My Girl

 

I worry about my girl.

I worry about the mysterious sadness that envelopes her like an old woolen blanket late at night.  It shrouds her as she huddles in the armchair by the fire, wrapping itself so tightly around her that it squeezes silent tears from her eyes as she stares deep into the coals, seeing an old memory of pain flickering within.

I worry about her health.  She doesn't eat enough and when she does it isn't wholesome food, just prepared meals from a tin made in a factory, so saturated with preservatives and chemicals that its noisome odour burns my eyes.  I didn't used to be sensitive to such things, but I am now.

I worry about her state of mind as she struggles to write her latest novel.

She sits at the small desk in the sitting room, fingers playing at their rhythm as she stitches letters into sentences on her small machine.  It is green and comes with its own little house.  Yet each time she performs this literary ritual I watch the worry line appear as her brows knit and the lines she sews begin to unravel until her fingers falter and the machine grows silent.  Her words become unwanted artifacts as she reads what she has written and the dissatisfaction is plain on her face.

She's written seven novels, I've seen them in the bookcase in the corner of the sitting room instead of amongst my books in the grand library.  She doesn't think her books are good enough to stand beside Dickens, Shakespeare, Austen, and Brontë.  Yet writing a book is a monumental thing for any human being, and she has done it seven times before.

I think she has forgotten that.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Fog

Each night as the sun lowered to the western horizon to sink into the far misty sea, the fishermen in the cove would work a little faster, folding and rolling their nets and stowing them back in their boats now that they had dried hanging on the poles that lined the shoreline of the cove.  Once the nets were stowed, they would check the mooring lines of their boats one last time and hurry up the slope toward home.

Mothers who lived in humble houses up the slope from the cove would begin calling their children home, their voices musical, each different from the next and each calling their own children to their thresholds with their particular song.  Timid children, hearing their songs, would drop what they played at and run home all knees and elbows, knowing that Nightbeast had awoken and was coming down from the mountain.  Bolder children would casually walk home, giving each other knowing looks of boastful pride, knowing that one night they would stay out until the village was dark and bravely face Nightbeast together.

But not this night.

Once the fishermen and the mothers and the children were safe within their homes and the heavy drapes were pulled and pinned over all the windows, only then would lamps and candles be lit.  Then the mothers would serve up the supper she had brewed all day over the coals in the fireplace while the husbands would lay the curfew over the coals to let them sleep and cease sending smoke up the chimney.

Families would eat then, nervously listening for the sound they dreaded, and when it came as it did every night they would set down their spoons and lay their hands on their laps and stare at the table.  The  sound grew louder and become a tremble beneath their feet, then a shaking and a deep rumble.

Nightbeast was walking toward the village, and all over the village the people would pray silently that it would pass them by. 

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

50,000 words ...

    I've been told by numerous sources that the industry standard for a novel length acceptable for publication is 60,000 to 100,000 words, and anything outside of that window will receive an automatic pass.

    Leaving Wonderland is an espionage thriller with unique characters facing novel challenges that moves non-stop from its haunting opening scene to its explosive climax.  I'm on my third editing pass to try and bulk it up from its current 51,630 word count and I can't find a way to do it without tripping up the pace of the story.

    The story doesn't even have chapters – it has a timeline; a countdown toward a planned terrorist attack such as this, the opening pages;

>Day:10:2111

>rabbit

    She lay dead at his feet and seeing her crumpled body limp on the cobblestones under the night sky, arms and legs at disturbing angles, sent a rush of sorrow through the core of his chest.  Discordant church bells echoing through the manmade canyon between the old brick buildings in the narrow alley seemed apropos to the sadness that choked him.  Yet something was wrong.

    It was her hair he decided as he tilted his head studying her, ignoring the growing awareness of pain in his left shoulder.  Her hair wasn't supposed to be that long nor that colour.  She was supposed to have shorter black hair, not long and brunette.  Although a flash of her as a blonde scampered across his memory and was gone as quickly as it appeared.

    And she wasn't supposed to be dead.  It was impossible that she was dead, and a small helpless sound vibrated his throat as he remembered that he loved her.  He couldn't remember her name, but he knew that he loved her.

    The pain in his shoulder was getting worse and was now matched by its twin in his left hip.

    What was her name?

    He grimaced as his the pain in his hip lanced across his lower back, the arhythmic tolling of the bells annoying him now as he searched his memory for her.

    The last thing he remembered was the dream; running across a grassy meadow in the moonlight, chasing a playful rabbit.

    Rabbit.  Was her name Rabbit? 

    He shook his head; that was wrong.

    In the dream Rabbit could talk.

    "Hurry." Rabbit had said, "Hurry or we'll have to jump."

    And he ran as fast as he could as Rabbit pulled him along by his jacket cuff, her long legs sleek and sure in the darkness, her feet light on the grass.  His own feet clumsy and heavy as he ran, his legs stiff and weakening quickly.  He was about to beg her to slow down when she fell.

    They both fell.

    "Who are you?" he whispered to the dead girl, lowering himself painfully to one knee his hip screaming in shattering agony, his hand trembling as he reached out to touch her.

    There was blood on the back of his hand.  It was scraped, a bruise forming, purples emerging through the seeping blood.  Behind him the church bells were growing louder, drowning out the shush of traffic passing on the streets at either end of the alley.  This was becoming surreal, like a bad European student art film.

    The skin of her cheek was pale, as soft as silk and still warm.

    "Who are you?" he asked again, pleading, "I can't remember." and he felt tears begin to well in his eyes, blurring his vision of her.  How could he not remember her name?

    "Run." said Rabbit in a barely audible whisper that caused him to pull his hand back, startled.

    The girl's lips, slightly parted, hadn't moved but the voice had come from her.  Then he realized that lips didn't have to move to form that word – it was all in the tongue and the breath.

    "Run!" Rabbit hissed louder and he felt a cold rush trill up his spine and over his scalp.

    Those weren't church bells

    He turned to see two men clamouring down the old fire escape on the building behind him, their pounding feet setting the metal rungs to sing like badly pitched bells.  One of the men clutched a pistol with a comically fat extended barrel.

    Not a barrel – a silencer.

    They were coming to kill him.

    Or worse

    He looked down at the girl, his chest hitching at the thought of leaving her that way, but he was alive and needed to stay that way.

    "I'm sorry." he whimpered, and ignoring the pain in his left hip he rose and ran down the alley away from the men, zig-zagging to make a poorer target.  He heard the throaty 'chunk' from behind and saw the limestone dust kick up from a cobblestone in front of him where the bullet skipped.

    They were definitely trying to kill him.

    When he reached the end of the alley he didn't slow, just changed direction and shot past the edge of the last building onto a broad sidewalk.  At the end of the block he saw the intersection was wide, and knew there were four lanes for each crossing street, both one way; one northbound, the one he was on westbound.

>Day:10:2119

>tradecraft

    How did he know the direction the streets in front of him before seeing traffic or a sign?  How did he know that out of sight across the street he was running toward there was a hotel half a block south with a lobby open to both that street and the one a block to the east?  And how did he know that a block east of that was a bar that was always crowded and had a rear exit that wasn't alarmed?

He had no time to wonder why he knew those things.  He just ran, and running wondered why the word –

tradecraft

– had arisen in his mind.

    And so on.  The 'Day' number is how many days remain before the terrorist attack that has the potential to trigger World War III, and the time is standard military time of that day.  The dilemma in the story is that the only person who knows the details of the attack is the guy in the alley standing over the dead girl.  During his capture and torture by enemy agents he induced his own amnesia by packaging his memories, encrypting them and burying them deep in his subconscious with an obscure password that only the dead girl would know.
    It's a good story, and I promise that once it's published you won't be able to put it down, and as a bonus, it's got a pretty sweet and steamy love story to boot.
    But there's that 60,000 word barrier.
    I did some research and discovered that the following novels all came in around 50,000 words or fewer;

• Animal Farm
• Of Mice and Men
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Speak
• The Outsiders
• The Great Gatsby

So I've decided; fuck it.  At 51,630 words it will be in good company.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

Twinkie ...

 

Mom named me Twinkie because she wanted me to stay fresh and sweet for a thousand years. But I know that I really survive in this wasted city because of Oscar.  Like his namesake, I keep him sharp and he's clever and quick in my hand and with his help I find people to talk to. They don't talk back but they're still company until they start to stink.  The best part of those relationships is that I can tell them all my secrets and they keep their mouths shut.  The worst part of those relationships is dragging them up to the open air to burn them once their stink keeps me awake because I'll be double-buggered if I'll drag them all the way down to the forest to bury them there.

Boys are easier to trap or hunt than girls.  I think it's because us girls are always alert to predators and because we're smaller and not as strong we have to be like little grey foxes when we move through the waste and feral little demons if we're cornered.

Boys are stupid, and come in two breeds – well, three if you count the ones who only like other boys.  Most boys want to rape you or fill you with babies or both, and no way I want either of those to happen to this body.  So I trap them or hunt them and take them quick so they don't bleed too much.

It's nice to take them just before the night shadows creep up out of the tunnels because their bodies are still warm when you cuddle with them.  I love the smell and feel of a boy's skin against mine when I'm safe with them in my bolt hole, I always sleep best that first night.  And don't think I'm a creeper; I don't eat them like some do, but I do take everything they've foraged and find some flavourful things in their backpacks and sling bags.

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

The Other Fallen ...

"Ya' wanna tone it down, Meatball?" Lilith called from the server station at the end of the bar where the under-counter beer fridges were.  Meatball laughed her off, lobbed a couple more wife comments at Erastus before wandering off to the pool tables.

"Did I not tell her?" Riot said, shaking his head.  Told her or not, Lilith walked behind the bar and brought Erastus a fresh beer on the house and leaned forward with her elbows on the bar to engage him in quieting conversation.

Lilith had gotten a bit chubby and gone goth out of spite since we three landed here in Humbolt, but she was still my favourite cowgirl.  Even with a purple stripe running through her silver hair and wearing outfits that looked like she'd raided a steamer trunk from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, she was the secret crush of half the men in Mad Dog's, myself included.

"Yeah, you told her." I agreed with Riot and smiled when I saw Erastus nodding his head and looking sheepish.  Lilith leaned further in and kissed him on the cheek before walking back to the server station and winked at me.

I felt a smug satisfaction that Lilith had diverted the situation so Humbolt could keep its population steady for tonight at least, when out of the corner of my eye I saw Riot make a little hand flick and the next song that cued up on the Wurlitzer was 'Stand by Your Man', and I swear it was just that much louder than Twitty and Steagall.

"You're a son of a bitch." I told Riot.

"Yep."

Right on cue I saw Erastus' shoulders tighten before he downed the rest of his longneck, set the bottle down on the bar and walked over to the pool tables.  I was still hoping he'd just use his fists or even a pool cue, but he grabbed the brass-headed rake and took Meatball down with one shot then proceeded to beat him to death with the heavy end like it was a potato masher as everyone in the vicinity backed away.  A circle of no-man's-land grew around the two men that was just a little bigger radius than a swinging pool rake.

When he was done, Erastus stood up, spat on Meatball's bloody corpse and dropped the rake before walking out through Mad Dog's front door like nothing had happened.  Half a dozen heartbeats later, Meatball got up and walked out too, but he used the wall.

'The Other Fallen'

Aaron D McClelland

Penticton, BC

Author's Website

No Character of Mine ...

 

Though I at times write some pretty badass characters and gnarly scenes, I have never written one of my characters raping or forcing or even coercing someone sexually.  The act sickens me.  People who do it sicken me.  And for the life of me I can't imagine how committing that vile act on someone could be pleasurable.

Years ago, while working as a security supervisor in Vancouver, I was visiting our guard at Queen Elizabeth park (aka “Little Mountain”).  As we were checking in, two full-patch bikers rode up the hill to the upper parking lot.  One of the bikers had a female passenger who almost fell off his bike as they rounded the last curve.

The guard and I walked up into the parking area and saw that the bikers had ridden onto the grass and the female was lying on her back, the bikers standing over her.  As we approached, the female - who was very intoxicated - was reaching up, inviting both bikers to have sex with her.  I overheard one of the bikers say to his brother; “This ain’t right, man.”  The other agreed.

The bikers saw us approach and one noticed the portable radio on my belt.

“Can you call for an ambulance?” he asked, “I think she needs to go to the hospital.”

I radioed our Dispatch and they called 911 for us (I specified an ambulance and not the police as both bikers had been drinking as well).  As we were waiting, the female started vomiting and choking and one of the bikers rolled her into the recovery position, rubbed her back and even held her hair as she vomited.

It turned out that the female was unknown to those men - they had picked her up in a bar, and despite their intention to have sex with her, they knew she was in no state to give proper consent for sex and suspected she was approaching medical distress.

Shortly after the ambulance arrived, the female stopped breathing and the paramedics had to intubate her and use a breathing bag.  If the bikers hadn’t felt empathy for her and acted on it, that female may have died.

My big question is; Why is it that two bad-ass 1% full-patch bikers respond with empathy when they see a passed out female and ensure she gets medical attention, but a bright university athlete or a politician or a millionaire decides to rape her instead?

Has two decades of “rape culture” in rap music, online homemade porn videos featuring men dominating and abusing women, and examples by a few professional athletes turned some young men away from their natural empathy?
I wish I had the answers.

But I do know one thing that we should all be alarmed by …

We have mirror neurons in our brains that activate an empathic response to someone else suffering.  These mirror neurons and our entire Limbic system are all part of our survival system - survival of self and survival of species.  As Dr Bruce Perry said in one of his books; “We are born for love”.  We are hardwired to care about and care for each other.  But what is happening to our society through rapes, murders, assaults, mass shootings, and religion-driven violence is evidence that there is a growing number of people who have lost touch with that survival system.

As authors, people honour us by reading our short stories and novels.  It is a privilege that very few are afforded, but with it comes responsibility.  We need to lose the tropes where the big strong man grabs the girl and bends her to his will.  We need to purge our novels of anything that glorifies rape or coercion.  We need to write strong women, strong transgendered characters, and men with a moral compass.  To sit passively by while rape and coercion continues in our society and do nothing about it, well … “This ain’t right, man”.

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website

BETWIXT (where the dead things go)

BETWIXT (where the dead things go) is launching on May 13, 2021 and is available for preorder now at Amazon.  The paperback will be available in the next 72 hours.

EDIT: The paperback version of BETWIXT is now available on Amazon

From the jacket;

There is a razor thin space between life and death, between existence and oblivion, between heaven and hell.  A place caught between light and darkness, a crimson clouded world frozen in Longtime.

When Max Brandt finds himself burning with fever from a deadly infection and steps off a rapid transit train to find somewhere to die in peace, he lands in the realm of the dead.  Natural law is twisted there; water flows from disconnected pipes, buildings reconstruct themselves by growing upward from the ground brick by brick, food appears fresh seemingly out of nowhere.  Whatever vanishes in the real world arrives there, including a WWI Zeppelin.

Everyone Max meets is a walking anachronism; a British Colonial Officer killed during an Indian uprising, a Dead Rabbit from the Five Points stabbed to death in a street brawl, a samurai who lost his final battle, a gunslinger hanged for a horse-thief, and a 17 year old hippie named Olive who died at the Monterey Pop Festival from a heroin overdose as Jefferson Airplane performed White Rabbit.

Max has joined the dead.

Yet like the real world there is evil and horror in this place; tribes of cannibals haunt the ruins of a city with many names, Caribou man and his cult makes human sacrifices to the crow gods they worship, and a Baptist Preacher who believes he is on a mission from his god to raise the dead and return to vanquish the real world.

All reside and will clash within this narrow band of existence called Betwixt.

A deathpunk novel of ghosts, wraiths, zombies, and zeppelins ...

BETWIXT (where the dead things go)

Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC

Author's Website