These questions are
about the short story “Home/Mercy”, and absolutely contains massive hairy spoilers. For
the actual short story itself, please go here.
*CONTAINS SPOILERS!*
Okay, so that was
pretty horrible. How do you even get an
idea for a story like this?
It’s not nice. But it’s cheerier than the original
concept. The story behind this one is, I
was going through a bout of fairly horrible depression as I sometimes do, when
everything seems both empty and vile and my existence on the planet seems like
a complete waste of time, and the story just sort of popped into my head as an
example of the ultimate meaninglessness of truth and failure of positivity. Perhaps it was the unhelpful chemicals in my
brain, perhaps it was the unhelpful emotions I was feeling, but, either way, I
liked the idea (ruefully, bitterly, cruelly), and so I jotted the idea down in
my phone. I have it here somewhere… ah,
here: 23rd of May, 2014 – “Couple
in love, guy asks her to swear she will put him out of his misery if he ever
loses his physical and mental with-it-ness… they swear upon it. Seriously. No nursing homes, no slow death in a place of
strangers. Old age hits, he loses his
physical capabilities. He forgets who
she even is. And as she’s killing him,
he has no idea why, or who she is, or what he’s done to deserve it… Dies in
terror at the hands of a stranger.”
So, in the original concept, she totally kills him, and it’s pretty
unequivocally fucked for both of them – killing your partner who has no idea
why, and is just horrendously scared and shocked and upset and fighting you
off, while you’re desperately trying to murder the person you love more than
anyone in the world… Jesus fuck, what a fucking nightmare. So yeah, when it came to take some of these
ideas out of Notes on my phone and turn them into proper stories (I’ve got
tonnes of ideas like this in my phone, but most of them just stay there), I was
no longer languishing in the trough of existential Doom, and without the Horror
of Existence crushing my every atom, I just couldn’t do it to them. No-one deserves that level of horror! Not even fictional people. So yeah, I basically chickened out, and they
didn’t have to go through with it. And
so the story actually went from being a representation of absolute crushing
terror to some kind of expression of “love conquers all” or something. An odd turn around, but a nice one.
Yikes.
You said it!
So you’re kind of for mercy killings, but in the end kind
of against them?
I don’t think I’m anything in
general – I’m more of a “case by case basis” kind of person. In some cases, euthanasia is probably the
best thing, in some cases it’s probably not.
That’s totally for other people to decide, based on their specific sets
of circumstances. I’m usually pro
anything that lets a person decide what they want to do with their own
body. In the right circumstances, I’m
even pro-suicide, which is a rant I drag out whenever I want to be really
unpopular at dinner parties.
Seriously?
No, not serious at all.
I don’t go to any dinner parties.
This couple seem to
fall in total crazy capital-L love really quickly. How do you expect us to believe that?
Because that stuff is totally
real. That’s exactly how me and My Loved One felt after a couple of weeks max, complete
and utter head-over-heels soul-mate connection, absolute kindred spirit
we-have-to-be-together-forever kinda feelings, intense emotional states of comprehensive
certainty that well surpass any other feelings about anything else ever. I think we’re particularly lucky to have had
that, and it may be rare (what would I know – we met when I was nineteen, so I’m
pretty much inexperienced at the whole “budding romantic partnership” caper) but
it’s definitely a real thing. I don’t expect
you to believe it necessarily – but it is true.
Not only that, but that image of being in a vast blueish-black void with
only each other, floating or falling, with nothing else existing in the
universe but each other – that is also something we experienced. And it does feel like home.
That’s nice. For you.
Yes. Yes, it is.
Are those quotey bits
– the bits where you seem like you’re quoting newspaper articles about old
people killing their loved ones – are they legit?
I’m afraid so. While researching the ideas behind the story
(ie, googling stuff about old people killing each other – believe me when I say
my search history is a frightening place to be), I found heaps of newspaper
reports about exactly that, and it’s fucking heartbreaking. Tale after tale of old people killing the
person they love, or, even worse, attempting to and failing. Eep.
Not a pleasant read, but essential – this shit is real, totally real,
people are living this stuff, and we need some kind of “game over” option for
people. Assisted suicide, euthanasia,
whatever it ends up being, we really need some socially-acceptable way for
people to say “I’ve had enough”, and to just make it stop. If someone wants out, that’s their right. We shouldn’t be forcing old ladies to stab
their husbands to death, or old grandpas to shoot their dear old wives in the
face with a shotgun (or all the other non-gendered permutations of such a
situation). There’s got to be a better
option. Don’t you think?
I… well, yes, I suppose so.
Me too.
All your stories are either about arses or genitalia or faeces or people
dying. Do you ever plan on moving away
from this rather restrictive palette?
Not sure. It’s not like I sit there going “okay, so what
foul body process can I write about now?” or “okay, so time to write a short
story about old people dying”. I just
write what seems like an interesting idea, and, being a fairly ordinary humyn,
I’m interested in sex and death. Because
we all are, almost universally – and I don’t mean universally like “all humyns”,
but “all organisms”. Almost universally,
organisms are interested in the broad area of reproduction, and the broad area
of survival – you could almost say that the entire hystory of evolution is
creatures fucking and/or dying, that’s what evolution is. So it’s an incredibly
uninteresting thing to write about, really.
There are a lot of goths out there who think they’re incredibly edgy
being interested in sex and death, but honestly, it is actually the very most boring thing imaginable to be
interested in. So I guess, my
work on arses and/or faeces is where I really shine. Evolutionarily-speaking, it’s my anal prose that
really stands out. Niche baby, niche!
I’m just… I’m just going to go over there
for a while. Got stuff to do, um.
Oh. Okay, sure.
I’ll just wait here then, okay?
No comments:
Post a Comment