The Curse: A Tale of Mummerotica

The story of The Curse begins at Franz Kafka University, a small liberal arts college in rural Pennsylvania.  This was where John Newt received his bachelor’s degree, and began a work that would soon be recognized as a modern classic of fantasy literature.  Newt was raised in Hellmouth, Utah, which despite extensive research has never been successfully located within the United States of America.  Newt studied at FKU on full scholarship, and was recognized as a gifted writer.  As a graduating senior he was awarded the prestigious Babel-Fisch Grant to pursue work on his first novel.  His first finished work, focused on the protagonist’s torrid affair with a nonmonogamous little person, was titled Pygmy Polygamist Pygmalion.  His second novel, Narcissus Drowning, focused on the creative and sexual frustration of a young author struggling to write a successful follow up to a modestly sucessful first novel.  Little did he know that he would soon be responsible for one of the most popular and critically-appraised young adult supernatural romance series of all time.

After the break: the unforgettable story of The Curse Saga.

HAVE YOU EVER HAD SEX WITH A PHARAOH?

Soon after publication Newt was hospitalized, with “grievous self-inflicted damage to his wrists”: presumably carpal tunnel syndrome after the terrible strain of typing two whole novels.  In the hospital he was visited by his agent, Myrt Mnemosyne.  “I held his hand,” she said, “and I told him that I would not allow this setback to stifle his voice, because he had a three-book contract.  I like to think that he heard me, through the antipsychotics and the SSRI-inhibitors, although his doctors assured me this was quite impossible.”

When Newt was finally conscious, Mnemosyne suggested he try writing a young adult novel in the popular supernatural romance genre.  Under pressure by his publisher and desperate for a hit, Newt returned to work.  The process was miraculous; although his two previous novels were composed over years Newt said he “cr[eatively] [sn]apped out The Curse in about six weeks.”  Newt could never account for this rush of inspiration; fans theorize he was inspired by the sprits of the ancient pharaohs themselves.

The Curse is told from the perspective of Jennifer Erica Squab, an ordinary high school girl who struggles with a lack of distinguishing characteristics.  In the first few pages of the novel Newt establishes what The New Republic praised as his heroine’s “utterly [un]forgettable” voice:

 My eyes were like twin pools of fluid, my hair a fibrous cascade of brown.  All of the handsomest and most popular boys wanted to date me.

“I like Jen-Erica because she’s so relatable.  She never does anything,” says young Mimi Skreemer, “I couldn’t see myself doing.  It’s like when I’m reading I forget about her, and I’m the one having adventures with hot mummies.”  Mimi, fourteen, is one of the books countless young fans.  She shows me her Curse poster, her non-interactive DVD trivia game, her battery-operated “vibro-magic mummy scepter.”  She also has an extensive wardrobe of Curse paraphernalia: an official “Clan Dollard” shirt, a wristband, a bathing cap, a complete set of day-of-the-week patterned thong underwear, an unofficial “Clan Dollard” shirt that reads “FUCK ME WITH YOUR MUMMY COCK.”

“Clan Dollard,” of course, refers to the saga’s enigmatic hero, Dollard Dokken, formerly Prince Putrefhax of the 700^th Egyptian Mummy Clan:

He sat across the lunchroom, brooding.  There was something about him that was transfixing and interesting.  His eyes glowed, as if they were glowing faintly red.  His face was covered in mysterious bandages, so I couldn’t really see it, but he had a really nice jaw and cheekbones.

The novel chronicled the impossible, doomed romance between these two unlikely lovers.

“Show me your face,” I said.  He removed the bandages.  His skin was pale and pasty, and his eyes glowed, as if they were glowing faintly red.  I’m not sure he still had all of his teeth.  But his body was incredible: bulging arms, firm abdominals, what appeared to be twelve inches of mummified manhood throbbing at his crotch.  Butterflies filled my stomach, and some of them swelled up into my mouth but I quickly swallowed them back down.

“This face is the face of a killer,” he said, “a sexy, sexy killer who you can never touch or experience physical intimacy with, because I would be overwhelmed by my ungodly desire to eat your brains.”

He was content to nibble on my scalp a little.  It was perfect.  But I wanted more.

It goes without saying that The Curse was an overnight phenomenon.  Critical acclaim was universal: supernatural romance website horrorgasm.net proclaimed the series “the biggest thing since Santo del Noche’s Chupacabra Chronicles,” while The Atlantic called the initial installment “frequently tolerable” and “incredibly creepy in unexpected ways.”  It was official.  Mummerotica had arrived.

“I believe The Curse will be one of the lasting fantasy epics of our era,” says Harry Blurt, part-time internet commentator.  Fans of The Curse are referred to as “Band-Aids,” or “Egypsies,” or “Pyramid Heads” – the latter refers to a ceremonial stone mask the hero wears in the second volume of the trilogy.  Blurt shows me his customized replica.  “At CurseCon 2010, these pyramid masks were everywhere,” he tells me.  “There was a competition to see who’s was the most accurate.  I dislocated some of the discs in my neck and I think it was worth it.”

Some, like Harry Blurt, take the series a little more seriously than others.  “I’m one of the Mummykin,” Blurt explains.  On the “Paper Rappings” message boards, Blurt interacts with his fellow fans under the screenname “Montezumas_Revenge.”  “I psychically channel the reincarnated spirit of the resurrected Pharaoh Montezuma,” he tells me.  As Montezuma, Blurt experiences the “astral form” of a six-foot tall Nubian demigod with formidable occult powers.  But this arrangement is not without its responsibilities.  “To commune with Montezuma I need to wrap myself, nude, in plaster, and spend hours undergoing sensory deprivation therapy.  Naturally, while ‘mummifying’ in my sarcophagus Montezuma requires me to engage in tributary autoerotic stimulation.  Frequently.  Very, very frequently.”  He offers to let me “mummify” inside the sarcophagus for a few minutes, an offer I respectfully decline.

After the success of The Curse, Newt’s publisher evoked a clause in his contract that required him to write at least two sequels.  As with any continuation of a beloved work, the Curse sequels were controversial.  The Curse Saga: Interminable introduced Nubilos, He of the Ebon Obelisk, one of the series most polarizing characters.  A 20,000-year-old shapeshifting Sphinx, Nublios has formidable voodoo powers derived from animal sacrifice, which he uses to tempt Jennifer-Erica.  “I love de white woman,” is his catchphrase, proclaiming his infatuation with the purity and lightness of Jen-Erica’s spirit.  Although she is smitten by his “savage, animalistic ways and his enormous manliness” she is repulsed by his “dark, dark person” and returns to Dollard.  This development divided the Curse fanbase, who responded by producing “Clan Nublios” and “Clan Dollard” accessories to proclaim their allegiance.

The trilogy concluded with The Curse Saga: Unreasonable, which features the remarkable consummation of the leads’ romance.  The series’ commitment to “the erotics of abstinence” is credited with its remarkable success among parents and young women, as well as its appeal to evangelical Christians.  Yet once the protagonists are bound eternally by a moon-ribbon ceremony in the eyes of the sun-god Ra, Newt addresses the physicality of their relationship with delicacy and restraint.  Jennifer-Erica’s deflowering is widely regarded as one of the most memorable moments of the series: The New York Times Book Review said the book was “one of the greatest pieces of s[exy]h[ot] [l]it  ever published,” and Harper’s called it “hypnotic and unforgettable, in the sense that it will be irreversibly seared into your brain until you die”:

His body like sandpaper rubbed against me, and my skin was irritated and aroused in equal measure.  I felt his petrified, bandaged shaft within me absorbing my moistness like a thirsty sponge.

“Never stop,” I moaned, “keep it in there forever.”

“For you, my love,” he cooed, and then stood upright with a start.  There was a snap.  He winced.  I glanced down at his crotch – suddenly gelded, a whisp of sawdust drifting from the dry flatness.

We separated.  Yet somehow, I still felt as if he were inside me.  As if he had left a part of himself within me, planted it, which I could never remove even if I wanted to.

The final book concludes with the birth of the couple’s child, a muimmyck, half-human and half mummy.  This remarkable pregnancy almost kills Jennifer-Erica, and to save his beloved Dollard uses Egyptian magicks to transform her into a mummy; then jams a funerary hook into her navel and pulls the fetus out through her belly-button.  After this excruciating passage, the series ends on a cathartic note.  Nublios reappears and magickally ages the couple’s newborn into a sexy eighteen-year-old whom he claims as his mummy bride.  In a conclusion Blurt calls “worthy of Shakespeare,” the characters reflect on their strange fate:

 “Think of Khepri, my beloved,” said the prince, “the celestial dung beetle.  In Egypt, we believed the dung beetle rolled a ball of stinking waste to be romantic with, and that from his ejaculate he would be reborn inside this womb of poop.  It is the same with Khepri, rolling the sun across the sky each day.

“Imagine how it must be for him!  Pushing the sun, straining and struggling with this steaming, sulfurous pile.  Grinding his face and jawparts into it, the taste of the waste hot on his tongue.  On and on!  For ever and ever, without end! Will he ever find rest from his eternal vigil, finally drop this massive load?”

“Will he find rest, my love?”  I ask.

“My darling, he will never.  His labor, his consternation, is unending.  Like our love.  He will bear his fiery load until death, and beyond.  He will never be free again ever.”

“I have that passage as a tattoo,” Betsy Button tells me.  Betsy is a thirty-five-year-old receptionist, and has an equal number of nieces and pet cats.  “It starts on my back, but the passage was longer than I thought and it sort of goes on down to where the sun don’t shine.”  She asks if I would like to see, an offer I respectfully decline.

I am standing at the gate to Newt’s apartment in Mumbleford Pennsylvania, which fans have transformed into an ad-hoc shrine to their favorite author.  They leave all manner of tribute: flowers, toilet paper tossed through the trees; even bags of flaming excrement, presumably in reference to that famous concluding passage.

The story of The Curse ends with a note of tragedy.  Newt was found dead, fatally noosed by an unknown assailant, in his apartment in the fall of 2009.  The news of his death was especially torturous for fans; Newt’s publisher had revealed only a week before that he was contracted to write a second trilogy of Curse novels.  But while the mystery of his senseless murder endures, so does his work.  It is unclear what form Newt’s legacy will take (a series of motion pictures is forthcoming, and Harry Blurt revealed to me that he is trying to contact Newt’s estate for permission to self-publish a “radical reimagining” of the Curse saga that recasts its leads as anthropomorphic tigers.)  The Curse, like its beloved mummies, endures.  The fate of John Newt is intertwined with that of his opus, forever, even beyond death.

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