Dilation Exercise 79
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, released by Lazy Fascist Press, I created the Dilation Exercise below to expand the story beyond the end of the novel. This week’s exercise works with last week’s. The novel is inspired by the three infamous Wardlaw sisters.
Need a further explanation? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.
By the time Vertiline had given up the search for Mary, Carolee had taken a terrible toll on the innocent, and by all signs, her deadly activity stretched far into the future.
Weary and reconciled to her existence ending in shame and failure, Vertiline tried to lie down and be still, but the wind gave her feathers life, picked her and sent her flying onward, ever doomed to witness the murderous career she had helped to shape.
Artwork: “Portents” copyright © 2008 Alan M. Clark. Cover art for Portents edited by Al Sarrantonio, published by Flying Fox Publishers.
Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Dilation Exercise 78
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, released by Lazy Fascist Press, I created the Dilation Exercise below to expand the story beyond the end of the novel. The novel is inspired by the three infamous Wardlaw sisters.
Need a further explanation? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.
When Vertiline found herself in the cemetery, she realized she was dead.
If Mary had also become a crow after death, and Vertiline could find her, she had an idea for how they might end their sister, Carolee’s, reign of terror.
Artwork: “A familiar Crow” copyright © 2008 Alan M. Clark. Cover art for VINTAGE SOULS by David Niall Wilson, published by Five Star.
Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Dilation Exercise 77
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, released by Lazy Fascist Press, I created the Dilation Exercise below using an excerpt from the novel. The novel is inspired by the three infamous Wardlaw sisters. This Dilation Exercise breaks my rule of only two lines of caption.
Need a further explanation? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.
“Detective Robert Walker testified that burnt fragments of the bones of a human infant were found in the furnace of the tenement where you and your family lived in Brooklyn. Do you know anything about the tiny bones, Miss Mortlow?”
Although she had her suspicions about Orphia’s role, and that of her sister, Carolee, in the disappearance of the infant, thankfully Vertiline didn’t know the truth. “No,” she said. She clenched her jaw, glanced at the jury, and was disturbed that she couldn’t read their expressions.
Artwork: “In the Furnace” copyright © 2012 Alan M. Clark.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Dilation Exercise 75
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, released by Lazy Fascist Press, I created the Dilation Exercise below using an excerpt from the story. The novel is inspired by the three infamous Wardlaw sisters.
As the flames raced down his body, engulfing him entirely, Carolee got behind him with the damp mop and used the implement to shove him out of the carriage house.
Reeling and screaming, he ran out onto the campus lawn, fell to the ground, and died in a gurgling, writhing, blackening heap.
Artwork: “Ash of a Boy (revised and colorized)” copyright © 2006 Alan M. Clark. In it’s original monochrome form, this image was the cover art for Dark Discoveries Magazine – Issue #10 and appeared in the interior of the magazine as an illustration to the short story,”Scare Tactics,” by Eric Witchey.
Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Dilation Exercise 74
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, released by Lazy Fascist Press, I created the Dilation Exercise below using an excerpt from the novel. The novel is inspired by the three infamous Wardlaw sisters. This Dilation Exercise breaks my rule of only two lines of caption.
In the late fall of 1898, persuaded by his mother that suicide was his best course of action, James boarded a train headed for Louisville, Kentucky with the intention of leaping from the locomotive at a great speed and dashing his brains out on the rough ballast around the tracks. He leapt shortly after the train left the station in Christiansboro, before much speed had accumulated. He broke a leg in the fall and was a burden to the family until he healed many months later.
Spring of 1900, James leapt into the well, but he thrashed about and cried so long and hard for help that trying to ignore him became an embarrassment, and a rescue commenced. With each attempt on his life, the activity and drama served only to draw unwanted attention from the parents of the college students and from folks in town.
Artwork: “Down the Hole (revised)” copyright © 2001 Alan M. Clark.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Writing the Human Experience: Guest Blogger Molly Tanzer on her Debut, A Pretty Mouth
(With Molly Tanzer’s permission, I have copied here her guest blog post from my Imagination Fully Dilated Blog. If you’d like to see her post on my blog, here’s a link. In her post, there’s a link to her blog where you can read my part of our exchange. —Alan M. Clark)
I asked Alan Clark about the possibility of doing a blog-exchange to give readers (and 
potential readers) some insight into our most recent works—my debut, A Pretty Mouth, and his 5th novel, A Parliament of Crows. He graciously agreed, so huzzah! Today, you can read my post on his blog—actually, I guess you already are—and his on mine.
I specifically asked Alan about doing a blog exchange because his 5th novel, Of Thimble and Threat, was one of the best books I read last year. Oh, and his latest has a bit of overlap with mine. (Alan talks about this very thing over on my blog, so that’s another reason to go read it!)
I read Thimble because our mutual publisher, Cameron Pierce, sent me an ARC. He thought I would like it, and I did, I did indeed. It’s a wonderful book, perfectly appealing to avid readers of genre and those who prefer straight literary/historical fiction. It also had the effect of forcing me to ratchet up my game for Mouth. I knew if I was going to be published side-by-side with Alan I needed to get real and start taking things seriously. It was extremely intimidating, but in that way that gets me excited about a challenge. (That said, if Cameron had sent me Parliament, I might have just thrown in the towel and given up on writing. Yeah, it’s that good.)
Anyways, blog exchange! As it turned out, I got the easy job. Alan wrote his piece first, and I liked it so much I decided to just riff off his. Which, if you must know, is pretty much how I wrote the largest chunk of A Pretty Mouth. More on that after a brilliant quote from Alan’s post that I found so inspiring:
“… The period a writer chooses for a story will define the characters in it to some extent. Obviously, some experiences we have today are not possible for characters set within a time, say, 100 or 500 years ago. This can present real limitations unless the writer is willing to learn about the period and really open up the character’s world, discover the possibilities, and share that with the reading audience. … No matter the period, the emotional characteristics of human beings are just as subtle and complex as those of human beings today. The everyday realities and events that shape their feelings and motivations can be very different, however. In creating characters, I try to take advantage of the similarities and the differences, setting up parallels and contrasts with what we know today to express something about human experience.”
That’s Alan for you. Saying pretty much everything there is to say on a subject, and more concisely than I, perhaps especially, could ever dream of doing. I mean, read Of Thimble and Threat and tell me there’s more to write on the fourth victim of Jack the Ripper. (I mean, his introduction to the book was shocking in its simplicity, honesty, and wisdom.)
I suppose the above quote struck me in particular, because it’s talking about exactly what I wanted to do with the biggest portion of A Pretty Mouth, which, depending on what you want to call it, is a novel told in parts, or a collection of related short stories. You see, the title novella is a (hopefully) witty Restoration comedy re-envisioned as an 80s teen sex romp.
Huh? What? Yeah, I know. I figured I was going buck-wild with genre in the book anyways, so why not have a “school story” kind of thing? I love school stories, always have. But how do you write something realistic and fresh about school experience when writing about a educational system long gone?
Wadham College, in 1660, was an interesting community of intellectuals, half middle/high school, half university. Boys from 12 years old were required to take courses in Astronomy, Physics, Logic, and Latin; older students attended more college-style classes, as we might think of them. Girls were not allowed. In fact, at that time the only female servant employed by the college was the laundress, who was required by the statutes to be older (and lower-class) as to not distract the students. And she was only allowed to come to the gate of the college, lest her presence inflame the boys’ passions. Kind of hard to stage a panty raid, or whatever, under those circumstances, you know?
And yet, when you read Restoration-era texts—let’s say, for example, the poetry of John Wilmot, the novels/plays of Aphra Behn, or the diary of Samuel Pepys—it’s obvious that some things haven’t changed that much. Worrying over things like popularity, academic performance, uncertainty over one’s future, all those concerns existed then, as they do now. So I hoped to exploit those similarities to make an unusual setting familiar.
Now, my stuff is more anachronistic than Alan’s, deliberately so. Alan’s the kind of writer who shocks you with the horror of reality; I’m the kind of writer who thinks it’s funny when 17th century schoolboys say things like “Busted!” and, I dunno, “motherfucker.” Which let me walk that line between historical drama and 80s comedy.
Maybe. I say that, but you, dear reader, must be the judge of that.
Terrible Twins and Their Easter Eggs
I met Molly Tanzer online after she read and commented on my historical fiction novel, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Jack the Ripper Victim. This year Molly and I discovered that we were both writing within historical settings, and we agreed to serve as readers for each others’ developing work. Both Molly’s book, A Pretty Mouth, and my novel, A Parliament of Crows, are historical fiction since they are inspired by real events within history. Both books tell dark, disturbing tales, hers an erotic horror, mine a southern gothic. Both were released by Lazy Fascist Press this fall. A Pretty Mouth is sort of a novel in short and long fiction set in England during several different periods, much of it in the 1600s, and A Parliament of Crows is set in various locations within the United States between the time of the American Civil War and the end of the first decade of the twentieth century.
The fun of writing within historical settings is that it’s a bit like time travel. The period a writer chooses for a story will define the characters in it to some extent. Obviously, some experiences we have today are not possible for characters set within a time, say, 100 or 500 years ago. This can present real limitations unless the writer is willing to learn about the period and really open up the character’s world, discover the possibilities, and share that with the reading audience. That’s the time travel I’m talking about. No matter the period, the emotional characteristics of human beings are just as subtle and complex as those of human beings today. The everyday realities and events that shape their feelings and motivations can be very different, however. In creating characters, I try to take advantage of the similarities and the differences, setting up parallels and contrasts with what we know today to express something about human experience. If done right, a reader gets to time-travel too, experiencing a long lost world through the eyes of a character they can understand emotionally, even if the character’s feelings and outlook are shaped by a different time.
A Pretty Mouth was so well realized that it sent me back in time, and allowed me to view a bizarre and terrifying world through the eyes of fascinating, very human characters.
Another thing Molly and I discovered about our writing this year was that both of us were writing about twins. A Pretty Mouth has a supernatural genetic line of evil twins. My novel, A Parliament of Crows, has one set of evil twins whose connection to one another has a supernatural aspect. I thought my twins could use a hint of long, dark genetic history, and suggested to Molly that we might create a connection. Adding more evil twins to her character’s lineage was desirable to her, so she agreed to creating a tiny link between the projects with one or two sentences in each. To get there, we traded messages via facebook “chat,” looking for a solution that was both minimal, but undeniable. I had fun, and I think she did as well. I could almost hear her laughing in her messages. The lines we added had to be of a sort that would not confuse and would not distract a reader from the story at hand, but would be an Easter egg for those who read both books. I’m curious to see who will be the first to notice.
—Alan M. Clark
Dilation Exercise 63
Below you’ll find Alan M. Clark’s weekly Dilation Exercise. Please look at the picture, read the caption, above and below the image, and allow your imagination to go to work on it. If the artwork inspires an idea, please use the comment feature to tell us something about it. Need a further explanation? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.
Alister regretted his decision to turn his imagination into a laundry hamper since his socks were all stretched out of shape and growing insect elephant heads.
Still, he enjoyed reading the prehensile nasal passages while on the toilet, and because they were filled with mucus, they slipped onto his tiny feet more easily.
Artwork: “Hot Head Lends a Hand” copyright © 2008 Alan M. Clark and Steven C. Gilberts. Cover illustration for Lost in Cat Brain Land by Cameron Pierce, published by Eraserhead Press.
Captions are original to this post and have nothing to do with the literary project with which the artwork first appeared.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Dilation Exercise 56
In an effort to promote my new novel, A PARLIAMENT OF CROWS, to be released by Lazy Fascist Press in the October 2012, my weekly Dilation Exercise uses the cover art for the book and the caption pertains to the story. The novel is inspired by the infamous Wardlaw sisters. Please look at the picture, read the caption, above and below the image, and allow your imagination to go to work on it. Need a further explanation about Dilation Exercises in general? Go to Imagination Workout—The Dilation Exercises.
The three sisters had lost everything during the War Between the States, and they mourned all of it, but the loss of their own innocence.
In a mad effort to insure their own postwar survival, what would they consider beyond the pale: forgery, insurance fraud, embezzlement, arson, murder, or betrayal of one another?
Artwork: “Cover for A Parliament of Crows” copyright © 2012 Alan M. Clark. Cover illustration for A Parliament of Crows, by Alan M. Clark, forthcoming from Lazy Fascist Press.
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
The OF THIMBLE AND THREAT-Inspired Painting Raffle Winner, Plus New Ripper Essay
And the winner of the raffle is Sam McCanna.
Congratulations, Sam, and many thanks to all who entered the raffle.
Brett McBean asked me to contribute an essay to his Saucy Jacky, a Ripper of a Blog. Here’s the new essay about Jack the Ripper and his victims.
Jack the Ripper, London’s Murder Weapon
Was Jack the Ripper a monster, larger than life, beyond our comprehension? From all that has been written and dramatized about the killer, one might think so. But perhaps he was merely a man, with the fears and frailties of an average human being?
If I could go through his pockets, I’ll bet I’d find that he carried common, everyday items that helped him maintain his physical and mental wellbeing in the world of Victorian London. If that’s true, it would tell me that, although he was an extreme danger to society, he was subject to the physical and emotional trials we all go through in life.
The clothes we wear and the items we carry on our person say something about us. I wear shirts that button up the front. I never wear t-shirts. If asked why, I might say that I don’t think t-shirts are flattering to my middle-aged abdomen. I carry numerous keys because I want access to areas and items I lock up. One can easily deduce therefore that I’m doing more than most would to secure my stuff against theft, and that might say something about how many times I’ve been robbed. I slip my keys into a flexible glasses case before putting them in my pants because they chew holes in my pockets. I got tired of paying for new jeans just because the pockets were ruined, so it’s reasonable to assume I have been concerned about money during my life and learned to be frugal. I carry lip balm because I have the nervous habit of chewing my lips and making them chapped. What have I to be nervous about? That’s a good question. I carry a cloth handkerchief to wipe my nose instead of using paper tissues which might have something to do with my desire to preserve the natural world. For reasons I won’t reveal here, I carry a pocket knife and have no cell phone.
All these things say something about what I think and feel in my daily life, most of it of no consequence to anyone, but if I were a suspect or victim in a crime and the truth was important, useful conclusions about who I am might come from considering these things.
Beyond the savagery of the Jack the Ripper killings, the murderer is perhaps most defined by his choice of victims; common, poor women who would have been forgotten in time if not for the compelling manner of their deaths.
With the idea that to know something of the women is to know something about the Ripper, I became interested in the possessions of the victims. The possessions of the murdered women, found at the crime scenes, provide a glimpse of their lives and speak volumes about the time in which the White Chapel Murderer lived. The people of 1888 London didn’t have the mp3 players and electronic tablets we have today, they didn’t have car keys and water enhancers, thumb drives and anti-anxiety medications, but they did carry items useful to them in their time and circumstances.
Here are the first four victims of the Ripper and their clothing and possessions found at the crime scenes:
Mary Ann Nichols (Polly Nichols)
Clothing:
A black Straw bonnet trimmed with black velvet
A reddish brown ulster with large brass buttons.
A brown linsey frock
A white flannel chest cloth
A pair of black ribbed wool stockings
A wool petticoat stenciled with “Lambeth Workhouse”
A flannel petticoat stenciled with “Lambeth Workhouse”
Brown stays
Flannel drawers
A pair of men’s boots with the uppers cut and steel tips on the heels
Possessions:
A comb
A white pocket handkerchief
A broken piece of mirror (This would have been a valuable item for one living in the work house or common lodging)
Annie Chapman
Clothing:
A long black, knee-length figured coat.
A black skirt
A Brown bodice
An Additional bodice
Two petticoats
A pair of lace up boots
A pair of red and white striped wool stockings
A neckerchief, with white with red border (folded into a triangle and tied about her neck)
Possessions:
A large empty pocket tied about the waist, worn under the skirt.
A scrap of muslin
A small tooth comb
A comb in a paper case
A scrap of envelope containing two pills.
Elizabeth Stride
Clothing:
A Long black cloth jacket, trimmed with fur at the bottom
A red rose and white maiden hair fern pinned to the coat.
A black skirt
A black crepe bonnet
A checked neck scarf knotted on left side
A dark brown velveteen bodice
Two light serge petticoats
A white chemise
A pair of white stockings
A pair of spring sided boots
Possesions:
Two handkerchiefs
A thimble
A piece of wool wound around a card
A key for a padlock
A small piece of lead pencil
Six large and one small button
A comb
A broken piece of comb
A metal spoon
A hook (as from a dress)
A piece of muslin
One or two small pieces of paper
A packet of Cachous. (a pill used by smokers to sweeten breath)
Catherine Eddowes
Clothing:
A black straw bonnet trimmed in green and black velvet with black beads
A black cloth jacket with trimmed around the collar and cuffs with imitation fur and around the pockets in black silk braid and fur.
A dark green chintz skirt with 3 flounces and brown button on waistband.
A man’s white vest.
A brown linsey bodice with a black velvet collar and brown buttons down front
A grey stuff petticoat
A very old green alpaca skirt
A very old ragged blue skirt with red flounces and a light twill lining
A white calico chemise
A pair of men’s lace up boots. (The right boot was repaired with red thread)
A piece of red gauze silk worn around the neck
A large white pocket handkerchief
A large white cotton handkerchief with red and white bird’s eye border
Two unbleached calico pockets with strings
A blue stripe bed ticking pocket
A pair of brown ribbed knee stockings, darned at the feet with white cotton
Possessions:
Two small blue bags made of bed ticking
Two short black clay pipes
A tin box containing tea
A tin box containing sugar
A tin matchbox, empty
Twelve pieces white rag, some slightly bloodstained
A piece coarse linen, white
A piece of blue and white shirting
A piece red flannel with pins and needles
Six pieces soap
A small tooth comb
A white handled table knife
A metal teaspoon
A red leather cigarette case with white metal fittings
A ball hemp
A piece of old white apron
Several buttons and a thimble
Mustard tin containing two pawn tickets
A Printed handbill
A printed card calling card
A Portion of a pair of spectacles
A single red mitten
I have not included the possessions of the Ripper’s fifth victim, Mary Kelly, because she was killed in her own bed, in her abode, and her possessions were not listed in the same manner in police report.
These lists speak to me of women who had little of material worth in the world. Not one of them had any money. During the period in which they lived unemployment and severe poverty were widespread in Great Britain. Regardless of whether the Ripper’s victims had few opportunities to live better lives or were responsible in large part for their predicaments, their legacy is pitiful and poignant. Items such as the brown stays, the comb, and the packet of Cachous suggest vanity or at least the need to maintain appearances. The tin of sugar, the one of tea, and the black clay pipes speak of a desire for creature comforts. The bloodstained rags, the pieces of soap, tooth combs (toothbrushes) were aids to bodily functions. Those things that are part of a incomplete set, such as the single mitten, and the broken items, like the partial pair of spectacles and the piece of a comb, suggest that nothing could be wasted, that everything, even if seriously flawed and deficient was irreplaceable.
With little imagination, the lists speak of skills, preparedness, resourcefulness and even aspirations on the part of these women. The list of Catherine Eddowe’s garments and possessions conjures for me the image of a Victorian-era bag lady, wearing many layers of clothing and carrying too many items in her bags (the many pockets, most of which were probably hidden under her top skirt). The only thing missing is the shopping cart. We have limited information about Eddowes’s life, and most of it leaves out the emotional aspects of her existence. We can assume she didn’t set out to become a bag lady, to be homeless and poor.
What events in her life led to her demise on the streets of London? How much of the way she lived was a result of the choices she made? What was beyond her control? Was she chosen randomly by her killer?
I became fascinated enough with the questions that I explored her life and presented possible answers in my historical fiction novel, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim, published by Lazy Fascist Press. Katherine Eddowes had led a hard life and was very ill at the relatively young age of forty-seven when she died. My impression is that her choices had something to do with her wellbeing, but much of her existence was beyond her control. A life of poverty in London was slowly killing her, and the final blow, London’s murder weapon so to speak, was Jack the Ripper.
I refer to the Ripper as male because of the name Jack, but, of course, we don’t know the gender of the killer. Although we can’t know much about the Whitechapel murderer, we have information that tells us something about him and offers a glimpse of the world in which he and his victims lived. We can know that he was in most ways as vulnerable as his victims in a dangerous, often merciless, world, that he was as aware as they were of the need to maintain appearances and to achieve the highest social position possible in order to ensure survival in a swiftly changing environment, and that he knew that eventually disease and death would claim him without ceremony and he would die alone just like everyone else. No doubt, as he considered these things, he was filled with a pitiable fear much like that experienced by his victims.
Most of us spend much of life feeling confidently alive, solid and incorruptible, not thinking about our demise, our eventual loss of facility and faculty, our loss of awareness and identity and finally the decay of our flesh. Those of us who have not seen war or violent crime and disaster turn to face our demise slowly over many years as it dawns on us that we are just like those who have gone before us, that we all suffer and die. But to face that terror precipitously, to have the process demonstrated within moments, to be the playwright and director of that drama—that is what the Ripper experienced.
Could he identify with the women he’d murdered and feel their suffering? Having revealed to himself by his own cruel acts the heights of fear and pain and the terrifying frailty and ephemeral nature of flesh and awareness, was his dread of a particularly intense nature?
The question I’m left with is, if his freedom or his life were never taken from him in answer to his crimes, did he at least suffer from the revelations of his own mortality?
—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon
Raffle of Alan M. Clark’s OF THIMBLE AND THREAT-inspired Painting
This is the final announcement for the raffle of a free painting by Alan M. Clark to promote Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim, published by Lazy Fascist Press. The image on the left is the painting by Alan M. Clark for the raffle [details below]. The image is inspired by Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim, and is currently unpublished. The painting is acrylic on hardboard with dimensions of 12″x18″.
For those of you who missed the initial announcement, here’s how to enter the raffle:
A. Take a picture of yourself with Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim and post it online (on your blog/website, Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere). Send a link to the photo to lazyfascist@gmail.com.
OR
B. Correctly answer the following trivia questions (send your answers to lazyfascist@gmail.com):
1. What song did Katie sing in the novel during her cousin’s execution?
2. What was given to infants by the childminder, Patricia Ennis, in order to quiet them?
3. What item in the novel is referred to by the slang expression “nose warmer”?
No purchase necessary. If you have any questions about the raffle, please email lazyfascist@gmail.com. The winner will be announced on June 4th, 2012.
Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim is a story about the intense love between a mother and a child, a story of poverty and loss, fierce independence, and unconquerable will. It is the devastating portrayal of a self-perpetuated descent into Hell, a lucid view into the darkest parts of the human heart.
Alan M. Clark is a World Fantasy Award-winning artist. He has illustrated the works of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Jack Ketchum, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Laymon, Brian Lumley, F. Paul Wilson, Brian Keene, William F. Nolan, George Orwell, Poppy Z. Brite, and Christopher Golden.
Now Available: Broken Piano for President by Patrick Wensink
The greatest political allegory since Animal Farm, written by the most fantastic-smelling author of our time.
Ever drank too much and forgot what happened? Don’t be embarrassed. Deshler Dean faces this problem every day of his life.
Dean is far more brilliant and productive when he’s blackout drunk. In the last few months alone, he has invented a hamburger more addictive than crystal meth, scored a six-figure record contract for his terrible art rock band, and started dating a woman he doesn’t even recognize. Worse yet, he has become entangled in the biggest war since the Allies took on Germany.
When rival fast food chains duke it out for control over Dean’s burger-inventing genius, Dean and his band mates plunge into the absurd world of corporate paranoia and greed. As the violence of the burger wars spills out onto the streets, it’s up to them to win over the hearts (and stomachs) of the American people and save the country from the equivalent of a deep-fried nuclear warhead.
With the humor of Christopher Moore and the madcap sprawl of Thomas Pynchon, Broken Piano for President is a comic masterpiece about the fast food industry, booze, and the necessity to choose happiness over work and security.
PRAISE FOR BROKEN PIANO FOR PRESIDENT:
“Like Christopher Moore on very strong acid. In Broken Piano For President, he’s created a Pynchonesque universe…A rollicking good time of a novel.”
-Greg Olear, author of FATHERMUCKER and TOTALLY KILLER
“Not only continues to break fresh Wensinkian ground, he continues to find his voice, a warped voice surely, but one uniquely his own.”
-Ben Tanzer, author of My Father’s House and You Can Make Him Like You
Click here to order Broken Piano for President!
Published by Lazy Fascist Press
Cover design by Matthew Revert
Flash Fiction Friday (Saturday): Architecture
by Andersen Prunty
__________
This story appears in Andersen’s latest book, A Driver’s Guide to Hitting Pedestrians. The collection of short stories and flash fiction includes some of his most spectacular stories. If you’re not already a Prunty fan, you’re going to be once you read this story. Driver’s Guide was actually released today by Lazy Fascist Press and you can get it on amazon just as soon as you finish reading this piece.
_________
The architect climbs to the roof of his tallest building and looks out over the city. He’s built all the buildings here. Some of them are small—two or three floors. Others are towering skyscrapers. Like this one. He has to build just one more. It’ll be his greatest construction and then he’ll retire and allow some other architect to move in and build structures that shame his. But he wants to do something different with this one. All the other ones, while his design, were built by construction companies. He will build the next one himself.
Not knowing where else to begin, he goes to the brick store and buys every brick they have. He has them brought to a vacant lot next to the sea. He places the first brick on his back. And then another one. It quickly becomes painful—his arms do not want to move in that direction—but, after a while, it gets easier. The brick store continues to bring him more bricks as they get them in. He continues stacking them on his back. Yes, this is what he wants to build. The tallest building in the city with himself as the foundation. He wants it to be a movable structure but, already, his legs are starting to buckle with the weight and he doesn’t know if this will be a possibility.
Eventually, the building becomes taller than his arms will reach. Each day he stretches a little farther. And his arms stretch with him. The bricks sink into his back and become part of him. This goes on for years. He becomes bent and twisted, his arms a hundred stories long. He doesn’t know what to do with them when he isn’t using them so he keeps them in the lobby. Contrary to his previous belief, he is still able to move around. While his torso has nearly disappeared under the crush of the bricks, his legs have thickened with rippling muscles as hard as brick themselves. Not bad for an old man, he thinks. With his current construction on his back, he wanders over to his previous skyscraper to see how he’s measuring up. It’s close. Only a few more floors, maybe.
Once finished, he is so thoroughly enmeshed with the skyscraper he can’t distinguish himself from his building. His arms remain absurdly long. He raises them into the air and uses them for antennas. His legs are only about a fourth their original length and, while they can support the structure, it becomes dangerous to move, lest everything topple over.
As with the ending of all his previous constructions, he is eager to climb to the top of it. Since he no longer has any body to climb with, he puts his head in the elevator and shoots it up to the roof. There he watches the evening and the fog roll in, the distant ships out at sea and, in the other direction, the twinkling lights of his previous constructions. He feels the cool damp breeze and hears the distant drone of airplanes transporting their sleeping cargo away to another city, careful to avoid the steady blinking of the architect’s fingertips.
__________
Andersen Prunty is the author of the legendary Bizarro Adventure Romance Classics Zerostrata, Jack and Mr. Grin, The Overwhelming Urge, and My Fake War among others. You can follow him or tell him you like him here: http://www.andersenprunty.com.
The Cult Chooses Kris Saknussemm
Kris Saknussemm‘s story collection Sinister Miniatures has been selected for August’s book club over at Chuck Palahniuk’s online community The Cult.
Click HERE to join the discussion
Sinister Miniatures by Kris Saknussemm available now!
Check out more books from Lazy Fascist Press HERE.
