IN VERMIS VERITAS by Poppy Z. Brite

Short Story Review: IN VERMIS VERITAS by Poppy Z. Brite

This story is fantastic as it puts so many images into your mind with the words/phrases used. The author starts with a quote from Francis Bacon. This introduces you to the topic and hooks you straight away. It will either put you off from the start, or invite you to read more.

I love this story, but as with most of this authors stuff, I am a huge fan. I work in Forensic Science, in a mortuary, so I can clearly appreciate the descriptions used.

In Vermis Veritas is, essentially, a short look into the world of a maggot in a slaughterhouse. It was written as an introduction to a graphic novel, Registry of Death by Matthew Coyle and Peter Lamb, in which all the characters are worms or larvae. Have you ever read/written a story where the characters are worms or larvae? I imagine it would be an incredibly difficult task. Poppy Z. Brite pulls it off beautifully.

Phrases like, ‘connoisseur of mortality’, ‘spongy purple of drowned meat, translucent rose of fresh viscera, the seething indigo of rot’, and, ‘The glistening whorls are dissolving, coming unglued, breaking down into their chemical components,’ rouse incredible images, and capture these moments perfectly. 

The story starts with the introduction into the world of a maggot devouring flesh, describes how the maggot saves its energy for the ‘sweetest meat’. It talks about reducing a carcass to the bone, and revealing qualities of the deceased. The maggot lives thousands of lives, memorises thousands of tomes, constructs and destroys dynasties. It has ‘been a foetus in a womb and a guru in a cave’. It tells us the way people die; for sport, love, or, for fun, and finally, it concludes with the harsh reality (punchline) that it is better to be a maggot in a slaughterhouse than a man. It is a complete life to death story.

This story seems perfect for sensory description but I cannot find any instances where it is used, which is a shame, although the story does not need them to work.

At not even 500 words, this story would be hard to discard unread. It’s so easy to read. You don’t have to know who Francis Bacon is because the quote is used as an introduction to the topic – a maggot talking about the many lives it has lived through the many bodies it has devoured.

I imagine an older audience for this piece as it talks about decomposing flesh and liquefying organs, or perhaps readers into horror. I recommend it to anyone who wants a visually provocative piece. 

AMERICA by Poppy Z. Brite

Short Story Review: AMERICA by Poppy Z. Brite

‘America’ is a short snippet into the world of musicians, Ghost and Steve, as they road-trip through the desert on the way to a gig. Travelling through this featureless landscape at night, Ghost unconsciously starts singing a song Steve hates (the conflict). As a distraction Steve decides to tell the story of the ‘Man-Headed Cat’.

Tension gradually increases towards the punchline and as readers we feel this in the reactions of Ghost. Like him, we are hearing the story for the first time. Steve’s long pause at the end leaves Ghost to ask essentially, ‘and then what?’ which leads to the comic relief/punchline.

The characters are completely believable. Ghost (who could come across as, ‘a true thing of ectoplasm’) is strengthened through his innocent reactions to Steve’s story. You can see that the pair, as opposite as they are, are completely comfortable with one another. They have been friends for thirteen years, and their habitual relationship shows.

The author describes the setting perfectly without slowing the narrative. At the start we are caught up in the long journey. ‘Glittering black ribbon into nowhere’ perfectly sums up the scene of driving through a dark desert with little to look at. We are taken into the car with the characters, primarily through Steve’s eyes as he is most unfamiliar with the stretching landscape. We get to know the two men and get a brief look into their life.

The plot is an urban legend being told as two companions drive down an endless desert at night, the perfect setting to imagine such a tale into existence. The plot of the story within the story is resolved at the end, but Steve and Ghost’s journey has not ended, leaving more opportunities for other stories.

This story was essentially written for fans of the book ‘Lost Souls’ so we could be kept informed of what Steve and Ghost were up to. Its structure as a complete short story means it can be read by anyone, young adult and up (because of the cursing).

On Questioning Style, and whether I mimic an Idol.

Glitter Girl

 25.03.2014

Inside were shadows and darkness; the wait . . . as maddening as the whispers in the wind. To pass time he examined the hands responsible for altering their game. They were large with long fingers, scarred, nails torn and dirty, smeared with blood and filth. 

Your father’s hands. 

He clenched them, as if the truth could be denied. He was different, he had to be.

The front door yawned open, spilling light towards Daniel that felt like creeping darkness. Fear paralysed him as his father stumbled in. He had no way of knowing how much he’d drunk already, but it became obvious. 'Where’s your mother?' he barked.

A malevolent voice spoke through his. 'Out whoring, like you told her,' it said.

His father grumbled, but not angrily because he had, on numerous occasions, told her to do exactly that. 'And you, what the fuck . . . What’s that fuckin’ stink?' His father stumbled forward, intent on investigating the source, but he hovered, hand clutching the edge of the table next to where his son sat.

'I . . . think a rat died in the bathroom,' Daniel stammered, standing to intercept him. 'It’s all right, I got rid of it.'

His father looked him up and down before he sneered and stumbled into the lounge room. He collapsed in front of the TV to catch up on the local news. 

And that left Daniel to prepare for the remainder of their game. 

He retreated to his mother’s room. She was staring up at him as he passed. 'It is true mother,' he said, ‘We should do something about that smell. It’s not healthy.' He turned to the dresser, rifling through the assortment of treasures before him. He found her perfume, Obsession, and sprayed himself, feeling the trigger of lust stir his groin. He closed his eyes for a moment, forcing away the other. 

NO!!!

The eyes that glared at him from the mirror were dark; long black eyelashes painted thick with mascara and smeared in kohl, as if the all light in the room had been absorbed into their depths. Hollow insides all prettied up. Utterly insane. Daniel scowled at the pallid creature reflected before him. Behind him, strewn over the bed and littering the floor, were the remnants of his mother’s closet. They had been in here all morning searching the vast array of clothing for something special. The clothes he wore fell lifelessly around his chest and hips making him appear waifish and childlike, flat chested and not the slightest bit appealing. 

Revolting! It glowered. It wanted the flowing cornflower blue dress with the cute spaghetti straps, but he couldn’t find it.

Daniel turned away from the petite girly boy in the mirror and stared at the clothes in sheer bewilderment. He seized an armful of the pastel flowery pile and pushed them to the floor until the bed was entirely cleared of mess.

She watched silently as he pulled back the comforter, uncovering the rest of her swelling, mottled body. 'Of course.' Daniel smiled, relieved, and it smiled with him. He proceeded to manoeuvre one stiff arm through the strap of the dress. It wouldn’t help him. 

Once she’d been undressed he pulled free of his own clothes, once again becoming transfixed by the naked reflection before him. He didn’t recognize the pale, ragged body, or the flaccid appendage between his legs, they didn’t belong to him. But the hate was all his; every angry mark, every scar, and every wound he’d carved into it.

Pulling the dress over his head, he slid his hands over the blue silk fabric. A wave of warmth, like when his mother’s blood had spilled out of her body and over his, like an orgasm, rose up from the pit of his stomach. The thing in him rejoiced. The dress was perfect, even with the dark staining and jagged holes through the chest, a reminder that beauty was never flawless. He unbound his dark hair and it cascaded around his shoulders, the hard-on marring an otherwise perfect silhouette.

An Analysis on an Excerpt:

03.03.2014

‘A Georgia Story’ from Wormwood written by Poppy Z. Brite (1994).

Poppy Z. Brite writes to entertain. She takes readers away from ‘safe’ storytelling to the grungy underbelly of social outcasts, weirdos and the ‘freaks’ of society, and her stories, as with these lives, often don’t have happy endings. ‘A Georgia Story’ revolves around one of four main characters as he returns home after a friend’s death drove him from it a few years prior.

Some people can’t ‘be normal’ and these are the characters Brite writes about. We see Sammy’s life through someone who has ‘made it’. I like that Brite gives a voice to these characters. They are far more interesting and she certainly doesn't make them out to be anything they aren't. There is no happy ending.  She writes, ‘Sometime Gene laughed and was human.’ Her characters don’t feel as though they are part of the human race.

This piece is purely emotive. Poppy Z. Brite wants you to be in the character’s place – right there with him, not only seeing what he sees but being in his mind as well, as he reflects on his past. She does it perfectly with her descriptions and character narration.

She takes us from the immense descriptions of what the character is seeing and pulls us, as the character, back to reality with Ben’s character – rather than have him explore the freaks in his own narration in his head. Her dialogue bit with Ben talking to both the main character and to Sammy, she switches effortlessly between. It is easy to follow because of the punctuation and sentence structures. She uses exclamation points and short sentences to talk to the geek – as if he can’t understand anything else, like a child, or an animal.

The main character tells us, ‘I knew that later, before this fresh blood dried, the geek's fingers would find it and use it to create more tracings, new legends to decorate his cage.’ Because he knows this of their past – it’s what Sammy did. But he doesn't say ‘Sammy’. It’s ‘the geek’, because this is who Sammy is now. He compares the make-up Sammy wore, to the gore he's decorated himself with now. You get the feeling of who Sammy was and feeling awful for what he is.

‘Take me with you’, Sammy whispers but there is no hope. He is not saved. There is no ‘feel good’ moment – except maybe for the voice of the story. He has come back to his home town as a tourist. He can leave any time.

When he puts his hand into the cage and says, ‘Sammy reached up to take it, I drew back’, is the point when the main character forgets his friend. It was no longer Sammy and he can move on. That is what he has come back for, an ending of longing for his youth as addressed in the final sentence.

Poppy Z. Brite writes in a mixture of long and short sentences. Her longer sentences are giving descriptions or longer chunks of information and usually followed by short statements to ram in your face, so to speak. This works to transport you to where the narrator is. The carny, Ben, speaks the way he would talk – not in perfect English; ‘Let go that stick, you!’

The introduction for this short story collection is written by Dan Simmons. He describes when he first met Poppy Z. Brite, by chance, while doing a reading and he says, ‘I may have been the only member of the audience not wearing black leather and chains.’ I think to say Brite's target audience is only alternative/goth types is a gross underestimate. Brite writes about characters and subjects that these groups might find more interesting than the general population, but the target audience broadens to young adult – adult, perhaps with a darker attraction, which is why she is so often wrongly categorised as horror.

I chose to analyse this piece because it's one of my favourite short stories by this author, but I could have chosen any of her earlier work.  This one in particular, I love her subject matter, I love the descriptions of the four characters and I relate to the dark, macabre subject matter and how she effortlessly expresses it. As I said, she gives voice to the social outcasts of this world, a voice not heard enough, I voice I relate to, and a voice I think I mimic quite a lot.