Yeah, a little bit longer than what I’m used to publishing. But that’s ok. We live for new things. Not every piece will be this long, and I do have a soft limit of around 5,000 words for SFF. After that, I would split it in two.
But, here we go, diving headfirst into my attempt to play with folklore and myth. Starting strong with vampires.
I think that these stories - monsters, hostile unearthly creatures and such - work better when you tackle them indirectly. You don’t focus on the creature itself, you come from the angle of normal people dealing with them. You can use that to relate their alien-ness back to the audience in a way that they can understand.
The problem here is that our protagonists are coming into the situation somewhat ignorant. They don’t - and, as it’s revealed, can’t - know what’s going on until it’s literally on top of them. That ignorance is how Hitch was allowed to be taken.
Instead of reinforcing ignorance with defense, our characters assume they can handle it as they normally would. It’s something of a paradox; you don’t know something, so you become more complacent. And then the bad things happen.
Beyond the immediate idea of monsters and the such, we are presented with some form of organisation that deals with them in some way. What that is, who they are, why they do it is (currently) unknown. More shall be revealed as we explore this world of monsters, field agents and analysts, including Hitch’s fate, Viola’s role in the company and we shall meet some other field agents. Perhaps with worse code names than The Woman. Which, by itself, gives you some insight into the organisation of the field agents themselves.
I have another story with these characters written but - from memory - it’s a bit rougher than this and will need some work before I’m ready to show it. I think it’s also slightly longer. Another thing I will figure out later.
I originally wrote this between the 13th and 15th of February 2023. The total length of this piece is 4,382 words.