Gef the Talking Mongoose

It's been more than a decade since I first read the one-page report of a talking mongoose in a book of ghost stories. Most of the stories were overly dramatic and illustrated with embarrasingly photoshopped images meant to spook children. It was full of demons in the closet, woman wailing at midnight, hell hounds at the door, ghostly battalions charging at 3:30 every Thursday, that sort of thing.  They were spooky to the point of garishness.

Not so much the mongoose who called himself Gef. He lived in a wall, creatively insulted people and occasionally stole lunches from the bus driver. The spookiest thing about him was that he hated to be seen and hid. When he was glimpsed, what was described was not entirely mongoose-like.

This beetlejuician figure passed from my mind for years until I went on exchange to Scotland. There, I came across a mention of Gef, and ended up reading a much more detailed story of his life. Later, after the semester, I traveled to the Isle of Man, where Voirrey first met Gef.  I myself met with some of the people who knew the story and visited the location of the Irving's home, where Gef and his beloved Voirrey and Jim had once lived.

The story, which I had once thought of as a welcome humorous relief in a slog of intensely dramatic super naturalism, turned out to be more tragic than I had anticipated.

I found the story really resonated with me for a number of issues. The story of Voirrey Irving and her friend the mongoose was one of social isolation, bullying, loneliness, trauma, jealousy, trust, companionship, abandonment, a childhood that tormented her adulthood, regret, love, abuse, fear, humor, charm, and ultimately the story of how a creation overcame its creator, the pain of being trapped and growing apart.

To boil these themes down, the ones that struck me most were isolation, companionship turned antagonistic in the bid to stay the same in a changing world, and a twisted eternal childhood eventually giving way to self-exploration and release of those things that kept us safe and happy in childhood.

 I initially tried to create this as a short story, but continually found myself thinking cinematically.

Rathering than adapting the story, this will be an adaptation with some of the core ideas. Namely, that of childhood friends learning to let each other go and find their way in the world.