Teaser Tuesday

Here’s the beginning of a short story I’ve been working on.

Mereá

The first thing that retreats before you is its name. Mereá, the city of winding caves. From a distance one sees only two lights shining out over the desert, marking her lair. There she slinks into dusk. No welcome to move further in and explore. These lights are not for guiding visitors through sage and scrub to the city’s entrance; she cannot stomach any more people.

Still he came back, looking for his wife who had been lost the year before. She had gone out to go look at the stars against all advice from their guides. She wanted to enjoy the coolness of the desert by herself, she said, and would only be gone for twenty minutes. He had waited an hour before becoming worried and getting a search party ready. That night they walked outward in a five-mile radius, calling his wife’s name. All that met them were jackal cries. They walked the same paths the next day, tried to see any trace of a human footprint in the sand. There was nothing. And then the storms came, and the guides said they had to move camp.

This time he came with no guides to slow his tracks. He had stayed in that country for a month after his wife’s disappearance, asking the surrounding villages if they had seen her, explaining that she was out on a walk and may have gotten lost. It was the time of carnival. Anything could have happened to her. But no, not just anything.

Mereá, they had said. His wife must have accidentally found the city underneath. He asked where it was, how he could contact the people there. They merely shook their heads, eyebrows furrowed as if to say the thing was never done. They only said Go home. Mereá has her now, and she has forgotten you and the sun and sand. Go home and find another wife who will not wander off.

He tried explaining that she would not so quickly forget her life and all whom she loved, but they just shook their heads again, a small laugh coming from one particular old man. The man came up close when passing by him, bent over, and whispered, You must look for her. His wife? That was what he was doing. No, not your wife. Mereá, you must find her first. Then, perhaps you will find your love, if Mereá lets you remember how.

  He found the approximate location of their old camp, and as dusk shaded into indigo, he went for a walk, just as his wife had done. The air was beginning to chill and all he had seen were stars and sand, no strange cave or hole in which his wife may have wandered. He cried out his wife’s name several times, imagining her face as he last saw it, laughing at his worry, smiling a quick goodbye and I’ll see you in a few minutes.

At last he grew tired, laid himself down the desert floor and stared up at the sky. The world tilted before him as he stared; he felt as if he could drop straight through the stars and land on the other side. Slowly he closed his eyes, settled his breathing to take long, slow draughts of air. There was no wind, no noise. In that stillness, he began to walk. Some say that if one slows their breath to the point of dying, Mereá will come, will let your feet slide in between her eyes and find the first step. Some nights there are twenty stairs leading down into the heart of the plaza; other nights there are thirty. Or one-hundred. There are some who descend forever.

INK

 

To call Ink a fairytale would be huge diservice to the film. The movie goes beyond the standard and over simplified evil versus good plot in way that keeps us mesmerized, mystified, and slightly creeped out. The Brothers Grimm would have approved.

Visually stunning, the story reminded me at times of  Terry Gilliam’s Tideland and Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (they too, have little girls who stumble into a wondrous kind of universe). Ink has a palpable delight that the previous films lack, and with an underground Gaimanesque Neverwhere feel to it,  makes it a truly remarkable film.

Written and directed by Jamin Winans, the creator of the short Spin, and produced by Kiowa Winans Ink is the story of a little girl, Emma, lost in a dreamscape. I’m hesitant to say more for fear of giving away too much of the plot, which plays off a Lynchian-like disjointedness. There are monsters of course, starting with Ink, a broken spirit dressed in rags who steals the Emma from her waking world. The Incubi, with their grotesque smiles, haunt our nightmares and seem to rule Ink’s most troubled desires.

Chris Kelly plays well the character of John, Emma’s father. He anchors us in the reality and paranoia of present day culture. In opposition to him is a blind man named Jacob (played by Jeremy Make). With his eyes taped shut, he is forever doomed to walk to the rhythm of both reality and dreams, knows the paths of the unspeakable and has the choice to “stop the flow” when needed. Liev (Jessica Duffy) is the storyteller, a Beatrice-like character who I didn’t quite empathize with until the haircut scene, and then I loved her.

Most of all, though, I enjoyed Quinn Hunchar’s portrayal of Emma. The first scene where she is playing with her father and begging him to rescue her from the pretend monster, I wasn’t sure if there might have been something  invisible there, tugging at her shirt. Then again, this movie is all about the seen and unseen–the haunting, cadenced movement between those worlds.

This is an ambitious first feature-length film, accomplishing an original and fresh visual narrative. The audience will forgive where it falls short, at times, in the dialogue.  It’s action packed enough to keep us invested and imaginitive to the point of really creating something….new. And in a tired world of information overload and disappearing time, isn’t that what we need right about now? To stop the flow, and remember the redemptive power of wonder.

 

PS: Ink is playing at STARZ Filmcenter in Denver until April 30th, so you still have a chance to buy tickets.

Urban Fantasy and Stiletto Boots (not!)

Quick post here. I sent off a revised Devouring Winter to my agent and two other authors.  So, nothing to do but wait and see what happens. Right. Just wait? I think not. The City of White Towers has been lying forlorn on my desktop and begs to be reopened. There’s an art thesis in my backpack dying to be read, and still mounds of essays on my coffee table to grade. Amid all that I’m desperate for a pair of flat heeled boots. Where the heck are they? All I see in the stores are these painful stiletto things that could be boots or some element of torture used in the Inquisition.

On a completely different note, look for upcoming teasers from The City of White Towers, an urban fantasy set in Denver. I’ve gone to some great panels discussing urban fantasy (which is very popular right now), so I’d like to open this question up to the audience:

What is your definition of urban fantasy? Could it ever happen in the a suburban community?  

Here’s a interesting story by Kafka called “A Country Doctor”–would you consider this urban fantasy–or something else? It’s a weird creeplicious tale http://malaspina.edu/~johnstoi/kafka/countrydoctor.htm

Now, must there always be a vampire or werewolf in UF, or do we need something new to invigorate and renew the genre? How might it differ from magical realism, horror, or the surreal?  (okay, I realize now this sounds like an essay test).  I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts!

The pic below–another view of my office. Both props from student presentations.