene is a tight shot on his face as he’s gushing out his feelings for Nikki. He’s nice looking and hopeful and scared. He’s relatable and sympathetic. He lives alone in his grandmother’s old apartment with his cat. No other family is mentioned, so I assume he’s been left alone. Early on, he comes home to find his cat dead. There’s a great shot of him sitting on his bed sobbing. The contrast of those two scenes really got to me. He’s a character who is aching and needy and alone.

But his tragic flaw is that he cannot get himself to take action in his own life. He’s paralyzed by fear.

A lot of criticism against Bear concerns the one action he DOES take: making that wish. First, a defense. Who hasn’t wished for something? Plus it’s not as if he truly believed the wish would work. The act of making that wish doesn’t make him the bad guy, and it’s a stretch to say that the wish was a sign of weakness or villainy.

But a case could be made that Bear’s culpability grew as he ignored the blaring signs that all was not right with Nikki. Even after he realized the wish did in fact work, he was still trying to find a loophole.

Still, I have a lot of sympathy. One of the roughest scenes emotionally is when Nikki is sleeping and she says something like, “she’s asleep, kill me,” (implying the real Nikki was trapped inside—she was), and his response was along the lines of “what’s so bad about loving me?” (probably misquoting but you get the gist). This told me that Bear’s pain was so intense that he couldn’t even see Nikki’s.

Horror can work as a morality tale, and this was one of the morals: loneliness can blind you to the truth. It can corrupt you. It can ruin you. Bear’s loneliness definitely did that for all involved.

What about Nikki’s story?

To see it clearly we’ve got to strip out the supernatural. It’s not cheating; horror works on metaphor. It examines human fears by exaggerating them.

Looking at it from this angle, Nikki’s story becomes easier to discern. It doesn’t take a genius to do so (hint: look at the title). (In her wishcast state) Nikki is obsessed with Bear. She acts out in the most creepy, disturbing, horrifying and violent ways because of her obsession. Almost everyone has dealt with, known of, or experienced themselves, a nasty case of obsession.

But what interests me most about Nikki’s story is that it operates on twl levels: an exterior and an interior.

First, the exterior. I’ve read some deep dives saying her behavior mimics borderline personality disorder. I don’t have a background in psychology so I won’t comment on whether this is truly BPD-like behavior. But the mood swings, the intense focus, the possessiveness, the anger, the desperation, and the terror of rejection all ring true to life. Watching Obsession called to mind Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd’s non-supernatural yet still horrifying true account of his dealings with a stalker.

This is what makes the horror so intense. Yes, we all know that Nikki’s obsession was caused by a supernatural spark and thus not genuine, but her actions feel so real because of the emotional truth behind it. As a writer, I respect how Barker was able to convey this true-to-life experience in such a cartoonish setting and have it hit.

While the exterior experience of Nikki’s obsession is riveting, what intrigued me the most was Nikki’s interior experience. In the movie, the real Nikki is an unwilling participant in this obsession. She wants no part of it. But she’s trapped. An observer. A puppet with no control.

This is horrifying. She does not want this. Yet she’s forced to witness all of this.

But let’s pull back from the supernatural and shift to the real world. Oftentimes someone who’s in the grip of an obsession (or an addiction), knows logically that what they’re doing is either harmful or utterly pointless, yet they’re still compelled (or possessed, much like Nikki is possessed). One part of you acts out the rituals of your obsession/possession (as in the shrine she built to Bear). Another part of you watches as your compelled to do things you don’t want to do.

You cannot stop yourself. You’re trapped by your obsession and forced to witness your compulsion.

What is this if not horror?

Anatomy of a Story: The History of Value Shopping in 21st-Century America

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I’m a fan of short titles. One word is the ideal for me. The reasoning is, if you can boil the essence of your story into as few letters as possible, you’ve got some skill on display. So what explains this story of mine, The History of Value Shopping in 12st-Century America, which is probably the longest title I’ve ever chosen? Is it unfocused? Does it suck?

Suckiness, for lack of a better word, is subjective, and apparently this insanely long titled story did not suck as per the folks at Monkeybicycle, who published it here.

What I think happened, regarding the title is this: sometimes you’ve got to let the story (and title) be whatever it is.

The History of Value Shopping in 21-st Century America is a deceptively simple story. Ellie Sears is a college student working on her thesis (hence the story’s title) by visiting dollar stores. She meets Lucinda, a clerk, a mysterious girl with a secret, and Lucinda brings Ellie along on an adventure. It’s a story of exploration and attraction (non-sexual) and escape. Hidden selves and alter egos. Maybe.

It’s also one of my shorter stories, clocking in at under 1600 words. It began life in a writing workshop as a power prompt, where you’re given two characters, a genre, a trope, a setting, and the POV/tense, and then you write a story. I came up with the bones of this one, and I thought I maybe had something, so I revisited it, and here we are.

I think at the time I was also in love with Bud Smith’s short story collection Double Bird. He’s great at detail and absurdity, so undoubtedly I was trying to incorporate some of his literary styles, play around with them, try them on, and while I would never consider myself an absurdist, I definitely like tossing in a drunken screaming circus clown now and again.

The moral of this post? I don’t know. Maybe it’s don’t insist on having every title be only one word. And let the story be whatever weirdness it insists on being, so it will find its place in the world.

Photo by Cam Ballard on Unsplash

Power Prompts: Episode 9

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The challenge: write a short story in 20 minutes using the following:

Characters: Long Island Real Estate Agent, Archaeologist

Genre: Comedy

Setting: Mount Vesuvius

Trope: Talking animal

POV/tense: 1st/future

And the result:

“You can’t go wrong. Seaside views. Beautiful ocean breezes. And look at these vineyards.” Loretta DiChiara will wave a manicured, overtanned, overjeweled arm around the landscape. “And at only half a mil, it’s a steal.”

Charles Weathergood will take off his fedora and wipe a bead of sweat from his brow. “I don’t know. It seems awfully rocky.”

“Rocky’s good. It keeps the wolves away. They hate rocks.”

“Wolves don’t hate rocks,” I’ll tell Loretta. She’ll give me a death glare. That, or the botox froze her face in a permanent squint. Who can tell.

“And who exactly are you again?” she’ll ask.

“He’s my assistant,” Professor Weathergood will say.

“Honestly Ms DiCharia, the professor is only here to do some excavation on the site, not actually buy it.”

“Hold up,” the professor will say. He’ll start breathing heavy. Too heavy. I’ll whip out his inhaler. He’ll take a mighty pull off it and toss it back to me. “It’s true that I did not intend to buy a piece of property, but, but…” He’ll turn red again and start to wheeze. I’ll toss him the inhaler. He’ll drop it on the black earth and when he bends down to pick it up one of the buttons of his shirt will pop off. Loretta will wince. Maybe? Hard to tell through all the fillers.

“You know, my father, Augustus Weathergood, he was named after the great Roman emperor. He was the emperor here at the time mighty Vesuvius vented her gaseous fury across this very landscape.”

I’ll try to interrupt. “Actually–”

He’ll wave me away with a pasty hand. “And my father was one of the greatest archaeologists of his day.”

“Actually it was Titus,” a voice will say.

I’ll look around. Loretta too. And the professor. No one there but the three of us in this ridiculous heat on this ridiculous stretch of earth.

“Not Augustus, you foolish human.”

Up comes a dog, big and sleek and brown, with big wet fangs. “Oh my fucking lord a talking dog,” Loretta will shriek, covering her mouth with her jeweled-up hand.

“Not a dog, you simpleton, a wolf. And for the record…” the wolf will prance among the rocks like he’s in the Nutcracker. “See? No problem whatsoever traversing these stones.”

“Okay, okay, a talking wolf,” I’ll say. “Isn’t this some sort of sign, professor? Some omen? Some bad omen? As in, no way should you buy this land, not for half a mil, not for fifty grand, no matter what some leatherneck shyster real estate agent says?”

“Hey, you little asshole.”

“And what the hell is a real estate agent from Long Island doing in Italy?”

“If you must know, I happen to be Italian.”

“No shit,” you’ll say.

The professor will wrap a sweaty arm around your shoulder. “Listen, my boy, I don’t want you messing up this deal for me. Please be civil.”

“This deal? It’s an overpriced piece of land being sold by a charlatan complete with a freaking talking wolf.”

“And you’re a talking human,” the wolf will say. “You don’t see me making a scene about you.”

“Because wolves aren’t supposed to talk.”

“Perhaps you’re the one who shouldn’t be talking,” the wolf will say.

“Yeah, asshole.” Loretta will shake her fist at me, her bangles jangling in a fury.

“My dear boy, why don’t you take a break. I believe the heat is getting to you.”

I’ll take a step back. Loretta will glare at me while the professor explains to her that his dream has always been to have his own little piece of Vesuvius, to dig at his will, no oversight from any overbearing authority. The wolf will recline. He’ll follow their conversation, nodding and murmuring. Finally I won’t be able to take it anymore.

“This is so ridiculous.”

“If you don’t like it, then leave, smart boy. I’m about to make a hefty comission.”

“Yes, smart boy,” the wolf will snicker. “Leave.” He’ll climb on all fours and saunter over.
I won’t know if it’s the heat or my shit pay or whatever but I drop to all fours and bite the wolf on his front leg. He’ll scream bloody murder and I’ll hoot laughter and then run to the nearest tavern for a nice cold beer.

Anatomy of a Story: Little Lamb

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Sometimes you need a little blood to make a story come alive. I’m not recommending you take out a razorblade and cut yourself, or someone else, but do it metaphorically.

I used this mindset in the crafting of my short story, Little Lamb, which was just published here by Epoque Press. The story follows Drew as he ventures to a very bizarre late night beach barbecue at the behest of his friend, Patrick, who in many ways is his Jungian shadow. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say there is definitely blood involved.

Let’s rewind first. Credit where credit’s due. As I’ve written here before, someone (Virginia Woolf?) once said books beget books. Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was a riff on James Joyce’s Ulysses. I’m a staunch proponent of writers having to READING fiction in order to truly be a great writer (many of them don’t). First, it gives you an insight into great writing and storytelling, and second, it inspires you.

For the past five years or so I’ve been giving myself my own MFA in the craft of the short story, so far covering writers like Flannery O’Connor, Hemingway, Carver, just to name a few. Reading them. Dissecting them. Hand-writing passages from their stories. Another one of these writers was Yukio Mishima.

Mishima, from Japan, was one of the most prominent mid-century writers. I haven’t done too deep a dive into his bio, but he was an interesting and complicated cat. A difficult human, but also one who put his soul into his writing. You can feel the man’s pulse when you read his work. One of his stories, Raisin Bread, jumped out to me. It resonated. It haunted me.

I knew I had to grapple with it. I wrote passages longhand, over and over, and then I examined the characters and the setting and the plot. I took it all apart in my mind, and then I wanted to reassemble it all into something new, something different—take his set-up and veer off in a wildly different direction.

And that is how Little Lamb came to be born.

It’s weird, this deep dive into the craft of the short story I’ve undertaken. I’ve come to get so attached to these long-dead writers: Flannery and Ernest and Yukio, and I want to show them what they’ve taught me. I can’t do that, but I can share it with the world.

Image source: Epoque Press

Power Prompts: Episode 8

by in fiction, horror, movies, Uncategorized, writing prompts and tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The challenge: write a short story in 20 minutes using the following:

Characters: Fashion victim, A foul-mouthed parrot

Genre: Fan fiction

Setting: Midtown Manhattan

Trope: The last thing I remember

POV/tense: 2nd/past

And the result:

You’ve been stabbed a total of seven times. The first time by your gay boyfriend Billy and Stu at that house party. You survived other stabbings, by your cousin, by Billy’s mom, by your long-lost brother, and by those crazed fans, all donning the ghostface mask. You swore you’d never return to Woodsboro, so you fled to the biggest city in America, no longer Sydney Prescott but some anonymous girl working at the Clinique counter at Macy’s.

And you were late.

In one hand you had your coffee and another a bagel. Tourists swarmed around you. Not just any tourists, but Halloween tourists. Freddys and Jasons, all these wannabe killers and it made your side clench. Which stabbing was that? You couldn’t remember. Too many of them.

PTSD is for pussies. That’s what Gayle Weathers told you, and yeah, she’s a bitch but she has a point. You decided the best thing for you to do was duck through an alley and avoid everyone. As soon as you stepped into the alley your heart calmed. But then halfway alley past the reeking dumpsters a man popped up. At first you thought he was homeless but he was too clean. He wore a cut off t-shirt and Cavarichis and Capezios, looking like some 80s fashion victim.

“Hey baby,” he said to you.

You rolled your eyes. “Not today. I’m late for work.”

He smiled at you. “Aw, come on. I just want to play a game.”

“I’m not in the mood for games.” Behind you you heard people shouting. They seemed far away. So far away. You reminded yourself how you dispatched several of the lamest serial killers who ever lived. This bridge and tunnel twerp was nothing. Still, something about him threw you off. “Just get out of my way.”

He scratched his chin. “Funny, last thing I remember was I was watching a tv program, one of those true crime things. And someone in one of the episodes kind of looked like you.”

“I look like a lot of people.”

“Nah,” he said. “It was definitely you.”

“So what if it was.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, bitch. Be that way.”

You watched him turn and walk off and your heart settled. Then you hear another voice, this one high pitched. “What’s your favorite scary movie, bitch?”

You looked up and down the alley. No one was there. Then you saw a gostface mask flying through the air, and something white, and something sliver.

“Are you fucking deaf? What’s your favorite scary movie?” the flying mask said.

It hovered in the air in front of you. You pulled the mask off to reveal a white parrot holding a knife in its talons. It lunged the knife at you. It stabbed you in the shoulder. You dropped your coffee and your bagel and reached into your purse and pulled out your revolver and shot. A plume of feathers flew through the air. “You hit me, you whore,” the parrot screeched. Then it dropped to the ground, still clutching the knife.

You walk up to it. The bird lay still. Then it sprung back up and stabbed you in the stomach. You aimed your revolver at the parrot’s head and blew a hole right through it.

Dead. Finally.

“I fucking hate scary movies,” you said as you pressed your hands against your two latest stabbing wounds.