The Halloween List: The Transfiguration and A Dark Song

The Transfiguration (2017)

I was utterly unprepared for this movie. It was an amazing get for Netflix, which scooped the film up from Cannes and recently released it on its streaming service. It’s the sort of highly poignant thing we can’t get enough of in Horror.

Milo is many things. A high school student. A son whose mother died when he was young, and whose father is long gone. He’s a serial killer who has no idea what to do with his compulsions.

Most of all, Milo is a fan of vampires. He thinks he is one, and uses their sanguine lore to rationalize his impulses and how strange he feels. He doesn’t fit in anywhere; his older brother offers no empathy, and he can’t communicate with the gangs that dominate his block. Instead he hides in his room, watching Nosferatu and Lost Boys. His notebooks are full of diagrams and lists of lore, figuring out how different vampires worked, as he tries to figure out why he is the way he is.

This House That Hunts Vampires For You

The modern world has not done enough to safeguard against vampires. The corrupt the young and drink the old, but the bravest hunters still travel in Trans Ams and fight on even footing with these monsters. That’s why we’re introducing a new product: your house.

LoreHouse ™ is not a mobile home you drag on a trailer hitch. No Sir or Madame, this is a titanium-reinforced domicile, coming in one- and two-story models, mounted on indestructible chicken legs using our patented Baba Yaga technology. Not only is the house capable or pursuing and crushing any folklore you encounter, but by becoming your new legal residence, it is impossible for biters to enter unbidden. Simply leave the front open and any undesirables that accidentally fall inside will combust.

Ever wished you had more silver nitrate or crucifixes as you were stranded in a wheat field, surrounded by bat noises? With LoreHouse ™, you’ll never worry you left something at home. Home will come with you, ensuring you’re equipped and have had a good night’s sleep before you stake your claim.

“Apparently there's a Narcoleptic Vampires series...” – Colin F. Barnes

DeMarcus has always possessed an alarming tolerance to alcohol and pain killers, which is why he dropped out of college. It's also why he's custodian here, of all places, though being custodian of any busy cemetery requires tolerance for people's discomfort and oddities. Because his mother is a head trauma specialist who married the president of a Fantasy Football League, he has a high tolerance for the absurd. That last serves him well this Wednesday morning as he discovers another mound of ash in front of one of the doors to one of the crypts.

DeMarcus squints from the ash, to the authentic faux-gothic crypt, to the sun. That last makes him wince; he’s never been good at not looking the sky in the eye, and it's always too bright in the mornings. Must have to do with Global Warming. Jerking away causes his neck to ache, and he rubs at the bandage. The twin punctures beneath sting familiarly. He wishes he could take something for it. Maybe holy water?

Any non-holiday Wednesday morning is a slow one; the dew before every grave is undisturbed. He collects his broom and dust pan, then notices the keys jutting from the crypt door's lock. He steps over the ashes, pushing the door with the broom handle. It jostles against its bolts; it's still locked.

"Passed out that close to home, eh?"

DeMarcus rubs his bandage again. He's also grown a high tolerance to irony, he thinks, as he pulls out his cell and dials Kristopher. He always gets voice mail. For all his tolerances, DeMarcus hates that Kristopher always lets him go to voicemail, and so DeMarcus just says it.

"Another one bites the dust. Also bit me - third one this season, so I'll be keeping eighty percent of his deposit this time. You can put out another open space ad. Got to tell me how you keep finding the narcoleptic ones." He chuckles, which causes the muscles in his neck to lock up in protest until he squats against the crypt for support. This hurts like hell, even for eighty percent. It's in the throes of the ache that he adds, "You're lucky I've got a high tolerance to vampirism, asshole. See you before dusk, unless you want to handle a night shift for once."

Bathroom Monologue: Christopher Lee is Not Dead

Dear Twitter,

Please stop scaring me into thinking Christopher Lee is dead.

We both love his infernal majesty. His grace, his voice, his simultaneous humanity and inhumanity - he is the most charming stuff of nightmares. And he has a new metal album coming out, which is very funny and apt and other adjectives.

Yet you must understand that when you talk about him, he trends worldwide. And when any aged celebrity trends worldwide, I presume they've died.

Bill Cosby has died at least five times. It's been very hard on my nerves.

With Lee shooting up the social media ranks over and over for his album and popular interviews, I've been terrified to think our lord of darkness in cinema had passed twice just this week. On Tuesday I got remorse whiplash and had to start wearing a brace on my empathy.

And yes, I know that Christopher Lee can't really die, only explode into a cloud of bats. But don't be so semantic. You're killing me.

Sincerely,
John Wiswell

'V' is for 'Vampires,' their dynasty and apocalypse.

'V' is for 'vampires,' that mildly evolved undead. An executive zombie, really. According exclusively to one series of accounts from the annals of the triclopes, this strain emerged shortly after an apocalypse of meteors wiped out all dinosaurs and most plant life. The skies were blotted out by seemingly eternal clouds of ash, which were the perfect circumstances for vampires to give living a shot.

A vampire's best friend.

So you knock off most of the sauropods, and most of the giant plants. That left the mammals in control, which is when vampirism really took off. The World of Night, where rats and fanged birds carried the plague across the entire continent. Tribes of infected centaurs and humans laid waste to any straggling healthy civilizations.

It was vampirism like the world has never known since. There were so many that they were forced to hold each other back and let blooded critters breed. They farmed people, region by region. The imps and centaurs still live where vampires stuck them, claiming ancestral birthright, even though that birthright was a nightmarish pen. The wars of that period were of impatient vampires against cultured ones, killing each other over the expiration dates of mammals. And then there was the apex predator.There’s the legend – the awesome legend – of the infected tyrannosaur rampaging the south coast. It never spread the disease because it just ate anything it came across – centaurs, dorads, anything. Your people hid in a cave? Then a bat flutters in, and before you realize it, the bat turns into a vampire tyrannosaur and he’s eaten your entire tribe. I love that people believe it’s still skulking in the volcanoes of the south. I don’t even care if it’s real. Who doesn’t want to believe in a vampire tyrannosaur, blending in with lava mist or drinking sharks at the bottom of the sea?

Surprisingly unsafe from inventive vampires.

If it’s still swimming around, it’s almost all that survived. Because under the torrents of dust, they were unbeatable kings and queens, spreading their disease at will and treating the planet as a buffet. Then the planet closed for business by clearing its atmosphere. It was the first morning in nine hundred years. The sun crawled across this continent, frying skinny-dipping biters, their ranchers and warlords, some fleeing in the forms of bats or wolves, though still more standing slack-jawed in awe. They’d thought the sun was a fairytale.

Funny that they all turned to fairy dust. I hear faeries eat vampire bones, and pay handsomely if you can find some.

Hands-down, the best apocalypse. It was just a sunrise. A little twinkling of a nearby star, checking to see how we were doing and eradicating most of the undead in existence. If only it was that easy to get rid of tentacle monsters.

‘B’ is for ‘Bacteria.’

‘B’ is for ‘Bacteria.’

If there are only two life forms left on the planet, one of them will be bacteria, living off of the other. There will never be only one life form left, because virii and bacteria are brilliant at finding a host and sticking things out. It’s believed that the first apocalypse was probably a massive disease, because all the world needed was a population, and some bacteria. Since then bacteria has caused numerous additional apocalypses, being the only scientifically plausible explanation for the rise of zombies, and later vampiria and tentacalia. Zombieism is just a bacterial reaction, after all. One hundred percent normal, scientific, perfectly magical bacteria.

It’s unsurprising that bacteria were the first magicians. They did almost everything else first, and once they got a little magical potential, their hosts lived longer, hosted them longer, and spread them farther. Imps have the highest magical potential because their uniquely screwed up physiology allows for so many simultaneous magical infections. Just as bacteria evolved to assist digestion and boost height, it thrived in hosts where its magic could do the most good.

It’s unknown if bacteria have ever suffered their own apocalypse. Perhaps some day all diseases may disappear in one great catastrophe. If so, though, it’ll be a problem for more than just the common cold.

Tomorrow: ‘C’ is for ‘Cartography.’

Audio: Excerpt from "Dracula"

Though now several days late, I've finally made my birthday recording for Helen Howell available for free stream. It's an excerpt from Bram Stoker's Dracula,  wherein our narrator first meets the world's most famous vampire.

You can listen to me voicing the hero and the count below.

Bathroom Monologue: One Vampire Allowed

I mean, I’d like to live with you forever. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, even if you drank my dad, and really, if we live forever, then we can live to the point where humans go to space, and then we don’t have to worry about the sun killing us anymore. That’s pretty much living in a night sky, which you don’t seem allergic to. And I think rolling around with a vampire space-buddy would be bad ass.

But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Dad won’t be the last person who tries to plant a stake in you, and you’re kind of helpless during the day. Rough as shit at night, but not during sun-up. And I don’t know if you know this, but insurance people, and meter readers, and the IRS, and cleaning ladies – they all visit during the day. It’s only luck that a tornado or hurricane or terrorist hasn’t blown up a wall and bathed you in killer sunshine. What if you need to evacuate? We’re going to have to live in this world for a century or something before we can blastoff into space, and buddy, you’re just not equipped. You’re a creature of the night, but also a special needs case.

So I’m thinking, at least for right now, I’m going to stay human. I can finish my Registered Nurse training, and maybe even get paid by the government to take care of your ass. That’d be funny, right? Their tax dollars at work, assisting a predator.

Also, you’re not eating people anymore. At least not in front of me. Dad was a premium asshole, but… yeah, I can’t take many more homicides. Do a blood drive. Or, I’ll do a blood drive, since those are mostly during the day.

See, though? I’ve got to stay flesh-and-blood, not flesh-and-blood-and-blood-and-blood. It’s better for both of us. Just hope that, you know, they figure out robot bodies before I get too old. I really want to see space.

Bathroom Monologue: Steak the Vampires, Redux

“Here’s the deal,” Coach said as he heaped even more steak on Tim’s plate. It was pink, barely rare. The blood congealed with the juice of the spinach and lentils on the other side of the plate.

Tim looked at Josh. Josh just shrugged, took his plate and reached for the pepper grinder.

“You know how you’ve been saying the new janitor acts weird? How Susan and some other girls seem all drained and you thought it was vampires, and I told you to quit that shit?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied. He really didn’t want to get yelled at about that again, and couldn’t figure out what this had to do with a steak dinner.

“You know all that stuff about vampires? Bite you on the neck? Turn into bats? Crazy made-up shit?

“Yeah.”

“Well they’re real. They’re real and they’ll be coming tonight.” Coach rubbed his greasy hands together, then slopped the remainder of the steak onto his own plate. He cut it up as he spoke. “They’re coming in mass and they’re coming for you. Every kid on the team is going to be screwed. You’re the healthiest blood bags walking the streets.”

He gestured at Tim’s plate with the carving knife.

“Eat. You got to. It’s the plan I’ve got.”

Tim had a dozen objections, and none cared to voice themselves when his gym teacher was pointing a carving knife at him. He took a bite of his steak and grimaced.

“We’re going to steak them.”

“Stake them?” Josh asked from around a mouthful of meat. He didn’t seem to care. His parents never let him eat like this.

“Steak. E-A-K,” Coach enunciated slowly. “Vampires are magic, right? Well magic is weak as shit against iron. You read any old book and you see: iron stops witches’ spells and cages demons. So when they come, if they get you, they’re going to get a mouthful of iron-rich blood. Beef’s full of iron. So are those veggies. Shame I couldn’t get you some liver, but regardless, you’ll knock them right on their asses.”

Coach shrugged and contorted his face apologetically, then shoveled steak into his mouth.

Tim licked his lips, looking at Coach. He wondered if, in case vampires were actually coming, a History or Chemistry teacher would have come up with the same plan.

Josh handed him the pepper grinder.

Bathroom Monologue: Set your hair on fire

So set your hair on fire. It’s the easiest way to do things; nobody questions a burning man, and it’ll all grow back after you drink them. Douse a little lighter fluid on your scalp as you walk up to their door, and howl as loud as you can. If they don’t open immediately, pound on their windows. They always come out for that, and when you beg them for water or to dunk your head in a toilet, they always invite you in. Once you’re in, do whatever you want. I only drink enough to make it through the night, since personally, I feel bad about draining good Samaritans dry.

Bathroom Monologue: Vampire Hunter Hunters, OR, I Won't Sparkle

"I can cross the bridge into town no matter how hard the river runs. The garlic growing in your garden means nothing, and I can enter your apartment unbidden.

"I won’t show up on security cameras because I’ve hacked them. You may see me in the mirror just before it happens. The holy water you keep in the dresser doesn’t matter. Your grandmother’s crucifix can’t hurt me unless you overhand it into my head, and I’m not going to let you do that.

"I don’t have an insatiable thirst for your blood. This is just a job to me, one of many The Council has hired us lowly humans to carry out. We’re just so good at killing each other, and their reasons are no worse than ours. When I’m done I’ll drive into the sunrise, well paid and unafraid. I won’t sparkle."

Don't Write Fantasy

Recently there have been many debates about historical accuracy in Fantasy. Debates range between how progressive a character’s politics can plausibly get to whether your agrarian folks could bale hay. Beneath it all is the belief that when you adopt too much from one culture, readers will judge the internal believability of your story based on how it matches their perceptions of that real culture. When it comes to taking a real culture and only tweaking a few things, I have simple advice:

Don’t.

Put more elaborately: please, for the love of God, don’t write another redundant piece of pseudo-history, especially not another sword-and-sorcery monomyth in an imagined England.

This is deviant advice and makes us stray from the debates. If you truly love some strands of history such that they determine your fiction, then me saying not to follow them doesn’t matter. You’ll do it anyway, and you should, and I’ll just pray you reflect critically enough to make the work fresh.

But if you’re not fascinated with it, if castles and rolling hills are simply all you’ve seen lately, if you’ve watched the Lord of the Rings flicks and want to make your own – then don’t write another Medieval Fantasy. Fantasy ought to be a non-denominational cathedral to the imagination, where any idea, no matter how impossible in reality, can flourish and enliven us. It’s not about new sub-genres, but about use of your pages. China Mieville ought to be one colorful brick in a mosaic of new materials. Yet in conversations about the New Weird and prospects of Fantasy, he’s often treated as the only brick.

Mieville’s breakout Perdido Street Station isn’t insanely original. It’s some H.P. Lovecraft, and some Industrial Era elbow-grease, a dash of String Theory, and a Steampunk gun. There’s some Pacific folklore populating some Gothic sensibilities, and some Star Trek multiculturalism grown up enough to have a liquor license. You can identify most of the moving parts, but it feels revelatory because the parts are different from what most writers are using and their creator is madly in love with them. He’s not following a convention too far, and he certainly doesn’t have to answer to an insipid authority about whether so-and-sos were treated this way in such-and-such similar culture, because he wrote something that belonged to him, not to a text book. It is fiction rich enough that it answers to itself.

You don’t have to be the next China Mieville or a practitioner of the New Weird. But look, you don’t need Yee Old Dialogue to write about dragons. We’ve got Urban Fantasy that puts elves barbecuing in the backyard and witches necking on the subway. John Scalzi just got nominated for a Hugo basically for making fun of people for adhering too much to old writing tropes; the community knows a lot of this tired stuff. (Update: Scalzi has since won the Hugo for this novel)

When it comes to crafting Secondary World Fiction, there is only one reason that it should resemble a notion of Medieval Europe, or the U.S. Revolution, or the Arab Spring: because it’ll allow you to write interesting things. There is far too much stuffy, boring Epic Fantasy that suffers because its authors are living up to Dungeons & Dragons. And Hell, we already have official Dungeons & Dragons novels. We’ve got World of Warcraft novels. Is that really what you want to write? There isn’t anything you’d change if you were in charge? Because you are in charge.

What do you love? If you love the Dark Ages, I somehow doubt it’s because you love oppressing women. Thusly, that doesn’t have to be a linchpin of your culture, though you should explore it if it interests you.

Before what buttons you think you can push, though, you need to identify what moves you. If it turns out you only like horseback riding and foofy dresses, and everything else from period pieces seems wimpy compared to androids, well then you can write about android dress-designers and horseback-riders. Why not create a scenario entirely out of the stuff you like instead of just partially? Fantasy is quite vast. A lot can fit in it.

An immortal god that craves nothing but suicide as he watches his pet civilization of ant-people crumble. He just doesn’t have the strength to help another one start. He begins pursuing his own meta-religion in search of guidance in his eternal failure.

Or, a prissy bridge-club of gryphons must wheel and deal to keep low-class naga from overrunning their borough. It’s a comedy of errors when one of their daughters falls in love with one of the flightless paupers.

Or, a war-tragedy anthropomorphizing blood cells fighting vainly to stave off a vampiric infection. We know doomsday is coming, but damn it, they will not slip quietly into that dark night. They will fight them in the knee cap, and they will fight them in the brain stem, and in a huge twist, they will fight them in the tail when it turns out they’re actually in a dog.

What is it that gets to you? Why doesn’t that stuff make up the entire world you’re writing? Because werewolves are hot on the market this year? If so, I’m sorry to report that by the time you finish your book you’ll probably be screwed.

Secondary World Fantasy means you can construct a world that contains anything, including foofy-dress-wearing androids that always win the equestrian event at the Olympics. If you love princesses and castles, then great. If you don’t love it then you are squandering both your time and mine. Your time on this planet and your time at the keyboard, and my time when I go to read it.

If you want, play with periods in history. Remix the real world and made-up ones. Make sure their systems can bear weight internally, not externally, and most of all, make it distinct and worthwhile. There are very few worthwhile books that came out of soulless copying.

In our self-pub dominated world there’s a good chance that you’ll fail no matter what you do, but surveying those who succeeded, you’re very unlikely to join them if you don’t love it. It’s not worth being intimidated by realism if it costs you experimentation.

Fantasy ought to be enormous. Whatever you make it, yours can fit. Make it.

Bathroom Monologue: The Vampire Mirror

"Not polished silver and glass; this model features a liquid crystal screen with twelve discretely embedded micro-cameras registering heat, air patterns and ambient coloration. If you have crumbs in your beard or your mascara is running, all the better, for these are tangible and scannable clues as to how you look. Using processors that would make Steve Jobs blush and software typically reserved to FBI suspect sketching technology, it auto-fills details of the human body based on what’s most likely to be there. Is it real time? Not yet, for now it’s surreal time, but even our first-generation technology is sensitive enough for Dracula to floss using its reflection."