To you treat me like you do
When you've laid your hands upon me
And told me who you are?
- New Order, “Blue Monday”
They met in the Year of the Tiger and found they had both been born in the Year of the Tiger. She had looked at him slowly, her calm gaze moving down his body, and then up to his face again, and he could tell at once that she understood him, knew that he was a beast who possessed both a bottomless reservoir of rage and a talent for violence, and she was not afraid. He had taken in her eyes, golden flecked shards of malachite, and the perfection of her face and form. Her demeanor was aloof, cool, remote, but he knew instinctively that something feral smoldered just under the surface of her skin. He found that the wilderness was in her and of her and she was of it. He had desired her immediately.
She never asked anything from him and never touched him except when she wanted to have sex, and when they did that, it was selfish but not miserly. They took what they wished from each other to satisfy themselves with a fathomless thoughtlessness that only spurred them both to greater pleasure.
Like him, she would never allow herself to be controlled and this fascinated and frightened him. Had he been able to subjugate her, she would have bored him, but her total lack of need for him both hurt him and, perversely, attracted him and made him crave her all the more. From this paradox an intolerable fear was born in him, a fear which he could not name or face. And so he converted it to anger, and used it to stoke the fires of his wrath.
There had been a few attempts to integrate each other into their respective social groups. She had taken him to haut monde parties and introduced him to the upper crust, the true rulers of the scarlet city, but there he felt like a caged animal on display and grew impatient and stalked silently about the ballrooms and art galleries, his only happiness seeing the apprehension on the faces of those he had been presented to. In turn, she was uncomfortable in the lowlife dives he frequented and amongst the wounded outcasts, broken dope fiends, and houseless rogues he associated with. Soon they abandoned these half-hearted efforts so that when they saw each other, they did so alone.
One night she had promised to meet him at one of her apartments, a place he had a key for and which they sometimes used. She did not show up or send word that night or the following day. Initially, he was concerned. He wanted to contact her but lacked the means. But while waiting, he became convinced that she had finally recognized his compulsion to have her, and understood it for the weakness it was, and that she had decided to leave him. His choler grew and grew as he imagined it.
When she slipped into the bedroom the next night, she found him sitting on the bed, nude, the sheet folded loosely around his lap. She began to undress. He watched her quietly. She offered no explanation or excuse.
As she finished taking off her clothing, he launched himself from the bed. Her closet door was made from metal and he slammed his fist into it. It made a huge crashing noise, and he hit it again and again, the thin steel deforming and bulging under his blows, great metallic reports sounding each time he struck it. It had horizontal slats which acted almost as knives under the force of his assault, and they transformed his fist into a gory lump, shredding his knuckles and slicing his hand and fingers down to the bone, but there was no pain. Rather, he felt only a fey exultation as he prepared to unleash the well of his fury upon her and he stifled a laugh as he spun to do so, whipping his hand around to point directly at her. The centrifugal force of his movement cast blood from his hand to cross the short gap between them, touching her from a distance to leave carmine droplets on her face and the creamy skin of her bare chest and shoulders. She closed her eyes reflexively as the blood spattered her face.
“I am going to kill you,” he said.
Unlike the huge noise of the door, his voice was soft, his tone flat and utterly without rancor or threat. He was delivering a fact, nothing more and nothing less.
She knew it for what it was at once and her eyes flicked open and her whole countenance lit up, nostrils flared, throat, cheeks, and breasts suddenly flushed, her entire body quivering. She wet her lips with her tongue, tasting the drops of blood that had landed there. Her mouth pulled into a snarl, teeth bared and barred, and they hovered like that for a moment, gazes fused, showing their fangs to each other. As he stared at her, her glare became a hungry smile of anticipation. The expression betrayed her. As he craved her, so she craved annihilation. It was his ability to extinguish her that she was interested in and the broken promise was deliberate, the means with which she would court obliteration. The realization shocked him so much that it overcame his wrath, disarmed him, and he slowly dropped his hand to his side, stunned.
She closed the interval separating them and fell upon him, her nipples grazing his chest as they toppled roughly back on to the bed. She held her thighs tight to his sides and buried her face in his neck. He felt her teeth scrape his throat as she straddled him. She sat up and moved her hands to his chest, pushing down. Having mounted him, she began to grind against him. He slipped his fingers up her side to touch her face, the blood from his flayed hand leaving a crimson band on her thigh and the taut skin of her stomach and ribcage as he slid it across her pale flesh. She took his ruined fingers to her mouth and kissed them, staining her parted lips ruby with his vitality.
The muscles in her buttocks and abdomen contracted and relaxed, contracted and relaxed, her movement driven by her core, slow but powerful, delicious friction, excruciating pleasure. As she neared completion she moved her hands from his chest to his throat and began to squeeze, cutting off his breath. She was strong.
“No. No, no, no,” she moaned the word again and again, pleading, almost sobbing in rhythm with the rocking of her hips, her brow knitted in ecstasy. He gripped her forearms, but did nothing to defend himself, allowing her to use him, wholly abandoning himself to her. The blood pounding through his body became an unbearable pressure in his head and face and then a ringing in his ears that drowned out all other sound and pulsed in time with the pump of his heart and the surging of her repeated denials. His vision began to blacken at the edges but even in the tunnel of oxygen deprivation he was aware of the excited, eager look she wore as she locked eyes with him. As hypoxia gripped him and he slipped towards unconsciousness, he saw sourceless, coruscating flashes of incandescence and his existence as an individual ceased. This, more than any single physical sensation, pushed him over the edge and for a moment he was completely gone. His gratification gratified her in turn and she too ceased to be a single being as they crossed the void to meet and intermingle fleetingly with each other in perfect, animal understanding, in incommunicable communion.
When he returned to normal consciousness, he felt like a color that had faded under an unendurable and pitiless sun. She was lying exhausted and completely limp over him, thighs and calves against the sides of his body, her cheek resting against his shoulder. She rolled off of him and then began to stroke his chest gently. The modesty of it surprised him. Always when she touched him it was lustful; never had she shown this kind of demure affection to him before. His head and throat and hand throbbed and his lungs burned. He had been unaware of the space between them until it been removed. Now he recognized the true and vast emptiness that separated them.
He understood then that no matter what else might happen, she was lost to him, irrevocably lost. A profound and hollow desolation welled up in him. With the surety of prescience, he knew this was unavoidable. It would be. Now or at some point soon. There was nothing left but to leave forever or to face doom with her; if he stayed, they would be wholly at the mercy of the intensity and combination of the emotions that they had just unleashed, eros and thanatos merged into a single overwhelming force that would drag them into an inexorable, insatiable, and effortless spiral of death. Hers or his, he couldn’t know; perhaps both. She knew it too and she seemed to welcome it, engulfed by the desire to be destroyed. There might be a single chance to escape the hungry gyre of oblivion; there might not. Once the devouring helix had begun to consume them, no human agency or power would be able to gainsay it or help them escape.
Overcome suddenly with the loss of her, he sat up on the edge of the bed and faced away from her, holding every muscle tense and motionless. He stared vacantly at the bare wall, willing himself not to cry. He was absolutely silent, absolutely still, using all his strength to hold himself frozen, daring not even to breathe, trying desperately to deny this savage, newborn truth.
He felt her hand on his shoulder and looked back at her. She tried to smile, but the expression fled from her face like a terrified animal. She, too, understood the fate in front of them now, hanging there like a noose. She embraced him, and the sudden and wholly unexpected tenderness of her caress permitted him to accept this new and ravaging reality and to allow himself to feel the grief of it. He returned her touch and gave her license to do likewise. They rocked slowly back and forth in each other’s grasp and wept soundlessly together.
After a length of time, the tears slowed and then stopped. They both lay back on the bed, spent in every way. Soon exhaustion claimed her and she slept. It was time. He stood and dressed silently and prepared to depart. As he left the bedroom, he looked back at her longingly. In the dim light, his blood was a maroon ribbon twined about the side of her body and neck and a bracelet circling her left forearm. Her hair was spread languorously about her face like a halo of polished onyx. In slumber her countenance was untroubled, exquisite, almost angelic. He wondered briefly but earnestly if she would look so beautiful after she had been murdered. Then he turned away abruptly and walked quietly from the bedroom to the door of the apartment and opened it.
Leaving behind everything, he stepped over the threshold and crossed alone into the gulf of the night.
I like the way this combines sexuality, consciousness, and self, and while there's very little directly in the way of worldbuilding or RPG-ishness per se, there are still various implications, things left open-ended to be questioned. Not that it needs to have those things, it can just be a piece of short fiction unto itself. It's also rare to see kink-related stuff in the TTRPG scene that isn't just about the aesthetics or where that isn't the primary focus, and even then there's very little of it regardless. It's also in general difficult to write a compelling scene about sex and sexuality, let alone one that is so layered. It's all so suggestive in multiple senses and in multiple senses of the word.
ReplyDeleteThanks Max! Yes, this really isn't RPG related or adjacent and I thought a bit before I posted it. I guess it falls under the "random creativity" part of this blog. Also, somewhere along the way I started to wonder if perhaps there is a link between one or two of the characters from Viaticum and this - a younger Eli or perhaps the woman on the corner. That might be a bit of a stupid idea, but I've tarted thinking a bit about a collection of short stories that are all set in the "scarlet city" and involving intense experiences and / or emotions. I don't know if you have the time or inclination but if you do I was wondering if you might take some time to answer a couple questions for me involving whether certain things were effective. I welcome any other answers as well. I'll start a new thread here just in case anyone else feels like answering as well!
DeleteYa I wasn't totally sure if it was connected to Viaticum; like it felt tonally consistent with that other piece about addiction in a way that I'd have to go back and compare to elaborate further, but I can see what you're saying about these vignettes that aren't so much about the setting in a literalist sense, but about exploring intense experiences and using that expression as a lens into the setting or broadly the themes of your works, that makes perfect sense to me.
DeleteWith the Holiday on Thursday my availability may be intermittent, but otherwise I always enjoy blog participation and all that, so ask away!
Thank you sir! Yes, whatever you can / feel like speaking too, any feedback at all even if it's just "what a pretentious piece of trash" is welcome, lol.
DeleteAlso, thinking about it, if it IS a character from Viaticum, it's the priest.
Questions about authorial intent coming through
ReplyDelete1. What is a Lacuna? A gap, hole, or a missing thing or section. What is missing here? Love. The characters have lust, but they do not have love. What is the hole? The heartbreak and emptiness that results from the realization that we are ALWAYS alone. What is the gap? The space that separates human souls from one another. Does this work?
2. There are lots of words specifically meant to evoke joining and separation (fusion, meeting, mingling, communion, combination, etc. as opposed to gap, void, interval, gulf, space, emptiness etc). The physical distance between the characters is meant to mirror the emotional distance between them. Does this work? a bit cliched perhaps?
3. The elements of lust and wrath are described with the metaphors of fire and water – something “smolders” in her, he “stokes the fires of his wrath” and has a "well of rage" – she is interested in his ability to “extinguish” her. Does this work?
4. Breath is intended to be a metaphor for the ability to articulate one’s emotions. To me the grand tragedy of these characters (and many human beings) is that they are self-aware enough to see what is happening but are unable to articulate it and are therefore unable to articulate it. There’s a sense in which the ability to articulate something renders it powerless or gives one the ability to transform it. Anger is always secondary and reactive to fear or pain. His inability to recognize his fear for what it is and articulate leads to his wrath which ironically is the very thing that renders him powerless. He can only leave or kill her, he cannot find a middle ground. Does this work?
There is a sense in which the “typical” power dynamic is reversed. She is described as "strong." He fears she knows he is weak. Does this work?
1. Ya this totally comes through. With romance, sex, attraction, etc., there is both a literal and symbolic form of merging of bodies, egos, a disruption of normal consciousness, in some ways the merging of life into new life, etc., so it also makes sense to use relationships and sex and so on, in the absence of a meaningful connection, to make the emptiness more salient.
Delete2. There is a degree to which these ideas are "cliche" or have been explored before, but I don't think that takes away from the fact that you explored it well, and I'm not sure how much more thematically or informationally can be said or done within the context of an isolated short story of this scope. As part of a larger narrative or world, more possibilities open up.
3. The answer to this question I think is consistent with those above. As much as I loath the over-representation of the classical elements in fantasy, I do think it's worth noting that you mention fire and water metaphors, followed by breath (air) in the subsequent question, and one could also juxtapose "grounded" (earth) consciousness with the detachment of self or ego or disruption of homeostasis as I described in 1.
4. I disagree with the notion that most people are self aware about most things- maybe this is anecdotal, but I find the greater tragedy in most people is the extent to which they are defined by their blind spots without even realizing it. That said, for those who do have that level of self-awareness, to at least recognize the shape of it by its absence, even if they can't see the full dimensionality of it, and within the context of the story, yes this definitely works and is a relatable experience.
4.5. I hesitate to endorse something that, even if it's reversing them, makes binary gender dynamics more salient. That said, whether one believes in gender binary or not, the fiction of it obviously pervades the world. Anecdotally, it does seem that cis women dominants and cis men submissives are less common than the reverse in the kink and bdsm scene, but it's definitely a thing.
Max, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to these. I really appreciate it. I didn’t think about the air / earth aspect, that’s really interesting. On 4.5, thanks for raising this point. It’s a good one and something I should consider carefully.
DeleteThere are some things that I wrote that I did intuitively but do not know why. I’d be curious to how other people interpret these things.
ReplyDelete5. What do you think her repeated denials are about?
6. What happens at the end? What is the gulf of night? I intuited it as a metaphor for him accepting his own loneliness rather than destroying her but it is meant to be somewhat ambiguous and I’d love to hear what other people think.
7. At some point I got the idea that this might be a slightly younger version of Gal or Eli from Viaticum, or she might be the woman on the corner. Or, it may be as simple as this taking place in the same scarlet city he inhabits. It doesn’t particularly matter for the purposes of this piece but may ultimately form a theme for a series of short stories that involve highly intense situations and emotions. What do you think of this idea? Does it suck?
5. I assume it's related to this: "He understood then that no matter what else might happen, she was lost to him, irrevocably lost.". As you said, these were things you did not necessarily consciously design, and while latent intent or incidental meaning is definitely a thing- I am a firm believer that works can have meaning beyond authorial intent or even in contradiction of it, in this case I think the meaning is not the point. It is about that moment, the denial just adds some kind of seasoning, something to the flavor of the sentiment. It could suggest on some level that she had a deeper understanding or came to certain realizations sooner than he did.
Delete6. Gulf definitely implies separation, and night obviously darkness, these ideas are consistent with the idea of self and ego, connection and separation, etc.
7. Why would it suck? As I said previously, and as I've been advocating for a while now, expressiveness and evocation are I think valuable and underrepresented aspects of worldbuilding. If this story were integrated into Viaticum, it just adds to the flavor of that world, but it still stands on its own.
I think you are spot on with regard to authorial intent; in discussing these questions with someone else, I wrote this: “Generally speaking, I don't put a lot of stock in authorial intent, but I wanted to do a kind of a head check to see if the way I interpreted some of this stuff made sense to / read the same way to other folks. That said, in hindsight, I think asking the questions at all had the unintentional side effect of guiding the reader to a certain conclusion about the work, and it would probably result in a more valuable and impactful experience for them if they wonder about it and interpret it on their own, so next time around I keep my big yap shut.”
DeleteI've since come to some of my own conclusions about what is happening in 5 and 6, but I'll follow my own advice and let people make of them what they will.
I don’t know why I thought it might suck re: 7. Probably just the inner demons at work. We will see what happens with later works of fiction – it may be that I integrate a few additional stories using the scarlet city as a vague backdrop.
Last a housekeeping question.
ReplyDelete8. I have a lot of ambivalence about trigger warnings. On the one hand I really do want to respect people's boundaries, on the other, I never had any trigger warnings growing up and I turned out ok...well, more or less ok, and I don't want to fall into any kind of pattern of self-censorship. I worked hard at trying to ensure the sex is not gratuitous or pornographic, but certainly it's pretty highly charged. If anyone thinks that this should have any kind of trigger warning or if I should turn on the adult content warning and /or age verification, please let me know either in these comments or email me at the address in my Blogger profile please!
8. "On the one hand I really do want to respect people's boundaries, on the other, I never had any trigger warnings growing up and I turned out ok" This is really bad logic and I would warn against it. That aside, personally I found the story to be fine. A little self-censorship is not necessarily a bad thing haha, although in this case I don't think it was necessary, but that's just my opinion. There's no reason why you can't put a trigger warning at the top without changing the content. In this case I really don't think it's necessary, but you could. Would it be so bad if the sex were gratuitous or pornographic? The pervasive prudishness of culture is really a shame. Sex or sexuality (or asexuality) is a fundamental part of life. The fact that we often have to frame it within or couple it with specific genres like "romance", or veil it, or bring with it so many preconceived notions, is really a shame. It's a shame that there are so few works of pornographic art and literature. I guess "pornographic" by definition is supposed to preclude art and literature, but I just find that a kind of vacuous concept anyway, more so than the so-called "pornography" per se.
DeleteHa, it’s awful logic, I won’t argue with you there. It was a stupid thing to say, and while I meant it in kind of an off the cuff jokey way, it’s a terrible measuring stick and I’m sorry I said it. I personally do not have a problem with sex and violence in art even when it is pornographic – I think there are times when that is entirely suitable. There is some fairly extreme material among my favorite works. But asking the question has helped me establish what the social expectations are; I had someone give me a pretty good measuring stick for this a couple of days ago and I’m hearing much the same from you. The consensus seems to be that I was probably worried over nothing. That’s that good ol’ puritan past reaching out to pull me back, lol.
DeleteIn all seriousness, I your take here is really well thought out. It gives me a lot to work with and think about. Truly appreciated Max, thank you so much.
Been playing catch-up, so I only got around to reading both the new W&WW micro-post and the City of the Dead stories over on the Grand Commodore blog just before reading this - I'm increasingly convinced that there's a TTRPG-adjacent space for writing that acts like a more successful alt-lit program. I spoke about it a bit when discussing "metered games", but to say it differently here, there’s a distinct set of concerns and best practices that typify modern literary fiction collected together under the label of “craft” which generally boils down to a particular breed of realist reaction to experimentalism. Anyone who’s been in a BFA/MFA program prolly knows what I’m talking about, though I recommend looking through Daniel Green’s linked essays on the post itself. Alt-lit initially promised a separation from the prevailing trends in litfic, but I can’t help but feel like the most important figures to emerge out of those currents only engaged in literary experimentation in v. superficial ways compared to the Sorrentinos and Barths and DeLillos - the animating concerns are pretty Craft-y at their roots. In a weird way, I think that the best of this tabletop-adjacent writing accomplishes much of what alt-lit set out to do - writing as separate from the gravitational pull of the program-journal cycle that dominates the scene proper. The converse is the sort of “””literature in gaming””” that typifies the lyric game phenomenon, which is like the third-rank of professionalized lit types colonizing gaming, but that’s its own thing. Certainly a truer outsider art, at least - look at Solomon VK’s Appendix N or Patrick S’s oeuvre and tell me they’re at all in conversation with literary currents. I think your work, both here and in Viaticum, is a really great example of the possibilities afforded by this type of writerly space. Excellent excellent piece, the questions helped guide some fruitful re-reading. I’m not sure if you wanted me to answer them as well but I thoroughly enjoyed Lacuna.
ReplyDeleteI love the Grand Commodore blog. In many ways that blog (alongside the False Machine) is responsible for getting me to start writing again after a 25 year hiatus. All of HCK's stuff is good, but one of my current favorites over there is The Secret Places of Megakratheon - https://grandcommodore.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-secret-places-of-megakratheon.html - it has this incredible sense of distance which I find it very hard to capture. It's difficult to articulate but it's like you're being afforded a view of something vast from an absolutely incredible height and yet you can still make out all the details.
DeleteI read that post about lyric and metered games! I really enjoyed it, but I haven't gotten around to the pre-reading quite yet, so it's on the list to revisit at some point. The Glaser quote about the inescapable ghost of yesterday's meter helped make what you were talking about click for me. I will have to check out the Daniel Green stuff soon, I just haven't had time! I too think there may be some space for a kind of writer's workshop adjacent to TTRPGs - I've personally seen a little of that happen already, and it's been really exciting.
Thank you so much for your kind words re: Lacuna and Viaticum, I am really glad you enjoyed them. It is all the more meaningful because I have so much respect for the stuff you are doing (I cannot wait to re-read An Exsanguinary Potentate having finished Dance, there are just so many layers there). In general I have found that folks operating in this space (the OSR/RPG blogosphere) are wonderfully creative and it shows up in their work. One other thing that I think contributes to the overall quality of the writing in this space is that the material we digest as a group is so incredibly eclectic - sure a lot of us have read the Harvard classics and what have you, but I think of Patrick reading books about fire or color or caving - stuff that isn't part of the mainstream curriculum - and then seeing how that material shows up in his work.
As to the questions, please answer do answer any that you have the time and inclination to answer! Feel free to post here or to send me an email, whatever you prefer. One of the reasons I numbered them was so people who felt like answering say, number 3 and 8 could easily communicate which questions they were addressing and to make it easy to skip questions they didn't feel like answering. I would honestly love to hear your thoughts. I tried some stuff with this one that I have not tried before and I've found that sometimes the way I read something is vastly different than the way someone else reads it. Generally the way I work the first draft is written completely intuitively without much recourse to metaphor or meaning, and then on subsequent editing I figure out what the hell I meant and start trying to build on it. Ideally, I would leave out questions like these, since I really feel that a reader will often come away with an interpretation that is more powerful to them since they have to come up with "what the hell does it all mean?" on their own and are not given guidance by someone else. That's probably what I will do in the future, except for maybe running it by one or two folks I've worked closely with, but I am suspending that policy for this post and welcome anyone and everyone to post and / or email me with thoughts on anything here in terms of the text or questions!