Weird Writings
My poem “Lab: Medusa’s Head” is in Issue 6 of Trampoline Poetry.
I want to write a poem to the lackluster scales
dusting her cheeks. But someone else
did that 10 years ago and I feel so old,
Older than stone.
The teacher says cut.
The teacher says peel.
The teacher says uncover the eyes last.
Jessa Forest Lab: Medusa’s Head
The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I donât do a lot of traditional book reviews and this isnât going to be one of them, I guess, more like thoughts on the book while explaining why I think itâs so great. Maybe that is a traditional review. Whatever. Itâs morning and Iâm not awake yet.
A little bit of background:
The Laughing Corpse was published back in 1994 and is the second book in the Anita Blake Series. I first picked up Guilty Pleasures, book 1, with my high school bestie in 2002.
At that time the only other horror literature Iâd been exposed to were the classics: Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Iâd read Anne Rice but found Interview with the Vampire too serious (much like Louis himself). Reading Anne Rice, for me, is like reading Herman Melville. I love it (some of it in Anne Riceâs case) but I have to be in the mood for long, plodding tones and slow, plodding plots. Iâd also read Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and found her books entertaining and the characters compelling but they were very light and fluffy for me.
When I was on a summer job, one of my coworkers suggested I read Bloody Bones. Bloody Bones is book 5 so when I picked it up I was totally lost. But then my high school best friend bought a copy of Guilty Pleasures and said I needed to read it. So I did. And hereâs why I loved it: Anita was real. I could hear her, see what she saw, smell what she smelled, feel what she felt. Laurell K. Hamilton makes her books like youâre plugging into the matrix. You get to live the book right along with the characters.
This was pre-Twilight. This was before everyone thought vampires and black nail polish was cool. I was more of the stereotypical goth girl than my friend but where Iâd always been an âoutsiderâ at my school, all the âcool kidsâ avoided her because she was new, sheâd just moved to Arkansas from Florida and, as Southern preppy high schools are also incestuous institutions that follow the âkeep-to-your-own-kindâ paradigm, no one wanted to hang out with her except the other âoutsiders.â This was before facebook took off and this was before anti-bullying regulations were set in place. We were no strangers to harassment and discrimination.
We werenât accepted in our limited version of society, we had family problems at home, we struggled with addiction and alcohol abuse, we had unreliable boyfriends, but we could escape into books.
Hereâs an image for you: underaged teenage girls sitting on a balcony overlooking a dark forest and the Arkansas River beyond, smoking cigarettes and reading Guilty Pleasures aloud to each other. At night. She was team Richard, I was team Jean-Claude. Guess who won đ
I felt like Anita was someone I could look up to and maybe even be friends with, she struggled with thinking about religion and spirituality the same way I did. I wanted to be just like her and have a job when I graduated college. I wanted to have meaningful relationships and a solid sense of self. I found Anita and the rest of Hamiltonâs cast of characters more real than any other characters Iâd read at the time.
Thoughts on The Laughing Corpse:
In The Laughing Corpse, a killer zombie murders two families. But it doesnât just kill them, it rips them apart and eats them.
You see a child with its stomach and intestines torn out. You see another childâs severed hand. You see a blood soaked baby blanket and possibly the little blob of meat that was left over from the baby.
You see ribs, you see ball joints, you see organs.
And that right there is my bread and butter. Because itâs real. When someone is murdered itâs not pretty, itâs not neat and tidy; itâs visceral and in-your-face. Showing this in literature, and the charactersâ human reactions to this violence, are extremely important because somewhere in the world, this scene has happened. Minus the killer zombie, of course. But out here in the real world, a very unfortunate person met an extremely unfair end.
Daily life, for most people, is not filled with violence and death. But there are other bad things out there. You know the saying, âEveryone is going through something.â Hamilton not only gives me an escape from my âsomethingâ but makes me feel normal for having âsomethingâ to go through instead of feeling like a weird freak who canât get her shit together (thatâs another story for another time).
In the afterword to The Laughing Corpse, Hamilton writes, âOnce upon a time it bothered me that I donât think like the majority of people. That I walk through a world where the worst can happen, and often does. That I see danger where most people see nothing.â
This isnât about being an alarmist or living in fear of all the things that can kill you, this, I feel, is about acknowledging and respecting the nightmares and, most importantly, showing that you can live through them.
When I re-read this book Iâd forgotten that Anita was almost raped. Not by a vampire or any other supernatural creature, but a person. A human bodyguard for a human villain. Thankfully though, she wasnât raped. She got free and kicked the shit out of that guy. But it still happened. A man put his hands on her.
Iâm going to say something that you might not like. That attempted rape scene was important.
Not just for character development or plot, not because I like reading the horror genre, but because atrocities need to be looked at and acknowledged.
I didnât like seeing Anita in that situation. I cheered when she got out of it. Anita was also tortured (physically beaten as incentive to do what the bad guy wanted) in that scene and yes, Hamilton could have chosen to not go that farâor faded the scene to black the same way romance authors will sometimes do sex scenesâbut she did and Iâm glad she did because, again, telling stories where REAL things happen is important.
I could look at Anita and say, âWow, bad things happened to her.â Bad things happened to me too; making a connection with a character through a shared experience like that helped me not feel so alone, helped me function as a real human being.
In interviews and at book signings Hamilton talks about how fans will come up to her and say âThank Youâ for making role models and heroes for them to look up to. Sheâs had people tell her that if Nathaniel could get therapy then so could they. And thatâs a beautiful thing. And that probably wouldnât have happened if Hamilton didnât write the dark aspects of the human condition.
But itâs not all gloom and doom. Anita has loving relationships with people, Anita is happy with herself (most of the time) and if she can do that then so can I.
The Laughing Corpse ends with the bad guys defeated but the mystery of life is still sitting there waiting to be solved. Anita solved one problem but she has others to deal with in book 3. Thatâs life too. Even when things are going good something will happen to turn things upside down. Anita handles those things like a human. She gets pissed off, she gets sad, but she always solves the problem and carries on with her life. Even when it hurts.
She lay on her cot and pretended the bullet hole in the glass above her was the eyepiece of a telescope, and the ceiling was the sky of a strange alien planet with a dozen rectangular, daytime, fluorescent-light suns. The daytime moon was the Exileâs Moon, cold and barely alive in an ocean of cloud-choked blue. Forever alone and abandoned by the shield of night and the unconquerable legion of stars. A sky where day was not separated from the night, and the Exileâs Moon wasnât alone anymore and her sisters, the Dead Girl Moon⌠and Havocâs Moon, the patron saint of troublemakers, prisoners, and hopeless little girls, was almost full.
from Dead Girl Moon, Pulling Teeth and Other Stories of The Slaughter Chronicles
Regina cast a suspicious glance upward, through the canopy of bare oak branches and prickly pine boughs to where the moon hung and the stars twinkled. Overhead, the moon was one week from full. Havocâs Moon, she thought. Patron saint of best laid plans and miscellaneous fuckery. The tall pines of the forest were stalwart sentinels, their branches were spears and their needles were beautifully crafted rapiers battling the terrors of the night in the sway of autumnâs bonfire smelling breeze.
from Havocâs Moon, The Slaughter Chronicles Book One
In case you havenât noticed in The Slaughter Chronicles series list, all the forthcoming novels have titles that involve the moon. Book one is Havocâs Moon, book two is Exileâs Moon. Book three⌠you get the idea. So, aside from the whole werewolf aesthetic, whatâs up with all the moon stuff?
Regina Slaughter, my main protagonist, was just a child when her biological father accidentally contaminated and transformed her into a werewolf. In the years before and the two years after, Regina received zero formal education. Before her parents met their tragic end, Regina was homeschooled by her mother. Reginaâs mother was a religious zealot who did not believe in Sesame Street, or that little girls needed the same learning opportunities as boys. She taught Regina how to read so she could read the Bible and other religious texts, but she was not allowed to write, sing, play, or do math. Or watch TV.
Reginaâs mother⌠how can I say this nicely?⌠was a terrible person who should never have been allowed to reproduce and be responsible for children. But if she wasnât, we wouldnât have Regina so⌠*shrug*.
And then, after Reginaâs mother (thankfully) died, Regina was kept in a secret laboratory for two years, where she also received zero formal education. But she had a lot of time to think by herself and, as a coping mechanism, she came up with her own unique version of numerology in which she tried to predict the fortunes of her fellow prisoners based on the time displayed in the laboratoryâs big digital clock.
Also, in the laboratory, Regina was heavily sedated and given drugs to keep her, and the other adult prisoners, from using their supernatural abilities to escape. (Keeping a bunch of werewolves in cages without sedating them is not smart.) Because she could no longer connect with her werewolf-self, Regina also fabricated her own phases of the moon, based on how she was feeling physically and mentally as the doctor in the laboratory experimented on her werewolf strain.
After she and the other prisoners were liberated, Regina continued to refer to her own moon phases. And that is how the titles for my books were born.
Each moon phase coincides with the theme of the book. For example, the novella Dead Girl Moon is about Reginaâs time in the laboratory and the days leading up to her escape.
Havocâs Moon is the waxing gibbous moon, the phase immediately proceeding the full moon. Havocâs Moon (also my principal work in progress) is about building conflicts and finding order in the chaos. But the next book, Exileâs Moon, is the daytime moon, the moon of loneliness, defeat, and despair. I donât want to give too much away, but if everything worked out at the end of book one, there wouldnât be a need for a book two.
Also, I AM writing grimdark fantasy so expect that if there is a happy ending, it wonât come right away.
The Slaughter Chronicles takes place in a fictional universe where there is the âeveryday worldâ (which 21st Century humans on Earth are familiar) and then there is another reality underneath that called, by some, the Void where giant creatures and celestial monsters float around in âspace.â
The bigger creatures are home to Void-Born humans and smaller creatures. Sometimes these smaller creatures exist in a symbiotic relationship with the larger ones, other times it is a parasitic relationship. The largest of these is a giant snail-like creature the Void-Born who live atop it have named Dark Home (because of the shellâŚthereâs no light inside the shell and the snailâs home is the shellâŚaccept my giant space snail!).
In the Void, Magic is the actual manifestation of oneâs intent. Depending on the intentions, everything will have a different outcome based on what type of catalyst you are using and what strain of contamination you have.
The most efficient magic users are, of course, Mages. Two mages casting the same intention will never have the same result because of their Void Creature strain. Life experience influence the intentions which influence the results of the magic.
Mages can generate energy internally or externally, depending on their strain.
Internally, the energy for the magic comes from within the Mage themselves. Externally, the Mage must draw on the energy of the thing/person they are trying to effect.
Mages can use catalysts instead of their internal or external resources, however, catalysts are not preferred because the intent of the catalyst can influence the results of the magic. If the catalyst is a living organism, that organism will influence the magic. If the catalyst in not living (a magical item) it has to at least be organic, be organic. Anything like metal or synthetic cannot be a catalyst.
The non-living item carries the intent of the living thing it was made from. Sometimes they carry the feelings from the day that they died and using them can be pretty traumatic.
Practice and intense training can force false intentions or intentions contrary to the Mageâs or the catalystâs personality/character. But these efforts always yield mixed results.
For the Void-Born werewolves and vampires, using magic takes years of training and grueling effort. Because their Void Creature strains are not innate (not born with Void Creature blood) non-Mages have a harder time successfully manifesting their intent. Instincts gained from the experience of contamination can affect the vampire or werewolfâs intent in negative ways. Sometimes a non-Mage user dies if they try.
But it can be done.
When ego warps intention, there are disastrous consequences.
Magical items and non-Mage magic users can employ special symbols to focus and manifest their intent. Their internal/external energy fuels their intent and their intent psychically activates the symbols of their everyday language and can turn their words into tools or weapons.
The black screen fades to a bright light.
A pair of broken glasses on broken ground.
The lenses are round and cracked.
Smoke and embers floats above them.
Ash floats above them.
A hand with a bruised wrist and scabbed
fingers reaches down and picks up the glasses.
One of the stems gets left behind. As the glasses
move through the air the lenses flicker and time begins
to
move
backwards.
The people in the theater will see images in the lenses:
fire,
an explosion.
The images move up and down as running,
falling, getting up
happen again and again.
There is a spray of blood and the blurry face of the love interest
(the face is blurry so the people watching can insert
the face of their own love interest into the picture).
A cigarette zooms into focus as it is lifted to the Wearerâs lips,
abrasions on the fingers, blood slick down the knuckles.
Vomit.
Tears.
Rain.
There is a scream, the first
sound since the movie started.
It is not the scream of a victim, a trapped animal, but a scream of
thwarted desperation.
The quick stick of a knife.
The Wearer falls and is held down by a heavy body.
The ripping of clothing.
A punch to the face.
The glasses are knocked askew.
There is a television screen with a news announcement and
A social media post promising bad weather ahead.
There is the hand again, not bruised, not bloody.
The glasses are not broken anymore and they finally settle
on the Wearerâs face.
There is morning.
There is sunlight.
I have two poems out in Blood & Bourbon’s 7th issue Begin Again.
Visit Blood & Bourbon’s site and show these amazing writers some love.
You must be logged in to post a comment.