SIMO SRINIVAS

On toning it down.

When eels fuck, the earth shakes. That’s a hilltop saying, one I don’t use anymore. There was a time in my life when I squatted barefoot on a beaten earth floor and let vulgarities plop from my lips like worms. Now the earthen floors have been tiled over, the rivers dammed, and the eels left to choke in the mud.

This is the opening of “The Hilltop Eel,” a story that joins 12 other lush, sensual tales of eco-horror in Silk and Foxglove, a gorgeous anthology (seriously, look at that cover!) from Hedone Books, curated and edited by Z.K. Abraham.

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved staying alone in hotels. Even before I had money of my own, I would drive my older sisters insane asking them to roleplay as concierges when they would have much rather been outside playing badminton—then slamming my parents’ bedroom door in their faces. In university, I booked cheap private rooms at nearby hostels. Now, of course, I can afford to splurge.

^This is the opening of the first draft. It is a very different story—one that takes place almost entirely in a hotel swimming pool—inspired by memories of being shuttled around Penang and Kuala Lumpur as a child, my fascination with deserted, blue-tiled hotel pools, the emerald green snakes of the Snake Temple in George Town, the finger-snap transitions between the icy, air conditioned spaces of malls and relatives’ houses into muggy markets and historical sites. (These elements have popped up in other stories, like “The Girls of St. X” in Wilted Pages: An Anthology of Dark Academia and the straightforwardly titled “Kiu Zee and the Snake Temple,” as yet unpublished.)

Petaling Jaya, 2018

Typically, my first paragraphs arrive fully formed, recited to me by unseen narrators (usually, I am realizing, vaguely into my left ear). I spend a day or two listening as they repeat the same handful of sentences over and over again. Once I give in and write down their words, they oh-so-helpfully disappear, leaving me to fumble toward some semblance of a plot (or wait for the next ghostly intonation. I don’t mean for this to sound so mystical—it really isn’t. It’s like getting a song stuck in your head, a really annoying song, when you’d rather be concentrating on something else).

On this occasion, my unnamed narrator had a lot to say. She talked about colonialism and hotel conglomerates, bathing suits, hotel buffets, scoliosis, mirror twins, earthquakes. Almost none of this made it into the final draft.

Which I feel weird about!

Increasingly, there’s a tension—not only between what I like to write (slow, meandering, unsettling, pseudo-literary, mystifying, frustrating) and what the sf/f market wants (not that) but also between what I like to write and what I myself like to read. Writer!Simo wants to float in the pool. Reader!Simo needs you to get to the @$&!ing point. I feel this impatience even as I’m drafting. It’s not a fun fight to referee, this allergy to structure vs. the desire to arrive somewhere for god’s sake. I do try to say sod the audience (sorry, audience) and write for myself, but it’s hard to do when you’re trying to balance competing desires. Inside you are two wolves, etc.

All this to say, my weird, pool-pruned, hotel-obsessed closeted lesbian/tribute to Ottessa Moshfegh did not survive my edits, and I kind of miss her. Maybe she’ll return some other time to whisper in my ear.

Also out this summer/ICYMI:

• “A Pale Herd, A Worm Moon,” now free to read in Issue 1 of Plott Hound Magazine – A flash story about fire, a full moon, and some creepy ungulates. I’ve been writing more about animals, it seems, as my disillusionment with humanity deepens. And yes, I had many “is this real life?!” moments and glee-outs about getting to share a TOC with my idol Yoon Ha Lee.