Waycross

"Waycross" is a short story by Caitlin R. Kiernan, part that features their recurring character Dancy Flammarion, the teenage albino monster-slayer. It was written in March 2002 and released as a chapbook by Subterranean Press in 2003. It takes place following the events in "Alabaster" (2006).
The story tells of Dancy's capture by and eventual defeat of the Gynander, a shapeshifting monster who steals the skins and the likenesses of its victims. Along the way, she kills the Gynander's friend Sinethella, a millennia-old godlike entity who has writhing tentacles in place of breasts. Dancy is forced to look into Sinethella's box, which shows her images of her abuse in the asylum in Tallahassee and at a county fair she attended with her mother, and what seem to be past-life memories of being hunted like an animal--in France, and much earlier, on the Ice Age landbridge between Siberia and Alaska.
== Characters ==
Dancy Flammarion: An albino girl who is used by an angel to hunt monsters. She was introduced in Kiernan's novel Threshold and has since appeared in numerous short stories and graphic novels.
The Gynander: A creature that wears the skins of people and animals that it's killed, taking on their appearance. In its true form, it's described as a "red thing" and "long, raw fingers." It refers to itself as a "two-bit, back-woods haint."
Sinethella: An entity that's lived at least 11,000 years, described by the Gynander, who is her friend, as "a goddess, almost.” She appears as "a woman in a yellow raincoat," with "shaggy black hair [that] fell about her round face in tangled curls," and "smooth and perfect" olive skin that "glinted wetly." She has eyes that are "very green and pupil less," and "long sharp teeth." In place of breasts she has "wriggling, tentacled masses instead, like the fiery heads of sea anemones, surrounding hungry, toothless mouths."
==Inspiration==
In Kiernan's novel Threshold, which introduced Dancy, the character recalls previous encounters she's had with the supernatural. One of them was "the black-haired woman in Waycross with stubby, writhing tentacles where her breasts should have been." Kiernan's curiosity about just who it was that Dancy met grew into the story "Waycross."Alabaster, "Preface," Caitlin R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press, 2006). 
==Publication History==
"Waycross" was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 15 (Carroll & Graf/Robinson, 2004). It was later included in Kiernan's collections Alabaster (Subterranean Press, 2006) and Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlin R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press, 2011).Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "Title: Waycross."
==References==
Category:Caitlin R. Kiernan works
Category:Expanded Mythos Works