Most writers I know are compulsive recyclers — of words. I always save the “out-takes” of my novels, scenes or bits of dialogue that I like (sometimes like a lot), but that I’ve cut for reasons of length or because they seem superfluous to the story at hand. There’s always a chance that I may reuse that scene, minor character, setting or monologue or dialogue exchange in some future novel or story. I remember using a number of bits and pieces I cut out of Fat White Vampire Blues in Bride of the Fat White Vampire, and major chunks of a long short story, “Relics” (which I’ll eventually get around to posting on this site), ended up as parts of the Miami Beach chapters in The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501.
My most recent bit of recycling sent me back to my earliest publishing effort, a fanzine called The Dragon Reader that a group of buddies and I put out in August, 1980 when we were between our sophomore and junior years in high school. I’m presently writing a short story to submit to one of Claude Lalumiere’s upcoming anthologies, Bibliotheca Fantastica (“stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present, future, or uchronic”). The first story I wrote with the intention of submitting to Biblioteca Fantastica, “The Velveteen Ebook,” ended up turning into what might be marketed as that odd bird, a children’s chapter book aimed at adult readers. I still wanted to submit a story to Claude, however, and I happened to remember a very old story of mine, one of my first, that I’d written when I was fourteen. I didn’t want to submit that entire story (called “Cliffside”) to Claude, but I wanted to use a part of it as a fragment of a story within a new story, about a middle-aged writer on the verge of giving up, who is confronted with his teenaged son’s girlfriend, an aspiring fantasy writer who is every bit as good as he was at her age… maybe far better.
Anyway, while cribbing from “Cliffside” in that 32 year-old fanzine of mine, I came across a much shorter piece that I actually like a whole lot better than “Cliffside” (although back in 1980, soon after I’d written the pair of stories, I thought “Cliffside” was a masterpiece and “Sheepish Labyrinth,” the story I reprint below, was small beer in comparison). “Sheepish Labyrinth” was the result of a writing exercise that my pals Larry Lipkin and Preston Plous and I engaged in during one of what we called our Write-a-thons, all-night writing and science fiction role-playing sessions we’d put on at one of our houses sometime between our eighth and tenth grade years. This particular writing exercise, the noun-adjective exercise, to the best of my knowledge, was invented by Ursula K. Le Guin; in any case, I borrowed the technique from her book of writing exercise stories, The Altered I: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction Writing Workshop.
It’s very simple (and surprisingly effective for producing new ideas). You and your friends write up lists of 30-40 nouns and 30-40 adjectives, the more colorful, the better. Then cut each word out, fold them in half, and put each in one of two hats, a nouns hat and an adjectives hat. Each writer picks out three pairs of nouns and adjectives. You then have to write a story based around a title utilizing one of your word pairs.
My noun was “labyrinth.” My adjective was “sheepish.” This is the story I wrote that night (amazingly, without so much as a sip of coffee, because I didn’t drink coffee back then… ah, the boundless energy of youth!).
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Sheepish Labyrinth
* * * *
There it walks. A solid wind blowing by from places unimaginable, carrying sounds and other ripples in its current — click, clack, click, clack, its heels striking me, the sound rebounding. Another little man. Another little man and another little flickering shadow, the dark outline creeping warily across my floor. They’re an odd pair, the shadow and the man; the shadow creeping bolder now, only to leap to its protective master when I threaten to blot it out; the man walking hurriedly across me, unaware of its brother’s plight.
Where from this time? I do not know. It moves, it seems to live, in a fashion; surely then it is from Somewhere. I am me; that which is Outside is not. Of me the man is not, being neither floor, nor wall, nor even air; thus the man must be from Somewhere Outside.
Does it matter? It is in me, and it is warm. Its feet tickle my floor, and my walls are dampened by its breath. Dampness is strange, yet not unpleasant strange… little drops, many little men walking my walls… The man turns one of my corners, and then another, and another. It is walking in a circle. Little man, will you never find my end? I growl a bit, and its leg wobble. I am hungry. I growl again, and it begins to move faster — run. Its second layer — clothes? — flails out behind it, and sets of creases form and disappear and change shape. Its face — no, her face, her face, yes — too changes, from light to glowing darkish, from tan to white to crimson. Little blotches appear — how wonderful, how different from Outside, always black.
I growl and heave, and she falls. A deep red flows from the middle of her face and slowly follows the creases, and fills the pores. Little lines appear in the whites of her eyes. I want to watch, but I am hungry. An empty place in me rumbles, wanting to be filled — I feel the emptiness; yet I am not vacant. Perhaps I should pull myself inwards, and the man and I could fill the space, and stop the crying. But to have to push, and pull, and push…
The little man has gotten up. She leaves red on my floor, and I am happy. I am happy and I am hungry, but I will make the empty place wait. I will rest from heaving, and I will watch the man. My empty place screams, and I tremble at the feel of it. I tremble, I cringe, yet with the fear there is another — a… a joy. It is the man. She runs, not down my passages, but towards my walls. Again the strangeness (a cause and effect that should not be) — my fear was the instrument of the joy, for in my very trembling I had forced an opening, a hole in myself, and it is towards this hole that the man runs. She runs, yet it is unlike the time before; she runs with joy, joy and something beyond joy, a joy beyond joy and beyond my very knowing, a happiness, a flight — a love, a love for… for Life itself. She runs, and her body, her feet, are strangely warm, and the warmth in her feet melts them into my floor. I swell with added essence, and she obliges me, wave after wave of joyful emotion flooding her senses, bloating her, swirling about our feet/floor, growing, spreading even to the empty place, until, at last, together we fill me.
Filled, fullness… to be unalone, to be… whole? Whole. Hole-whole. Hole in me opens her joy, binding us, making me… whole. A circle, a closed line, that directs my passages and, seemingly, the flow of time’s events. Flow, drift; something’s floating by, drifting in… sound? No, sound touches, tingles… but it is sound, sound and seeing; sound without feel… seeing without light… thought. Thought: a blue whale is swimming in a gold-rimmed, pink bathtub. This cannot be. But why? Perhaps because whales are big, and no bathtub, even if gold-rimmed and pink, could hold one. Yet I saw it; it was so in my thought… thought… sense without feel, without light, without reality… Perhaps thoughts are unreal?
And what do I know of whales? Until an instant ago, whales did not exist; yet I think them, I know them — blue-black immensities, drifting contentedly through dark, chilled oceans; oceans like mountains of moisture, pleasant, strange dampness… little drops, little drops walking my walls, born of the breath of the man… breathing out drops… thinking out… whales. Breathing out; thinking out — a giving. Sharing. The whales are hers, and now they are mine, too. She is sharing with me. What was the difference between clear droplets and a redness left on my floor… but she knows… and I know, too… She is sharing with me! Light and darkness, the lonely ends of sight, they’re not alone, even as I’m not alone, the vastness between them is filled with color, color… A she and a he, so separate, so alone, join together, to birth another out of abandoned loneliness… Clothes, clothes to keep the cold out… Warmth, joy, love… love… hole. The hole, mine to share, which gave her joy… the man… she is still running… running away… but we… we are joined, I thought it, I saw it in my thought… thought… thoughts are… unreal… why…
Stay; stay, little man, share the warmth, and together…
Now she is Outside, and I am empty once more. The empty place gathers up its voice to scream again. The deserted redness sinks into my floor, and with it a last glimmer of happiness. The scream unleashes itself, and I await another little man.
