Horror-Tober Part I: Vampires

Written by Alexander Greco

October 7, 2020

“And if they get me and the sun goes down into the ground

“And if they get me take this spike to my heart and

“And if they get me and the sun goes down

“And if they get me take this spike and

“You put the spike in my heart”

My Chemical Romance, “Vampires Will Never Hurt You”

As a quick forewarning, some of this analysis and the things I talk about are pretty rapid-fire and probably should be elaborated or explained more, but I wanted to shorten many of the points here. If you want to learn more about some of these things, you can check it out for yourself, or reach out to me with any questions and whatnot.

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Introduction

Vampires need very little introduction, but here we go.

Vampires have become something that borders on memey at this point, but vampires as a Dawkinsian meme (the immaterial, “idea-gene” or evolving idea) have a long evolutionary history—starting with folklore, developing into the classic Dracula-vampire, and then finally committing a slow suicide with a glittery stake in the 2000’s and 2010’s.

Concepts of vampires or of things similar to vampires have appeared across cultures throughout history, beginning with ancient stories such as the Indian Vetalas and Pisaca; the Babylonian/Assyrian and Hebrew Lilitu and Lilith, respectively; and a slew of Greek monsters: the Empusae, Lamia, Stirges and Gello.

Many of these creatures, as well as other similar tales throughout the world, are not strictly “vampires”, but they bear similarities to the modern concept of the vampire (nocturnal, blood-sucking/flesh-eating, demonic, undead/undying, odd rules around their behaviors). These ancient creatures in particular may have given rise to the modern “Draculian” (yes, I just made up a new word) or Gothic Vampire.

Accounts of this more modern concept of a vampire arose from the Medieval Period to the 18^th Century (the century where a widespread fear of vampires began to crystallize and bloom across Europe). There were Hebrew, Norse and British accounts of undead or vampiric entities, such as revenants and draugrs, and then in the 18^th century, when European populations began using the term “vampire”, vampires became the object of hysteria.

Similar in many ways to the witch-hunts that spread across Europe and North America, the notion of vampires became an object of fear, paranoia, hate and morbid scholarship. The “18th-Century Vampire Controversy” was a generation-long marathon of grave-desecration, hysteric accusations, and the tail-end of pre-modern superstitious-hysteria (though, I’d say the underlying psychological/psychic structure persists to this day).

One interesting note here is that this Vampire scare flared parallel to the Age of Enlightenment, a tangent that I probably won’t bring up much beyond this, or will simply forget to bring up, but an interesting corollary to the analysis.

Why was it that both witch-hunts and vampire-scares coincided with progressive philosophic movements?

Why is it that such ancient, superstitious cleansing-hysterias emerged in tandem to socio-cultural and cognitive leaps forward?

Why have we, at such dramatic cultural turning points such as the 60’s, 80’s and 00’s, faced similar witch-hunts and vampire-hysterias?

And why do we now, in such a strange and tumultuous politico-cultural shift of contemporary history, do we seem to be face similar superstitious hysterias?

This 18^th century vampire evolved into the Bram Stoker Dracula of 1897—another curious example of society/culture/media that roughly coincided with Nietzsche’s famous proclamation, “God is Dead”.

From out of the dying light of Romanticism, Dracula—named after Vlad III, Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula (I may talk about him more, I haven’t decided yet)—evolved through the 19^th century into suave villains and anti-heroes (excluding Nosferatu, who was less-than-suave). After Bella Lugosi and pulp fiction, there came waves of comic book and genre-fiction renditions of vampires who all played as variations of the Gothic/Dracula vampire, peaking with thee ’92 Bram Stoker’s Dracula film before its new, contemporary variations (one might say the Post-Modern vampire).

And with this relatively brief but relatively whole history of vampires, I will examine the core psycho-symbolic meaningfulness of vampires.

I want to use this to analyze the modern depictions of vampires in an almost historic study of its evolution and bring this all in to a contemporary analysis of culture and society using this initial analysis, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do that without a hyper-extended article.

So, I may do this in the future.

For this analysis, there are three crucial “modes” of the ancient, classical and post-classical/early modern vampire narrative I wish to examine:

1. Vampire as Feminine Demon
2. Vampire as Indifferent Entity
3. Vampire as Masculine Aristocrat

And, for those already jumping on this “controversial analysis”, this has nothing to do with value claims about actual gender/sex, rather the mytho-narrative symbolism of these fragmented archetypes. This is all aimed at a symbolic mythological analysis, not a material, cultural or philosophical analysis of sex or gender.

Analysis of Vampires

I’ll first roughly define each of these sub-archetypes and give a mythological/historic relation/foundation to each of them, then delve into each. As a fun little note here, these three archetypes I think may still be present, at least partially, in modern culture, arts and narrative, but it’s safe to say they’ve both splintered and evolved into more sub-archetypes.

However.

The actual “psychological archetypes” (since we’ve already entered the realm of Jung here) are most certainly still alive and well in our culture, sleeping in tombs or ruling from dark castles.

First, we have to examine vampirism at its foundation. Vampirism, roughly speaking, relates to an undead, undying or demonic/infernal force that parasitizes “normal” humanity. Vampirism relates to death, but it also relates to undeath (either something dead returning to life, or something immortal) which preys upon life.

Vampirism more particular relates to either consuming flesh or blood, and so can be seen as siphoning a life force or siphoning “what makes us ‘us’” as a source of sustenance. Vampirism also relates to the nocturnal, which is what we cannot see, what lurks in “the dark”, or what comes out in times or places of “dark”.

Vampirism is often treated in a disease-like manner. It can either kill others, or it can be spread to others who then become new nodes of Vampirism.

Vampirism also relates to immortality, but usually is more specific to the ability to consume the “life force” of others in order to maintain or continue its own life.

This can be seen in a number of ways:

– Something which we suppress, either in our own selves or in our conception of reality / Something parasitic or destructive in ourselves which we actively decide not to acknowledge, or something external to us that we do not acknowledge.

– Something we regress to, or something that the state of society, state of nature or state of being regresses to in moments or periods of weakness or “death” / Some state of behavior or being that emerges as we as individuals or we as a collective revert into a less humane state of being.

– Some eternal and recurrent force, or some “undying” force—or an aging force that maintains itself beyond death—which preys upon, parasitizes or infects the contemporary culture or youthful population.

Now, for the promised controversial analysis.

Vampire as Feminine Demon refers to the “Lilithian” vampire—the darker elements of Hecatean feminine-mythology. Really, this archetype goes down to one of the deepest roots of mythology: the feminine archetype of Mother Nature. More particularly, this relates the negative aspect of the Mother Nature archetype: Nature as cruel consumer and destroyer, as opposed to Nature as loving creator and nurturer.

Examples in Modern Culture: Antichrist (I would argue); Blair Witch Project (also arguable); Jennifer’s Body (there aren’t many great examples, guys); A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (but not really); Let the Right One In (kinda)

Vampire as Indifferent Entity is sort of an off-shoot of the Lilithian vampire. Where the Lilithian vampire may be seen as the more divine (divine meaning “of-higher-being”, not necessarily in a positive or negative sense) conscious progenitor, source or monarch of vampirism, the Indifferent Entity is more like an amoral child or creation of the source-being. This Indifferent Entity is like an animal, a more unconscious being driven by instinct, and closer to an unthinking, mechanical object than a conscious, moral agent.

Examples in Modern Culture: Stakeland, 30 Days of Night, I Am Legend

Vampire as Masculine Aristocrat is closer to the more traditional conception of vampire. This is the Draculian vampire, ranging from Nosferatu to Dracula to Edward Cullen (brace yourselves, Twilight fans, it’s only just begun). The Masculine Aristocrat vampire relates to the patriarchal sense of masculine—the twin brother of Mother Nature—as the archetype of “Father Society”. Just as the Lilithian vampire represents the negative aspect of Mother Nature, the Draculian vampire represents a negative aspect of society—the manipulative, bureaucratic, parasitic aspect of society.

Examples in Modern Culture: Bram Stokers Dracula, the Underworld series, the Twilight series (Edward’s a pedophile, accept this fact)

The first analysis will be of the “Vampire as Feminine Demon”. And here, with feminine, I will repeat:

I do not mean the modern contextual meaning of “feminine as effeminate” or “feminine as female biological sex”, or even “feminine as cultural gender”. I mean “feminine as mythological ‘Mother-archetype’” and it has nothing to do with actual sex/gender. Thank you for your time.

With this, we look at the concept of a vampire as the Hebrew Lilith, which arose from the Babylonian Lilitu. Lilith has often been associated with Satan, and in some traditions, Lilith couples with Samael, who, in some ways, can be considered as an initial conception of Satan (Samael being “Ha-Satan”, the accuser, seducer and destroyer).

However, focusing more on Lilitu, Lilitu was a Babylonian “female night demon” who consumed the blood of infants for sustenance. A similar Hebrew demon, the estries, were nocturnal predators who consumed the blood of their victims for sustenance. And then we have the Greek Lamia and Stirges, which feasted on the blood of children and adults (Lamia more particularly on children).

This historic “Lilitu” meme generalizes to a nocturnal, blood-feasting predator, which often preys on children or infants. Here, I think one concept becomes blindingly clear: the negative Mother archetype.

The Mother archetype, as previously stated, is the archetype of Mother Nature, which is both protective, nurturant and procreative, but also cruel, preying and destructive. Mother Nature is that which creates life, and mother nature is that which consumes life. These Lilitu and Lilitu-esque demons are female entities which consume the life-force of individuals, and often the life-force of children (one could say that all individuals, youthful or mature, are children).

So, this ancient proto-vampire, the Lilithian vampire, is an aspect of Mother Nature. The Lilithian vampire might have been a personification of the fear of child mortality/morbidity—the fear of predators, the fear of disease, the fear of fatal injury, the fear of one’s child suddenly going missing when they’re out of sight (in the dark).

This fear could also be seen as a Mother’s fear of her own part to play in the potential destruction of their child. This might be reflective or symbolic of two things. The first, the mother’s own incompetence or the mother’s own malevolence. Perhaps the fear manifested here is that it is the Mother’s fault through their inadequacies that their child either dies or matures into an unsuccessful or even malignant individual.

The second might be an aspect of another negative aspect of the Mother archetype: the Oedipal Mother. This is the archetypal maternal force which is overbearing, overprotective, smothering, and even manipulative and parasitic.

The Oedipal Mother (archetypically speaking, though perhaps literally speaking) keeps their children, particularly their sons, from going out into the world and exploring. They keep their sons at home, where they fulfill the role of their father (sometimes only superficially, sometimes behaviorally, sometimes to a Freudian/Oedipal extreme). This relationship is manipulative, as the mother must coerce, or at the very least be an enabler, the child/son into remaining at home and fulfilling the role of the father, in exchange for continued protection and “nurturing”. The relationship is parasitic, as the mother essentially ruins the child’s life by smothering them, keeping them from maturing and keeping them from living a fulfilled, satisfying life in order to satisfy her own needs.

These are a bit of a stretch. They fit the “vampiric mold”, though it may be difficult to prove that Lilith/Lilitu and their corollary mythological monsters are in fact symbolic of this (but it’s still fun to think about).

The next part of the analysis is the “Vampire as Indifferent Entity”. This one, I will be honest, interests me the least, so I will be quick with this one. However, these happen to be the types of vampires in three of the only good vampire flics in the last couple decades (30 Days of Night, I Am Legend, Stakeland).

These are the animalistic, zombie-like vampires—the mindless, raving, depraved animals. Now, these might be represented at times as semi-autonomous people, or at the very least may outwardly appear as being normal humans, but are far more animalistically autonomous than they are moral agents.

And I think that’s the key here: these are parasitic entities without moral agency.

But, at the same time, it could be argued that a vampire, especially the traditional Draculian concept of a vampire, is without moral agency, since they have a sort of addictive “ball-and-chain”. They cannot escape their necessity to consume blood.

And so, we might look at this Indifferent Entity as being the baseline for vampirism, or the core mode of vampirism—a revelatory vision of vampirism beneath the faux aesthetic put on vampires. At the core of both feminine and masculine modes of vampirism, there is this mindless hunger—this animal instinct to feed.

Perhaps this vision of the Indifferent Entity is the masculine/feminine modes stripped of all external pretense and power—the animal without the divine/demonic powers or omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of nature; and the animal without the structures and powers afforded by culture and society.

It is a parasitic animal, and perhaps all animals, humans included, are these indifferent, parasitic entities, stripped of all aesthetic and power and pretense.

Finally, there is the “Vampire as Masculine Aristocrat”. This relates to, as previously mentioned, the Patriarchal Father archetype, and the negative Patriarchal archetype: the Tyrannical King. With the Father archetype, there are the positive elements or aspects: protection, order, meaningfulness, a place in society, tradition and so forth. But, there are also the negative aspects: tyranny, conformity, stagnation, immobile and unfair hierarchies, inability to adapt.

However, one aspect of the negative Patriarchal archetype I think is often overlooked is it’s parasitic and manipulative nature. Now, this might be because the elements of tyranny are often regarded in terms of brute force and reigns of fear. However, this is not a nuanced perspective on Tyranny. Some of the most disturbing aspects of tyranny are the manipulative and parasitic aspects of it.

Take for example bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are monolithic hyper-complexes of rules and regulations, filled with a five-dimensional labyrinth of legalities, jargon, hierarchies, departments, divisions, forms, contracts, signatures, waiting lists and so forth. Bureaucracies are unquestionable and impenetrable. Unless you know the infinite in’s and out’s of a bureaucracy, you are at their mercy, and you cannot battle them except on their own terms.

In order to overcome the labyrinth, you must first enter the labyrinth, and we have all committed and signed ourselves over to a bureaucracy from the moment we enter a society. From the moment we enroll in school, from the moment we become an active agent in the legal system, a rational agent in the economy, or a consumer, employee, car-owner, etc., we have entered the labyrinth of a pre-constructed bureaucracy. And at that point, you are subject to a multitude of fines, legal requirements, insurances, non-disclosures, liability forms and so on.

Perhaps this is Dracula’s castle.

And then, you are subject to the sway of society (I would recommend Camus’ The Stranger, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and the dystopian diad, 1984 and Brave New World in order to get a fuller scope of this).

You are under the sway of conformity, and the lure of advertisements, and the pull of envy and resentment and ego and uncertainty and the schizophrenia of modernity.

You are gaslit by everyone around you, your conceptions of reality are constantly questioned and attacked (which may be good in some circumstances), and you’re either with us or against us—with a multiplicity of reasons why (with a multitude of sub-labyrinths and Kafka-traps that trigger your determined “otherness-hood”)—and you’re an enemy because you’re not a patriot, or you’re an enemy because you are, or an enemy because you’re neutral, or you’re an enemy because you’re not, or you’re an enemy because you’re as independent and individualistic as possible, or you’re an enemy because you’re part of the herd—and then, on top of it, everyone finds every way they can to make you all of these things at once, and then in the end, who are you anyway? so just follow the herd, but be your own person, but be the person we want you to be, until we’re done with you.

And this is the psychosis of modernity, and this this is the charm and trap of Dracula.

You need a job. Go get one, and now you’re trapped.

You need an education. Go get one, and now you’re trapped.

You need to buy a thing. Go get one, and now you’re trapped.

Okay, let’s sound it out together.
Pe-do-phi-le

And powers on all sides are trying to convince you of five things at once, and you succumb, and now you’re a warm, comatose body they can siphon blood off of.

And then—THEN—there is Dracula as the aging noble who seduces, entraps and parasitizes the youth (Dracula seducing the virgin into being his bride and prey). This is the key element of understanding the Draculian vampire.

The Dracula-vampire is an entity which is immortal, but it can only continue its immortality by drinking the blood of the youth.

It is a parasite which exists only to manipulate new generations in order to siphon their life-force from them. These are the decade and even centuries-old institutions which have been created by prior generations for their benefit. While these in some ways may offer some benefit for those entrapped (just as Dracula offers a home, a purpose and pleasure for his brides), the vast majority of the benefits go to the Draculian institutions.

These are colleges and student loans. These are Big Pharma and Big Oil. These are monolithic retail stores. These will soon be the monolithic social media and online retail stores. These are all the institutions created with benefits for the many and the small, but with tremendous and corrupted benefits for the few and the big.

And, no, I’m not a Marxist or a Socialist. No, no, no. But, fuck man. Some days.

Some days.

A Sudden Stop and Conclusion

There’s so much more I wanted to discuss with this analysis, but the analysis is already long, and there’s so much more I have to say—so much more that I’m not sure I can comfortably articulate in a sane manner.

There may be a part 2 to this at some point, or another standalone article to discuss more of this article, but I do think that this is a good place to stop for now.

I want to say here that I think the analysis I’ve started has opened up a sort of psycho-symbolic-social-critique can of worms. These are complicated topics, and the three symbols I’ve dredged up from the concept of vampires are incredibly deep and complex symbols/ideas and parts of our society and widespread, cultural mythos.

Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of “begging the question” in this analysis, where I’ve mentioned a lot of things that want to be brought into a sort of practical moral conversation, but would be compounding cans of worms if I did right now.

So, I will say this here as well:

This isn’t intended necessarily to make any social or moral value claims, even though it kind of did make a few. It’s intended to analyze vampires as a symbol (and this was written somewhat manically over the course of a couple days, so cut me some slack). And it’s meant to be fun.

I think this is a strong though in parts somewhat shaky analysis of the core aspects of the vampire symbol:

• The relationship of vampires or proto-vampiric-entities and the negative aspects of Nature
• The animalistic vampirism present in life and nature as a mechanical, unconscious agent
• The now-traditional aristocratic vampirism of social institutions

But these are each complex topics, and the implications to a broader moral and social conversation become even more complex [Xander is currently still realizing the deep end of the pool he dove into was actually the Ocean].

Do I think anything bad of Nature? No! Do I think anything bad of the occult? No! Do I think anything bad of women? Only a few.

Do I think anything bad about animals? No! Do I think anything bad about the masses? That’s a loaded question. Do I think anything bad about being an unconscious, mechanical agent in a moral system? Well, yes, I do, actually.

Do I think anything bad about older people/generations? Next question. Do I think anything bad about social institutions? That’s a complicated question. Do I want to burn down all institutions? No, but I do want change.

Do I think the world governments are secretly run by Alex-Jonesian psychic-pedophile-vampires? Maybe. The jury’s out.

But, this is all beside the point.

Here’s what vampires are. Here’s what I believe them to represent. Here’s a foundation for how we can begin discussing the symbolism of said vampires.

I didn’t get to drive a stake through Twilight’s heart, but goddamn, I wanted to.

Hopefully in the future I can work out these ideas a bit more, maybe give myself more time to organize my thoughts, but for now, I’ll have to put this bad boy back in its coffin. Next up, I will analyze Eraserhead, and I think this will be a much more sober analysis. Thank you for reading, and have a spooky October.

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A Brief History of Fear

Written by Tara East

Re-Published June, 03, 2019

The following paper analyzes how the theme of fear has changed in Australian Literature over time. The Australian settlers responsible for our early gothic fictions gave external form to their internal fears through their descriptions of the landscape as eerie, dangerous and monstrous. While some contemporary works, such as Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones, revisit the nation’s classic literary themes of racism and “who belongs?”, others, such as Liane Moriarty’s Truly Madly Guilty, fall into the emerging trend of domestic suburban thrillers. Both these works will be analysed through a psychoanalytic, post-colonial and feminist lens to determine how contemporary fiction has changed the face of fear.

Fear has played a major role in the history of Australian literature in response to the establishment of British colonies and what that meant to Aboriginal culture and way of life; beginning with the gothic tales published in the late nineteenth century. The colonial writers of these early Australian novels wove unnerving tales about the anxiety of not belonging in a foreign land. At the same time, the unknown landscape also inspired their fearful descriptions. In The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction, author Marcus Clarke provides a ghostly description of the Australian landscape.

The Australian mountain forests are funeral, secret, scorn. Their solitude is desolation. They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair . . . In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums scrips of white bark hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks, and the mopokes bursts out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like monstrous sea calf, drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy (Gelder 2007)  

Gerry Turcolte, lecturer at the University of Wollongong, provides further insight into the Gothic narratives place in the history of Australian literature.

Long before the fact of Australia was ever confirmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imagined as a grotesque space, a land peopled by monsters. The idea of its existence was disputed, was even heretical for a time, and with the advent of the transportation of convicts its darkness seemed confirmed. The Antipodes was a world of reversals, the dark subconscious of Britain. It was, for all intents and purposes, Gothic par excellence, the dungeon of the world. It is perhaps for this reason that the Gothic as a mode has been a consistent presence in Australia since European settlement (Turcotte 1998).

Early Australians saw the land as a fearsome place.

Literary monsters are timely as they embody social and cultural present-day fears. Before the White Australia Policy was dismantled, books such as Charles Chauvel’s Uncivilised were popular. The story is a fairy tale about an indigenous tribe making a lost white child its leader and includes what would later become the archetype of the “evil witch doctor” (Breyley 2009), a reference that also appears in Bingham and other Golden Boomerang books. This continued into adult novels such as Ion Idriess’ Lasseter’s Last Ride which featured a black witch doctor:

With skinny claw the witch-doctor pulled out a dried lizard . . . His lips moved sibilantly and Lasseter could have sworn that the lizard hissed in reply . . . Over each article he pored . . . as if it possessed some power of evil (Breyley, 2009).

Shared global fears in the twenty-first century, at least for Western countries, largely concern terrorist attacks. This is reflected in Janette Turner’s Hospital, A.L. McCann’s Subtopia and Linda Jaivin’s The Infernal Optimist; three narratives about the destructive nature of terrorist and their desire to wreak havoc (Carr, 2016).

Post-colonial Fear

The self/white heteromasculinity and two subtly different types of Other, Indigenous people and ethnic groups (those who are understood as offering a threat of social, political or military invasion). Other authors are more concerned with the horrific actions carried out by members of our own community, such is the premise of Craig Silvey’s novel, Jasper Jones. Fear maintains an active presence in the work following the opening catalyst: the grisly discovery of a young girl’s body, hung from a tree by a local watering hole. Though this incident is frightening enough, the sensation of fear continues well beyond this scene. The protagonist, Charlie Bucktin, is consumed by fear. Some of Charlie’s worries are spurred from actual experiences, others are the conjuring of his own mind. He is instantly suspicious when Jasper Jones knocks on his window that fateful night and enters his life. Later, Charlie is terrified of the idea of Jasper leaving town and abandoning him. After disposing of the young girl’s body, Charlie is afraid of getting caught, of not getting caught; afraid that there is a murderer in his town, and that maybe that person is Jasper. And to top it all off, he has an irrational fear of bugs.

Racism, prejudice and the underlining fear of the Other are explored through the outsider characters of Jasper and Jeffery. Jasper is the child of a white father and an aboriginal mother. Jasper experiences an unstable childhood following the death of his mother. His rebellious, alluring and aloof personality quickly establish him as a convenient scapegoat and he is blamed for every unseemly activity that occurs in the town. It is because of this prejudice that Jasper compels Charlie to dispose of Laura’s body. Jasper is convinced that if they don’t, then he will be arrested for Laura’s murder; a reasonable conclusion given that the victim is a white teenage girl (believed to be a virgin) from one of the town’s wealthiest families. Similarly, Jeffery Lu and his Vietnamese family are the continuous victims of racial prejudice as many of the local residences have sent their sons off to fight in the Vietnam War. Charlie witnesses the town’s prejudice first hand during a town meeting. Following the announcement that the police have no new leads on Laura’s disappearance, Charlie notices the gossip and speculations around the potential culprit.

“Then someone mentioned Jasper Jones. The same way they did when the post office burned to the ground. With titled eyebrows and suspicion. … And I understood then that maybe we really did do the wrong thing for the right reasons” (Silvey 2009).

Australia, like America, continues to struggle with its colonial past and issues of “who belongs?”

Before Charlie turns to leave the hall, he hears Jeffery’s mother, Mrs. Lu, cry out. After filling her teacup up from the communal urn, a woman named Sue Findlay, slaps the cup from Mrs. Lu’s hand, scalding her badly, and precedes to jab the air and recite racist remarks. It isn’t until Sue reaches out to pull on Mrs. Lu’s hair that the town Reverend intervenes.

This racial tension continues throughout the novel. At one point, Jasper is arrested – without evidence – beaten up by the town sergeant, locked up for a weekend and enticed to confess to Laura’s murder. It is during this illegal detaining that Jasper meets Laura’s father, who also beats him, and discovers that Pete is the president of the shire. Here, Silvey illustrates that racism was not only common in Australia in the 1960s, but celebrated. As the narrative continues, the Lu family continue to experience violent attacks and abuse. Jeffery is mocked by his schoolmates, and Mr. Lu is brutally beaten on his front lawn after a town father discovers that his son has died in action while fighting in Vietnam.

Fear and racism have remained popular themes in Australian literature because of our settler history and our present-day multiculturalism and social egalitarianism. As Cornel West argues in the case of America, “To engage in a serious discussion of race…we must begin not with the problems of black people but with the flaws of American society — flaws rooted in historic in equalities and longstanding cultural stereotypes” (Huggan 2017). Graham Huggan states that Australia, like America, also suffers from this same “violence and ideological extremism” (Huggan 2017). Racism is fear; fear of the other. It could be argued that the racism that exists within Australia, and that is reflected within its literature, may not be the result of the nation itself but the product of far reaching roots that go beyond the nation’s history and borders. The root behind the racism within Australian literature boils down to one question, “who has the right to belong?” (Huggan 2017)

Feminism and Fear

Until we reach a political, social and cultural utopia, themes regarding racism and “who belongs” will continue to dominate contemporary Australian fiction. In alignment with Poe’s earlier sentiments about fear being a luxury in a time of comfort, the new subgenre of the domestic/suburban thriller has emerged. Fear is no longer generated through external evils that exist outside the home: monsters, supernatural entities or psychopaths. Instead, publishers and readers are interested in experiencing sophisticated, modern, and internalised fear by exposing the evil that exists in our homes, our spouses and ourselves. Evening Standard Journalist Rosamun Urwin describes this new genre as chick lit with “no happy ending, no wedding dress or pram, just plot twists and tortured souls. These are thrillers thrown into the domestic sphere, tales of intimate betrayal and mistrust” (Whitehouse 2014). International best-sellers Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn, USA) and How To Be A Good Wife (Emma Chapman, UK) have helped craft this new sub-genre and Australian author Liane Moriarty’s suburban thriller, The Husband’s Secret, hit number one on the New York Times, and her novel, Big Little Lies, has been turned into a US television drama. Truly Madly Guilty is Moriarty most recent work, hitting number one on the Australian bestseller list while her two-previous works were still in the top ten.

The target audience of these novels is straight, married women. What makes these books marketable and profitable is their ability to tap into the audiences’ collective fear that men are a threat to women’s safety. Though men are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than women, women assume that they are more vulnerable to attacks than men. Criminologists dub this the fear-victimization paradox (Yodanic 2004) The belief that women are more vulnerable to sexual attack than men assists in the divide between the public sphere and the private. The private sphere, physical structures built by men, are safe. The public sphere, which is dominated by men, is unsafe. The perceived threat of inescapable attack when entering the public sphere keeps women fearful, and therefore, easier to control. Women are not doomed to become victims and not all men are violent, but by manipulating the knowledge that some women have become victims, then women are collectively easier to control and suppress.

Women are the target audience of Suburban Thrillers as these novels personify their deepest fears.

Suburban thrillers take advantage of this basic fear by having female characters experience multiple forms of domestic violence or abuse. In the case of Lianne Moriarty’s work, Truly Madly Guilty, all the female leads are the victims of their male counterparts. Erika becomes a foster parent because her husband Oliver wants to be a father (though she doesn’t want to be a mother), Clementine is blamed by her husband Sam for the near death of their child (though both parents were present at the time of the accident) and Tiffany is encouraged by her husband Vid to strip during a neighbourly barbeque (despite her reservations to do so). Moriarty plays directly into her audience’s basic fear of men taking control of women.

Although Jasper Jones is set in the 1960s, the suppression experiences by its female character remain uncomfortably relatable. Initially, Jasper idolises Eliza through his comparison to her and Audrey Hepburn; both are prim, proper and perfect. A simplification that causes him to underestimate her. As the truth behind Laura’s death is revealed, Jasper learns of the tragic circumstances that lead to her demise. Both Wishart sisters were abused by their father, a wealthy and prominent man in the community. Pete Wishart, a closet alcoholic, sexually and physically abused his oldest daughter Laura, and physically abused his youngest Eliza. In an effort to save Eliza from their father, Laura submits to his abuse. Eventually, Laura decides to commit suicide, seeing no other means of escaping her powerful father. Eliza eventually gets her revenge, by setting a fire in her home and injuring her father. Similarly, Charlie’s mother Ruth feels suppressed by the circumstance of her own life. Now middle-aged, she feels that both her youth and dreams have withered as she raised her son in the small town of Corrigan, isolated from her own family in the city. Her outlook is further embittered through her passionless marriage to Charlie’s father, Wesley; a relationship that is not improved by Wesley’s decision to disappear into his study every night after dinner. In the end, Ruth is only able to liberate herself by abandoning Charlie and Wesley, knowing that her husband would never be willing to sacrifice his comfort and preference for small town living in order to follow her into a new life in the city.

Literary Devices and Supporting Themes

If a novel is truly terrifying – or at least unsettling – why do readers continue to read? Some may argue that a likeable character is enough to keep readers’ attention, but award-winning author Patrick deWitt disagrees: “Some of my favourite books have despicable protagonists but I find them fascinating […] I hope some [readers] might be willing to push a bit deeper and look to spend time with characters who aren’t entirely likeable” (Bethune 2015. In alignment with deWitt’s statement, Moriarty’s Truly Madly Guilty focuses on three largely unlikeable couples, their children and one rude neighbour. Though unlikeable, Moriarty has made the characters interesting through their dynamic interactions with one another, complex personal and interpersonal histories and through her withholding of information. Given the sizeable cast, Moriarty initially allows her characters to fall into stereotypical roles, making it easier for the reader to differentiate them. First, there is the outrageous and wealthy couple Vid and Tiffany, OCD control freak and germophobes Oliver and Erika and the artsy new-age parents Clementine and Sam. As the book progresses the characters deepen and change and justification for certain behaviours are revealed. For instance, Erika and Oliver’s controlled demeanour is the result of their respective parents’ mental illnesses. Previously endearing characteristics, such as Sam and Clementine’s playful marriage are later revealed as a forced re-enactment of how ‘happy families’ behave in the movies. In reality, their marriage has become sexless and is on the verge of collapse. However, despite each character’s flawed nature, they are capable of selfless acts. For example; Erika accepts Vid’s invitation to the barbeque, even though she doesn’t want to go, and Clementine agrees to donate her eggs to Erika for IVF treatments, even though she finds the idea repulsive. Readers are willing to invest in these characters because they can relate to the (admittedly bloated) suburban problems.

Truly Madly Guilty challenges the stereotype that all women are maternal/motherly.

In order to convince a reader to stay with a novel that explores fearful themes, one needs more than a cast of interesting characters. The use of literary devices such as voice, POV and pacing double as tools to engage readers, heighten tension and build fear. Truly Madly Guilty uses a rotating, past tense, third person limited POV, while Jasper Jones uses first person, present tense. While Moriarty maintains a consistent tone throughout, the voice within each chapter changes to reflect that POV character’s unique perspective. Though the horrifying events of the barbeque are not revealed until halfway through Truly Madly Guilty, Moriarty successful keeps her readers hooked by making them care about her complex characters and by delicately insinuating the reasons behind particular behaviours and conversations. Despite the close third person POV, Moriarty subtly alludes to deep seeded secrets and regrets while holding back on the details. Though she shows that the characters’ feel appalled by the behaviour of their shadow selves, she conceals the particularities of their situation until the end of the novel.

Fear is maximised in Truly Madly Guilty through the manipulation of its pace. As the timeline, sequence of events, or character motivations become clear, Moriarty peels back another layer to reveal a new unexpected truth: Erika is a kleptomaniac, having stolen items from Clementine’s home for years and storing them in a concealed chest in her bedroom cupboard. The book moves quickly throughout, despite the fact that the traumatising event hinted at in chapter one is not revealed until page 291. Moriarty leads us to this pivotal moment with five short sharp chapters, increasing the pace and instilling a sense of fear: something is coming. A red herring appears, but when the much-foreshadowed event is revealed the plot twists again.

One of the book’s central mysteries is Erika’s memory loss. Fear is propelled through these gaps as other characters step in to reveal what they witnessed on the night of the barbeque. So much information is brought forth that the reader is led to believe that they have the full picture. It is only when Erika regains her memory within the last ten pages that the plot twists one final time. Truly Madly Guilty generates terror in its readers through its characters exploration of their shadow selves, but also through Moriarty’s withholding of information, consistent allusion to character secrets, and the tension created by the combination of these two elements.

Misdirection and mystery are central to the plots of Jasper Jones and Truly Madly Guilty.

The subject matter and style of Jasper Jones is very different from Truly Madly Guilty, yet it uses similar techniques. Employing a mystery novel structure, Silvey carefully exposes the truth behind Laura’s death while simultaneous unravelling the complicated and rich subplots of 1960s racism, marital discord (domestic servitude), first loves, sexual abuse and child abuse. The question of Laura’s death is what drives the narrative, however, it is the compounding emotional terror of the subplots that keeps readers engaged. Readers identify, or at least empathise, with Ruth’s domestic suffocation, Jeffery’s alienation, Jasper’s abandonment and the abuses suffered by the Wishart sisters. Though the emotional tenor is what keeps readers engaged, Silvey also employs classic mystery novel techniques like red herrings – did Jasper kill Laura, did she kill herself, did Mad Jack Lionel do it? – and the gradual exposure of secondary characters’ motivations and backstories to keep the central plot moving forward.

Jasper Jones combines horrific events both real and rumoured. Mad Jack Lionel, as the name suggests, is cast as the town’s mad man supposedly responsible for the murder of a young girl, her car slowly rusting away in Jack’s backyard. Fear is struck into the hearts of Corrigan’s youth as teenagers dare each other to dash across Jack’s property to steal a peach from the tree in the backyard. Even when Charlie learns that Mad Jack Lionel isn’t mad, that the rusting car in the backyard belonged to Jasper’s deceased mother and that Jack is, in fact, Jasper’s Grandfather, he stills feels uncertain after accepting Warwick Trent’s dare.

“I’m so far inside [the yard] that I can’t hear them, or even feel their presence anymore. And even though I know I’m under no threat, it’s still an eerie and intimidating pilgrimage. I start to tread lighter as I get closer … I wonder if he’s watching me … I breathe deep.” (Silvey 2009)

Then there are the real horrors: Mr. Wishart’s repeated assaults on his daughters, a town blaming a teenage boy for all its mischievous activities and the brutal hate crime against the Lu family. Through the manipulation of pace and careful control of information Silvey is able to turn commonplace events into terrifying experiences. Both Jasper Jones and Truly Madly Guilty start with enticing, violent incidents: the death of a young girl and the near drowning of a small child. However, these events are not the plot, but a mere catalyst to get the ball rolling. The true plot is the snowballing effect generated from the terrifying incident and how that crime has caused some characters to expose their shadow selves or become aware of the shadow selves in their families, friends and perceived enemies. Following Laura’s death, Charlie’s eyes are opened to the racism that exists in his small town of Corrigan and the abuse the women in his life have suffered. Following the near drowning of a child, Erika’s kleptomania is revealed, Clementine confesses that she is only friends with Erika out of obligation, Oliver’s need for control increases, Sam and Clementine’s marriage grows colder and the neighbour who warns Erika of the near drowning, Harry, immediately falls down the stairs and dies.

While Jasper Jones is a contemporary take on the classic Australian tropes of racism and belonging, Truly Madly Guilty falls neatly into the trendy category of domestic suburban thrillers. And yet, both give form to fear not as an external Other but in the shape of neighbours, family, friends and ourselves. While early horror novels gave form to fears – social and cultural – by way of supernatural creatures and monsters, contemporary literature leans towards a more sophisticated representation. Now, terror is explored through the exposure of a character’s shadow self. Now, we are the monster.

Works Cited:

Bethune, B (2015) ‘The Interview’, Business Source Ultimate, issue. 128 pp. 23, available from: <https://usq.summon.serialssolutions.com/2.0.0/link?t=1527742826133>

Breyley, G (2009), ‘Fearing the Protector, fearing the protected: Indigenous and “National” fears in Twentieth-century Australia’, vol. 23, issue 1, available from: <http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.usc.edu.au:2048/docview/211256754?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo&gt;

Gelder, K and Weaver, R (2007), ‘The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction’, Melbourne University Print, Melbourne.

Huggan, G (2017), ‘Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism’, Oxford University Press, Oxford, available from: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/lib/usq/reader.action?docID=415105&query=

Moriarty, L 2016 Truly Madly Guilty, Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney. 

Silvey, C (2009), ‘Jasper Jones’, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

Turcotte, G (1998) ‘Australian Gothic’, in Mary Mulvey-Roberts (ed.) The Handbook to Gothic Literature, pp. 10-19, Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan.

Whitehouse, L (2014), ‘Rise of the marriage thriller’, The Guardian, available from: <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jan/15/rise-marriage-thriller-couples-secrets-gillian-flynn&gt;

Yodanic, C (2004) ‘Gender Inequality, Violence Against Women, and Fear: A Cross-National Test of the Feminist Theory of Violence Against Women, Journal of Interpersonal Violence’, Sage Publications, no. 19, vol.6, pp. 655-675, available from: http://journals.sagepub.com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/doi/pdf/10.1177/0886260504263868

Autonsitor

Written by Alexander Greco

May 3, 2019

My travels have taken me to the Maelulos Forest, in search of the Autonsitor. How do I describe either of these? How do I describe what drew me here? How do I describe what I actually believe I am doing here?

I had been drinking with wily company in Sairn, the City by the Sea, and listening to weathered travelers tell half-remembered tales. Something was in the air, you could smell it above the hops and the pipe-smoke—you could feel it like a static in the air. Yet, it was approached with caution. The Maelulos would be mentioned, and there was a quiet, knowing look in everyone’s eyes. Then the conversations would be diverted—consciously or unconsciously—to something else.

After a story about whaling and battling leviathans off the Garvreil Peninsula, I asked, “What’s the Maelulos? I keep hearing you all mention it, I’m curious. What is it? What’s there?”

Everyone looked at me. I had been quiet for most of the night—laughing yes, jabbing a tease and asking a few questions, sure, but I hadn’t directed the conversation at all until now. A woman who had been a traveler and a woods-woman for the first half of her life, and then a farmer’s wife until three years ago. “You’ve never heard of the Maelulos?” she asked, “The Maelulos Forest?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not from around here.”

“You don’t have to be from around here to ‘ave heard o’ the Maelulos,” a thick-bearded man piped in.

“I’m from far away,” I told him. “Worlds away.”

The bearded man gave me a long look, then the woman spoke up and I turned back to her. “The Maelulos is a forest in Sha’Haro where the Aether spills over into the land. It’s—“

“Aether?” I interrupted.

“What?” the woman asked.

“Did you jus’ ask what Aether is?” the bearded man asked. “How foreign are you? How do you not—”

“Just get on with the story, Freirdei,” a second man—a tall, wiry man with rough stubble—interjected. “We can’t give ‘im physicka lessons tonight, give ‘im directions to the Uni’ if he doesn’t know.”

The woman sighed. “The Maelulos is a forest in Sha’Haro—its own forest, isolated from all the others by miles of plains on all sides—where the Aether… Think of… It’s magic, it’s part of magic, but smarter people than I—or anyone else here—say its more. It’s a part of the fabric of everything, we just can’t see it. They’ve been trying to measure it like electricity or like brain-waves for years, but they haven’t yet. It doesn’t work the-“

“Freirdei,” the thin man interrupted.

“Right,” she said, “the Maelulos. It’s… It’s like walking into a dream. Things aren’t real there the same way they are here.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The fabric of things is torn there, or perhaps it’s that it blends together there. What separates the physical dimensions from the Aetheric dimension, it’s not there—the borders begin to blur. It glows with colored lights, but there’s no source of the light. There’s things there—there’s things that happen there that can’t be explained. It’s like a dream and an ocean and a storm all at once.”

“But… it’s a forest?”

“Aye,” said Freirdei, “in the easiest of words, it’s a forest.”

“Home of the Autonsitors,” said the thin man, “the only place in the world they live.”

“Autonsitors?” I asked.

“The Lords of the Maelulos,” said the bearded man.

“Not the Druids nor even the Veritasians dispute it. No one owns those woods but the Autonsitors.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“They are not a ‘who’,” said Freirdi, “they’re beasts.”

“Beasts’ doesn’t do them justice, Freirdi,” said the thin man, “they’re equals with the Dragons.”

“Well, what are they?” I asked, “What are these beasts, or whatever they are?”

There was a small silence. I could see in all three of my companions’ eyes that they were searching for words. The bearded man spoke first. “They make bears look like puppies.”

“They’ve got these tusks,” Freirdi began, “they move like a tiger, and-“

“You’ve never seen a tiger,” said the bearded man.

“Fine, it moves like a mountain lion, you can’t tell me I ‘ahven’t seen those. And it’s got a wolf’s maw, ‘cept its teeth are as long as your forearm.”

“They’re ferocious,” said the bearded man, “they’ll let you into their forest, but you ‘ad better not disturb a single leaf.”

“It sees things,” said the thin man, “that’s what’s important. Something can be big, something can have teeth, and something be fierce, but the Autonsitor sees things. It knows things—like the Dragons, an’ the Elves know things. They spend their entire lives in the Maelulos; their entire lives with those eyes of theirs.”

“That’s enough,” said the bearded man, “let’s-“

“’Ave you ever seen its eyes?” asked the thin man, turning to his bearded compatriot. “Have you ever seen it open its-“

“That’s enough, Pater,” the bearded man said to the thin one.

“Aye, enough,” said Freirdei, “tell us about Korsik,”

The bearded man stared at Pater for a long moment, then smiled slightly. Any tension slowly dissolved as he spoke. “Mah favorite story,” he said, “don’t know why I’ve never been back.”

More stories were told for another hour or so. All the while, the static in the air still hung. I would listen to it ringing, and I would begin to imagine the Maelulos. My mind’s eye would wonder to the Autonsitor. And every time, I would catch Pater looking at me. I’d catch his stare for a moment, and he’d seem to smile with the crease of his eyes. Then he’d look away, back to whoever was telling the story.

Eventually, we all grew tired enough to call it a night. As I was walking up the stairs of the inn, going to my bed, Pater stopped me.

“Are you interested in the Autonsitor?” he asked.

“Interested?” I asked.

“In finding it,” he said, “in going to the Maelulos.”

I stared at Pater for a moment, silently rolling the thought over in my head. “Yes,” I said. I was.

Pater smiled.

In the morning, just as this world’s star—the Sozl, I believe they called it in this country—rose above the horizon, I boarded a train—engine #64, just as Pater had told me to. It wasn’t a long journey to Sha’Haro from the southern hill country of Veritas. Pater had given me a map to the Maelulos, along with some directions and words of advice:

“Stay on the roads. Don’t journey into the forests—it’s the Druids’ land. Once you enter the Mael—the plains surrounding the Maelulos—keep your eye to the Rais [their word for East]. You’ll eventually see the Maelulos from the road.”

Once my train arrived in Sha’Haro, I began walking down the Vahn’Ozl road to the South. For a long time, there was nothing but forest. The first night on the road, I slept just off the side of the road, though I didn’t go any farther than the nearest tree. On the second day, around noon, a merchant came by with a horse-led wagon and offered to let me ride with him. By the end of the second day, we had made it to the Mael.

Night was falling, so we camped out in the grass a few yards from the edge of the road. When I woke up the next day, the Sozl was just beginning to rise on the Mael. It stretched on for miles and miles—a seemingly infinite stretch of grasslands. The merchant and I took to the road again, and by the afternoon, I could see the Maelulos to the East. It looked like a normal forest, though we were still miles away.

An hour or so later, when we were parallel to the Maelulos, I told the merchant to stop so I could get off and go on to the forest. He looked at me for a moment as though I was insane, then nodded and slowed to a stop. He didn’t say anything while I got off and collected my belongings, but as I was about to thank him, he interrupted me and asked, “Are you sure?”

I didn’t understand the question at first, it seemed taken out of context, but then it clicked, “Yes, I’m sure,” I said, “thank you for the ride.”

The merchant nodded and grunted something, then went on his way.

I began walking across the plains toward the Maelulos.

As I near the Maelulos, it seems stranger than when I had first seen it, and with each step it seems to grow wilder—less constrained by any words an individual might craft for such an occasion. Within a mile of its edge, the Maelulos has become a storm of green arms reaching up into the sky. It is comprised of trees, yes, but not like trees I’d ever seen. Not trees of our world, nor trees I’ve seen in other parts of this world.

Maelulos, the Glowing Wood, Pater called it. I am closer now; the Sozl is falling onto the horizon behind me. The forest begins to emanate soft, blue light. The Sozl is now beyond the horizon. All that’s left of it are deep reds and violets exploding into the night’s deep indigo.

I am approaching the edge of the forest now, despite the fall of night. Pater told me the Autonsitor is an animal that never sleeps, but it only walks through the Maelulos at night. By day, it exists invisibly and universally in the leaves and vines and branches of the forest, and in the flowers, seeds and fruits of the forest.

The light blue of the forest is now becoming infused with every color imaginable. Yellow lights like wil-o-wisps dance between shifting boughs of the sprawling, monolithic trees. Indigos of the night sky seem to drift and swirl about with the green of glowing leaves, and echoes the sky blue glimmer permeating the air. Currents of orange, wild violet and burnt red swim between trees like autumnal whales swimming through the forest’s depths.

At the threshold of the forest, I see red fireflies dancing in the air with white moths. In the distance is a great bird—it looks like a giant shoebill, or some monstrous crane. Its feathers are grey shadows painted across snowy fields, and its eyes are yellow gems with piercing abysses cut across them. Fish as large as my head are swimming through the air—possibly propelling through the invisible “Aether”.

The static from the night I first heard of the Maelulos seems to return. Something hums through the air. A ringing brushes across my body like a cool breeze. Why am I here? I wonder. The question is like ice running across my nerves. I couldn’t answer it. My same words that fail to describe the Maelulos begin failing to describe me, or my motivations. I couldn’t tell you why I was here. Could the Maelulos tell me why it was here?

The static and the hum and the ringing grow, drowning out my thoughts until all I hear are the shapes of the trees. All I can think are the colors of the air.

I’ve entered the forest now. My grip on reality begins to fade here, or perhaps there’s simply less reality to hold onto. Less than fifteen minutes of walking—as far as I can tell—and a mouth formed from tree roots and loamy earth opens up, and from its lips fly flocks of birds. They all chirp with distinct melodies in a unified rhythm, and their small, ringing noises form a chaotic yet beautiful and haunting song—a composition that was easily far more complex than even the Elvish symphonies could produce.

Further into the forest. I don’t know how far I’ve walked. I watch a deer bite the air—nothing in the air, it bit the air itself—and tear a hole open. From that hole, a rabbit, a crow and a moth, each the size of my chest, emerge. They all walk together through the forest.

I want to follow, but I realize I’m watching them from above. I realize I’m standing in a canopy of branches and leaves. I thought I was standing in grass and earthen debris, but I realize I must climb back down.

A giant earthworm emerges from the ground. It rises up into the air, then splits into seven. These all become the boughs of a tree, while the part of the tree that remains unified becomes the trunk. A black beak the size of sailing vessel crashes through the forest and plucks at the tree, but pulls a worm from the ground.

I look up to see the crow again. I realize the worm was not giant, and the beak was not the size of a ship. I realize I had been staring at the ground, watching the earthworm, and my eyes had only been inches from the ground. I am sprawled out across the ground, covered in dried leaves and dirt.

The deer, the moth and the rabbit are here as well. I stand up and follow the four animals. As I walk, I seem to be traversing through a tunnel of leaves, boughs and museum exhibits, though I couldn’t tell you which displays I saw. All that stayed constant, all that I can really remember, were the four animals.

So, I come back to my first question, how to describe the Maelulos.

I couldn’t say the Maelulos is a forest anymore. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t begin to describe what I see.

As I step into a clearing with the four animals, I watch a small star—one of the wil-o-wisps—burst into a spiraling flower stock that hangs in the air. The bud of this flower opens into an endless pit of sunlight and fire. What I thought were seven golden petals begin to move, and I realize they are seven yellow bees standing on the edge of this fiery pit. They lean in and pluck seven strings from the inferno of sunlight, then fly off into the forest—weaving the seven strings throughout the trees and bushes and limbs and creatures and colors and lights.

But even that doesn’t describe what I see. How do I describe this? How doI describe an object I hear with my body? How do I describe a thought I see with my hands? How do I describe a sound that I feel in my thoughts? Because that’s what I saw, a storm of perception wrapped inside of a single event.

From this clearing, we follow one of the bees as it weaves through the trees. Flower to flower, wrapping a curving vector about the forest. We step inside the hollow of a tree. The tree was no more than three feet thick from the outside, but suddenly we’re walking through a dark hallway carved into the tree, following this bee. We come to a small, circular room, with a hole in the floor. From the floor comes a golden light.

The bee flies into the hole. I look down and see three naked women—one with white hair, one with blonde and one with copper hair. I couldn’t say if they were beautiful or ugly, I couldn’t say if they seemed clean or unkempt, and I couldn’t say if they were happy or furious at the arrival of the bee. They were like oil paintings in the air, their features were crisp yet distant, and I wanted to climb into the golden light to be with them.

From yards away, they might seem perfect. Examining them inches from my face, I might see the Truth. But, from right here, I only saw confusion. I only saw the ideal and the material meeting in the middle, and blurring like rivers of opposing thoughts crashing into each other.

The animals kept walking, and I followed.

We move past the golden light, and onward across this hall through the dark. For a moment, I wonder if the darkness will swallow me, if there will never be an end to it, if I will ever return. Then I see a light at the end of the hall. Now we’re walking out of the hallway, into the forest once more. The descends from the air above us, still carrying its string, and we follow it once more.

How do I describe this?

The Maelulos is like an estuary of what is and what could be. It is where the briny depths of life’s oceans mix with the meltwater of snowcapped epiphanies. It’s where reality doesn’t have to be real anymore, and the thoughts of ours that can never be step foot on solid ground.

I tell you this, I tell you what I’ve seen here, and now I have just as much difficulty telling you what has drawn me here. How do I tell you what pulls me? How do I tell you what strings tug at my joints? How do I tell you what thoughts I followed to find this forest?

Like the search for something you’ve seen once and forgotten. Like the investigation of a dream lost to time. Like you’ve been following a map you didn’t know was in your hands, hunting for something you never knew you needed. How else could I describe it?

It is unknowable, ungraspable and undefinable, yet it is so real. When it brushes up against you in your dreams, it feels far more real than anything you’ve held in your waking hands. When you dance along the edge of reason and the irrational, it embraces you like a star embracing the empty vacuum surrounding it.

This—whatever it is; whatever unknowable angels dance through my head—has drawn me to the Maelulos.

And so I tell you that I search for the Autonsitor, but I tell you also that I search for more. I tell you I hunt for the Autonsitor, but, if you knew the Autonsitor, you would understand what I truly hope to find.

The four animals and I follow the bee on through the Glowing Wood.

We are walking in a space where reality seems to have calmed down once again. I can think again, I can look around, and I can see myself as an individual nested in reality again. Then I hear it. A roar, a howl, a cry—something I’ve never heard in my life, yet it couldn’t be mistaken. The Autonsitor. I hear it from deep in the forest ahead of us, but then I watch as the bee flies into a river, still carrying the string. The four animals follow. I hear the cry once more and hesitate, but I know—for whatever reason; the same reason for why I must search for the Autonsitor—I must follow the four animals into the river.

All of the animals and the bee immediately submerge beneath the water, unafraid of its current, and unafraid of having no air to breathe. I step into the water, and it’s freezing. I walk in as quickly as I can, though I don’t have the same disinhibition as the animals and the bee. The water is up to my waist, then my chest, then my chin. I take a long breath, then submerge my head into the cold water.

On the other side of the river’s surface, I open my eyes and see normally, as if there were no water. Everything around me—the plants, my clothes, the rabbit’s fur—all move as if they were underwater, but I don’t feel the water itself, and I find that I can move normally, as if there was no water. I sip the river into my mouth, and find that I’ve sipped in air. Cautiously, I exhale my breath, then inhale normally. I can breathe underwater, or under-whatever-this-river-is.

The animals and I walk across the silt of the riverbed, following the bee. I glance down the river to either side of me and see fish, but not normal fish. They’ve all got heads of various animals—elephants, tigers, monkeys, goats and snakes—and their dorsal fins were made out of arms, while their tailfins were like long trailing flowers.

As we walked across the riverbed, I watched each fish pick up a stone with its mouth, then carry it to another fish. Two fish would meet with each other, and pick the rocks from each other’s mouths with one of the hands on their dorsal fins, then go to pick up another rock and meet another fish. Eventually, a fish would have every hand of its dorsal arms full of different rocks of different shapes, sizes, colors and origins, and they would find some safe place along the riverbed—either a sunken log, the roots of a tree, or a bush of reeds—and lay down to set every rock in a pile around it.

I watched this for as long as I could, but then I saw from the corner of my eye that we were approaching something. I turned forward, toward the animals and the bee, and I saw we were nearing the bank of the river’s other side, except the bank was opening up like a dark mouth—the same mouth I’d seen the birds fly out of earlier.

Together, the animals and I follow the golden bee into this earthen mouth underwater. The riverbed swallows us into its dark silt. We are walking, though I begin to lose feeling of my body. I know I move my legs, though I don’t feel them move. Maybe it’s too cold to feel anything. A part of me wonders if I’m dead. It seems foolish, I acknowledge that, but it seems to make sense as well.

Warm light shines from ahead. Soon, we are stepping through a tunnel of soil and clay. Ahead, I think I can see buildings where the tunnel opens up. They’re buildings made of metal, I think. They’re buildings made of tree roots, car frames and engine blocks, and a mismatching of many different bricks—red bricks, cobblestones, fired clay, cement blocks, and so forth—I think.

Eventually we come to the end of this tunnel. There is a city, I can see it fully now. There are people here, I see them now. They are like geometric shapes painted into the riverwater-that-isn’t-water. Their faces are squares and triangles, and circles inside of circles, and their bodies are gaunt rectangles, hobbling trapezoids and tall, thin triangles.

We pass the first two blocks on our left and right. Then the bee flies into an open doorway. We follow it, take a staircase to the basement floor. Except the staircase keeps going. And going. And going. It enters my mind, how long has the bee been pulling its string from the flower? How many paths has it woven through? How many paths have the six other bees woven? It enters my mind that—

But we’ve come to the end of the staircase. It empties out into a vast underground—a cavern. A cavern, with doors everywhere. The animals and I follow the bee through one of the doors. There’s sunlight down here, though I don’t know from where. We walk into a hallway, and it leads to endless hallways streaming with sunlight. Hallway after hallway—how many places has the bee’s string woven through by now?

We step out to a dark, midnight beach—the sunlight stays in the halls behind us—and we behold an ocean ahead of us. I wonder how there can be an ocean when we’re already in a river. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. But I know there’s a ship waiting for us just offshore. We’re swimming in black water now. My legs are treading air, and my head is underwater, but we’re moving. Now we’re climbing the sides of the ship.

The animals and I stand on the sides of the deck. The bee wraps its string around the masts, and ties a knot around the bowsprit. The bee is pulling now on the ship, pulling the ship through the ocean. We sail for hours, it seems like, across charcoal black waters. Above us, the sky begins to crack and shimmer with color. The sky becomes a wine bottle green, cracks of light barely escaping the underground sky.

In the distance, I see a massive black shape converging to a point above the horizon. Eventually, I realize that this is our destination. We crawl across the water. As time passes, I see phantom shapes find life in the air. I see mice run across the water. I see the ghost-forms of foxes dance in the dark. I see tresses of pale vines climb through the air and disappear.

Then I see the moon come out. It means something. I don’t know what it means. It’s telling me something. The still image of the moon opens an invisible mouth and speaks. What is it saying?

A sudden jolt, a crash. The ship has hit land. The animals begin walking toward the bowsprit. I follow. I end up walking faster than them and make it to the bowsprit first. I climb down from the side of the ship, and my feet touch solid ground. The ship begins to move. I turn around and see the bee pulling the ship away from the coast, the animals still on it.

For a moment, I wonder if I should try climbing back aboard the ship, but I know it’s too late. The ship has left land. It’s gone. I watch to see if the animals turn to look at me, a part of me wants to wave at them, but they don’t.

I turn back.

I am standing at the summit of a black mountain, I realize. I am standing at the summit of a mountain made from the darkest substance I could imagine—something beyond charcoal, something beyond simple shadow, something wholly un-seeable—ore of a black-hole, perhaps, mined from the cosmos.

I know I must begin climbing.

There are rocks beneath my feet, and stones against my hand, but there is no seeing them. Far above me, at what I assume to be the peak, I see a faint light. Hand over hand, I climb this un-seeable mountain. As I do, I feel the pressure of the water I’m in grow stronger and stronger. It grows until I think I feel a hand gripping my entire body, and I wonder how much more I can take. Above me I see the light still, so I go on. Hand over hand, I go on, until the pressure is so great, and the light is so near that I am nothing but a war with myself. The pressure grows, and the light comes closer until I am nothing but collisions of thoughts.

Then my hand finds nothing but water—thick water, which squeezes my hand in a crushing grip. I reach down, and I feel a rounded, pyramidal point where the mountain must end. Above me, there is a small point of light. Then, above me, there is a call.

Above me, I hear a long, trailing keen. If a single saxophone could howl like a wolf, roar like a lion, screech like an eagle, and still croon sweet, blue lullabies in the quiet of the night, it might sound like this keen. It might sound like the call of the Autonsitor.

From the top of the mountain I have climbed, I breach the earthen ceiling with my hands and pull myself through the dirt, back into the forest. The abyssal pressure is gone. I crawl into the hollow of a tree, and turn the bark’s door handle. I crack the door of the tree open just enough to peek outside, into the woods.

There, it stands. The Autonsitor.

It has the body of an ashen-furred lion, except it stands as tall as an elephant at its shoulders. Its head has an elongated snout, like a wolf’s. Thick tusks emerge from its mouth, bent backwards beyond its shoulder blades. Its back is covered in twigs, branches and thick tree boughs all laden with deep, green leaves. It looks just as Pater had described it to me.

I step out of the hollow in the tree and step into the forest. I watch it, and wonder what the Autonsitor is doing. It seems agitated. It seems confused. This wasn’t what I had expected. Sure, it looked like a creature of beauty and elegance, but not in the way it moved.

Lumbering about as though it were in pain or scared, the Autonsitor walked further into the woods—it’s head moving side to side as it did, searching. I follow after it. The woods have seemed to congeal into a less frantic reality here. It is no longer shifting between reality and dream, but rather seems to be one or the other. Whichever one it is—whichever of the two that the forest has chosen—it seems to be holding true.

The Autonsitor stops in a clearing. I come to a stop several yards outside of the clearing. The beast looks around, then its eyes become fixated on something to its left. A song is playing somewhere in the forest, and it gets closer and closer. The Autonsitor begins to open its mouth. A flock of birds—the source of the music in the woods—comes flying directly at the Autonsitor. It opens its mouth, and they all fly into the beast’s mouth.

I step forward to get a better look. The Autonsitor tenses up suddenly. The odd panic in the creature’s body seem to peak. Each movement of its body is quick—its head jerks to one side, it’s legs move to reposition its body, its back arches, ready to lash out. What’s making it so agitated?

It turns, and I see its face from the front now. It has two light blue eyes—the same color as the light permeating this forest—then a single, closed eye at the crown of its skull. It is sniffing the air and turning its head slowly to scan the forest. Its eyes stop on me—it sees me now, I know it does.

For a moment, all the Autonsitor does is stare at me. All I can do is stare back. Then, step by step, it begins to move toward me. There is no running away, so I don’t even try. I just stand there and stare back into the beast’s eyes. It comes to a stop only a few yards away. My fate seems indeterminate for a moment. Then the Autonsitor rumbles and closes its eyes.

The eye at its crown opens. It is white, with a black center.

From this black center, I see seven bees holding seven strings crawl out and fly into the forest. The Autonsitor stands motionless now as the bees fly all around me, wrapping me with their string. Is it looking through its white eye now? Through the black pit at its center? Through the eyes of the seven bees? Is it searching for something? And what does it search for?

The bees wrap me entirely with strings, and I let them. They form something like a chrysalis around my body. The strings cover my face until I can see no more, and then they all melt into my skin, melting me with them. I open my eyes again, and I am floating in an endless, white space, with spirals of color spinning all around me.

Then, the spirals coalesce into a single circle. The circle shimmers. It becomes a mirror. I look into it and see photographs of myself. They are photographs of me from the day I was born until the day I die. They are all layered on top of each other, yet transparent, so I can see them all at once, and so they form one face. In the reflection of the mirror, I see a mirror behind me.

I seem to have no body here, so all I see are two mirrors reflecting each other infinitely, and all the photographs in between. I am just an ethereal body here, watching these two. I move toward the first mirror, and try to push myself through the glass.

The mirror is like a liquid, and my body—whatever my body is—moves into the mirror as though I am emerging from water. My body breaks through the liquid surface of the mirror. I stumble out of it onto grass. It is nighttime. No. I see light on the horizon, it must be morning time. All around me is grasslands, plains—the Mael.

I turn around, and I see Maelulos just behind me—the edge of the woods calling for me to return. But, I know I must leave, though I don’t know why (I assume I must leave for the same reasons I came here, whatever they were). I turn to the horizon, and watch as the Sozl rises above the edge of the horizon. A new morning is here, and I must travel on. I turn to look once more at the Maelulos.

At the heart of this forest is a great animal, searching for something. It turns itself into an instrument. It turns itself into a telescope that scours the surface of pebbles. It turns itself into a tool that navigates from flower to flower, color to color, life to life—a tool prying at the night, prying at the forest, prying at its reflection.

Perhaps one day I will return to the Maelulos.

Perhaps one day I will lose myself in the Maelulos.

Perhaps one day I will find myself still wandering through the Maelulos.

Pillars of Flesh

Jason stared at the corkboard above his desk. One of the flashcards he’d pinned to it was tilted so it leaned down on the right and up on the left. He held the cared against the corkboard, pulled the pin out, then inserted the pin a smidge further to the left. When he let go of the card, the right side swung down even further, and the left side tilted up even higher.

That’s not how that’s supposed to work, he thought to himself.

He repeated the process, holding the card against the corkboard, pulling the pin out and putting the pin back in even further to the left. The right side dropped even further, and the left side moved even higher. Jason stared at the flashcard. What first seemed like an easily-corrected oddity to him now seemed utterly wrong.

Jason sat there staring at the board, almost terrified to try fixing it again, but, eventually he mustered up the resolve. He held down the card, pulled the pin out, then pushed it into the top-left corner of the card. When the right end swung straight down, Jason jumped out of his chair and backed away from the desk.

Something was wrong. Not the normal, fixable sort of wrong. It was as if some rule that governed reality had been broken.

Jason scanned the room. Something about the windows seemed strange. Jason’s bed appeared to be standing on solid ground, but it might fall to the ceiling at any moment. Then Jason turned to look at his bookshelf.

When Jason looked at his bookshelf, a wave of horror overtook him. He couldn’t read any of the titles on the book bindings. They were all just shapes and lines—squiggles and sharp angles that should have been in English, but they could’ve been in any language now. They were titles he should have known, titles he should have been able to remember without reading them, but he couldn’t tell what any of the books were.

There was a knock on the door. Jason whipped around, almost yelping at the sudden sound, but then he was relieved. It was probably one of his parents, and they’d be able to help him. Jason walked to the door and opened it.

Jason looked where a face should be, but there wasn’t a face. Jason didn’t know what was there. He only saw an arrangement of shapes and colors—curves and colors and shapes and patterns—and Jason couldn’t understand what he was looking at.

Then the arrangement of shapes and colors began making sounds, but it was all nonsense. As far as Jason could tell, all the sounds he heard were disjointed scrapes, hums, clicks and hisses—some absurdist symphony of strange mutterings.

Jason’s mind reeled trying to make sense of what was happening. Something Jason couldn’t begin understanding was at his door, making noise at him. Panicked confusion galloped through Jason’s head. He slammed the door, locked it and stepped away from it. The thing on the other side started making even louder noises. Their pitch warped and churned into a tumbling of dissonant emotions.

Jason ran across the room to his desk. He opened one of the drawers and pulled out small, foam ear-plugs he used when he studied, twisted them, and pushed them into his ears. They expanded, filled his ears, and soon Jason couldn’t hear the sounds coming from the other side of the door. Jason then went to his bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him. He sat down on the floor and tried to calm himself down. What’s going on? he wondered. What’s happening?

Nothing made sense. Nothing, not a single thing around him. He looked around his bathroom, and only knew what the cabinets, the shower, the toilet and the sink were after he stared at them and pieced together what the shapes and colors meant. That thing is square and brown, with a small, white sphere on one side. It must be a cabinet. And that thing there is… That thing is…

Jason was now looking at the mirror, only the mirror wasn’t a mirror. It was a whole different dimension of the room he was sitting in that had exploded into the wall. It took Jason minutes to understand what he was looking at. Once he finally understood that it was a mirror—though only logically, he had no intuitive grasp of what he saw—he stood up and looked at it.

In the mirror, Jason saw another arrangement of colors and forms—like the one he’d seen on the other side of the door—except this one moved when he moved, blinked when he blinked, stared where he stared. It’s me, he thought. I know I’m looking at my own reflection, but… I can’t see myself. Then, Jason noticed a fork of red streaming down the arrangement. He moved a hand to his face—which also moved in the mirror—and touched the red.

Jason looked down. It took a moment to realize the segmented pink-white-red-tan pillars of flesh emerging from the warped square of similar, wrinkle-carved flesh was his own hand. He noticed there was red on these pillars of flesh now. What was it doing there? It came from his face, hadn’t it? Why was there red streaming down his face?