Thoughts On "Rise Up"

by author C. S. Fuqua and Kaidankai Podcast host Linda Gould

Photo by Hashem Al-Hebshi on Unsplash

Author C.S. Fuqua wrote this about the motivation behind the story “Rise Up”

“Australian author Rick Kennett (you’ve published his work) calls ‘Rise Up’ my ‘zombie story.’ I guess it could be considered such, but I never had zombies in mind — rather, I wanted to write a tragic story based on love and magic in which a soul is restored to its body, but ‘the powers that be’ fail to restore the body. The story originated from the lyrics of ‘Rise Up,’ which, along with the music, came to me one morning on my daily run as I morbidly contemplated mortality. The story prominently features The Sharps & Flats Music Store and the old woman who runs it, both appearing in an earlier story called ‘The Sharps & Flats Guarantee,’ which was featured in Year’s Best Horror Stories edited by Karl Edward Wagner.”

“Rise Up” made me think about “The Monkey’s Paw,” that classic tale by W.W. Jacobs from 1902. We remember it for the wish granted with cruel irony, but when you get away from the horror of it, “The Monkey’s Paw” is just another story about heart-wrenching grief and inconsolable loss. We all would refuse the finality of death if we could—for our loved ones and for ourselves. Who wouldn’t reach into the veil of what comes after to pull back someone we love if we had the chance?

But “Rise Up” does something different, something devastating: the soul returns, but the body is too far gone. The resurrection is incomplete. And that incompleteness is where the pain lives. It’s not a curse, exactly. It’s coming to terms with reality despite hope, unrealistic hope. And that pain cuts deeper than the original pain, so deep that what seemed unbearable originally is now a quiet devastation, a hollowing, that leaves no path forward.

So no, “Rise Up” isn’t a zombie story. Unlike soulless, mindless zombies, Wynne’s soul gives her will, but her body allows her no agency. It’s a story that puts us in our place by pointing out that, no matter how much we desire it, the dead belong in their realm, wherever, whatever that is. And though we may think life is hopeless when we lose someone, the experience of billions of people who have gone through these emotions shows that life without our person just changes, like a melody that loses its harmony — quieter, lonelier, but still moving forward, note by note.

I’d love to know what these kinds of stories stir up in you. Do you read them as horror, or something else?

Linda