The working title of this novella was The Werehumans. While the novel evolved from its original conception, the story remained largely the same. I grew up in Oscar Springs, the fictional name I gave to my hometown, and I was one of the lost kids you hear about in this story. My family was abusive and impoverished, and later in life, I would find out that members of the town knew about and enabled our situation. Many people knew my father and mother were dangerous, but no one did anything for my brothers and me. The Ground is Full of Teeth is at its core a story about what we owe each other, and how responsible we are for people who may not be like us, or who may disgust us.
However, Ground is not my story. It is a story of another family and they too were real. Their house is depicted much as it was, and the scene of Abel Smalley driving down the street? I remember it. The scene of Junior Smalley sitting outside his mother’s funeral? I remember it too. Other people wonder if I am Alice, as I am a teacher. No, I’m not. I went to school with Alice, and this is how I imagined she would grow up, given the way she stood up for the right things while she was my classmate. She did become an elementary school teacher. She might never know the influence she had on me, but this story is my gift to her.
In writing this novella, I am writing about the world I saw at that time, through the lens of an eight-year-old, living in shadow. The world is a very different place now that I am an adult. I live in another small town, a bright and sunny town, rather than a town full of shadows. Maybe there are still shadows, and I can’t see them, because my parents are gone, and I live on the sunnier side of the tracks. I have become a teacher, and I know there is no magical way to tell which kids are in trouble and which are not, something which haunts me. I have felt Alice’s sense of frustration, but the difference between my time and hers is now teachers are mandatory reporters. Kids like Junior Smalley are less likely to slip through the cracks. Principals like Sturgeon are still out there, but the law pushes them in directions to help kids.
All cities, big and small, hold the good and the bad, the heroic and the villainous. People like Alice, Chris, and Irv exist. Bravery is imperfect, one step at a time in the right direction, one small deed, one right word. Decay is one tiny slip, one splinter, one cut. There are grand gestures in The Ground is Full of Teeth. It is fiction, after all. However, people like Alice, Chris, and Irv exist, and they persist in making tiny steps. Persistence toward good is what makes us real humans, rather than werehumans. Perhaps, while there is darkness in this novella and in the real Oscar Springs, there is more light than I supposed.
Cath Schaff-Stump writes speculative fiction for children and adults, everything from humor to horror. Her YA Gothic fantasy The Vessel of Ra is available from Curiosity Quills. Catherine lives and works in Iowa with her husband. During the day, she teaches English to non-native speakers at a local community college. Other recent fiction has been published by Paper Golem Press, Daydreams Dandelion Press, and in The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk. Catherine is a co-host on the writing and geek-life fan podcast Unreliable Narrators. You can find her online at Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, @cathschaffstump, cathschaffstump.com, and unreliablenarrators.net