Owen Essen

Entrepreneur

Designer

Storyteller

Owen Essen

Entrepreneur

Designer

Storyteller

Blog Post

Three Eyed Man

November 7, 2017 Uncategorized, Writing

Three Eyed Man is a collection of short stories I wrote in high school and in the years immediately after. It’s an eclectic collection, ranging from whimsical, magical realism to grittier, more real world stories. Rather than being centered around a common theme, Three Eyed Man was more about a particular point in my life, and all the different things I was thinking about, dreaming about and worrying about at that time.

Like a lot of writers, I have a very hard time looking at my work once it’s out in the world. This is particularly true since I wrote most of these stories years ago when I was a teenager. Some of the subject matter is quite dark and graphic, and makes me uneasy now, but I also think part of what’s really great about Three Eyed Man is its rawness, and the fact that it does go to dark places.

Check out on Three Eyed Man on Amazon.

 

 

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Night Sky image by Tom Bennett

 

 

King of the Empty Desert

King of the Empty Desert is a highly metaphorical story about a man who wanders into the desert at night. After nearly dying of thirst, he meets a strange and beautiful woman. What at first seems like a fantasy turns into a nightmare as they struggle against each other for control. It’s a story about power and madness, and is one of the stories I’m most proud of.

Some people have described it as ‘poetic prose,’ and though I had not heard that phrase when I wrote it, I think it’s an accurate description of what I wanted it to be. It’s a dreamlike kind of story, full of passion and images.

It’s also very dark. There’re fairly graphic descriptions of violence, rape and sexual exploitation. I feel these were necessary to the story, but I don’t doubt that they make some people (including me) uncomfortable.

I began writing King of the Empty Desert while staying on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, after a long, nighttime walk on the beach.

 

 

Alone image by Paul Bence
Alone image by Paul Bence

 

Locker 99

Locker 99 is the story most directly about high school. It’s about a quiet, mysterious transfer student that gets his friends to start selling drugs. They gradually become more and more powerful first within the school, then in the community at large.

Though it’s a very different story than King of the Empty Desert, they have some themes in common. They’re both about power, the pursuit of it, and the corrupting effect of having it.

As a story about drug dealers, and even drug users, it’s admittedly not very realistic. It’s stylized, in the way that West Side Story isn’t actually what gangs in New York are like. In a certain sense, it’s really a high school fantasy. Though ostensibly about power, it’s also kind of about the weakness and vulnerability of being a teenager. It’s a time in which we seem to have so little control over our lives, and so Locker 99 is kind of a fairy tale, in a sense, about one teenager that does have control, at least for a little while.

To my horror, some people, including in my own family, interpreted this story as autobiographical. As with any fiction, it certainly has autobiographical ingredients, but nothing in the story related to drugs is autobiographical. Even the dilemma of the nerdy kids tempted to do drugs to seem cool and ‘badass’ was more about people I knew rather than me personally.

The other part of the story I worry about readers misinterpreting is the sequence in which the teenagers unfairly frame the principal for having indecent relations with a student. As a teenager myself when I wrote it, this seemed to me one of the handful of ways one of us could theoretically have power over the grown ups. Looking back at it now as a grown up myself, especially in the post ‘Me Too’ era, I worry some may take it as a broader political statement to the effect that sexual abuse accusers should not be trusted. I doubt that perspective even occurred to me at the time, which is unfortunate.

Similarly, that same part of the story has a reference to the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case, which was in the news at the time. The protagonist of the story refers to the case as suggesting that the public will turn on someone before all the evidence is fully available. There has of course been a broader discussion going on over the years about how the internet and the twenty four hour news cycle has become too quick to turn on someone based on only preliminary information. In referring to the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case, my intention at the time was not to defend George Zimmerman in any way, but only to note that most people jump to one conclusion or another upon hearing a news story, and that the teenagers could use that to their advantage.

Looking back on it from my current vantage point, the legacy of the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman case seems to be much more about racism and violence against African Americans than about unfair, false accusations. I’m not too sure why teenage me decided to refer to that case rather than any other, except that it was just so much on everyone’s minds at the time.

If I ever get the chance to do a second edition of Three Eyed Man, or of Locker 99 for a separate collection, I’ll likely cut out the reference to George Zimmerman and also modify somehow the sequence with the principal.

As a more aware adult, I now worries those unintended potential political messages may distract from what is otherwise a story about young relationships and the loss of innocence.

 

woods
wood image by Daniel Stark

Superstition

The third novella, Superstition, grew out of a story I heard about communities in rural North Carolina, near where I grew up, in which people still believe in voodoo and magic. In particular, I heard a story about a couple who was separating and the man evidently used voodoo to intimidate the woman. I believe he hired some sort of shaman to help him and the woman eventually turned to the church for help.

That story really stuck with me, and my fictional story is basically a fleshed out version of that apparently true story. (Though admittedly I had only limited, third or fourth hand information about the actual events, if indeed they did happen.)

Most of this story was written while I was studying at The Savannah College of Art and Design.

 

sketchy tattoo parlor at night
Tattoo Parlor image by Jerald Jackson

The Tattoo

One of the first Three Eye Man stories to be written was The Tattoo, which actually helped me secure a scholarship for college years before the book came out. It still holds a special place in my heart, and is often a favorite with Three Eyed Man readers.

The Tattoo is about a man who drunkenly gets inked at a fly by night tattoo parlor. The next day, the tattoo begins to come alive.

 

 

Read these stories and more in my Three Eyed Man collection, available now on Amazon.

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