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I feel the need - excerpt...
The scissors are at her pussy, closing around the lip he's pulled and rubbed so that's it's swollen and the girl is trying to look down and pleading. I hear the snip, I actually hear the snip of it and then she's screaming, screaming so loudly I can't bear it. Tommy flips the piece of it onto her stomach and the blood is gushing and he pulls on the other one and snip and the girl's body is twitching, convulsing in the overwhelming pain. Tommy is smiling and he stares at her and moves to her face and while she's screaming he grabs her tongue and holds it and places the metal of the scissors around it and her eyes are bulging and she's trying not to move and Tommy says
"Look into her eyes. Right now she's wondering how this could happen, more than that, how someone, how someone could possibly be so cruel, how God could let this happen, how one human being could be so impossibly cruel to another one."
hamilton speaks...
I Feel the Need is one of those things my writer friends and I like to call "Big Bang" stories - as in a bunch of stuff coming together for no apparent reason or for a reason so large you can't even begin to fathom it - to somehow create something wonderful.
My wife and I travel a lot and on one of our lengthy jaunts across the country we ended up going to hotel after hotel. While doing the obligatory jump on the bed and turning on the tube to unwind, I found myself watching parts of one Tom Cruise movie after the other. At every stop, no matter where we were or what time it was, whenever we clicked on the magic box there he was, be it an old film or some news report. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Cruise fan, but it seemed no matter what entertainment show it was or even local news, he was there. We laughed over his constant appearance and all I could think was this guy is everywhere while shaking my head.
This thought stuck with me and I started writing what I thought would be a magazine piece about the things that keep us connected, the comfortable familiarity of television, certain faces and things. This expanded to certain people (Cruise, Elvis, etc.) that seem to find a way into the collective unconscious in all of us and after seeing the crowds, the fervor at his public appearances, an idea about celebrity personas and obsession. This little project went by the wayside as others came and went and a year later I found myself at home finishing a Richard Laymon book. With a dozen or so horror sales under my belt I started thinking you know, I've never really written anything that's just plain out and out gory or extreme (not that Laymon is, I've always found his violence kind of charming in it's own innocent way). So I pulled up to the old laptop and wrote the most violent and sickest thing I could think of, which is the first killing in this story. Satisfied and unsure whether I would ever do anything with it, I went to save it and found another thing named "Tommy" already lurking in the memory banks. I pulled it up and low and behold, I'd completely forgotten that while trying to find a peg on what I wanted to say, I'd written a fictional introduction to my unfinished project on Cruise. The writing styles were similar and for some reason unknown to me, I'd named the protagonist in my short killing spree 'Tommy'.
The two seemed to fit and that night I tampered with my old lead-in a bit and expanded the story (it's been trimmed down a lot for this anthology) and had myself a tidy little tale. I had no idea what to do with this completed story either. I had worked with Mike on Chimeraworld #2 (with a completely different type of story having gone there) and sent it off to him and luckily he bit. It's a far cry from what I started with (and yes, my wife loves the style but hates the content) but I like what it became (and yes, it makes me laugh in how sick it is as I hope it does those who get it as well). It encompasses some parts of what I'd originally started writing a year ago and something completely new that still touches on bits of what I had planned.
Why did the different bits of stuff come together this way? Who knows? I still think it had something to do with my original, more academic piece. Synchronicity, the familiar, trace amounts, everything sticks and there is always something out there waiting to get back in when you least expect it.
hamilton bio...
Glen Alan Hamilton is a full time writer and artist whose short story work
has appeared in Elysian Fiction, Gothic.net, Neverworlds, Trip the Light
Horrific, Fantasque and The Dark Krypt among others. Currently finishing
work on his second novel, Glen resides in Montana with his wife, Cynthia.
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back to Chimeraworld #3 editorial page
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Chimericana Books.
Hellbound Books, Spring 2006
Plus six other short novels (approx 40,000 words each) that I'm looking to publish in a special 6-pack.
