Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote,
website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will
simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test
or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes
of them.
F Trope:
divination (especially water (how Stephen King got his start)
Current Event: http://www.britishdowsers.org/whats_on/water_divining_dowsing_group.shtml
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danse_Macabre_(book)
While not
“current”, it’s interesting to note that horror writer, Stephen King became a
writer because of water dowsing (also called, “divination”): “explains his
childhood fixation with the imagery of terror and horror, making an interesting
comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple
branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While
browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback
version of the H.P. Lovecraft collection The Lurker in the Shadows,
which had belonged to his long-since-departed father. The cover art—an
illustration of a monster hiding within the recesses of a hell-like cavern
beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which ‘that interior
dowsing rod responded to.’”
Sui Fun Fong Eu
and her boyfriend Chang-Lin Chiao are New York natives, two generations
separated from their Chinese heritage – neither one speaks Chinese, likes
Chinese food or has any desire to be anything except another invisible New
York, high school seniors. They aren’t brilliant, both have older brothers and
sisters who are lawyers, doctors, physicists and a pro-basketball player; so no
one expects anything for either of them.
Both of them plan
on “going to college”. Neither one knows what they want to major in except,
“business”. They are comfortable with their lives and they are comfortable with
their relationship – sexy, but not crazy (a pregnancy outside of marriage would
STILL be a “bad” thing for them). They
are simply, COMFORTABLE and happy to be that way.
That is, until
they’re walking through Central Park one afternoon and see someone with a white
stick – a slender single end splitting half-way up and the elderly man holding
the two ends in his hands, intently studying the ground.
“What’s he doing?”
Fong asked.
Chiao shrugged and
went back to scarfing his McDonald’s fries. He finally glanced at the old guy
and stopped walking, squinted and said, “I think he’s looking for water.”
“In Central Park?”
Chiao shrugged
again. “None of my business. Just another crazy New Yorker.” He kept walking,
but Fong stopped to stare. He reached out and tugged her sleeve. “Don’t do
that. He might be a mugger.”
“I don’t think
some old geezer can hurt me from, like, the middle of the park,” she said,
laughing.
Suddenly the old
man looked up. The dowsing rod plunged to the ground like he’d caught a
hundred-pound tuna. He shouted angrily then the ground fountained up into the
air, throwing him back. Something large, dark and insubstantial – like oil
smoke – spewed from the ground. A limb of the smoke speared the old man in the
chest. He spasmed once, then lay still. The cloud slid across the grass and
before it reached them; before they could move or even scream, Fong could see
that the grass beneath it curled into brown deadness.
Chiao said, “I
think we should get...”
The oily smoke...
Names: ♂; ♀ China
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