Shock Totem 5: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted
Page 13
Without giving the story away, the situation Tallena thinks she sees is obviously not what it appears to be, but that doesn’t matter. She is a good person, very smart, and she knows the right thing to do about it—or so she thinks.
In the end, it is the imposition of her belief system upon someone else, someone she knows little about, that leads to...well, read the story.
Oh, a final note: Some of the names and surnames of the characters are epithets. You just have to figure out in what language.
–D. Thomas Mooers
“Hide-and-Seek”
While psychopathic killers crop up with depressing frequency all over the planet, Wisconsin has had some of the all-time stars. Ed Gein, upon whom Psycho was based. Jeffrey Dahmer. A common strategy used by serial killers is to prey on itinerants, vagrants, and runaways; I thought about what it would be like to be one of those, wandering and homeless. And to prey back.
–F.J. Bergmann
“Postmortem”
When Ken added microfiction to the Shock Totem guidelines, I’d just penned a couple post-relationship exorcisms (“The Wound” and “It’s Not You, It’s Me”). When Ken saw these he asked if I’d be interested in writing a series of micros for issue #5. I thought they were just going to be used as filler to eliminate white space throughout the issue. I had in mind the Five Stages of Grief and added “Love Is,” “Monster” and “Bonfire” to the set. Ken thought they were cohesive enough to put together as a five-part unit. The hardest part was coming up with a title. Postmortem seemed appropriate because each of the micros deals with a different stage in the death of a relationship.
–Kurt Newton
“Jimmy Bunny”
This story is absolutely true, except for the parts that aren’t.
I really did go into such a deserted, recently fumigated row-house on Harrison St. in Philadelphia (which really is across from the high school and seemed to have three active drug houses on the block servicing the student clientele) under pretty much the circumstances described, in the company of my long-time friend Diane Weinstein, the former art director of Weird Tales (and presently art director of Space and Time).
This is a prime example of how authors mix up reality and fiction, because in real life Annabelle is the name of the cat, not Roderick Usher, and I didn’t give it to her; and also, incidentally, her husband Lee is very much alive and well and the author of an article on psychic detectives which appeared in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine recently. Besides which, we did not find any evidence of mass murder next door, though we did find that tape recorder. Diane really has been a “picker” in the antiques and vintage clothing trade, and she did get us into the house the night before it was to be emptied out by the means described (standard practice in this business).
The protagonist is not me, either, as I did not end up like this but instead married the lovely Mattie Brahen. However, it sure was creepy, and there were indeed an impossible, clearly supernatural amount of roach-tracks everywhere, and many of the other details are quite accurate. One could not help but speculate what catastrophes had occurred in the lives of people who left behind such remains.
No need to ask horror writers where they get their ideas. They get them by entering the empty houses of mysteriously vanished nameless degenerates in the middle of the night, of course. But in real life, nobody went mad, and the police were not called, and Lee and Diane very sensibly moved to a much nicer neighborhood.
The cat, Annabelle, does have her psychotic moments, though.
–Darrell Schweitzer
“Little Knife Houses”
The inspiration for this story obviously originated with the haunting cover image for Shock Totem 3. I had a lot of trouble coming up with a concept that was worthy of it, and spent six of the seven days of the flash contest discarding idea after idea. Some concepts were too obvious and others were too big for flash. On the day the story was due, I’d settled on a story about a cutter but had no idea where to begin.
And so I procrastinated by watching a Top Chef marathon. In one episode, a chef cuts himself with a knife that looks exactly like the one in the picture. I wondered if maybe there’s a supernatural reason for a person to cut herself. Maybe there’s something inside the knives that forces it to happen. The story practically wrote itself from there.
–Jaelithe Ingold
“Canon”
You have the chance to read this story because, otherwise, Jim McDonald would have come for me in the night. All blame lies with him.
–Anaea Lay
“The Catch”
When it came to writing “The Catch,” it really did congeal by accident. What started as a more conventional time-travel story evolved as I considered just how much of the world is covered in water, not just across the surface, but also, as I say in the story, “across the axis of time.” That led to the idea of “fishing” through time and the duo of profiteering time-fishermen.
My first draft, sans the ending, was far more lighthearted, with a lot of silly antics involving people they might catch (...so that’s what happened to Hoffa!), but once I hit upon the more sinister punch line, which I liked, I had to double back for major tone revisions. That’s a pretty regular occurrence for me. And even then, I just couldn’t bring myself to remove all the lightheartedness.
With my side-project writing, I can afford the luxury of exploring a story and letting it take me where it wants. Some projects require strict adherence to outlines, deadlines, guidelines, and every other manner of ‘line, and while there’s a time and place for that methodology, sometimes it’s more enjoyable to just sit back and let the clouds tell you what shapes they look like.
That’s exactly how “The Catch” came to be.
–Joe Mirabello
“Three Strikes”
This was written from the perspective of a woman who saw no other way out of what I thought was an obvious abusive relationship. I didn’t realize until reading it back that it could be so many other things, so many other situations. I like that. Here’s hoping you like it, too.
–Mekenzie Larsen
“To ‘Bie or Not to ‘Bie”
As both a reader and a writer, I’ve always enjoyed absurdist story plots and themes, even though these elements are always the most likely to wither under logical scrutiny. But then, I’ve always enjoyed picking stories apart, especially when I like them.
(If you care to pick apart “To ‘Bie or Not to ‘Bie,” contact me through my website. I’d love to hear from you.)
To me, the more interesting element of the story is the narration. I’ve wanted to try writing a story that used “we” as a narrator ever since reading Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” I liked the way Faulkner used “we” to make it seem as if the entire town was narrating his tale.
The original plan for “To ‘Bie or Not to ‘Bie” was for all the narration to be done in Elizabethan English, believing the troupe, having trained so long and so intimately in Shakespeare, would start to adapt it as part of their regular speech. I liked the idea of these kids losing touch with “modern” English, even though “modern” English is now, in the story, decaying like everything else. I kept the idea as a plot point, but decided to tell it rather than show it, figuring it would otherwise put up too many barriers to the audience.
–Sean Eads
ARTIST BIO
Silent Q Design was founded in Montreal in 2006 by Mikio Murakami. Melding together the use of both realistic templates and surreal imagery, Mikio's artistry proves, at first glance, that a passion for art still is alive, and that no musician, magazine, or venue should suffer from the same bland designs that have been re-hashed over and over.
Mikio’s work has been commissioned both locally and internationally, by bands such as Redemption, Synastry, Starkweather, and Epocholypse. Shock Totem #3 was his first book-design project.
For more info, visit www.silentqdesign.net.
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Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.