Bailey (Conclusion)

I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head against the horrifying image.  It couldn’t be true.  I couldn’t be a monster.  My breath came in short harsh bursts.  I breathed deeply.  In and out.  In and out.  Trying to control it.  Finally, the shaking stopped and my pounding heart quieted.  I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands.  Somehow the fur was lighter, like it was receding.
When I looked in the mirror, I looked more like myself but definitely like a monster.  I touched my face, which felt alien beneath my fingertips that were still coated with a fine layer of fur.  What was I?  Maybe this was why no one ever wanted me.  Maybe they had known from the start that I was a  monster.
I didn’t even hear the door open and shut, which was weird because normally I can hear a pin drop, on carpet, in the next room.
“Bailey?”  Her voice was soft now, not the hard taunting tone that she had used just moments before in the first floor cafeteria.  But it didn’t matter.  At the sound, my shoulders tensed and it was happening all over again. I opened my mouth to tell her to go away, and I think I growled.  Her hand touched my shoulder.  I reached up, flinging it away.  She cried out, and that was when I turned around.
I had scratched her upper arm, shredding the sleeve of her t-shirt.  The scratches were deep.  Her arm was dripping with blood, that ran down her arms in twisting rivulets before spilling in fat drops to the floor.  And the odor of it was coppery and tangy and…appetizing.
“Bailey, what’s going….” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.  I was walking toward her, and even I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  What I wanted to do was finish ripping her arm off and maybe eat a little of it.  Even as out of it as I was, I knew that was a bad idea.  So I settled for salivating over the look of terror on her face as I backed her into a corner.
“Bailey! I’m sorry Bailey!”  To this day, I don’t know if she was yelling to convince me or because she hoped that someone would hear her.  No one would hear her though.  The fourth floor was deserted in the morning.
“Bailey, Bailey.” She whimpered and then started to cry as I took another step towards her.  I didn’t say anything.  I don’t know if I could have talked then if I wanted.
When she was backed into the corner, caught between the a sink and the wall, I ripped the sleeves from my shirt so that she could see the fur.  I stepped forward, put my hands on the walls on either side of her, and leaned in.  She tried to get away, but there was no where to go.  I have to admit, I enjoyed her terror far too much.  It made her smell good, to a point.  Then, suddenly, she just started to stink.  I think she peed her pants.   I opened my mouth, showing her my brand new fangs and growled.
The noise was so loud, I knew the rest of the building heard.  When I stopped to listen, I actually heard footfalls running up the stairs from the bottom floor.   Suddenly, I knew that I had to get out of there.
I ran.  I burst from the bathroom and sprinted to the end of the hall.  There was window, that opened out onto a narrow ledge.  I opened to window and stepped out.  Gazing at the rooftop of the building next to the home, I wondered if I could make that jump or if I would survive if I didn’t.
I heard Head Mistress Danbury calling my name.  “Bailey! Bailey!  No!”  Maybe she really did care after all.  Too late.  I jumped.  I jumped and ran.  I didn’t stop until I reached the trees….

I guess it was about a year later, when Anna Pantera found me and brought me here.   At the time, I wasn’t sure.  One tends to lose track of time in those conditions.  I had been living in a forest north of the city, away from humans, eating all squirrels and rabbits that I could catch.  I knew so little then.
She told me what I was.  She coaxed me back into my human form.  I had tried to change back once or twice, but I couldn’t.  By the time she found me, I had almost forgotten that I had been human once.
When I think about it, I was really lucky.  I could have been hunted down by humans at any time.  But she found me…and she saved me….  I owe her my life.

©L. M. Davis.  All Rights Reserved.

How far does Bailey’s loyalty go?  What will she sacrifice for the woman that saved her life?  Find out in Posers:  A Shifters Novel; available soon.

Black People Love Fantasy Too…Don’t They? (Warning: This is a bit of a rant.)

I know that I can’t be the only black kid that grew up loving “The Wizard of Oz.”  I know that because I have siblings who were right there alongside me, huddled on the floor of the den, watching the movie deep into the night–with a bowl of the special popcorn my mom made–and singing the songs we knew.  (So, there’s at least us.)  We each had our parts.  I was the scarecrow (If I only had a brain).  My other siblings were the cowardly lion and the tin man respectively.   There was not a Dorothy among us…I guess because maybe we found the other characters more interesting.  If not “The Wizard of Oz”, then “The Wiz”, with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, Richard Pryor and that soundtrack.  Ease on Down the Road…

If not “The Wiz”, then how about “The Goonies”, “Back to the Future” (At Least Part I), “E. T.”, “Star Wars” (though I think the trilogy began in the seventies), “Ghostbusters”, and that’s just off the A-L list of 80s movies (Star Wars excluded).  What  about more recently, with “Matrix” (again, at least part one), the “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy (ALL OF THEM), and Harry Potter.  I know that I was not the only black person standing in line for the midnight showing of “The Two Towers.”  All of these, whether they took place in worlds that were recognizable or worlds that were completely foreign from anything that we might imagine are a part of this genre, and if you love any of these, and countless others I don’t have the space to name, then you love fantasy too.

Where am I going with this?  Well, I guess, right now, I have had it about up to my ears with folks looking at me strange when I say that I write fantasy.  Yes, I, a black woman, write fantasy.  And no, I don’t write fantasy because it’s what’s hot in the streets (though it is).  And no, I don’t write fantasy because I want to be the next J. K. Rowling (though her success, in the sense that millions have read and loved her stories, is the goal, I am perfectly content with being L. M. Davis).  I write fantasy because I grew up loving the stuff, and I know that I am not the only black kid who did.  Moreover, I know that there are millions of black children today who love Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Bella (what’s her last name?) too.   So why is it that folks look at me so strange when I say it.

I had a conversation with another author a few weeks ago.  He asked me what genre I wrote, and I told him fantasy.  He looked at me with shock, and then said, in a rather dubious and decidedly less interested tone,  “Well, we need that too.”    That ended the conversation.  To be honest, I didn’t know what to do with that.  But as I thought about it, I realized his response reflected a certain unspoken attitude that I have been running into lately, which is that black people don’t write fantasy–or maybe, more to the point, considering the very tough issues that black people have to face in their daily lives, wouldn’t it be more fruitful to write about real life and real experiences.  Books that Sarwat Chadda might call worthy.

Here’s the thing, some of our most worthy thinkers, W. E. B. DuBois, Pauline Hopkins, and Samuel Delany, turned to sci-fi/fantasy genre at one point or another during their careers–Delany in fact is a well-known sci-fi author.  Don’t believe me, check out Dark Matter, an anthology of African diaspora science fiction and fantasy.  Why would these authors, known for their thinking about the serious issues that impact black communities, who have every other genre at their disposal, turn to sci-fi fantasy as a mode of expression.  Who can say for sure, but maybe their reasons are similar to mine.  Maybe they saw in sci-fi/fantasy a way to imagine a world that was more than what they saw everyday, a way to meditate on ideas that they could not address in the genres of writing that they normally employed.  Are the lessons of those texts and the ideas that they explore any less valuable because of the genre? I haven’t even mentioned here the whole slew of black writers who exclusively write/wrote sci-fi/fantasy :  Octavia Butler, L. A. Banks, Nalo Hopkinson, Brandon Massey and others(the list goes on and does not even begin to think about the “magical realism,” if you will, of Toni Morrison and where that positions her work), that make sci-fi/fantasy speak to black experience in powerful ways.   If the genre is worthy enough for these folks, I guess I am in pretty good company.

What’s my point?  There is an audience out there for my books, and that audience includes black people.  I don’t want that potential audience to discount my, and other writers, work because of perceptions about what is worthy material for black authors to write.   I don’t want people to pass over my books  because they fall outside of the realm of what black authors should be writing about and what black people read.  Sci-fi/Fantasy entices readers to expand their horizons and imagine beyond perceived realities; is it too much for those of us who write it to ask for a little of the same?

Your Rewards for Making it to the End.

Summer Reading Challenge

Diversity In YA is hosting a Summer Reading Challenge.

The goal is to read a book featuring a protagonist from an underrepresented population and then blog about it.  The deadline for entry is Sept 1. The prizes are great (lots and lots of books), especially for all of you that teach middle grades. What a way to expand your library!  And, of course, if you are reading my book, it qualifies. 

Find out more about the contest at here at DiversityinYA.

Good luck!