Shriek: An Afterword

I became addicted to anonymous sex, sex without love, sex as an act. I loved the feel of a man’s chest against my br**sts, the quickening of his breath while inside me, the utterly sublime slide of skin against skin. Each encounter faded from memory more quickly than the last, so that I only became more ravenous. Before, I had been starving; now, I felt as if I could never be satiated.

In other words, I began, under the steady, orgasmic pressure of fame, to become someone totally different than I had been. Can I blame me? It felt marvelous. It felt so good I thought I would die from ecstasy. I was successful for the first time ever. For the first time ever, it was me, not Duncan, who commanded respect. If our father had been alive, he wouldn’t have ignored me—he couldn’t possibly have ignored me. {He never ignored you, Janice. No one ignored you. You just couldn’t see them looking at you, for some reason.}

And still I consumed and consumed and consumed. I could not stop. Even in the midst of such carnality, a part of me remained distant, as if I were pulling the strings of my own puppet. I used to walk through a crowd of people, most of whom I knew intimately, and feel utterly alone. I had written that letter to Duncan about the golden threads and yet forgotten everything it meant.

Even Sybel had his doubts about my philosophy of life, despite how perfectly it fit in with the New Art ideal. We’d sit on the steps leading into the courtyard at Trillian Square, eating fruit that Sybel had plucked from some trees near the River Moth.

“How do you think everything is going?” Sybel would ask, a typical way for him to start a conversation if concerned about me.

I’d reply, “Great! Wonderful! Spectacular! Did you see that new painting? The one by Sarah Sharp? And it only cost us half of what it should have. If I can sell it, there are twenty more where that one came from. And after that there will be twenty more from somewhere else and then before you know it another gallery and after that, who knows. And that reminds me, did you see the mention in the Broadsheet? You need to make sure the theater owners see that—free advertising for us both. We have to maximize any leverage we get.”

And I couldn’t. Stop. Talking. And Sybel would eat his fruit and sometimes he’d put his hand on my shoulder and he’d feel that I was trembling and that I couldn’t control it, and that touch would become a firmer grip, as if he were steadying me. Righting me.

Despite this, I didn’t stop. I refused to stop—I wanted to eat, drink, and screw the world. Each new party, each new artist, each new day, started the process anew. With what glittering light shall we drape the new morning? Starved for so long, I now became the Princess of Yes. I. Simply. Could. Not. Say. No.

It is because I could not say no, ironically enough, that I became involved in so many projects for Sirin at Hoegbotton Publishing—and inadvertently provided the catalyst for the clandestine {and erratic} second career of Duncan, my by then thirty-six-year-old brother.

This new secret history he would carry with him was only one of many. He already brought with him the labyrinth beneath the city. He already brought with him a secret understanding of his own books—and a personal history increasingly intertwined with Ambergris’. For Duncan had discarded his public self; he had returned to the facelessness from which he had come. {What freedom there can be in this! Unfettered from all of the distractions, finally and forever. Yes, I would long for, pine for, legitimate publication many times—but then I felt that first rush of anonymity after the last book went out of print, and with it fled any obligation to anything other than tracking the mystery of the gray caps.}

To become…someone else. I was learning that lesson every day as Janice Shriek remade herself into a hundred different images reflected from store windows and mirrors and the approving or disapproving expressions on other people’s faces. No longer jailed by expectations—of himself or anyone else. No longer anything but himself.

And yet, even then, he was beginning a slow slog back toward the printed page, from a different angle—a forced march with no true destination, just a series of way stations. At first, it must have seemed more of a trap than an opportunity….

Duncan could publish nothing with Hoegbotton, at least directly. The last meeting with his editor had ended with a violent shouting match and an overturned desk. {For the record, I had nothing against either my editor or the desk—especially the desk. My reaction to the rejection of what would have been my sixth book for Hoegbotton was a delayed reaction to L. Gaudy’s calm diatribe several years earlier in the offices of Frankwrithe & Lewden. All my editor at Hoegbotton said was, “I’m very sorry, Duncan, but we cannot take your latest book.” Yet I found myself doing what I should have done to Gaudy—trying to beat his silly, know-nothing head against a desk. I’m lucky he didn’t have me detained by Hoegbotton’s thugs.}

But as I have written, Hoegbotton offered me more opportunities than I could possibly accept, and I did not turn them down. With the result that I had no choice but to enlist Duncan’s help. Duncan took to it easily enough. {What choice did I have?} He was even eager for it. In fact, I can now reveal that the entire series of seventy-five travel pamphlets Hoegbotton published, one for each of the Southern Islands, was written by Duncan, not me. He would take my feverish, indifferent research, fortify it with his less-frenzied studies, and try to mimic my prose style, codified in many an art catalog:

Archibald With Earwig, by Ludwig Poncer, Trillian Era, oils on canvas. This tititular crenellation of high and low styles, by virtue of its unerring instinct for the foibles of both the human thumb and the inhuman earwig, has delighted generations of art lovers who pine for the shiver of dread up the spine even as their lips part to offer the sinister white of a smile.

Blah blah mumble mumble and so forth and so on yawn yawn.

Duncan also wrote, under the pseudonym “Darren Nysland,” the three-hundred-page Hoegbotton Study of Native Birds {which included my lovely, poetic entry on the plumed thrush hen}, still in print and often referenced by serious ornithologists. {As well it should be. It came into existence with excruciating slowness over many months. I soon wished a pox upon the entire avian clan. I never want to see another bird, unless eggwise, sunny-side up on my breakfast plate, or simmering in some sort of mint sauce.}

When, much later, I could not complete an essay on Martin Lake for the Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, Duncan did an admirable job of presenting my {crackpot, or at least unsupportable} ideas in good, solid prose. {And doing what you would not—protecting the identity of Lake’s real lover. I wonder if you noticed. That and the peculiar “messages” I embedded in the text.} As if this was not confused enough, my work sometimes appeared under pen names, and thus when this work was actually written by Duncan, he appeared in print twice removed from his words.