Three Short Stories About Revenge

Title: Casting the Runes
Author: M.R. James (Montague Rhodes James)
Where I Read It: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

This is an entertaining, creepy, and fairly straightforward story about revenge after academic rejection. A scholar turns down a paper about alchemy and subsequently gets marked for death by the paper's author, a deeply unpleasant man named Mr. Karswell. Karswell enjoys toying with his victim and encouraging dread and despair. (At one point, the victim, reaching for a watch, instead touches "a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and... not the mouth of a human being." I like that – we don't know what mouth it is, but it definitely isn't a human mouth.)

Title: The Method
Author: Janet Fitch
Where I Read It: Los Angeles Noir

"The Method" has a well-written first-person narrator, Holly, who's a struggling actress. She meets a charismatic older guy who becomes her lover and also wants her to gain access to the decrepit mansion of an old actress. The reason he gives her is that some of older woman's possessions are valuable as memorabilia. But the story takes a darker turn, as the narrator realizes certain things about her new lover and the old actress. I liked the details about the mansion, and the way the story evokes the feeling of being faded and used up. A kind of solidarity develops between the two women, and the ending is intense and grim.

Title: The Victim
Author: P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James)
Where I Read It: Sleep No More

A man kills his ex-wife's second husband. I especially liked the descriptions of the route the murderer takes to commit his crime and the griminess of the home he lives in. The story is a good study of obsessiveness; obsessive people can be readily manipulated, especially if they're lovelorn.

Week in Seven Words #347

fanfare
She arrives late to the concert and trills apologies, her arms flung wide for balance, as she walks crabwise down half a row to her seat.

pastry
The chocolate rugelach they bring out isn't dry and flaky. The chocolate is seeping deliciously into the dough.

realized
She transformed a secondary character from a stock figure to a person.

residence
She makes a Lego version of me, a princess with glasses and a crown, and installs me in a two-story, two-room house with a rooftop observatory and the necessities - a tree, a book, a bar of gold, a hairbrush, and a cape.

unblinking
In the back of the pickup truck, he keeps a stuffed animal basset hound that stands guard over his gear.

upbeat
A day of feeling down ends on a bright note, as if a curtain's been brushed aside, thanks to a good dinner with some good people.

waggle
He's a few decades older than they are, so he flirts with them in a paternal way, one leg propped on the seat next to theirs, his elbow on his knee as he leans forward to explain the world to them and give them little compliments. They smile at him politely until his wife reappears.

Week in Seven Words #330

clarification
What at first sounds like the wind crying resolves into choir music broadcast on a radio in a waiting room down the hall.

hamming
She makes short videos of evil twins leaping out of mirrors and people finding an intruder in the closet as they tour their new home. I'm cast in several roles. My favorite is the one where I get stabbed with a plastic pineapple and deliver a monologue for the ages.

meaty
All of the commuters packed, flesh to flesh, turn the subway car into a sausage link.

median
He continues to be fanatic about how normal he is. His way is the one true way of normality.

reactiveness
Waiting for the elevator, stone-faced as a Buckingham Palace guard, while a neighbor and her child scream at each other a few feet away.

spud
Pleasure from a potato's crinkly gold skin.

sway
In her marriage, she's a courtier. Dressed in elegant fabrics that pool on the floor as she bows and scrapes.

Week in Seven Words #325

belting
The tulips look like a tipsy choir, open-mouthed and unsteady.

executive
He practices a dramatic swivel in his parents' office chair - revealing himself to the room with menace and flair. Like a responsible adult, I suggest that he pretend to hold a whiskey glass, maybe a cigar.

pesky
She treats my emotions as an inconvenience. Like, why can't I just not have them? Consider how much simpler life would be.

plashing
The shivers of a robin in a bird bath.

pooling
Lemony willow leaves stain the pond. A child showers the ducks with gold and brown crusts.

rive
We part ways, for good I think, and all I am at this point is tired.

strides
"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll survive by pretending I do," is their way of working, and I don't know if I want to roll my eyes at them or give them a hug.

Week in Seven Words #198 and #199

#198

dolls
Before the play, the actors come on stage to finish dressing. They're an all-male cast, and one of them (a noble lady) does a few warm-up sashays in his green gown. Those in masculine costume need help with their buckles and buttons; one actor smiles benignly at the audience as a crew member tries to maneuver his feet into a pair of pinched boots.

dreary
We live with paradoxes every day, and they sometimes seem like cosmic jokes. People who try to impress a rigid order on the world have to first rid themselves of their sense of humor.

gasper
They've taken off the masks to their Sesame Street costumes and puff on cigarettes in the cold air.

peculiar
When the documentary shows parts of a Catholic mass, it occurs to me that for most of the audience, this will be the closest they ever get to watching a mass. It's an alien rite.

spear
Waiting in line outdoors in the brittle sunshine.

tallow
The stage is lit with real candles, hovering in chandeliers that hang on ropes. Throughout the play, candle wax plinks onto the stage.

tumult
He plays, on alternate days, a violent king and a noblewoman falling violently in love.

Week in Seven Words #172

attentive
Beneath a tree that's touching the ground with its upper branches, they read the Ten Commandments. People listen quietly and eat ice cream.

forced
He thinks that if he stops telling jokes, he'll be boring. People will wonder why they're talking to him. So he doesn't relax. It's a fine day outside, and he's got a kindly, patient audience, but he can't stop forcing the jokes.

goofiness
Without prompting, he belts out a funny song and acts out all the voices. Silliness can be beautiful.

oenophile
A large dog in a wine shop, moseying among the shelves.

reactions
Because we all talk when watching TV, it still winds up being quality time with them. In reaction to what's on the screen, they reveal things about what they think and feel, and they ask questions.

tête-à-tête
A bench beneath a tree by a fountain. The shadows in the afternoon move slowly.

wearying
I look around, and I can't truthfully say I'm eager to meet any of them.

Week in Seven Words #166

compete
The kids in his class keep an eye on each other's reading levels, indicated by colors assigned by the teacher. The information isn't advertised, but they all know anyway from sneaking peeks into each other's notebooks and folders; the competitiveness is fierce, even at this young age. Instead of asking him where he stands in relation to the other kids, I tell him to focus on his own progress. And he really has improved. He's less prone to skipping over words he doesn't know or mumbling them quietly. Instead, he stops, tries to pronounce them (out loud or to himself), and asks if he doesn't know. He's starting to dip into simple chapter books. Does the competitiveness help? If it gets students to read more and maybe enjoy reading too, does it matter?

monkeying
In the game of monkey in the middle, it seems there are two monkeys, and neither is in the middle.

placid
On a lazy holiday afternoon, I'm reading in the sunshine.

salverform
Discovering delicate purple crocuses among the daffodils.

stuffed
Food is coming out of my pores, I'm so full.

terrene
He spins the globe as a self-soothing mechanism. The sound of the world rattling around and around calms him.

theatrical
She's memorized the book so she can read it to me even without knowing all the words. Then she can focus more on the acting: belting out dialogue in different voices or speaking in a stage whisper.

Week in Seven Words #164

cleared
For the first time in an embarrassingly long while, I can see the bottom of my desk drawers. It's a cathartic moment.

clues
She's a competent person who psyches herself out, her thoughts chasing suspicions and omens.

fisticuffs
My knuckles are raw and bleeding, as if I've punched a wall, but the only things they've battled against are dust and cold, dry weather.

histrionics
In a heartbeat, she feigns hysteria, her voice plaintive and her eyes moist. Cars zoom by on the highway.

inconsiderate
He's in a bowler hat and a red bowtie, and he sits in the front row. From there, his tired jokes and loud asides are sure to disrupt the speaker.

renewing
Cleaning for Passover means a fresh start. Everything looks neater and more spacious. There's room to work and grow. I'm not going to be buried in the detritus of past years.

self-possessed
I'm amazed at how patient he is, fiddling quietly with the picture book as he waits for me to wrap up a conversation on the phone.

Worth Watching: Stage Door (1937)

Title: Stage Door
Director: Gregory La Cava
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

I had a feeling I'd like this movie, and I was right.

Much of it is set in The Footlights Club, a boarding-house for aspiring actresses and other stage performers trying to make it big (or at least find work) in New York City. Jean Maitland (Ginger Rogers) is a smart-alecky blonde who butts heads with her new roommate, Terry Randall (Katharine Hepburn), a bright Midwesterner who seems to have an enviable amount of money and more booksmarts than real experience. Linda Shaw (Gail Patrick) is enjoying jewels, furs, and fine dining paid for by her sugar daddy, while Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds) has failed to find any new work after she made her successful debut on the stage a year earlier. The other boarding house inmates - played by the likes of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Constance Collier, and Ann Miller – keep each other's spirits up by hanging out together and cracking jokes.

Week in Seven Words #145

gauze
Fat snowflakes swimming past my eyes. The world is wrapped up in snow.

macabre
Despair is always waiting with open arms but I don't look his way, not this time.

masonry
In the subway car I'm just one brick in a wall of solid flesh.

morphed
The dog got a haircut. Now when she stretches up on her hind legs to poke her nose over the edge of the table she looks part-canine, part-rodent, and part-pixie, with liquid alien eyes.

pointless
Conversations with people who have a gleam in their eye that tells me they're not really hearing me out, just waiting to pounce on what they expect to hear. Why should I talk, when they already know what I'm going to say?

simulation
Before reading comes pretend reading, where she turns the pages, recites the words she knows by heart, points out the pictures, and to all appearances looks as if she's reading.

wobbly
I'm heading into new territory on unsteady legs, as if there's ice under my feet.

Good Short Fiction: "Puss-Cat" and "The White Cat"

Collection: Tails of Wonder and Imagination: Cat Stories
Editor: Ellen Datlow

Title: Puss-Cat
Author: Reggie Oliver
Godfrey is a washed up theater actor who used to perform in supporting roles alongside the late Sir Roderick Bentley, a legendary thespian. In the story Godfrey is sitting around talking about Roderick ("Roddy") over drinks, and even though Godfrey is an interesting man in his own right - world-weary and full of forced cheer, his tongue loosened by drink - you sense that his life has revolved and will always revolve around Roddy. "Puss-cat" is the term of endearment that Roddy, an insatiable womanizer, used for all of his girlfriends and mistresses, and Godfrey spends the most time talking about one of them: Yolande, an ingenue who caught Roderick's attention after she berated him for hurting a stray cat that hung around the theater where they were rehearsing. As Godfrey puts it:

Yolande, you see, was one of those people who is instantly drawn to anything even more defenceless than herself.

There's so much deliciousness in this story, the way it's crafted in a loose narrative where each detail slips in at just the right moment. In Godfrey's reminiscences the characters come alive: Roddy, grand and careless, the charismatic egotist par excellence, and Yolande, who is way in over her head when it comes to love and life and the often sordid business of theater. And Godfrey himself, with his witty asides and drink-deadened heart, what little surprises he has in store for us. I love how the humor in the story can suddenly give way to a deep bruising darkness.

I also love the detail about each theater having its own cat, a stray who saunters around and owns the place (and keeps mice from chewing on wires and cables). Isn't it curious that Roddy, a man of the theater who calls all his girlfriends "puss-cat," really hates cats? Theater cats are a critical part of this tale.

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Title: The White Cat
Author: Joyce Carol Oates

There was a gentleman of independent means who, at about the age of fifty-six, conceived of a passionate hatred for his much-younger wife's white Persian cat.

Julius Muir is in his fifties; Alissa, his wife, is in her thirties. It's her second marriage, and his first. She's pursuing an acting career in the city and spends a lot of time with her circle of theater friends, including men her own age. Julius meantime hangs around his large estate outside the city collecting valuables and wondering why he still feels lonely.

Into this picture of marital health steps Miranda, the cat. Miranda seems to show affection to everyone but Julius, and it drives him up the wall. He bought her, didn't he? Out of his loving, considerate heart he gave her as a gift to his wife, to cuddle and dote on. He sustains her, provides her with a home. Why won't she let him touch her? Why won't she love him? If someone were to ask him, "Julius, dear boy, is it really the cat that's bothering you or is it your wife?" he would say that of course it's not his wife. He loves his wife; it's just her cat he can't stand. Her beautiful ungrateful cat.

So he starts plotting how to kill the cat and make it look like an accident. It's a sad spectacle for the most part. Creepy and pitiable. He married a woman who is unsuited to him and to his ideal of marriage, and he thinks offing her cat will change things? But he's not really thinking, is he; he's going off the deep end.

Sometimes a story has a dominant color, and for this one it's a pale icy blue. Husband and wife may be cordial to one another but there's a chill on the marriage. Even Julius Muir's passions give off little heat. I see him bluish and oxygen-starved, with little to nourish him from within or from without.

Love can't be bought or demanded. And revenge doesn't always go as planned. It's painful to watch Julius square off against a house cat, and feel the futility of everything he does. Tormented by the thought that maybe a man like him can't inspire love.

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Other stories from this collection: Coyote Peyote (by Carole Nelson Douglas), Every Angel is Terrifying (by John Kessel), Tiger in the Snow (by Daniel Wynn Barber), Gordon the Self-Made Cat by Peter S. Beagle, and Guardians by George R. R. Martin.

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This post has been linked to at Short Stories on Wednesday #23 at the Breadcrumb Reads blog.

Week in Seven Words #8

assortment
We're the ones who don't fit neatly anywhere. Off the main room with the bright lights and song and long tables, we're in the semi-dark, five or six of us, whoever wants to drift in and talk about anything, from holiday plans to obscure historical details, and whether it's possible to both be cynical and hold onto cherished ideals. We're in the side room with the books, leftover crackers, and the windows facing sunset; in key ways we're beautifully different from one another, but seeking similar things - the pleasure of good conversation, along with room to slouch and stretch out our legs.

budding
The darling buds of March. They're set, in shades of light pink, against backdrops of gray sky or drab brick; they're framed by windows, where they seem to be looking in with rapt attention. Some trees have already flowered open, but on others the buds hold tight to themselves as long as possible; I'm expecting them to be especially spectacular when they finally yield to the season.

pantomime
To help someone out with a project, I agree to be photographed carrying out a number of different actions - playing cards, getting chased, sipping from a cup, reclining in a chair. I also need to mimic angry and violent actions - punching and kicking. I find it difficult to act those out, because I keep cracking up; I don't look angry enough. Finally I manage it but even then it feels like a comic sort of anger, as if I'm a cartoon character with steam coming out of my ears.

signal
He wants me to give him a signal if he's getting to be too long-winded in front of the guests. The signals we discuss range from the relatively subtle - three taps to the side of my nose, a beseeching stare - to the more obvious, like throwing my head back and letting out a huge groan.

steeped
The short thin raincoat isn't enough against the downpour. The rain soaks into my jeans and sweatshirt sleeves. I wear the rain on my skin for hours, cool against my thighs and wrists and the slope of my shoulders.

terrace
A light dinner beneath a peach and gray sky; the breeze for the most part is mild and pleasant. I sit alone and eat slowly. I stop often to sip my root beer and lean back in my chair.

underestimated
Very young infants are often underestimated. But there's so much that they can do, and many things that they're primed to learn. They have certain cognitive structures in place. They can pick up contingencies about the properties of the world and its objects. As the weeks fly by after birth, they show an ability to reason (in their own elusive, nonverbal way) about events in the world. The glimpses we get into their minds reveal amazing processes.