NOTE: It feels fitting to begin this intimate blogging experiment with a short story, as that, after all, is how many of my novels begin, finding their footing in short form years before they ever grew chest hair and chapters.
I love short stories; I hate short stories.
Short stories put me in mind of that quote by J.M. Barrie, talking about Tinkerbell:
“Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”
Short stories are not tiny novels; long short stories are not novellas. Good shorts are playthings and horror shows, experiments and thought exercises. As a reader, I want novels to satisfy me. As a reader, I want short stories to stick.
As a novel-writer, I use short stories as a way to play with things I might not have time or space for in my long projects. I use them to try on different hats. Explore different methods. Test-drive new characters. Shine flashlights into strange worlds. Sometimes those explorations are dead ends, and the story is the signpost where the pavement stops. Sometimes, though, my exploration sticks and later, it grows into Shiver, or The Scorpio Races, or All the Crooked Saints.
Every month, I’ll share one of these explorations with you guys. It might have a few words. It might have a lot of words. However many it has, it will be a short story. A swift glance down a strange corridor. It is quite possible that some of these corridors will eventually lead to entire Stiefvater houses, and you’ll have seen them first.
The next thing you’ll see from me will be a craft-post mid-month (I know what you’re getting this month, but if you have burning topics you'd like to see me talk about, leave ‘em in the comments). And then near the end of the month will be a nonfiction bit or bob of some variety. Media recommendations. Nattering. Reader thoughts. Human thoughts.
(note: some folks have asked what the ‘collectors’ subscriber option is, and it is simply this content, plus a signed, doodled copy of whatever my new hardcover release is that year, in this case, Mister Impossible.)
Then we will begin all over again at the top of the next month. Let me know as this experiment goes on if there are things you’d like to see more or less of in your inbox. And thank you for welcoming me into your inbox in a time when we’re all doing our best to curate our internet experiences as much as possible.
Without further ado, this month’s short story is a piece called:
“The X”
The X informed Jenn at 5:47 a.m. that she intended to ‘end her’ at midnight. The photo was going up, she warned. The bad one.
The missive was sent via text. It was difficult to tell its purpose. Ransom note? It made no demands. Punishment? It named no insult. Threat? Jenn couldn’t be worried, because she didn’t know what ‘the bad one’ was, and the X sent no further clues.
The X had a name, of course, but she had been the X for so long that habit required Jenn to keep using it. She was Xceptional, Xquisitite, Xtroverted. Xfriend. It had been ages since they’d spoken.
Jenn wondered what had prompted this sudden communication.
She wondered if she should answer.
She wondered what the photo was.
‘The bad one’.
It sounded Xciting.
But Jenn lived a dull life, she thought. A routine life. An unphotogenic life. She mouthed ‘the bad one, the bad one’ as she took the bypass to work as she always did and backed into the spot by the patchy boxwood as she always did. Could the photograph be job-related? She had gone to work for Dr. Heaney, a podiatrist, straight out of college, and had not missed a day since her start. Her tasks as office manager were pleasant, mundane. Dr. Heaney was similarly pleasant, mundane. Photo-worthy drama might still have been possible if he had been dashing and lecherous or if his assistants had made a secret baby together or secretly pocketed co-pays. But Dr. Heaney was a reasonable man of the golfing age and the only other staff were two sisters who sat in the empty rooms between patients drinking kombucha and talking about the middle episodes of televisions shows you’ve seen. It was a pleasant, mundane practice that did a pleasant, mundane amount of business. There was little podiatry-related billing drama. Little podiatry-related physical drama. There was little podiatry-related drama.
No, she thought. There could be no scandalous photo related to her work.
‘The bad one.’ Jenn looked the same as she had in college, she thought, as her reflection in the dark glass door greeted her for work. Straight brown hair, muddy brown eyes, an unremarkable mouth that didn’t look good in lipstick. She weighed as much as a bag of horse food, according to her long-dead father, a statement she was unsure of as she had never had horses and neither had he. According to Jenn’s investigations through social media, many of her peers had undergone profound physical changes over the last five years. They’d gotten smaller. Larger. Different noses. Different butts. More boob. Less boob. Red hair, blue hair, green hair, no hair. Jenn just looked like Jenn. No shocking before-or-after reveals.
No, she thought, there could be no photo related to her appearance.
Before lunch, the podiatrist saw an older woman with bunions. The bunions, the podiatrist explained patiently, were probably on account of her wearing extremely high heels for most of her life. The woman was unapologetic. She said the high heels had been the only part of her wild stage that she hadn’t grown out of; the bunions were deferred payment for a life well-lived in leopard print. She gave Jenn a conspiratorial look, but Jenn hadn’t had a wild stage, not even in college. She’d interned at the podiatry practice from her sophomore year on to pay for her books and microwave burrito bowls, and she’d studied in the library, and she’d gotten a beginner high-interest credit card that she paid off every month in order to begin building her score in case she ever found something worth financing. The bunion patient was probably thinking of someone like the X, who had spent her college years in clown suits or dancing on tables or shaving heads (hers and others). The X had As, Fs, and XXX photos, nothing in between. Not Jenn. She was a B student. B straight. B kind. B reliable. B Jenn.
No, she thought, ‘the bad one’ had nothing to do with her coming of age.
Jenn had met the X in freshmen year and they’d become fast friends. Well. The X had been fast. Jenn was the usual speed. The normal speed. The dull speed. She was the drogue chute behind the aircraft. The X said that she needed Jenn. She said this a lot. She did everything a lot. Driven to Xcess, she was. Jenn found her Xciting to watch but was never lured to join. It was as of the X were an Xtreme reality show with episodes made just for Jenn; every week was different, the rising action, the unXpected climaX, the falling tears. Jenn suspected the X probably would have kissed her if she’d been interested, but Jenn had an unremarkable mouth that didn’t look good in lipstick and didn’t feel like kissing other people, so the theory remained untested and their mouths uncomplicated.
No, Jenn thought, there could be no photo related to their friendship.
Through her workday, Jenn thought and thought about what the photo might be. She thought about it as she made and canceled appointments, chased down balances uncovered by primary insurances, ate lunch, made progress on transferring their billing software to the new system, and closed everything down for the afternoon. She thought about it as she drove back her usual way, through the neighborhoods, to avoid the rush hour. At home, she pulled into the garage and hit the button to close the door behind her. She looked again at the teXt.
The photo is going up. The bad one.
She still couldn’t decide if she should answer. She had no idea what could have upset the X. As she climbed out of her crossover, she pushed the button on the keys to open the back hatch. She moved the bloody hammer and then got the body out of the back and dragged it inside the house. It weighed more than a bag of horse food, but Jenn had surprisingly strong muscles. A gym had recently opened near her neighborhood, and she’d gone in for a tour, and on it, they’d told her that you had to do special exercises to get big rather than just strong. That seemed true, because despite her continuous use of them, Jenn’s arm muscles just looked like ordinary muscles. The trainer used phrases that sounded as if they could have been symptoms if said by someone else: massive gains. Peak burning. Real beast. In the background, a variety of people in a variety of straining garments did things with their body in time to a song the sisters at work sang a lot. Jenn was not completely disinterested in being a massive gaining burning beast, but ultimately, she hadn’t signed up for classes because they would have conflicted with her work schedule and she didn’t care for conflict.
So there could be no photo related to the gym.
Inside the house, she dragged the body to the room with the access to the crawlspace where she’d hidden the others. The X probably wouldn’t have enjoyed this because she had never cared for physical activities like hiking or cycling or swimming; she would have had quite a few smart remarks to make about the extreme beasts at the gym. The X had always told Jenn that Jenn needed to get more hobbies, but she’d never asked Jenn if she already had a hobby. Jenn wondered if the X had somehow taken a photo of the first four bodies, but they had been put away in the crawlspace before Jenn befriended the X.
No, she thought, there could be no photo related to that.
Jenn finally decided to simply answer the teXt with a question mark. She didn’t like to say words she couldn’t take back.
The X typed for a long time. Three dots wiggled on the screen. Then they disappeared, and a long while after that, the X replied only that Jenn would just have to wait and see.
This was the thing about the X. The reason Jenn had to break up with her. In the end, the X was also Xhausting. Jenn had never enjoyed suspense like she did.
Jenn sighed, picked up the hammer, and got her car keys.
Reading this, “yes, I’ve totally had Xfriends! My lips look weird with lipstick!! This character is so relatable!!! . . . 😳
Insane. Totally insane. But It sticks ; ) And on craft -- place as a character, sometime, pretty please.