Disappointing

Down here, the earth bleeds, her tissues giving up what is held between silt and sand and rock, allowing it to well where a wound is made in her epidermis, a tooth mark piercing all the way down to her private places, where she steeps in four and a half billion years of what is done, and what is witnessed, and what is felt. The cut is part-scabbed with un-mortared bricks, chalky white dulled through shades of grey and into inky black as they are submerged beneath the pooling surface, where, by design, this new-made skin will never knit.

Down here, that black sheened surface is smooth and still, catching whatever fleeting ray of light penetrates the depths and returning it to the sky like mirrored glass. But beneath, in a seeping, sibilant shift through soil and stone, all is motion. Above, where moisture gathers and falls and flows, and sinks into the beckoning earth, water collects fragments of the sublunary world like sins and carries them into the dark as it descends. But the earth offers absolution. Heavy chemicals, good and bad both, are shed amongst the soil, and the stink of death and waste is lost amongst the gravel. Viruses and microscopic protozoa are devoured by microbes amidst the sand, and sediment finds a new home, here within the land. But feelings? The sharp spike of fear, the bitter taste of fury, the heft of disappointment, feelings flood the aquifer to seethe beneath the sun-bleached mud.

And down here, at the bottom of the well, the earth bleeds through brick. Filtered, cleansed, clear water. Or so they choose to believe, as they lift the pump arm and watch the water fill the glass. So they choose to believe as their children swallow bitterness, and resentment, terror and sadness, the tears they themselves wept into the snow just this winter past. But here in the shaft, unencumbered by the flesh of their mothers and fathers, feelings mist the brickwork with poisonous clarity and lace the clinging moss with purified loathing. Here, the spirits of dread and disgust rise in swirling evaporate untethered by the risk of castigation. A traveller leaning over the brink of a well in the brightness of a too-warm day, will feel the chill about their cheeks and breathe deeply in, relishing the softness of the air at the rim of their nostrils, savouring the humid cold as it enters the lungs. Just a breath, one deep inhalation, to ice the blood a little before they journey on. And they will come away and barely notice how their patience has frayed just a little, or how they are wary, now, of shadows they did not see before.

But for those who drink the water, who fill their bellies, who soak their guts and flush their kidneys through? There is nothing more powerful on the face of this earth than water, and every man must drink.

What did you think? Did you like it? If this was an excerpt from a novel, a wee amuse bouche as it were, would you pick the book up? I’ll be honest, I quite like it. This bit. I’m not unhappy with it. But I’ve shown you the trailer for the film here, the shiniest bit. The premise, but not the plot. Really, I should add a smattering of other paragraphs, just to get you invested.

It’s just… don’t buy your ticket for the movie theatre quite yet. This masterpiece is still very much in production, and there are a few hold ups in play. Namely, the actors are one dimensional, the costumes pinpoint the period with the same precision as Dick Van Dyke pinpoints a regional dialect in Mary Poppins, the lighting designer is a work-experience kid and the writer is on strike again. Oh, and the director appears to be avoiding questions of the legitimacy of the art by scrolling Instagram and shouting at set design about the shade of faux stone to be used for the façade. It should be at once warm AND forbidding, apparently.

In August 2024, I joined a small local(ish) dark fiction writing group. Periodically, we put together an anthology, based on a prompt, in which each of us contribute a novella of up to 20,000 words. This is my second. Having not written stories of 20,000 words before, the first, I was certain, was a learning experience for me. The second, so far, has ALSO been a learning experience. In that I have learnt that I am not a good learner. Perhaps it is the disappointment at this discovery which has me hobbled, but here I am, throwing metaphors like confetti to pretty up a mundane truth. I am not actually all that good at writing stories.

Pointing it out feels somewhat like standing on the battle field with a nicely carved sword declaring one’s Achilles heel, but there it is. A story, you see, requires what they call a narrative arc. Which, and I must disclose AI usage here, google AI overview tells me “transforms a random timeline of events into a compelling experience”. A compelling experience. Quite so.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I have a random timeline of events, but there may be issues with the compulsion of the experience. AI Overview (interesting word choice, don’t you think? I probably would have avoided Big Brother connotations, or anything that close to “overlord”, given the public alarm, but there you go. AI summation? AI’s best effort?) would have me going about “building momentum, raising tension, and guiding a character through challenges before reaching a resolution.” So look, in fairness, let me give you some evidence of this. Here is how I go on, introducing my main character:

By 10am, the sun had burnt away the mist even in the garden of Althorp House. Emery Althorp had slept well, which he had not expected, and was enjoying a leisurely breakfast, which he had. He had scrambled for himself two eggs, which he had served on toasted bread accompanied by a plum from the garden. The previous night, he had very much enjoyed murdering his wife, and the pleasures of the evening were still returning to him in exquisite ripples of delight through the organs of his belly. It made eating both harder, and somehow more satisfying than ever. He had feared he may be plagued by remorse, or disgust, or some other inhibiting emotion, but nothing could be further from the truth. Emery felt alive, invigorated, and strangely desirous of a woman. Indeed, had he not sunk his wife into the pond, he wondered if he might not consider her fair game, even now. He supposed not, in reality. There are actions a man cannot come back from, and he rather suspected such an act would engender a distaste for oneself he would sooner not carry.

Emery washed his plate at the sink and contemplated the day ahead. Under normal circumstances, he supposed that a man might go loudly into town, conduct his business with visible normality, construct for himself the guise of the unwitting innocent, but Emery had no expectation of being called to account, given no one had even known he had a wife living at Althorp House, let alone that one had gone missing. No, the day was his own, and Emery had just one quandary on his mind, the same quandary he had faced many a time on finishing a really good book. Ought a man pause, allow the pleasure to be savoured, permit the details to mature and deepen, or might one gain more by moving swiftly on to another in the hopes of reaping similar rewards the sooner?

Now, what I intend for cocky dipshit Emery here is that the fear and anger experienced by his poor wifelet in her moment of departure become gradually inhaled and imbibed via the medium of water, such that he himself is forced to experience them and author his own downfall thus (spoilers? Not if there is no fucking end to spoil). What, you may ask, is holding back this building of momentum and facing of challenges? The answer is twofold.

Firstly, competence. I fear I am not that subtle. I like to think I can infuse a MOMENT with subtlety. I delight, in my poems, in using a line with precision to layer meaning like mille-feuille. Don’t worry, if this is something you have not noticed in my poems, it is possible the fault does not lie with you. But dynamic subtlety? The shift from one state to another, over time? I am peeved to find myself in need of development. Plus, as already discussed, my characterisation is a tad loose edged, my setting in time and place a little ill defined, the borders of my context sketched with spray paint administered at 20 yards. In short, I am stymied by a poor grasp of my own intentions. I have gone off half cocked. And having done so, I am finding it difficult to return to the drawing board with suitable humility and so, I suppose, I just keep trying to patch it up and soldier on.

Then, as if this were not enough to content with, there is the second reason, which is more complicated than mere competence. It’s an issue of conscience. I got several thousand words into this story, you see, and then I read an article, proffered for discussion in the writing group, on how to write sexual assault. I include a link for you here, should you wish. And I agreed with almost all of it. And this piece falls short.

https://www.emilyinkpen.com/blog/writing-sexual-assault-things-to-remember?fbclid=IwY2xjawR0NDBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEej0BsPfrYJvb5LFqJNdad-p-rokck3kb3G5PhxtLfzQmoqXTCHk4rEdSc3h4_aem_CMZJnE_RSrfyRXNTatmPaA

The author, Emily Inkpen (absolutely not a pen name, I would guess) puts forward a primary proposition. If sexual assault is gratuitous or written to titillate, don’t do it. Valid, Emily. Most valid. Excellent point. And what I am writing here is not designed to be titillating. In fact, my plan has not been to write a murder that links to sexual assault at all, I tell myself. Great! Is this then even relevant to this piece? No!

Except, my gut still says it is. No, I am not writing sexual assault. But I am writing a murder as part of a wider power dynamic that the murderer evidently rather gets a kick from. And this is what my gut knows. Sexual assault is the most easily flagged marker of a power dynamic which I AM writing about. A power dynamic where one party obtains gratification from exerting extreme power over another. Which I would like to think we can all agree SHOULD have our guts waving villi like little flags. It is a common motif in stories, of course, but that is hardly a reason to perpetuate it in the same way.

So what do I do about this. Well, central to Emily’s thoughts around how sexual assault should be written, I believe, is empathy. She suggests that, in the case of sexual assault by men against women, unless the writer can write the assault whilst holding in mind the experience of being a woman, that writer should consider avoiding the topic altogether. She writes about the abiding flavour of vigilance and mistrust which permeates the experience of being a woman in many spaces, and yes, I am a woman, and I do know exactly what she is talking about. I can, with an awareness and gratitude that I have not myself been murdered by my partner, empathise with this poor dead woman.

So, again, we are all good then, yes? Carry on, right? Again, my gut remains a-quiver.

Tell me how useful empathy is, when it is the end of the story. Empathy is useful to us because it drives a relational response. Comfort, assistance, behaviour change. But we empathise only where we are aware of another’s plight. And what is the purpose of writing? Well, it's not to keep an awareness of another's plight to myself is it. As much as writing to be read might create a sense of intimacy, it is not about privacy. To respect the victim, Emily argues, to reap the rewards of empathy, we must grant her a voice. And not the pipsqueak ham protests of a side character who’s function is to propel the story. No, if we are going to write the assault, she argues, we must centre the victim. Give her the stage.

And what have I done? My victim is water vapour! She is moisture, she is mist, she is droplets of misery and fear. I have de-centred her so completely from the outset that not only can she have no voice, but she can have no will. She is reduced to hormones drifting with the whims of the weather, feelings hitching a ride on borrowed power. I could hardly have reduced her more profoundly.

Of course, this poor dead woman, she is fictional. She is, in fact, no-one. If anything, I have elevated her from non-existence! I mean, surely a minor presence as oozing memory is a step up from absolute nothingness? She should be grateful! And as a fictional woman who pre-deceased my story's beginning, should I worry about how I serve her? STILL with the niggly gut!

It is not only that our fictional characters have something of an epiphytic relationship with actual humans, it is also that when we READ a fictional character, we imagine that they are real. We imagine how it would feel to be that person, in that context, with those experiences. We empathise. So no, I have no responsibility to this woman. But I do have a responsibility to women. And I do have a responsibility, when I write as when I act in any other ways in my social world, to consider what part I am playing in the construction of cultural narratives. By refusing my victim her chance to be perceived in her own right, do I contribute in a manner that sits well with my values? Ask my gut, it's been shouting at me all along.

So change it, right? Give her the spotlight, make sure we must look the lady in the eye while she tells us how it felt? But let’s go back to that trailer shall we. Because as vague as I am on the whole who, where, when, this reduction is the whole premise of my story. She is, as the prompt for this anthology goes, a “whisper in the mist”.

I am now stymied not only by my own nebulousness and my, erm, shall we say “emerging” competence, but now also by the realisation that I am compounding a grave violence by robbing the victim of representation. She has no narrative arc. I have given it all to him.

Now, here is the part where I feel I must explore my options, argue my point and draw my cogitations to a conclusion. “So,” I shall say, “I could do this or, and hear me out, I could do that! What I have decided to do is...” And then I shall briefly outline my remedy, thus tying up this tale of flawed tale telling with a nice neat sense of completion. “I started to write a story”, I shall remind you. “I did a bit of a poor job and encountered an ethical dilemma” I shall explain. “I applied myself harder and now…”

Well, I’m sorry. Here is where I leave you. Stilted, unsatisfied, with “but…” on your lips and a mild muddlement in your mind. Hold that feeling a moment, and empathise with me as I stare down my story.

I will give you this. I intend to keep working on it. Any day now.