Francesca smiled back at her from the mirror. Sheila leaned forward to press her mouth against the glass and it seemed as if Francesca dipped towards her to accept the kiss. When Sheila drew away, she saw only her own reflection looking back at her, the mark of her lips and also the surprised expression of the woman beside her. I was her, once, Sheila thought.
Perhaps the other woman might have lingered, waited to pick up the tissue, kiss the glass, but she hurriedly stuffed her hair-brush into a shoulder bag and almost ran from the room. Sheila smiled to herself. She saw, in the mirror, a woman of medium height, with soft, fair hair, whose square face was not pretty, but strong and striking. She looked as if she’d escaped from a ‘Thirties film with her raincoat collar up around her ears.
Sheila now had all of Francesca’s knowledge. It no longer mattered whether she had lived in the past or very recently, or whether she had lived at all.
The woman in the mirror. She is a ghost of life, like clothes hanging in a wardrobe, devoid of feeling or essence. The body, the feelings, the depth, stand before her in the world of the living. Now they are one. She is on her way somewhere, urgently. She might not come back.
Sheila had business to finish. She put her lipstick back into her pocket and walked out of the station to an assignation. Her feet would lead her there, in their high, spiky shoes. The future in the lip-stick print had been hers, but now she had kissed another future over it, and the outcome would be different. Her hands were strong and steady deep in her raincoat pockets.
Story History
One of four volumes collecting my shorter works, Mythophidia’s theme is the serpentine and the exotic. The snakes in these pages are seducers and deceivers, whose pretty jewelled coats might attract the eye, yet ultimately poison the heart.
Kiss Booties Night Night
The inspiration for this piece came from the anecdotes of friends of mine, who were in a band and who had played at a fetish night club in London in the early 90s, when such things – in the mainstream at least – were pretty new. The title actually comes from something that was said to one of the women by a man who’d crawled up to her, interested in her pointy spiky boots! Well, once I’d heard the stories, my imagination kicked into gear and I had my own story to tell.
An Old Passion
I wrote this story fairly soon after getting to know Andy Collins, from whom I found out all about psychic questing. I didn’t really know much about this phenomenon, but of course it pricked the interest of my muse who immediately smelled the opportunity for a story. The questers in this piece are not based on the characters of Andy or any of his group, I hasten to add. These are completely made up questers! The story appeared in a limited edition convention booklet in Australia.
Just His Type
This tale appeared in ‘The Mammoth Book of Vampires Stories by Women’. As with the previous story, the idea of psychic questing lies behind this little tale. After various conversations, in which I’d discussed with friends some of the dangers of this type of work, I wanted to explore the darker side of it. People with a fragile state of mind can be at risk, and also the fearless obsessive. It’s best to have your feet firmly on the ground. As before, the characters are not based exactly on any real people – even though there are undeniable similarities between Andy Collins and Noah, the writer in this story, simply because Noah is an author who runs an earth mysteries group. That’s where the similarities end though. Andy has not, to my knowledge, ever got himself into a sticky situation like this! Or if he has, he’s not telling…
Remedy of the Bane
This piece first appeared in Realms of Fantasy in 1996, and it was based on an allegedly true story. A long time ago, someone told me about a royal princess, who taunted the guards of her parents’ palace. The guards weren’t allowed even to raise an eyebrow while they were on sentry duty, which created great sport for the princess. If she could induce one of them to react to her, she’d report them and they’d be punished. Whether this tale is true or not is really irrelevant. The fact is it provided a great idea for a short story.
I wanted the princess to be an ambivalent character. While there is no doubt she has a streak of callous cruelty, she is also a victim of her circumstances. She is driven to behave in the way she does because of frustration and bitterness. The story is also about ethics, and whether an immoral act is justified if its end is for the greater good. The protagonist of the story wrestles with this dilemma. He has the means to destroy the princess and save his colleagues from unfair punishment, but in so doing he will become no better than she is. He is also perversely attracted to the princess’ capricious and wanton behaviour. The ending of this story has a bittersweet overtone. When I wrote it, it made me realise that no story ever really has an end.
Sweet Bruising Skin
Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have compiled a series of successful anthologies, based around traditional, or perhaps not so traditional, fairy tales. ‘Sweet Bruising Skin’ was written for the collection, ‘Black Thorn, White Rose’, the second in the series, which was published by AvoNova Morrow in 1994. The story was based on the fairy tale ‘The Princess and the Pea’. I’d always thought there was something sinister about that story. Versions of it I’d come across were always very short, but I sensed a lurking weirdness behind them. What kind of skin must a princess have for it to be so easily marked? Surely such a sensitivity would make a normal existence impossible? Anyway, I had my own ideas about the prince’s mother’s involvement in the proceedings. And here they are.
Curse of the Snake
This is the earliest completed story I still possess. Although I wrote compulsively from childhood, my writing was meandering and lacked narrative structure. I never actually finished anything, or thought about the most important of story techniques: that everything has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I wrote this particular piece in 1976, just before the Punk explosion, and it was the first story I ever completed properly. Back then, I never showed my work to anyone, and certainly didn’t consider trying to sell it. A typescript of ‘Curse of the Snake’ lay hidden in an old folder in my filing cabinet for over twenty years, unread by anyone except me, until it made its first appearance in ‘The Oracle Lips’ collection, published by Stark House. It makes me feel a little odd to think that this can be seen as the original piece that inspired and gave birth to everything I’ve written since.
Nocturne: The Twilight Community
I can’t remember exactly when I wrote this story, but it was somewhere between 1980 and 1981. It was inspired by the club scene of late Punk and the New Romantics, which at times seemed to me to be very shallow. People might dress up with all the makeup and cool clothes, but there was often little beneath the masks. Also, the bitchy gossip that went on was frequently quite cruel and destructive.
Night’s Damozel
The idea for this story was born during a late night discussion on poisonous plants, and some of the imagery in it came from Eloise Coquio, although it was me who wrote the story. This piece is set in the fictional world of the Magravandias Chronicles, but whereas ‘Sea Dragon Heir’ and its sequels have a Medieval feel to them, this story is set in a modern-day world.
The Heart of Fairen De’ath
The following story properly belongs in ‘The Thorn Boy and Other Dreams of Dark Desire’ collection, since it’s part of the cycle of stories included in that book. But when Stark House republished ‘Thorn Boy’ in a new, expanded format, ‘The Heart of Fairen De’ath’ had already been accepted for another collection of my work – a collection that never happened and which Immanion Press has now brought to fruition. As with several of my other stories, when I decided to try and sell it, I changed the male protagonist to a female in order to make it more acceptable to editors. It eventually appeared in ‘Weird Tales’ in America. Here, as with the other stories, is a re-edited version of the original, restoring Filerion’s gender to its original state.
Poisoning the Sea
r /> This story was inspired by the Waterhouse painting of the same name, which is sometimes known as ‘Circe Invidiosa.’ I have a print of this painting in my living room and have always loved its dark mood and smouldering Circe.
Such a Nice Girl
This story is a sequel to ‘Candle Magic’, which appeared in ‘The Oracle Lips’ collection. It remained unsold for a long time, until I reworked it for a magazine. The version that appears here is the uncut one, since I had to trim it for the publication that bought it.
The Oracle Lips
Ideas for short stories strike me at odd times. The seed of ‘The Oracle Lips’ occurred in 1997, in the back of a friend’s car, in an underground car park in Wolverhampton, a town in the Midlands. A group of us were there for a day’s shopping, and before we left the car, I touched up my lipstick. I blotted my lips on a tissue and then the idea came. I said to my friend, ‘Lip prints are as personal as marks on a palm. I wonder if you could tell someone’s fortune from them.’ I thought about this again throughout the day, and by the end of it, I had the beginning of a story. It was fortuitous, because I’d recently been contacted by Laurence Schimel to submit a piece for his ‘Fortune Tellers’ anthology. Clearly, the subject of prognostication was burning away at the back of my mind. I wanted to do something different with the theme, rather than resort to a tale about crystal balls or tarot cards.
Storm Constantine
August 2008
Storm Constantine, Mythophidia
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