Little Box of Horror

Little Box of Horror

Melissa Yuan-Innes

Published by Olo Books

In association with Windtree Press

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Melissa Yuan-Innes

Cover art © 2004 Konstantin Schneider

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

SKIN SONG

THE DORMITORY OF THE FRIABLE LITTLE GIRLS

MRS. MARIGOLD'S HOUSE

INTRODUCTION

Confession #1.

Book cover to the contrary, this collection has nothing to do with boxing, although I will tell you that if a human body is caught in a fire, the flames suck the water out of the flesh. The forearms recoil toward the body in a pugilistic position, so called because the charcoal remains look as if the body is ready to go for another ten rounds. Or like the person drew the arms up as a shield against an attacker.

Just another little tidbit I learned in my forensic pathology course in my final year of medical school.

Confession #2.

I don't find my writing horrifying, no matter how bloody or evil it turns. I'm just trying to tell the story as best I can.

After I dissected a cadaver in my first year of medical school, I wrote about it in the first story, Skin Song. Writers of the Future awarded it second place in its second quarter of 1999.

When CBC Radio's Katherine Gombay interviewed me, she told me, off the record, that my story was scary. I just looked at her, uncomprehending. Maybe that was partly because I was post-call on internal medicine, but probably I've just suppressed my natural reflex to recoil from death and disease.

I was a teensy bit angry during my residency, when I was overworked, underpaid, and matched to a specialty I didn't want. So that manifested in my darker stories, The Dormitory of the Friable Little Girls and in Mrs. Marigold's House.

I had more trouble placing these tales. No one wanted to touch The Dormitory of the Friable Little Girls. The vampire magazine Dreams of Decadence rejected as nice but too violent and no one else bothered to do anything but form it. Fortunately, the insanely imaginative Claude Lalumière, who writes pretty off the chain stories himself, purchased Mrs. Marigold's House for Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic (Véhicule Press) and then The Dormitory of the Friable Little Girls for his Lost Pages website.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, one of my writing mentors, told me I had a direct way of seeing the world that can be disconcerting. Since I'm like a kid who thinks everyone should perceive things the way I see them, I still don't know why that can make people choke.

How about you?

Dissecting the human body helped me learn anatomy like nothing else could. Not computer models, not Netter's atlas, not plastic imitations. I felt deeply grateful to the donors. And yet the experience was so deeply disturbing, I carried it around all year, wanting to write about it.

In the spring, I heard a CBC Radio documentary about synesthesia, which means that one sense, like smell, can trigger another sense, like hearing. So someone might smell chocolate and hear a bell ring. I knew this idea would be central to my story.

Then On Spec Magazine ran a contest with music as the theme. Finally, all three elements came together in my mind. I couldn't make the deadline for the contest, but I knew what I wanted to create.

To steal away time to write during our first year of med school, my classmate Kim Moore and I would occasionally do ten minute timed writing sessions a la Natalie Goldberg. That's where the writing of Skin Song began, with the sound of the sound of her refrigerator humming in the background.

SKIN SONG

What does a dead, preserved body look like? Smell like? Sound like?

It’s lunchtime, two days before medical school orientation begins, when I force myself past the frosted glass door and combination lock into the anatomy dissection lab. It’s a huge room and smells strange, almost sweet. I stare at the well-spaced islands of white body bags until I notice Aerosmith playing, tinny at a low volume.

I follow the music to an adjoining room where I find the prosector, John. He has blond hair and a moustache and looks surprisingly normal for someone who cuts up cadavers for a living. He says, Kyla. You’re at table 39. Do you need to buy anything?

I buy the lab coat for $10 and shake my head at the dissection kit and gloves.

Okay. You’re all set. He pauses.