Surreal Moment of the Morning
Kameron Hurley of Brutal Women, guestblogging
The new neighbors are moving into the apartment downstairs that me and my buddy Jenn just moved out of. For the last couple of days an increasing number of books, boxes, and other odds and ends have been piling up on the enclosed back porch that I have to walk through to get to the back door.
This morning at quarter to seven I was stumbling downstairs, and when I rounded the stairwell and looked down onto their porch, I jolted to a halt.
A woman's torso stared back at me from amid a stir of empty boxes.
It took my brain a half second to realize I was staring at a mannequin that had been taken apart and divided into two halves for easy moving. It now regarded me from the porch. Its legs stuck up in the air next to it.
I couldn't help but be reminded of a certain story.
I'm wondering what, exactly, my new neighbors are getting up to down there....
- K Hurley
posted by JeffV @ 10:46 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Maybe it's just a decoration? When I was part of the experimental writing scene in Cleveland, we used to do readings at some coffeehouses with mannequin parts scattered across the room. We also had projectors displaying Shockumentries from the 70's while we read, and soundtracks of weird noises as background music.
Strangely enough my wife made me get rid of my dismembered mannequin collection when we had our daughter. Guess she thought it would scare her.
Now I'm the one who's scared because we've got dolls all over the place. I have no idea why, but dolls give me the spooks. Espicially china dolls, looking all pure and white and eval.
Erm, I guess I want on a rant there.
I'm actually trying to figure out if the woman who lives there does some sort of fashion design. The guy does some sort of technical writing, so I'm more or less sure it's not his.
But then, people are quirky.
Of course, it could be theirs.
Maybe it makes for interesting bedroom decor.
Hmm. Well, I think JeffV does technical writing as well (if I'm not mistaken) and so just being a technical writer doesn't mean your not a little strange--
I write talking animal stories for third graders. That makes me normal. Or not.
JeffV
Funny story about Dradin. When I was interviewed for my current job Dradin had just been out a year in stand-alone book form. The interviewer saw I was a dark fantasy fiction writer and jokingly asked, "You're not one of those writers whose books have black-and-white covers and end with somebody's severed head on a shelf." Even though that was a pretty accurate description of part of Dradin, and the book's cover, I chose to say, "No."
JV
That's priceless.
Paulo,
Speaking about dolls, my daughter used to have all kinds of doll parts around the house. She liked to interchange the arms, legs and heads. Very surreal. Later, when she was older, Jeff and I bought her a mannequin bust and she loved it!
Ann V.
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