Monday, August 1, 2011

The Metamorphosis of Jane Doe

My (very) short story, The Metamorphosis of Jane Doe, is now up at Linger Fiction here. Check it out, it's got everything - words, disturbing horror, and fur. You know you can't resist that last one.

2 comments:

  1. Great use of language in an effective piece, but... I do worry about the cliché female victim, mooning over a man, which is understandable short-hand but perhaps too easy. I identified that as your theme for the piece, ie women shouldn't put all their faith in men.

    Was all that sexual symbolism deliberate, or have I been on the Internet too long? ("impotent", "on all fours", "straddling", "writhing" "struggle beneath him")

    This is a great line: "her flesh flowing like a silt-filled tide."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the comments and the reading, Anton. Your identification of the theme - and the symbolism supporting it - is certainly accurate, though I intended it to be broader. I was thinking not just in terms of romantic choice and change, but choice and change overall. The abusive relationships were a way to show someone with no control over their life not gaining but control but changing to a different abuser, but they weren't the entirety of the attempted metaphor (which would include, say, directionless changing of jobs or religions, to pick two other random examples).

    ReplyDelete