by Barbara Poelle
Okay. It’s Shark Week on Discovery and karma is kicking the crap outta me as I actually DO have a sore throat but NO ONE will believe me if I call in sick. And my throat isn’t the cool, “I’m Kathleen Turner from Romancing the Stone in 1984” it’s more like “I’m Harvey Fierstein from that really weird night you had in Soho in ‘97”. So I have to muscle through.
I will try and behave myself and not slobber and wiggle in my chair with glee over all of the new fun shark facts I will be learning this week, because some of them aren’t as, shall we say, comforting as one would hope and I have Husband 87% convinced that I should be allowed to cage swim with great white sharks in the wild. Here’s the thing he DOESN’T know. That I am going to work on the angle that I should get to do it how Michael Rutzen does it. I CAN TOTALLY DO THIS, I KNOW IT. You guys, Husband neeeeeeds to let me pet one. It is imperative. I will be very gentle and quiet and not disturb their ecosystem. I just want one snout rub.
Unfortunately, the only wildlife I have come into contact with these days is not of the gilled and delightful, but of the scampering and tiresome.
Last week I came home from work one night while Husband was out, collapsed on the couch, and then watched, wordlessly and with thunderous apathy, as a mouse darted across the hallway and into the kitchen. I mean my head actually slowly turned to gauge its progress. Then I sighed. And slowly rose. And then it was on like Donkey Kong.
I exploded into the kitchen and flipped on the light, and Stewie (short for Stewart Little, of course) darted for the corner behind the garbage and recycling bins. I kept my eye on the corner as I bent down and grabbed rubber gloves and a Tupperware. I donned the gloves, spun the Tupperware on the palm of my hand and then kicked the cans away. What happened next cannot be aptly described, but perhaps this series of texts I have lifted from Husband’s phone will help:
8:07 pm: F#@&! Me and a mouse are going AT IT! I had him, I f#@^ing HAD him and then he slid under the Tupperware and got away.
8:16 pm: F#$#@&!!! He just brought the F*%*ing fight to ME! He just charged at me in the living room!
8:19 pm: I have destroyed our home.
8:29: ohmigodohmigodohmigod there are tiny mouse turds on the ARM of the couch. He’s all over me. He’s like a turdfilled ninja! It’s like the beach at Normandy! $@*$#@ Come home and bring traps argrgrghhhhh!ohgodohgodohgod
8:40: He’s gone into the wall. The apt looks like a mongoloid rhino stopped by to enjoy some line dancing. Also, I’m crying a little.
When husband came home and viewed the carnage, he was not terribly pleased. “Why didn’t you go out and get traps?” he asked he up-righted a couch (Oh, believe it. I was flipping them like my toddler was trapped beneath a semi).
“Uh, because I would feel bad about it.”
“And what, pray tell, were you going to DO with this mouse when you caught him in a Tupperware?”
Well, I hadn’t really gotten that far in the planning.
The best part is that, as a day or two passed, Husband expressed some doubts as to whether or not I had actually seen a mouse. Like, maybe what had actually happened is that I scored some black tar heroin and invited that hooker with the scabby knees who works the GWB bus station back to our apartment but we had a bad trip where we thought Russian acrobats were trying to kill us and our only defense was to tip a couch and throw all of my shoes from the shoe rack at them as they flipped and jete’d through the living room.
But- aha! Last Friday, I called Husband to check in on broken ribs and such and what is he doing? Swearing and sweating as he has had his own run in with Stewie. Now this has tapped into Husband’s deep primal Hunter/Gatherer urges to which had heretofore only been satiated by Chinese takeout and Scrabble. Now our apartment is like a mine field. For example, I would love to have you over for dinner but I better get the linens for the table because if you were to reach your delicate hand into the linen basket in the kitchen SNAP! You would howl in terror and pain and Husband would yell from the corner where he is crouched wearing a grass skirt and covered in river mud, “I have to THINK like the mouse to catch him, Babe! I have to think like the mouse to catch him!”
Which brings up an excellent point. The mouse doesn’t think he is the villain. He’s just eating coconut shreds and pooping on the couch. Man, he’s living the dream!!!! This is a very important point when writing mysteries and thrillers. You can’t just have the bad guy be a bad guy. He has to have different priorities and motivations from our hero, but at the highest stakes imaginable. The old show (and then the movie) The Fugitive is the perfect example. It’s like a prism of villainy, our hero is the villain, but we know he’s the hero. Then the cop chasing him is both a villain and a hero. Then the villain is a hero but really a villain. Brilliant!
You can’t just be good for the sake of being good: booooring. So you can’t just be bad for the sake of being bad. Both sides of the coin must have supporting back story. Check out your villain. Does he/she have her motivations burning through from a legitimate place? Because that might be the cheese that makes me reach for the trap that is your brilliant plot.
Okay, now I am off to buy Red Bull and Ricola so I can stay up all night and watch Sharks, Glorious Shaaaarks!
