The Day the Vikings Landed

*In the CCC 20 entry, he was named the more lackluster Ulrich the Uneasy. -cb

I have a poem called Please that is about 9-11, but it's not fiction- it's about my personal experience the day before, the day of, and the days since. I am, and have always been, against writing about 9-11 in fiction. Actually, that's not completely accurate. I'm against writing about characters that died in the World Trade Center. I think that adding fictional bodies to that tragedy is like vandalizing a grave. It's like heaping broken mannequins on Ground Zero and calling it art.

However, I always knew that fiction would pounce on that massacre like hyenas on a carcass, and I wondered how long it would take. "Not very," was the answer. Other than some amateur fictions that I read online, which were obviously cathartic attempts to exorcise whatever demons 9-11 had brought the authors, the first fictions I read about it were in comics- the now famous issue of Amazing Spider-Man, of course. Also an issue of Queen & Country that brushed by it. And of course multiple tribute issues, all of which I own, because profits were promised to go to families of victims of 9-11. I also own multiple magazine and book tributes to 9-11, most of which were photographic and news accounts of that day.

Outside of comics, I think the first professional 9-11 fiction I read that didn't come out immediately following 9-11, was a novella by Stephen King, titled "The Things They Left Behind." I don't know that it was the first, but it was the first that I read. It was originally published in the 2003 collection, Transgressions, Volume Two, and later in King's own 2008 collection, Just After Sunset. It has just been picked up by CBS, to be adapted for television.

Then of course there's the 2006 movies World Trade Center and United 93, neither of which have I watched, nor will I. If you've enjoyed those movies, more power to you. I just... don't want to.

I don't fault any of these fictions for coming out. It was going to happen. We've fictionalized every great tragedy we've ever faced. The ones that spring most closely to mind are the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor, and indeed World War II in general. We've written about them, and written about them, and written about them, until the fictional body counts probably exceed the factual ones.

That's why I don't want to see it happen to 9-11, although it has already begun. I don't want to see the trivialization of a massacre. I don't want to see the fictionalization of true heroes who charged into the World Trade Center and lost their lives. We're going to do it though. We're going to pile story after story after story on that precious site, until the words are as high as the Twin Towers themselves once reached. For catharsis; for healing. For tribute. For love. For emotional backdrop. Finally, for profit. Crass of me to say so, perhaps, but true- we only pick historical backdrops for stories because we think they'll connect with readers or viewers, and so bring us a profit when the thing is published.

***

So why write "The Day the Vikings Landed," right? Because we only pick historical backdrops for stories because we think they'll connect with readers... remember? And it was only a backdrop. I didn't tell you about anyone in the Twin Towers, or any of the rescue personnel that charged into them, and I didn't change the facts of that attack.

But I have a memory of that day, and the week or so that followed. The USA was devastated as a country. We were holding our breaths, glued to our televisions for any scrap of information we could get. It literally took President Bush holding a press conference and saying, "It's time for us to get back to work," for us to exhale and start the push back to "normal," everyday life.

We were so focused on Ground Zero during that time, I've always had the thought that anything else could have happened that day, and gone completely unnoticed. And that's where my fiction ideas for 9-11 come from- from "What else happened that day?" Did aliens steal the Brooklyn Bridge? Did zombies walk through Wall Street? Or did... maybe... a Viking ship appear briefly off of Liberty Island, and disappear again without anyone noticing?

Now, will I ever write about 9-11 again? I'd like to say, "No," but I've learned to never say never. And honestly, why should I? It'd only be one out of that great pile of stories that started building immediately after 9-11. However, if I do, I don't imagine that the attack itself will be more than peripheral to what's really going on in the story, much like the events in "The Day the Vikings Landed." In fact, I've thought of writing a series of short stories about "what else happened that day," and I may yet do that, but it's not high on my list.

But really- the main reason we write stories about historical tragedies like 9-11? So we never forget. -cb 9/11/14