Student Spotlight: Kaitlin Nichols

Interview

What do you write?

High and Epic fantasy about the con­flict between fate and free will. At least, that’s what every­thing I write trends towards, kind of like how toast falls butter side down no matter how hard you flip it.

Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

Prob­a­bly either Tamora Pierce or Michael Crich­ton. Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series was a staple of my teenager­hood and gave me so much bravery and con­fi­dence. I’d think to myself “You know what? Alanna could do this. Daine could do this. You can totally do this.” At the time it was valu­able, but it was also valu­able later, when I real­ized how impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tion was in fiction.Crichton influ­enced the way I write about magic. Juras­sic Park is written so that the science is seam­less with the story. At the same time that the reader is under­stand­ing the plot, so to are they under­stand­ing the science which drives the plot, and the under­ly­ing ethics ques­tions to boot. I write my magic as if it’s a science, some­thing to study and broaden rather than an eso­teric thing that just exists.

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

Funny story about that! I applied to MFAs right out of college, but no one wanted a fantasy writer, and I never found Stonecoast at that time.  So I decided that hey, if they weren’t going to let me write fantasy, then I wasn’t going to go to school. So there! Fast forward eight years, and a friend of mine from high school had been accept­ed an attend­ed her first semes­ter. “You HAVE to come,” she said. “You don’t get it.  People sit around at lunch and debate were­wolves in space and what kind of vampire is best. It’s home.“It took me a year to gather the courage to take out student loans, but having grad­u­at­ed now, I can say with cer­tain­ty that she was right.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

Well. There’s three. But I’ll make it short.My first res­i­den­cy we were doing Karaoke and the wifi went down. Someone started singing “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast acapel­la, and slowly we all joined in, until there were 8 or 9 of us belting out this Disney song totally from memory. There’s a fan­tas­tic picture some­where of the incident.My second res­i­den­cy I sprained my ankle badly (embar­rass­ing­ly, I was playing Pokemon Go!). The care and concern from my fellow stu­dents was astound­ing, and to be honest, I needed it.Finally in my forth res­i­den­cy in Ireland, I joined 2 other stu­dents on their lunchtime hikes. We went up into Dingle pass and hiked down the road to the little lake that’s a bit down the moun­tain from Dingle. It was an incred­i­ble view, and I went swim­ming in the lake (for all of 2 seconds, but it was the most deli­cious water!) and then we hiked back up, chat­ting all the way. What a fan­tas­tic time that was, and the ice cream and ride from Ted at the end made it even better.

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose?

Invic­tus by William Ernst Henly. It’s the only poem that has stayed mem­o­rized in my head, and it’s prob­a­bly a good deal to do with many themes of my writing.  “It matters not how straight the gate/How charged with pun­ish­ments the scroll/I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.”

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

Well, I’d like to be the next best­seller, but I’ll settle for enough fame making a dif­fer­ence with my writing, to affect a few people’s lives by either giving them hope, making them think, or just giving them a char­ac­ter to say “they did it. So will I.”

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Featured Work

How Sweet the Flesh

The fol­low­ing is an exclu­sive work of fiction for Stonecoast Review. Trigger warning: this story alludes to “chil­dren in danger.”

The deep water vibrat­ed with sound, clicks of rock on rock, rock on coral, coral on crab.

From my place on the sand I saw only three colors:

Brown.  Tan.  Blue.

The sand was fine and white, the kind people dreamed about while surfing through vaca­tion ads they could never afford. Grains of it crunched in my teeth and crawled on my scalp like tiny, per­sis­tent sea lice. Sand is com­posed of bits of ground up land­scape that didn’t survive the waves: shells with no living owner, empty bodies of dearly depart­ed foraminifera. The ocean rests on a grave­yard of beau­ti­ful corpses. I was there for the bas­ket­ball-sized clams.  They were studded along the bay floor like the raisins in the Christ­mas bread my sister sold at church bake sales.

“Sweet breads from sweet babies,” my uncle would say when he came by and bought a loaf, press­ing a bit onto her tongue, making her suck the stick­i­ness off his fingers…Our father always said his brother was a little eccen­tric.  But he was family, so we didn’t tell mom.

The clam’s eyes were trained on the surface.  When I had first come to see the clams in the deep, I thought they were watch­ing me. They had big, human eyes, com­plete with whites, sclera, and iris. I had only learned the parts last year in science class—it made me feel better to have words for them. But when I asked the teacher if clams had the same kind of eyes, he had gone on a long ram­bling lecture. A simple “no” would have been fine.

Fish didn’t come to this place. When a mis­guid­ed school of minnows wan­dered onto the mine­field of bivalves, I saw why.  Decep­tive­ly lazy tubes stretched from the front lines of the clam kingdom, at first flaccid and dis­tend­ed with water, but then erect as they ven­tured closer.  Sud­den­ly, the water began to move. A little group of minnows became sur­round­ed by sucking, hungry ten­ta­cles. For the first time, the clams had turned their eyes from the surface and onto the prey, staring into the school with the inten­si­ty of a scru­ti­niz­ing lover.

Thank­ful­ly, I was too big to be prey. I sat amongst the clams as an observ­er, of no more note than a rock, holding my breath like my mother had taught me. I was up to ten minutes at a time now. My sister said I was a freak.  Maybe that was why I kept coming back to the clams with human eyes.

Tonight, the boats shone bright, white lights into the deep, luring more foolish fish into their nets. Amongst the clams, the browns, tans, and blues turned the kind of green which shouldn’t quite exist. I held extra still while the boats passed over; I was sup­posed to be in bed, after all.

It was strange. Even though we ate clam meat nigh on monthly, they were never over-fished.

The clams set their shells half-open, and I could just see the mottled brown lips dotted with impos­si­bly blue eyes.  People hadn’t even had a word for that color of blue until store­front signs blared its par­tic­u­lar kind of neon.

I’d found out that the eyes were blue when mother dragged my first clam onto a boat in preschool.  The eyes had rolled back and forth like a hys­teric stal­lion; round, irises dilated in terror, just like my sister’s when our uncle asked for a hug.

“They’re just clams.” My mother had said when I expressed the gorging dread of watch­ing the clam’s eyes dart back and forth between my mother and sister, as if begging to be heard.  “They can’t hurt you, now.” And then she took out a knife and sliced deep through the lips, until the flesh lay bare to her hands.

In the green of the boat lights, I waited.  My mother was on one of them, and tomor­row was clam night. Finally, I’d be able to figure out how she per­formed her magic. What hap­pened under the water while we dragged up clams? Did they mouth farewell? Those eyes, the way they rolled and widened…I had long sus­pect­ed they would scream as they were dragged to the floor of our boat, pried open, invaded, and eaten.  My mother savored those meals.  My sister wouldn’t touch them.

A splash above me. The clicks and con­stant wor­ry­ing of the sea around me ground to a halt, and my ears rang with the lack of noise. Heart pound­ing, I squint­ed into the unnat­ur­al green, looking for the source of the disturbance.

There was a figure, writhing at the surface, arms akimbo, legs kicking, not to swim but to defend. It was my Uncle. Had he fallen off the boat? He was sup­posed to be going with my mother tonight.  As I watched, his legs stiff­ened, curled up. Did he have a cramp? Had he just mis­cal­cu­lat­ed his step and fallen into the water? His knees came to his chest and his head snapped up, then he sank beneath me.

As my uncle sank, bubbles flew up like silver birds escap­ing his lips. Finally, the new clam landed on the floor of the bay, sand spray­ing up into the water like a plume of confetti.

Resist­ing the urge to gasp and scream—I couldn’t inhale water this deep!—I pushed off the bottom of the cove and shot to the surface, letting out breath as I went, kicking so hard that I beat my own bubbles to the surface, break­ing the inky layer to the world of moon­light and silent air.

I turned, pushing water around me to stay afloat, when a light turned direct­ly into my eyes.

“Tala?”

I threw my hand out of the water, still kicking and squint­ing into the light. Slowly the light turned away from me and onto the figure on a boat. “Mama?” I asked, and a great sob erupted from my chest.

“What are you doing out here?” Mother asked, crouch­ing down in the boat.  She was alone, I could see that, wearing her short working dress and flip flops, her boat bobbing up and down in the tide with me. “Tala, why were you down there?”

“I wanted to see,” I whim­pered. “Mama, are they all people?  Even the ones we eat?”

My mother sighed and sat down on the edge of her boat, reach­ing out to smooth my thick hair down to my scalp, the salt of my tears washing away the sand on my cheeks.

“Yes love. They are.”

“But why?” I sobbed. “There’s hun­dreds of them, mama! Why?”

She smiled as if someone had taken a fishing hook and pulled it up and out of her cheek.  “Why don’t you swim down and take a closer look? I’m sure they’ll show you why I put them down there.”

I stared at her face, illu­mi­nat­ed by the great white light, and tried to work it out for myself.  Mama had put them there? The only reason Mama ever got angry enough to hurt anyone was if they hurt me or my sister. Uncle had never hurt us.  He was just…eccentric.

But there was no arguing with the chipped porce­lain sharp­ness of Mama’s smile. I nodded, turned and dove down again, Mama tipping the light into a column for me to follow.

The clam which had been Uncle was rocking slight­ly, I could see the furrow it had made around itself, was still making. Just like all the others, it had two eyes, staring at the surface, and the irises were huge, as if fury had pulled them to their great­est diameter.

I swam over to him, float­ing over the eyes and peering down. Had this really been a man, once?

A tube flopped out from the clam’s side and as water cycled through, it stretched out to me.  I stayed still, won­der­ing what it would do. None of them had ever acknowl­edged me beneath the water. But this was my uncle. Maybe he rec­og­nized me. I reached out my hand.

The extant flesh ignored my gesture, and I felt it wrap around my thigh, drawing me closer. Wide eyes fixated on my chest. A second valve slapped at my mouth, then wrig­gled at my lips, the same way I had watched my uncle’s fingers wiggle at my sister when he’d given her the Christ­mas bread.

Hey baby, he’d said. I’m all dirty. 

The shell opened as if to devour me whole.

Grit­ting my teeth, I kicked away, his ten­ta­cle not strong enough to hold me.  When I turned, a forest of pale fleshy ten­ta­cles erupted across the sea floor, as if the new­com­er had proven that my body was nothing more than food.

It’s dan­ger­ous to surface from a dive like that too quickly.  I swam until my stomach cramped.  When I broke the surface, my mother was there with a rope and a grim expression.

“Do you under­stand, Tala?” she asked.

Panting, trying to push the memory of the ten­ta­cle at my lips, I nodded.

“Good.  I could use the help.” She pulled me into the boat, wrap­ping me in a towel.

When we returned home that night, a bowl of rice awaited me, strips of grilled clam criss­crossed across the grains.

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