Thank you, Meg. Recently, I’ve been interested in the world of noir. Not simply the traditional aspects one usually associates with this genre, but the games, tricks, language, and behavior that are involved with pulling a fast one on someone–the ways this can be undermined and rolled into counter-attacks. These aspects can be translated into any setting with any number of characters and the dynamic between them. One thing they all have in common is the reprobate. The man or woman who, for whatever reason, seems destined for an underworld existence even if they are outside a network. They have created a world for themselves which is reinforced and magnified by internal pressures and habits. They have an outside-of-bounds code–their pride and prison. My inspiration for the story started as a workshop exercise in which we began with a character committing a crime.

I was hoping for this kind of response, Meg. I think it goes with what I was saying above. Yes, on the one level, there are these literal Chinese handcuffs Muriel imagines are her boss’ hands. And these things were always wonderful to me as a kid, as they probably are to a lot of kids. They create a wonderful dilemma. Why, when you are trying to pull out of this tight weave of the cuff are you more firmly pulled in? Typically, leaving is not associated with being further trapped. But what I’m exploring is that leaving most certainly can trap one further. In the space that exists beyond the leaving is a vacuum so powerful that the anti-social or even criminal activity, when it suggests itself to the “outsider,” will show itself with double the force. It is impossible for Muriel to escape the larger forces that seem to trap her. Her body thrills with the adrenaline created by an opportunity for a double-cross. It overrides her resolve to lead a clean life. Why and how she has become trapped by this life is not something explored in the story, but protagonists of noir are generally considered the scofflaws, and those come in many packages, even efficient secretaries, and yes, equally so, their bosses.

I wanted to introduce the idea of a slightly altered reality, which is a wonderful aspect of film too. I wanted the effect to build from what can simply be imagined, to what requires openness to things such as changing eye colors, and a boss that talks like a Jon Goodman character. I wanted a sense of unreality, even within the dialogue. Furthermore, the idea of sliding into unreality in the piece comes back to the idea of the underworld. It is a society of loosely bound scoundrels who have their own rules, codes, ways of seeing themselves and the world that has little to do with the conduct and values of the majority. Muriel may have too big of a conscience to completely fit in with the underworld – she does have her moments of guilt and reform - but in the end, she is bound.

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s The Time: Night, Natasza Goerke’s Farewell to Plasma and Olga Tokarczuk’s Primeival and other times.

It would be difficult for me to pinpoint only a few but if I had to narrow the field by the writers who have influenced me to explore the nature of evil, conscience, crime–topics related to my story, I would have to say Flannery O’ Connor, Graham Greene, and Patricia Highsmith - their short stories especially. Recently I read Meghan Abbott’s Queenpin and it blew me away. It is the story of the protégé whose naïvete is slowly stripped by a seduction that is both alluring and dangerous. It is the ultimate story of the “Chinese handcuff” effect except the protagonist is an innocent.

I am enjoying the smaller pieces. I blog at my new site “Black Shatter” and keep the work in flash form, sometimes microform. I am moving away from fiction that fills in many of the gaps and instead explores more of the spaces.