![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wendelah1 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xf_book_clubThis week's story, nominated by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bravenewcentury, is "Strangers and the Strange Dead" by Kipler. In the 2000 Spooky Awards, it tied with "Aquinnah" by Anjou for first place for best mid-length story. I suspect it would make many writers' top ten lists, as it is technically brilliant, memorable, and original.
Summary: In which dead bodies and shivering people disturb the hilltown of Bradenton, and our young, orphaned narrator serves hot beverages to the investigating agents even as she ponders the peculiar, elusive nature of their relationship.
I was in the coffee shop, late afternoon, mid-January. I liked to work the afternoon shift, from 11 to 4:30, because no one came for a bagel or a sandwich at 4:00; the most I had to do was brew another pot of decaf, refresh the cream in the creamer. That gave me time to sit in the big booth and write. I was working to save money to start at college the next fall. Technically I was too old to be a freshman - 21 - but it was time for me to get out of town. So, I sat alone in the coffee shop with my books and my paper when the door opened and the bell went off to alert me. A man stood there in the slanting light. I couldn't really see him but heard his voice: "I need some food."
I got up and moved behind the counter.
"We close in a half-hour," I said. "There's not much left. A couple muffins and some beef barley."
"Soup?" the man asked, and I looked at him then because his voice shook and his teeth chattered as he finished speaking. He was slight, swallowed by the jacket he wore. His lined face was dirty or bruised - I couldn't tell which - and his right coat sleeve was torn from elbow to cuff. At first I thought he was drunk but then I saw a drop of water run off the pull-cord of his hood and realized that he was wet and cold.
"You OK?" I asked, wondering if I should be alone with him.
He looked at me, then pointed out the window, toward the hills.
"I was up there," he said. "I need some food."
"Your car break down?" I asked.
"No. I was up in the woods."
Up in the woods was nothing in summer and even less in winter. Bare trees, cold ground, our little mountain and then another and twenty minutes' drive on Route 60 to the next town.
"You were camping?" I asked. The man stared at me, his face blank as though I'd been speaking a language he'd forgotten. I pressed on. "Were you lost?"
"Lost," he said. "Yes."
"God," I said, and scalded myself pulling the ladle out of the soup pot. I brought a bowl to the man, and he looked at it for a minute, as if he'd forgotten how to eat, too, but then he picked up the bowl - no spoon - and drank the broth down in a series of gulps. The barley and celery he pushed into his mouth with the fingers of his left hand. The fingers were shaking, still.
"Can I get another bowl?" he asked.
The smell of him hit me then. I knew it from hunting parties and schools of fishermen, times when they'd come back from a trip to the woods with no running water and no women. And I knew the smell from trips to Boston, walking past the men on the street-corners, the ones who rattled tin cans as I moved by. People who are tied to normal life don't carry that smell.
If the link doesn't work, her stories are archived at Gossamer. If anyone has a working email address for her feedback, let me know. Suggestions for next time can be made here.
Strangers and the Strange Dead.
Kipler's Fan Fiction
bravenewcentury, is "Strangers and the Strange Dead" by Kipler. In the 2000 Spooky Awards, it tied with "Aquinnah" by Anjou for first place for best mid-length story. I suspect it would make many writers' top ten lists, as it is technically brilliant, memorable, and original.Summary: In which dead bodies and shivering people disturb the hilltown of Bradenton, and our young, orphaned narrator serves hot beverages to the investigating agents even as she ponders the peculiar, elusive nature of their relationship.
I was in the coffee shop, late afternoon, mid-January. I liked to work the afternoon shift, from 11 to 4:30, because no one came for a bagel or a sandwich at 4:00; the most I had to do was brew another pot of decaf, refresh the cream in the creamer. That gave me time to sit in the big booth and write. I was working to save money to start at college the next fall. Technically I was too old to be a freshman - 21 - but it was time for me to get out of town. So, I sat alone in the coffee shop with my books and my paper when the door opened and the bell went off to alert me. A man stood there in the slanting light. I couldn't really see him but heard his voice: "I need some food."
I got up and moved behind the counter.
"We close in a half-hour," I said. "There's not much left. A couple muffins and some beef barley."
"Soup?" the man asked, and I looked at him then because his voice shook and his teeth chattered as he finished speaking. He was slight, swallowed by the jacket he wore. His lined face was dirty or bruised - I couldn't tell which - and his right coat sleeve was torn from elbow to cuff. At first I thought he was drunk but then I saw a drop of water run off the pull-cord of his hood and realized that he was wet and cold.
"You OK?" I asked, wondering if I should be alone with him.
He looked at me, then pointed out the window, toward the hills.
"I was up there," he said. "I need some food."
"Your car break down?" I asked.
"No. I was up in the woods."
Up in the woods was nothing in summer and even less in winter. Bare trees, cold ground, our little mountain and then another and twenty minutes' drive on Route 60 to the next town.
"You were camping?" I asked. The man stared at me, his face blank as though I'd been speaking a language he'd forgotten. I pressed on. "Were you lost?"
"Lost," he said. "Yes."
"God," I said, and scalded myself pulling the ladle out of the soup pot. I brought a bowl to the man, and he looked at it for a minute, as if he'd forgotten how to eat, too, but then he picked up the bowl - no spoon - and drank the broth down in a series of gulps. The barley and celery he pushed into his mouth with the fingers of his left hand. The fingers were shaking, still.
"Can I get another bowl?" he asked.
The smell of him hit me then. I knew it from hunting parties and schools of fishermen, times when they'd come back from a trip to the woods with no running water and no women. And I knew the smell from trips to Boston, walking past the men on the street-corners, the ones who rattled tin cans as I moved by. People who are tied to normal life don't carry that smell.
If the link doesn't work, her stories are archived at Gossamer. If anyone has a working email address for her feedback, let me know. Suggestions for next time can be made here.
Strangers and the Strange Dead.
Kipler's Fan Fiction
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 05:18 pm (UTC)I think I'm hitting an "it's famous and perfect" wall. Because it is. Anyone who's hung around X fandom for any length of time has been introduced to "Strangers," usually by people who are signalling their politeness in not giving away the breathtaking ending. It's our Sixth Sense, our Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And it subtly earns the surprise, especially with that daring mention of Mulder. Our first response is to say, "wait, she cheated." No, she didn't. It's so cool.
Though not flashy, this is a very literary story, and that is also quite daring when we think that the observing pov is a young waitress earning money for college. But that's solved in the first line. She's a *literary* young waitress. Also very cool.
If I sound flippant, it's because I tend to be more comfortable with light and clever than serious and touching. Fortunately, I think we can all agree that "Strangers and the Strange Dead" is both clever and serious. And this is confirmed by the chill, after that final reunion scene with its shock and relief, of remembering all those strange dead bodies...
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 08:31 pm (UTC)It is indeed perfect. And literary. I was shocked by the reveal--and I predicted the ending of The Sixth Sense before I had even seen the film. So for me to get that sort of psychic jolt was quite impressive. I don't know anything about Kipler but I am pretty damn certain she writes for a living, maybe not fiction, but something. This story would certainly make my top ten list of XF fiction, it might even make my top ten list of fan fiction. With very little tweaking this could have been a publishable science fiction short story, in my humble opinion.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-19 01:26 am (UTC)Of course I love this amazing story. I count this and Cell Phone as the two examples of how fanfic can achieve a power that's generally unavailable to "regular" fic. While it's possible that this could be tweaked into a publishable story, it wouldn't have the same impact. It's not only that we already know about Mulder and Scully, it's that we've cared about them for a very long time.
At the end, when the stranger's identity becomes clear, I had a larger revelation. First the stranger is smelly and dirty and you don't want Scully to let him touch her. And then, from one second to the next, the dirty man is Mulder, and he's not disgusting any more. It's something I try to hold on to, in my better moments. Humanity lurks under appalling exteriors.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-19 05:27 am (UTC)I confess, I've been sending vibes.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-20 10:31 pm (UTC)Yes, a good point, and another one I had not thought of before. That is certainly a theme that could not be conveyed as easily or with as much emotional resonance outside of fan fiction, where the love we share for the characters adds so much to how we approach the text. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 02:01 am (UTC)that is so fascinating. i love those weird, one-eighty moments, no matter what kind of art i find them in. now i really wish i'd been surprised. all the same, i think the sensation of that moment for me was similar to what you're describing. I was feeling the pain (scully's pain, i guess) at being uncertain of who the man was, so in a way i did feel repulsed by him, or rather, as soon as he walked into the narrator's diner i started trying to ward off the massive rush of feeling i had towards him. what if it wasn't mulder? i'd be crushed. scully would be crushed.
when it turned out to be mulder, all that relief and gladness and fear crashed through. while scully was leaning there against mulder, i suddenly kinda wanted to do the same in a cerebral sense to the story itself. i'd felt so alienated from this story the whole time. now i didn't feel alienated anymore.