Mangled Meat

Author’s Afterword:

I got the idea for the “Room 415” story one night while standing in a dark hotel room at about 4 a.m. This was four or five years ago. I’d taken a trusty Greyhound to Orlando in order to attend a Florida-writers book signing, and then I drank too many beers at an industrial club called Independent where publisher Dave Barnett moonlights as a DJ and enjoys the Life of Riley. I had a blast, even after realizing that I was twenty years older than almost everyone in the club, after which Dave treated me and others in his posse to a preeminently grease-laden breakfast at a seedy all-night diner. When I got back to my hotel room—Room 415—I discovered to my horror that it was a non-smoking room. So I did what all respectable smokers do in a non-smoking room. I smoked. I turned out all the lights and stood brazenly in my shorts before the window, which I opened as far as it would go (only a couple of inches. A “governor” was installed, presumably to thwart jumpers. Neat.) So I’m standing there smoking, at this wee hour, in the dark, when I look down and notice a window lit in a room one floor below and caddy-cornered against my vantage point. A several-inch gap existed between the salmon-colored curtains, and in the gap I could see a bed. And that’s it.

I need to assure you all that the aforementioned is the ONLY aspect of this story rooted in truth. But as I was standing there watching my smoke siphon out my window, and periodically glancing down to the caddy-cornered window, Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW came to mind. “What if I saw someone get murdered in that window, right now?” I asked myself. “And what if it was a beautiful nude woman?” (Nudity seems to be an auxiliary ornament in most of my work.) Anyway, then I went to bed and awoke with a stunning hangover, and while Greyhounding back home the next day, all the details of the story were already in my head, with pretty much no conscious effort.

Very recently I read a Stephen King quote (in, I believe, the Cindy Margolis issue of Playboy—hubba-hubba) where King cited that he often gets story ideas simply from seeing a particular thing, after which the plot begins to create itself in his head. Though Mr. King’s bank account and acclaim have precious little in common with mine, I was enthused to discover this singular commonality: I regularly get entire story ideas that originated by my witnessing some “thing.” House, car, road, person, sound, etc. or some other essentially non-descript thingamajig that for some reason fires a subconscious creative spark. Most of the flesh in my novel THE BACKWOODS, for instance, was rooted in my glimpsing a 17-year locust through the window of a cab taking me to BWI airport in Maryland. A house right across the street from my wonderfully squalid apartment proved the initial fuel for FLESH GOTHIC (because the house is actually an office for a porno company. I live in a classy town.) The major plot device in the novella MINOTAURESS (a prequel to THE HORN-CRANKER) was incited decades ago when I was a security guard inspecting an unoccupied two story house. I was checking the locks of this supposedly untenanted dwelling when I heard a toilet flush upstairs. Ooo. Creepy. After possibly peeing my security pants in terror, I envisioned a monster sitting on the upstairs toilet. (The flusher, I’m happy to say, wasn’t a monster, it was another security guard I didn’t know was inside.) And in the case of this story—“Room 415”—it was something as simple as a hotel window that would hand me the entire plot and character line. This is my reason for cringing when asked that most cliched question: “Where do you get your ideas?” It takes too damn long to explain and is actually quite unremarkable.

Afterwords are often unnecessary, and even more often boring, yet due to a publishing intricacy, I feel the situation warrants a tad more verbosity from Edward Lee. When Necro Publications began production on their excellent DAMNED Anthology, the publisher teamed up with Tampa’s Camelot Books to jointly produce a super-fancy (and super pricey) “deluxe” edition for hardcore collectors. Only thirteen copies of this deluxe edition would be sold, and to enhance its uniqueness, I was contracted to write a story that would be exclusive to that edition. The story was “Room 415,” but with a condition: that I could publish an alternate version later. When I was writing the piece, two different endings immediately occurred to me. One ending—a longer one—was what I’d call more commercial yet very negative, while the other ending was downright nihilistic. The latter ending wound up being the one I wrote for the deluxe inclusion. My favorite ending, however, is the one you’ve read. While it’s by no means a “happy” ending, it’s not as dark and soul-dead as the deluxe. Why, then, is this my favorite? I think because I may be turning into a candyass as I get older. A wimp, but a happy wimp no less.

So. It seems that I’ve just penned about a thousand words to explain what would’ve sufficed with two sentences. Ah, the economy of language, and the disciplined skill of the true artist! I’m nearing the three-million-published-words point in my jubilant and unseemly career so, really, what’s an extra thousand? This only to assure those thirteen hardcore souls who laid down serious coin that the version of “Room 415” in their deluxe does indeed remain exclusive. And as for those of you who’ve purchased this version, thank you. It’s a story I like very much, and I hope you did to.