Something Wicked #19 (March 2012)

by Something Wicked Authors

  Greene lives with his wife, Brenda, their son, and two cats. He was married by Princess Leia in front of the full-sized Tardis he built in the backyard

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  WRITERS CORNERED:

  an interview with R.W.W. Greene

  Where is home?

  I live in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA, but I grew up in rural Maine.

  Do you write full-time?

  I teach high-school English full time, specifically creative writing and journalism, and do my writing on the side. I’d like to work out a way to be a half-time teacher, half-time writer.

  What inspired this story?

  Joss Whedon’s Firefly series: I started to wonder what the exodus from Earth would have been like. I was further inspired by a mix of hope and pessimism. I’m worried we’ve reached a moment in history wherein we either have to act swiftly to give up bad habits or resign ourselves to the fact we’re making our planet inhospitable to life. Pessimistically, I’m not sure we have the maturity and will to break those habits. The hope is, clever beasts that we are, we’ll figure out a way to give ourselves a second chance.

  The narrative voice (that of a young girl) is very believable. How did you go about finding that voice and the emotions, reasoning and value system of a teenage girl?

  Hayley’s voice came easily to me. I spend most of my workday among adolescents; my brain is constantly crawling with their voices, drama, and dreams. Hayley started as a blend of a few students and quickly took on a life of her own.

  Do you think humans will ever actually colonise another world, or at least, make a serious attempt to do so?

  I think we have it in us, but we have a fair amount of growing up to do first. It would take a concerted, worldwide effort to do so, and we’d need motivation everyone could get behind. In the short term, I don’t know that we could do it out of sheer curiosity or a drive to explore, but a threat to the species might be enough to scare us all into line.

  If we did launch a generation ship, would you sign up for the trip?

  I’d like to think I would. Maybe I could be ship’s poet.

  Are you working on anything right now?

  I have a handful of short stories bouncing around the marketplace, but my big project is a novel spawned by the “Safety Cards” story. It’s my master of fine arts thesis, and it takes Hayley and two other characters on a search for a reason to live in a world that’s winding down around them. The first two drafts are complete, and it stands at about 107,000 words. The third draft will be finished by June. I’m also working on a short-story collection about the male relationship with love and labor.

  Where can we read more of your work?

  I maintain a blog at www.rwwgreene.com. Fiction-wise, the easiest thing to find is my chapter of Overfly, a novel written in twenty-four hours by twenty-three writers including Hugo winner James Patrick Kelly and Stoker winner Benjamin Kane Ethridge. I wrote chapter two.

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  SIXTH SENSE OF HUMOUR

  By Mark Sykes

  Twisted Sinister

  Surely one of the best things about reading short fiction is waiting for the twist at the end. Not every short story has to have one, and some do very well without them, but they are delicious when they’re done properly. And could there be more fitting genres for them than sci-fi and horror? For a start, things are already pretty bad (Armageddon, oxygen running out, zombie apocalypse, etc) – and when the twist hits, they get even worse! It’s like the powerful aftertaste of a lemon fizzball: you know it’s coming, but you just don’t know how strong it’s going to be, or when it’s going to hit.

  Ending a great story with a suitably brilliant twist is tricky, to say the least; not only does an author have to be able to weave together a captivating plot, but they also have to turn the whole thing on its head in a plausible way that leaves your head spinning. My favourites are the ones that rattle around in my head for days after I’ve finished reading, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that a choice few still give me goosebumps to this day – over twenty-five years after first reading them (It goes without saying that I’ve lost count of the times I’ve re-read them). One of those stories is Stephen King’s ‘The Jaunt’ (which got a prominent mention in this column a couple of months back), but most of them are the work of someone I’ll come to a bit further down the page.

  Even though a good twist can make a story indelible in the memory, its effectiveness is, of course, dependant on the set up, which makes up about 80-90% of the work; then there’s a short transition, where you start to realise that something is very, very wrong (or at least, more wrong than normal), and what you’ve been reading so far isn’t, in fact, what’s really been going on… and then POW! The boxing glove leaps out of the last paragraph - or in some cases, the last sentence - and socks you one on the side of the head. Job done.

  When it comes to revealing the twist, the author needs to convince you that everything is a certain way for as long as possible and, just like a stage magician, uses misdirection to let you think you know what the twist will be, so it’s really all about guile and cunning on his part. He’s a hunter laying a trap for you. Not only does he have to make it invisible, but he then has to convince you to walk down the path – one that you know has something nasty at the end. What can it be? A demon? Quicksand? A disintegrator field? Oh wait, it’s… oh my god, it’s a fluffy little kitten! There’s a kitten at the end of the path, and it’s mewling for milk! Mushkins! Your pace picks up as you head for the poor widdle puddy, and just before you get to it, you realise that it’s going to change into a slavering alien kill monster! You pull out your .357 Magnum, aim it at Tiddles - and that’s when the giant snake above you closes its jaws around your stoopid head.

  Ask a handful of short-story readers which author they think of first when you say the words ‘twist in the tale’, and you’ll probably get a different answer every time: Philip K. Dick, Kafka, Asimov and King will definitely be mentioned. Ask me, and I’d have to say Roald Dahl. And if you think that I’m straying from the horror genre by mentioning him, then you’ve obviously never read stories like ‘Georgy Porgy’, ‘William and Mary’ and ‘Pig’. These stories, and others, would fit very snugly into the pages of Something Wicked, simply on horror merit alone, and all without a trace of the supernatural. Sometimes, what ordinary people are capable of doing to other ordinary people (and themselves) will keep you awake at night far longer than, say, a monster under the bed or a vampire floating outside your window, begging for entry.

  When I was fourteen, I was given More Tales of the Unexpected as my English literature reader. I’d never read Dahl’s adult fiction before, and from the first page of the first story (‘Poison’, a tale of a man in bed with a deadly snake), I was wide-eyed. By the second story, the unforgettable ‘The Sound Machine’, I was truly in awe of him. (Up until then my only exposure to Roald Dahl had been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, my school reader in the UK only four years previously. Now I was reading a stories about an elderly landlady who practices taxidermy on her lodgers and a man who collects severed fingers.)

  I was an instant convert, dedicated to finding anything and everything that Dahl had written. As I did so, I wasn’t surprised to find that his stories had had the same effect on a great many people, although there were a few who had decided, after reading stories like ‘Pig’ and ‘Royal Jelly’ that they ‘weren’t able to handle him’. I know that if Dahl himself had heard that, he would have given an avuncular chuckle of pride in his work.

  One thing I adore about Roald Dahl (aside from his supermodel granddaughter, Sophie) is the way his writing style so often veers towards the childlike, as though his protagonist is an innocent, barely aware how he came to be in his situation. He seems to be simply going with the flow, ushered along by an invisible hand down fate’s path… at the end of which lies the inevitable twist (because the story up until then wasn’t twisted enough). Sometimes it’s a horrifying dis
covery, or spousal treachery, or just a slow, lingering death. The narrative itself is made up of simple, unassuming language that gives little indication of the sheer malice and iniquity in the minds of some of the characters, or what they are capable of doing. As life lessons go, it’s a pretty good handbook on what to look out for in adulthood.

  Needless to say, if you haven’t read Dahl, you are missing something utterly unique and special. He really is up there with the greats.

  Now, if I were a brilliant writer, who could just toss this stuff off daily, I’d be able to put an appropriate end to this piece by giving it a twist of its own… but I’m not, I can’t, and I don’t have one. But wait… maybe that’s the twist - there is no twist!

  Nah, sucks. I’ll leave it to the professionals

  Mark Sykes was born in Sheffield in 1970. He was raised by a cruel uncle, who sent him to work in the salt mines of Argentina from the age of four, where he developed the condition known as Pickled Lung. This confined him to a bed for the next 36 years, and also prevented him from following his dream of working with dolphins, and so he turned to writing, so that he might at least write about dolphins.

  Several famed works followed, and sold in their millions as people worldwide heard about the boy with Pickled Lung who loved dolphins. These works include One Day I Shall Work with Dolphins, Dolphins Sound Funny, Dolphins are Friendly Sharks, They Shoot Dolphins, Don’t They? and Send in the Dolphins.

  Sadly, Mark wrote and said the word ‘dolphin’ so many times that that funny thing happened where the word becomes completely meaningless, and he lost all interest in dolphins. (Dolphin dolphin dolphin dolphin dolphin dolphin dolphin dolphin – hey, that’s weird!)

  He now lives in Cape Town and is waiting for the Pickled Lung to finish him off.

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  STAINED

  by Chris Stevens

  The stench of sulfur wafted through the air as Colin lit the black candles positioned at each corner of the pentagram. He stared intensely at the large pentagram he had drawn on the bare concrete floor. It had taken a while to remove the carpeting and padding from the room. Harder still was the remnant of glue that was swirled on the floor to keep the padding in place. Colin had even gone so far as to remove the tack strips and their anchors, in order to get a nice smooth surface for the task at hand.

  If his grandparents were still alive they would be screaming right now. His grandmother would be looking for a ladle to swat across his bare behind. She was probably rolling over in her grave right now. As for grandpa, his moment of shock would be replaced with the need to save his grandson from the ladle-waving loon he called his wife. Colin could picture it quite well, her yelling and screaming, ranting and raving at the mess he had made in their bedroom, while the old man tried to calm her down, almost suffering several swats from the ladle himself. The whole time Colin would be hiding underneath the table, curled into a little ball.

  All this fuss over their fuzzy new blue carpet. The carpet they had spent a fortune on, according to his grandmother. The carpet he had made a mess on in his grandparents’ bedroom. That had been a long time ago, yet the carpet had remained. Colin had thought he could even still see the stain he had made all those years ago. By this time though, the carpet was no longer fuzzy and was a long ways away from being new. He couldn’t believe that the new owners of his grandparents’ house hadn’t bothered to change the carpeting in all the time they had lived there.

  He thought it made sense though, since the whole house was in disrepair. What had once been white walls were now yellowed with smoke stains. There were small holes in the plasterboard that no one had ever bothered to run a putty knife over. As for this room, the room that had once been his grandparents’ bedroom, it too had seen much better days. He remembered his grandmother spending several days applying the rose colored wallpaper in large strips across the wall. Within the swirl of color, cherubs pranced and prattled, gawking at all who entered.

  Colin remembered the times he had stared at those little angels, wondering if they could see him, wondering if they were watching over him or judging him when he did something wrong. Now those baby-faced angels looked at him through a dull haze. The paper had puckered in some spots and peeled away from the eaves at the top. Again Colin wondered how the previous tenants could have left it like this.

  Even the yard, which had once been the pride of the neighborhood, was now overgrown with weeds and crab grass. The back yard, which had boasted a beautiful vegetable garden thanks to the hours his grandmother had spent toiling away, de-weeding, re-seeding, and mulching, was now a junkyard of car parts and trash. Although pungent, the burning yellow sulfur failed to cover the stench of oil that permeated the whole house, along with other rancid smells, which Colin couldn’t place. Something acidic. Based on the look of the house, it had probably been converted to one part auto shop and one part methamphetamine lab.

  Colin grabbed the candle at the tip of the pentagram and began pouring a circle of wax in the center of the pentagram. Colin wasn’t sure if any of this was going to work, but there was no turning back now. He thought much of this stuff was pretty corny. At least he didn’t have a goat’s head hanging from a rope and he wasn’t garbed in black robes. What felt like a lifetime’s worth of work was all boiling down to this moment. His palms sweated in anticipation as he completed the circle and then went to unbind the rather large brown book. It was supposedly bound in human skin, but Colin was pretty sure it was just leather, maybe even imitation. The binding didn’t matter though; it was the pages inside that mattered. Pages he had almost been killed for.

  Colin looked again at the faces of innocence peering out from the wall and thought again of his grandfather. Barely a day went by that he didn’t think about his grandfather. Heck, who was he kidding, there was never a day that went by that he didn’t think about his grandfather. His grandfather, with those piercing blue eyes, which could look at you and make you almost believe everything was going to be alright. The man with the jovial smile and infectious laugh.

  The only one who had never seemed to laugh was his grandmother. Colin couldn’t even remember seeing the woman smile. All she had ever seemed to do was yell. If she wasn’t yelling as his grandfather, she was yelling at him and if she wasn’t yelling at him, she was yelling at the two of them together. Colin knew that at these moments his grandpa had discreetly turned down his hearing aid so he could remain oblivious to it all. Unless of course, she was going after Colin, then grandpa had become Colin’s protector, his knight in shining armor, shielding him from the evil witch or fire-breathing dragon.

  This had been like taking one’s life in one’s hands and Colin had feared that the man might not be able to take the blast of fire. He had always walked away unscathed, though, and made sure to whisper something nice in his ear. “What does she know? Your piano playing sounded good. Besides, how are you ever going to get good if you don’t practice? Once she goes to the store, I’ll let you play all you want.” His grandpa had always done what he could to comfort him, whether it was playing chase in the house when grandma wasn’t around or showing him how to whittle wood in the garage.

  Colin had never been any good at whittling, but grandpa was real patient.

  When his grandfather died, Colin had cried quite a bit, like a never-ending fountain that kept re-circulating the tears from the bottom of his heart. As hard as Colin had taken it though, his grief had been nothing compared to his grandma’s. She had crumbled. Her hard demeanor had given way to someone void of all feeling. She no longer yelled and screamed when Colin did something wrong. She would just sit in her chair and watch TV. Colin had thought that was the worse year of his life. He’d been wrong. Losing her husband had seemed to suck the life right out of his grandmother. She had died almost a year to the day after his grandfather died.

  He hadn’t cried then. Maybe he too had been devoid of all feeling by then. Colin had gone to live with an aunt and uncle and their seven children. It ha
dn’t worked out. What harm could one more do? they’d thought. The answer, according to his aunt, was: quite a lot. Colin’s presence disrupted their happy household. Colin had thought that, being the good Mormons they were, they would care for him as one of their own. Again, he had been wrong. He’d wound up in foster care, bouncing from family to family until his eighteenth birthday.

  Life hadn’t been easy, but Colin had never given up hope. He’d struggled through school, much as he’d struggled through life. Drugs and petty crime had become commonplace for a time, until Colin had finally realized it was distracting him from his life’s work.

  His grandpa had died suddenly, of a brain aneurysm in his sleep. His aunt and uncle had tried to comfort Colin by letting him know that grandpa had died painlessly and was with Our Heavenly Father. His grandpa had taught Sunday school and had even been the bishop for a short time at the church they’d attended, so the thought of his grandpa being in heaven wasn’t too far-fetched. Didn’t the Heavenly Father forgive all sins?