DELIVERANCE

We’ve forgotten about the old gods, the gods of the wind and oceans; the forests and rivers. But if we’ve forgotten about them, they haven’t forgotten about us. They just choose to ignore us; but they are watchful in their slumber. Sometimes, perhaps, the old gods dream of us.



The problem with the old gods, is that when they decide to take their drowsy action, they are not at all discerning. They don’t really care who gets in the way; and why should they? As far as they are concerned, we’re none of us innocent. They don’t even care who is guilty. They don’t answer questions, those old gods; the judgement is final and if the little people get in the way, it’s too bad.


An atrocity is occurring and as usual, mankind is at the bottom of it. Mankind is damming the beautiful Cahulawassee River. Mankind, in the form of the power company, is going to turn the beautiful river, with its rapids, woodlands and panoramic views, into a dull, flat lake.


It will be a rape; a desecration. It is sacrilegious.


“Deliverance”, really is one of the great suspense films. And without being too fanciful, I do have that chilling sensation that something else is at work here. Whether that something else, is a manifestation of those old, primitive gods taking vengeance, or simply a group of city guys totally out of their depth, in the face of a world where the normal rules of civilisation don’t apply, I don’t know. But you do get the feeling that you need to keep looking over your shoulder. Maybe it’s the camera angles, maybe it’s the use of light and shade. But the hair stands up on the back of your neck; a primal reaction to the something that is creeping up behind you.



It’s been a while since I first saw it, but I watched John Boorman’s 1972 film, of James Dickey’s novel, “Deliverance”, last week. I hadn’t forgotten how good it is, but I had sort of forgotten about some memorable performances and stunning direction. I needed to remind myself of the chilling impact that the film had on me when I first saw it.


We join “Deliverance” at the point where four friends plan on a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River. The four are in high spirits; there is a sadness that the beauty that they see before them, will soon disappear, but apart from Lewis, a weekend “survivalist”, played by Burt Reynolds, they bow to the inevitable.



In his review of “Deliverance”, Steve Rhodes informs;
“The movie opens disarmingly as Drew, played by Ronnie Cox, plays a good-spirited, impromptu duet with a young, backwoods, mountain boy playing his banjo. This hauntingly tranquil banjo music will reappear periodically during the film, as will scenes of the placid sections of the river. And there will be peaceful shots of roaring campfires and of the river at twilight, all to provide sharp contrast to the horror of their journey.


Different rules apply, out in the wilds of Georgia; they are far away from the tame influence of modern civilisation. Ironically that's exactly the quality that attracts the four urban businessmen of James Dickey's novel, the chance to pit themselves against Nature. Of course what they want is not actual risk but its semblance, a taster sharp enough to remind them that they're still alive.”


Anything could happen -- and does.


Steve Rhodes continues;

“It's a palpable sensation, a horror so intense you want to curl into a foetal ball. The cast really does a superb job of communicating their terror, the certainty that they're mixed up in something beyond their comprehension. Burt Reynolds, as Lewis and Jon Voight, as Ed, take the ultimate honours in this, modulating themselves through the full gamut of emotion, moving from excitement to happiness to panic to grim desperation. Yet at the same time “Deliverance” never loses sight of their roots, the cultural decency that becomes something of a liability in this sort of situation. Ned Beatty, as Bobby Trippe and Ronnie Cox very nearly attain the same heights, with the former, central to one of the most harrowing scenes in any '70s film. Several times Boorman leaves you open-mouthed in shock, stunned at the enormity of what you're witnessing, yet the actors are good enough to make the material hit home without numbing. This is a world turned upside-down and they're living through it.”


In his review, Damian Cannon tells us;


“Dickey's narrative is carefully structured for maximum impact, an effect enhanced in Deliverance by Tom Priestley's well-judged editing. The pace picks up with the film's memorable banjo duel and never lets up, not once. The characters are supremely ordinary and the cast, in a fine acting style, makes them believably naive. Thrust into the real-life Tallulah Gorge, the peril that they're in, barely seems fictional, thanks to the awesome camerawork of Vilmos Zsigmond. In his hands the river springs to life, toying with these unwise canoeists, pondering whether it should be merciful or merciless. Around these four there is scenery of intense hue and shade, a backdrop mighty enough to awe a brave man into weeping; yet they don't see it, so consumed are they by the desire to survive. It seems as though the hellish ordeal will never end, and in some ways it never does.


From start to finish, “Deliverance” is a film of rare power, focused towards a single end. It throbs with tension and fear, a reaction to the forces arrayed against our weekend paddlers. As the drama unfolds, Dickey skilfully guides you into contact with the characters, understanding their motivations. The four, Lewis and Ed leading, are well balanced, providing everything that the film requires. Merely watching them paddle, gaining confidence from their rapid-shooting success, is a delight. When the hillbilly conflict arrives, from the merest bad timing, it propels the film onto another level; yet the battle is mostly psychological, there's barely any contact between the two sides. This is where John Boorman's direction astonishes, in his conjuring of menace from thin air. He doesn't need to show us the danger, only the suggestion”.


1972 is a long time ago, but “Deliverance” is still an important, iconic film. Its indictment is profound and powerful. The accusation makes us tremble, because we know that we are all guilty.


“In 2008, “Deliverance” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.” WIKI


This blog post has been compiled using sources from the web.

TELL ME A STORY

Where do stories come from? What inspires a story? Whether it is Romance or Erotica, Horror or Adventure; any genre that you can think of, they all have a beginning; the germ of an idea. Anything can be a source of inspiration for the creative writer. Our night time dreams; our waking dreams. Newspaper articles, childhood, other writer’s stories. Jealousy, fear, loathing, desire, love, hate, death, grief, greed and of course sex: every emotion that you can think of can spark a story.


My favourite writer of plays for television, Denis Potter talked about his own torment about the creative writer's calling, a word with religious significance to Denis. He weaves together his only partially assimilated realization that God and sex, guilt and anger, longings and frustration are inescapable aspects of his creativity.


I wonder about a writer like Edgar Allan Poe. I wonder what he thought about his feverish writings in the cold light of day; those hallucinatory worlds; those bloody visions.


Psychoanalytical theory is interesting. Freud talked about “the return of the repressed”. Our dirty thoughts, our bad thoughts will find a way out, whether in our dreams, or for writers, through our stories. Jung talked about “the Shadow”. We must acknowledge our dark desires; again, perhaps as writers, we face stuff we’d rather not face in reality, in our stories.


If it is absolutely impossible to give our fantasies a voice then the old Mythologies are there to help us; to teach us that there is nothing that we can dream up that the Myths have not already confronted.

The Mythologist, Joseph Campbell (“follow your bliss”) felt that Americans, both the general public and professionals who worked and studied overseas, were uninformed with regard to the world's myths and cultures. The Myths have a wisdom that is relevant to us, even today, in modern society.



My writer friend, Jan Vander Laenen and I have talked about the roots of our stories on numerous occasions. Jan and I both write Erotica; the sort of Erotica that some would describe as Pornograhic. Neither of us can reach a conclusion that satisfies us both. Here are Jan’s thoughts.



Sabrina

Unusual associations – this is something I read in a book about creativity – are frequently made in the nebulous zone between falling asleep and waking up. During an afternoon nap, I suddenly wake up with a start and with a complete story in my mind. It seems a repulsive story to me. Nevertheless, I hope to develop it into a novella one day – not with the title “The Foundling”, which gives away the point, but, rather, “Sabrina”.


Sabrina “works” as a shemale in the pine forests around Torre del Lago. On a porn website, her profile has the name “assbirth” on account of her being able to dilate her anus in an incredible way using all sorts of objects and her greatest fantasy being the ability to bear a child at any time. Her movies are almost surreal: after some investigation in the area of the average head for a baby, she should indeed be able to do this.


One day, she finds a newborn baby boy in the forest, a foundling. She takes him home with her straightaway and rubs Lubrifist all over the baby. And then she manages to have him reborn out of her arse - the renaissance! The baby suffocates, of course.


She hides the child’s body under a bush in the woods. The corpse is found and the police soon arrest the real mother, who is prosecuted and brought before the court. They don’t know what to do about the anal mucus and traces of Lubrifist at the time.


Sabrina sells her movie as a “nasty”. She has no sense of guilt whatsoever. And perhaps she will never get caught. Her deed becomes an urban legend.

Before writing it out in full, I will have to ask for counsel from the ghost of Pasolini during the night. Maybe have a chat with a shemale. Preferably not a viado from Brazil but, rather, a real Italian – I feel I understand the way they think. Fate will help me run into the right person to make this tale into a long story.


Corpses

It is 1968 and I am 8 years old, sitting in the third class of the boys’ school in Tongerlo. Master Verboven is giving a history lesson, relating all the gory details of the plague epidemic in 1348, how people suddenly get a sore throat and lumps and languish under the most excruciating pain for a day and a half, how the streets are strewn with rotting corpses, and how nobody knows what to do to escape the horrors of the Black Death.


I feel scared. My throat contracts. I start sweating. And run out of the classroom in panic, from Abbey Street, past the parish church, towards Trannoy Square and to my GP, Doctor Caers. He consoles me, gives me a tablet to calm my anxiety attack and tells me I have indigestion.


“Now go home,” says the doctor in a fatherly manner - we live a little further on. “But it’s only half past three, they expect me to be at school. Can I stay here till four o’clock? If I get home earlier, my parents will be really angry and maybe even hit me.” “Ok”, says the doctor. From that day, his wife will only talk bad about my parents.


When my elder brother lays in a coma for two weeks in 1978 and eventually dies from injuries suffered in a road accident, this Mrs. Caers tells everyone it is a concealed suicide and that my parents do everything to make life a misery for their children. My dead brother. I am seventeen. And I do not go and pay my respects to his body, nor that of my grandfather when he wastes away with grief six months later. In fact, I don’t see my first dead person until I am thirty-seven years old.


Strangely enough, I develop an unhealthy predilection for horror from childhood. “Godfather Death” is my favourite fairy tale. As an adolescent, I discover Edgar Allan Poe. And Dracula. And Frankenstein. And Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


My first book, “A Spark of Genius”, appears in 1988. Stories about suicide, crushed phalanxes, abused children, corpses and skulls. In an Italian and Brussels atmosphere – in Brussels, everyone drinks the famous “half & half”, a mixture of sparkling wine and white wine in a champagne flute. Mrs. Caers rings the doorbell. She has come to congratulate me on my first book and presents me with a gift of a bottle of sparkling wine and white wine. For a “half & half”.


So I don’t see my first corpse until the age of thirty-seven. My 89 year-old grandmother. I go to see her at the funeral home. I speak timidly to her: “Grandma, I’m here.” I make the sign of a cross on her forehead with my left index finger. And my legs feel they will give way. “Zet aa ressekes”, “Sit down,” says the funeral director in Lebbeeks dialect as she pushes a chair towards me.


I come out confused. And go for a cup of coffee in the café on the other side of the street. I have to go to the toilet. So, at the urinal I take my member out of my pants with my left hand. I haven’t washed my hands. “There are now dead skin cells from my dear old grandma stuck to my penis”, I think.


That evening, my Albanian lover, Fittim, owner of the Fritland take-away restaurant opposite the Brussels Stock Exchange, calls by unexpectedly. Our romp is a relief for me. And when he takes my member in his mouth, I get outrageously worked up. “Now he has dead skin cells from my dear old grandma in his mouth”, I think.


2012. In the meantime, I have become very well-read in the genre of horror. And I am even a member of the World Horror Association. It is dusk and I am playing with the idea of visiting St. John’s Hospital as well as the mortuary. You know, as a horror writer I have to brace myself and dare to stand face to face with everything I write about: corpses, diseases and murders.


I push the idea away and walk towards the Coal Market. Fittim has since died and his sons have taken over the business. The take-away is also a meeting place for many homeless people, as well as drunks and beggars.


On the footpath in front of Fritland, I witness a scary scene. A drunk has bitten off his tongue during an epileptic fit. It gets stuck in his throat. He is choking to death. Bystanders look on. A drunken mate phones for an ambulance: “Je crois que c’est grave,” – I think it’s serious -, he stammers.


That evening, not only do I see my second corpse, I also see someone in the throes of death. The drunk has turned as blue as a ‘smurf’, his eyes are bulging and blood is coming from his mouth. He is lying on his back and continues to convulse and shake uncontrollably for another ten seconds, upon which his soul departs from his body. I carry on walking and think about how fragile life is.



Crime of passion

I would almost want to start this alienating tale with the beginning of Poe’s “The Black Cat”: “For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.”

My story is set a few years back. I literally immerse myself in everything that
has to do with horror: books, movies and theoretical works. The English translation of my horror story entitled “The Sleeping Beauty” receives nothing less than a Bram Stoker Award in America. I am also invited to attend a congress on the aforementioned Edgar Allan Poe, and a New York horror publishing house is issuing my recent story entitled “Lise”, which is a cross between “The Night Porter” and “Flatliners”, in a compilation. So yes, of course I am proud of myself!


My love life is also doing ok. A year earlier, I run into an ex-lover, Mimoun from Algeria, and we start to develop a relationship. We are in love with each other, which means, of course, that the devil known as jealousy also rears its ugly head. Using his own key, Mimoun drops into my apartment at the most unexpected time, fearing to catch me in bed with someone else.


I don’t ask him any questions. Very early in our affair, I think I can smell a different perfume on his stomach. Right at the beginning of our affair, I find a single louse in my pubic hair. A French fortune-teller tells me our love is pure and that a happy future lays in store for us.


She also tells me that Mimoun knows another man somewhere in the city: he wants to finish with this fellow as quickly as possible but the person concerned does not shrink from employing dirty practices in order to keep the Algerian for himself – such as threatening to disclose Mimoun’s homosexuality to the members of his family.


A few nights before Halloween. I have seen Mimoun the evening before. I am at home alone and reach the conclusion that I, as a horror writer, have never seen a corpse apart from that of my grandmother or have first-hand experience of people dying, let alone attending a bloody operation such as a leg being amputated. I am a bit tipsy. I walk resolutely to St. John’s hospital and go a step further. I want them to let me into the mortuary.


The person I encounter there is Evert. He is the night nurse in the emergency department. He earns a bit more by also working as a waiter in the gay bar, “Le Duquesnoy”, where he served Mimoun and myself our drinks at the time - a Duvel beer for Mimoun and a small lager for me.


Evert looks at me aghast and takes me in his arms. “Mimoun’s family has to be informed, quickly; I will let you pay your respects before they get here.” He then leads me into the morgue. And shows me a lifeless Mimoun, with fatal stab wounds to his chest. Evert takes me by the arm and leads me outside. A group of North Africans come running up, relatives of my forbidden lover.


A crime of passion, my lord! The nasty guy somewhere in the city does not want to let Mimoun go alive. Is the rest a coincidence? Synchronicity? Mimoun’s soul giving me a sign? Why, in God’s name, do I run to the mortuary at St. John’s Hospital the moment Mimoun’s dead body arrives there?


***


My thoughts at the beginning of this post are partially my own, but are also influenced by sources from the Web.

Thanks to Mister Mojo for reminding me of Joseph Campbell. You can follow Mister Mojo at Twitter; @FunkedUpRadio He is very cool!

MILK by ROSE W Erotic Lactation Fetish

If you are one of the thousands who read Rose W’s short story “Post Mortem,” you will understand that Rose’s writing is something very special. Rose has an amazing feel for pathos; making something deadly serious into something uncomfortably amusing. Rose also has an uncanny intuition for hitting the reader with tragedy when you least expect it. Rose has no fear of the taboo. In her tale, “Milk,” Rose illustrates an alluring fetish – Erotic lactation. Here is an extract from Rose’s new tale “Milk” available now at Amazon UK
and Amazon US.

There were six of us in the maternity ward, but only four babies. I was in a bed next to the door, with a woman called Tracy on my left and a woman called Faith opposite. Tracy’s son Ashley was with Michael, upstairs in the Special Care Baby Unit. She’d had a caesarian, and wasn’t supposed to climb the stairs, so we went up in the lift together, wearing dressing gowns over our pyjamas. She had to hold onto the rail, looking weak and pale.

“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. It hurts, but I’m okay. You?”
I tried to smile. “I hope so.”

Our babies were in aquariums, with tubes up their noses, like small mauve creatures at the zoo. We were allowed to reach in though a hole in the side, ‘to hold hands’, which meant that we could extend a finger for the baby to hold. Ashley obligingly wrapped his tiny hand around Tracy’s fingers, but Michael just lay there, no matter how many hints I dropped by nudging his palm with a fingertip.

We had to continue to express milk, too. Tracy squirted white jets into the funny contraption, but I was about as good at it as Michael was at holding hands, dribbling only a meagre trickle into the bottle, but at least it looked like a bit more like proper milk, and not the yellow stuff. We laughed about it together. I said I’d never make a dairy cow, and she asked me what I thought of her udders. However, pretending that the little bottles were cocktails, and clinking them together, changed my life.

“Cheers,” said Tracy.
“Cheers.” I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t see whether Tracy drank any from her bottle, but the sip I took from mine was like my first square of chocolate all over again. “Bloody hell.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” With my insides quivering, I looked at the puddle that was left in the bottom of the bottle.
“Come off it. That looks like nothing the way Kylie Minogue looks like Dolly Parton.”

I glanced at Michael in his aquarium, and downed the rest of the milk. It was sweet and slippery, and it didn’t taste any more like cow’s milk than bitter chocolate tasted like the horrible carob stuff from the health food shop.

Tracy was aghast, seemingly talking with her mouth wide open. “What did you just do?”
I licked my upper lip. “Nothing.”
Tracy laughed. “You just drank all the milk you expressed.”
I looked into the top of the bottle, wondering if I could get my tongue inside to lick out what was left. “There wasn’t very much, anyway.”

She laughed again, and held out her little bottle. “Do you want a swig of mine?” She might have been joking, but I didn’t care. She still looked amused as I took the bottle from her. Her milk tasted different, but just as delicious, the way Dagoba doesn’t taste the same as Green and Black’s, and I got the same quivery feeling inside.
“Jesus, Jan.”
If the nurse hadn’t turned up to see how we were getting on, I’d have drunk the rest. “How are we doing, ladies?”

Recovering my composure, I held up the two bottles and busked it. “We were just comparing notes. Tracy’s not doing too badly, but I’ve hardly managed to wet the inside of mine.”

Tracy sniggered as I handed her bottle back to her. There was milk still beading her nipples, like tiny white pearls, but she didn’t get to express any more, because the nurse took the bottles from us. When we were on our own again, Tracy asked, “What was that about?”
“What was what about?”
“You and the milk.”
“It’s to die for.”

Tracy squeezed a few drops from her nipple onto her finger, and licked it. “Don’t see it myself.” She repeated the action on the other nipple and held her finger out for me. “Here. You have it.”
I sucked the milk from Tracy’s fingertip. There wasn’t much of it, but it was still worth having. I tried squeezing my own nipples, but they didn’t even ooze.

When we went back down to the ward, Faith was trying to feed her baby, but the milk squirted everywhere whenever the baby took its mouth from the nipple. Tracy caught my eye and shook her head, as if she’d read my mind.

The other four had regular visits from their partners, but Tracy seemed to be as much on her own as I was. I didn’t like to ask, so I was quite pleased when she brought the subject up. “Aren’t you married?” she asked. “You look respectable.”

“I’m a maths teacher, so I suppose that makes me respectable, and I’m theoretically married, though my husband ran off with another woman six months ago.”

“The bastard.” That was starting to look like a consensus. “Is it his?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“And he still hasn’t come to visit?”
“He’s in Australia, working. Presumably on his way back by now. I wasn’t due for another fortnight. He had intended to be here. What about you?”

Tracy shrugged. “I don’t know where he is, and he didn’t know I was pregnant. He’d probably be a useless dad, anyway.”

The next time we went upstairs to express milk, I didn’t even manage a single drop. I tried for about ten minutes, but all that happened was that my nipples swelled. Tracy managed almost an entire bottleful, and she obviously saw me staring at it. “Do you really like it?”

I nodded, speechless, afraid to ask.
I didn’t have to. “Here. Just don’t drink it all. Leave some for Ashley.”

Hoping it wasn’t a tease, I reached out for the bottle, hardly believing she was handing it to me. Leaving some for Ashley was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, but I managed to limit myself to less than half. “Bloody hell, Tracy. That is so delicious. Thank you. I’d never have believed it would taste like that.”
Tracy laughed as she took the bottle back from me. “Lucky thing you’ve got a friend like me then, since you don’t seem to be able to deliver the goods yourself.” She applied the pump to her nipple, and more milk squirted into the bottle.

“You don’t mind?”
She laughed again. “Course not. I think it’s funny.”


The links for "Milk" by Rose W at Amazon UK and Amazon US


"Post Mortem" a debut story from Rose is at Amazon UK and Amazon US