Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "post-apocalayptic"
Christmas
So I really want to have this part in one of my books where a guy gets ripped apart by dogs. I know Game of Thrones stole my thunder on this, and I know it sounds homicidally psychotic, but hear me out: a warlord in post-apocalyptic Washington, DC, imprisons a woman and tries to woo her, because his ideas on romance are disturbingly skewed. I could mention he's the distant descendent of the last Vice President of the United States, and that she shares genes with the final (and only female) President, but that's a little too much backstory for now.
Obviously, this woman hates the warlord with an unquenchable passion, but lucky for her he gets called away to fight my protagonist (don't worry about him). In the meantime, the woman uses her learnéd brain to take over the city-state while he's gone, because his minions are mostly uneducated crooks. When the bad guy crawls home, defeated, his army gone and his self-esteem in tatters, he bangs on the walls of his home to be let in. Only now, his incensed unrequited love is in charge.
Now, this warlord has a nasty defining trait: he beats dogs. Dogs are used as messengers between the city-states of our brave new world, and there's one dog in particular named Gore Vidal, whom the warlord strikes repeatedly and castigates with swear words too horrific to repeat here. (I think he says "durn mutt" at one point.)
So anyway it's fitting, isn't it, that this woman unleashes a bunch of hounds to chase the warlord away from his own gates? The answer to that is "yes."
The dogs hunt down this warlord like a dog and tear him to shreds. And Gore Vidal, the cross-eyed, mostly ineffectual, entirely dumb pup, happily laps at his master's severed head as the sun rises on a beautiful nuclear wintry Christmas morning.
Now, for a touch of heart and humor, I wanted the scene to be set to Perry Como's rendition of "O Holy Night," sung in this case by the warlord's longtime white servant, Crimmsy Fitch.
This is probably the only Christmas song I actually like and find meaningful, so I don't simply intend to use it blasphemously. For some reason it made my head-hair stand on end to think of the busted warlord limping towards the Potomac in slow-motion while a pack of dogs runs him down and eats him. (I'll probably cut, erm, tastefully away from the grislier consumption parts ... I don't need to wallow in gore.)
I think I wanted this dude to go out this way because, as a warlord and "leader" of a community, he never understands the consequences of his actions. In the beginning of the book, he actually feels rejected and sorry for himself when his prisoner deters his advances. His actual hope when he returns from his defeat abroad is that the woman he's kept forcibly imprisoned will somehow welcome him with open arms ... with love, even.
So part of the "meaning" I get from his death scene is his horrified, slow-motion understanding that maybe, just maybe, his paramour doesn't like him. And then the doggos descend.
Obviously, this woman hates the warlord with an unquenchable passion, but lucky for her he gets called away to fight my protagonist (don't worry about him). In the meantime, the woman uses her learnéd brain to take over the city-state while he's gone, because his minions are mostly uneducated crooks. When the bad guy crawls home, defeated, his army gone and his self-esteem in tatters, he bangs on the walls of his home to be let in. Only now, his incensed unrequited love is in charge.
Now, this warlord has a nasty defining trait: he beats dogs. Dogs are used as messengers between the city-states of our brave new world, and there's one dog in particular named Gore Vidal, whom the warlord strikes repeatedly and castigates with swear words too horrific to repeat here. (I think he says "durn mutt" at one point.)
So anyway it's fitting, isn't it, that this woman unleashes a bunch of hounds to chase the warlord away from his own gates? The answer to that is "yes."
The dogs hunt down this warlord like a dog and tear him to shreds. And Gore Vidal, the cross-eyed, mostly ineffectual, entirely dumb pup, happily laps at his master's severed head as the sun rises on a beautiful nuclear wintry Christmas morning.
Now, for a touch of heart and humor, I wanted the scene to be set to Perry Como's rendition of "O Holy Night," sung in this case by the warlord's longtime white servant, Crimmsy Fitch.
This is probably the only Christmas song I actually like and find meaningful, so I don't simply intend to use it blasphemously. For some reason it made my head-hair stand on end to think of the busted warlord limping towards the Potomac in slow-motion while a pack of dogs runs him down and eats him. (I'll probably cut, erm, tastefully away from the grislier consumption parts ... I don't need to wallow in gore.)
I think I wanted this dude to go out this way because, as a warlord and "leader" of a community, he never understands the consequences of his actions. In the beginning of the book, he actually feels rejected and sorry for himself when his prisoner deters his advances. His actual hope when he returns from his defeat abroad is that the woman he's kept forcibly imprisoned will somehow welcome him with open arms ... with love, even.
So part of the "meaning" I get from his death scene is his horrified, slow-motion understanding that maybe, just maybe, his paramour doesn't like him. And then the doggos descend.
