Women in Horror Month 2016 – Featured Author: Melanie McCurdie @MelanieMcCurdie #WiHM7

Melanie McCurdie

I am a Canadian based writer who resides in Calgary, Alberta and blessed with two challenging boys. A Warrior Mom of Sam, aged 13 and DaveyB, aged 9, wife, administrator with The Twisted Path Group, writer with Visionary Press Collaborative, supporter of Independant Film and Publications, and a horror junkie with a taste for words, and bloodsauce.

I am proud to be in The Burbs, a radio serial by Liane Moonraven as the friendly, coffee loving Maria Sanchez. Listen on Spreaker Thursdays at 10 pm EST.

I can also be seen in the slasher film The Orphan Killer 2, Bound x Blood written and directed by Matt Farnsworth, available to rent on Vimeo VOD.

You can find Melanie and her work in the following places:

Author Page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Melanie-McCurdie/e/B016C68GYC
Website: http://melaniemccurdie.wix.com/slayfulstories
Personal Blog: https://malevolantmajesty.wordpress.com/
The Twisted Path Website: http://thetwistedpathgroup.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/proseinbloodsauce/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/melaniemccurdie
Google+: http://google.com/+MelanieMcCurdieslayfulstories
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/melanie-mccurdie-270299ba

Guest Post by Melanie
Rotgut

I could hate you. Sorry, but there’s no more room in the Temple of Self to deny it further. It’d be fairly easy as far as that goes but it’s exhausting and I don’t care enough to try. The writing is on the wall and I know that it’s done in indelible ink. That shit don’t wash off. What I really wish is that you’d stop lying to me about it.  Not that it matters to anyone save me.  I’ve kept my feelings to myself for the most part, as exposing oneself to cruelty, willingly, is not something I relish. Been there, done that, made a scrapbook. So few understand if even comprehend the prison I reside in, nor does the effort it takes not to engage; to just sit quietly and observe when situations beg for a fucking spotlight and ring announcer to draw attention to the ridiculousness.

But to what end? A continuous finger pointed at the wrongness of each and every situation, consistently even, when the neon signs and glaring arrows beg to differ is not worth mentioning. Detraction as distraction, an old and trusty ruse, employed to perfection and yet blind ears and deaf eyes see nothing even when it is a mirror image. The proof is in the pudding. I’m not stupid, no matter how many try to convince me that I am. I see more than anyone realises and that alone is a huge mistake for anyone to overlook. It all falls into the pattern.

Patterns are what make up a portion of the human animal’s behavioural manifest and the sad and sorry truth is that we all subscribe to it. Each person, by nature, follows the maps set out by genetics and creates the pathways that are inevitable to be followed. There is no choice, nothing outside of conscious action can change these courses. The unfortunate end result is that in our modern world, no one wishes to make conscious efforts anymore. Not when it’s easier to be a sheep and ignore reality.  It’s simpler to subscribe to belief that everyone else is as blind as themselves. I quote Jonathan Swift ‘‘There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know’.

Here lies the crux, the heart of the matter. I could hate you. I really could, but how can you feel that way towards a person who is deluding themselves? It’s not anyone’s fault that, when the truth is glaring one down like a pissed off brahma bill, that the preferred course of action is to shove one’s head in the sand. But out of sight does not mean out of mind. I have no further interest in being less than candid. Stupidity is no excuse, not when it is obvious that the blindness is an active choice. Hardscrabble lessons have taught me much. One doesn’t forget lessons like those and the sharpened awareness to the big picture is  something I know humans tend to miss, and it is a source of frustration.

The world doesn’t stop and am powerless to change it. I’m not sure I want to do more than I have and so I choose to sit back in the trees on the old navajo rug I’d taken with me and opened the bottle of scotch in the cooling breeze to observe. That cheap ass rotgut you drink was a perfect accelerant; it helped that you spilled it everywhere after backhanding me into the Welsh dresser and staggering upstairs when you came home from wherever you’d been.

I can see you now, rubbing at your eyes and staring out of the bedroom window; your hand resting on the pane.  I know you are looking for me and I can’t help but laugh at the unconscious gesture you always make when you are incensed, hands in your hair.   Then you disappear for a moment, before and return with a scowl to hammer both fists hard enough to make the glass rattle.  The frantic attempts to open it are to no avail because I nailed it shut and the door too, while you were passed out.

I can hear the tinkle of breaking glass from behind the house. You’re coughing now, banging the flimsy office chair into the double panes windows you insisted on and I can’t contain the chuckle when it bounces back and smacks you in the face.  Hurts, doesn’t it? A louder shatter leave me concerned for a moment when I realise the bedroom window was smashed and you can see me sitting here, observing.

But the fire is a sinuous creature and it wraps it’s beautiful tendrils around your body, hungrily licking your skin like a long denied lover. I watch your flesh char and burn, your screams are music and I close my eyes to listen until the sirens overpower them.

Featured Books:

The Death Maiden Journeys (Slayful Stories Book 2)

She begins as Lilith, a human who has her own way of bringing torture and desire to every life she touches. Killing at will and with no regret, She slowly evolves into Death Maiden and devolves into the human condition as she grows with greater skill, crueler.

As She comes to mature, so does Her understanding of the world around her, and so does the knowledge that all life is fleeting, even when you are the one dispatching it. I invite you to enter Her world.

Enjoy your journey and remember, Death Maiden does not spare.

Available on Amazon

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Slayful Stories: Volume 1

In these pages, death lays in wait. The killers you will find here are a wily bunch as beautiful as they are lethal. Beginning with the epic poem Swing, a story of a woman scorned, each journey takes you deeper into the mind of a murderer, a victim, or a survivor of lost love, untold horrors, and unnatural phenomenon. Won’t you join us as we wander along the twisted corridors of the human psyche.

 

Available on Amazon

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Death By Poetry

Poetry. Beautiful words, song lyrics, humorous limericks, it all counts. Long used to speak ones heart and let’s be frank, woo the opposite sex, it comes in every genre, from vicious and bloody to heart wrenchingly eloquent and anything in between. It is also an expression of one’s heart and soul, of their pain or passion, of immediate inspiration or remembered events. Sometimes it’s nothing more than the equivalent of a creative tantrum. An outburst. As you make your way through these pages, you will find may such outbursts and tantrums, some are bloody, and some are not, but all are from the heart.

Available on Amazon