It’s a grand fall in New England, though warm in a way I don’t like. The leaves have passed that haunting orange-pink to settle in their crimsons and golds and all the other colors that make sense to the eye.
Halloween came and went—a season in which I revisit books of a certain character, and while I do read horror now, horror isn’t quite what I mean. There’s an autumnal quality that draws me, and a particular take on American society and Americana: Something Wicked This Way Comes, the Addams family, Peace, folk tales. For the last handful of years I’ve re-read Zelazny’s classic A Night in the Lonesome October, which is ostensibly set outside of London, but has, thanks I think to its interest in old Universal monster movies, a similar vibe. Other books have the same key, without any monsters: The Westing Game, for instance, and Little, Big. (ThoughLittle, Big is one of the most flexibly seasonal books I know. Most books either have a clear seasonality—Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale in winter, say—or very little seasonality. I’ve read Little, Big in every season, and it’s seemed perfectly fit to each.)
This year’s new (to me) discovery was Kate Milford’s The Boneshaker, bluesy and haunting and featuring one of my favorite folk tales, the tale of Stingy Jack, which I believe is a Scottish or Irish story originally—but which I encountered first in an American telling, and which seems, especially in its end, a distinctly American parable. The Boneshaker also stands out for opening with enormous portent, with many mysterious figures stalking around doing Mysterious Stuff, and—to my pleasant surprise—follows through on all counts, rather than vagueing off into mystery-box land.
I’m curious what binds these books. There’s a sort of dry-leaf whimsy to them, but that’s not all. There’s a sensitivity to Americana, played slant. Perhaps it’s the sense of the charming cheap plastic monster mask removed, to reveal the real monster—or is that just another mask? Can we choose our faces? And what might that choice reveal?
Last Sunday I took part in a goblin-themed Halloween charity prose-off, hosted by the fine folks at Pandemonium Books. It worked like this: each round, we three writers each drew a story prompt from a basket. We then had ten minutes to write a story, or a piece of one, involving our word, and goblins; then, we read our results aloud, and moved on to the next round, for a total of three rounds. It’s a fun exercise, and let me tell you, ten minutes goes by fast. But I liked the snippets of zero-drafty microfiction I ended up with, and I thought you might enjoy them too. The titles are the prompts I received, in case you want to try this exercise at home.
Villain
He cowered behind the barn while the heroes soared above.
It was the sound of wings that woke him in the cold before dawn—their avalanche sweep. He had time to grab his gobbling from the crib, and scuttle out the window, before the fireballs fell.
Wargs screamed in the kennels as they died, and the wind wafted the stench of roast aurochs and burnt hair. Through the fire came the rainbow light of an unsheathed holy sword.
He clutched his gobbling to his chest, and heard her coo.
Villain, that was what the heroes heard—and somehow never thought that it meant farmer.
Comedy
On Friday the Comedy came to town.
We ran from our homes to see them, leaving our dinners half-eaten, our mothers calling admonishments after, come home before the late bell, come home before the gates close, come home, come home—and we did not listen.
Masked, they dazzled us.
Pantaloon staggered pompous and rich upon the stage. The Lovers sparkled. Scaramouche with his twisted leering mask gamboled and plotted in the wings.
Vincenzo and Alonso could not keep their eyes off the Lovers, and they dared each other on—to sneak into the wagons and see them bare. Come home, we said, echoing our mothers. Come home. But they did not listen.
Vincenzo we found later, after the Comedy wagons left. He trembled and could not speak, but to say—they were not masks.
Wild West
“Y’all ain’t from around here, are ya?”
“What ever,” Grothmog said, in his most studied and noncommittal voice, “gave you that idea?”
Go west, young man, the papers said. And Grothmog had said, he’d said, that Arglog had focused too much on the first part, ignoring the pivotal final word. So here they were. They might not be the meanest cowpokes in the west, but they certainly were the greenest.
The local boys circled their table, blocking out the light that streamed through the saloon doors and the paper windows. “You gettin’ fresh with us, gobbo?”
“I would not dream,” Gothmog said—his hand resting, casually, on the pearl handle of his .45. “I doubt there’s been anything fresh in this establishment for quite some time.”
That’s all I have for this week. Take care of yourselves. Enjoy the autumn. And: vote!
OMG what lovely microfiction :) I love how poetic, florid your style is -- a nice alternate from the relatively straightforward style I usually associate with your books. I hope there are more such fundraisers in the future, such as I can attend!