Response & Analysis - "Midnight, Licorice, Shadow"

"Midnight, Licorice, Shadow" by Becky Hagenston

Reading Becky Hagenston's short story Midnight, Licorice, Shadow was a roller-coaster ride of emotions, to say the least.  I very much enjoy stories that make me feel all sorts of emotions, and this story did deliver.  While I was mortified at the events that transpired at the end, I was left feeling very satisfied with the overall story because the narrator took me on a journey that went from curiosity, to trust, to sympathy, to doubt, to horror, then to sadness, and finally to understanding.

Donna is a very believable character.  She is complex enough to keep me interested in her but also not too over-the-top to be cliché or resembling some sort of caricature.  She keeps me invested in her life and thought process as she drops little hints about her past that may or may not be elaborated on, but seem to have a pattern and most definitely give dimension to her character.  Her distinctive voice develops a trust in me as a reader - at first I was skeptical about Jeremy, but as she narrates and I trust her more and more, I therefore trust Jeremy more and more.  This gave much more weight to the end, when Jeremy kills the kitten - I trusted him because Donna trusted him, and so therefore I was just as numb and traumatized as Donna was.

The form of the story is very telling of its theme.  I particularly enjoyed the way information was dropped like little bread-crumbs between real-time events and flashbacks until the bits would coalesce, like when Donna sees the family outside her motel room.  All her mentions of family and vacations finally merge together to bring to light the important details of her childhood.  Or like when she's in Mrs. Jarvis' bathroom and checks the bathtub: "The tub was empty, of course—no old lady lying there with a razor blade beside her, her eyes closed under the red water" (Kardos 236).  This shows Donna's fixation with comparison and expectation - she is looking for her traumas while also trying to run away from them.  Donna is highly removed from the present moments of her life.  She jumps around from memory to memory because she is fragmented in herself.  This is why she is so intent on naming the kitten - the search for the cat's name mirrors the search for herself.  And she is very far removed from herself, which is why the perspective is in third-person limited.  And this is why, when face-to-face with another traumatizing event, she takes on the role of the nameless kitten and continues to search for her self: trauma is recursive like that.  (It also begs the question of whose "trip" this is - "Donna" and Jeremy have bonded over this song {I am familiar with the Ritchie Valens song and know the lyrics rather well} and as he "finds her" she momentarily finds herself; whatever trauma they are both running from subsequently eased momentarily but then is shattered when something happens that breaks that shared realty of false peace.  But that is another paper for another time.)

I very much enjoyed this story, even though it is rather depressing.  I will probably be thinking about for awhile, for many reasons.  It is a very well-crafted, complex story, in my opinion.

K.T.Trigg 2017.