Look, See, His Bones Are Gone

[handful_ofdust]

Horizontally-blowing snow in Toronto today, making my impossible-to-shake cough all the juicier. I also have what feels like complications from the flora-stripping and replacement two-step, extremely painful and annoying, in the usual area. Niiice!

OTOH, I did get a flood of notes yesterday on "Black Bush", a new short story starring (surprise, surprise) the redoubtable Allfair "A-Cat" Chatwin, newly-sprung holler witch gone wild. For those unfamiliar with her, I made A-Cat up for my story "Crossing the River", which was published in Dark Arts Books' Mighty Unclean anthology--the short pitch for that was "genderswapped Supernatural meets genderswapped Prison Break, plus heirarchical magic, half-demon parentage, fetches and lots of tattoo fetish material". This one, which takes place after "Crossing the River", is more like A-Cat meets Winter's Bone: She returns to her old neighbourhood, intending to dig up her Momma (literally) and quiz her re how best to summon her Daddy, but gets caught up in a teenager's quest to get her possibly-dead brother to stand up in court, by any means necessary. Other fun features include getting dive-bombed by a coven of covens lead by A-Cat's best/only childhood friend, being forced to treat with a creature known as the Rot-Pearl Queen, and (eventually) eating supper off a corpse. Fun times.;)

(There may or may not also be phantom cryptozooids involved, at one point--huge phantom rabbits, maybe, or flying cannibal heads. The sort of shit you trip over while fleeing from Baba Yaga, or such. So if anybody has some suggestions, I'd be glad to entertain them.)

One way or the other, A-Cat's voice is hilariously easy to fall back into; like her template, she's skanky and charming and scary all at once, the very model of a classic Magnificent [Bitch]. Though she'll probably emerge from this one with most of her hands intact, at least.

Comments

[sovay]

a creature known as the Rot-Pearl Queen

I like the sound of that.

(There may or may not also be phantom cryptozooids involved, at one point--huge phantom rabbits, maybe, or flying cannibal heads. The sort of shit you trip over while fleeing from Baba Yaga, or such. So if anybody has some suggestions, I'd be glad to entertain them.)

Actual Baba Yaga?

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

No, I'm just thinking of the sort of weird local legends you get in the backwoods--those crossbreedings of European fairytale nightmares and American fauna. Silver John story stuff.

[sovay]

I vote the flying cannibal heads, then, and at least one nameless thing out of the backwoods that no one ever gets a good look at.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

That'd be the Behinder.

But I like the Skim.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Where would I find explanations of these things? They sound fascinating.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Well, I've really only heard of them via Manly Wade Wellman; specifically 'The Desrick on Yandro.'

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

That one I hadn't read, but I actually just looked it up, and damn. The Bammat shaking its head at John is fairly hilarious, too.

[baggyeyes]

Black Bush sounds like a wild ride...although, for a minute there, my mind convinced me you were writing a story in which George W. Bush becomes black.

Real life stuff makes me extra weird.

Say, did you ever get rid of that rug? Maybe mites in there are affecting your lungs.

See 'life stuff'. I'm weird again.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Flying cannibal heads scare the shit out of me. Not that I've ever encountered them, but it reminds me of those Japanese monsters... I'm sure you know which ones I'm talking about. There's a Malaysian version of an Indonesian vampire that's similar - head detaches from the body at night to drink blood, have to destroy body to stop the cycle. Can't bring myself to google though, too scared. :(

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Penanggalan! Yeah, I love those. ;) I particularly love how they supposedly have to soak their blood-distended guts in vinegar at the end of the night, in order to get them to fit back inside their bodies.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Okay, I finally googled the Japanese one. It's the Rokurokubi and the Nukekubi. Ugghghghgh. This is all because I used to watch Journey to the West and the snake princess did that neck elongating thing in the end credits.