Clarion West Write-a-thon Progress: How Deep Is Red

(From a story I’m working on.)

Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had come to shape her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five which were distributed through the Bureau’s publications and information dollops: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.

Today she was composing Five Signs of Spring in Eletak, her native city. Here along the waterfront, she added chimmerees to her list as she watched the native creatives, cross between fish and flower, surface, each chimerene spreading its white petals as it surfaced, white clusters holding golden centers, tendrils of golden thread sending their scent into the air along with the most delicate whisper of sound, barely audible over the lapping of the sound’s water.

The urge to pose beat along every energy vein of her silica body, but she resisted it. She would remain alone this spring, as she had every spring since she had made her vow and inscribed it in the notebook where she kept her personal lists, under “Life Resolutions,” #4 under “Keep myself clean in thought and mind,” “Devote myself to promoting Porcelain’s tourism,” and “Fall in love.” The third item had been crossed off at the same time, in vehement black pen strokes.

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I’m working on a novella set in the world of The Fathomless Abyss, a shared universe project with authors Mike Resnick, Brad R. Torgersen, Jay Lake, Mel Odom, J.M. McDermott, Philip Athans, and myself. We’ve all done stories set in it, and each of us will be producing novellas set there over the course of this year.

If you’re interested in finding more about the oddities of the Fathomless Abyss world, check out the From the Fathomless Abyss anthology, which contains a story of mine that I like very much called “A Querulous Flute of Bone,” a somewhat odd retelling of O. Henry’s short story, “The Pimaloosa Pancakes.”

This project, which will appear as a stand-alone, is a mash-up of William S. Burrough’s Junky and H.P. Lovecraft’s “Dreams in The Witch House,” a story which terrified me as a child. Here’s how it begins:

His earliest memory was fearing the nightmares. He never slept well, all his life, even in that first moment, so long ago he remembered remembering it more than actually remembering it.

Knowing that if he slept, they’d come crawling out from underneath his cot, or spawn in the cavern shadows outside their hut only to come creeping in.

He didn’t remember what the nightmares were. Were they what they would be later, that room, over and over again? Or were they more childish ones, a ghost chasing him around a table, its breath rot-damp, or a fiery lizard curled in the stove’s belly?
The second earliest memory was the couple. Or rather, first the light on his face. They were going Outside, out to the walls of the world and he could see the light ahead of them.

Then, in the shadows, movement, squirming like a worm in a mushroom box, but much larger. Flesh twined with flesh, limbs sliding together slick and naked against the weed-choked rock.

What was that in the woman’s stringy blonde hair? A tiny rat of shadow. Its face was human, pugnacious jaw slung forward, brow pronounced. It looked at him and he nearly pissed himself.

His mother yanking his hand along so he stumbled, nearly fell. He tried to stop her, tried to ask, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes or acknowledge his tugging hand. Her face red in the light as they went onward towards the market Outside.

Later, she said to his father, when she thought him out of earshot, “Shameful junkers! Rutting there beside the path with their dreams frolicking on them where any passerby could see!”

“There ought to be a law,” his father said in a mechanical tone.

Or was that his mind interpreting the memory, ascribing the tone his father always used, the tenor his mother, a thwarted councilwoman, habitually took?

It was the first time he’d seen a junker.

Not even close to the last.