Beautiful Sorrows (19 page)

Ben reeled again, and steadied himself on the chair.

“But...”

“That’s your name. I know.” Allan’s mouth worked in a strange way. “And suddenly it all made sense. She didn’t cry when I’d leave, anymore. She withdrew money from the bank account. It used to devastate her whenever we’d move, and then one day it was all okay. I didn’t understand it. And then I didn’t want to understand it.” He studied Benjamin’s face. “You’re not what I expected.”

The urge to fight flashed through Ben’s body. He could stand up to this man. He was already mostly beaten. He’d fall without a sound, like flowers under snow. Angelica could be his. Her eyes would open one last time, and his smile, his warm gaze would be what she saw. How many times had he dreamed of being the one that she awoke to?

Ben took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes.

“Sir, I...I never fully understood.”

Allan blinked and took the hand that Ben offered. He shook it firmly.

“I’m sorry that things turned out this way, Ben. You seem decent enough. But sometimes life...”

Does funny things,
Ben thought.
Rips your throat out. Leaves your hands empty at the end.

Ben stuffed his hands back into his pockets. He stared at a scuff on the floor. “I’m glad that I knew your wife, and your son.”

The silence pressed heavily on them. There was nothing more to say. Ben pushed his way through the door, fleeing his love and his hope as they lay dying. Angelica didn’t belong to Allan. She didn’t belong to Ben. And Ben was realizing that he didn’t belong to her, either.

He walked down the hall, paused, but slowly continued walking. He tasted Angelica on his lips, realizing it would be for the last time. When he stepped outside of the hospital, he squinted his eyes against the sun. It illuminated. It burned.

BEAUTIFUL NOTES

“Broken”
This is a hint-fiction piece. “Hint Fiction” is a term coined by Robert Swartwood that has to do with hinting at a deeper story in under twenty-five words. I had a dark little tale accepted in Swartwood’s
Hint Fiction
anthology, and he asked if I would be interested in writing something else for promo leading up to the anthology’s release. I submitted a few pieces and was thrilled when “Broken” was chosen. It chills me.

“Black Mary”
Ah, “Black Mary.” What to say? “Black Mary” cuts to the bone.

My friend and fellow writer Robert J. Duperre asked me to write a story for his
Gate 2
anthology. The theme was isolation and despair, and he originally pitched an idea about a woman going crazy alone on an island. It very much seemed like something I could play with, and I ended up writing about a kidnapped girl who lives alone on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The only person she has to talk to is Black Mary, a rather strange friend who has secrets of her own. The eventual arrival of the Red Mary spurs the girl into action.

I choose not to explain “Black Mary.” Are the Marys figments of the girl’s imagination brought on by her abuse and isolation? Perhaps her mind is creating companionship. Perhaps she is haunted by the ghosts of the man’s previous victims. I feel the same way about this story as I do “Music to Jump By,” in that I believe you, as the reader, will correctly come to your own conclusion.

The other story behind “Black Mary” is that, at the time of writing, I was dealing with the death of two of my three triplets. They were all girls, and while I was so grateful and in love with my remaining littlest girl, I was naturally ripped apart with grief. After rereading this story later, I realized that I wrote about a surviving girl and two otherworldly (or are they?) girls who come to her aid. I think writing “Black Mary” helped me exorcise some of my grief, and I kindly thank Robert Duperre for offering me the chance to create it. Thanks, Robby D! This helped me heal.

“Flat, Flat World”
One of my favorite stories, but also one I found difficult to place. It’s a very ethereal piece about a girl who simply wants to disappear. Nothing is wrong with her life, but she finds herself fading away. It was one of my first pieces where the trees and other things of nature became sentient beings. While I was intrigued by the mysterious man who silently brushes the girls hair, I found myself more drawn to the tree who desires to rain down flowers upon the girl. He’s a thing of majesty and dignity. Very royal.

“Extraordinary Beast”
If you read Gardner Goldsmith’s gorgeous foreword, you’ll be familiar with Las Vegas’ Killercon and the annual creative writing contest. “Extraordinary Beast” was my second attempt at the contest. They gave us a prompt, a few words that needed to be included, and about twenty minutes to write. I had just been looking at some of Alan Kaszowski’s art, and he had a piece that reminded me of Spring-Heeled Jack, so I took the prompt, sat down, and wrote. I won first place for the second year in a row, which was an amazing feeling. I very much like the dash and the sinister intent of the male character. I do believe he’ll show up elsewhere.

“The Boy Who Hangs the Stars”
An experiment. A friend told me that I should write fairytales, and I told him that I didn’t think I could do that. “I cannot do fairytales and horror,” is what I said. But I tried my hand at it and wrote this sweet little story about two children who felt horribly isolated but figure out that a pair of wings fits as nicely around two as it does around one. This story was a game changer for me. It was one of my very first publishing credits, and it was a triumph because I got over a mental “I can’t do that” type of wall. It also cemented my winged-boys and stars obsession.

“Untied”
This was originally named “See Jack and Jane Jump.” I wanted to try my hand at a lighthearted romance, since most of my love stories have to do with the dead or dying. And what is more lighthearted than a suicidal man about to plunge from a building? Okay, so he’s
almost
dead or dying. I had a wonderful professor explain that he loved the surreal and almost bizarro quality of the lecherous tie. He wondered what I was telling the reader about myself. I was flattered; I was only having fun.

“The Container of Sorrows”
My saving grace. I had just written a novel in an absolute haze of delight. Nothing had ever come as easy for me, and I felt absolutely lost after the novel was completed. It felt like the end of a relationship, in a way. I couldn’t write anything of worth for a long time, and I struggled with that. One day I was looking at my favorite piece of art by Mark Ryden. It’s called “Night Visit” and it has always filled me with a quiet, beautiful horror. I sat down and wrote “The Container of Sorrows,” and I was so pleased with the outcome. The white, white girl and her darling Peter, who is actually an important character in the novel that I had just finished. This story was published by
The Pedestal,
and that gained me entrance into the SFWA. “Sorrows” came at a time when I needed to know that I could fall in love with language and with my work again.

“A Place of Beauty”
A brief love affair with language. I wanted to write about a woman in a charming suit and hat who walked away from something somber into something better.

“Music to Jump By”
A story years in the making. When I was newly married, I was in our dank little apartment, soaking in the tub. I was listening to a mix tape that I had made and I thought,
Oh my goodness, this mix is so depressing! It’s music to jump by
. The songs were kind of saying goodbye to this other life that I had left behind, and I was quite young and afraid of what was in store. I finished the story maybe ten years later, here in Vegas. I’ve been toying with the idea of drawing it out into a novel, but I’m not certain about that. While the characters have the depth to carry a novel, that would most likely mean that I would have to explain the ending, and I very much don’t want to explain the ending. You, as the reader, know the ending. It may be different for every reader, but the reader’s heart will tell them if he jumps, if she jumps, if she pushes him so he doesn’t have to make that decision, or if they simply dance until the CD goes quiet. I would also hope that you would think about the soundtrack to your own life. What would it be?

“Axes”
I have a series of short stories that I write to amuse myself. I call it the “Death and Destiny” series. Death and Destiny are roommates until one day when she kicks him out for being a creepy mooch who is always late with the rent. Death drives a huge orange gas-guzzler and leaves Cheetos dust wherever he goes. In 2009 I sold a flash fiction spinoff of this series called “Lady Luck” to
Bards and Sages
. Other than that, I’ve kept them all for myself. Somebody suggested making them into a graphic novel series, which could be a lot of fun. It’s something I’m considering.

“The Quiet Places Where Your Body Grows”
This story hurts. It was written for something called The Fraternity of Flash. It was originally based on the Killercon creative writing contest idea in that everybody was given the same prompt: the words “hungry,” “flashlight,” “breath,” “rain,” and “corpse,” and the sentence “Lightning splintered on the bleak horizon.” I used this as a jumping-off point, and wrote about Azhar and the horrible murder of his little girl. “Quiet Places” is a tie-in to my current novel-in-progress, and Azhar, in all of his optimistic sorrow, shows up to comfort the main character after her child also goes missing. Azhar’s character was inspired by an article I had just read about a man who goes to murder sites years later and takes pictures after the land has healed. He names them after the victims, and I found it to be very haunting and sweet and sad.

“Show Your Bones”
My first published piece. When I originally wrote it in college, it was about ten pages long. I was fed up with the beauty culture and the celebrity hype. My professor said, “You know, magazines are now publishing something called Short-Shorts.” He told me to polish every word as if it were a gem. I starved the story down to its bare bones, and several years later, I sold it for twelve dollars. It was the best twelve bucks I ever made. More importantly, I was a published writer. Whenever I picture my muse, I picture the woman in this story. Sometimes she has wings, and then I believe she is truly happy.

“The ABCs of Murder”
“I got really tired of murdering Billy Cords.” This line just popped into my head one day, so I wrote it down. Who was Billy Cords? Why was the narrator trying to murder him? No, wait, it sounded like the narrator was
succeeding
in murdering him! How could that be? In order to answer that, I sat down and wrote “The ABCs of Murder,” which was quite fun for me. Most of my stories come as a phrase or a scene, and I need to feel it out and discover what happens. It’s exciting. This story won second place in
On the Premises’
contest #7, and I used the money to buy a sewing machine. I’m still terrible at sewing, but it gives me great joy.

“A Place Shielded from Horrors”
This story is a conglomerate of some of the strange dreams that I have. Toby the Tiger Shark usually follows me as I jog through town. He’s quite the protector, and has a blunt, strokeable nose. The Water Cat loves his water room, the singing daisies show up quite a bit, and I used to dream about that apartment with the wooden door that assembles itself every night. Welcome to the world inside my head. Sometimes it’s quite terrifying, and sometimes it’s quite a lovely place to be.

“Crosswise Cosmos Sabotage”
This is really a story about last Tuesday.

“Life”
One evening after the kids were asleep, I put on noise-blocking headphones. The silence was disconcertingly thick and my heartbeat was frightening. In that silence, I wrote “Life,” about a girl whose love is dying while she lies in a field with his brother. It’s about mortality, and joy, and losing that joy, and trust, and mistrust, all at the same time.

“Luna e Volk”
We listen to a lot of Russian music in our house. One of our favorite bands has a solemn song called “Luna e Volk.” It’s absolutely haunting, and the singer tells of a wolf who howls at the moon with blood on its lips. The song still gives me chills after all of this time. I was very inspired by the idea of a man so deeply saturated in the media that he can’t truly distinguish between fantasy and reality. How would this carry over if he meets a woman so ephemeral that he thinks she must be otherworldly? I love how “Luna e Volk” turned out. I think it’s beautifully dark.

“Stars”
My husband doesn’t like to read most of my work. He likes things to be on the lighter side. “Stars” was actually something that he liked—hooray! He was my biggest cheerleader at getting this thing published. It was turned down quite a few times because the story powered along all right, but then the ending was a little too trite. After bringing it back to my writer’s group, the illustrious Illiterati, they told me that the star needed to die at the end. I knew this, but I had the hardest time killing this particular darling. I wanted the star and Samson Gimble to be happy, but it wasn’t their destiny. After deciding that, yes, the star must die, I rewrote the ending and submitted it to the Eric Hoffer Awards. It ended up on the short list and was included in the
Best New Writing 2012
collection, which is now sitting pretty on the shelves of my alma maters. I studied the
Best New Writing
books in college, so to be included in it now...well, that’s an achievement right there. But it was still difficult to ice my little star.

“Wings”
I dearly love this awkward boy and his cumbersome wings. While this is, in a gentle way, a tale about bullying and being shunned for differences, it’s mostly a tale of love. When I look back to my school years, I think of all of the very, very good friends I found hidden beneath their mountains of quirks, and I’m so grateful that they looked past my oddities to find out who I truly was. Life can be harsh when we’re young, but when we have a little experience behind us, we discover that the things that make us odd—wings, my eyes that seem to change color, my friend’s extensive My Little Pony collection—are the things that make us special. This is a story that says, “Hey, there’s hope. Keep being your beautiful self and everything will work out one day.”

“Sweet, Sweet Sonja T”
Before I worked for
Shock Totem
,
I thought the publishing game was much more ephemeral. You shot your story into the ether and an editor magically accepted or rejected it. “Sweet, Sweet Sonja T” came about after I realized that I was sending my personal information off to total strangers, and there was a possibility that one or two of them could be complete whackjobs. That’s probably the case, but the truth is, so am I, so it evens out in the end.

“Blossom Bones”
Exactly 100 words long. I wrote it for a 100-word contest, and ended up getting an honorable mention for it. This brief story gave me the chance to weave the light and the dark together. It’s a terrible love story. My favorite.

“Edibility”
I remember distinctly being in a playful mood when I wrote “Edibility,” and it still brings me happiness when I reread it. It is more surreal than most of my other work, I know, and although a bit bizarre, many aspects are grounded in reality. My husband saw a bobcat on an electrical line, which promptly set ablaze. I want nothing more than to pull all of our grass out and have a giant flower garden instead. I love to bake star-shaped lemon cakes with johnny-jump-ups as decoration. It’s strange how you can take normal everyday things, put them together, and suddenly life seems a dreamy circus.