Jacalyn Schnelle

Writer in Tucson, Arizona. Author of Springs Falls. Contact me at [email protected].

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Jacalyn Schnelle is creating Springs Falls and other writings | Patreon

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I’ve finally made one of these, where I will be posting work such as short stories, essays, journals, and book chapters,as well as behind the scenes look at my life and processes.

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The Dis-empowerment of Beverly Marsh

TW: Discussions of rape, sexual assault, discussions of child abuse I am a horror writer, a horror reader, a horror watcher, and a rape survivor. Trying to balance these isn’t easy. Anyone who’s spent five minutes around the horror genre knows rape is a go-to plot element. To engage with the work I love I’ve learned to wait for reviews from others, often my friends or partner. I watch trailers or read synopsis. I’ve learned the signs, the common beats, and I can usually pick them up from a trailer, or five minutes into the movie. Being raped didn’t destroy my love of horror, so I had to learn to adapt, and I’ve gotten to the point where I am almost never surprised. It was learn that or struggle every day with being triggered, so I learned. ‘It’, a movie based off the book by Stephen King, took me by surprise. King has never shied away from rape in his books, and Gerald’s Game, soon to also be released as a movie, deals almost entirely with rape trauma and the effect it can have on your life. ‘Library Policeman’, a novella, is similar, though with a supernatural bent, and ‘The Stand’ has several heart rending scenes of abuse and survival.

The difference in this case is that the book version of ‘It’ features no sexual assault. What it has instead it a low level radiation of toxic masculinity that permeates all of Beverly Marsh’s life. Her father views her as property, and often accuses her of ‘letting the boys touch (her)’. The last scene with him features an attempt to beat her to death based on this belief, only somewhat influenced by the influence of the clown Pennywise. His interest in her is emotionally incestuous, there is no doubt, as he seems to see women as interchangeable, but his abuse is emotional and physical. The unsettling sexual undertone comes from a father believing his daughter, even at 10, is both a sexual being, and someone he has the right to have sexual control over.

In a culture where ‘Rules For Dating My Daughter’ can be found in every corner of Facebook and Father’s Day merchandise involves shirts like the one below, the story of Beverly Marsh is incredibly important.

The book is a very different portrayal of childhood sexualisation then what we usually see. It is the ‘I have a shotgun!’ speech taken to it’s natural conclusion (”I have a daughter, but I also have a gun, a shovel, and a backyard”), and it is horrifying. If you believe you own your child’s sexual experience, you sexualize them from the moment you begin to believe that. They are not a child to you; they are an object to control, someone who’s decisions about their own body will never be right unless you are involved. That means you must be involved, even before they are sexual beings, to make sure they do not make mistakes. In ‘It’, this leads a preteen to being shamed and almost killed over something she has not even begun to understand. This is one of the (many) reasons the new ‘It’ is deeply disappointing to me. Beverly lives with her single father, and her mother is never mentioned, playing into the stereotype of men ‘needing’ sex and seeking it from their children if they don’t have a partner or aren’t ‘getting enough’ from said partner, a false and harmful idea. The sexual abuse is discussed immediately after we see her interact with her father for the first time. All of the choices she makes in this movie regarding her body related to the abuse. Abuse survivors will often change themselves physically in some way, either as a way to reclaim their bodies, or, as in the movie, to make themselves unappealing to their abusers. However, this was not in the book. The nuance and subtlety is violently thrown out the window in favor of a straightforward sort of sexual abuse. Now the original story wasn't perfect, of course, not even close; but at the end of the day what I saw was one my favorite books and most beloved plot lines become something I did not recognize. Both the book and the movie follow a group of seven children, known around town as outcasts and losers, fighting a force that came from beyond our time and space. As they learn more about the creature that calls itself Pennywise they also discover that they are more than how others see them. The Losers, as they call themselves, spend one terrible summer discovering the unimaginable might of childhood belief and the evil that plagues their town. Unlike the book, the movie chooses to make Beverly a victim, and she is never allowed to leave that role. She is always ‘the girl’ to them; unlike the book ,there is never a single moment of camaraderie where all of the Loser’s are equals. Much like how Mike, the only black Loser, is diminished to a token, Beverly loses any elements of herself that are not connected to her ‘femininity’. She is struggling exclusively with her upcoming menstruation, her father’s abuse and control, the rumors of promiscuity that plague her in everyday life. This movie does not allow her to be the best shot in the losers, or a horror fan in her own right, or a friend, or a multi-faceted character struggling to survive in a world that doesn’t care about her. She is a love interest, and a sexual object for the other Loser’s, with the notable exception of Mike which leads to an yet another unfortunate racist undertone. The ultimate betrayal of Beverly, however, comes from an element unlike anything in the story that inspired it. In the third act the Loser’s begin to fight among themselves, and ultimately disband. After her father’s attack, where she is allowed to save herself, she is kidnapped by Pennywise to tempt the other Loser’s to the sewer for the final battle. She is not with them. The only reason the Loser’s get back together is to save ‘the girl’. She is the damsel for whom the men will forget their arguments.  If they had to go with the kidnapping idea, Mike, who had the least amount of time with the group, or Richie, notorious loudmouth and impetus for the dissolution of the Losers, being the victim could have made the finale fascinating. Driven not by a strange chivalry or romantic interest, but by friendship and loyalty, it would have changed the tone of the movie almost entirely.  As it is, the story ends not with seven Losers holding hands in a circle, equal and devoted to one another, promising to save a town that doesn’t care about them with a blood oath. It ends with Beverly kissing Bill, an uncomfortably long shot that shows us that once again Beverly is not allowed to be a person, that in this world she will always only be the girl.

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!!!! That's my name !!!! WHAT

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My story, ‘An Acceptable Loss’ is featured in the anthology, Enter the Apocalypse.

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Gender Terror

My story, It’s Creaking Up Above, can be read on Gender Terror’s website.

https://genderterror.com/2017/01/03/its-creaking-up-above/

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Postpartum

Parenthood is a difficult job, even when wanted. When child rearing is a cultural expectation and not a choice things can go bad very quickly. Read an excerpt of this story below. 

She should have terminated. Sarah knew that even before they put the squalling pink thing she was supposed to love - but didn't - into her exhausted arms. This whole thing was an accident. People (her mother) told her it wouldn't matter. That as soon as she held the child she'd forced out of her body, she would be glad it was there. Sarah wondered if this was her mother's revenge for being forced to carry her. Two days later she took Felicity Ann home, bringing with her multiple prescriptions meant to alleviate what the doctors were sure was post-partum depression. It was hell on earth almost immediately. The pills, when she could remember to take them, made her logey and miserable, but did nothing to her distaste for the child she was solely responsible for. Maybe she could still put it up for adoption. Was that an option, once you took it home? She would have to find out. It was hard to focus, though. Hard to remember what she meant to look up when she spent all night trying to calm down Felicity. It was astounding to her that something so new could already hate so many things. Sarah was positive the child had no reason to cry so much, but that didn't stop her. The hallucinations were the final straw, though. Sarah hadn't slept more than 8 hours over the course of three days. Her eyes were grainy and her mouth was dry, and the hallucinations weren’t making her feel better all. Sarah heard her door unlocking at all hours of the night, shaking her from the shallow, fitful sleep that she did manage to get. No one was ever there, though, no one but the baby, awake and miserable yet again.

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TANSTAAFL Press

My story, An Acceptable Loss, will be available from the TANSTAAFL Press anthology ‘Enter the Apocalypse’. Pick it up this March!

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It’s Creaking Up Above

There’s something in the attic. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s getting closer, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. Read an excerpt of this story below.

The wind howled it's way around the cracks and corners of the tiny house. Inside, the youngest of the family, a boy of five, was the only one awake, the blanket to his chin. He heard that wind in his nightmares sometimes, as it came whipping in off the long plains that stretched around the farm forever. It scared him less when the thunder slammed into the windows with it, or it brought the snow to take the world away. Those times it was right, and natural, and only doing what wind must do, because it is wind.

On nights like this, however, it screamed for no reason but to scare him. His father hated it because it hurt the trees, and his mother hated it because it made her sneeze, but he feared it as it encroached, enraged at him for some reason he could never understand. He could swear he felt the house crouch lower huddling and hiding against the onslaught. The boy could commiserate, and scrambled further down into his quilts, large eyes staring. It almost seemed like he could hear things rustling in the attic above. Perhaps the wind had found it's way in, or scared in a creature much like himself, small and quaking. Or maybe, as his mother so often said, her lips pursed, her voice snapping like the knots that burst in the fire, his imagination was simply too active. He tried to make it behave, but it never seemed to listen. Listen. The creaking of the wood, right above his bed. A hole in the roughly hewn planks tried to catch his eye, and he pulled the blankets higher with a gasping little noise. There's was probably nothing up there, just like the apple tree wasn't a skeleton, and the fox holes weren't secret tunnels to buried treasure. Some of the things had been true, though, like the time he dreamed that Janey Levit from the next farm down had been taken away by trolls. She had gone missing that very same night, but when he had tried to tell his mother who had done it she had just cried and screamed and finally hugged him, confusing him again. So he knew not to get up to explore the thuds and creaks above him. Even if he wasn't afraid – and he was always afraid, even when the wind wasn't howling at him – it would be a bad idea to get up. If he was found out of bed at this hour Mother would be scared and worried and his father would walk back and forth and yell about how 'that imagination wasn't from his side of the family' and then mother would cry. He hated it when Mother cried. But he hated the noises from the wind and the attic even more. If anything was going to keep him firmly in this bed until morning, it would be that fear, not his parents.

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Lazarus

A young mother’s religious faith is both a burden and a blessing. She knows her child’s death must be a test, and she is determined to pass.

Read an excerpt of this story below.

Ruth Williams was A Good Christian. That was how she defined herself above everything else. Ruth Williams was a skilled teacher, devoted wife, loving mother, and A Good Christian. This remained true above all things when her son's stomach aches began in earnest. It was true even when the results came back positive, and the testing, and dosing, and waiting began.

Her friends patted her hands and cooed at her, assuring her this was simply a trial for her faith, and He would surely return health to her only begotten son once He was sure she was like Job; tested, but not defeated.

Her husband called every week like clockwork, and she became annoyed, and then scared, by the sense of him slipping away from them. He had always been a strong man, and being a soldier of their nation as well as a soldier of their God had given him a sense of steadiness she had never seen before, or since. Now, though, he was hard as well as steady, and he always seemed to find her lacking.

She pleaded, though she knew it wouldn't move him. “Joseph, please. Please, come home! Nathan needs you. He's begging to see you.”

“Ruth, I can hear the doubt in your voice,” He thundered down at her from across thousands of miles, and she closed her eyes, wincing back from the accusation. “Nathan will be healed if that is God's will. He doesn't need me, he already knows my faith accompanies him; he needs a mother that believes. You are the one that sees him everyday, and you are the one who encourages his devotional. Do not fail him.”

The conversation had ended then as he was called back to his services, and she hung up knowing that this was a test of her faith. Those around her had commented on it, again and again. There were no coincidences, only God's signs, and she was one of the blessed, able to take heed of what He was telling her. That night she prayed until her voice gave out, and wept when her boy's restlessness (“His tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day”, she mumbled to herself, exhausted and joyous) became deep sleep a little before three that morning. It was a sign.

In the months that followed, her co-workers and church friends smiled, encouraged her, told her how proud they were of her faith. She made sure to demure, not just to them, but in her heart, knowing pride was not for her; God was. Nathan was. God had given her Nathan, the only child her unfortunate womb had been able to bear, and when she had become proud, and comfortable, He had reminded her that Nathan was His to give, and to take. She accepted this rebuke as she had everything in her life; with grace and humility, and an acceptance of her lot. She prayed, of course, and encouraged Nathan to pray with her, but knew she could only hope to prove herself to God. For a while, it seemed as though she had.