Short Story: "Warts and All"

"I can't believe we have to live in this rat trap," Florence complained once again to her long-suffering sister as they sat at the kitchen table having their morning coffee. "Nobody is ever going to buy it. It's a what-do-they-call-it... a teardown."

"It's not a teardown," Eleanor said. The ruffled sleeve on her flowered robe fluttered as she swept her hand around the room. "It just has... character. We're not as young as we used to be either, you know." She gave Florence a rueful, and surprisingly girlish, grin but got only a glare in return.

"Nothing in this house works. And the water's getting worse. First it was freezing, then it about scalded my skin off in the shower this morning." Florence's scowl accentuated the deep crevasses that ran from the side of her nose to her chin, puppet-like.

"Really? That never happens in my bathroom. Certainly, the pressure's a little low..."

"I'm telling you, it's dangerous! Look!" Florence held out a flaccid arm that was indeed red, shiny, and scaly, as if it had been repeatedly burned. "I'm like that all over!" To punctuate the point, she scratched a particularly irritated-looking patch under her chin where the folds of loose skin had scabbed over and turned a deep brown. She stood up to pace the floor. "This horrible place is giving me hives." She stopped at the nearest wall, used a hand to steady herself, and kicked it, leaving a black smudge against pale-yellow, beadboard paneling that seemed to shudder under the blow.

"Florence! Don’t do that!" Eleanor snatched her napkin from her lap and cautiously knelt down, noticing with surprise that her knees didn't creak like they had for the past decade or so. She spit in the napkin and carefully wiped the smudge away, polishing until the wall was spotless. Then, giving the wall a loving pat, she stood smoothly back up and gave Florence her best glare, the one she'd perfected in four decades of teaching music to fifth graders. Or rather, she glared at the top of Florence's head. When did she get so short? Eleanor wondered to herself.

"What?" Florence demanded.

"You shouldn't be so spiteful about the house. Old houses like this have personality, that's all. If you would take the time to appreciate its finer– "

"There's nothing about this horror to apprecia..." Florence's voice gave out, and she cleared her throat then waved her hand in a "wait a minute" gesture and went to get a drink from the sink. She swallowed half a glass full in audible gulps and grimaced as if the water tasted bad. But when she spoke again her words still came out rasping and not very clear. "I detest this house. If one more thing goes wrong I'm going to call a salvage company and have them pull it apart!"

"Don't you dare! This house is mine, too!" But Eleanor found herself talking to Florence's disappearing back, which, now that she noticed it, seemed to have gotten very stooped lately. Well, they were both past sixty, and the years had to start showing sometime. But, unlike Florence, she'd actually been feeling – and, if she did say so herself, looking – much better lately. She'd noticed her skin had gotten smoother, her joints more limber, her hair still-dark hair thicker, since they'd moved into this beautiful house.

Everything about the old house was beautiful to Eleanor. She loved the carved woodwork and the stained parquet floors, the ancient chandelier that shimmered like dusty diamonds and the cracked attic windows that made the front of the house seem to be looking at you. She didn't mind that the paint was peeling or that the roof leaked, that mice lived in the baseboards or that the water taps were temperamental. But Florence minded. Florence minded a very great deal.

They'd been living in separate apartments – tiny apartments in "adult communities" – until their 106-year-old great-aunt died and left them her house: 60 percent to Florence, the elder sister, and 40 percent to Eleanor. Even pooling their limited retirement resources, Eleanor's from teaching and Florence's from the postal service, they hadn't been able to afford rent on their apartments plus taxes on the house. So they'd decided to live in it together until they could sell it. With five bedrooms plus maid's quarters in the attic, there was plenty of room for two single sisters, sisters who in a less-enlightened age might have been called "spinsters".

Now, Eleanor spent her days alternately being flabbergasted that she was lucky enough to live in such an incredible house and worrying that someone really would buy it, snatch it away from her. She tried not to look at the "For Sale" sign by the curb and silently willed the house-lookers to keep driving when they slowed for a closer inspection. But it hadn't always worked. Three potential buyers had been interested enough to make appointments and come to see the inside of the house, and each time Eleanor and Florence had temporarily switched roles. Eleanor, who adored the house, spent the tour pointing out all the drawbacks of an old home and how much work it needed; Florence, who loathed it, turned into a fast-talking saleswoman and made the house sound like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

If only she really loved you as much as she pretends she does when she's trying to get rid of you, Eleanor thought, gently wiping down the stained tile countertop. Then we could just stay here and everything would be fine...

Her thoughts were interrupted by a resounding crash from the front of the house, a crash punctuated by Florence's shrieks. She followed the noise at a run – a part of her mind musing on when had been the last time she actually ran anywhere – and came to a sudden halt in the front hall. Her sister cowered with her back to the wall, the remains of the crystal chandelier spread at her feet.

Eleanor took in the scene and dismissed Florence when she didn't see any blood. Her sister was standing statue-still as if afraid to stir. Eleanor's eyes moved from her to the carnage of shattered crystal and bent brass, and her skin tightened with horror. Your beautiful chandelier! Through tear-blurred eyes, she spied a sparkling diamond-shaped crystal that looked miraculously whole and took several careful steps into the room, trying not to crush any potentially savable shards, until she could reach it. At least she didn't ruin all of it, she thought, aiming a deadly glare at her sister and cradling the precious crystal in her hand.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Florence demanded, anger making her voice crack. "This isn't my fault. I could have been killed!"

"What were you doing in here?" Eleanor narrowed her eyes, trying to see the truth in her sister's face.

"The mail came. I was just looking through it when the damn chandelier started shaking. Next thing I knew there was this ripping sound, then that." She gestured toward the crystal remains as she crept along the wall, unsuccessfully trying to keep something hidden behind her back.

"What do you have there?" Eleanor had caught hundreds of students passing notes, and she hadn't lost the skill.

"It's my personal mail; it's none of your business."

Eleanor was suddenly glad her sister seemed to have shrunk since they moved in. She towered over Florence and grabbed the large manila envelope out of her hand with newfound strength. The return address said: "Martinez Demolition and Salvage". She ripped the end of the envelope open, wondering for a moment where her glasses were before realizing she could read the small type of the enclosed contract without them. A contract already signed by her sister and by a Robert Martinez. A contract stating that the company would begin salvaging "all reclaimable building materials and hardware" from the house on the first of the following month.

"You... you can't do this!" Eleanor was backing away from Florence as if she were something repulsive. "I won't let you."

"I own the majority of this house; it's my decision. Don't you worry, I'll give you your part of the profits. Now give me my contract." Florence held out a hand that wasn't quite steady.

Eleanor dropped the contract among the destruction on the floor and fled from the room, wanting only to get away from Florence before the gathering storm of sobs broke.

*****

Over the next ten days, Eleanor spoke to Florence only when it couldn't be avoided, and at first, she was rewarded with barely recognizable croaks in return. But soon even those disappeared, and her sister replied only with baleful looks and curt, sharp gestures: jerky head shakes, yanked-up shoulders, sullen nods, and glares from newly bugged-out eyes. Eleanor wasn’t sure if her sister's voice had finally given out completely or if she was just being even more unpleasant than usual, and she didn't care. She wasn't worried about her sister; she was worried about saving the house.

The house itself, on the other hand, seemed to be taking Florence's plans personally and was doing everything in its power to make her life miserable.

Eleanor was the house's silent cheering section. She couldn't resist a small, secret smile when she heard high-pitched wails coming from the shower. She reveled silently when Florence's repeated tripping over thresholds, rugs, and stairs resulted in her walking with a permanent hopping lurch. And she walked away with a bounce in her own step when a bookshelf spewed its contents at her sister, raining heavy leather-bound volumes down upon her bent shoulders.

And every act of rebellion by the house resulted in another retribution by Florence. It seemed she'd decided not to wait for Martinez Demolition and Salvage; she was starting the job herself. She unscrewed glass doorknobs, she took down light fixtures, she even tried to pry up the ancient oak floorboards in the hall.

It was war.

*****

When the first of the month arrived, both the house and Florence were bruised and battered, and Eleanor's hopes had been beaten as well. She'd consulted a lawyer and been told that the disposition of the house was in the hands of its majority owner. Period. She had no say in whether the house was torn apart piece by piece, and her love for the house carried no weight at all.

As Eleanor sat drowning her despair in coffee at the kitchen table, stroking the diamond-shaped crystal from the chandelier that she'd strung on a satin ribbon around her neck, she heard her sister thump-sliding down the hall. She watched her struggle past the door dragging a laundry bag on her way to the washing machine in the basement. Eleanor decided to make one final appeal.

"Florence, can't we talk about this. Please?"

Her sister didn't acknowledge her.

"What if I buy your interest in the house?" she pleaded at her sister's tiny, curved back. "It would take me some time, but eventually, somehow, I could pay you what it's worth, and you wouldn't have to live here, and I could just send you some money every month, and..."

The basement door squeaked open, and Florence turned her head and forced out a rasping croak that sounded a little like, "Forget it," before starting down the stairs step by careful step with the laundry bag bumping behind her.

Eleanor, one hand gripping the molding beside the door, watched her sister recede into the dimness until she disappeared.

That's when she heard it.

She heard the scrape of grasping fingers and the bang of thinly fleshed bones against wooden stair risers. The wordless animal screech of fear and pain. And she heard all the other sounds end with a split-melon noise when her sister reached the hard-packed basement floor.

"Florence?" Eleanor called, softly at first, then louder. "Florence?!"

Nothing.

She was just starting to take a step toward the stairs, screwing up her resolve to investigate, when the door started moving. Slowly, carefully, it swung toward her, giving her plenty of time to step back out of the way before it closed and latched with a solid snick. She tried to turn the doorknob, but it wouldn't budge.

Eleanor stared at the door silently, then whispered, "Florence..." She lay her hand flat upon the door, rested her forehead beside it. She was still there, standing in silence, ears straining for any sound from below, when the front doorbell rang. She yelped and jerked around so her back was to the basement door, hands pressed protectively against it. The doorbell rang again.

Straightening her hair, then smoothing her hands down her dress, she made her way to the entryway, looking back over her shoulder several times to make sure the basement door was still closed. At the front door, she peeked through the leaded glass panel and saw a man of about her own age – or at least the age she now looked. He was medium height and ruddy, in jeans and denim shirt and with a clipboard in his hand.

She took a deep breath, blew it out, and opened the door.

"May I help you?"

"Ms. Johnson? I'm Robert Martinez. It's nice to meet you in person." He held out a well-calloused hand, and – after a short pause – she shook it. Her hand only quivered a little.

"Actually, Mr. Martinez, I'm Eleanor Johnson, my sister is... indisposed." She couldn't keep her eyes from darting toward the basement, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Please, call me Robert. That's no problem. I just need to take a look around and get a plan together for my crew. They'll show up in about an hour." His eyes, and then his hand, strayed to the decorative carving surrounding the front door, and he stroked it appreciatively. "Man, they really don't make 'em like this anymore, do they?" He rapped the wood with his knuckles. "And it seems to be solid." He inclined his head toward the entry. "Mind if I come in?"

"Oh, well, the thing is..." Eleanor stepped back in automatic response to his stepping forward, and Robert walked in, stopping after a few paces to turn in a complete circle, head moving up and down, side to side, as he took in the house with a professional's eye.

He whistled. "This place is gorgeous. Really." He looked at Eleanor speculatively and pinched his lips together, seeming to be struggling with whether or not to speak. After a moment, his need to say what was on his mind clearly won out over propriety. "Ma'am, I gotta be frank with you. I can make a fortune for both of us salvaging this place." He paused, looked around again. "But are you sure you want me to? I mean," he gestured at the woodwork, the pocket doors, the leaded glass, "this isn't the kind of place we usually get. It's still livable, you know? Heck, with just a little work, it would be a showplace. Seems a shame to rip apart a grand old lady like this and sell her for scrap." He looked down at the floor, obviously embarrassed. "'Course, it's up to you, but if it were my house...."

Eleanor beamed. "Really? You really think so? I mean, I love this house, warts and all. And I never wanted it torn apart, but my sister..."

Behind her, a thump sounded against the basement door, and they both turned to look in that direction. It thumped again, louder this time.

Robert smiled. "You got a cat or a dog in there, you can let 'em out. I love animals."

"No, it's not... it's just..."

The door thumped.

"Really, I'd love to meet 'em. Here, I'll get it for you."

And before Eleanor could force words of protest through her fear-tightened throat, Robert had walked to the door and had his hand on the knob. It opened easily under his touch and swung outward. Seeing what was on the other side, he jumped backward with a gasp.

"Whoa!" He laughed nervously. "That's your pet?" His face clearly expressed his disbelief, and more than a little repulsion.

The huge toad that had been throwing itself against the basement door hopped over the threshold.

Eleanor could feel her jaw drop as she watched the toad make awkward jumps across the parquet floor toward her. She finally managed to respond, "Pet? Um, no... no. That's... well... you see, I've been having problems with her... I mean that, or those. Toads, I mean. In the basement." She couldn't look away from the toad's patchy, brown, lumpy skin, its protuberant eyes.

And then it croaked out something that could have been, "Eleanor!" and made a mighty leap toward her, landing with a fleshy "plop" at her feet. She yelped and jumped backward.

Robert came to her rescue, striding forward and grabbing the toad up while making a snarl of distaste. He clasped it behind the front legs, and its dangling hind limbs hung down almost a foot. "Out you go!" he said then opened the front door and tossed the toad into the yard.

He held his hands out in front of him as if they were contaminated. "Yuck," he said. "I've never liked toads. Mind if I wash my hands?"

Eleanor's own hands had strayed to the crystal at her neck, and she nodded. "In the kitchen."

She started walking and looked back at him over her shoulder with just the tiniest smile. "I'll make some fresh coffee, and we can talk about the house."

The Odyssey Begins!

I received some amazingly good news last week: I've been accepted into this year's Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop (http://www.sff.net/Odyssey/).

In case you're not familiar with Odyssey, I'm going to brag a little. Odyssey is a prestigious, intensive, six-week writing workshop dedicated exclusively to speculative fiction—fantasy, science fiction, and horror—that accepts only 16 students per year. This year's students come from around the U.S., plus Australia and Singapore. And they accepted little ol' me!  My heart's still pounding.

This is the first of what I expect will be many posts centered around my Odyssey, well, odyssey. I'll be sharing some of what I learn partly because I just want to share the wealth and partly because I think teaching what I'm learning will help me absorb and retain it. So don't think I'm being entirely selfless.

One of the pre-workshop "homework" assignments is to bring a copy of your favorite short story along with several typed paragraphs analyzing it and explaining why you think it's great.

Simple enough, right?

Uh, no.

When I read this assignment, I seriously panicked. A) I don't *have* a favorite short story. B) I in no way feel qualified to evaluate and analyze a great short story and present it to the workshop group. Who am I to judge what's great?!

So I freaked out for awhile, and then I hit two different Half Price Books. I bought every copy of The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror I could find (five of 'em) on the theory that if I pick a story out of one of those volumes, at least I can be confident that it doesn't suck.

I've been binge reading for two and half days now, and I'm halfway through the second book. Basically, I'm reading every story and dog-earring the ones I really, really like so I can go back, re-read, and pick a favorite. I'm a little surprised how few fall into the "love it" category.

But that's not the point. The point of this excessively long post (sorry...) is that I'm having multiple epiphanies about what I do and don't like—what is important to me—in short stories. I've never really quantified it before, and I think that's largely because I've never read story after story after story one right after the other and really paid attention to what's working for me and what isn't. I've never been able to define "what I like"; I've just used the cop-out concept that "I have eclectic taste."

Well, it turns out that that's true, but I've discovered what some of the common threads are in the stories that really speak to me, regardless of genre or storyline. Some of this I already knew in an instinctual way, but I never could have put it in words before. And I think learning this, quantifying it, is going to help my writing. Now, when a story isn't working, I can look at it and see if I'm writing what works for me as a reader—in a quantifiable way—and (hopefully) fix it if I'm not.

This is only an initial, quick list of what I've discovered (I'm still reading):

• I like stories with well-developed, interesting characters. It doesn't seem to matter to me if much happens (action, involved plot) as long as I can get into the characters.
• I like stories that feature relationships. The story doesn't have to be about the relationships, and it/they don't have to be romantic, but if there aren't people in some way relating to each other on an emotional level (or perhaps one introspective character relating to him/herself?), I tend not to be as interested.
• I tend to like stories with children and young adults as the main characters.
• I like straightforward, simply told—versus symbolic or lyrical—stories.
• I seem to like stories about ordinary people—the more ordinary the better—who find themselves in extraordinary settings and/or circumstances.
• I enjoy it when writers use point of view and changing verb tenses to create certain effects, as long as the don't sacrifice clarity.
• And finally, clarity is key for me. I don't need everything wrapped up in a bow at the end, but if I'm scratching my head and thinking, What the hell?, while reading, I lose interest quickly.

Even if you think your own reading preferences are well-defined, I strongly recommend this exercise. Try to set aside your preconceived notions and just read a large number of quality short stories one right after the other. See what appeals to you and what doesn't, and try to figure out why. Look for patterns beyond genre and storyline. You're likely to gain some insight into yourself as a reader and as a writer.

The Devil is in the Details

It seems appropriate to start a post about making mistakes with a misquote, or at least a second-generation quote that underwent a significant evolution. The original version, "God is in the details," has been variously attributed to Michelangelo, Gustave Flaubert, and German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Whoever said it first, it didn't take long for the saying to spawn a corollary: "The devil is in the details."

When it comes to editing and proofreading, the details definitely take a devilish turn.

Which brings us to another truism: You can't proofread your own work.

Oh sure, you can try, and you might even catch a good 90-plus percent of your typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors. But you won't catch them all. And you won't catch nearly as many as you would if you were proofing someone else's work.

Why? It's simple: You don't see what's actually on the paper (or screen); your brain sees what it knows is supposed to be there. And the more times you've read and edited what you've written, the worse it gets.

Here are some tips and tricks you can use to make your final proofing more effective:

• Give yourself at least 24 hours (more, if you have the time to spare) between finishing a project and doing your final proofing.
• Proofread first thing in the morning. Don't try to proof when your eyes and brain are tired.
• If you're working on a text document, change the font and spacing, making what you're proofreading look different visually (and have different line and page breaks) than what you've already read seventeen times before.
• Proof back to front. Start at the end of your manuscript and proofread the last sentence, then the next-to-last, and so on. Seeing the sentences out of context will force you to read and judge each one on its own merits. If it helps, use a blank piece of paper to cover up everything above the sentence you're reading.

All of these tricks will help, but the best thing you can do is get some "fresh eyes". No, this isn't one of my horror stories in the making! I'm just suggesting (strongly) that you find a proofreader or a proofreading partner. You want someone with good spelling and grammar skills and an eye for detail. Secretaries (um, I mean "administrative assistants") are usually excellent proofreaders. So are English teachers if you're lucky enough to know one. Sometimes fellow writers will also do nicely, and they're usually willing if you'll do the same for them. But do "test drive" potential proofreaders. Not all writers can proofread, just as not all proofreaders can write. They're totally separate skills.

Whomever you choose, here's the key: do not let them read your work in any form until you're ready for the final proof. Don't ask them for critiques. Don't have them do interim checkups on your grammar. Save those precious "fresh eyes" until the very last minute, right before you're ready to submit your story or book, then put them to work. Because your proofreader has never seen your story before, his brain won't make any assumptions about what it's supposed to say, and he'll see what's really there.

All of which is a long-winded way of making an excuse for the mistakes you're undoubtedly going to find in this blog as we go along. Try as I might to make everything I post perfect (and, results notwithstanding, I do try), some errors are going to slip past me. Horrifying but true. Some already have shown up here, as readers have gleefully pointed out to me. I guess that's what you get when you proclaim you're going to give grammar and editing advice.

My excuse, make that excuses:

1. I'm not perfect. It pisses me off to no end, but I'm not.

2. I don't have the time to run my posts by any eyes but my own before they go live on this site. And, just like yours, my eyes don't always catch mistakes in my own writing.

So, while I full expect my beloved readers to make snarky comments when the self-proclaimed "Comma Queen" gets something wrong (Who among us can pass up the opportunity to make a good snarky comment, after all?), I do hope you'll cut me just the teensiest bit of slack.

Meanwhile, I'll do the best I can hunting down those devils that live in the details and eradicating them with my trusty purple pen!

I'm a Guest Writer on Supernatural Fairy Tales!

My new story, "Warts and All", has just gone live at Supernatural Fairy Tales.

My "assignment" was to write a story that A) was inspired by a fairy tale and B) included a supernatural element.  I don't want to give the surprises in the story away, so I'm not going to say yet which fairy tale and which supernatural element I chose.  While the supernatural part should be obvious once you've read the story, the fairy tale I chose is rather obscure, and I'll be interested to see if anyone can guess it.  I'll give you a hint: it's French.

Enjoy!

Commas, conjunctions, and confusion, oh my!

If you've been paying any attention at all to the way things are punctuated (and if you're a writer, you should!), you know that there's very little consistency in the way writers handle commas in a series. Part of this is probably just not knowing any better. But part of it is the fact that there are two different (and conflicting) sets of rules depending on where the writing is published. It's a matter of style. Or rather, it's a matter of style books.

Periodicals editors, those at magazines (at least those that print non-fiction) and newspapers, follow the A.P. Stylebook. According to A.P. style guidelines, when you have a series of items separated by commas, you do not put a comma before the conjunction preceding the final item. In plain English, that means don't put a comma before the "and". For example:

Dorothy was afraid of lions, tigers and bears. She was accompanied by a scarecrow, a lion, a tin man and a little dog.

Book editors, and editors of magazines that focus on fiction, on the other hand, generally follow the Chicago Manual of Style. According to this weighty tome's style guidelines, when you have a series of items separated by commas, you do put a comma before the conjunction preceding the final item. In other words, put a comma before the "and". Another example:

The wicked witch had a broom, flying monkeys, and a bad attitude. She was lean, mean, and green.

This would all be well and good, and fairly easy to deal with, if the waters hadn't gotten muddied somewhere along the way – as it seems they always do when you're talking about writing style rules. At some point, teachers in most schools started teaching the "no comma" version of series punctuation. But not all of them. The A.P. contingent got the upper hand, but the Chicago Manual of Style folks are sticking to their guns. The end result is that items in a series are punctuated every which way, and no matter how you do it, some reader, somewhere, is going to believe it's wrong.

My recommendation is to consider your target audience. If you're writing for publication, ideally, look at a sample issue of the publication you're targeting, notice how they handle commas in a series, and do it that way. Otherwise, if you're trying to sell to a non-fiction editor, leave the final comma out of the series. If you're trying to sell to a fiction editor, put the comma in. And, either way, be prepared to be flexible and gracious if they correct you.

For general writing not intended for publication, about the best you can do is flip a coin. But whatever you do, pick a rule and be consistent. There's nothing more annoying (or more indicative of poor writing skills), than inconsistency.