Powell's Murderers

So when I first went to Powell’s city of books I didn’t know what to expect. It was strange to be sitting there surrounded by books I would love to spend the rest of my life reading but confronted with the dilemma of only having three hours to spend in the store. Through this predicament I quickly found myself in the horror section; second floor, gold room, back corner next to the elevator. The concrete floor in that particular corner had, what I assumed to be red paint poured and stripped off, leaving splotches of color behind. It had the look of dried blood, which no doubt was intentional but I found ironic all the same. I was curled up by the weirdest section of horror stories; salivating at the corners at all the titles and cover art that lay before my eyes.

Books about real monsters and human depravities, sins with consequences and imagery so vivid it could make your insides squirm. Not the over used generic of two teen supernatural lovers thrown together through mystery, and intrigue. Intrigue that is, if you haven’t read every other teen lit book that has been published in that last 5 or so years. These weren’t about boy meets girl and girl is a vampire. These were about demons and monsters so horrible we don’t want to publicize them, fictionalize them, make them into TV monsters you watch after the lights turn off.

These stories are written in a language I want to drink into my veins.

I had been immersed in a book about serial killers; who they are, why they do what they do, what they’ve done, all their general psychotic tendencies. The information that my eyes dug out from beneath the covers and dust covered pages satisfied the long and morbid fascination craving. When I finally looked up from the book and stared hard out the window, considering the gruesome facts I had just learned and partially ignoring how weird it was that I was so intrigued by real horror, I succumbed to an overwhelming urge to write.

And I don’t mean jot down a short note on my phone, already filled with one-liners and story ideas, I mean down to the basics, pen and paper writing. To feel led vibrate through my fingers against each imperfection in the paper, to move my wrist across, staining my skin with gray powder. To see my words become real.

My friend was leaning against the bookshelf in front of me, reading a scifi book on black alien feminist warriors and evolution in space, waiting for my signal to move to a new section but I was confronted with a brand new problem.

I had no pen. And no paper.

 

This is a rare event in my case.

 

I almost always have some form of notebook, paper and pen/pencil in my bag. But in the recent months of writers block, I hadn’t brought my journal, nor did I carry a pen.

So I’m sitting there in the city of books, surrounded by fantasy, theatre, scifi, fiction, poetry and horror genres, all begging me to crack open their pages and enjoy. Sitting in what looked like dried blood next to the gruesomeness of horror collections, with a book about the world’s worst known psychopaths open in my lap, with an aching arm, wrist, palm, fingers, and a growing hunger to write.

My body and mind refused to write this all down on my phone. It didn’t, doesn’t, seem right, not natural, not safe.

So with minor trepidation because of the fear that if I move from this spot all my creativity will leak back into the wall behind me, splashing the floor with more red, I got up and walked to the information desk where through some light polite conversation I borrowed a pen and three strips of paper.

And I returned to my dried blood splotch, opened the murder book where I left it and I wrote. And I wrote.

And I kept writing.