Kevin's Watch

I ran across a short story by SRD a few days ago. It is entitled "The Conqueror Worm" and is included in Michelle Slung's "I Shudder at Your Touch" (22 tales of sex and horror). Anyone else read this? It's both creepy (which i knew donaldson could be capable of) and hilarious (big surprise there.)

Yeah, it's also in Daughter of Regals his first collection of short stories. Will have to reread it to refresh my memory though.

--A

It's such a great story!!

I JUST finished it...

Does he really

Spoiler

stab himself in the junk??

Also... I'm not getting anything deep and... well, deep from this story like I do his others. Anyone wanna help me out here??

don't know if this'll help or not (i haven't read the story) but hard to overlook this coinkydink....

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
THE CONQUEROR WORM.

LO! 't is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama!—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally published for the January 1843 issue of Graham's Magazine, The Conqueror Worm can be found in:
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: J.S. Redfield, 1858.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Poems. Thomas Ollive Mabbot, ed. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

"And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot."

this is actually quoted in the beginning of the story, right?

SRD said that was the only story he didn't enjoy writing. He was just compelled to writing it.

I didn't enjoy it so much, though.

I had totally forgotten about Daughter of Regals, but this story stuck in my mind. It actually gave me a minor phobia about centipedes.

The Conqueror Worm made me gag. Not keen at all. I do enjoy unsettling stories, and I enjoyed the sinister menace, but the inclusion of the worm itself just spoiled it. I don't do bugs.

I enjoyed this story much more than The Lady in White. I thought the husband / wife problem was very realistic and close-to-home actually. The worm thing in my mind could have been excluded and still be a cool little short story.

I guess this story is about the harm that can be done by overreacting, by jumping to conclusions. And about how it can be a mistake to not take seriously the complaints made by someone you believe you care about. That's about as much deep meaning as I was able to mine from this brief tale.

Here you've got married couple Vi and Creel coming home from a party at Creel's work, and a half-drunken Creel is accusing his wife of flirting with one of his company's vice-presidents because she talked literary subjects with him for awhile. Vi tells him they were just talking about books, and complains that Creel knew she liked learning about Baudelaire when she was in college, and that in their two years of marriage he hasn't even bothered to find out who Baudelaire was (Charles Baudelaire was a French poet, essayist, art critic, and translator of Edgar Allen Poe's works into French--and I admit I had to look that up ).

Their home has rooms that are conveniently poorly lit at their edges. I say "conveniently" because that allows a rather large centipede to lurk around in their house and continually avoid detection. The centipede is certainly described as menacing enough.

It looked slimy and malicious, and it waved its antennae hungrily. It was nearly ten inches long. Its thick legs seemed to ripple as it shot across the rug. Then it stopped to scan its surroundings. Creel and Vi could see its mandibles chewing expectantly as it flexed its poisoned claws.

Continuing their argument in their home, Vi tries to tell Creel she needs to have her own friends and life independent of his workers and drinking/football friends. Creel just interprets this as she is wanting to sneak out and cheat on him. At heated moments in their argument, the centipede appears and Creel starts smashing things up in an attempt to dispatch the aggressive arthropod. Creel's increasingly jealous accusations combined with his violent overreactions convinces Vi to pack up and leave him. When the centipede crawls under Vi's clothes, Creel volunteers to get a knife. Considering how he has been reacting this particular night, I don't blame Vi for getting out of there as soon as the centipede gets off her.

I really didn't enjoy reading this story. It didn't emotionally lift me up. And it's only scary if you have a thing about arthropods or if you're a guy who frequently worries about emasculation. My verdict on this story: FAIL!

I appreciate the added insight, vraith, and I hope to keep it in mind when next I re-read this story.

I guess I sounded a little harsh in my above review, and I realize that Donaldson is a very creative and descriptive writer--the evidence is apparent, even here. And I NEVER think that I could do as good a job as he does. It was simply a matter that I couldn't take this particular story "to heart", so to speak.

I've taken the time to read this story once again. And once again, I don't care much for it. I suppose I can appreciate it as a cautionary tale to not let the rotten things inside us overtake our ability to control our actions. As a cautionary tale, it serves a purpose, I guess. Certainly all Creel's problems with Vi seem to be of his own making, in the way he overreacts.

Disturbed by her movement, the centipede crawled out between the pillows onto her left arm. It waved its poison claws while it tasted her skin with its antennae, looking for the best place to bite in.

This time, she did scream. Wildly, she flung up her arm. The centipede was thrown into the air.

It hit the ceiling and came down on her bare leg.

It was angry now. Its thick legs swarmed to take hold of her and attack.

With his free hand, he struck a backhand blow down the length of her leg that slapped the centipede off her.

As the centipede hit the wall, he pitched his bottle at it, trying to smash it. But it had already vanished into the gloom around the bed. A shower of glass and tequila covered the bedspread.

She bounced off the bed, his behind him. "I can't take any more of this. I'm leaving."

"It's only a centipede," he panted as he wrenched the brass frame off the foot of the bed. Holding the frame in one hand for a club, he braced his other arm under the bed and heaved it off his legs. He looked strong enough to crush one centipede. "What're you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of you. I'm afraid of the way your mind works."