SPOOKTOBER DAY 9 – POSSESSION
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES: STALKER, INSOMNIA, PACT WITH EVIL
TAROT INFLUENCE: ACE OF WANDS, UPRIGHT
TITLE: THE FLAME OF GOD
Premise: Jim put it all together, somehow. Seeing the writing on the wall in junior high, he plotted and schemed to get around all the laws and societal pushback coming down on trans youth. He conspired with some cool diablos online to secretly get puberty blockers, unfortunately a little too late to prevent some amount of breast, and started hustling his own money to pay for transition proper when he got old enough and out from under his parents’ control. He had enough money for top surgery stashed and everything, college just around the corner…
The Villain: But he had a stalker. Older boy Francis (STALKER) was obsessed with his own narrow vision of Jim as a special little girl. In stalking, he discovered the top surgery arrangements, and in an effort to save tha boobs, he ratted Jim out to his parents. Enter the horror…
Horror Element: Jim’s mother Christa is remote, quiet, very deeply involved in scholarship. One wouldn’t expect her to be a theofascist, but all that research was geared toward learning the power of miracles. She had become convinced in youth that the reason miracles no longer happen is because people forgot the true methods of them – holy magic – and strove to learn those arts for herself (PACT WITH EVIL, frankly).
Her time has come (ACE OF WANDS). With help from Francis and the hubby Mike, she traps Jim in a magic circle and summons the flame of god to possess him (POSSESSION). Now whenever he tries to be true to himself, he is subject to burning agony. Visions of heaven and hell obscure his sight. He has to wear bras and dresses to ease the pain, can’t sleep at night (INSOMNIA).
You fascists bound to lose. No way I can write this story without the jesus people getting proper fucked. It’ll happen.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers. The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it. Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, or fuss over this at all. I used gemini to get the composition and openai to make it more convincing. Still had to tweak the final a lot in photopea, but less than painting something original from scratch, boy howdy. Making the source art, no matter how crude, helps make these more distinctive / less generic; hope to do more drawings for them soon.
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I know I’m a poor judge of such things, but this may be the right moment for a novel of this nature. It is infuriating that there needs to be a national conversation about how people feel in their own bodies and what they can do to make themselves feel better about themselves, but here we are.
The trouble with pain, as most torturer’s figure out, is that there is a limit to it. The physical body can generate only so much physical pain. The neurons can saturate. The root of pain is that your body is very loudly telling you that something is wrong. Some pain can be learned to be ignored. I am not belittling those people who are in chronic pain, that absolutely exists and is not pleasant in any way. It’s not like learning to ignore the sounds of a railroad you might live next to, you will be aware of it all the time, but you can learn to ignore it much of the time. So torturer’s will alternate between pain and no pain, and the anticipation of the next pain is probably better at encouraging a confession than the application of that pain.
I can see a narrative like in the OP go in a couple ways. First, the obvious, where Jim endures until he overcomes. They may find a path to overcome their torturers in many ways. Jim may be find a way to secretly read his mother’s notes on creating miracles. Jim may find a friend who can research solutions for him. Jim may be a nexus for otherworldly creatures (angels or demons) who are attracted by the scent of a miracle. Lot’s of options.
Another possibility includes the idea of redemption. Probably not for Francis, but possibly for Jim’s mother. Jim’s mother could immediately be horrified at what she did, but once the miracle is invoked be powerless to halt it. In such a case the story would likely still center on Jim, but on Jim’s growing strength and final ability to overcome. Once Jim knows what happened, and has an ally who is knowledgeable, pushing through the pain may be possible.
I can’t really imagine much nuance in a plot like this. It’s a young adult horror novel. Which means it’s about a teenager learning who they really are, and how much strength they have to take on the world. I know my wife loves this type of literature, it’s a world of saturated color and broad brush-strokes.
it would be a hard read for a lot of people. i’m inclined to be antichristian, but i am culturally christian, so i have to rebel against those instincts. per the prompt-of-the-day, this is an exorcism scenario, and i just flipped the script on which side is doing the possessing. forcing in angels instead of forcing out demons.
the horror there for a lot of cultural christians would be the idea that their god could do evil. in real life it’s easy to see christians doing evil and say “they’re doing it wrong.” what if they’re right that god’s on their side, and that’s a bad god? it’s a grim universe. another possibility within this scenario is that the methods mom learned are actually religion-neutral and could be used for different ends, bailing jim out in the end, and mom has just mistaken them for being god’s will because his names are all over the magic words.
in terms of jim’s strength v the world, the character as-written was ready to fight against a transphobic society and win, just got broad-sided by an unexpected attack. the most consistent plot would be for him to win by cleverness or power of his own, tho i have no strong ideas for that at the moment. i prefer to go in with a plan, but something might emerge from writing without one, y’know? lay out the scene, look for opportunities from the inside that might not be as obvious in outline mode.