Novella November: The Love Child

"A love-child, the phrase had surged up from her inner consciousness, and she spoke it without realizing what it implied. It just did express what Clarissa truly was to her---the creation of the love of all her being. It was the truth, and in face of the truth she knew that no one could take the child away. She had saved her."

Being an only child led me to manifest Jasmine. She was a bit older than me, smarter, cooler, owned a pink Corvette, and had luxurious glitter dusted hair that she dragged across the floor. I told anyone who'd listen that Jasmine (yes, she was named after Aladdin's main squeeze) was my sister. My parents played along. They poured extra Kool-Aid for her, set a placemat at our table for her, made sure she was buckled up in the backseat --- for my benefit they entertained this second "daughter".

After some time Jasmine started to become an issue, this when I began to talk about her outside of the comforts of home. Jasmine never went to school with me (she was older and cooler remember?), but I blabbed about her enough to where she became known to my teacher. Little did I know that I had successfully convinced her of Jasmine's existence so much so that when my parents came to a PTA meeting (yes, my parents actually went to those) my teacher asked about Jasmine's whereabouts and was greeted with my parents' quizzical stares.

Jasmine is no more, as all the "imaginary friends" I have now are characters in stories that I have hibernating in unfinished word docs, but it's a little funny that what made Jasmine more "alive" was not me just believing in her existence, but that I kept her in the confides of home, and once she became realized outside of that, poof! she was gone. Gone because she wasn't just exclusive to me anymore. I had messed up giving her away. Reality had intruded the fantasy. In short, I grew up.

To create a person out of thin air, give them shape and identity and then be able to convince others of such a creation requires an intimacy that is challenging to explain. Of course psychoanalysts, child experts whathaveyou have tried to link the appearance of an imaginary friend to a child having a social "problem", and since only children are sheltered little monsters who bray at the moon at midnight every third Thursday, we are classified as having such a "problem." (I'm kidding) True, I created Jasmine's existence due to a desire to have siblings, but it also was an inkling of the storytelling life I would quasi-live one day, and the wild imagination that I continue to have all so I can keep a little fantasy in my reality.

Maybe that's why I was drawn to this odd little novella as The Love Child actually delves into that weird, sorta Frankenstein-equse way we 'create' individuals in our adolescent, and how they somehow translate towards our adulthood. The Love Child delves a little further as it asks the question: what would happen if you conjured up your imaginary friend as an adult? If you're Agatha Bodenham, you'd play along, that is, till such a creation begins to consume you greatly...

Novella November: The Shape of Mrs. Caliban

"You are too frightened. It spoils your enjoyment." / "Larry, you're all I've got"

Let's get this out of the way...

Mrs. Caliban was The Shape of Water before The Shape of Water. And yes, it too is about a woman who gets her freak on with a sea creature.

Oh, and you thought Guillermo Del Toro's Academy Award-winning film (and it's book accompaniment) was wholly original?* Surely you jest...

Now whether Del Toro was inspired by Rachel Ingalls' slim novel from 1982 is up for debate (Del Toro has stated that he was inspired by the romantic undertones in the creature feature classic Creature From The Black Lagoon), but it's not hard to detect that something was cribbed, as both posses strikingly similar threads of DNA whereas a lonely woman, stifled silent by her oppressive environment finds solace and personal freedom through loving an equally misunderstood sea monster. Both too also blur the lines of normal and abnormal (or how we define such...), but Mrs. Caliban, for me, detours into something deeper. Much deeper.

The Quiet Madness of 'Séance on a Wet Afternoon'

I'm often drawn to the more muted mystery thrillers. The ones that star quiet, unbalanced individuals who promenade in gloomy, claustrophobic habitats that tend to close in ever so slowly with every page turn. Where the only explosions that occur are the synapses of the mind, when mental slippage is in its most sinister, and secreted form.

Written by Australian author Martin McShane in 1961, Séance on a Wet Afternoon checks all those boxes for me when it comes to psychological thrillers, as it takes an unsettling dive into the disturbed mind of Myra Savage.

Myra is a middle-aged medium who believes she possesses special sensory "gifts", "gifts" that have her foresee the future and has her in touch with spirits from other dimensions. She supports her unemployed, asthmatic husband, Bill, through this "gift" by conducting seances out of the couple's isolated Victorian dwelling.

As quaint as it all sounds, Myra isn't content. She vies to be world-renowned for her "gifts" and abandon the meager existence her and Bill share, thus, she hatches a plan to kidnap the child of a prominent businessman, and to use her "gifts" to find the "missing" child and collect the ransom, with camera bulb flashes, congratulatory headlines, and patrons lined up at the door to soon follow. Ensnaring the assistance of her hapless hen-pecked husband into the plot, Myra is convinced that the plan possesses no flaws, but it's obvious to the reader that the signs are there for a flurry of disaster to unfold.