Moving some things about the place. Got rid of the feeds for the time being.  No particular reason, certainly not out of a lack of love for the folks I had over there, just didn’t seem like what the site wanted to be. 

Yes, that’s a fancy widget-book reader thingy at the side.  Yes, it’s too small to actually read the pages.  The only other size it comes in if fucking huge and would require all kinds of horizontal scrolling.  Really, it’s just there so I have some kind of commerce link for the new book on the home page.  I’d like such a thing to be innocuous and brand-neutral as possible.  This one goes directly to my mother ship publisher Random House.  So I can live with that.  But, honesty, you can get the book cheaper just about anywhere else. 

Yes, The Book of All Future Names still exists.  I’ve not stopped, just haven’t had time to do a new entry in a bit.  More to come.  I promise.  

And, finally, yes, that’s a Twitter feed.  But let me tell you, don’t expect much.  I set up an account months ago to get an idea of what the technology was about.  Got my sense and got out.  Clearly a huge invitation to be massively distracted while trying to get anything done.  But I didn’t delete mu account.  Thus, I have over a hundred people “following”  me.  If that doesn’t inspire one’s sense of paranoia, I don’t know what will.  Truly, the folks concerned about government and corporate invasiveness  are going to find their audience shrinking daily.  Exposure is what it’s all about for those crazy kids these days.  And, hey, when we’re all naked, no one can have anything on anybody.  Could work.  Anyway, I don’t plan on keeping anyone apprised of many of my random thoughts or drunken misspellings.  thought I’d take a crack at writing something in doses of 140 characters or less.  Shooting for one a day.  As long as it keeps me amused.   

hang tough, -c�

Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.

 

When I say steam gun I ain’t talkin about one of them things they use what to wash subway cars down in the yard.  Those they call steam guns.  An they ain;t hardly do no good nohow.  Cars still covered in graffiti an flyers an pigeon crap.  That’s a whole racket that is.  Somebody got a cousin somewhere owns a company makes them steam wands.  Betcha that’s the case.  Buy up them wands, give some jobs to some low income types to appease the masses, have them in the yards at three in the morning wavin steam around, like it do some good other than to make a night atmospheric.  It don’t.

 

Anyhow, steam gun’s got nothin to do with that.

 

Steam gun was like a cannon with a boiler.  Boiler is like what you got in the basement.  ‘Cept they mostly call it a water heater in your basement.  These days they do, anyhow.  Water goes in, little fire burns under it, heats that water, sends it up to your shower.  Mmm, nice hot shower on a cold day, nothin like that.  Anyhow, that’s how it works you got a landlord who isn’t in a racket tryin to drive tenants out so’s he can get in new ones on a new lease that costs them more money. 

 

Little off the track there.  Got me a landlord puts rats in the halls, turns off the boiler, don’t fix leaky pipes, don’t have no garbage pickup.  Got landlord issues I do.

 

Anyways, steam guns.  They got boilers, too.  But ain’t a hot shower kind of boiler.  Got the kind of boiler could drive a train.  Drive two trains.  Some of them steam guns got boilers so big and so powerful, they could drive ten locomotives up a steep grade in the snow. Steam gun like that gets loaded down a barrel that’s just about as wide as a cask.  A cask is like a barrel itself, but the kind you put stuff in, not the kind you shoot from.  See in the basement of a winery, see all them big barrels?  Casks.  Picture on of them made from iron, solid through.  Picture the cannon you gonna shoot than from.

 

That the kind of a gun Riddle Afield was on in them Tinker Wars.

 

Big gun.  Giant gun.  Boiler at the base of the barrel, furnace fire blazin, boilin a tank of water big enough for five classes of twelve-year-olds to swim in all at once on a hot summer day.  ‘Cept you wouldn’t want to swim in there on a hot day.  Nor on any other day.  Wouldn’t want to dip a toe in there on the coldest day of the year.  Stick your toe in there, it be cooked tender to tough in a second.  Hot, bubblin, roilin, steamin.  Steam fills a tank right at the back end of the gun.  Fills it and fills it and fills it.  Pressure builds in there, kind of pressure someone would be crushed by it.  Pressure, it’s like weight.  Like pounds of it.  Thousands and thousands of pounds of it in that tank.  And when it hits red on a dial on the side of the gun, then it’s time.  Got that iron cask down the barrel.  Fitted in there so tight it had to be rammed in all the way.  Iron plug in the neck of an iron bottle.  Needle hits red and the steam gunner grabs a lever, squeezes, and pulls.  Got to be a big man a steam gunner, got to be a strong man.  Those guns, no one wants them goin off by chance, so’s that lever is massive hard to pull.  Trip an fall against it, it ain’t gonna pull.  Takes four normal men, or takes one big, mean steam gunner.  Man with calluses instead of skin, man with the smell of singed hair always floatin around him.  Despite the fact he got no hair of his own.  Burned off from the heat of the gun, all of it, every strand.  Steam gunner got eyes on him, keeps them behind goggles, keeps them safe from the heat and the flames and the steam.  Eyes like hawk eyes.  Eyes to see far over the horizon, so’s he knows where that cask is gonna hit when it runs tired of fightin gravity and comes to earth and shakes the bones of everything it doesn’t flat crush.  Got to keep them eyes sharp.

 

Eyes the target does the steam gunner, flexes the muscles in his legs and back and shoulders and arms, squeezes and pulls and, man-o-man-o, WHOOSH goes the steam out of that tank, all that pressure at once, crams itself behind the cask where there just ain’t enough room for it so it’s got to have more and it pushes and pushes and the cask it tries to stay put cause it’s crammed in tight like it wants but the steam is stronger and it says GIT OUT, CASK!  And the cask, it gets the hell out.  BANG flyin up the barrel and into the air and gone, like nothin you ever saw and too fast too see anyhow it’s over the horizon and lookin for the spot the gunner sent it to.

 

Only it don’t happen like that. Like one thing after another.  It happens all at once.  And it don’t sound WHOOSH and then GIT OUT, CASK and then BANG.  More it’s all one thing.  WHGITOUTSHBACASKNG!  Just all at once.  A single sound faster than thinkin and louder than thunder.  Steam gunner loses his teeth early from the rattlin they take.  An ain’t no matter how much cotton they stuff in theys ears and how many yards of cheese cloths they wrap around and around ‘em, theys hearin ain’t too hot neither.

 

Still, better than bein on the other end when the cask from one of them guns returns to earth.  Travel so fast, the front end goes red from the friction.  (friction is what you got when things rub gainst each other.  Like rub your hands together real fast and feel hows they heat up, that’s friction.) Steam gun cask gets friction from the air, that’s how fast it shoots.  So one end is red and hot, other end is black and trailin steam an pretty hot itself, but not so hot as the front.  Call that contrast.  One thing is one way and the other thing is the other was and the difference between them is how they contrast one another.  That contrast between red hot and black hot, it makes something like a giant iron cask unstable.  Makes it less rigid than if it was all black (rigid means stiff, hard), and less pliable than if it was all red (pliable is like how somethin can bend or drip or squish.) So what happens when that damn cask hits ground? 

 

It shatters is what.

 

Hundreds, thousand pieces, fragments is what, some red hot, some black, spray and whistle, slicin, cutting, lodgin in things, makin a mess.

 

Ugly.

 

Man on the field, woman too, they hear when that steam gun goes off, no matter how far, they hear that fast thunder.  Look up, look for a black dot with a red tip, trailin steam, look for it and where it’s comin to, an they theys run somewheres else. 

 

But don’t matter too much.

 

Cask hits, shatters, sprays, and it sprays far.  Runnin ain’t much good.  Bestways thing to do, bury yourself deep.  Maybe it saves you, maybe it don’t.  If it don’t, you just saved some work for the local burryin man.  An he’ll thank the memory of you, cuz he’s got plenty of burryin to do after the cask drops from a steam gun.

 

Riddle Afield was a steam gunner in the Tinker Wars.  Last one left.  Big, that goes without sayin, got none of his own teeth left, got brass hearin aids screwed into both ears, scars where hair is on most folks, muscles where skin is on most folks.  Wears a great coat from the Tinker Wars.  Medals and such on the front for bein the best steam gunner ever.  Wears his goggles still, to protect eyes that are so sharp, they see round corners and behind his back.  Left side of his body, it’s gnarled (means twisted and hard and knobbly, like an old limb on an old tree front of a scary house on a block where ain’t nobody livin.)  That side of his body got that way from bein closest to the steam guns, closest to the fire an the steam and the fast thunder.

 

When Riddle Afield laughs, sounds like the old echo of one of his guns.

 

But he don’t laugh much.

 

They day he showed up at the old voodoo man’s iron building, that same day Shdding Lyttle was holding the baby Necrotic Culver in his arms and they was both realizin without knowin what they felt that they was in love, that day Riddle Afield laughed.  Broke half the windows on the street when he did.

 

What made him laugh is part of the story.

 

What he come to the old voodoo man for is, too.

 

Came to the old voodoo man to sell somethin, somethin he knew that old man had the covets for (covet is like when you want somethin so bad it’ all you think on.  that toy ya saw in the shop window an all you can think is how much better life will be when ya get it, that’s a covetin toy.)  For years Riddle had no-wayed they voodoo man.  Wantin to keep his eyes for when the wars came again and he could be back beside one of his guns, bringin the fast thunder, hurlin casks on the unexpectin.  But now he had a covet of his own, an he come to the old voodoo man ready to swap one of his hawk eyes for what it was he wanted. 

 

An he saw Necrotic Culver, and he laughed, and glass broke all over, and what he was covetin for changed on an instant.

 

Shivers it gives me, right into that foot I don’t got anymore, foot that was taken from me by the piece of a steam gun cask in the Tinker Wars, gives me shivers to think on that man, Riddle Afield, and makes me sharpen up my knife to think on his throat.

 

Go on now, let me stew a little on the past.  Come back later and I’ll tell you more.  Go on, my foot’s shiverin, an I want to be alone.

 

-c

I’m reposting chapter 7 of The Book of All Future Names because some readers have reported problems opening the page.  

  

    Let me tell you somethin about Necrotic Culver, that girl, she had a bee sting for a heart.  Hot, swollen, a fierce pain ya don’t dare touch for fear it will hurt worse than before.  But it weren’t so much that she felt it herself, more than those that tried to touch her heart pulled back with red welts all over theys ownselves. 

            She didn’t plot it out to be that way, but that’s the way it was all the sames.  That old voodoo man what raised her, if ya can call what he did raising a child, he saw that in her the first time he looked at them mismatched color eyes.  Saw a pain-full heart.  Saw a sewer of hurt and longing.  Saw an instrument for lost hopes and lowered expectations.  Saw just about everythin he could want to see in a girl of his own blood. 

            Standin there at the threshold (that’s like where a door is, but more if the door is open, just that spot you step over to go from one place to the next is a the threshold of the place), holdin that baby in his arms the first time, thinkin he ought ta just hand it right back to the biddy on his stoop, he saw the destruction in that girl and had hisself a thought.

            No, he didn’t little Necrotic back ta the biddy, he just kicked the door closed on her face and took the babe inside. 

            Now I already told you how he had that Hugo Cauldron fetch up the Book of All Future Names for him.  How he flipped the pages and found the name Necrotic Culver waitin for the baby.  An’ also I may have mentioned about another baby that comed to live in that dark, iron building, boy baby nursed up in a fish bowl, Shadding Lyttle. 

            Case you missed it, Shad was there that day too.  Standin right there in the room, got his sweepin broom in his hand, which is what he had in his hand anytime he didn’t have his mopping mop or his sponging sponge or his wiping wipe or his scrubbing scrub or any of the other tools of the cleaning trade he was plying there (plying means he was doing it.  Like to ply your trade is to work at your work, if ya  follow) at the command of the old voodoo man. 

            That boy Shad, you’d have thought that comin to term in a fish bowl, bein fed on voodoo man scraps, livin in a dark iron building full of dark goings in and such, you’d have thought such a boy would grow stunted and low, a scuttler (scuttle is something you do when you kinda creepy crawl to the side like.  See a crap walkin sideways, that’s a scuttle.  So a scuttler’s someone who scuttles.  Or so says I), a boy to hang at the walls in the dark places, of which there were lots in that building, out of sight and out of mind.  But it weren’t so.  Shadding Lyttle, he were tall and straight and comely (means good looking, hot, in the parlance of the kids.  An you got to know what parlance means you can go fetch your ownself a dictionary.  I got no time for every last little multisyllabic word out of my mouth.  And what I said before goes twice for multisyllabic.), more than that, he was bright and kind and strong, and, well, just a good damn boy is what he was. 

            Old voodoo man, he hated Shadding Lyttle.  Hated him like he hated grit between the layers of a grilled leek (it’s a kind of an onion), hated him like he hated when it was late at night and he couldn’t sleep an he just wanted it to be morning and every time he looked at the clock he swore an hour at least was gonna have passed, but it was never more than five minutes, hated that boy like you could only have expected him to hate the boy if the boy had done somethin personal like to him that no one knew about except him, and that includes the boy not knowin neither.  Which is what the case was as a matter of fact. 

            Just by bein born that boy had done something terrible to the old voodoo man, somethin the old voodoo man was like never to forgive or forget.

            No, I ain’t gonna say what it was.  You open a book to read it, do you skip first to all the secret good parts first?  Find out every little twist and turn in advance then go back and read the in-between parts?  I didn’t think so.

            Ya read a book in order, ya can listen to a story in order.

            So, there’s young Shadding Lyttle in the iron home of the old voodoo man, an there’s Necrotic Culver, a baby girl with a poison heart.

            An what’s the old voodoo man do?

            He turns to Shad, smile on his face, ugly smile on his face, as if any other kind of smile crossed his face ever (actually, truth to tell, there was a time he had a beautiful smile.  Before it got broke.  But that’s for later, too), turned to that boy with that baby girl in his arms and said, “You, young master Lyttle, come take the darling child.”

            An Shad did as he was told.  Did it happy and relieved.  Happy caused once he had that baby in his arms he knew he could maybe keep her safe.  Relieved because he thought the first place that baby might have gone was straight into Hugo Cauldron’s bubbling maw (it’s a mouth, but picture a big nasty one opened wide to swallow you whole).

            Holdin that baby girl himself, Shad, just not much more than a baby, he looked into those eyes, red and black, no doubt trouble spellin eyes, an he flat fell in.  Fell in deep, droppin, tumblin, lost, an not carin a damn.  When he come up out of those eyes, he’d of thought a month had passed at least, or a year, or ten, no tellin how long, didn’t leastways expect to find no time at all had passed.  Standin there dumbstruck (which means speechless), standin there wonderin at the new thing he was feelin.  Deep in his chest, an ache, a swellin ache, more like a burn really, a fierce hot pain like nothin he’d ever felt before.  A pain he’d go on feelin the rest of his born days.  A pain that would only be more painful when it was took away from him for a while in some later years.  Pain that hurt worse when it was gone than when it was there.

            Old voodoo man looked at Shad’s face, an he knew in an instant what the boy was feelin.  Yes he did.  How’d he know?  Cuz he’d felt it hisself.  Years before.  Now he only felt the pain of it bein gone.

            Old voodoo man laughed.  He let Shad hang on to that girl, let him take care of her, feed her, tuck her in nights, let that pain grow and fester and blister and swell.  Let that pain get big as all Shad’s insides. 

            All so it would hurt more when he took Necrotic away from him.

            What did Necrotic Culver feel in all this?  What was that little baby child thinkin?

            Mostly she was thinkin what baby childs think.  She was thinkin goo-goo and gah-gah.  But also, looking up at Shadding Lyttle, she was thinkin somethin else, she was thinkin, goo-goo, gah-gah, why’s my heart hurt so bad?

            Round bout right then’s when Riddle Afield showed hisself up. 

            Riddle Afield, about who this here chapter is named.

            But about who I ain’t gonna tell now.

            Cuz it’s gettin dark.

            An every fool knows you don’t talk on Ridde Afield when the dark’s come.

            Even a fool like me.

 

-c

 

PREVIOUSLY IN THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

How old?

 

Damn old.

 

Think on it.  How old a cauldron got to be before it get a name, any name, let alone a name like Hugo?

 

Yeah, that old.

 

But Hugo even older than that.  Take for instance how Hugo knows, whenever the old voodoo man tells him to fetch some of this or some of that, how Hugo knows where to get it.  How comes a cauldron on those kind of details?

 

Here’s a hint.

 

This world of ours, it didn’t just go pop one day and there it was all finished.  It didn’t do that anymore than your favorite dinner of lamb korma (a Indian style of curry with cream and raisins and other good stuff that you can look up in a cook book if you want to) just pops up on a plate with a big pile of basmati rice and nan bread and mango chutney.  No, this world of our, it first had to be cooked up.

 

All the bits and pieces of this world, steamed, sautéed, browned, broiled, par boiled, emulsified, seared, smoked, deep fried, roasted, or blanched, they all had to be prepared, cooked, and tossed in a big damn pot so they could stew up together.

 

A pot.  Like what they call a cauldron.

 

See where I’m goin?

 

In case you don’t see all that well, let me paint a picture a bit brighter.  Hugo Cauldron, could be he knows where every damn thing is because he cooked every damn thing at one time or another.  Got the taste of everythin in his big iron mouth does Hugo.

 

You don’t got to believe me if you don’t want to, but there it is.  An whether you believe it or not, there’s still the plain fact that when the old voodoo man says, Hugo, go fetch me the last livin breath of the thief to Christ’s left up on Calvry Hill, Hugo goes and fetches it.

 

So you tell me how he does it an I’ll shut up an you can tell the story.

 

Sayin that Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

Not sayin that the old voodoo man is as old as Hugo.  Cuz I know you’re thinkin that someone had to chop an dice and mince all them ingredients before puttin them in the cauldron, an they did, but it wasn’t the old voodoo man, that’s damn sure.

 

Yeah, he old.  He damn old, but he’s not that damn old.

 

Let me tell you somethin about that old voodoo man.  That fella, he’s mean.  Like you didn’t suss that out already.  But that’s not all.  He’s mean and he’s nasty.  More.  He’s mean and he’s nasty and he plays the violin. 

 

Didn’t see that comin.

 

Plays the violin as sweet as it ever been played.

 

Know who’s a sucker for sweet violin playin?  Yeah, that’s right.  Hugo Cauldron.  So if you were wonderin where all this was windin to, now you got the hint. 

 

Hugo Cauldron, he’s old.  And he knows things.  Things ain’t no one else ever known.  Well, one other know them, but only that one, and then Hugo.  Knowin things, that makes a person, or a cauldron, powerful.  You got a knowledge of things, you got a way to shape them, control them, possess them.  That kind of power, Hugo has it in spades.  But he ain’t the type to use it.  Not on his own. 

 

Hugo, he’s the kind of cauldron, he mostly wants to simmer over a fire with his belly full of a nice thick onion soup.  Leave all that power business up to some other people got the hunger for it.  But Hugo, he suck a wonder, he found his way into some stories, some legends, some rumors and tales.  And all those whispers, they found their way, year after year, into the ears of the old voodoo man.  Well, just into his left ear really, his right ear, it don’t hear so well.  Accident he had when he was a boy.  Well, not so much an accident as a case where his granny cut that ear off to use in a conjurin potion.  But that’s a long story.

 

But that good left ear, it heard plenty. 

 

An what it heard was that this knowin and powerful cauldron, it liked the violin.  So what does the voodoo man do? (an I call him the voodoo man her instead of the old voodoo man because he’d been around some by then but he wasn’t quite old by the standard of how old he got to be later) That voodoo man got himself taught how to play the violin as sweet as could be.

 

It was hard.

 

Sweetness was not somethin that came easy to the voodoo man.  Bein mean and nasty he could pull off at the drop of a hat.  First time he put bow to strings he could eke mean and nasty from that violin, but sweet sounds took him time.  Years.  A pile of years.  And then another pile.  Like fightin all of nature tryin to get that violin to sound sweet.  Wore out a hundred and seventy three violin teachers learnin to play sweet. 

 

By wore out what I mean is he killed most of em in some mean and nasty way or another when they couldn’t teach him proper what he wanted. 

 

Then he met someone special. 

 

But he don’t talk about her. 

 

No, I ain’t gonna tell you her name or what happened to her.  It comes later.  Nuff to say she taught him how to play sweet.  How?  Well, I’ll tell you this much.  Only way to learn what it is to be sweet is to have someone be sweet to you.  Then you maybe get some of that sweetness on you.  Then maybe you can rub it off elsewhere.  An if maybe the person who rubbed all theys sweetness on you up and dies of a sudden and leaves you alone, well maybe your sweetness gets seasoned with sadness.

 

An there ain’t nothin sweeter than that.

 

After that, whatever it was that happened to the old voodoo man (he was old by then) whatever it was that happened to him that I ain’t sayin, he could play that violin sweet like to make your teeth fall out.

 

In them years, an it took years, find him in every house wares and pot shop in the world, goin up an down the aisles, plain that violin as sweet as dyin in the arms of the one you love.

 

Playin and walkin and playin and listenin and playin some more.

 

Till he heard it, comin down a cluttered shelf of bric-a-brac in a rummage sale raisin money for a volunteer fire department in some small place with barely a name in some hills lost aways from the city.  Pausin between notes, lettin the last sweet one vibrate out of the air before the next could be bowed, he heard a sigh.  Delighted and content, the sigh of someone who enjoys a good cry now an again.  Someone who accepts the sour with the sweet.  Someone who knows a thing or three about seasonin.

 

How much? is all the old voodoo man asked the churchy ladies runnin the sale.

For that old thing? is what they answered.

 

And in the end the old voodoo man had him for six yankee dollars.

 

Hugo Cauldron, bargain basement, with all his knowin and all his power.

 

An Hugo got seasoned by the old voodoo man.  Around all that mean and nasty, Hugo got some of it hisself.  So that when Necrotic Culver was dropped on theys doorstep, all he could think to hisself was how yummy that baby might be in his tummy. 

 

But sweepin up the corners, already there for a few years, big enough now to keep things clean and tend to duckin out the way when the old voodoo man got mean and took a swipe at him, sweepin up in there was Shadding Lyttle.  One eye on that girl baby, one eye on the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Shad, he’d been figuring he needed to get out for some time from that place, had a plan just about finished, but when he saw tiny Necrotic Culver, he hung up his plan and put it to the side. 

 

Have to wait a few years it would, until that girl was old enough that he could take her out too. No was that boy leavin her behind with the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Then things got a little complicated.

 

-c

 

PREVIOUSLY IN THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

Castigleone didn’t like to be called fat. 

 

Problem being there wasn’t many way around callin him fat.  Face the truth, wasn’t many ways around Castigleone.  Boy was big.  Hefty.  Rotund (which is another way of sayin fat without sayin fat).  Castigleone coming down the sidewalk, you bet he cleared a ton of space for hisself.  Don’t got to ask people to make way, they just do.  Got no choice.  Only other option bein that you stand your ground and Castigleone tromps over you and you end up an extra large wad of sticky somethin or other on the sidewalk that gonna adhere (mean stick to somethin) to the bottom of some fella or gal’s shoe.

 

Castigleone didn’t like to be called fat.

 

But I am here to tell you somethin, that boy was fat and there ain’t no two ways or nevermind about it. 

 

Fat.

 

An under that fat, he strong.

 

All that jello shakin all over the boy, that just hidin what he got underneath.  You could render that fat away (render means, in this context, like to melt somethin) (by the by, context means within the terms of which we are discussin at the moment.  Cuz render can mean other things in a different context and I don’t want to confuse no one.), so if you could render that fat away, what you’d get left over would look like a bull standin up on its hind legs like a well-trained dog. 

 

But all them muscles, they got Castigleone in trouble.

 

Time was, when he was a mite (mite is like a tiny insect kind of a thing), he didn’t have no fat on him at all.  An the thing to remember is, when I say he was a mite, I don’t mean his bigness, I mean his age.  He was plenty young, barely up to tyin his own shoe laces age, but he was already the kind of a boy who cast a shadow down the ground before him.  Case a shadow like you get when it’s early mornin or late afternoon and you turn your back to the sun and see how it stretches out ahead of you.  Imagine what it’ll be like when you all grown up, to be that tall.

 

Well Castigleone, he didn’t have to wait.  He was already as tall as that shadow, an the one he was castin was taller than any adult you know. 

 

A boy that size, wearin overalls, got a runny nose, draggin a stuffed penguin around with him everywhere he’s goin, well you just know he’s gonna draw hisself some bad trouble.

 

Some kinds of people, they ain’t happing in theys ownself. 

 

True.

 

Hard to see it, but that is truth.  People like that, they always lookin for reasons outside theys ownselves for why they ain’t happy on theys own.  Figure it got to be someone’s fault. 

 

Take offense at the drop of a hat a person like that.  Go around lookin for what it is makin them not happy.  Look around this world, spoilin for a fight with whoever it is they think responsible.

 

Castigleone, him an that penguin of his, they just catnip to people like that. (Catnip, it’s a flowering plant that a scientist would call Nepeta.  Part of a family it is, family called Lamiaceae.  Take some of that Nepeta and let a cat get at it an that cat gonna go wild and roll around an drool maybe and meow and want some more.  Then it gonna get bored and wander away till some time passes. Then it gonna go crazy all over again.)  So these people I’m talking about, that’s about how they behaved when they got sight of Castigleone.

 

Little boy, who ain’t little at all, so big people think he at least a teenager, build like a bull, with a stuffed penguin and a gapin grin on his face, mouth still full of baby teeth.

 

An here they comes, the bullies.  Fellas so unhappy in theys ownselves, they got to push someone else around to feel happy.  See Catigleone, his bigness, those muscles, it like an affront to theys unhappiness (affront is like an insult.)

 

So they start in, makin fun. 

 

“Wipe that snot offa your lip, boy.”

“Where you get them clothes, boy, the poor box?”

“What that you draggin, boy, that a teddy bear?  You too old for teddy bears.”

 

Castigleone, he don’t understand half of it.  But he get the tone.   Sound of those voices, he know theys givin him the business.  An bein a little boy, it plain upsets him.  Gets the tears to flowin.  Blubberin is what the child gets up to.  Cryin on the sidewalk.

 

Well, you talking catnip, that is some catnip for these fellas.  A big guy cryin, that’s about as much fun as theys can imagine.

 

Start circlin Castigleone.

 

“Crybaby.”

“What you cryin over, boy, you wet your pants?”

“Where’s your mama, boy, she gonna wipe your nose for you?”

“Hey, boy, gimme that!”

 

Oops, that a mistake that fella made, grabbin that penguin out from Castiglenoe’s hand.

 

Boy stops cryin.  Boy opens his mouth wide.  Boy pulls his arm back as far as he can.  And he swings it forward at the fella what took his penguin from him.

 

Heard people talk about someone goin all raggedy doll?  Means they fall jumbly on the ground without they got no nothin to hold them up.  Raggedy doll, it got no bones inside what to give it stiffness.  This fella what grabbed Castigleone’s stuffed penguin, he don’t go raggedy doll all at once.  What he do is fly through the air a ways, sail across the sidewalk, looks like he’s struggin against somethin as he fly, his arms an legs all kicky and swingy, like he don’t know yet how the ground got knocked out from under his feet.  Then he hit a wall.  A brick wall.  It had been a wood wall, a fence say, things might have turned out better for that fella.  He maybe would have just broke this an that.  Or probably not.  He might have broke a few less part, but he probably end up just the same way.  Way is was, the wall was brick.  He hit that wall, that’s when he went rageddy doll.

 

Sound was like a wet crunch.  Which is kinda like one of them paradoxes I explained to you before.  Wet crunch.  Things splattin an breakin at the same time.

 

He hit that wall high up, an then he flop all boneless onto the ground.

 

Them other fellas, ones was makin theysselves feel better bout things by pickin on Castigleone, they get lost in a hurry.

 

Castigleone, he don’t know what’s goin on.  He run over, grab up his penguin and hugs it to him.  Wipin snot an tears off on that poor sad ol penguin.  He don’t know what to make of that fella all raggedy doll an all.  He just stand there kickin at him an waitin for him to move.  Till some people come around and see the mess and starts to screamin.  Then he get scared an run on home.

 

Yep, there was some trouble.

 

Castigleone, he was bein raised up by his mom.  His dad was some fella she never knew to well.  Castigleone, when he was born, be was small and weak as a kitten.  She worried he might die of bein so small and fed him up. Fed him up an up an up.  Then she tried to stop feedin him up, but it didn’t seem to make no matter.  Whatever and however much she fed him, he got bigger.  Like sunlight and breathin an water was all it took to make that boy grow. Like he was a weed or somethin.

 

But now she was scared.  No of Castigleone, she loved that boy.  But she was scared what was gonna happed to him. 

 

So she did what she had to, an she sent him away.  Sent him away to her cousin in the city.  To live there, hidden in the city.  The only place where a boy that big might hide.  City is a place where ain’t no one gonna star at you, no matter who or what you may be.  People mind theys own business in the city.

 

So that’s where she sent her son.

 

Castigleone, he starts to think he done somethin wrong, somethin made his mom not love him no more.  Somethin bout the way he hurt that fella so bad.  He starts to hate how strong he is.  Hate them muscles.  He don’t want to look at em.  He don’t want people talkin about em.  He wants to hide em. 

 

So that’s what he does.

 

Boy starts eatin again.  Eats an eats.  Boy can grow on sun an air an water, an he’s eatin hotdogs an avocadoes (creamy green fruit that people think it a veggie because it’s green, but it’s got a pit which makes it a fruit) an cheese crackers an chick pot pie an asparagus (green veggie that makes you pee smell funny) an ossobuco an corn flakes an menudo (a spicy soup made from stomach from a pig or a cow or a goat or a sheep) an endive (like a kind of lettuce) an cheddar cheese an key lime pie an baba ghanoush (fancy mashed eggplant), an, his favorite, viccysoise (cold fish soup).

 

That when he get fat.  Though ain’t no one says it to him.

 

But that muscle, it don’t go away.  In fact, under all that fat, it gets stronger.  Haulin all that around?  Man, them muscles just gettin stronger an stronger.  That boy lost all that fat at once, he’d take one step on them strong legs that was used to carryin all that weight, and he’d just about lift off the ground, kick hisself into space, he would.

 

Truth.

 

So here’s Castigleone, which is what his name is in the Book of All Future Names, comin down the street, makin way, no one callin him fat, an he comes behind him his mom’s cousin, lettin Castigleone clear him a path. 

 

Cousin’s name is Bobo Link.

 

Uh-huh.  Startin to see it now, ain’t ya?  Things they come together a little if you wait.  Cuz trailin after Bobo is his two new apprentices, Munez Lautner and Petty Affair. 

 

We already know cuz I told you that Munez and Petty gonna someday be in the mob of Shadding Lyttle.  We already know cuz I told you that Storie Latier was already come to be the first of Shad’s mob.  An now let me tell you that the last of Shad’s mob was gonna be Castigleone. 

 

But what about Necrotic Culver an all that? 

 

An how does four plus Shad make up a mob when a mob is supposed to be a whole mess of people?

 

Let me tell you now, I just got them all in one place an introduced to you, so hang back an give some room an let me take a breath an we get down into what happened an got on caused all the trouble round here.

 

Truth.

 

-c

 

LOS ANGELES, August 8, 2008

 

Previously in The Book of All Future Names

Munez Lautner knew not a damn thing about Shadding Lyttle, and he liked it that way.

You can ask how a fella that knows nothin about another fella can like it that he don’t know nothin about that fella.  An I’ll tell ya the answer, an all you got to do is sit an wait for the story to catch up to your curiosity is all. 

So, Munez didn’t know a damn thing about Shad, and liked it that way.  An truth be told, Shad didn’t know a damn thing about Munez, but whether he cared a damn about that state of things I couldn’t tell you.  See, theys situations was different in regard to what they knew of one another.

Mind that of  I just dropped in there. 

Told you Munez didn’t know a thing about Shad, didn’t say he didn’t know of  Shad.  Different points entirely.  Way I tell a story they is anyway.

Take a step back, backer than that, little more backer, kay, now you’re at the time when Munez was a whippet child.  Slink of a gutter snip, zigzaggin crowds around the Square, rubbin his belly an looking out from under curly bangs from outta big brown eyes.  Boy had two singular talents, boy could make them eyes leaky as a hydrant at will. 

Tell you, many’s the traveler made the mistake of glancing down and making eye contact with that child, watched as the valve was opened and the waters flowed down those dirty thin cheeks, felt theys hearts touched, frozen there by pity, reached to they’s back pocket for handbag for a little something for to give the mite that he could buy a hotdog from the cart over there, an found that while they’s better natures were being touched upon, theys wallets had likewise been touched up and gone.  Time they looked back for Munez Lautner, he was gone too, down some stray alley was with his big sister, watchin as she counted out the cash, threw the plastic down a sewer drain, stuffed the bills into the strap of a bra she didn’t even need none, and spilled the silver into his cupped palms.

Yeah she got a name too.  What, you think the Book call her Munez’s Sister?  No.  Her name in the Book of All Future Names is called Petty Affair.  An why they has different last names ain’t because theys mommy married different daddies or somesuch, it because the Book don’t care what your brother or sister or mommy or daddy or grands or great grands be called, the Book has your  name, for just you, got no relation to whosoever’s womb you happen to squirt out of or how you got in there or whether theys people what got together to put you in there was married or any other nonsense the Book don’t give a damn about.

So there.

Munez Lautner and Petty Affair.  Brother and sis.  Tight as tight.  How tight they be, you ask, if she be pocketing all the foldin money an givin him only the jinglin? 

Tell you: for ones, she the dipper.  He the shill, keep the attention of the suckers while she stick her hand in theys money keepin places, but she the one taken the rap if a blue suit show up at the wrong occasion of time.  For seconds, she not hoggin that cash.  That cash, sure she take some for herself, but somthin nice, a scarf like she like to wear over her head, wrap up those waist long dreads and keep them manageable while she work, she got dozens of those, master at tyin knots and makin ropes an other usful stuff from them scarves, but mostly what she do with that cash is pay rents on theys place to live, buy groceries for theys to eat, an books from the three-for-a-dollar bin for Munez to read on cuz he way ahead of himself with that readin an go through books like nobody you seen.

That was the other singular talent of Munez (singular, by the by, means theys only one of them.  Don’t give me no mess about how can the boy have TWO singular talents. I mean by singular is that no one else have them, they all his alone.  So there.), readin.

Boy could read a storm. 

Mean that literally (literally mean I mean it exactly how I say it an it ain’t no figure of speech meant to illustrate a point.  If you follow).

Mean that boy was so proficient (proficient mean someone really, really good at something) in the art of readin that he could read a storm.  Look up through the rain, up at the clouds, cracklin lightnin, rollin thunder, whippin wind, look it all over an read it in a flash.  Tell you if it a cleansin kind of a rain, a ill wind, tell you where the thunder from, if it Chinese or from Zaire, know if the clouds the silver linin type, or the other, read everythin in a storm. 

That not all.

Munez Lautner, he could read the street.  Read the buildings.  Read your face.  Read dirt.  Read pigeons on the wing.  Read the grease on a diner countertop.  Read clothes line.  Read shoe soles and bald spots and coffee cups and chocolate cake.  Boy could read anyolthin.

Over the years, as he growin, he read the city, an it tell him of Shadding Lyttle, but it don’t tell him anythin about Shad.

Just tell him such a boy exist, that an no more.  Well, it tell him one more things of Shadding Lyttle.  It tell him that he gonna kill him someday.

Sorry, what I mean is, he (Shadding Lyttle) gonna kill him (Munez Lautner) someday.  Tell you, that a hell of a thing to read about yourself and some other fella you ain’t never met nohow.  Remember back when I talked about foreshadows?  It like that, when you read about somethin that’s to come to pass but ain’t yet, but it better to call it a portent, like a sign of what’s to come.

Having read that much of Shadding Lyttle, Munez didn’t want to know nothin about him.  The less there was in the city to read about Shad, the further than person, whoever he be, must be away from him and his sister.

Still and somehow, Munez ended up in Shad’s mob.

Thought I’d forgot what I was tellin didn’t you?  No, I didn’t just comin at it kinda sidelike here. 

How is it a fella that knows that some other fella is or might be destined to kill him come to cross paths?  An how it was that it happened was like this:

Munez was readin one day, readin the crowd like he was supposed to, lookin for that person whose moles would read to him a story about how they had some scratch on them and that they was a soft touch for a cryin child at the same time.  Took an awful lot of readin to find that combination.  An truth to tell, by the time of this, Munez was gettin a little largish.  Growin into those big brown eyes.  Cheeks fillin out. 

Petty Affair knew she should make him fast now an again, specially on wokin days, but she loved her brother angry.  Not by which I don’t mean that she loved him when he was angry, but that she loved him with angry love.  Not gentle love, not all-consuming love, not even fierce love, but angry love.  Like to rip up the world if it do wrong by him kind of love.  So she never had it in herself nohow to ask him to skip a meal.  She’d skipped plenty meals in her time.  Three years older than him, she’d skipped means every one of the days of her life.  First because the meals weren’t there, then because they weren’t there and what was there she gave to Munez.  An then, once they was out on theys own, she coulda stopped skippin meals, but it was like her body didn’t know what to do with food.  Just looked at it an said, what that for?  She looked proper ragamuffin.  Pretty as all damn, but boney as hell. 

So Munez takin a long time readin the right mark, an he getting bored, start readin other things.  Readin the exhaust from a cab, readin the cups and gum wrappers in the gutter, readin the statue in the middle of the Square, even though he read it a hundred times before.  Sudden, he read somethin on a man, read a big fat backroll, read a weakness for children.  An he tickle his earlobe the way he supposed to for Petty to know it’s on. 

Problem is, Munez don’t read deep enough.  He just kind of scan this fella, don’t get the who story. 

So when he catch this man’s eye, fire up the tears, get em goin good and strong, an see the smile come over that man’s face, he plain shocked by what he read in that smile.  The nasty things that smile tells him, they make him want to run an hide some other place.  Before he can, an before he can lift the sign tells Petty to slip off otherways, she’s dipped the man’s pocket, an found his hand already there, grabbin her wrist, twistin it, pullin her close, that same smile all over his face.

“Well,” he say, “what a delightful pair of children you are.”

Munez Lautner, he just frozen there, readin the man’s face over an over again, readin his belt an his socks an his toupee, readin the same thing in all of them.

This here man, he knowed Shadding Lyttle.

That how Munez Lautner and his sister Petty Affair come to be indentured to Bobo Link.

And the sadness that followed should come as no surprise when it does.

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 30, 2008

THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

The mob, then, an how Packer, whofor was really named Shadding Lyttle, and whofor the sake of clarity an brevity (brevity meaning shortness so as to take less time) we will henceforth call Shad, how Shad came to have the mob in the first place.

Well, it was back in them days when Shad was most like to be called Packer, and not mind it much cuz he’d rather not be reminded of his being Shadding Lyttle an how he got that name an how it was the old voodoo man what gave it him. 

First up in that mob of his was Bingo.

Kay, let’s get this over with.  Yes, Bingo ain’t what his real name was.  His real name, as according to the Book of All Future Names, was Storie Latier.  An, no, I ain’t gonna tell you how he come to know that was the name he got in the Book cuz if I do I’m gonna end up tellin a whole damn other story about Storie instead of the one I mean to be tellin which is about how Shad come to have a mob an how the love of his life Necrotic Culver come to steal it away from him.

Oh damn!

I just let that slip before I was supposed to.  That bit about how Necrotic Culver was the love of Shad’s life.  I didn’t mean to let onto that twist in the tail for a good long time.  Damn.  Kay, what you do is, you file that away, as in like a foreshadow.  A foreshadow bein a shadow that runs ahead of something, you see it before the actual thing an it give you a hint of what castin it.

So an like, maybe I screwed up an just told you a little more than I meant to, or maybe like I’m funnin and teasin an slippin things that ain’t exactly so just to confuse the trail we all on. 

You make up your own damn mind.

I’ll tell you this much: I don’t lie.  Not on purpose nohow.  That’s a rule I got.  I tell you somthin, it’s the truth as best I know it.  Course, sometimes I ain’t know but the least bit of the truth an I got to make up the rest.  Bespoke truth, as it were.  Bespoke is something made to order.  Made custom just for you.  Usually means a suit of clothes.  Get you a bespoke suit from a bespoke tailor, that how people know you livin high.

Shad, at the top, with his mob behind him, he had such a suit.  Suit made for him by the finest bespoke tailor in the city.  Suit had woven into it special things.  Charms an wards, talismans (talisman is like a good luck charm only it really magic an not just some damn rabbit’s foot), a runic suit is what the tailor called it.  Proof against many things.

But he didn’t have that suit at the start.

At the start he had a bloody apron an he was packin boxes down in that butchery.  An with him down there also was a boy whose real name was Storie Latier, but who got called Bingo mostly because he was the furthest thing from a bingo.  Meanin to say, he was the furthest thing from a winnin card.  Fellas in the butchery, other boys, other packers and hookers and haulers and washers and even the cuttin men, they all knew him for to have bad luck.  Not for other people. Just for hisself. 

Storie was the first of the mob.

Was a marrower he was.  Marrow be what is at the middle of your bones, stuff that makes blood cells and whatnot.  Can’t live without you got it.  Also it makes damn good eatin.  Take a nice thick thighbone, cut it into chunks an roast it.  Careful comin out of the oven, that bone gets hot.  Dig that marrow out with a tiny knife or spoon, spread it on some bread with some salt an some chive.  Yum, I say.  Yum.

Anyhow, Storie was a marrower.  Cracked bones all day, dug out the marrow and scraped it off his long thin knife into tiny jars.  Every day a little fella with a wee little moustache come by.  Fella named Touch Marple.  Had hisself a grocery way aways uptown where the big houses is.  He take them jars, pays off the head cutter man for them, sticks fancy labels on them and puts them on the shelf at his grocery.  Next to the caviar (fish eggs) and foie gras (fatted goose or duck liver) an other fancypants stuff like that.  Matrons of that there neighborhood, a matron bein a kind of respectable lady of a certain age, they buy up that marrow.  Not so much for the eatin, but because someone start some damn fad about how it get rid of wrinkles. 

Whyhow wrinkles supposed to be some damn horrible thing still a mystery to me.  Whyhow marrow supposed to get rid of em just as big a mystery.  Biggest mystery is whyhow someone want to smear good marrow on theys face when theys could smear it on a nice bit of sour bread toast.

After the butchery close one day Shad be walkin home.  He just about the last one out on account that he the junior packer an the junior packer responsible not just for his cleanin up, but also for the cleanin up of the senior packer. 

So he walkin tired up out of the Water Street Cul de Sac, an he see somethin that don’t play right be him.  He see three fellas, big fellas, got Storie Latier backed up against a wall and seem like to be menacing him (menacing is like the same as threatening for all intents here).  Comin a little closer, Shad overhear a bit of what goin on.  What he hear is the biggest an oldest fella, fella about say nineteen, tellin Storie to cough up his daily paycheck.  Give it over before somthin bad happen.

Shad, he no stranger to this fella.  This fella is Storie’s dad. 

An you ask, wait, how the hell old is Storie if his dad only nineteen?  An I say, wait right back, Storie’s dad was a dad when he was eleven, an so you do the math.  (19 – 11 = 8).

Shad don’t look to want no trouble, but he know that Storie’s dad a nogood.  He know that man got nothin to do with Storie bein raised.  That matter, ain’t no one got nothin to do with how Storie raised ‘cept Storie.  Boy been on his own since he was four.  Make his own damn way in the world he does.

What Shad see that make him pull up, is he see Storie’s long thin marrowin knife slippin from the sleeve of his shirt an into his hand.  Shad see it, but Storie’s dad an his friends they don’t.  They don’t on account of how damn drunk they be.  Blind drunk.  The real an sincere thing.  Sightless with booze those three. 

Shad seen Storie do things with that shiv.  Seen him flick the blade down the inside of a rib and come out coated thick in yellow marrow, leavin the inside of that rib dry as a what?  Dry as a bone, that’s what.  An I ain’t tryin to be funny by sayin it that way.  Just sayin that boy knew what to do with his knife. 

Shad know what comin next.  He know Storie ain’t gonna hand over his check.  He know Storie’s dad gonna make a grab for him.  He know Storie gonna cut somethin.  He know that gonna make the other two mad an grabby.  More cuttin.  Time it’s all done, there could be some mighty rivulets of blood in the gutter (rivulet is like a stream or a tiny river). 

What Shad does is, he trips hisself.  He falls in the gutter hisself.  All eyes come his way, look at the fool in the gutter.  Blind drunks, they start to laughin.  Point at Shad, callin some names.  Talk about some times back from when theys was all in school together, times when they was big men on campus an had Shad’s number.  By the time Shad get hisself up and shuffle off quiet like an they turn back to finish theys business, Storie Latier be gone. 

Down the street a little, he come out of a alley behind Shad.  Walk there behind him.  Not sayin anythin, just walkin behind him, little off to the right, few steps back.  Not like he taggin after, but more like he watchin Shad’s back, wachin it so Shad don’t gotta worry bout no one comin at it.

Storie Latier’s dad, he got hisself killed that same night anyways.  Tried to rob a liquor store an was so blind he didn’t see the proprietor (that’s the owner) when he come from behind the counter with a sawed off shotgun and blew his left leg off just below the hip.  Bled to death in a hurry.

So an he died that night, but it wasn’t Storie Latier what killed his own dad.  Which would have been a cursed thing to happen that no good would have come of.  First big of good luck Storie Latier had in just bout his whole damn life.  A turn in the river for that boy.  Thanks to Shad.

An that’s how he become the first of Shadding Lyttle’s mob.

Damn.  Still can’t believe I let that other bit slip. 

Mind my tongue from now on.

-c

LOS ANGELES, July 25 2008

THE BOOK OF ALL FUTURE NAMES

LOS ANGELES, July 21 – First off, Packer weren’t even his real name nohow neither.

That name he got slapped with account the time he spent working the butchery, packin meats in cardboard cartons.  See him in his apron, supposed to be white, but it so drenched in pig an cow insides that it gone red all over, got them black rubber waders on, high pressure hosin the concrete floor, washin all that blood and them gobbets of whatall into the gutters and down the drains.  Someone callin to him, one of the old hands what works the blade, cutting dead flesh all day for a livin, old hand callin him, sayin, “Packer, haul your ass over here, got me a haunch got to go in the back of this man’s Cadillac.” 

Man with the Cadillac ain’t no man at all, he Bobo Link.  Bobo, that his real name, he run rackets in the Water Street cul-de-sac where the butchery did business.  He come by couple times a week for to have somethin put in his trunk, some haunch, or slab, or flank, or hock of meat sliced from whatever he took a fancy to as it hung from them danglin hooks.  Every time he come by, Packer get called over to lug that meat and drop it on the tarp spread in the trunk of that shiny white Cadillac.  Bobo, he always give the boy’s hair a tousle, pinch a saw buck between his forefinger and his flippinfinger an slip in into the boys back pocket for him.  “You come see me some time when you had enough of this crap, Packer, I’ll put you to work.  Man’s work.”  Then Bobo get in that car and roll off down out of the cul-de-sac, away off to his office on Water Street proper. 

Packer, he think about it, but not for long.  Old hand with the blade, he snap his fingers.  Packer take the ten dollars he just got gived and hand it to the cutter.  Cutting man take that ten, put it in his own pocket, hand packer a couple singles for his troubles.  Then he point his butcher blade off down the street where Bobo Link rolled to. “You go work for him, I tell you what kind of work he got for you, hustler work.  Have your ass on the street.  You want to sell that ass.”  Packer, he a kid back then, not no older than you, but big, big enough to shoulder a half a side of beef on his own and sling it if he have to.  He young but he already been here an there.  He know what the old hand sayin, but he act like he don’t, just kind of shrug.  “Dunno.”  Old hand, he run his thumb down the blade of his cutter.  “Dunno, huh?  Let me tell you then, you don’t.  Take if from me, you got a gift with the carcasses.  You stay here, earn your keep honest like.  Soon you be a cuttin man.  Have your knives.  Like bein a sculptor is what it is.  Good work.  An you’re suited.  Now git an load them beefs.  Move on it, Packer.” 

So you see then, that how he got the name.  But it not his.  His name, his name be Shadding Lyttle.  Uh huh, yes it be.  That name, it come from the place names come from, come from the Book of All Names that the old voodoo man had delivered to him by Hugo Cauldron that time I was tellin bout before this.  An how he got that name from the book is that he knew the old man his own sameself. 

When that boy were little else than a tadpole, belly swimmin in his momma’s insides, his daddy had a notion to get hisself elsewheres.  An so he did.  That boy’s daddy got hisself gone and goner.  Split town with whatall was in theys back account and under theyalls mattress and crossed the bride.  Or anyways he got halfways across the bridge.  Halfways was where someone crossed his path an took offa him all he was carryin and sent him over the rail an inta the river.  Water’s a damn hard thing to smack into from such a height. 

Anyways, Shadding Lyttle (that’s Packer to most folks), his mamma was what they call the hysterical type.  Which is to say she had a tendency to freak out at the drop of a hat.  Now I ain’t sayin that bein knocked up an havin your fella blow out the door with your savins on his hip an them have him end up takin the long dive is the drop of a hat.  Not noways unless it’s a damn big hat with a killin propensity (a propensity bein a thing you have when you got a natural way that you tend to bend towards when you got things to do).  An I don’t know no killer hats.  Do you?  Didn’t think so.  But Shadding Lyttle’s mamma anyway, she got herself hysterical, with good reason, I say, an she decided she couldn’t have no baby noways on her own with no fella and no dimes and besides which that man was no damn good and why bring inta this world one of his seed?

So she went to see the old voodoo man.

Sad old night, when she went to see him.

Old voodoo man, he deal in more than just a hex or a potion or two, he deal in medicines and medicals.  What she lookin for, well I don’t got to tell you, but what she lookin for was not to be a mamma. 

That old man, he say, “Sure, no problem.  I get that baby out of you no trouble. But you got to answer what in it for me.”  She don’t got nothin much left in this world, so all she can do is ask what he want.  Old voodoo man, he give her that grin he get on his face, grin that looks like the nastiest frown in the world, only turned the other way round.  Just as ugly as before when it pointed down, only now it pointed up like it pretending to be somethin other than what it is.  An he tell her what he want.  An she, not havin no choice nohow, she say yes, you can have that.

He get a cup make from some kinda bone that make you not want to think about where it come from, an he whisper somethin low to Cauldron Hugo, an that pot fizzle an belch and the old man dip the cup inside and bring it steaming and stinky to Shadding Lyttle’s mamma. 

Don’t look.

What happen, it bad.  Very bad.  Nothin you want to see or know about.  Trust me on that.  Ain’t sayin I’m a person you trust everyday on everythin important to you, but trust me on this. What happened to Shaddin Lyttle’s mamma, that ain’t nothin no one want to know too much about.

Suffice to say (suffice be a world that means something is just plain enough and don’t need no more), she didn’t have to be mamma to no baby without no man or no money.  Plain spoke, she didn’t have to be nothing to nobody noways any nohow anymore. 

She was dead.

People tell you the old voodoo man plan it that way.  But it ain’t be so.  He warn her, like he warn all the ladies show up on his door back in them old days, “There is no guarantee.  No guarantee that you will survive.”  Oh he guarantee plenty that theys all lose theys babies if that what they want, but no guarantee they live theys ownselves. 

Call that tough luck.

Be what it be, don’t know one nowhere be tellin you this life is fair.  They do, you know just one thing for certain, whoever it is tellin you so, they a liar.  A mean liar at that.

So then, Shadding Lyttle’s mamma, she dead from what she drunk that come from out Hugo Cauldron’s belly.  But Shadding Lyttle, he alive. 

Whatsay, you ask?

He no bigger than a tadpole, how he livin?

True I said that, but maybe I was perhaps exaggerating a little.  Exaggerating is what you do when you ain’t exactly lyin, but maybe you might be makin things to be a little more or less than they really is, so for to make a story a little better soundin. 

So he a little bigger than a tadpole when his mamma go to see the old voodoo man.  Which maybe had somthin to do with why she ain’t able to drink that potion an live. 

Enough said on that.

Shadding Lyttle alive.  So, what to become of him?  Old voodoo man, what he gonna do with what left over after the woman die?  Tell ya, never no question, he gonna keep it. 

Remember when old voodoo man whispered in mamma’s ear, told her what he take for in payment to give her that potion what killed her?  What he told her was, “Whatever you leave me, my dear.”

Ain’t no trick neither.  Old voodoo man woulda taken whatever was she left for him.  Handful of change, broken heeled shoes, wadded kleenex, button torn from her blouse.  He would have taken whatever whatfor.  Why?  Cuz he a collector of things personal.  Never know when some slight personal thing might come in handy if you in the voodoo business. 

She left a baby, not quite finished.

Old voodoo man keep that.  Keep it in a big glass bowl.  Go an tell Hugo Cauldron, “Fetch me up broth of tyrant fish and spume (spume is like frothy bubbles on top of boilin soup) from a kraken’s spit.  Fetch me lecher’s grass (a lecher is like a dirty old man standin by the playground.  Don’t talk to em.) and coffin moss.  Fetch me piker dust (piker is someone cheap) and mud from the Mariana Trench (Mariana Trench is a deep place at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It some 32,733 feet deep.  Deepest place anyone know on the face of this Earth).  Hugo Cauldron grumble some at all the work he got to do, but he hop it.  Start to burblin and gurglin and raisin some of his own damn spume, and old voodoo man start dippin his bog ol ladle in there and servin out gook and grime, spillin it all over that unripe baby boy in that glass bowl till that tiny thing be swimmin in sludge.

But he alive.  Can’t say whether he look happy, but he alive.

An so he stay.  Months come an go, old voodoo man tossin in the occasional clump of withered hag grass or a dollop (dollop is about say a big spoonful of somethin like whipped cream maybe) of beggar’s rheum (rheum is them crusty eye boogers you get at the corner of your eyes come morning).  Any old ways, that muck and mess, it keep that baby growin, an growin, an growin.  Ain’t never no time the voodoo man pull that baby out, no.  What happens is that baby grow an grow and one day that glass bowl it crack, like an egg what hatched, an out spilled a fully done baby.  Done an then some.  Less like a baby an more like a toddler.  See, that was one big damn bowl he was in. 

Old voodoo man he look up from where he’s twisted some hair from someone’s head onto a rusty nail for some mischief or other, he point at the boy an he say, “Shadding Lyttle.  Looked you up in the Book of All Names, boy, and you are Shadding Lyttle.”

Boy look at that old man an you know what he did?  He said his first world right there.  Know what that word was?  Well I tell ya.

“Mamma.”

How damn sad is that.

Anyway, I was supposed again to be tellin how Packer, that was really Shadding Lyttle, lost his mob to Necrotic Culver.  But it late again.  So you bide some and we get to it next time.

-c

 

Necrotic Culver: The Book of All Future Names I

PS

 Shadding Lyttle was the sender on another piece of spam.  Bobolink was one of the addressees on more spam.  See this POST for my Book of All Future

LOS ANGELES, July 16 - Packer wants his mob back.

Bingo told him, “Let it go, Pack, they’s gone and goner and ain’t nohow gonna come back.” 

But Packer won’t let it go.  That mob, he gathered em, fed em, learned em what and whyfor, put clothes on they’s hides and roofed they’s heads.  Nurtured em is alls he did. 

Then Necrotic Culver came along.

Hip sashayin Necrotic Culver, castin’ spells with her sway, draggin all eyes after her as she comes down the street.

Hear that traffic screech and crunch?  Cars forcin theys ways into one another?  That’s Necrotic walkin by.  Distractin drivers as they approach a yella lighted intersection.  Blowin they’s timin.   Dishes bein dropped, mans walkin through plate glass windas, fellas trippin over they’s own feet, crotch splittin they’s own selves on fire plugs.  Sowin chaos and discord is what she does.   

Necrotic Culver. Like she’s all that.  Like she got it like that.  Well, truth bein a thing to be told, truth is she is all that.  And she got it. Not always so. Before she bit it, took that dirt nap, before she up and died and all, she didn’t have nothin that was noways special to see. But when she come back? Oooh that Necrotic Culver.  Look at that.  Loose limbed and long.  Tight black leather keepin her together, pale skin, long back nails, that shaved head thing goin on and really workin it. How she get so damn hot? Dyin.  Dyin is all.   Necrotic Culver, up and died, come back steamin.   

Other ladies see her, they turn theys noses up, act like they can’t don’t see it, like it ain’t there.  But it is.  An they see it and they knows it too.  Couple ladies, they try it, like it’s a beauty secret or some damn thing.  Pop a cap in theys ownselves, put theyselves down.  That Necrotic chick come back so damn hot, see what happens when some real thing come back. But it don’t work.  They’s just dead.  Plain old dead.  Gettin uglier by the second.  Some shit just only works for some people and other people need to learn to keep to shit they’s understand. 

Necrotic Culver, she understands dyin. Lady born into it, born into dyin. 

Momma died on the table pushin her out.  Daddy died even before that.  Granny died when she found out she was gonna have to take care of this damn baby.  Other granny already dead.  One grand pappy was dyin in a alley with a needle in his arm the night Necrotic was conceived, so they say.  Brother was born still years ago.  Two sisters, twins like, one died she was three years old and wanted to know what broken glass tasted like, other twin sister died at the same time, of the same bleedin’ inside, even though she didn’t eat no glass.  I ain’t lyin.  That shit is truth.  Aunties and uncles, all dead.  Hangin rope, car crash, influenza, big C, an 89 bullets from the guns of a half dozen policemen is what got them. Add it all up, Necrotic Culver came inta this world with one grand pappy for family. 

And that grand pappy, he was a mean sonuvabitch. Bad voodoo that old man. 

An I don’t mean it in the figurative way neither. 

Catch him up in his attic room in that old Bogardus  building on Lispenard Street.  Got a big stew pot stewin all the damn time.  Only that no stew pot, that a damn cauldron.   

See a picture of three hags around a big pot, stirring in frog brains an such?  That pot’s a cauldron. Necrotic Culver’s grand pappy, he had hisself a damn cauldron.  An that cauldron, it had a name.  A pot with a name.  I ain’t lyin.  Called that pot Hugo.  Talked to that pot.  Old man sittin up there with that pot, havin a conversation like.  Sayin, “Hugo, fetch me that dawn light from off the coast of Korcula.  Don’t talk back to me, Hugo, I’ll set you over the fire and forget to fill you up.  Leave you dry on the hob with nothing to boil.  Neglect to scrub you out and oil your belly, I will.  That’s right, Hugo, a little of that dawn light from the coast of Korcula would be perfect. And a little less talking back next time.” 

Crazy old man, talkin to a pot.   

An now, now this old man got what?   A baby.  A baby girl at that.  His dead wife’s sister’s daughter goes and dies on the damn table and leaves no one nohow to take care of this little snippet an someways someone pulls his name outta some damn hat an finds him up in his room in that old iron building an says, “This here’s your grand daughter.  Take her an sign this receipt for goods received.” 

First thought he had was simple enough.  No.  No damn way.  Not takin no damn baby.  Not signin no damn receipt.  He married a woman who turned out to be cursed and unlucky and she up and died young.  Far as he was concerned her dyin cut all ties with her side of the family.  Hadn’t seen them people for whatsay years an years an years.  An Marryin one of their women didn’t make him obliged to raise one of their baby childs.  Noways nohow. Bout to slam the door in the social worker’s face an send that baby back off to find someone elseways to be burdened, he happened to catch a peek of her eyes. 

Mismatched eyes.  One an another color eyes. 

Not like one bein blue an the other brown or likewise, but one bein red an the other black.  Left eye red like a fire engine.  Red like the apple Snow White’s witchy step mama brought to put her to sleep.  Red like what runs from a suicide’s veins in the tub when he punches his ticket to the other side.  Right eye black.  Black like caves at night.  Black like under a blanket in the back of a big closet with the light off an the door closed.  Black like evil. 

Old man look at those eyes, an he liked what he saw. Said, “We’ll give it a try.”  Scratched somthin at the bottom of the receipt, somethin that made the paper hiss and smoke, and took  that baby and slammed the door before the social worker could have a second thought an take that baby out of that place. 

An there he was, old voodoo man with a baby in his arms.  Lookin at her, those eyes, tellin him that there might be somethin special bout this girl, somthin to tilt-a-whirl the world offa it’s axis.  Somethin to make the start stumbly.   “You got potential, young lady,” is what he said.  Then he cackled. 

Kind of a laugh is what a cackle is.  Wicked kind of a laugh.  Evil.  Like you’re thinkin on doin somthin you know you shouldn’t oughtta be doin cuz you know it’s gonna cause trouble for all kinds a people but you kinda like that anyways an ya laugh bout it?  That’s a cackle.  Old man cacklin, rockin that baby girl in his arms, cacklin away. Hugo, that cauldron, that big steamin pot, start cacklin too, like it in on the joke.  But Hugo just cacklin cuz it think maybe the old man gonna toss that baby inside his big black belly, braise her, like slow cookin with some nice red wine an a big pile of taters an suchlike.  Yum.  But that ain’t the old man’s plan nohow.  Not yet. 

“Stop that cackling, Hugo.  She’s not for you,” so he says.  And the pot stopped cacklin and started sulkin.  “Not for you,” says the old man.  “A little lady like this, with potential like she has, she needs a name.  Fetch me the book of names, Hugo, from the Library at Alexandria, the book of all future names.” 

I know, I know.  The Library at Alexandria ain’t there. 

Aside from it bein crazy to tell a pot to fetch you this an that, now the old man’s sendin his pot to fetch something from someplace that ain’t is no more.  Mean, that library, thought up by Ptolomy the Savior took so long to build and fill, it didn’t even have no grand openin till his son Ptolomy II come along to cut the ribbon.  An while a place that aimed to gather up all the knowledge in the world an collect it on one place might have such a book as the one that old man was tellin his pot to fetch for him, that Library at Alexandria was burned down a whole long time ago.  At least once.  Julius Caesar in 48 BC may have caused the fire when he burned his own damn fleet during a failed attack and set the Egyptian docks on fire, burnin down the whole damn city. Or the Emperor Aurelian in the third century could have done it when he was suppressing a revolt by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra.  Or the Christian patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in 391 may have done it to comply with a order to destroy all pagan temples an places of worship (though what that has to do leastways with a library is lost on me.  Or Amr bin al Aas’s army after the Battle of Heliopolis in 642 may have burned them books to heat they’s bathwater.  Or maybe such all four burned different parts of that great library over the years. 

Don’t no one know nohow rightwise. 

But here that crazy old man tellin a pot to fetch him a book from that library. An know what that pot does?  He does as he’s told.   

Cauldron Hugo burbles and boils and gurgles and sputters and steams and whooshpop, a book, a big damn book, comes bobbin to the surface.  Old man dips that book out with a mighty ladle and flaps it back an forth to dry the pages and drops it on the floor, pages floppin open howsoever they will.  Closes his eyes and says somethin in a ways that sounds like he’s talking backwards Russian an jabs his toe down an this is what he read when he opened his eyes. 

Necrotic Culver. 

Smiled did this old man.  Toothsome and gummy that smile, like he’s thinkin on bitin into something yummy like.  Somethin braised mayhaps.  Looked at the baby girl in his arms, looked at those red an black eyes, and gave her her name. “Necrotic Culver, is your name, little lady.  Says so right here in the book.” 

An that’s how that girl got that damn name. 

But I was talkin on Packer an his mob.  How he lost them to Necrotic.  An how he badly wanted them back.  After all the work he’d put in on them.   

Well, it’s late now.  So we’ll finish that up nother nightby. 

Hush to sleep.

-c

Shadding Lyttle: The Book of All Future Names II

PS

Received spam the other day.  Sender’s name: “necrotic culver”. Inspiration is where you find it.

LOS ANGELES, May 18 -  Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

Linoleum roll sticking from the half-zipped backpack hanging off his shoulder by one strap, he’s watching from the back to the ringed-crowd, catching glimpses of the kids down on the corrugated, as their limbs, bright-sleeved in shiny sweats, flicker and twist.

Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

Wiry and limber, the dancers take their turns, throwing down, upping the ante, sweat spraying from limbs and bandana-tied hair, drenching the cardboard.

Bring another sheet.  Lay it down there.

Each layer soaking in turn, strata of packing cartons, refrigerator and washer/dryer boxes, compressed, mulching under the relentlessly twirl of the dancers.

Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

The crowd surges and recoil, hollers and shouts, driven by the dancers and the DJ, while Pachuco Dave looks for a seam, a break in the crowd that he can dive into, and swim to the center, where the dancers break on the ground and splash.

The DJ is calling for dancers.

Step up now.  Don’t hold back.  This isn’t the night for holding back.  Throw down.  Ante up.  Show it.  Prove it. 

Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

There will never be another night like this. 

The DJ will never spin like this again.  You can see it in the searchlight laser beams that shoot from his eyes, cutting new tracks as he lays the platters on his turntables. 

The dancers will never dance like this again.  You can see it in the youth they are burning, the flickering blue flames that trail their arms and legs as they thrash the air.

The crowd will never crowd like this again.  You can see it in how they seethe and ripple, liquefying themselves, the vibrations of the music melting them together, flowing into one another.

Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

But there is no crack or seam in this fluid crowd, only the tide. 

The DJ is calling all dancers.

Now or never.  The sun must come up eventually.  And there will never be a night like this again.

Pachuco Dave wants to dance.

But first he must swim.

At first the crowd doesn’t feel the pressure.  The bulk pressing in from the shore is so massive, distributed over so much of its surface, that it doesn’t register at first. 

Then a counter wave crashes into this thing, and breakes.  And, in so doing, breaks the tidal rhythm of the crowd, reminds it that it is not liquid, but flesh.

And, at the same time, a body lurches from the crowd, a foot is misplaced, and someone stumbles into the DJ table.

A needle skips.

A beat is missed.

And a dancer falters, breaking off.

And all heads turn.

Lumbering, Pachuco Dave moves toward the center, his footfalls sending shudders through the pavement.

And the crowd makes way.

The DJ is waiting, a sour eye on the fresh scratch on one of his most prized discs.

The dancers are hooding looks at him, this fat man who stopped the beats.

The crowd is murmuring, waiting for this vessel to pass, craving liquidity again.

They wait.

Pachuco Dave looks at the ground, shoves his hands in the pockets of his Big & Talls.

 I want to dance. 

But too quiet.  No one can hear.  Impatient, they are becoming restless with this interference.

The DJ points a mic at Pachuco Dave.

Speak up, man.  Say what you want and make way for the groove.

Pachuco Dave looks up, licks his lips.

You called all dancers.  I want to dance.

There is laughter.  Soft, but mocking, from the back of the crowd.

The DJ will not have it.

Can that crap.  We called all dancers.  Man wants to dance.  He dances.

He looks at Pachuco Dave and grins.

But he dances to my beats.

Pachuco Dave nods.

That’s why I’m here.

He unlimbers his backpack, slips from it the roll of linoleum, flicks his wrists, and snaps it out, letting it drift and settle over the cardboard.

There is scuttlebutt at this. 

Linoleum.  This ain’t that kind of party.  Cardboard is the medium of choice.  Thick slabs of it congealing under the dancers, when the night is over, when the sun has dried it, people will chisel away souvenirs to take home.  So they can say.

I was there that night.

But Pachuco Dave hears none of it.  Staring at the DJ, he is only listening to the night, waiting for the beat.

When the needle drops, it drops dead at the top of the groove, no hiss or pop, just slam into a beat, right into a cut, no time to prepare, just time to dance.

The crowd thinks it’s over already.  Look at Pachuco Dave, standing there, frozen by the suddenness of the DJ’s drop, they think he’s already been topped.

They called for dancers, so they had to give him his shot, and he blew it.  Now they can move on.

They’re getting ready to crow, preparing the shouts and whistles that will drive him and his linoleum square out of their midst, then someone sees it, and someone else, and it ripples through them.

The beat, pulsing perfect, in his little finger.

Robot pinkie, at his side, joint by joint, entering his hand, sharp and crisp, like it’s a joke.  Like Pachuco Dave is saying to the DJ, you can’t catch me out.

That pinkie, that ripple it sends, reminds the crowd.

We are a sea.  We are water. We are made to flow.

The DJ scratches, breaks the beat into pieces.

And Pachuco Dave’s fingers snatch them out of the air, building a mosaic, putting together a new beat, played on his body.

Oh, it’s on.

The second needle drop, deep in a cut, nothing but bass, body-blows of bass, they hammer at Pachuco Dave, and he can only laugh.

The bass, it tickles.  His body, it’s made for bass.  It’s made to absorb and store the deep sounds of the earth.  He gathers them in his bones, and stomps them into the ground.

The bass, enters him, and he stirs it around, and pumps it back out, a booty shake that send a universal howl up into the galaxy, and pushes a tsunami through the crowd.

The dancers are clearing back now, making room, making room for this man to throw down.  They want to see it when it happens, and they know they need room, perspective, distance from the epicenter.

The DJ backtracks his main cut, reverses the beat, lets Pachuco Dave rear up, then he lets it go, pushing it, revving the bass back and forth on the second table, before releasing it into the night.

And Pachuco Dave hits the linoleum.

They get it now.  When the sweat stars to flow out of him like lava, they know why this man must shun cardboard.  You’d have to throw it under him like shoveling coal into a locomotive. 

Pachuco Dave dances.

Rolling, tumbling, a whale on the water, leaping high, splashing down, spinning into the depths, rollicking.

Throwing down, upping the ante.

There will never be another night like this.

When the square of linoleum finally melts and Pachuco Dave has to stop his dance, everyone will say it.

There will never be another night like this.

-c

Penny Dreadful, what the hell kind of name is that?

Stupid question. I know what kind of name it is. The made up kind. It’s the kind of name some goth chick slaps on herself when she finds out that the guy she met when she went fishing online for her first actual blood letting experience was infected with the Vyrus and that at some point while they were stabbing each other with lancets and lapping at their wrists she ended up getting a dose.

It’s the kind of name that tells me as soon as I hear it that I’m not gonna like the girl attached to it.

-Come in, Joe, come in.

She steps back and holds the door open, sweeping her arm so that all the torn black lace hanging from it billows nicely.

I consider killing her right now and just skipping the whole question and answer thing, but there’s always a chance that she’s not the one. Not that the world wouldn’t be a better place without her regardless, but I would be nice to know for sure. I might be inclined to hurt her more if I know for sure.

I step inside and she shuts the door.
-Have a seat, Joe. Please.

I assume the old wingback draped in tattered red velvet is her favorite, and park myself on a heavy wood armchair that she’s riveted black leather wrist, ankle and neck straps to. There’s no bloodstains on the chair. One can assume the straps are decorative or recreational. Either way they’re fucking annoying.

She takes a pewter and blue glass goblet from one of the shelves and cradles it in her palm.
-Something to drink?
-Got any beer?

She smiles, looks at the floor, looks back up at me through the curtain of thick magenta hair that falls over her face.
-I’ve some mead.
-Mead.
-Yes.
-I’ll pass.

She nods and takes a seat, pulling her legs up and curling one arm around them.
-And how can I help you?

I take a look at the all the loose bolts of satin and lace and velvet she’s draped over every surface of her shitty little studio apartment. Once I kill her I can just knock over one of her oil lamps and the place will go up in a couple seconds. I can pull the fire alarm on my way out the front door. With a little luck no one else in the building will get hurt.
-You can tell me why you made that mess over at the church.

She runs the tip of a finger over the ring that pierces her upper lip.
-Did I make a mess?

I think about what Terry told me. About the priest and where he was found and what parts were cut off. I think about the cops and reporters that are buzzing around, poking into every corner of my neighborhood.
-Yeah. Looks that way.
-And who is it that claims I’ve made this mess?
-Philip Sax.
-Sax. He’s your Renfield, isn’t he?
-I don’t have a Renfield, lady.
-That’s not what people say.
-People know from shit.
-Then why trust Sax?
-Because I’ll torture him if he lies to me.
-Can you be sure he believes you’d actually do that?

I think about the time I met Phil. What I did to him when I found out he’d lied to me. How I promised him it’d be worse the next time. How he lied to me again and how I did it worse. And how he stopped lying after that.
-Yeah, I’m sure.
-Such trust must be comforting.
-I don’t trust Sax, I just know he won’t lie to me.
-And he claims he saw me at the church?
-Claims more than that.
-He saw something?
-Saw you go in. Saw you talking to the priest. Saw you come out. Saw the priest was the worse for wear after you came out. Didn’t see anyone else.
-I’m curious.
-It’s going around.
-How is it he saw all this? Is Philip Sax stalking me? Does he have a crush?
-He was keeping an eye on you.
-On your behalf.
-On Terry’s behalf. On The Society’s behalf.

She takes a sip of her mead.
-Terry was having me followed? Why?
-Because it seemed like a smart fucking thing to do after stood up in a Society meeting and started talking about taking revenge on the clergy for centuries of persecution.

She stretches her arm toward one of the dozen or so candles illuminating the room and runs her fingers through the flame.
-That was indiscreet.
-That was stupid as fuck.

She holds one finger in the flame until a wisp of smoke drifts from the seared skin. She pulls her hand back and stares at the fingertip as it blisters, and immediately begins to heal.
-We shouldn’t be tolerating their persecution, Joe.

I shift in me seat, making a little more room for my gun hand in case she charges me and I have to go for my piece.
-Lady, you are crazy as all fuck. No one’s persecuting you or any of us. No one fucking knows we exist. And the only way they’re ever gonna find out is if nut jobs like you go around splitting open members of the clergy and nailing them upside down to crucifixes in their own fucking churches.

She touched the burned finger with her thumb. It’s healing fast. She must have fed recently. The priest. She’ll be strong. Me, I haven’t had anything for almost a week. I shift again, so I can get to both guns if I have to.

She blows on the finger.
-You’re wrong, Joe. That priest was a persecutor. He persecuted me.
-That priest was a seventy year old man who didn’t know shit. And even if he did, who gives a fuck? You’re not a creature of the night, you’re not damned, you’re sick, you got a fucking disease just like the rest of us. Guy could have hunted you down and bathed you in holy water and it would have done shit. He was just an old man.
-Persecuted is perhaps the wrong word.

She finishes her mead.
-Molested is the word I was trying to say.

She sets her empty goblet on the floor.
-But I’ve always had a hard time saying it in front of people.

She looks me over.
-But we’re alone. And I’m almost drunk. So it seems a little easier just now.

She untucks her legs and places her feet flat on the floor.
-This is my neighborhood, too, Joe. I grew up here. I went to that church when I was a little girl.

She stands.
-I can go into detail.

She takes a couple steps, stops when she’s just in front of me.
-If you’d like that.

She’s says it like it matters. Like why she did what she did makes a difference when it comes to the rules.

Right in front of me. This close, a round from the automatic will blow her heart to shreds, just like that.

Terry looks up from the book in his lap when I sit down next to him on the bench.
-Was it her?

The sun is down. The summer air in Tompkins Square is warm. Some kids go running past, spraying each other with squirt guns.

I shake my head.
-She’s got an alibi. Solid.

He marks his place in the book with a finger and closes the covers.
-Sax said he was sure.
-Sax is a stone junkie and he was hard up for a few bucks.
-You said he wouldn’t lie to you again.
-I’ve been wrong before.

He opens his book.
-You’ll have to do something about it. So he doesn’t get in the habit.

I stand up.
-Sure.

He looks down at his book.
-Want to take Hurley with you?

I stick a Lucky in my mouth and light it.
-Naw, I can handle it.
-OK. Call me when you’re done.
-Sure.

I head off. Phil will be at Coney Island High probably. But I need to swing by my place first. Pick up my pliers and such.

©Copyright 2006 by Charlie Huston, all right reserved etc.

LOS ANGELES, November 5 – Holst turns away from the flames on the TV screen.
-So the southland burned again. Which is what it does.
When it’s not shaking itself to pieces. Or being washed away by rains and mud slides.
The southland in general, and Los Angeles in specific, is a disaster not waiting any longer to happen. It got tired of waiting. So it’s happening now. Which puts it in good company with the rest of the world.

Bags nods, taps the bottom of his glass against the bar to loosen the ice at the bottom, and nods again.
-Yeah, I seem to remember you saying something like that before.

Holst raises a finger, shakes his head.
-This? Not this. I have not said this before. I’m not saying things are bad. I’m not saying LA is a fantasmagoria of real estate speculation holding the desert at bay by the singular virtue of water stolen from damper climes, I’m not saying our doom is impending.
He drills the tip on his index finger into the bar.
-I’m saying it is here. I’m saying, more than that, I’m saying it is a done deal. The time to stave it off has come and gone. Our doom is not just here, it is sealed. Signed and delivered.

Bags shakes his glass, rattles the ice, brings it to his lips, tilts it into his mouth and crunches the half-melted cubes.
-Well. That’s some ominous shit there.

Holst drops his head, makes a popping sound with his lips.
-Ominous.
He rotates on his stool, slips off and walks to the jukebox.

Bags chew ice, shows his empty glass to the bartender, and watches Holst in the mirror over the bar.

Holst is stabbing at the button that makes the CDs inside flip back and forth. He’s trying to find one that he recognizes. This bar, he was in this bar one time. When? Ten years? Fifteen? When the hell was he in this bar on Beverley just a few blocks shy of Alvarado? When the hell would he have been this far east? This far from the ocean. What for? Anyway, he was here. That time, they had a great Juke. Now? He flips back and forth between a compilation of 80s rock and a Beach Boys CD. His dollar gets him two songs. He plays “Sloop John B” twice.

Bags fingers a ten from the pile of bills in front of him and pushes it at the bartender who has just freshened his CC and soda.

Horst climbs back onto his stool as the opening notes of his song start to play.
-Ominous.

Bags sips his drink.
-You want something?

Horst waves a hand over the neck of his half-full Coors.
-Ominous, you said.

Bags nods.
-As best I recall, that was my word.

Horst slips a finger into his breast pocket, probing for a pack of cigarettes he hasn’t carried at least since the last time he was in this bar.
-I’m not being clear.
-You’re being plenty clear. I get it. Chapter and verse, I’ve heard it before, and I get it.
-No.
-Yes.
-No, you do not get it.
-Let me buy you another beer.
-I do not need another beer. I have plenty of beer. Do not try to change the subject.
-Beer is not a change of subject. It’s a conversational lubricant meant to get you into another fucking gear.

Horst makes the popping sound again.
-Another gear. Let me. Here. Look over there.

Bags closes his eyes.
-I didn’t know you liked the Beach Boys.

Horst holds up a hand.
-Screw the Beach Boys and look over there.

Bags opens his eyes.
-Just that I never knew you liked the Beach Boys.
-Look over there.

Bags swirls his drink, sets it on the bar, spins his stool and looks out the door where Horst is pointing.
-Over there. I’m looking.

Horst squints.
-Those people. Driving. People on the street. Those ones, waiting for the bus. They are doomed. They are dead people walking. What they are is, they are zombies. Living dead. Except maybe without the living part. And that, that is not ominous, that is horrifying. Because, get me, because who wants to live in a world of the dead. And that’s not a question.

Bags puts a hand under his jacket and adjusts the heavy piece of steel that hangs there, the new harness chafing the spot where the holster hasn’t yet formed a callous under his arm.
-Ominous shit.

Horst pops his lips.
-Not making my point.
He reaches to his belt at the small of his back.
-Here.
He comes up with his gun and aims it out the door and squeezes the trigger until it is empty.

Two cars in the street skew, one plows into the bus stop, the other meets a small Japanese hybrid coming the opposite way on Beverley. One bullet smashes a window across the street and a scream is heard distinctly over the twisting steel, shattering glass, squealing rubber and snapping plastic.

Horst puts his gun in it’s holster.
-I make my point?

Bags nods, slowly rotates, picks up his drink.
-OK, I get your point.

Horst stares at the chaos outside the door, listens to the sirens’ howl.
-Dead people. Walking. Like they don’t even know.
He reaches into his pocket and takes the badge out and loops the thong around his neck and it drops onto his chest.
-Come on.

Bags knocks back the last of his drink and points at the bar tender.
-This guy?

Horst starts for the door.
-I have to instruct you in everything in life?

Bags pulls his piece and shoots the bartender.
-I got it, I got it.

He watches the bar tender twitch and spray and chews the ice from the bottom of his glass.

“Sloop John B” starts to play a second time.

He puts the glass on the bar, holsters his weapon, and flips his own badge holder open, tucking it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
-Really, man, you surprise me.
He joins Horst, standing in the open doorway, watching as the emergency vehicles pull up outside.
-Never knew you were such a Beach Boys fan.

with love,
charlie

LOS ANGELES, March 15 – Tome sleeps.

And so he has.

Slept since the words were uttered, since he consumed that last book from the tall shelf. The improbable, inevitable book, blindly taken down in a moment of absent hunger; a snack to tide him over, to assuage his limitless hunger, if only for the time it took him to run his unfeeling inked fingers over the spine, to anticipate what it’s flavor might be, whether it might, at last, fill him.

Kave had been there, of course.

The stone bulk of him settled into a long burgundy couch, the velvet cushions flattened beneath him, its oak spine beginning to splinter. As all furniture eventually splinters under the weight of Kave. A deep hatred of all things inanimate and four legged dwells in Kave. Chairs, divans, stools, day beds, sofas, ottomans. All the breakable things that will not bear him. Each time another carpentered puzzle of sticks shatters under him, he mutters a curse in his guttural stone tongue, dreaming of a mighty wingback of granite, cushions stuffed with gravel, woven from diamond chips strung on lengths of alloy thread. Dreaming of such comfort, he listened to the ominous creaking of the couch, and observed as Tome opened the book and cast his fingertips over the pages.

Harbinger was not there, of course.

Had she been, had events not tossed her otherways, it would never have happened. It could not have happened. The book would never have approached Tome’s mouth, her blades having cut it from his hand, dissected its spine, quartered its pages and flayed them. But Harbinger had occasioned to be lost. A rare luxury. She had found an Eventuality that did not allow for her, and had folded into it, gloriously unknowing if she would emerge. Or, at least, pretending to such ignorance. A delusion allowed by the place she had lost herself within. But she would be back. She knew, with the certainty that made her cut herself.

And even then, without Harbinger to warn, if the couch had collapsed a moment sooner, still it might never have happened.

Instead.

Kave marked a telltale groan, a desperate rasp, an oaken grate that did not require Harbinger to tell what it foreboded. A heave brought him lumbering to his feet as the couch gave its last and, broken-backed, succumbed to the floor. Standing, Kave surveyed the other means of temporary respite from gravity, discarding from consideration out of hand the steps of the spindly library ladder, the narrow legged chairs at the reading table, and the desk’s castered seat, certain its stem would snap the moment he tilted the least from true. But the desk itself, a mighty thing of alien hardwood, might take him, if only for a few minutes.

He started across the room, floorboards splintering from his tread, the hobnailed soles of his great boots leaving deep divots in the polished wood.

Tome fingered the pages of the book. He could not, in fact, feel their texture, but the resistance they gave as he passed his digits over them, the friction of matter on matter, gave some indication of their quality. And it was high. Thick paper, he knew, robust linen perhaps. A book of quality. Dense with purpose or knowledge or imagination. A book that, at least at one time, was deemed to matter. A filling book. Perhaps.

Kave trod on, his path to the desk taking him close by Tome and the book.

Books were no great friends to Kave. Tearing so easily between his thick fingers, their greatest value seemed, to him, that they could be piled under the edges of a low piece of furniture, and therefore, bear it up for a moment longer than it otherwise might last. That, their greatest value for him, were it not for Tome. The fact that books sustained Tome, fed him and replenished his long, nearly limitless strings of dense print, the skeins of letters, words, paragraphs, chapters, parts, sections, prologues, epilogues, tables and indexes that were his physical body, that fact made him value the silly tissue things, and inquire occasionally after their contents.

Trundling past Tome, Kave looked down at the book open in his friend’s hands. His agate eyes at the deep ends of the tunnels bored under the outcropping of his brow peered at the ordered, repeated, bursts of type on the creamy pages. Between one step and the next, his great mass carrying him relentlessly on, he watched as Tome riffled the pages, saw the same phrase repeated without variation throughout, the same two words standing in on every page for date of publication, copyright, publishing house, chapter titles, lists of illustrations, even arranged graphically to form the illustrations themselves. Startled, uncomprehending, he began the process of bringing his frame to a halt, the usual rumble of his passage changing in tone as he flexed his strange muscles, to a clattered of rocks presaging an avalanche.

Tome closed the book. Anticipation spent, he raised it to his mouth, his lips spreading, his lexicon flesh stretching to take the book into his maw, to add its content to the vastness of the compendium of all-things that he aspired to be.

Kave’s heel crashed into the flooring, carving a long, stuttering furrow down to the joists. He turned, one blunt arm reaching, pebbled fingers stretching, longing for the pliability of most living things, the lithe malleability that allows them to extend a precious extra inch when reaching into tight narrow spaces to retrieve lost and treasured things before they can slip away. That or, looking at the title of the book, wishing for a different circumstance, an Eventuality to occupy that would bring into play his vast strength and stability to prevent this impending disaster.

The title of the book.

The same as the two words of text latticing its every page.

Tome Sleeps

But Kave was not made to bend. He was made to grind and to crush, and, eventually, to shatter. But not that night. Though he may have wished he had.

The book slipped entire into Tome’s mouth. The jumbled, indecipherable tales of his lips sealed around it. His gullet expanded, and Kave watched, immobile again, as the well defined rectangle of the book slid down his throat. The book, and its contents, becoming, as all things written must, Tome.

The book digesting, ink sliding from its pages to nourish him, contents being broken and critiqued with the context of the vastness of his terrible knowledge, Tome sensed Kave overhanging him and turned his face toward his obsidian guardian in his worn soldier’s dress, bandoleers, and holsters.

The knobs of Os that jutted from the oval perched on his stem of neck, approximating eyes for the comfort of others, flickered, as if a curious shutter of X’s had blinked over them.

Kave, in his natural anchored state, waited, his greatest talent, one hand, wrapped around the butt of his favorite pistol, the one he fueled with blood, the one that killed his immortal lord.

A thin gap opened near the bottom of Tome’s face, his lips reappearing, splitting again, a sound, a rattle of type and a slosh of ink, rose from within, an announcement, a telling of the content of the new book. A statement of the realignment of things known, and the ever shrinking supply of things unknown to Tome.

And, as with all things, what Tome speaks, is.

-Tooome sleeeeps.

And he tumbled to a barely coherent pile, just shy of a spill of ink, decipherable only to one as intimate to him as Kave, and he slept. The peacefulness of that sleep revealed in the small clouds of Z’s that puffed from his puddle face and drifted regularly into the air, and disbursed.

Tome sleeps.

And Kave, knowing what kind of danger this foretells, unlimbers the great gun from the iron holster riveted under his arm. He fires it’s boiler from rest, bringing a full head of steam, filling the reservoir from the flask of a loved one’s blood he keeps pocketed within the blouse of the uniform he wore in her service. From a pouch on his belt, both stitched from the hide of a beast long extinct, he chooses his bullet, the coin from a dead man’s mouth, its edges honed to razor. Thus armed, a horror begging death to bring him satisfaction, he slips a hand under his friend, gathers the long looping coils and drips of him, and carries him from the library, the door erupting from his path as if exploding from fear.

Testing,

Charlie

The King

No, not that king. I mean King’s Comics in Tracy, California.

King’s Comics

I will be visiting on March, 24th from 2-4pm. Come say hi.

Steel Cage Death Match

The deeply disturbed folks at FantasyBookspot.com are sponsoring a bloodfest of one on one sudden elimination bouts between novels. Think “The Octagon” with more dialogue. I’m not exactly sure how these things happen, or how they work, but NO DOMINION seems to have been tossed into the arena. I can only hope it survives. See the carnage HERE.

Bat Segundo Damnit!

Do I have to keep saying it? Not really, but I like the way it sounds. Bat Segundo. HERE’S me talking on the show.

LOS ANGELES, November 29 – The ether sloshes in the bottle.

Reminded by the sound that the glass handle is still hooked in his loose fingers, Teasdale pulls the jug that once held a gallon of Gallow’s finest Burgundy up and settles it into his lap before it can slip to the floor.

He scratches the gray stubble on his chin, losing himself for a moment in the sensation of tough the bristles against the cracked calluses on his fingertips. The sound is large grain sandpaper rasping over cheap knotted pine.

Loud.

It’s loud. Louder than his slow drumbeating heart. Louder than the panting breath that slips in and out of his thrice broken nose.

He remember the first time he broke the thing.

Five years old. Five? Yeah, five. Had a dog. Big dog. Well, maybe not so big. Was a little kid, maybe the dog just seemed big. Naw, was a big dog. Big black mutt with gray spots all over its chest. Playing with that mutt one Sunday, it jumped up on my back and I went face down in a mud puddle and got my Sunday best all dirty. Mama saw me coming back up to the house, clothes full of mud just before church time. Grabbed my by the ear and smacked me a good one across the face. Broke my nose right there. Lord she did cry. Lord she did.

He hears someone.

Listens, but the voice is gone. Realizes the voice was his own.

Talking to myself. Hell does that mean?

The ether sloshes again and he sees the jug is tipping out of his lap. He lunges and wraps both arms around it and hugs it close.

Got ya.

He clears his throat and places his nose close to the open mouth of the jug and inhales.

That’s the way. That’s the one.

He leans back in his seat, releasing his hold on the jug, and watching as it lists out of his lap and falls to the floor, tipping, and rolling a few feet from the little couch, trailing the heavy clear fluid.

He rubs his chest, tries to feel the tumors deep inside, but can’t. His palm crosses the unopened pack of Pall Malls. He slips two fingers in the pocket and removes the pack and picks at the cellophane strip that seals it.

Little fuckers.

He remembers a story.

Member that story? Somebody’s kid? Jack Benny. Jack Benny’s kid. Her dad, the show was sponsored by Pall Mall. Pall Mall and Lucky Strike. Every week, they’d send him a couple cartons of each. Thing is. Didn’t smoke. He didn’t smoke. Just took the cartons and tossed ‘em in the kid’s closet. So the kid, she started smoking when she was a teenager. Started with the Luckies. When those were done, she switched to the Pall Malls. Said she didn’t have to buy a smoke till she was in her thirties.

He unzips the cellophane and rips away the foil flap.

Me, I was always a Pall Mall man.

A laugh gurgles up, but he chokes it off, knowing it will cut against the radiation scars inside his throat.

His mouth is overflowing with saliva and he tilts his head to the side and spits and wipes his lips.

He looks at the pack of cigarettes and pokes his middle finger against the bottom of the pack and three cigarettes jut from the open top. He puts the end of one between his wet lips and pulls the pack away and drops it to the floor and the cigarette rests on the lip of his mouth.

A bus drives past on the highway out by the fence line. He looks at the window and sees it disappearing beyond the faded yellow curtains.

He remembers when Elise sewed those curtains up.

He squeezes the front right pocket of his Wranglers and then the left pocket.

Sunofabitch. Where’d I?

He finds the lighter in the same breast pocket where the cigarettes were.

There ya are.

His dirty thumbnail spins the wheel on the front of the Bic until it’s cranked all the way up.

His mouth is full again. He spits and there’s blood in the saliva that hits the floor.

The curtains were the first thing she made for the house, to shade the parlor on the sunward side of the place. The room where they sometime could be found making love on the little couch when he came in for lunch in the first year they were married.

He shifts on the little couch and brings the Bic to his face, thumb on the flint wheel.

Damn, this is gonna hurt.

He strikes a flame and touches it to the end of the Pall Mall, the ether fumes in the air igniting at the same time the smoke hits his lungs.

On the highway, a boy on the back seat of the bus looks out the rear window just in time to see a fire blossom on the horizon before it’s lost by a curve in the road.

Copyright 2006 by Charlie Huston. All rights reserved etc.

They’re dropping fast these days. People. God knows why. Just seems to happen this way.

Going slow,
Charlie

LOS ANGELES, September 5 – Lucky found the Geek bitin’ the heads offa chickens between acts in a low down gold rush burlesque in Frisco.

Can Can girls straight from Gay Paree, but speakin AMERICAN like you ‘n me, would do high kicks with frilly leggins and bare beavers. Drunks n drinkin miners hootid and howled. We all liked a flash a cunt an ya didn’t get it in the more high-toned places. Next after the girls ya might get some full dressed fella looked like he was supposed ta be a dude from Back East. He’d come out with one a the Can Can girls dressed as his wife and a Nigra dressed in Injun attire and ther’d be a good laugh or too at the expence of the Easterner and the Injun both an ya’d get a nother look at that Can Can girls beaver n just when the Injun was getting all randy an reddy ta rape her the Hero dressed like a miner or a sailor or a cowpoke shows up an kills the Injun. The Hero an the Can Can girl would usually go behind a paper tree or sumpin while the Eastern Dude was blurbin his thanks an all to the Western Hero. Everone speckted this was pretty close ta the truth cuz we all knew them Eastern Dudes were kweer at heart. Eastern women always go crazy for the way a Western Man throws the beef in.

Me I couldn’t get enouf Eastern Beaver and they always came back for extra once they got a piece of the halfpound I packed round. Folks who don’t know tell ya I got the handle RAILSPLITTER cuz when I was a boy I worked laying tracks ta bring the East out West. Truth be told I split some rails in my day but the moniker came to me cuz the sight of my HOGLEG could split the most ice cold womans legs open like a dry old log bein split by a ax. Only reason I worked the rails at all wuz for the extra tin and to make it easyer for Eastern Women to get out West for me.

Corse it was a Eastern Woman what put all that to a end for me. A case of the FRENCH disease that just bout killed me and made me half blind. And corse my halfyard were pretty worthless and weathered after that. I tracked down the whore what gave me the dose and I shot her in the heart. In a rage mind you. It weren’t no clean killin and I ain’t proud of it. Anyhow that put me on the run and so ifn it wernt for her I never woulda met Lucky and the Geek.

Luckyd been trakin the Geek from KANSAS CITY.

Theyd been travlin for a good many years when they got waylaid in KC. Them boys were on a good old drunk an they told me the tale later and admitted the Geek may have been talking a bit loud and showin off a mite much. See the Geek could bite chew and swallow just about any dman thing you could dig out of a garbage pail and he were a rough one ta boot. He’d start up with wood chips or somthin easy. Luckyd start the wagerin an the Geekd work his way up ta rocks glass nails and such. Way I figure it some City Tuffs took offense at beein takin for a weeks pay n followed Lucky an the Geek out to a Alley to put the hurt to them with some boards and broken bottles. There was five or six a them an lucky an the Geek were mighty drunk but I don’t figure them City Tuffs had much of a chance no ways. I didn’t see it myself an all but I seen both those boys in plenty a brawls so I know how it probably happened.

I figure Lucky just pulled the hatchet he always carried on his belt an the Geek was dangerous as a mad dog even with nothing but dirt in his hands but he probably picked up a rock from the ground and started swigin. Well the City Tufs all went down or got run off but not before Lucky got cut pretty bad in the face and the Geek took a board in the back of his head and went down blackedout and drunk ta boot. Lucky was in sore pain and pretty much blind with his own blood in his eyes and he checked to see if the Geek were OK an he couldn’t find or feel any sine of life in him. Drunk and blind he howled off inta the dark lookin for the City Tuffs who he thought killed his FRIEND.

The Geek when he woke found his memory knoked clear out of his noggin. He wandered lost in the City while Lucky went CRAZY with a lust for revenge and tracked those City Tuffs through cattle yards and down the rails South and each one DIED from a hatchet blow to the face. An meanwhile the Geek was discovered by a entrapranure of sorts what ran a travlin entertainment. Kind of a combinatuion Circus Casino Whorehouse on wheels. This fella called hisself HEETHCLIFF and came out to AMERICA from England wher he was no dout a wanted man. Well he found the Geek in a KC saloon eatin garbage for loos change and regognized his talent and sold him on a travilin life in SHOW BIZUNESS! The Geek not knowin who he was an beein a bit at loos ends without noone around him agreed. HEETHCLIFF gathered up his wagons an his whorse and pharo dealers and wheels of chance and watered down wiskey and they headed out of town that day for the WEST!

END PART ONE!

Copyright 2006 by Charlie Huston. All right reserved etc.

Written in the mountains some time in ‘98-’99.

Happy Trails,

Charlie

NEW YORK, June 14 - The below was written on April, 6 2005 and had a previous life at the now defunct Daily Chicoan. Back with new stuff week after next.
best,
charlie

-Should we use all of it?

Indeed, should we?

The “all of it” in question was a Ziplock freezer bag full of Minnesota ditch weed. A throw-pillow size mass of shake, leaves, seeds, stems and the odd clump of dry brown bud. The manner in which it was to be used was to throw it in a pan with a large quantity of melted butter so that the THC might be cooked off to bond with the fats in the butter. The resulting mess to be passed several timed through cheesecloth and ultimately blended with a box of Betty Crocker brownie mix, baked and consumed. (NB: Mexico has lodged a protest regarding the accuracy of this “fictionalized” memoir. The protest being his insistence that the aforesaid brownies were, in fact, made from scratch, as he would never use a pre-made baking mix. Protest noted.)

Kenya pointed at the bag again.
-Should we use it all?
Arkansas and I turned and looked at Mexico.
Mexico consulted the recipe.
-How much does it weigh?
Arkansas shrugged.
-A lot.
We stared at the bag.
I took another sip from my beer.
-You know guys, fuck it, use it all. What’s the worst that can happen? If the brownies are super strong, that just means we don’t eat as many.
Arkansas nodded.
-Good point.
Mexico picked up the bag, unzipped it and upended it into the pan.
-OK, it’s in.

There was a plan. There’s always a plan. For us the plan was simple. This was one of the last weekends the four of us would be able to spend together at the beach house Kenya, Mexico and Arkansas had been sharing through grad school. We would bid farewell to this place that had been our personal pleasure dome for that last two years by firing up the BBQ, drinking beer and tequila, eating Mexico’s excellent cookery, sucking nitrous, and consuming pot brownies. The Southern California weather had agreed to bless our endeavor with sparkling blue skies and a gentle offshore breeze. The fridge was packed with beer and meat, the margarita bar was set up on the deck, we’d started the day with pancakes and bloody mary’s, and the brownies were going in the over.

Bliss.

We passed the time as the warm smell of baking chocolate filled the house. Mexico began to marinate various cuts of beef and pork and shark that we planned to devour once the munchies set in. Arkansas and Kenya settled themselves before the TV and fired up the Nintendo. Soon they were hip deep in “Total Carnage”. I DJed their battles, sifting through tapes and albums. Green Day, Cyprus Hill, Sound Garden, The Meat Puppets, all our favorites of the day were in heavy rotation. In between selecting the perfect track for each stage of the game, I’d twist tiny tanks of nitrous into a brass cylinder, fasten a balloon over one end, and tighten the cylinder one final bit, puncturing the tank and filling the balloon with gas. Whoever’s turn it was in the rotation would take the balloon, empty their lungs of oxygen, and suck the laughing gas from the balloon before slumping to the floor in a helpless mass of senseless giggles.

DING!

-Brownies are done.
We rushed the kitchen to watch as Mexico removed the pan from the over. He set it on the counter and we gathered round.
Arkansas stuck his face over the pan and inhaled.
-They smell great, man!
Mexico frowned.
-They look a little lighter than they should.
I grabbed a knife.
-Fuck it, let’s eat.
Mexico stepped in my path.
-They have to cool.
-What?
-They have to cool, man.

I looked at the others. They rolled their eyes. Fucking Mexico and his food. Everything had to be perfect. Shit. Oh well, in the end, he was always right. Let him deal with the food and it was always great.

I put the knife down.
-How long?
He touched the top of the brownies with the tip of his finger.
-Half hour.

There ensued the longest half hour of our lives. How to pass the time? Under normal circumstances, we’d have gotten baked. But none of us wanted to mess with the purity of the brownie high. We settled for margaritas, more nitrous hits, and some chips and home made salsa Mexico had whipped up.

DING!

-Brownies are cool.
Mexico carefully cut the pan of brownies into twelve equal squares.
-How many should we start with?
I snatched two and shoved one in my mouth.
-Twoooh.
I chewed with an open mouth and waved my hand back and forth in front of my face.
-Ot! Ot! Ot!
They all laughed.
My saliva cooled the brownie and I closed my mouth.
-Ood! Eally ood!

They dived in. Two each. Leaving us a reserve of four brownies.

Now what?

We knew this would take awhile. A brownie high takes a notoriously long time to come on. How to pass yet more time? Arkansas came dashing out of his bedroom dribbling a basketball down the hall.
-Hoops?

Ninety minutes of hoops in the sun. Running, sweating, arguing, throwing up air balls, blowing easy layups, having a great time. But not getting high. Surely, surely we should be feeling something by now.

Kenya bounced the ball off the backboard.
-Man, I’m not high at all. It’s that weed.
Arkansas chased down the ball.
-Minnesota ditch weed. We should have known better.
Mexico adjusted his headband.
-It’s all we could afford.
I finished retying my Chucks.
-There’s still four more back there.
Arkansas smiled.
-And a whole eighth of green buds.

We headed back to the house.

Arkansas broke out the bong and we munched the last four brownies while passing it around and taking massive rips.

Arkansas exhaled, filling the room’s last cubic foot of clean air with smoke.
-Finally, man, I’m high. Those brownies were a bust.
We all agreed. The brownies were a bust.
Kenya coughed.
-But they tasted great, dude.
I high fived Mexico.
-Excellent bakery, man.
He polished his fingernails on the front of his shirt.
-It’s what I do.

What now?

Arkansas had a plan.

-Let’s each do another rip, finish the last nitrous hits, and take a walk over to the Fun Zone.

An excellent plan.

Rips were done. Nitrous was hit. Assorted trips to the bathroom, sips of water, forgotten house keys later, and we set out on the quarter mile walk along the bay side of the peninsula to the Fun Zone.

We never quite made it.

Along the way, strange things began to occur. Arkansas and I became more and more chatty, firing words back and forth at one another with no regard for what the other was saying. Kenya walked ahead of us, marching with unnatural purpose and erectness. Meanwhile, Mexico lagged behind, mutter something about his childhood.

We stopped.

Mexico was frozen on the path, gazing through glass doors into the livingroom of one of the houses lining the bay.
-It looks just like the house I grew up in.
Arkansas nodded.
-Cool.
Mexico sat down in the middle of the path.
-Just like it.
I gave him a nudge with my shoe.
-Cool, man. Let’s go play some video games.
He looked up at me.
-Dude, it looks JUST LIKE THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN.
There were tears in his eyes.
-Uh-huh. Well, me and Kenya and Arkansas are gonna go play some games. You wanna hang here?
He got up.
-Just like it.

Onward.

Just before the Fun Zone, a bar appeared. It was always there, but on this particular day, it materialized in full. It looked cool, dark and appetizing.

Arkansas smacked his lips.
-I want a drink.
I ran a dry tongue over equally dry lips.
-Good call.
Mexico halted, pointed at the dark interior of the dive.
-I’m not going in there.
I looked over my shoulder, still walking.
-Why not?
He was rooted to the pavement, pointing, staring, in the grips of some paralyzing fear.
-It’s scary.
Arkansas was at the door, clearly lusting to be inside and get his hands on a cocktail. I knew, because I shared his lust. I looked again at Mexico. Why was he being such a boat anchor?
-OK, cool. So you hang here. We’ll have a quick one and be right out.
He gazed after us, forlorn, as we were swallowed by the bar.

Once stationary, once equipped with a fortifying gin and tonic, once ensconced in the belly of the beast, something began to occur to me. I was high. I was really, really high. I reflected on this as a stared at Arkansas’ mouth opening and closing, making noises, babbling difficult nonsense.

-Hey, Arkansas?
-Yeah?
-You high?
His grin split the darkness of the bar.
-Oh, man, I’m really high.
-Yeah, me too. Maybe we should check on Mexico.
He looked at his half-full drink.
-I’ll be done in a minute.
I looked at my own cocktail.
-Sure. Let’s finish these and go get him and go home. I think I’m too high for the Fun Zone.
-Good call.

Half an hour later we stumbled into the bright sun, hands shading our eyes.
I squinted up the street.
-Where’s Mexico?
Arkansas scanned the sidewalk.
-Didn’t we leave him by the fire hydrant?
-Yeah. He was sitting there leaning against it with his eye closed.
-Huh. Maybe he went home.
-Yeah. Sure he did.

We set off for home. We took our time. We had no choice but to take our time. Time was molasses and we were covered in it. Lurching and giggling and pointing at various mundane grotesqueries, we plowed our way through it.

Turning the corner, coming up the last hundred yards to the house, I though of something.
-What happed to Kenya?
Arkansas pointed.
-His truck’s gone.
I looked at the open space in the driveway.
-Maybe he parked around back. He wouldn’t go driving this high.
-Yeah, around back.

We went up the steps and into the eerie silence of the house.

Arkansas set his keys on the kitchen table.
-Mexico?
I looked down the hall.
-Kenya?

Nothing.

-They’re fucking with us.
Arkansas nodded. We tiptoed down the hall toward the bedrooms, ready for a sneak attack of pillows or squirt guns. No ambush came. Kenya’s room was empty. Arkansas frowned and went into his own room to look out back.
-His truck’s not here, dude.
My insides began to chill.
-No way, no way. He’d never go driving this high.
Arkansas came out of the room.
-It’s gone, man.
We chewed our lips.
-What about, Mexico?
Arkansas pointed at the window.
-His truck’s there.
We looked at the open door of Mexico’s room. The master bedroom, for which he paid extra rent so he could have his own bathroom.
I stuck my head inside.
-Mexico?

Nothing.

I turned my head.
-Oh shit! Shit!
There they were, Mexico’s legs, on the floor, sticking out of the bathroom.
I ran in, Arkansas behind me.
Mexico, spread eagle, face down on the bathroom floor in a pool of vomit.
-Mexico! Mexico! Dude! Mexico!
I got down on my knees. Arkansas ran for the phone.
-Mexico?
-Uhhh.
-Oh, man.
I checked his pulse. It was racing.
-You OK, man?
-Uhhh.
Arkansas came back with the cordless.
-911?
I looked at him.
-I don’t know, man.

The implications of calling 911 were huge. We were all on financial aid. A drug bust could void our loans and scholarships. Fuck.

-Uhhh.
-Mexico, you OK?
-Uhhh.

He was fucked up. I had a sudden vision of the apartment in fifteen minutes when Arkansas and I might begin to suffer a similar fate. Jesus, what about Kenya? He’s out on the road. What if this hits him? Oh, man.

-Mexico, look at me, dude. Just say something or look at me. Are you really sick? I’m calling 911. If you know you’re gonna be cool, you gotta look up or something. Otherwise we’re calling.
-Uhhh.
He moved.
-Uhhh.
He shifted his hands, moved them close to his shoulders, began to press down.
-Uuuuhhhh.
Slowly his upper body lifted.
-Aauuuhhh.
-Mexico, look at me, man.
He head turned, misery etched on his face, agony I had never seen.
-Mexico, you OK, dude?
He looked me in the eye, square, recognizing me, then opened him mouth wide and released a flood of vomit.
Arkansas took a step back.
-Gross!
Mexico flopped back into his own puke.
-Uhhh.
Arkansas offered me the phone.
-You want to make the call?
I shook my head.
-Naw, he’s cool.

We got towels and warm water. We got him out of his puke-covered clothes and wiped him clean. We wrapped him in a robe. We played James Taylor for him and talked in low soothing tones. Hours later, we helped him to crawl into his waterbed. By the time the ordeal was over and he was sleeping peacefully, Arkansas and I were sober as judges.

We settled on the couch with the bong and the front door opened.
-Hey, guys, what’s up?
We turned and looked at Kenya.
Arkansas threw a pillow at him.
-Where the fuck have you been?
Kenya caught the pillow.
-I told you I was going to see a movie.
-No you didn’t.
-Yeah, I did.
I passed him the bong.
-How did you drive?
He checked the bowl.
-Carefully.
He took a hit.
-What’d I miss?

copyright 2005 by Charlie Huston. All right reserved etc.

NEW YORK, April 12 – A Tale From the Joe Pitt Casebooks:

Penny Dreadful, what the hell kind of name is that?

Stupid question. I know what kind of name it is. The made up kind. It’s the kind of name some goth chick slaps on herself when she finds out that the guy she met when she went fishing online for her first actual blood letting experience was infected with the Vyrus and that at some point while they were stabbing each other with lancets and lapping at their wrists she ended up getting a dose.

It’s the kind of name that tells me as soon as I hear it that I’m not gonna like the girl attached to it.

-Come in, Joe, come in.

She steps back and holds the door open, sweeping her arm so that all the torn black lace hanging from it billows nicely.

I consider killing her right now and just skipping the whole question and answer thing, but there’s always a chance that she’s not the one. Not that the world wouldn’t be a better place without her regardless, but I would be nice to know for sure. I might be inclined to hurt her more if I know for sure.

I step inside and she shuts the door.
-Have a seat, Joe. Please.

I assume the old wingback draped in tattered red velvet is her favorite, and park myself on a heavy wood armchair that she’s riveted black leather wrist, ankle and neck straps to. There’s no bloodstains on the chair. One can assume the straps are decorative or recreational. Either way they’re fucking annoying.

She takes a pewter and blue glass goblet from one of the shelves and cradles it in her palm.
-Something to drink?
-Got any beer?

She smiles, looks at the floor, looks back up at me through the curtain of thick magenta hair that falls over her face.
-I’ve some mead.
-Mead.
-Yes.
-I’ll pass.

She nods and takes a seat, pulling her legs up and curling one arm around them.
-And how can I help you?

I take a look at the all the loose bolts of satin and lace and velvet she’s draped over every surface of her shitty little studio apartment. Once I kill her I can just knock over one of her oil lamps and the place will go up in a couple seconds. I can pull the fire alarm on my way out the front door. With a little luck no one else in the building will get hurt.
-You can tell me why you made that mess over at the church.

She runs the tip of a finger over the ring that pierces her upper lip.
-Did I make a mess?

I think about what Terry told me. About the priest and where he was found and what parts were cut off. I think about the cops and reporters that are buzzing around, poking into every corner of my neighborhood.
-Yeah. Looks that way.
-And who is it that claims I’ve made this mess?
-Philip Sax.
-Sax. He’s your Renfield, isn’t he?
-I don’t have a Renfield, lady.
-That’s not what people say.
-People know from shit.
-Then why trust Sax?
-Because I’ll torture him if he lies to me.
-Can you be sure he believes you’d actually do that?

I think about the time I met Phil. What I did to him when I found out he’d lied to me. How I promised him it’d be worse the next time. How he lied to me again and how I did it worse. And how he stopped lying after that.
-Yeah, I’m sure.
-Such trust must be comforting.
-I don’t trust Sax, I just know he won’t lie to me.
-And he claims he saw me at the church?
-Claims more than that.
-He saw something?
-Saw you go in. Saw you talking to the priest. Saw you come out. Saw the priest was the worse for wear after you came out. Didn’t see anyone else.
-I’m curious.
-It’s going around.
-How is it he saw all this? Is Philip Sax stalking me? Does he have a crush?
-He was keeping an eye on you.
-On your behalf.
-On Terry’s behalf. On The Society’s behalf.

She takes a sip of her mead.
-Terry was having me followed? Why?
-Because it seemed like a smart fucking thing to do after stood up in a Society meeting and started talking about taking revenge on the clergy for centuries of persecution.

She stretches her arm toward one of the dozen or so candles illuminating the room and runs her fingers through the flame.
-That was indiscreet.
-That was stupid as fuck.

She holds one finger in the flame until a wisp of smoke drifts from the seared skin. She pulls her hand back and stares at the fingertip as it blisters, and immediately begins to heal.
-We shouldn’t be tolerating their persecution, Joe.

I shift in me seat, making a little more room for my gun hand in case she charges me and I have to go for my piece.
-Lady, you are crazy as all fuck. No one’s persecuting you or any of us. No one fucking knows we exist. And the only way they’re ever gonna find out is if nut jobs like you go around splitting open members of the clergy and nailing them upside down to crucifixes in their own fucking churches.

She touched the burned finger with her thumb. It’s healing fast. She must have fed recently. The priest. She’ll be strong. Me, I haven’t had anything for almost a week. I shift again, so I can get to both guns if I have to.

She blows on the finger.
-You’re wrong, Joe. That priest was a persecutor. He persecuted me.
-That priest was a seventy year old man who didn’t know shit. And even if he did, who gives a fuck? You’re not a creature of the night, you’re not damned, you’re sick, you got a fucking disease just like the rest of us. Guy could have hunted you down and bathed you in holy water and it would have done shit. He was just an old man.
-Persecuted is perhaps the wrong word.

She finishes her mead.
-Molested is the word I was trying to say.

She sets her empty goblet on the floor.
-But I’ve always had a hard time saying it in front of people.

She looks me over.
-But we’re alone. And I’m almost drunk. So it seems a little easier just now.

She untucks her legs and places her feet flat on the floor.
-This is my neighborhood, too, Joe. I grew up here. I went to that church when I was a little girl.

She stands.
-I can go into detail.

She takes a couple steps, stops when she’s just in front of me.
-If you’d like that.

She’s says it like it matters. Like why she did what she did makes a difference when it comes to the rules.

Right in front of me. This close, a round from the automatic will blow her heart to shreds, just like that.

Terry looks up from the book in his lap when I sit down next to him on the bench.
-Was it her?

The sun is down. The summer air in Tompkins Square is warm. Some kids go running past, spraying each other with squirt guns.

I shake my head.
-She’s got an alibi. Solid.

He marks his place in the book with a finger and closes the covers.
-Sax said he was sure.
-Sax is a stone junkie and he was hard up for a few bucks.
-You said he wouldn’t lie to you again.
-I’ve been wrong before.

He opens his book.
-You’ll have to do something about it. So he doesn’t get in the habit.

I stand up.
-Sure.

He looks down at his book.
-Want to take Hurley with you?

I stick a Lucky in my mouth and light it.
-Naw, I can handle it.
-OK. Call me when you’re done.
-Sure.

I head off. Phil will be at Coney Island High probably. But I need to swing by my place first. Pick up my pliers and such.

Copyright 2006 by Charlie Huston, all right reserved etc.

NEW YORK, February 9 – He should have kept his mouth shut.

Sitting on the stand, staring at the jurors, showing them the scars, telling them.

Here she is. And here. How much am I supposed to show? Cut myself open and show you the marks?

Rolling his sleeves down.

To hell with you. All of you. Some things you can’t have. To prove I didn’t. Kill her. To prove, I’m supposed to show you everything. No. To hell with you. Some things are mine. You can’t have them.

So they sent him up the river.

Life.

The judge said.

Still, some things they couldn’t have from him.

But they broke him anyway. In there. They took what they wanted. Threw the rest on the scrap heap for the rats.

And he fought the rats for what was left. What he wouldn’t give. Ever.

Lived in a corner. Dark. Rat skins on his back. Rat bones in his teeth. Owning what was his.

And that was his story, the end of him, the end of any man.

But for the girl.

(Ah, you say, the girl. Like you know something. But you don’t.)

The girl who had been a child, now grown, who was there when he showed the scars and asked how much he should give away. She who had felt the same her whole tiny life.

Asking.

How much of me?

Knowing.

Not this. This is mine.

And she now, finding the truth he had refused to show them.

The struggle when they came to his dark corner. Tried to take his skin and his bones. He marked them. As he had been marked.

Until she told him.

You’re not the only one in the fucking world with scars. Not the only one to keep secrets close. Living with things inside not to be shared. But sharing all the same.

On the A train. 2/3/06,
Charlie

Internet Blah Blah

Rib Magazine review.

Fangirl Magazine review. And seriously, who doesn’t want a Fangirl review?

Comic Con Chaos
Starting to get my schedule together for Comic Con NYC from 2/24-2/26. Here’s what I know so far:

My panels and booth appearances for 2/24 are:

Signing at the Del Rey booth from 2pm to 3pm.
Mondo Marvel Panel from 4pm to 5pm

Panels and booths for 2/25:

How to Break into Fantasy/SF/Horror panel from noon to 1pm
Signing at Del Rey or Midtown Comics (not sure which yet) from 1pm to 2pm.
Signing and hanging out at Buzzscope from 2pm to 3pm

NEW YORK, November 2 - When Pierce saw the crack appear at the top of the full moon’s arc and jag its way downward, splitting the satelite in two like a perfectly spheracle egg, he took a last drag from his cigarette, dropped the butt and ground it beneath his boot heel as he spoke through the cloud of smoke pouring from his mouth and nostrils.

-Well, shit, that can’t be good news.

His first impression was echoed by the night’s newscasts, which variously titled this latest natural disaster as:

GROUND ZERO MOON

FLASHPOINT MOON

LUNAR LUNACY

and

THE MOON: FRIEND OR FOE?

Experts, primarily an assortment of rumpled astronomers and cosmologists blinking molelike under the unaccostomed glare of the studio lights, described an imminent havoc of 10 point earthquakes, catagory 20 hurricanes, tsunamis to drown the shattered continents, and a hail of moon debris in the form of office block size meteors.

One NASA specialist, media battle hardened as a commentator during sundry shuttle crises, upon being asked what could be done to avert the tragedy at hand, raised an eyebrow and took another swig from the bottle of mezcal he had carried onto the set.

-Lady, we’re going where the dinosaurs went. What say you an me share the worm at the bottom of this bottle and have us a fuck on your desk?

Her aquiesence leading to a ratings spike, an unpresidented jump in her Q-rating, and according to an instant email pole, and a 40% increase in the public’s “good feeling” regarding astronomers.

A movement in congress to tighten FCC regulations and impose staggering penalties upon the network failed to gain traction as the overwhelming majority of of the members of both the House and the Senate were spending the final hours of their final session screwing sundry interns they had hired with the intention of nailing at Christmas parties which would no longer be celebrated.

Pierce turned off the TV after the twentieth screening of a video taped fatwah from Osama Bin Laden declaring Jihad upon the moon.

He went out back and stood in his yard and looked up at the broken moon.

For the hundredth time he bit his lip, but still failed to wake up.

He looked the yard over and kicked the head of one of the weeds dotting the vegetable patch. He’d been planning the weed the patch for weeks now, but his trick knee had acted up and the idea of kneeling for the halfhour it would take to do the job properly had kept him finding better things to do.

Like smoking another cigarette or reading sections of the paper he didn’t usually read.

The sirens, blaring music, gunfire, intermitent explosions, screams, laughter, madly howling dogs and crackle of fireworks peppering the sky covered the sound of the car pulling into his driveway.

He was on his knees pulling the weeds when she came out the backdoor, purse over her shoulder, a sixpack of Coors in her hand.

She looked at him.
-What are you doing?

He looked at her.
-Weeding the vegetable patch.
-What the hell for?
-Didn’t have nothing better to do.

She nodded.
-Thirsty yet?

He inclined his head toward the beers.

Where’d you get your hands on those?
-Distributor’s truck parked in the middle of the road. Bunch of kids were helping themselves. Flagging down cars and passing them through the window. Seemed rude not to say yes.

She hefted the six.
-You want one?

He rubbed his chin with the back of his wrist to keep the dirt from his whiskers.
-Think I’ll pass. Been so long, don’t see much point in having one now.

She nodded.
-Care to sit with me while I have one?

He stood up, knocking his hands together, his knee grinding.
-Sounds better than weeding anyhow.

He walked over and remained standing while she sat first, then eased himself down and joined her on the step.
-How were the roads?

She cracked her beer and took a sip.
-Some traffic.
-Lot of rubber necking going on I suppose.
-Yep.

He lit a cigarette.

She looked at it.
-You gonna think less of me if I have one of those?

He shook one from the pack and handed it to her, sparking a flame and watching her face as she took the smoke into her lungs like she’d never stopped doing it.

He pinched out the match and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
-How’s that?

She looked at the cigarette.
-Like I though it would be. But it’ll be better by the time I finish it.

They sat and watched the skyline toward the middle of town as a volcano began to blossom there.

She tilted her head at the house.
-You feel like going in to the bedroom?

He thought about it.
-I’ve heard worse ideas. But I kind of think i want to watch this.

She smiled.
-Yeah hate to miss it.
-Ain’t gonna get a second chance.

She edged closed to him, pressed her thigh to his.
-I could get a blanket. We could get under it on the grass.

He slipped his arm inside hers.
-Don’t know if my knee could take the ground.
-How about your back.
-Yeah, why don’t you get that blanket.

She went inside and he looked at the beer.
-Pierce. Hey, Pierce.

He looked up, Leonard was hanging over the top of the fence.
-Hey, Len. What’s up?
-Nothing. Just I got the hose I borrowed. Thought I’d bring it over.

He held his hand up, showing the coil of rubber.

Pierce waved a hand.
-Just drop it here on my side, I’ll get it later.

Leonard dropped the hose.
-Those beers you got?
-Yep.
-Spare one?

Pierce underhanded one of the beers across the yard and Leonard snagged it as she came back out with the blanket and a candle.
-That Leonard?
-That Siss?

Leonard opened the beer, a small geyser of foam errupting.
-Hey, Siss, good to see you around.
-You too, Len.

She tossed the blanket over her shoulder.
-You don’t mind, I think we kind of want to sit a little.
-Sure, sure. Thanks for the beer.

He disappeared back into his own yard.

She walked onto the lawn and spread the blanket and sat on in and took off her shoes. He got up and went to her, taking her hand as he sat, letting her take off his boots. The laid back and he folded the blanket over then and she put her head up on his shoulder.
-Been missing you.
-Yeah, good to see you too.

She slid a hand under his shirt and onto his stomach, feeling how it’d gotten softer over the years.
-Wishing we’d never split.

He pressed his cheek slightly to the top of her head.
-Wish I’d gotten to those weeds.

She pinched him.
-Be sweet, you bastard.
-Baby, when have I ever been sweet?

He kissed her, tasting the beer.

Written 11/2/05 on the downtown A after a morning with the news telling about all the things blowing up everywhere.copyright 2005 by Charlie Huston. All right reserved etc.

NEW YORK, September 13 - I have violence on the brain.

This comes as no surprise, I suppose. I deal in violence, it is part and parcel of writing the stories I write. I didn’t plan it this way. I didn’t sit down with a plan to write stories that often include scenes of graphic violence.

OK, that always include scenes of graphic violence.

Indeed, I find writing most of those scenes pretty fucking uncomfortable.

While I’m aware that they are cathartic for the reader as well as my protagonists, I try not to let them become in any way playful. Try not to include them just to trigger that release of tension.

Part of the reason for the sometimes excruciating detail and sheer volume of space devoted to these scenes is to make the reading of them distasteful. Not out of any desire to alienate the reader mind you, but simply because if I’m going to write about violence, I want it to count.

I want it to count for the characters. I want it to count for the reader. I want it to count for me. There have been a couple occasions on which I have sketched in a character, knowing that it was quite likely that he or she would serve no other purpose than to be killed off. Those pages feel like gaping holes in my books. I don’t like thinking about them. They are evidence of failure on my part, a lack of rigor. Fucking laziness. Laziness is not something that should be indulged where violence, fictional or otherwise, is concerned.

To some extent, to a great extent, I owe my current living to a certain taste for violence. A taste that revolves around the emotional impact that can be had from the use of fictional violence. The dread that looms when the writer has shown willing to brutalize suddenly, that kind of thing works for me. And, liking sad stories, it also works for me when a character I love is unexpectedly lost. And being a sucker for happy endings, it works just as well when a character I love is unexpectedly spared.

That taste for violence is a mystery to me. And one of which I am not particularly proud today, having reached my threshold for real violence while reading accounts of the latest suicide bombings in Baghdad.

Not that I’ve never reached that threshold before. Not that I haven’t been pushed across it repeatedly the last couple years. Not that the last few weeks of news out of New Orleans have not dragged me back and forth across it along with everyone else.

But you know how it is.

You never know which is the blow that will land the heaviest.

Something in this morning’s accounts, a story I read, a man describing how he tried to talk to another man who had been cast by an explosion to land smouldering on the doorstep of his shop and how the smouldering man did not answer, something today landed quite heavily.

And my taste for violence seems like such a crappy thing to indulge. With a surfeit of the real thing so readily available.

Searching my files for some idea I might use as a jumping off point for this entry today, something that might steer me away from indulging in apologia, I found the fragment below.

I seem to recall this was started by a game I was playing with a group of close friends, one of those storytelling things you do when you’re in college and baked, each of you adding a line. I seem to remember having scraped the story back into some kind of shape and having written this with the intention of sharing it with these friends. I seem to remember never quite getting around to it.

Something overwritten and self-consciously pretty. Something unlike my usual thing. It feels like what I want to be writing today.

I’ll be funny again next week,
Charlie

Untitled Fragment

There is a blue, blue sea with a bright sun shining overhead and sparking off the water. There is a white sand beach sifted by a calm wind that blows with the sea and pushes a sailboat crewed by three people wearing red and yellow and orange scarves billowing in the wind. On the beach, an old leather book slowly turns its own pages in the wind. Next to the book, a red jewel with a single flaw close to its heart glistens in the sun and is slowly covered by the shifting sands. Leading away from jewel and book is a single set of footprints that drift to the surf and disappear, punctuated just above the waterline by the wet impression of a single large tear. In the distance, beyond the sailboat, is a small island with two palm trees swaying in the wind and five winged children dancing between them. In the water, between island and boat, a body floats on its back and violet eyes stare up at the blue, blue sky. And on the cliffs above the beach a woman stands, her white hair and clothes flapping in the stiff wind at the top of the cliffs, and she waves farewell to the violet eyed beauty drifting slowly to the island of dancing children and large tears roll down her cheeks and are caught by the wind and carried and scattered over the sea and sand and boat and scarves and book and jewel and the sun shines down bright, but cannot dry those tears.