Mama Death

 Long had I wanted to find some way, any way, into the head of Mama Death. I knew her as she was when she fled that night Jonathon Kearns came for her ("The Witch of Pitts Junction"), but from that moment on, when death had taken her and rejected her, she was lost to me. All her appearances since, and many it has been (six in fact out of the 54 stories since "The Witch of Pitts Junction"), she has served as a haunt, a demon in the darkness doing delightful things like ripping... well, it's best not to really discuss out of context those things she has be rightfully accused of doing. I mean, in context it's all bad enough, but just lobbed out like candy grenades of delightful madness, no, that would prejudice too much any potential reader as to the irredeemable nature... an nuts... she rips people in twain. There, deal with it.

Just know that I needed to find a way into her head and tell a story from the perspective this thing she now is but that was a hard pull to make. Thus the reason this beautiful title sat empty and unused all this time. I needed to come up with just the right story to fit a Tale using solely the name given to this character by those she most torments because it's such, in truth, a badass name. You would do the same and you know it too.

Ah, but what a story? Seriously, what story? What am I going to do...

Oh, I know a few secrets about good old Mama Death and what she's up to at certain points in time distinct from just being a haunt waiting for opportunity or a summoning. Actually, there is no understanding as of yet to her actions yet those, speculating, would suffice. Why does she haunt? Why does she focus on the Kearns? Why does she not cross the ridge and take to the Bajazid proper for some proper slaughter? She's been seen up at the Amalgamated Mine ("The Golden Hawk"), that is if you don't trust your 3 day Benzedrine bender and yes, on the other side of the ridge such as up at the old beehive smelter, but seldom. These were a few of the things that I had been of recent wondering.

Another function of thought progression was what is she doing there in that cave? I have notes galore of things hinted, speculated. Oh, there are Tales to be told... I know of one guy, a member of the Kearns Family, who will lie in that chamber of bones as her incantations torment him for was she not a mamba before her descent into zuvembie? Patient in the eons it is said, but here upon the Bajazid, what corruptions in incantations exist to twist the outcomes to something perverse. If the zuvembie still remembered, even corrupted and flawed, the processes of mamba, what goals should drive the Dead in exhaustive fury to attain? What pursuit would strain a mind forgetful the passage of time to the point willful attention? What struggle would be, could be between the amnesia of death and something new in the sphere of the wicked undead... a zuvembie of willful intent, struggling against that void and the urge to be mamba yet again... a lich of sorts in a new and perhaps...

Hey, I am just spitballing here, trying to figure out exactly what Mama Death is. This is something that's really taken on a bit of a struggle with me because she is zuvembie by design but the potion was corrupt, the ingredients altered by regional availability. Other inconsistencies she improvised, such variances which should make no difference being intent is true. Such variations should not alter the stream of a casting too much, should they? Then how to account for the retention of will, even to such a degree. It is know that there are many undead species who possess such distinct will, the vampire and the lich being too such examples. Zuvembie are not know for such planning, so design as I know Mama Death strives. What then? What to account for this perversion, a witch turned zuvembie clinging yet, like some wizard lich, to the magical aspects she claimed in life?

Ya'll think on that and tell me what you come up with, what makes our dear Mama Death so much more demanding distinction from her species of undead. Me? I just know that not even gods who stray casual into this valley claim their own counsel. This is where is That Which Damned. That should suffice.

Now, as to this story, "Mama Death", what was I to do and how can I hook all this somehow onto the first day of action in the Outside the Circle of Midnight Black collection? You know, set up "Girl Rattled" and give reason for the expressions of horror and disgust in "There is Clearly Something Amiss". I saw an opportunity here and I figured I'd go for it, starting with our dear hero, Mama Death, waking up from her death to the confusion of lost cells and the fortification that brings clarity of rotten mind. I needed to wake her up.

When I first presented "Mama Death" to my two beta readers, I did not send an email (to one) or bring in a printed copy to work (for the other). Instead, I sent them each an audio file produced days after my final edit as I sat stood in my box early one morning reciting this Tale into my phone. The recording is roughly 20 minutes long and there are a few minor voice chokes, but the fact that I made it through in a single take (not the first, by the way) without customers interrupting me, is kind of amazing. I wanted the first reactions to this Tale to be from the presentation of how it works, how I hope it to sound in the mind's ear when pulled from the paper. I sent the text copies shortly afterwards.

You know, I truly hope the security cameras on me don't have audio...

The trick that I had to tackle with "Mama Death" was to wake her up from dead in death to awake in death, return her from emptiness to functioning in thoughtful manner, much like when one is roused from a deep sleep too soon interrupted and the first moments of staggering consciousness are fractured in moments unstrung. That is what I had to portray, as well as her, um, cup of morning coffee (?) Then I needed to bring her direct understanding and defiance just in time to coincide with a particular event in the third chapter of "Circle of Midnight Black" (as it is being developed) that involves seismic movement. Lastly, I needed to set up those established incidents so that my fabled Reader, upon connecting these Tales, issues forth a soft and reverent "ah-ha!" as these revelations pour forth.

From both those two beta readers the response came back, both from the audio files and the text which followed, that the production worked. I am still wary of this for though I revel in playing with form and apparently have taken to doing strange things, the method of wakening I wonder at often. Then I open this up or, lucky me, the audio file takes exactly the time I need to get to work, and I realize that yes, despite my fears, this story works and it does so surpassing my initial hopes. In fact, it has set in motion other things that I am not at liberty to speak of right now (That Which Damned only allows me to say certain things) as well as clarified for me certain intents which I intend to pay close attention to shortly (ah, famous words written in vain!)

And now for that obligatory information which I somehow failed to find ways to incorporate into the text above. "Mama Death" was completed on April 17, 2020 at 2,999 words. This is the 62nd entry into the Tales of the Bajazid.