{"id":2583,"date":"2013-06-26T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T13:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2013-10-15T17:49:45","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T22:49:45","slug":"the-creation-of-el-vengador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"The Creation of El Vengador"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"El<\/a>The Creation of El Vengador<\/i><\/p>\n

By Stephanie Osborn<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.stephanie-osborn.com<\/p>\n

Deputy Sheriff Michael Kirtchner gets an “unknown disturbance” dispatch call to a remote house trailer in the swamp. There, he discovers an old woman and a dog, terrorized by a mysterious beast, which he takes to be a bear. But when he contacts Game Warden Jeff Stuart to come trap the animal, Stuart tells him to get out if he values his life – this is no ordinary animal. Is Kirtchner up against a Swamp Ape – a Florida version of Bigfoot – or something more…sinister?<\/i><\/p>\n

El Vengador<\/i> (http:\/\/www.sff.net\/people\/steph-osborn\/ElVengador.html) is my first deliberate foray into the paranormal and horror genres. I\u2019ve had numerous friends try to convince me to do so in the last few years, but never was able to get hold of the right story idea. So I waited and let it \u201cpercolate\u201d in the back of my mind.<\/p>\n

But when a Facebook friend (who wants to remain anonymous) told me the story of his encounter of a mysterious \u201cFlorida Swamp Ape\u201d during his tenure as a deputy sheriff, I was fascinated. And when he gave his permission for me to fictionalize the story, I knew I had found my paranormal horror story.<\/p>\n

So I took his basic story from his own words and I transformed it. I cleaned it up, couched it in proper writer\u2019s grammar, changed the point of view. I changed the deputy\u2019s name, added the perspective of other civilians who encountered the creature\u2026and then I twisted the knife.<\/p>\n

Because, you see, I have some Cherokee in me. Oh, the family can\u2019t prove it, not after the way the Cherokee were ejected from their properties during the Trail of Tears; any Native American who could pass as white in those days, did, and all records of their heritage were lost. But because I have several distinctive genetic expressions of that heritage, I am accepted by most elders I know as Cherokee. And my curiosity being what it is, along with my sincerity in wanting to know, I\u2019ve been taught numerous things that most people don\u2019t<\/i> generally know.<\/p>\n

Like the fact that the Cherokee (along with the Seminole and the Iroquois Confederacy, among others) are purported to have been offshoots \u2013 colonies, if you will \u2013 of the Maya peoples. It\u2019s interesting to note that, just as the \u201cCherokee\u201d are a group of tribes [Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, etc.], the Seminole are a group of tribes [Seminole, Creek, Miccosukee, etc.], the Iroquois Confederacy are a group of tribes [Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca, Cayuga, and later Tuscarora] \u2015 so too are the Maya really a collection of tribes [Yucatec, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch\u2019ol, Kekchi, Mopan, and more]! The Maya comprised, and still comprise (oh yes, they\u2019re still around \u2015 they were laughing their butts off at the white fear of the \u201cend\u201d of their repeating calendar), more than 25 different peoples. The notion of splinter groups of this huge nation (it covered a substantial portion of Central America, butted up against the Aztec\/Olmec empire, and expanded out into the Caribbean) moving up into Florida, then up the East Coast of North America, isn\u2019t hard to believe at all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also true \u2015 as I mentioned in the story \u2015 that the medicine people and elders hold that the Maya, in turn, came from some place across the Great Sea to the East. Depending on who you talk to, this means we\/they originated in Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, the Biblical traders of Tarshish, or even Atlantis!<\/p>\n

So it seemed to me that it would put a fun spin on things if I had this swamp ape, this mysterious unknown creature, be something other than pure animal. As it turned out, my research into the Maya turned up a mysterious \u201cHowler Monkey God,\u201d Hun-Batz, and an entire mythology in which this god was set. Monkey = simian, and ape = simian, so it wasn\u2019t a huge jump for me to proposing a curse invoking the Son of Hun-Batz. And suddenly the whole thing congealed into this amazing, suspenseful, paranormal horror story.<\/p>\n

How amazing and suspenseful? Well, let\u2019s just say I literally creeped myself out. I\u2019m a night owl, prone to insomnia and getting up in the night to putter around until I can fall back asleep. And I immediately discovered that I didn\u2019t enjoy that anymore; I had a constant feeling that there might be something outside, in the yard, in the dark, watching through the windows and doors. When I did go back to bed, it was only to have lucid nightmares about the creature and the events in the book! I took to closing the curtains and blinds, avoiding the windows at night. Finally I gave up writing on the story after sundown, choosing to write only in the light, and hoping to get the imagery out of my head by bedtime.<\/p>\n

I was more or less successful in that. I find that I still do better not to think about the book at night, and I still have the blinds and curtains closed at night. But our neighborhood is well lit with street lights, and the birds cluster in the trees around the house and sing cheerfully. So I know there\u2019s nothing out there that they think is unusual. And that is comforting.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ll regularly write horror. I\u2019m inclined to think, from my experiences with El Vengador<\/i>, that I might not be cut out for that! Still and all, much of the science fiction mystery I do<\/i> write tends to have strong elements of both paranormal and thriller, with the occasional seasoning of horror concepts thrown in for good measure. So I think I can take what I have learned from the experience and fold it back into my other works. And I think they\u2019ll be the better for it.<\/p>\n

And you never know. After all, my friend really did encounter\u2026something<\/i>\u2026in the swamps of Florida\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Creation of El Vengador By Stephanie Osborn http:\/\/www.stephanie-osborn.com Deputy Sheriff Michael Kirtchner gets an “unknown disturbance” dispatch call to a remote house trailer in the swamp. There, he discovers an old woman and a dog, terrorized by a mysterious beast, which he takes to be a bear. But when he contacts Game Warden Jeff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,210],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-interviews","category-characters-welcome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2585,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}