Excerpt - Springs
Last year, Drollerie Press published my novella Springs – which I still regard as one of the best things I’ve written. If you enjoyed Woman of His Dreams here, or if you have liked some of my other, darker stories, I would be gratified if you would take a look at my little erotic horror tale.
Like my recent novella Playing God and another story I just sold, Gloriana, Springs is set in the world of computer gaming. It’s the story of Cherie, a young woman employed by a game studio, writing music for the sequel to Harvest of Pain, a horror survival game, and the unique inspiration she finds in a music box. Here’s an excerpt:
Between the themes and the exit scenes, Cherie needed to compose about twelve minutes of music. How hard could that be?On the fourth night, flying on the mail boy’s hyperactivity meds and three glasses into a bottle of white merlot, she heard the Harvestman, the bristly insect monster that lived beneath the town of Forked Oak, where it fed on the carnage its minions made of the cursed town’s simple citizens. Cherie’s fingers flew on the keys as she grabbed samples, shaped the notes, and played a wild riff on “The Ants Go Marching”. She married that tune to a metal song she had written seven years before when she was fifteen, living on the bad side of San Antonio, and in love with a suicidal singer in a band called Mosca.
She figured the boys in Mosca would dig Harvest of Pain II, if they happened to play it. Maybe they‟d see her name in the credits.
The next day, she ran the tune for Matt and Bradley. Silence weighed the air for about a decade.
Then Matt scratched behind one ear and gave her a quirky smile. “Fuck. This means I can’t tie you to your desk.”
He might as well have.
The job was alive inside her after that, like a wicked, kicking baby. She gave herself a night to sleep, and then she chased the Blood Farmer, studying his digitized existence over and over. The Farmer emerged from a gaping crevice in the earth, a red wound in the black dirt, his ragged overalls and lamprey face a marvel of sick color and motion.
Buzzing, crazy with coffee and kiddy coke, Cherie saw a dance in the rhythm of his movements, and she played corridos on her iPod until she found the one she wanted. She stole its tune and added twang. For the frames where the big rock turned into the Farmer’s bone tractor, she used the tractor’s roar—her own work, no guilt over fucking with it—to counter the techno maracas, and then added feedback that built like an oncoming train. The rush of glorious darkness she heard inside her own head fed her need to keep pushing, keep the music playing forever.
Matt said nothing when she demoed the Farmer’s theme. He didn’t need to. Cherie saw respect in the eyes of the whole crew.
Only the Black Baron remained, the monster created in H1 to be Jet’s own personal badass, and Cherie had been listening to the silence where theme should be beating in digital rhythm for too fucking many days. The Black Baron’s heartbeat eluded Cherie no matter how many pills she chased with good wine, no matter how many times she watched his rendered shape, the tapering cone of a head with a single red eye , his burly, muscular body all ebon and shiny, like a mummy made of electrician’s tape, the patent black layers of his chest rising and falling with bellows‟ breath.
He had only appeared as a menacing shape in the very last scene of H1, the spawn of the first Harvestman, born from the monster’s agony and its desire to dominate and destroy Jet Vixen. The Baron’s only score in H1 had been a single sonorous chord and a wavering scream.
She played the fight sequence over and over, winning and losing, watching for patterns and rhythms. When Jet lost the fight, the Baron whipped her red gown apart a rag at a time, until she had been stripped down to her skintight action suit—essentially a crimson corset and a thong. His inky arms became whips and studded flails to embrace her.
If Jet won the match with the powers of the Blade of Isis, she got to keep her dignity.
Boy’s fantasies, Cherie thought. So predictable.
Cherie liked the scenes where the Baron’s whip became a caressing arm holding Jet immobile while he moved closer, the black cone opening to show dripping teeth, the red eye leering.
Such nightmares deserved special music, killer music, but Cherie might as well have been deaf.
Posted by Angela Caperton at 7/9/2011 2:25 PM 
Categories: Horror, Erotica, Angela Caperton, dark erotica, computer games, Springs
Tags: Angela Caperton Springs Erotica Horror Computer games
Categories: Horror, Erotica, Angela Caperton, dark erotica, computer games, Springs
Tags: Angela Caperton Springs Erotica Horror Computer games
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