Issue 42 March 2017 Flash Fiction Online March 2017

This is a short return to the Gutters, the space between successes that dominate our lives and work. Not sure when the rest will return, so, a mild refresher of where we left off.

By 2005, I had a couple of okay sales, one nice payday, but for six years of trying it didn’t seem to mean much. I read widely to improve my game, including vast swaths of works from Joe Lansdale, Gary Braunbeck, and other innovators of modern horror and crime fiction, classics from Albert Camus and Herman Hesse that spoke to my darker views on humanity and hope, as well as oodles of military history for my doctorate. I also read the usual books on improving, including horrid classics like Damon Knight’s Math Textbook for Narrative which is useful if you’re not me. I wrote a story a month and tried to prove the old Soviet proverb correct: “quantity is a form of quality.”

But besides a semi-pro sale to the Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (yes, that’s the name of the mag), I wasn’t almost making a sale a year. And, with an increasing workload of a Ph.D. and between four and five jobs, ranging from teaching cadets military history . . . to saying “would you like a bag with that?” to the very same cadets on the weekend when I worked at Novel Idea Bookstore, I was getting pretty discouraged at such little forward momentum after six years of toil.

But I was self-taught. No MFA. No English degree. Hell, I’d only started reading books “for fun” when I was nineteen. I knew I had vast holes in my knowledge of the craft. There was no substitute for experience, but why not try and learn from the best? So I applied to the Odyssey Writing Workshop the year AFTER George R.R. Martin was there (since I didn’t give a shit about George R. R. Martin, beyond digging “Sandkings” and “Meathouse Man,” and a very cool but average novel with Lisa Tuttle called Windhaven). I wrote a story about childhood bullying, suicide, and the French film The Red Balloon, which featured a quote from a Winged Victory, a novel written by an air war veteran of the Great War who would later die in a sanatorium:

“No Kingdom of Heaven could be made up of children: it would be a kingdom of jealousy, squabbles, and attempted murder.”

That got me in the door. And, fun fact, that story has never sold. Make of that what you will.

I had a lot of great teachers, like Liz Hand (currently writing the amazing Cass Neary punk rock crime series) and Jim Morrow (the elder statesman of satirical SF and monster fiction), whose work I enjoyed and whose reputations were known. But the writers in residence were new to me. A husband and wife duo best known for horror, which was one of the reasons I applied that year; I figured I was a horror writer, and very few workshops of note gave a fuck about the most punk rock of the genres. Clarion, in particular, seemed averse to horror fiction, but Jeanne Cavelos, the director of Odyssey, had run two horror imprints in the 1990s, and her love of horror brought our class Steve and Melanie Tem.

The week Steve and Melanie gave to us was a boon. Their lectures were a dialogue between them on various aspects of writing, and the best part was they didn’t agree. Anytime Steve got close to an answer that sounded like a “rule,” Melanie would challenge him on the existence of absolutes, and they’d find a synthesis and contextual refrain and then carry on. I spent all night writing the best story I could for them to read. I pushed myself to try things I barely knew how to do, like framing mechanisms, different POVs and uses of time. And the result was the best thing I’d written to that date, minus a shit ending. “It’s not that it’s bad,” Melanie noted, “it’s that it doesn’t work given the the structure of the story.” Steve agreed, saying it hit a different tone. They were right, but it was also shit. Nick Mamatas, when he was the editor at Clarkesworld, gave me a clue as to why in a lightning fast rejection: he thought it was well written but it lacked “moral complexity.” Four years later, I found a morally complex ending (in comparison to the shit one) and sold it to two great editors, David Morrell (creator of Rambo) and Nancy Kilpatrick (Canada’s queen of vampire fic). Make of THAT what you will.

Best of all, I got to hang with the Tems and just talk writing in a one-on-one session. I was likely hopped on Moxie and excitement (in my edition of Steve’s first collection, CITY FISHING, he signed with the note “I enjoy your enthusiasm”), and I barely recall what we talked about, but I remembered asking if they thought Harlan Ellison was right when he suggested, as he did to Dan Simmons, another writer I don’t much care for, that “you’re only a real writer if another writer says you’re a writer.” Melanie’s response? “Well, that’s nonsense. Don’t let other people dictate who you are.” Steve laughed, said he thought he knew where Harlan was coming from, about validation coming from professionals instead of your mom or best friend or dog, but agreed the only way to be a writer was to write, get better, and keep at it.

“Great!” I said. “But . . . would you say I’m a writer?” I’m sure I was grinning like an idiot because that’s who says such things to such amazing writers of THE DEADFALL HOTEL, BLACK RIVER, and their magnus opus joint-memoir of their imagination, THE MAN ON THE CEILING.

They both laughed. “Of course you’re a writer,” Melanie said. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jay.”

I kept in touch with them through the years, visited them once in Colorado and saw Steve at conventions (Melanie’s eyesight was fading so she kept close to home). Melanie also had a critique service, so I asked her to look at my bitter anti-Ray Bradbury tale called “The Last Ice Cream Kiss.” She thought it was professional grade and wanted to give me my money back since she had no advice to give. That was the kind of lady Melanie Tem was to this young writer, who read her books and stories and learned much from them and her.

Melanie died on February 9th, 2015, just over two years ago, after a vicious return of breast cancer that she thought she’d beaten in the late 1990s. The last time I’d chatted with her was when my life collapsed in 2013, and she and Steve offered me sympathy and advice. “Hang in there!” she declared, and I did my best. I always had a sweet spot for the utterly friendly and forthright personality. Her work is haunting, lovingly crafted, and waits for all of us who want to read the tales of a gifted woman who wrote about the dark side of life with her eyes wide open. Steve continues to do great work, and his new novel UBO, a treatise on the nature of violence, is en route and I can’t wait to read it. You can read his short memorial to Melanie here.

Apex Publishing recently published YOURS TO TELL, a writing guide Steve and Melanie wrote together for over a decade, largely based on the lectures they gave me and my class in 2005 and their return to Odyssey as writers in residence in 2014. Our class gets a shout out a couple of times, which is awesome, but the real joy is the Tem’s  giving us a glimpse into a partnership in art, and the sage advice on techniques, tactics, career, and work-life balance that they offer. It’s this lifelong love of each other and their art that created a body of work that should inspire you to write stories only you could write.

Make of that what you will.

JSR

The Yankee comes in the back, brushing by my casket in his creased wool, smelling like he’d just swum in his leather-and-pine cologne.  He fishes his way through the mourners who stand around fanning away the July heat and takes up a spot, nonchalant-like, along the back wall, opposite where my body’s laid out.  Next to him, our big mantle mirror faces the wall as do the other mirrors in the house.  Catching sight of a coffin in a mirror bodes nothing but ill for the looker.

The Yankee draws narrow-eyed glances.  At a Southern man’s funeral he can’t pass without notice, particularly by the dead man.

Auda, my wife, moves quick to close the door to the kitchen before Clovis, her favorite calico and my enemy in life, can get into the main room.  Cats are Satan’s minions.  Given half a chance, they’ll jump in a casket and steal the soul of the recently departed.  I imagine old Clovis sitting on the other side of the door, full of sneak and waiting for a chance at payback for all the swift kicks I’ve given him with my brogans when Auda’s back was turned.

Auda’s jaw is set, her mouth pulled sour-serious and straight as a plumb line across her face.  She’s holding in her misery.  I feel for her.  After the hullabaloo of my sitting-up, and then the funeral, she’ll be all by herself.

Dutiful Auda.  She was pretty in her day.  The first time ever I saw her, on my way to pull corn on the Johnson’s farm, I’d been moved to whistle in appreciation.  Her red hair danced like a brushfire above her mamma’s wash as she hung it on the line to dry.  She’d scowled at first, but then winked at me, her eye sharp and shiny like a needle in a haystack, her grin sharp like one, too.  There’s no blessing greater than the love of a Southern woman.  Ain’t no man worthy of it, neither.  You got to be regularly thankful, but in the end, you always fall short of living up.  And I’ll be the first to hold my hand up there.

Folks move up and peek into my casket, then depart to the left where the kitchen table has been drug out into the living room.  On it sits a slew of casseroles, biscuits, some slaw, ham, mashed taters, and redeye gravy.  A sweet potato pie sets in amongst it all.

One of Auda’s friends sits at the head of the casket, flyflap at the ready.  Her lips are sucked in on account of her dingy false teeth soaking in a glass under her folding chair.  I look down at myself for the first time.  The casket is draped in yellow veils to keep away the summer flies.  A fat black housefly hangs by its entrails from the veil above my ripening form. 

I don’t appear nothing like how I remember.  It’s like someone pulled a plug out of me and I deflated down to my bones.  Two heavy buffalo nickels sit atop my closed eyes.

I got to admit, I never reckoned sitting-ups was much good for anything.  I figured the spirit woulda took off by this point.  Truth be told, I’m a bit fidgety standing around here waiting for something–I don’t know what–to happen.

Thinking of death puts me in the mind of the Yankee again, so I glance about for him.  He’s still in the back, now standing next to my empty rocking chair, an idle hand tipping it back and forth.  Folks have shied away from him.  Rocking an empty rocking chair is some serious bad luck, like spinning a chair on one leg or opening your pocket knife and letting someone else close it.

All of a sudden, a racket busts out from over near the buffet, and who do I see but Delma Maynor.  She’s half on the floor, legs buckled under her, her face a beet and temples flaring with veins, just a wailing.  “Wilbur!” she hollers.  “Oh Wilbur, why?  Why?”

Delma is my sister-in-law, wife to my recently deceased brother Percy.  A fine woman with long legs that you can work like oars.  Ol’ Percy never truly appreciated her.  Delma didn’t make half this much of a fuss at Percy’s sitting-up.  Amongst the mourners whispers spout like air leaks from a doodlebug tire.

Quick as a shot, Auda is behind her, her strong arms hooked underneath Delma’s.  She roughly puts Delma on her feet, who promptly starts in on another wail.  The woman with the flyflap smacks her lips and says what I figure everyone’s thinking:  “Lord, she’s just the sister-in-law.”

Before I know what’s what, the Yankee is there behind Auda to help.  His pale hand slides its way all-too familiarly to the small of my wife’s back.  She arches into it, just for a second, making a curve I ain’t seen in many years.  The plumb line snaps, and a smile whips across her lips.  Auda’s eyes shine like the needles I once knew, but they pierce everything I thought I’d known.

The Yankee lifts blubbering Delma and kicks the kitchen door open to carry her out the back.  At that moment, Clovis sees his chance and bolts.  The cat leaps, pulling down the veils over my body and lands in my casket.  He knocks the coins off my eyes and they fly open, and from those assembled come gasps and much uncomfortable shuffling.

Oh, Auda.  I can see it all now.

Previously published in Weird Tales Magazine #347, November-December 2007. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

The Headless Child built a gas chamber out of Legos and now cannot sleep. Only the dead truly sleep his mother says, and this doesn’t help. A black wind batters the window, an owl cries in the storm.

It is the Headless Child’s past that upsets him. He recalls The Episode With The Plastic Bag That Was Not A Toy. The Time Mother Left Him In The Hot Car. The Teeter-Totter Trauma. The Syrup Incident. The Time He Was Accidentally Fed To Cats.

Calm yourself, baby. Would you like a stuffed bear? A stuffed lamprey? A stuffed wasp? A stuffed virus? A stuffed brick? A stuffed bomb?

It is no use. O, he is weeping still.

We will read a Little Golden book, Mother declares. Tuffy the Tumor? The Scrawny Tawny Cannibal? Fluffy Bunny Has Myxomatosis? The Pokey Little Pit Bull?

No? Perhaps Dr. Seuss, then. Slugs In My Rug? The Rat In The Hat? There’s A Hookworm In My Hippocampus? Stomp On Pop? If I Ran The Animal Testing Lab? Horton Hears A Hate Crime?

Sobs, gasps, a scream like rent metal.

Shall we try The Berenstain Bears And The Windowless Basement? …And The Calming Medication? …And Their Abnormally Small Heads? …Visit Mama In The Dementia Ward?

The child soaks the pillow with sweat, claws at his blanky. Mother is desperate. Outside the window, a light glows in the East. A mushroom cloud blooms in the faraway city.

Shall I sing you a lullaby? Rock-A-Bye Bastard? Twinkle Twinkle Little Meltdown? The Ants Go Marching O’er The Corpse?

Now the father lurches into the room. Father’s jaw hangs by a broken rivet, a dollop of red spittle splashes his boot. In a voice like bullets hitting tin, he speaks.

Hey there Sport, hey there Ace, hey Champ. Let’s toss the ole ball around. Let’s fire off some guns. Let’s kick some ass. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. It’s kill or be killed. Let’s make a woman cry. Let’s beat high mountains down and put forests to the torch. Let’s be winners. Let’s get ripped. Let’s sack a city. Let’s bomb a daycare. Let’s go forth to murder and create.

That won’t work; it’s the future that the Headless Child fears. Oh, is that it? The Headless Child’s future holds a lot of fearful things: heavy machinery, the sea, postmen, imported wheat, the Global Standards Index, laughter, a hen.

See, says the Mother, I have purchased devices designed to calm a troubled babe. The Vibrating Swing. The Rotating Chair. The Euthanizing Hose. The Electrified Skillet. The Cabinet Of Minimal Oxygen.

Failing that, we will try the FDA-approved medicaments. Tranquizol. Nepenthe-quil. Flintstone Valiums. Dr. Cockle’s Patent Roach Paralyzer And Colicky Toddler Tonic. Jungle Juice. Animal Smackers. Hemlock Licks.

The Father threatens. The Mother coos. The child bawls, and bawls anew.

It is no use, Mother sighs. Best let him grow up.

The Headless Child is grown. Now we call him the Guillotined Man.

The Guillotined Man has been pulverized by the heavy machinery, drowned in the sea, ruined by the Global Standards Index.

The postmen were cruel. Things went poorly with the hen.

The Guillotined Man chooses a spouse. He wants his parents’ blessing. Shall he marry the Faceless Doll? The Murdered Queen? The Gunnysack of Live Stoats? The Black Dahlia? The Me-Wolf? The Smear of Blood on the Wall?

O child, we only wish you to be happy.

The Guillotined Man and the Smear of Blood seek grandparentally-approved names for their twin children. Adam and Grieve? Hansel und Regretel? Spavin and Dolt? Pinhead and Claw? Eye-Mad and Wind-Blast? Holla and Weep?

Don’t matter whatcha call ’em, Son, just raise ’em to be Winners.

Now the former Headless Child chooses a career. Mulch Specialist? Behavior Control Technician? Drone Triggerman? Book Burner? Bleacher of Rabbits’ Eyes?

Whatever makes money, boy! Ha ha.

Ha.

Time slithers. The parents grow old. Time to find them a home.

The Guillotined Man seeks a repository for the elderly. Whispering Spines. Medicated Manor. Hainted Cloisters of Sheep’s Bend. Wizenhall. Feeblefarm. Gravesedge. On Thursdays We Open the Blinds.

Father stares at the flowered wall. A long spoon delivers unto Father his beets.

Mother is stalked by nurse assassins and cannot sleep. A phone call to the Guillotined Man. He arrives.

Mother, cease threatening the staff.

Mother. I will calm you.

Pills and tinctures. The chill sap of the needle. The plastic cuff, the soaked sponge. The cage of rats. The guilt that eats the heart away.

I have so many ways I can calm you.

Do watch eight-year-old Esme as she comes across a small house made of sticks in her backyard. It’s nested in a pile of damp leaves beneath the shady bur oak. The house is held together by strips of bark and knotted strands of animal hair. See the fly crawling in the shadow of the house’s rough-cut window.

Don’t allow Esme to see the rune carved into the gnarled bark at the base of the tree: a straight line with two bent arms sprouting from the right side. Imagine a fractured letter F. Since she doesn’t see the marking as she lifts the house from the clinging leaves; it’s OK to reveal that the rune symbolizes a mouth.

Do show Esme clearing off a spot on her bookshelf for the house of sticks. The front of the splintery house faces her bed.

Don’t continue reading this story.

Do stay alone in the room with the house of sticks as Esme’s mother calls her to get ready for bed.

Don’t worry. What could be more safe than a child’s bedroom? Toys and clothes litter the cream-colored carpet. A vibrant painting of a rabbit marching band covers an entire wall. There’s a wicker hamper wedged in the corner, pajamas hanging over the side like a panting tongue.

Do notice how quiet it’s gotten. Except for a faint buzzing sound. Get closer to the house of sticks. See the fly just inside the dark doorway, its wings shuddering as it steps out into the bedroom’s dim light.

Don’t ignore the maxillary palps twitching.

Do watch the spongy labellum pulse. Hunger is everything to the fly. It needs to eat.

Don’t get too close. It’s not safe.

Do hear the muffled sound of Esme and her mother talking as they approach the room.

“Don’t shut the door all the way,” Esme says. Her mother smiles, leaves the door open a crack.

Do watch Esme’s chest as it rises and falls. Outside, crickets chirp. Wind rattles the windowpane.

Don’t finish reading this story.

Do allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness. See the silhouette of the crooked body looming over Esme’s bed. Multi-jointed arms stretch and crack as the torso elongates. The silhouette, somewhere between human and insect, tilts its wide head sideways like a hungry dog as it watches Esme sleep.

Don’t disregard the sound of sucking mouth parts and the wet shifting of chitin over membranous flesh.

Do smell the wormy tang of freshly churned soil and the baking bread reek of festering wounds clinging to the back of your throat.

Don’t forget about the sense of taste. The creature certainly won’t.

Do watch the creature lean over Esme’s body. It drags its long, lank hair across the sheets as it reaches out with spidery hands.

“Don’t struggle, little one,” says the creature in a grandmotherly tone, craggy and sickly sweet. It places a segmented foreleg over Esme’s mouth and lifts her against its emaciated thorax.

Do listen to the slow creaking footsteps as the creature lurches back to the house of sticks on the bookshelf. There is nothing that can be done now.

Don’t waste another second. Leave.

Do rush downstairs, through the kitchen, past the back door, toward the front entrance. Hear something scraping against the sliding glass door in the kitchen.

Don’t go back that way.

Do peer around the corner, down the narrow hallway which leads to the only way out. See the creature blocking the door, slouched against the wall and gibbering to itself. Flies form a cloud around the twitching forelegs as the creature scratches the rune into the baseboard with its spiny pretarsus. The creature notices you watching and spreads its complicated mouthparts into a grisly wet version of a smile.

Do catch your breath as something bangs against the back door as though trying to smash its way inside. Hear the deafening buzz of flies outside, surrounding the house.

Don’t dare go outside. Run back upstairs. Hear the clicking on the tile as the creature scuttles after you.

Do run past Esme’s bedroom to the another room at the far end of the hall. Block the door with the nearby dresser, pushing all your weight against the drawers. Behind you, on the floor, Esme’s mother slumps, dark hair obscuring her face. Something dark pools on the carpet where her head rests at an impossible angle.

Do call out to the mother. Get no response. She can’t help any longer.

Do smell the heavy bad breath stink of her dead body filling the bedroom. Listen. On the other side of the door, the creature slides its body against the cheap wood.

Do remember, you could have stopped reading at any time.

Do hear Esme call you by name. Her voice sounds pinched and angry. She’s on the other side of the door with the creature. Esme and the creature whisper to each other, shushing and snickering.

Do strain to hear what they’re saying. They go quiet. Hear the window slide open behind you.

Do hear Esme say your name again, this time the voice comes from inside the room. She isn’t laughing anymore, and she isn’t there alone. Something shuffles alongside Esme as though a parent guiding her first steps.

Don’t look back. Close your eyes. A fly lands in your ear. You slap it away, but the buzzing gets louder and louder. A voice as sweet as a grandmother’s but higher, a child’s voice, says, “Come along.”

Do notice how cold Esme’s small hands feel on the back of your neck.

Do feel long spidery fingers caress your throat as the creature joins Esme. Together, they wrap their arms around your chest and pull you away to their house of sticks.

Hi. You there with the big teeth and the appetite for human flesh. I’m the girl who’s going to survive your horror movie. Yeah, me here in the driver’s seat of the van. I know there are a bunch of rules and tropes and things for how this is supposed to go down. But before you unleash any more blood and mayhem on this little road trip my friends and I are on, I’d like to explain a few things to you.

First: I’m not a virgin. I am therefore not eligible to serve as a sacrifice to your standard-issue elder gods and other assorted demonic entities. In fact, I’ve already had sex twice during this movie, and I enjoyed it too.

Speaking of that sex I had, see my boyfriend there in the passenger seat? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. He looks like the guy who always dies first, right? Wrong. In fact, if I have anything to do with it–and I will because I’m your protagonist–he’s not going to die at all.

Also not going to die? My plucky, hard-drinking, chain-smoking best friend in the back of the van–who, FYI, is also not a virgin. But she’s not going to survive because some dashing young hottie swoops in to save her. She’s going to survive because she’s smart and tough and totally hip to your particular brand of shenanigans. That’s why she’s my best friend. Not to mention that, from her point of view, she’s the protagonist, and I’m the plucky best friend.

As for squirrelly guy . . . Yeah, he’s a different matter entirely. None of us even remember inviting that mouth-breather along.

Conveniently, our GPS and cell phones have all lost their signal. We asked that creepy old dude outside the taxidermy shop for directions, and he warned us to turn back. He was a bit ominous-voiced and wide-eyed crazy about it, but he also seemed pretty serious, so you know what we did? We turned the hell back. Creepy dude looked really surprised.

But you had another twist in store for us–namely that collapsed bridge, curiously unmarked and lacking in work crews or police activity. I’m not thrilled about this oddly desolate route we’ve been forced onto, but we’ve got some old-school paper maps, and I navigate like a Viking.

So far we’ve passed an Indian burial ground, an abandoned town, an abandoned hospital, an abandoned carnival, an abandoned summer camp, hillbillies, a hitchhiker, a cabin in the woods, and some silver-haired kids peering out from behind cornstalks. Every damn one, squirrelly guy wanted us to stop. Insisted he had to pee. So we handed him an empty beer bottle. I also busted his phone as soon as he suggested documenting our little adventure. I am not going to end up in one of those damn shaky cam found-footage videos.

As you know, we did eventually stop for gas. Squirrelly guy was immediately all “I’ll be right back.” We tackled him before he could wander off alone. We have a rule about not splitting up, especially when the rusty mini-mart door is creaking in the breeze, and there’s nary a customer nor gas station attendant in sight.

Not surprisingly, we found Latin words scrawled on the bathroom mirror in what looked like blood. Squirrelly guy tried to read it out loud, which was when we put the duct tape over his mouth.

That’s also when I noticed you were getting desperate. The rustling followed by a black cat jumping out from behind the ice machine? Please. That only served to put me more on guard than before. Besides, I’m allergic to cats; I’m not going to breathe a sigh of relief at seeing one.

Anyway, after the requisite search to make sure a monster or serial killer hadn’t crawled into the van during our bathroom excursion, we were ready to be on our way. But nope, you couldn’t resist: an unmarked door squeaked its way open, just enough for us to see stairs leading down into a pitch-black basement.

This time, when squirrelly guy darted forward with a duct-tape-muffled “Let’s check it out!”, we just let him go. I did offer him a flashlight–I’m not totally heartless–but of course he didn’t take it. A lot of noise and screaming followed. By the time squirrelly guy staggered back up, drenched in blood, we were all armed. Sword for me, gun for the boyfriend, flamethrower for the BFF.

“It’s okay,” squirrelly guy claimed, the torn-up strip of duct tape dangling from his mouth. “I killed it.”

Ah, those famous last words. You don’t just kill it. You decapitate it, slice it into a thousand bits, burn it, sprinkle holy water on it, sink half the remains to the bottom of the ocean and blast the other half into space. If squirrelly guy had actually been our friend, he’d have known that. He also wouldn’t have tripped over nothing trying to get away when you snuck up behind him.

We all had a key at the ready to avoid the inevitable escape-cut-short-by-car-key-fumble, so getting back in the van while you ate squirrelly guy was easy. But of course, the van wouldn’t start, hence why I’m sitting here addressing you now. This dependable-until-a-minute-ago vehicle underwent a thorough inspection and tune-up before we set out on this little trip, but I didn’t expect you to play fair. That’s your problem. You’re predictable, and you expect us to be the same.

But here’s the thing: we’ve got an extensive collection of weaponry and explosives in the back of this van, along with holy books and relics from several different religious traditions.

You see, I’m going to survive your horror movie, but I’m not your final girl. And my friends aren’t expendable props to prove how wholesome and special-snowflakey I am in comparison. We’re not playing by those rules anymore. We’re in this together, and we know what you’re going to throw at us.