what i’m writing. southern goth.

Archie Bishop weren’t worth half a man. Not even on a good day. On a bad day there weren’t no point to him at all. He’d sit on that stump – out by the railroad where the boys from the mountain wore the path through the woods – and just stare at you like you was the most inconvenient thing he ever saw. But the thing you got to figure, is he was an old man when it happened. Not so old that he couldn’t own to what he did, but too old to do it by himself. And then there’s Mary Hubbard. She was the one who said she saw it. Now I’m not saying Mary’s a liar, but she’s been known to see a thing or two aint no way she saw.

sweet dreams

You know stress is getting the better of you when you wake up at 4:00am-screaming. I use to do this routinely. The Euro found it amusing, until he didn’t. Then he started sleeping in the guest bedroom because “you’re going to give me a heart attack and I’d really rather you not, thanks.” But that was then. Tonight he didn’t even budge. Tonight, someone could have killed me in my sleep and he’d have slept right through it.

It’s usually getting attacked by wild animals that brings me to the screams. When I was a kid I use to dream of goats and grizzly bears. I’ve always maintained that goats were little satanic creatures and once, when I was ten, I saw a grizzy bear haul up on his back legs. Hauled-up grizzly bears will scar a ten-year-old for life. I dreamed of that bear for fifteen years, and it was always tearing down walls to get to me. During college I’d dream of being chewed on by a wild boar. A big tusky thing with red eyes. It’d gnaw on my shoulder until I’d wake up in near epileptic fits. Tonight it was a jackal. You forget those things even exist until they start going down your stairs backward, then you remember there was one in The Omen.

I’m using my laptop as a nightlight at the moment and thinking I should probably get one of those dream interpretation books. But the last time I did that, I found out my maternity instinct was trying to eat me alive. I really don’t want to know what backward-walking jackals mean.

an unexpected gesture

I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity. – Flannery O’Connor