Feel the Alien Sounds
What if there was an alien language that humans felt in their bodies more than in their ear drums? And what if those feelings and interpretations were uncomfortable to humans?
That’s what I’m playing with in my newest short story. This is one I’ve shared part of before, the one with the murderous toddler. I read a couple of pages for Creative Colloquy last month and I love the reactions it got. And that’s why I’m working to complete it as a 3000 word short story for CC’s latest anthology.
In the original couple of pages I vomited out first, there is this description:
A voice, which was not so much a sound as a sick feeling in the pit of Merton’s stomach, issued forth from this face.
Tonight, writing pieces of what will be the final confrontation in the story, I came up with these phrases:
… a string of syllables that were less like sounds and more like the sting of bile in the back of your throat…
... responded with sounds that caused the skin on Earl’s arms to crawl as though populated by centipedes.
Isn’t that fun? I think so. I’m having a blast with this story. I love conjuring up these feelings as sounds, or is it sounds as feelings? At any rate, it’s part of the joy of being a writer: anything I can imagine can become part of a story.
