A time to every purpose under heaven....

So, I've been pondering an idea for a "short" fiction competition in December. There won't be any word about the last contest I entered until October, so what better way to pass the time than by preparing another piece for the next contest.

I've never really limited my writing by classifying it to any specific genre, but I have found that most of what I write has a definite bent toward magical realism....more specifically, the darker side of magical realism. Is there such a thing as the macabre magical realism genre???

I don't normally consider myself overly preoccupied with death, but it does have a strong role in most of the themes of my writing. I've mostly attributed it to my upbringing. There aren't too many children that I know of that spent their formative years wandering the halls and rooms of a skilled-patient nursing home. But the lonely, pathetic halls of such a place is exactly where my brother and I spent many an after-school hour, waiting on one or the other parent to finish their nursing shift to take us home.

There are things he and I saw, smelled and felt that most will never experience until later in their adult life...and a very few, still, will never experience them at all. And everything buried in my childhood memories of that place lends itself readily to every scene that I craft.

It's the fragility of life...the fact that we are always vulnerable, whether we can admit it or not...that is held most dear in my sub-conscious. The knowledge that there is so little time in our existence on earth with so many things to experience and explore...this is what drives my creative endeavors. It is the frantic call to the world's people to immerse themselves in every facet of life within their reach, with the constant drive to touch those facets of life beyond their reach, that propels my craft forward.

We must BE, lest we run out of precious time and are no longer able to BE.

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Y is for Yeth Hound.....

Yeth Hound--- one of the incarnations of the "Black Dog" myth, this one located specifically, in Devon, England.

"Black Dogs" appear in myths across the world, most are associated with death and bad omens... i.e. Hell Hounds.

The Yeth Hound is said to be the spirit of an unbaptised child that takes the form of a headless black dog. The Hound wanders the woods at night making pitiful wailing sounds (though, I'm unclear as to how it makes wailing sounds without having a head).

The Black Dogs were possibly one inspiration from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ghost dog in The Hound of the Baskervilles-- "an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen."

Heed Not, the Lonesome Cry
Heed not, the lonesome cry, the baleful wail echoing through the woods. Seek not, the black hound's sigh, look not where the headless creature stood.
One sound, your limbs will shake, your heart filled with the deepest dread. One glimpse, your sou…

B is for Banshee.....

Irish bean sidhe and Scottish Gaelic bean sith, literally, woman of fairyland.

The mythology and legend surrounding the Banshee is a bit mixed. The most readily accepted story is of a hag-like creature wailing the impending death of someone nearby-- most ancient Gaelic families, especially the more well-to-do families, had their own Banshees that attached themselves to the lineage of the family name. I suppose it was a sign of station for a family to be able to claim their own Banshee--- I mean, who needs an exciting/ tongue-wagging-inciting skeleton in your cupboard when you've got a Banshee wailing in your rafters?
The origins of the more familiar Banshee may have stemmed from the ancient Keeners-- women who were employed to sing a lament at a funeral. The best Keeners were in high demand to "wail" and "weep" for the great personage who had fallen.

The Great families would boast a bean sidhe or bean sith-- a fairy-woman Keener--and having foresight, the Keene…

S is for Siren.....

Sirens--- the beautiful, the terrifying.
Vicious, but, seemingly opportunistic creatures who lured sailors to their deaths by the sound of their captivating songs. Whether the stories of these creatures were a result of surviving sailors attempting to explain their near-miss in an effort to divert the fault of their shipwreck from their hands, or whether as a warning for those leaving to ensure their fidelity to the women they left behind, is unclear...

Considered the daughters of Achelous(river god), and though they have been blamed for the death of many sailors, they were not, however, sea deities. They have sometimes been called Muses of the lower world, their sad song causing the body and soul of those sailors who hear them to fall into a fatal lethargy.

In early myths, Sirens were the combined form of birds and women. Sometimes with a large female head, their bodies covered in bird feathers, their feet...scaled. Later myths show them as female figures with the legs of birds, tho…

From the Inkwell, From the Vein.....

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