Meshoo Crowe & Woodstock, Ontario
An announcement of an announcement to come
Weird name, eh? But I kind of love it and I have to learn to love it even more as it will become the name of my alter ego, or, more specifically it will be my new pen name. I’ve decided to become a literary-horror writer on the side to deal with my over productivity and to separate my brand (sorry!) where I write memoirs of darkness and strictly literary fiction. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to give birth to Meshoo Crowe because I have been thinking about doing this for years but I suppose all the elements had to be in place, like people suggesting using my dog’s name as my first name (plus I wanted something nonbinary and paying homage to my Polish heritage) and then me looking back at certain archetypes in my stories and honouring the spirit of a crow that has guided me through my entire writing career. The last sentence I wrote? The old me would go and drown myself from embarrassment but I’m so far past cringe I can only embrace with joy.
I love the weird, unsettling elegance to the name, like someone trying to sound normal but failing just enough to be suspicious; it’s memorable, eerie, and just absurd enough to hopefully be remembered. I don’t know which work will be my debut fiction as Meshoo Crowe since I’m increasingly leaning towards self-publishing, but for now, Crowe has been writing their Ontario Gothic short stories revolving around Woodstock, and every time I sit down to sketch one of those tales, it just pours out of me in its entirety. All I have to do is shape it a bit once it’s out and I’m astounded at the ease with which they materialize. I don’t know if they’ve always lived in me or if I’d unlocked some sort of weird portal. Which would be on brand considering their location. When you drive in from London (Ontario) to Woodstock, you have to pass underneath a short tunnel-bridge and once you do, the town is suddenly right there, opening up like a (creepy) movie. When we were teenagers we’d say “Welcome to the Twilight Zone,” every time on driving in (we’d go to London to rat about its various malls, later I went to university there).
And here’s the fourth story in the series (very rough draft):
The Son of Moth
Auntie Beth drove me to see Moth twice. The first time was when I graduated elementary school and the second time when I turned 16. The second time, she announced to us, to me and Moth, that this is the last time she is responsible for me visiting Moth and she said it in a way that made me feel guilty as if she’d been driving me every weekend. “He gets his licence he can drive,” Auntie Beth said to the ceiling and got up and left me there with Moth for the remainder of the hour. She didn’t talk to Moth eight years prior either, telling the ceiling instead that I graduated third in class and that Grandpa died and that they built a new mall, Woolco, on the outskirts of town.
I’ve been calling my mother, Moth, for as long as I can remember because that’s what I called her as a little boy when Auntie Beth tried to explain — and couldn’t — what she was to me. Of course I understood what mothers were — all of my friends had them — but it didn’t make sense to call her that and not because I was angry, it just wasn’t logical. Auntie Beth said I should come up with a nickname then that I think would make sense to me. I thought of “moth” because it was part of the word but also because moths were the wrong butterflies. Not wrong like bad. Just imperfect, made from leftover pieces — same wings, but not as bright, like someone meant to make a butterfly and something slipped. That felt true.
It also fit, because I didn’t know what kind of person my mother really was. I only knew the Big Fact about her—that she was in prison for murder. I didn’t remember the murder and I didn’t remember her as my mother. But I was of her and because of that I knew what it felt like to be made from something flawed.
I didn’t get my licence for a long time. That’s only partly why I didn’t visit Moth again. I didn’t visit Moth but we’d send each other birthday card and on Christmas I’d receive a care package: a card she’d drawn on with stubby pencil crayons, the kind they sell at commissary, and a letter folded so many times it felt like something sacred. The Christmas letter would sum up her year in a detached unmotherly tone; it was more of a report. Occasionally she’d get someone on the outside to order me socks or chocolate bars to add to the package. Once, she sent a tiny crocheted heart — stiff with effort and prison starch — someone in her unit had helped her make. The heart didn’t feel like her at all and I imagined a scene: a stern but loving warden butch trying to convince Moth. “C’mon,” she’d say, voice like gravel and honey. “Kid’s still your kid.” The care packages weren’t wrapped. She couldn’t wrap anything. But my name was always written like she meant it, pressing the pencil into the paper till the lines would become smooth grooves. It was a code, a wink, some sort of proof that she thought of me, hard. At least that’s how I interpreted it.
Moth killed five people. One drunk Christmas evening Uncle Frank said, “It was way more than fucking five.” But five is how many she’d been convicted for. Two were well known to her — both were her lovers — and three were people she took care of as a PSW, which is also how she got caught.
The first two weren’t the murders I was interested in — I was interested in her third: how did she decide that person had to die? The first and second even could've been anything, an accident, self-defence. But the third — what kind of thought process ends with murder as a reasonable option? Was it already a tactic by then — something she knew worked? By the time she had killed her fourth, did it become a thing she just did, like the way you start thinking of yourself having a certain preference when it comes to dealing with problems? like how some people take up jogging to cope with anxiety, or get really into cold plunges instead of going to therapy?
I used to fantasize about her getting released. I pictured her in cutoff jean shorts living in a motel right outside of Brantford except in my scenario, this motel was also in the desert and we were in Nevada and this was a movie. Maybe something with Nicholas Cage, directed by Lynch. In that fantasy, Moth was Dorothy Vallens—Dorothy, just like her namesake—and here the fantasy would stop as I’d realize I’d been lusting after this figure.
That is great writing! Now I want to read the book! Can't wait for it to be published+