Let Me Tell You a Story E-Book

Tim Waggoner

• Herausgeber: Raw Dog Screaming Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

In Let Me Tell You a Story, Tim Waggoner continues what he started in the Bram Stoker Award-winning Writing in the Dark (2020) and Writing in the Dark: The Workbook (2022), both of which focus on the art of composing successful horror fiction. This latest guidebook takes a different approach, foregrounding Waggoner’s prolific, decades-long career as a professional author. Partly autobiographical, partly tutorial and diagnostic, each chapter features one of Waggoner’s stories followed by reflection on the historical context of publication, insightful commentary, and exercises for writers who are just learning their craft as well as those who have already made a name for themselves. As always, Waggoner’s experience, wit, and know-how shine through as he discusses and re-evaluates material from 1990 to 2018. Let Me Tell You a Story is a vital contribution to his evolving nonfictional oeuvre.

Leseprobe

Let Me Tell You A Story

TIM WAGGONER

GUIDE DOG BOOKS

Let Me Tell You a Story

Copyright © 2023 by Tim Waggoner

ISBN: 978-1-947879-64-5

Library of Congress Control Number:

First GDBHardcover & Paperback Edition: October 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher. Published in the United States by Guide Dog Books, an imprint of Raw Dog Screaming Press.

www.RawDogScreaming.com

Cover Design © 2023 by C.V. Hunt

Interior Layout by D. Harlan Wilson

www.dharlanwilson.com

Guide Dog Books

Bowie, MD

Table of Contents

Foreword

Huntress

Alacrity’s Spectatorium

Mr. Punch

Daddy

Keeping It Together

Ghost in the Graveyard

Joyless Forms

Broken Glass and Gasoline

Waters Dark and Deep

Swimming Lessons

Long Way Home

Sharp as Night

Til Death

How to be a Horror Writer

Afterword

Acknowledgements

FOREWORD

Are You Kidding Me?

Another Damn Writing Book?

After Writing in the Dark, I swore I’d never do another how-to-write book. Once I finished it, I thought I’d said all I had to say about writing fiction in general and horror in particular. Sure, as the years passed and my knowledge (hopefully) increased, I might feel inspired to do another how-to, but for now, I figured my blog posts and newsletter articles about writing would be more than enough.

Then I wrote Writing in the Dark: The Workbook.

One of the things readers liked most about the first volume was the exercises that appeared at the end of each chapter. That got me thinking ... Could I write an entire book of horror-writing exercises? I wasn’t certain, but it sounded like a fun challenge—and obviously there were readers who’d like to have such a book—so I decided to give it a go. Writing in the Dark poured out of me like water when I wrote it, and I was surprised to find that the workbook did so too. But when I finished the workbook, I vowed that I wouldn’t write another follow-up—at least for a while—and I fully intended to stick by this.

I’ve been writing about writing for decades. In my late teens, I began reading Writers’ Digest religiously, and my favorite part of the magazine was Lawrence Block’s monthly column on writing fiction. (This is why I dedicated Writing in the Dark to him.) I became fascinated by the art of writing about writing, and after I began selling fiction and articles professionally, I decided to give it a go. I published a number of how-to-write articles over the years, and when I started a blog over a decade ago, I decided I’d use it as an outlet for writing about writing.

Still, I wanted to do my own how-to-write book, so I wrote various proposals and gave them to my agent to send around, but no publishers were interested. Then I came up with the idea of writing a horror how-to, and John and Jennifer loved the idea, and the rest is history. I told my agent to forget about the previous how-to-write proposals I’d sent her, and I went back to writing fiction full-time. A couple years passed, and my agent—who hadn’t deleted my old proposals—remembered one for a book called Let Me Tell You a Story. I’d originally intended it to be an overall volume on writing fiction, but I’d incorporated so much of that kind of material in Writing in the Dark, I abandoned the idea of writing a generic how-to. My agent sent the proposal to Jennifer, who liked it, and offered a contract—for a book I had no intention of writing.

I’ve been writing professionally for too long to immediately turn down a publisher’s offer without at least thinking about it. And my previous two experiences working with Jennifer and John were wonderful, so I was excited by the prospect of working with them again. But what the hell would this new book be about? I knew I couldn’t write the generic how-to-write book I’d originally envisioned for Let Me Tell You a Story, but there was nothing about the title that suggested a way to turn it into a third volume on writing horror. I decided I’d figure something out eventually, so I signed the contract.

Days, weeks, months passed. I worked on other projects, but I kept thinking about Let Me Tell You Story and wrestling with what the book should be. More time passed. The deadline for turning in the manuscript approached, and I still had nothing. This was very unlike me. Usually when I’ve contracted to do a book, I finish it early. Not this time. I told Jennifer, and she kindly understood and gave me an extension, but I was afraid I’d never figure out a way to move forward with Let Me Tell You a Story. If I couldn’t, I’d have to back out of the contract, which was something I’d never done before. But, as so often happens in my writing life, when I thought all was lost, an idea popped into my head.

I’d written Writing in the Dark: The Workbook solely because of reader feedback I’d received on the first volume. Was there anything else readers liked about the first two books that might serve as inspiration for a third volume? Yes, there was. In each of the previous books, I included a short story of mine and critiqued it based on the principles outlined in the books. I talked about what worked, what didn’t, and what I might do differently if I had the chance to rewrite the story.

What if I focused an entire book on examining a collection of my stories, discussing their origins, my intentions for them, how well they’d worked, and what—if anything—I’d change now. Such a book would be an odd duck, part short story collection, part how-to-write, part memoir, and part career retrospective. The idea of working with a hybrid format like this appealed to me. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t encountered similar books before. One of my favorites is science fiction writer Mike Resnick’s Putting It Together: Turning Sow’s Ear Drafts into Silk Purse Stories. In it, Mike presents several of his stories and shows how they went from idea to multiple drafts to finished version. The idea behind his approach was that any how-to-write book can tell you how to create developed characters, write engaging dialogue, etc., but by detailing his writing process, he could show you how to do it, or at least how he did it. And of course, Stephen King’s On Writing is a blend of how-to and memoir.

As I contemplated this new approach for Let Me Tell You a Story, I had some concerns. What if readers viewed the book as one long ego trip on my part? Check out all these fabulous stories! Aren’t I a great writer? What if readers didn’t give a damn about my fiction and only wanted how-to-write advice? What if, by being neither fish nor fowl—not fully a writinginstruction guide or a shortstory collection—the book failed to find an audience? I’ve always enjoyed reading authors’ story notes in collections, though, and I feel I learn more when authors share specifics about how they create their work as opposed to offering generic advice, so I figured, what the hell? Why not go for it?

So I did.

How did I choose the stories included in this book? I decided to include stories that were pivotal in my development as a writer, stories where I learned important lessons or made mistakes that I only recognized in hindsight. I’ve arranged the stories in chronological order because that seemed simplest, and because that will hopefully create a portrait of my development as a writer as well.

In terms of the type of stories I’ve included, while I’ve written in different genres, I’m known primarily as a horror/dark fantasy author, so I stuck to those genres rather than put in a fantasy or science fiction story here and there. It seemed to make more thematic sense to me.

And after each story, I’ve included commentary/reflection, as well as a couple writing exercises so you can take the focus off my work and put it on yours, where it belongs.

You’re welcome to read and use this book however you wish, as a writing instruction guide, as a short story collection, or as an inside look at how one writer created his stories and what he thinks about them today. It’s as much a portrait of an artist as it is a how-to, and I hope whatever you came here for, you find the book both enjoyable and useful.

So let’s get started.

HUNTRESS

Originally published in Tamaqua (Winter/Spring 1990)

Reprinted in The Mythic Circle (Fall 1993)

This was my first time at Basin Street. I make it a rule never to visit the same place twice. Not that I fear detection or capture. If I were detected it would yield little more than a headline on a cheap supermarket tabloid. And capture is a distinct impossibility. You can’t hold a spirit. Not when it doesn’t wish to be held.

I was more than a spirit that night. My form was that of a woman, mid-twenties, with brunette hair which hung in bangs over my forehead and touched the back of my neck. My skin was pale, my lips red. I wore a white blouse and blue jeans. My body was long and thin—a model’s body. Not the pipe cleaner-limbed languidness of Europe, but rather the controlled sexuality of, if not the girl next door, the woman in the next office. The one who sells business suits by managing to make them look like teddies. It was one of my most effective guises. I thought it would work well for this night.

I was waiting alone at a table just big enough for two. The wait used to be my favorite part of the hunt, back when it was all new to me, but that was centuries ago. At first it was exciting, delirious. I walked like a god among mortals. Now, after thousands, hundreds of thousands of nights like this one, I no longer felt like a god. I saw myself, on those few occasions that I even bothered to think about it, as a shark. And like a shark, which must swim constantly in order to extract oxygen from the water, I traveled without let. One night a bar, another a street corner, another a back alley ... And I gave as much thought to these places as a shark did to the water it swims in. Now the waiting wasn’t anything to me.

Dance music throbbed from gigantic speakers, a driving beat overlayed with electronic runs that were supposed to sound like bells. The music filled the room with a constant beat I could feel through the floor. I prefer to sit right next to a speaker and let the music fill me, but it discourages conversation, so I don’t usually indulge myself. At the table next to me sat a ram-headed man dressed in a green robe. He was drinking beer through a straw and talking with a girl whose tight red leotard sported a forked tail. A horned tiara topped off her ensemble. Her companion’s mask was amateurish. The hair was obviously fake and the horns were far too short to be menacing. Still, it was amusing.

A woman in a black dress, low cut and torn at the hem, with red nails and raven circles around her eyes walked past, her arms around the waist of a young man in a gargoyle mask wearing a T-shirt which read “Go to Hell.” I smiled as they went by and lit a cigarette.

The bar was tended by a pair of men with bloody homemade scars on their faces, necks, arms—it seemed every bit of their exposed flesh was covered by lipstick-red welts. They had wrapped themselves in chains. I supposed them to be the Damned, though they were far too cheerful to be convincing.

I wondered what these costumed children would think could they meet the cold, harsh shadows they mocked. Shadows such as myself. The thought turned my smile into a grin.

A waitress came by and I ordered a glass of burgundy. As I waited for my drink, I watched the dance floor. It was filled with all manner of creatures jumping and swaying to the music. As I watched, a man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five approached me. He was wearing a charcoal gray business suit. His hair was slicked back and he wore a false goatee. It was time for it to begin and I realized with a bit of a shock that I was disappointed. In the back of my mind I was already wondering where I would be tomorrow night.

“Good evening, my dear,” he said cheerfully. He thrust paper and pen at me. “Would you be interested in the deal of a lifetime?”

I took his pen and laughed. He stood patiently, a smile on his lips. I glanced over his contract. He’d done it in red ink, to resemble blood. He’d even gone to the trouble to smear it in a few places. The irony was delicious.

“Where do I sign?”

He smiled back. “At the bottom, of course.” He spoke loudly to be heard over the music, but in an easy manner. Still, I could feel his nervousness. He was uncertain of himself, yet he was here. I liked that.

“Would you like to sit down so we can discuss terms?”

For a moment I thought I had been too direct. He hesitated, and I thought he would mumble some excuse and go, but then he smiled again and sat down.

“I think you’ll find my terms very reasonable.”

“I’m sure I will.” The waitress brought me my drink. He insisted on paying for it and ordered himself a Michelob. I thanked him politely, then sipped my wine, waiting for him to make a move.

“My name’s Jerry.”

“Mine’s Lana.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lana.” He offered his hand. I found it a most endearing gesture. I held his hand for just a half-second too long. I tasted his flesh through mine, drank in the salty-sweetness of his skin.

The waitress returned with his beer. He took a long sip, his eyes scanning the dancers. I knew from experience he was buying time to think of what he would say next. I took the opportunity to examine him more closely. His hair was more brown than black. It would be much lighter whenever he washed out the substance he’d used to slick it back. His face was thin. It was a face that hovered on the edge of appearing unhealthy. But that didn’t bother me. Bodies are merely empty shells. It’s what fills them that is important. I caught his light-green eyes and in the instant I held his gaze, I bored into and down to his soul. Most people’s souls are hidden, buried deep within the flesh, but his was close to the surface. It was one of the purest I’d seen in a very long time. My need screamed at me to take him right then. But I restrained myself. There would be time for that later.

The contract lay on the table between us. He rolled it up carefully and replaced it inside his jacket, slipping it into a pocket behind a small pad of drawing paper.

I smiled gently. “Are you an artist?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, then sighed. “Not really. I play around with it some, but that’s about it.”

I understood now why the contract had been so well done. He had a talent for this sort of thing. “Is that a sketch pad? I’d like to see it.”

He looked embarrassed. “I’d really rather not.”

“Please?”

He was uncomfortable, but he gave in and handed me the pad. There was only one picture, a rough pencil sketch of a woman. I realized with a start that it was me.

He was very embarrassed now. “Now you know why I didn’t want to show it to you.”

“But why not? It’s very good.” I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t shown it to me. Clearly he had intended to keep it to himself. But why? He was here, in his own way, for the same thing I was. Why wouldn’t he make use of such an effective lure?

“I sometimes sketch when I come to places like this. Gives me something to do when I’m by myself, you know?” He spoke hurriedly to cover his embarrassment. “Besides, what with all the costumes, I thought I might come across something really interesting to draw.”

“I see.” I examined the sketch closely. The way the woman in the drawing held her head gave her an air of intelligence. Her lips were not the sensual fantasy I expected, but rather soft and kind. Most striking were her eyes. They were dark and tired. I looked so ... human.

The music faded out then and the lights came up on the floor. Without the anonymity to keep them going, people wandered back to their table or off to get a drink.

“How are all you demons out there tonight?” the DJ asked, much too loudly and cheerfully. “You all look like hell!”

There were a few answering howls and shrieks from some of the more inebriated patrons, and quite a few obscenities as well.

“We’ll get back to the dancing for all you boys and ghouls out there in just a couple minutes.”

“Jesus,” Jerry said, shaking his head. “Boys and ghouls.”

“First off, I want to remind you that Rock 109 will be sponsoring a sneak preview of the new movie Hellbeast this Thursday at eight o’clock at the Cinema Seven. I’ve seen some reviews, gang, and this one’s supposed to be scarrrry! Also, don’t forget to vote for your favorite demon tonight. I’ve got the ballots, so just come on over to the booth and get them. You’ve still got half an hour to get your votes in. Remember, the winner of tonight’s contest will take home one hundred dollars and will be automatically registered for Rock 109’s trip to Hawaii. All right, enough talk. Let’s get back to raising hell!” Thankfully, the music started. It wasn’t long until the dance floor was filled again.

“So why didn’t you come in costume?” Jerry asked. “Not in the mood?”

I shrugged. “I couldn’t think of anything.”

I hadn’t known about the contest beforehand. I wander at random, following my instincts. Just before the club opened, I chose my form and changed from shadow and mist into the woman Jerry saw before him. If I had known about the contest, I could have created a costume from my substance, as I did the blouse and jeans. Perhaps in my younger days, such a joke would have appealed to me. Now it seemed like more effort than it was worth.

“I really like your outfit,” I said. “It’s very clever.”

“Thanks.”

“Where’d you get the idea from?”

“I work at a video store, so I see a lot of movies. I love those old deal-with-the-devil flicks. You know, the ones where Satan’s always very urbane and dapper? I get a kick out of seeing the Prince of Darkness portrayed as a kind of insurance salesman.”

I giggled, but this time it was only half-affected. There was no devil, not in the form Jerry mimicked. But there were myself and others of my kin. And urbane and dapper we are not.

The conversation lagged for a moment, and we took the opportunity to finish off a little more of our drinks. “Do you really want to hang around for the rest of this contest?” I asked.

He smiled. “Well, I did go to a lot of trouble to get all decked out. Took me almost ten minutes.”

“I was thinking maybe we could go someplace and talk.”

“What’s wrong with talking right here?” His smile faded just a bit. “Look, I like you Lana, but ... not so fast, okay?”

“Sure.” I forced myself to relax and give him a smile, but inside I was furious. He wasn’t ready yet, and I hadn’t realized it! This had never happened before. I was so upset I nearly got up and walked away. But then I realized something. This really hadn’t happened before. Once again I was living the hunt, not merely going through the motions. For the first time in ... no, for the first time, the outcome of an evening was in doubt for me. And it was exciting.

I nodded to the dance floor. “Who do you think will win?”

“The contest?” He sat his empty bottle down and looked around the room. “I don’t know. Maybe that guy over by the bar, the one in the purple robe.”

The man Jerry pointed to was tall, almost seven feet. He wore a robe of deepest purple, embossed with stars and silver crescent moons. His mask was pale yellow, and a single spiral horn jutted from the middle of its prominent brow. One eye hole was cut out for him to see, but the other was a rubber sculpture, torn from its socket and hanging bloodily down to the cheek.

“Why him?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He just looks like a real demon, you know? I guess I think a demon should look like something scarier than you can imagine. For me, that guy comes the closest.”

I nodded, wondering if Jerry would have a chance to change his mind before the night was over.I gestured to the dance floor. “What if they were real? Right now.”

He thought about it for a moment. “This is probably going to sound stupid, but I would draw them. See, the reason I like to draw things is because, while I do it, I feel, I don’t know, like I kind of get into what it is that I draw. I understand it, on a different level than the kind of understanding you get just by thinking about something or talking to someone. As just a bunch of people in costume, they’re fun to look at and sketch. But if they were really demons, I’d draw them so I could understand, really understand what it was like to be one.”

“What if you didn’t like what you discovered?” I glanced down at his sketch of me.

“I’m not interested in liking something when I draw it. I just want to understand it.”

I smiled and fingered the edge of the paper. “And what did you learn about me from this?”

“That I wanted to come talk to you.”

“Come on.”

“Really. You think I came over just because you’re pretty? If that was all I saw, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“Beauty is unimportant to you?”

He smiled. “Not at all. It’s just that there are dozens of better-looking guys than me here tonight. And they were all eyeing you before I came over. Hell, most of them still are, waiting for me to strike out so they can have their shot. A girl as pretty as you are is awfully intimidating to a guy like me. I’m not exactly Mr. Universe.”

“Then why did you come over?”

He picked the sketch up and looked at it. “It’s hard to explain. Usually when girls as pretty as you come to a place like this, they spend all their time looking around, checking out the guys, enjoying the music, whatever. But you, well, you weren’t really paying attention to what was going on around you. You were focused on what was going on inside you. Kind of brooding, you know.”

I forced a laugh. “And you find that attractive?”

He put the sketch back down with a smile. “I guess. It made you stand out in a way your beauty couldn’t. What were you thinking about anyway?”

I hesitated.

“Nevermind,” he said. “You were probably just thinking about work or something, and I read too much into it.” He tapped his fingers on the table in time to the music.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked. The question was casual. His eyes showed that he was afraid I would say no, certain I would give some apology, I already had a boyfriend, a fiancé, maybe.

“Sure.”

He grinned and I found myself grinning back. He stood, took off his jacket, and draped it over the back of his chair.

He offered me his arm in a mock-gentlemanly manner. “Madame?” There was his own anticipation, his own need, not really so different from my own, beneath the word.

“Sir.” I rested my hand in the crook of his arm as he led me to the floor.

The dancers moved aside, giving us a tiny space. The walls next to the sound booth were mirrored and showed the two of us in the midst of whirling and gyrating creatures. Jerry turned out to be not a bad dancer at all. I felt free to let go just a bit more, to show off a little. It had been a while since I had a chance to really cut loose on the dance floor. By this point in the evening, my escort and I have usually moved on to bigger and better things. But I was surprised to find myself actually having fun.

I found myself succumbing to the beat, losing myself in the music. The beat was in the floor, in my feet; I breathed it, tasted it, drank it in. And before me was Jerry. I began to see him, not as bone and meat, but as shifting patterns of energy, pulsing with delicious life. I couldn’t stop myself any longer. I reached out and began to take him, to drain his life into myself.

Just then I caught a glimpse of our reflections out of the corner of my eye and I stopped dancing and stared. There was Jerry, slowing down as his life energy began to trickle out of his body. Around him were other dancers, most costumed, but a few were wearing regular clothing. And there, right next to Jerry, was a white-faced woman standing deathly still. But I couldn’t tell her apart from any other woman on the dance floor. She was just another person in the crowd. And for a dizzying, sick moment, I asked myself: Just what am I?

But then a man in a skintight black leotard painted to resemble a skeleton whirled away from his partner and came between me and my reflection.

Jerry lost the beat for a half-second and he swayed, light-headed. I reached out to steady him. “Beer catching up to you?”

He was uncertain, confused. “I guess so.”

“It’ll pass. Just take it easy.”

My own confusion had broken the connection before I could take more than a little of his life force. What had I been thinking of, trying to take him in public like that? But I hadn’t been thinking. And with that, I had the answer to my earlier question. I was Hunger, and that’s all I was. The song ended and there was a brief moment before the next one, a moment filled with clinking glass and the soft buzz of conversation beyond the edge of the dance floor. The lights dimmed and a slow song came on. Some people left the floor, while others went into their partners’ arms. Still others emerged from the shadows to embrace and sway to the music.

The momentary mingling of our life forces had made it far easier to sense his feelings, and I knew that he wanted to touch me, wanted me to touch him. I placed my hands lightly on his shoulders. His hands trembled slightly as they rose to my waist. I took a half-step closer to him, and he to me. The floor seemed to flow beneath us, like we were treading lightly on the surface of a cool, tranquil lake.

Jerry pulled me closer. I could not only sense his emotions, I could feel them as intensely as if they were my own. I didn’t just know his hope and excitement; they became mine. The sudden intimacy was most ... disturbing. I put a mild psychic block between us. I am Hunger, I reminded myself. Nothing else.

He pulled back and looked at me. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He wasn’t very reassured, so I pulled him close once more and let my body reassure him for me.

We held each other through the song and two more. His hair was in my face and I breathed in the dizzying aroma of maleness, of cologne and sweat. My tongue darted out of its own volition and flicked across a strand of his wet hair. I relished the taste of him. The need was full on me now.

I whispered in his ear. “Could we go get some air? I’m starting to feel a little ill.”

We left the dance floor and returned to our table. “I’ll be fine once I get out of here.”

He nodded as he slipped into his jacket. His goatee was coming off. He pulled it free and tossed it on the table. I reached for my purse, and paused as I saw the sketch lying there. I picked it up and put it in my purse. We weaved through the tables and smoke toward the exit.

Outside, I breathed deeply. “That’s much better. Thank you.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I guess it was just too much wine. What time is it?”

He checked his watch. “A little after two.”

I sighed. “I was hoping we could get a bite to eat, but it’s a little late for me. I should go back and call a cab.”

“You don’t have to do that. I could give you a ride home.”

I smiled. “I’d like that.”

We’d been driving only a few minutes when I told Jerry I was feeling sick again.

“Do you live close by?” I asked.

“About ten, twelve miles. We could be there in a few minutes. You might feel better if you could lie down for a while.”

“That might be a good idea at this point.”

We pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex. He was on the second floor. I allowed him to help me up the stairs.

He opened the door to his apartment and stood back to let me enter. It was a one-bedroom, big enough for one, perhaps two when the occasion demanded it.

He shut and locked the door. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“A glass of water would be nice.”

He went into the kitchen.

I heard him open a cupboard and turn on the tap. I looked around the room and realized that what I had first taken to be framed pictures were instead Jerry’s artwork. A landscape, a kitten, an old man, a skyline at night.

He came back into the room and handed me my glass of water.

“I thought you were shy about your work.”

“I am. These are for me. Not many people ever get to see them.”

I smiled at the implied compliment. “I’m honored, sir.” I took a sip of water.

“Let’s go sit down,” he offered.

I nodded and he led me to the couch. I drank a little more.

“I think I’m better now, Jerry. Thank you for taking care of me. You’re very sweet.” I leaned over and kissed him lightly on the lips.

It took him by surprise. “You’re feeling better, I take it.”

“I’m starting to feel all right, but I’m not sure I’ll make a full recovery. Unless ...”

“Unless what?”

“Another kiss or two wouldn’t hurt?”

He grinned and pulled me to him. The kiss was intense and my hunger welled up. But I held myself back. Just a little longer and it would be so much better.

He undressed me slowly, clumsily. He hadn’t done this many times and his hands were unsure. His lips moved over my skin as I unbuttoned his shirt. Then I undid his belt and helped him out of his pants. We hugged, and the hunger sang within me. I could feel his own hunger calling to me.

We got down on the floor and we joined.

He was unpracticed, but what he lacked in skill, he made up for in enthusiasm. He was a rare one—totally open and giving of himself. There would be no tearing, no rending of body and spirit that makes a soul bland and tasteless. He was opening the doors for me, one by one, until he would be mine.

Right before I feed, my perceptions shift and instead of seeing a man’s face, I always see the bright flare and pulse of his life force as he builds to orgasm. But it didn’t happen this time. I watched, for the first time, the face of my prey. Watched him revel in his body’s sensations, saw his tender expression as he kissed my neck, my face. Saw deep into his eyes as he looked into mine.

I wondered if it had been like this before. Had all their faces shown the same emotions? Had all their feelings been ... real? All night I had been thinking of Jerry as special. But what if they all had been special?

We flowed together, pulsed one against the other with building urgency. The sensations my body gave me were nothing compared to the waves of Jerry’s Self which crashed into me. As he neared orgasm I dissolved the block and easily stripped away what remained of his psychic defenses.

I watched his face as his breathing quickened. His skin was flushed and I couldn’t get over how alive he was. Over his shoulder, I saw one of the drawings on his wall. The one of the kitten. And I realized something. It hadn’t been my lure that had drawn him to me. He had come over to my table because he had seen beyond my disguise. He had seen what no one else ever had. Me.

He held me tight as he came. His soul shone full and bright, and I reached deep to feed.

But for the first time I understood what it was that I took from my prey. I understood Life.

And I spared him.

We rested in each other’s arms for a while. After a bit he asked me not “How Was Yours?” or “Was it Good?” but “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

His brow furrowed with worry. “You’re crying.”

“I am?” I touched my cheek and found it wet.

“Is something wrong?”

I shook my head. “Could you just hold me some more?”

I was gone by morning. I had reverted to my true form, little more than a bit of unseen fog, and slept as I drifted through towns and cities, across country sides.

I’m sure Jerry was hurt and puzzled by my absence when he awoke, but I couldn’t stay with him. No matter how much I understood, I would never be more than a mockery of what he thought I was.

But I did leave him something. His sketch of me.

The next was another town, another bar. The place was seedy, the tables scarred by ancient graffiti which held the crusted black scum of years of cigarette ash and spilled beer. The body I chose that night was young and blond. I wore a tight, thin T-shirt and shorts.

The clientele could hardly be considered sophisticated. The majority of patrons were already drunk, although it was still early, and were bellowing out the words to a song on the jukebox.

A man walked up to my table. He was thin, reedy, skin weathered by time and work. He had been handsome once, before he’d seen too much of life, but he retained enough of his former looks to approach me with confidence.

“You’re new ‘round here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. Care to show me around?”

His smile became a grin. “I’d like that.”

I stood. He offered me his arm and I took it. Later I tore the soul free from his body and devoured it whole. I had to look at his face the entire time, had to see his eyes as the life left them. I see all their faces now.

It goes on like that. Every night someplace else. But not always someone else. Sometimes I can’t go through with it. And I’ve noticed I’m getting weaker.

What happens to a shark when it can no longer make itself eat? It soon dies, sinks to the bottom and is buried in mud, forgotten.

But one thought will make that long descent easier. I will not be forgotten. Not as long as there’s a small, framed sketch on a wall somewhere.

Comments

I wrote this story for one of my graduate-level creative-writing classes back in 1988-89 (I can’t remember which year for sure). I was 24 or 25, and recently married to my first wife. PC’s were still new back then, and I wrote it on some boxy black metal computer my dad gave me, with a thick glass screen and glowing green letters. I had a daisy-wheel printer which produced copy that looked as if it had been written using a typewriter, since my professors (not to mention editors) weren’t fond of trying to read dot-matrix printer text. Dad got the printer for me, too. He worked repairing ATM machines, but technology was a hobby for him—his passion, really—and he always found computers and printers cheap in those days, often repairing or even building them himself. I sometimes wonder what my dad would’ve done if he’d had the opportunity to go to college. Would he have become an engineer? Or a computer designer? Maybe.

My inspiration for “Huntress” was twofold. I’d read an article in Writer’s Digest about the most common clichés in horror fiction, and one of them was called The Jaws of Sex. This is a horror story where an unsuspecting victim (usually a man) is lured by person (usually a woman) into a sexual encounter. During the encounter, the woman reveals herself to be a monster of some kind and kills the man. I decided to give the cliché a go, only I’d turn it around, make the monster the main character, and see if I could make readers feel sympathy for her. My second inspiration was Suzy McKee Charnas’ novel The Vampire Tapestry. Skip the next paragraph—which I’ve enclosed in brackets—if you don’t want the book’s ending spoiled for you.

[At the end of the novel, the vampire character comes to view his prey as people instead of food, and he can no longer bring himself to kill them. He then goes into hibernation, and when he awakens, he’ll be a pure unfeeling predator again. He goes through this cycle every century or so, with no memory of his previous lives, as this is the only way he can survive.]

I decided to make my main character a succubus so she’d be more directly connected to sex than a vampire or other monster, and I decided she would be an it, a genderless being who could be either male or female, depending on a victim’s sexual preference. The character would be unimaginably old, and I decided that she (the entity presented as a woman in the story) would develop empathy for humans, which would make it more difficult for her to feed, putting her existence in jeopardy. I would focus on the climactic (no pun intended) night where she finally makes a connection to one of her victims and finds out once and for all who and what she really is.

I didn’t know it at the time, but what I’d done was give my story an emotional core. It was about an important struggle for the main character, one which would determine the course of her life.

Because I wanted readers to feel the most sympathy for my main character as possible, I decided to write the story in first person. For whatever reason, I tend not to use first person a lot. Probably because a first-person narrative implies the narrator lives through the story events, decreasing suspense and tension (especially in horror), and it brings up the question of who the narrator is telling the story to and why. Plus, how much time has passed between the events the narrator is describing and who they are now? If enough time has passed, you essentially have two main characters: the narrator today and their past self. These selves may have different attitudes, speech patterns, etc. Most readers don’t worry about stuff like that, so when I write a first-person story, I tend not to worry about it either. I most often write in an immersive third-person point of view, which is close like first person, but there’s a bit of distance there. I can kill the character, have them change into something awful at the end of the story, or have them commit a horrible act, all without worrying about how they’re managing to tell this story themselves. And in third person, there’s no narrator who already knows how the events of the story turned out. Imagine a first-person narrator starting out a story thusly: This is a story about how I was almost killed by a ravenous werewolf who turned out to be my twin sister, and how I was forced to kill her in self-defense by stabbing her in the heart with a silver dagger. Poor Cecily. Anyway, my tale begins in New Orleans in 1997 ...

(For some reason, I find first person more comfortable when I’m writing a novel than a short story. I have no idea why.)

Exposition can be a problem in first-person stories, as the narrator can deviate from relating events moment-by-moment and go into memories or longwinded explanations about people, places, how things work, etc. In “Huntress” I tried to keep the exposition focused on what my character was experiencing at that moment and have her tell readers the bare minimum of what they needed to know when they needed to know it. One of the ways I managed this was to leave much about my character vague so I wouldn’t be tempted to put too much information in the story. I know she’s a succubus, she’s a predator, she’s very old, she can present as either gender, her true form is some kind of energy, and that’s about it. I focused more on how she feels about these things as opposed to a lot of specific detail about them. Writing instructors often tell students they need to have everything about their characters worked out in detail, but I’ve found that the less I know, the better sometimes, especially when writing short fiction. Plus, it allows me to keep a sense of mystery going about the supernatural. The more specific detail people use to depict supernatural events—especially when they fully explain the reasons behind them and how they work—the less magic there is in a story.