May 4, 2009
I've finished a new short story, Shelter From the Cold. It's really just a typical "man takes in a homeless girl" story that seems to be a pretty common plot in erotic stories, but this one has a twist.
If you notice some similarities between this and some of my other stories, especially A Perfect Match and New Daughter, I'm not surprised. I got the idea for this one when I was still working on A Perfect Match, and some of the ideas overflowed into Shelter From the Cold. Also, because the characters and even the situation resemble New Daughter so much, there were bound to be similarities.
Let me warn you that a lot of this one is a little darker and gloomier than my other stories, so if you prefer happier, upbeat tales you'll want to avoid this one. Think of what New Daughter might have been if it focused more on Kimmy's past than her present and future, and that's basically the tone of this story.
The title has two meanings. It refers both to the physical cold (it takes place during the first snowfall of the year) as well as the emotional cold of the main character's heart. The girl needs physical shelter, and the man needs emotional shelter, though he doesn't realize it at first.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'll tell you that the spoilers are only minor. The main one is that there is a surprise ending. I won't tell you what it is, but like any surprise ending, just knowing that it's there might ruin it.
I'm rather proud of the setup to the surprise ending. Early in the story I establish facts that make up the viewpoint character's background. They appear to be simply a device to help set up the situation, like Cammy's cancer in Island For Three or Scott and Anna playing together as children in Not a Baby Anymore. In both of these cases, I could have used any of hundreds or thousands of ideas to serve the same purpose. In this case, these details are meant to help us understand and sympathize with the main character. We don't realize until the end that they're actually clues to the revelation at the end of the story, clues that we're not even looking for.
John is a depressed misanthropist, for reasons that are obvious once you read those details, which come early in the story. His relationship with the young Cassie serves two purposes. First, it contrasts his noble and caring actions with his image of himself as hateful, antisocial, and "unlovable." Second, it gives him a cause for self-reflection, which ultimately leads to the conclusion that he isn't beyond saving. What he needs is just the opposite of what he's giving himself. He's withdrawn from society when really he just needs someone to love, someone like Cassie. Both characters are full of love without an outlet for it, until they come together.
Now let me talk for a moment about why I chose to end this story where I did.
I'm reminded of the words of the King of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. He says, "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
That's surprisingly good advice for a writer, considering how obvious it seems. A lot of storytellers could benefit from such advice.
I actually break the King of Hearts rule in Shelter From the Cold because I stop before the end. There is more to tell; the story is by no means resolved. At this point the reader doesn't even know whether it's a happy ending or not. Is this just one of those "oops" moments that you laugh about later, or is it going to be psychologically devastating for the people involved? I wanted the ending to be ambiguous; unlike most stories, this one doesn't tell the reader how they're supposed to feel in the end. You may be reading along thinking it's a decent romance and be happy that John and Cassie have found each other, then suddenly have that happiness run into a brick wall. Or you may think that despite what it means for their relationship, everything important is resolved and John's tortured past finally has closure. Or with a bit of imagination, perhaps Cassie doesn't exist at all, and she's just his nightmares spilling out into the waking world as he's finally driven insane by his self-imposed isolation. (Okay, that last one is kind of a stretch, I'll admit, though I actually hint about that in the story itself)
Interestingly enough, if you imagine this story without the sex scene, the ending is unambiguously happy. Perhaps there's a moral here, that casual sex is bad. Considering that the moral of my other stories seems to be just the opposite, I think it's safe to say that that really wasn't my intent.
I could have ended it later. I could have come right out and said what happened next. I could have even added a couple of paragraphs as a sort of epilogue, like in New Daughter. On the other hand, I really couldn't have ended it earlier without it being essentially a shorter version of A Perfect Match.
Often in my writings, the climax of the story coincides with a climax of a different kind. (An orgasm, for the subtlety-impaired) In Shelter From the Cold, I put the sex in the middle of the story instead of the end, because the true climax comes with the revelation in the final sentence. I chose to end this story right at the climax because I believe the reader's imagination could do a far better job of finishing this story than I can. If you want to imagine an ultra happy ending, that's fine. I sort of envision that kind of ending myself, but that's just my own personal feeling on the matter.
And no, I'm not going to write a sequel because that would ruin it.
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