Music is, almost certainly, the biggest source of inspiration and influence for my writing. The skeleton for this story is in the song referenced at the beginning of 3 of its 4 parts, and the outline and theme for it were formed as soon as I’d heard it the first time. It’s a bit ambiguous and open to interpretation, but the thread you can easily discern is of a young man who left home in search of something, casting aside everything to pursue that goal, only to discover at the end – and after hurting many around him – that not only was the goal fruitless, but in its pursuit he’d abandoned what was actually important. This is, of course, not a unique or original premise, but the way the supernatural and spiritual seem to interplay with that base narrative was really interesting to me, and it was something I wanted to explore a bit. The theme (and indeed, the title) of the album from which the song is from – ‘Tarot’ – filled in the gap for me on where I wanted to go with this story: a kind of cosmic tragedy about fate and regret.
A caveat I should point to is that, of course, different music will inspire different people, and the same music will inspire people differently. Metal, as a genre, is not everyone’s bag. It is a genre that I feel works interesting stories into music more than most others though, which is probably one of the reasons I like it. You can similarly see that in some of the music that inspired me to write ‘Blue and Gray,’ notably the album ‘Strange Trails’ by Lord Huron. Indie/folk music also incorporates stories into music, which is probably a big reason I like that kind of music so much as well.
Anyway, enough about that. I could talk about music forever, but really what you get out of music is personal, what speaks to me may mean nothing to someone else and vice-versa, so nobody’s gonna give a shit about how I feel about it, haha. And probably more importantly, it’s almost impossible to translate that feeling into a story, no matter how much you try.
Two big questions I needed to answer before I started writing this one were the specifics of the character and how the story would be structured.
The structure wasn’t too difficult – I wanted the character to repeat the same mortal error several times before being given an opportunity for redemption, which was squandered. The first iteration serves as the introductory anecdote that is sort of a condensed version of the overall story stripped of context. The 2nd iteration reinforces while also also dropping exposition that is needed to put the final part in context. This exposition is fragmentary, but it is expanded and clarified after the 2nd iteration in the scene where the central character pleads with the deity/god. With those pieces in place, the 3rd iteration takes on a new meaning and the whole thing comes together as a cohesive whole. Nothing groundbreaking but I thought it was a structure that would serve this story well.
The 2nd question about the character at the center of the narrative required a little bit of research, but eventually I started seeing that actually several religions have canine gods that are associated with duality or twins, sun and moon, that kind of thing. I was surprised that there are several specific instances of religions where a dog or wolf chases or eats the moon, which I’d never realized before but kind of makes sense in a weird way. Dogs and wolves howl at night, why not have a canine god who chases the moon? But yeah, there are characters like that in Norse, Chinese and Aztec mythology, probably a lot more. I found it interesting that cultures that were so distant had those kind of similarities.
The specific species that I went with, the jackal, kind of carries a little bit of a mysterious, supernatural air, and I think it sort of alludes to an origin in the distant past in itself by way of its association with ancient Egypt.
Once I had that sorted, I needed to figure out specifically where and when I wanted the three iterations of the story to take place. I decided to make the jackal a conquistador in the New World for a few reasons; partly it’s a setting I’ve always found interesting, a clash of cultures unlike anything before or since. It also ties in with the god I seemed to think of my ‘jackal with a hundred names’ being most closely associated with: the Aztec god Xolotl. Given, the setting implicitly has Mayan ruins, but since the story takes place across several centuries in Mexico I thought it was fitting. The story of Xolotl also had a lot of elements that I could use throughout the rest of the story, and I did to a greater degree later in the narrative.
If I’m honest part of it is also that both the subject and structure for this story were inspired by the 2006 film ‘The Fountain,’ which is one of my all-time favs and is set partially in New Spain in the same time period.
I guess that’s enough for background. On to the writing.
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I needed a ‘name’ for the jackal that could translate across the three eras he’d be living in. Francisco Rodgrigo worked because it became Frank Roderick in English and I could make it a more modern sounding (though not totally region appropriate) Franco Rodriguez in the modern segment.
I also started each segment with him breathing, inhaling the scent of New World flowers in 1548, exhaling tobacco smoke in 1892, inhaling to try to detect water in 2019. I dunno, I like doing little things like that. I feel like things like that give some continuity to the character, since he’s actually different individuals with different personalities in his different lives.
Miguel Torres / Michael Hightower is kind of the same in that I needed a name that translated from Spanish to English. The ‘tower’ element relates to the Tarot card ‘The Tower,’ which is indicative of sudden calamity and destruction. That’s what I saw while doing my research, anyway – I’m an atheist irl, I don’t actually believe in anything supernatural, but I’ve always found religion and things like that interesting anyway, if for no other reason than their cultural significance and ability to explain historical happenings. In storytelling, when I need a supernatural element I always lean in that direction as well, almost never to the kind of ‘magic systems’ that you see in fantasy and Harry Potter and stuff like that. I don’t like writing about ‘magic,’ I don’t like reading it, I’ve always found subtle gods and a kind of hidden reality behind the curtain more interesting in stories where supernatural elements are needed. Personal preference.
I also saw Miguel/Michael as the kind of mirror image of the jackal, and the fact that a lot of the myths and gods that deal with the dog or wolf chasing the moon seem to also involve brothers, twins, etc. added a lot, I think. If the jackal is Xolotl, Miguel is Quetzalcoatl. If the jackal is Hati Hrothvitnisson, Miguel is Skoll. I felt like that could work. As a little Easter egg I also made the date May 21 for each section, which is the first day under the sign of Gemini in astrology.
The golden statuette is a MacGuffin in this story, for sure. I usually try to avoid MacGuffins, but I decided to go this route here because at the end of the day it really doesn’t hold any secrets or progress the plot in itself. My hope was that it would serve more as a symbol for his wrong decision that presents itself in each of his lives than a real object that he could ever obtain, pry out the jewels, melt down the gold to sell and become rich. It’s the object that mesmerizes the jackal, purposely ostentatious and massively valuable if he were to ever obtain it, but of course he can’t. He can’t be allowed to. That’s the test.
There’s no explanation as to how it ended up where it is, considering he’s seen it so many times before in his previous lives, but that’s kind of the point. Mysteries where even the writer doesn’t know the explanation are extra mysterious… or lazy on the part of the writer. But in this case my excuse is that I didn’t feel that background would add anything to the narrative and was somewhat out of the scope of the story. You’re free to consider it laziness though, that’s valid, haha.
I had a little trouble trying to describe Francisco’s escape. I felt like my descriptions started getting a little too mechanical despite my efforts to pare down as much as I could while still getting the pertinent facts across. I always worry about stuff like that, whether my story is evolving into an instruction manual, this, then this, then that, here are the steps of the process. You can really lose a reader by boring them with segments like that. Pet peeve of mine.
I try to alter my writing style a little when the character is experiencing trauma or turmoil, like once Francisco is away from his pursuers and suffering from his injuries. Shorter sentences. Recitation of facts. A terse detail. Lots of sensory descriptions. I feel like that changes the tone and pace a little for the reader, focusing in on the here and now when the here and now are what matter most. That’s the intent, anyway.
I tried to trail away the descriptions in the way that would indicate pretty plainly that the jackal was losing his mental acuity and grip on reality as the infection in his arm spread through his body, a little hallucination, a narrator that is less than 100% reliable. That stuff is hard for me so this was good practice.
At the end the jackal is chasing the moon before falling into the cenote and drowning. Both the moon and water are recurring elements, which I thought was appropriate since in part I was trying to mesh this story somewhat over the story of the Aztec god Xolotl, partly because the bulk of the story takes place in Mexico and partly because I felt it also fit best. That became more overt later in the story.
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The second part following the outlaw Frank Roderick was pretty fun for me. In movies and books and games, I love the Western genre in general, so making stories set in the old West is always great to me.
One thing I worried about here was the continuity of Francisco/Frank and Miguel/Michael. In my mind they are the same souls living these experiences over and over again, but the actual lives they lead in their various time periods can be quite different. The souls are the same, but the lives they are leading in any time period are separate and individual, which I felt was appropriate if the characters could not remember their past lives. I also wanted this emphasized a little more in the different ages of Miguel/Michael in the jackal’s different lives. He was about the same age as the jackal in the New Spain portion, but in this section on the train traveling through Mexico he is significantly older, in his 40s or 50s while the jackal is much younger, and in the last section in the near-modern he is a child. Same souls, different lives. It made sense to me, hopefully it translated into the writing?
Another topic I love, if you couldn’t tell from some of my stories and the name I’m using on this site, is history. Historical fiction is among my favorite genres, James Michener is my favorite writer, and writing stories that kind of weave actual historicity into the narrative are super fun for me to write. So, in this section, I ended up adding a lot of extra detail about the artifact/relic that the professor was toting. I think this was needed anyway to added context in this section so that it wasn’t just a repeat of the previous one, kind of like slowly pulling back the curtain on what’s really happening beyond the surface-level story, as well as to provide some context for the next section where the jackal meets with the primary god of this universe in ethereal space.
Part of it, as well, is to throw in some connections to my other stories. Anything I write that is not explicitly set in a different fictional universe (Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, etc.) I kind of consider to be set in the same ‘furry’ universe, which is mostly identical to ours except populated by anthro folks. So in this section I directly connect the relic to my earlier story ‘Termination Shock’ by implying the statuette is of the god Asherah-El. I also tie in my novel ‘Blue and Gray’ by having Frank’s coat being tailored by ‘Harrison & Riley.’
Anyway, eventually desire for the relic overpowers Frank and he acts. I wanted the scene where he kills Dr. Hightower to be overly violent and gruesome, a kind of juxtaposition to the cordial conversation that had been the focus of the section up to that point. I don’t like writing especially violent scenes and usually shy away from them, but narratively I thought it was necessary to really hammer home how intense the jackal’s desire for the relic is and how he will do anything to get it, regardless of who or what gets in his way. I feel like this was also heightened by how pleasant and friendly Dr. Hightower was, not to mention his naive trust of a stranger. The story is chiefly one of the jackal’s repeated failure, but Michael is the secondary focus, a tragic figure doomed to suffer over and over again until the jackal can break the cycle. If the reader is going to feel sympathy I wanted it to be for him, not for the jackal.
By the time the jackal jumps from the moving train his death is already all but guaranteed from his numerous injuries, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. He’s got a gunshot wound, broken leg and severe bloody lacerations from the broken window glass, but in his mind all he has to do is make it to a doctor and somehow he’ll be able to sell the statuette and be rich.
This is where I wanted to start tying the jackal especially strongly to the Aztec god Xolotl. In Aztec mythology there is a story that the sun stops moving in the sky, and in order for it to start moving again all the gods have to kill themselves. All the gods do this except for Xolotl, who runs away and hides, disguising himself as different plants and animals to remain hidden. He cries so much that his eyes fall out of their sockets, but eventually he is found and killed, and the sun begins to move once again,
One thing that I found interesting about that story is that while Xolotl cries, his tears are not for the other gods who dutifully sacrificed themselves or the people on Earth suffering because the sun won’t move. Xolotl cries only for himself.
In the first section Francisco cries, but for himself and the situation he’s in. He thought of home and childhood, but he did not think of Miguel, the friend he betrayed and killed. Similarly in the second part the outlaw Frank Roderick cries when he realized how fucked he is, but he never even thinks about the innocent professor he murdered. He’s suffering from the consequences of his actions, but his focus is always selfish. He never learns anything. At the end Frank traps himself in the cave – Mictlan – and realizes he’s going to die, but he never feels pity or remorse for his actions, only the outcome.
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The next section in which the jackal speaks with the supreme god of his universe took a while until I felt like I got it right. I wanted the deity to clearly be the character Asherah-El from my story Termination Shock, but I didn’t want it to be necessary for the reader to have read that story to understand everything about this one, so mostly I was trying to strike a balance between being specific enough to get across the points I wanted to get across while still being nebulous enough to make the reader feel like the background of this entity was fleshed out without the need for them to know exactly how. There’s also just the challenge that comes from trying to write dialogue from the perspective of an omniscient, omnipotent being. I don’t feel like there’s a right solution, but I’m pretty okay with how this section turned out.
I did a little name drop in the section enumerating some of the jackal’s past lives, mentioning that he was a Minoan merchant in one of them. Because why not. As I mentioned, this name is mostly just from my fondness for history and interest in that specific place and time, interest in the story of the Minotaur and Knossos and the Labyrinth, bull-jumping, etc. Also it’s because when I was a kid Age of Empires was one of my favorite games, and I always chose the Minoans when playing multiplayer. They had the best archers in the game!
Part of the goal of this section was also to clear up any doubts about the nature of the jackal and to be a kind of interesting expository section to put things into context. As I mentioned earlier I was surprised when doing research how many cultures have mythological stories about dogs chasing or eating the moon, so I added in some of the ones I found to link the jackal across cultures. Xolotl, Hati Hrothvitnisson, Tiangou, Wepwawet… he’s all of them and a lot more.
I also needed to make sure the previous sections were fully explained. Through their conversation I wanted to make it clear that the ‘relic’ could never be obtained by the jackal, it was essentially an elaborate test for him, and only by acting unselfishly once could he break the ‘Cycle’ he was in. The implications of this aren’t important, not really, and I wanted to make it open to interpretation. At one point I do mention that he stands to inherit this world if he can break the cycle, but what that means isn’t elaborated on. That’s way beyond the scope of this story, and frankly I don’t have an answer for it. It’s enough to know that the stakes are high, the ‘Cycle’ (whatever it is) can be broken, so far the jackal has failed at every opportunity but it will never end until he makes a different choice.
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I wanted to make the last section in or near present day. I settled on 2019 mostly because that would make sense as a year when border patrol would be very active and also I didn’t want to deal with anything related to covid, haha. In keeping with the idea that it’s the same souls but different lives with different experiences, I made Miguel/Michael a child in this timeline rather than an adult.
I leaned more heavily and blatantly into the Xolotl angle in this section. The wind jewel that the jackal wears around his neck is a direct reference to this, since this is something that is directly associated with both Xolotl and his brother Quetzalcoatl, which Miguel can be viewed as. Whether it does or doesn’t actually speak to him and tell him where to find the cave is not addressed, so the reader is free to interpret that as they wish.
The jackal pleaded for the god to give him memory of his previous lives in the last section, so I wanted the latter section of this part to imply that he kind of had at least a partial memory through dreams in this life. Descending down into the cave and finding the skeleton of Frank Roderick – one of his previous lives – also has parallels to Xolotl in that in Aztec mythology Xolotl descends down into Mictlan to retrieve bones of the previous inhabitants of the world to start new life on Earth. I also mentioned the ‘Harrison and Riley’ coat once again because as I mentioned, I view this as taking place in the same ‘universe’ as Blue and Gray and all of my other stories not associated with different IP.
Franco has a Taurus Millennium pistol both because I thought the name of it is sort of in line with the idea of fate, fortune, tarot, astrology that weaves through the story, and also because in real life it’s a pretty cheap, crappy gun that I’d imagine would be in line for a character in Franco’s line of work.
As for the ending, it’s of course heavily implied that Franco repeats his mistake once again, murdering Miguel and taking the relic. I felt that was the best place to end it. I’d also had the ending of the story set before I filled in a lot of the rest, namely him saying that it was his ‘fortune,’ meaning his treasure/wealth but also with the real implication that it’s his fate to repeat the same mistake once again. The details of how he ends up getting killed this time and what the future holds are not spelled out, but the reader knows what will happen in broad strokes.
Anyway, that’s it! This one was a lot of fun for me. I know this kind of story will never get the same kind of traction here as porn stories, but it’s good practice for me since this is the kind of writing I’m working on on the side. I actually started this specifically as practice for a novel I am writing that I’m hoping to publish some day, but that’s a long way off.
