Fiction

JITTERBUG JOHNNY by Grey Traynor

July 11, 2025
Jitterbug Johnny made it to the back of a dozen trucks and sports utility vehicles in the form of a sticker: “Jitterbug Johnny 1965-2023 – ‘Drive faster than an eagle takes flight!’” Jitterbug said the phrase any chance he could: before and after taking a shot, getting out of cold above-ground pools, even while receiving the toothiest blow job.However, it was a phrase that bothered some folks, sticking in their ear like a stubborn wad of wax. Did eagles take to flight faster than most other birds, they would wonder, shouldn’t this pithy encouragement have more to do with eagles soaring unparalleled heights rather than the immediacy with which they took off?These were understandable questions to ask of a man who also drove a beat-up sedan that couldn’t reach 30 miles per hour without shuddering and shaking across the land it traversed. And shit cars aside, Jitterbug usually preferred to stumble home most nights, the pounding tread of his unsteady boots his only company at 2:30 AM.After his death, choking on a chicken wing alone in his studio apartment with no curtains and a crunchy carpet that would scare even the bravest set of bare feet, the truly unspectacular mystery of Jitterbug Johnny’s motto that, without realizing it, garnered years of mental estate by those who knew him, rose to the surface, ready to be evaluated.Bored by their regular brews, Jitterbug’s bar buddies, a comingling from two different, dimly-lit establishments, met in an agreed upon abandoned parking lot to speculate over who “Jitterbug Johnny” really was and why he proselytized about driving faster than an eagle takes flight.First, the bar buddies decided to bust down Jitterbug’s front door, a place, they all discovered, they had never been invited back to.Their first batch of clues was the adornments: a Mexican flag on one wall, just to the side of the bulby TV, and, on the other, just above the couch, hung a life-sized poster of Howie Mandel wearing a burgundy suit—official 2007 promo for the show Deal or No Deal.The buddies stopped in their tracks, thankful for the safe, cleanish confines of their work boots traversing across the crackling carpet, their feet inside burdened enough, sore, weary, from working their hauls, their men, and their minds throughout the day.With fewer answers and more questions, the breeze drifting over the felled front door, the bar buddies scratched their beards and polished their bald heads shiny, forgetting why they felt so compelled to come, until the leering face of Howie Mandel sparked a discussion, a speculating as to why Johnny, a live alone bachelor, would have a poster of a sharp-dressed man and not a woman with honeyed hair and cleavage like an overstuffed couch?What, ultimately, they didn’t say (“Johnny was a queer!”), out of reverence for the dead, screamed louder than what they did (“Deal or No Deal? Solid network TV!”)Then the baked-in smell of spicy chicken soup, advancing from the hallway, comforted their searching minds and, together, without further debate, they realized Howie Mandel, at heart, was a stand-up comedian, an uncovered masculine aspect to the poster and the dead man who had tacked it up with three rusty nails and one bobby pin (“Certainly a souvenir from one wild nooner,” the bar buddies nudged each another with a grin.)But the Mexican flag they still cut their eyes at, wanting Jitterbug to be a full-blooded American. That is until one of the buddies, either the one a full inch shorter than the rest or the one who was always “pickin’ his seat,” chimed in, “I remember Jitterbug sayin’ his dad was half Mexican? Or…Maybe…It was his grandfather?”Ah yes, the bar buddies nodded. They too had a half-Mexican father and/or grandpa.The buddies split up, combing through the rest of the apartment, hoping to turn over the right “shell” and gain more clarity, more understanding so they could get back to their respective bars and nod with added certainty whenever someone spoke Jitterbug’s name.Drawers opened, cabinets closed, and fingers of the buddies gripped, tousled, and upturned what they could find only to come up short of filling in the deep gaps of just who all these men had considered a friend.Was Jitterbug the broken comb wedged under the one recliner, not the one with the blood stain but the one that smelled like box? Was he the TV, stuck on the weather channel for a different state? And where was the car manuals or bird ephemera for all that talk of driving eagles and flying cars. What was the saying again, the buddies shrugged, the permeating soup smell now a given, no longer a comfort.Tired, the buddies scratched themselves a final time, resting their other available hand on their hip until that posture felt too feminine and they all quickly shoved their hands in their pockets and left.Back at the bar, a new one, but as divey as the ones they had known, floors sticky, the beer cheap and shitty, the buddies sighed collectively.“Remember the time Johnny chipped his tooth?”Yes, they remembered, their smiles flat and foamy. Jitterbug had gotten blackout drunk and smashed his face into the pinball table just because no one had ever thought to give it a try.“Remember the time Johnny shit his pants?”Yes, that too they remembered until a bar buddy said, “Which time?”They all laughed over their beers, promising they’d learn from Jitterbug’s mistake, stopping at three, rushing to the toilet if they felt any “hot chocolate” coming on.Then a lull settled and the bar buddies noticed the football game blaring from the many screens and the two women playing pool who, yes, did have smaller breasts than they would normally hope for but it would be rude not to chat them up after the next round brought out the courage.It was this kind of casual moment of nothing, before that chicken wing refused to budge, when Jitterbug Johnny would’ve appeared, telling them all to drive faster than an eagle takes flight. The bar buddies acknowledged his absence with back slaps and mug raises. They didn’t have more any information about their dead, beloved friend. And they still didn’t understand his confounding catchphrase, but one thing was clear: you can argue with your boss for sticking you with the night shift, you can argue with your girlfriend on how best to shut that newborn up, but you can’t argue with the dead.“Hear, hear!” The bar buddies cried, clinking their glasses, letting the beer spill over the rim as it pooled on the bar top. “To Jitterbug Johnny!”
Read More »

NO NAME AND COOL PARTY by Erin Satterthwaite

July 9, 2025
No NameI looked at her picture to see if she was more attractive than me. I looked up her family’s ancestry to see if they had ever owned slaves. They hadn’t; they were quakers. I looked at the picture of my boyfriend and her when they were in Italy together. I had never even been to Italy and he knew this. Yet there he was four years ago eating gelato with her with his eyes closed and a big grin. He probably wouldn’t take me to Italy because I was dull and uncultured. She worked in academia at a fancy university and had degrees that I would never have. I worked as a preschool teacher and everyone thinks I just finger paint all day. I don’t, and we mostly use colored markers anyways. She was born in a city, a really important one. I was born in a town with no name. It did have a name, but it hardly deserved one. She was not prettier than me, but somehow that made it worse. She must be really special while I am just attractive. Being attractive isn’t special. Anyone would date someone attractive because they assume they're good at sex. I am not good at sex; I just lay there. She probably did really kinky stuff. Like finger stuff. I heard ugly girls do that to compensate. She was not actually ugly, but I needed to say that she was. It was all I had.  Cool Party I had finally been invited to a cool party. I was wearing a long skirt. I couldn’t drink because I was on antibiotics so I ordered an apple juice at the bar because I thought it would at least look like a beer but the bartender handed me a bottle shaped like an apple. I was wearing a long skirt and drinking apple juice and everyone thought I was Mormon and they hated me. Nobody had said they hated me, but I could assume they did because nobody was coming up and talking to me. The most popular person at the party had invited me. He was talking to everyone else and everyone wanted to talk to him. I was alone in a corner watching a Youtube video on mute, which probably wasn't helping. Then someone came up and began talking to me. He asked about the Youtube video. I told him it was two really funny guys that play video games and he asked if I played video games and I said no because I didn’t play video games, I just liked watching other people do it. He excused himself and walked away. I was jealous of him because he could walk away. I finished my apple juice and went home.  
Read More »

THE CONSULTATION by Zac Smith

July 7, 2025
So a vasectomy isn't actually reversible. I like to start off with that. Because for some guys that's all they need to hear before they decide they need some more time to think about it. I know people say that a vasectomy is reversible, but it's not. You really need to be done having kids if you're going to do this, because it's permanent. But I see you already have some kids so I'm less worried about that in this case. You have three, is that right? That's great. Makes sense you'd want a vasectomy. I have three kids, so I get it. I had three and thought woah there, that's enough of that! Time for a vasectomy! And did it myself. I mean, I didn't do it to myself, but you know what I mean. I got the procedure done myself. By my colleague Dr. Askildsen, actually. Although, to be fair, I could've probably done it to myself. I've done, well, yeah, let's see, I've done probably five hundred vasectomies now with no complications. Maybe one or two complications. Or at least no complications from anything I did, uh, well, not wrong, but, you know, most complications are due to the patient not resting properly or tending to the incision site correctly. Which is partly why we like to have consultations like this first and then schedule the vasectomy procedure itself for a later date – and we'll get into this more later – because there are some things that we like to go over before the actual procedure. But like I said I've had a pretty excellent record. I'm pretty good at vasectomies, basically. I feel confident that I could have done my own procedure, actually, if you want the truth. It's all I do at the clinic, really. And a successfully completed vasectomy has a ninety-nine point nine five percent chance efficacy rate at preventing pregnancy. That's effectively one hundred percent. I could probably do the vasectomy procedure blindfolded at this point, too, to be honest. And we'll get into this more later, but it only takes about an hour, usually less, from start to finish. So some days I do five or six vasectomies in a row, like that's just my whole day, maybe one consult, like this, in the morning, you know, and then I pick up the bulk of the procedures for Dr. Askildsen, usually. Some days it's just back to back procedures and I clock out. There isn't really a clock to punch, but you know what I mean, you know, but it is nice, like, if my schedule's empty after that I can just go home. But most days, yeah, it's like, one or two consultations, a couple vasectomies, lunch, then maybe three or four more vasectomies, then some paperwork. And it's all very smooth and predictable because I am very experienced. You've picked a good clinic to come to, basically, if you'd let me brag a bit, because I am proud of the work we do here. So I appreciate you coming in. Like I said, I could have done my own procedure, blindfolded, I imagine, too, with no complications. But the main goal of this consultation is to get you up to speed on what to expect. So, in a bit, with your permission – and we'll get into this more later – I'd like to take a look and have a feel to make sure everything's alright down there, and that you're aware of, sort of, like, what to expect, in terms of how the procedure goes and, like I said, like which parts of your body I may need to manually manipulate, what to expect in terms of pressure or discomfort, that kind of thing. It's all very straightforward, but I do find that it helps to walk through how it all works prior to the actual procedure. And I should say here that I wouldn't actually do it blindfolded, to you, or to anyone, or even myself, although I definitely could, I'm pretty sure. But legally speaking I probably shouldn't. Definitely couldn't do that. But I could easily do it.  Blindfolded, I mean. Or to myself. Both, really. I basically do it blind now, in a way. I mean, we'll get into this more later, but the whole procedure pretty much goes by feel. I'll take a look I guess to make sure there's nothing strange going on down there, you know, that might lead to a complication, like I said, and then I need to deliver the local anaesthetic, but then from there it's pretty much by feel. And I guess the first part is more like a formality, really, to make sure there isn't anything that could lead to an infection of the incision site, like I mentioned. That's generally what we mean by a complication: it's generally something that would pose a risk of infection or impede recovery which would make me not want to proceed. But you don't see that much out here in Weston. You get that more over in Wellsborough, in my experience. I imagine you're familiar with Wellsborough, with it being so close to Weston. Cute little town. But you get some people who really don't know how to take care of themselves. Which, and we'll get into this more later, is what a visual and physical inspection during a consultation helps identify. And usually I don't have to deal with this type of patient much here in Weston, but there's still a lot of ignorance, or discomfort, maybe, when it comes to the body, especially this region of the body, in general, like, for anyone, you know, anywhere in the country. You don't go out to a restaurant and ask people how their genitals are, you know? Which, again, can complicate the procedure. But I remember being surprised about what kind of problems people are just dealing with without realizing it, especially in Wellsborough. At my first clinic we saw some really interesting guys come in, is all I'll say, some guys who seemed to suffer this kind of terror of their own body, I guess is a good way to put it. Well, maybe that's not how others would put it, but it makes sense to me to put it that way. I don't want to go into this too much, but sometimes you can really get a sense of it when they come in. You start talking about things – and we'll get into this more later– you know, like scrotum and perineum, and they sort of recoil. I'd talk about semen, you know, and, really, yeah, the best I can describe it, really, is just terror. A deep fear. Very deep. So I call it terror. You would think it'd be more of like a disgust, or revulsion, maybe, or some kind of general discomfort, you know, because of the association with urine or excrement, but no, it's really just a sort of, well, shocked, fearful. I call it terror, really, that's the best way I can describe it. You start a consultation and then you really see it: terror. The physical nature of fear, really, of terror. You know, you can see it. They get a little pale, maybe they sweat a bit. It's very physical, really a drastic change, and very immediate. Some guys might shiver, even, I remember. But it's really in the eyes. Some guys, you know, most of these guys, their eyes start to get wide, and their pupils dilate. And they sort of, well, cower, I guess, too, in the chair, and I'm not doing anything else than what we're doing here, you and me, you know, just calmly talking about the procedure, talking about what I'll need to manipulate, how a vasectomy actually works, physically, you know, biologically. At the time, when it was happening, I would think they were just afraid of the procedure because they didn't understand it, you know, and this was back when we didn't have these consultations as much. They'd come for the procedure and immediately they start cowering on the table, and I assumed they were thinking it was more like castration, or something, you know, which I get, because there's a lot of ignorance out there, and I get how that would maybe scare you a bit. I mean, it doesn't make sense at all, really, if you think about it, but I don't know, I was trying to figure it out. And I wanted to see how to make things easier for these guys. So then I started, you know, first thing in the consultation, which has a few parts to it – and we'll get into this more later – I would start with just very simply saying Hello, a vasectomy is very simple, and I'm not gonna remove a single part of your body, I'm just making a small snip in a little tube and you won't even notice a difference in three days' time. But I was foolish, in retrospect, thinking that way. It didn't make a difference. They still just cowered in the chair, eyes wide, pupils dilated, little blobs of sweat peeking out from under their hair. Terror. But I was stubborn, you know, and I wanted to be the best, one of the best, if possible, is what I wanted at the time, which I kind of am now, to be honest – so know you're in good hands here, expert hands – and so I kept trying to improve, I wanted to figure out how to help them, and I thought, okay, let's have consultations, and during the consultation, right at the start of it, even, I can reassure them. I thought I just had to be more clear. Concise. I figured I could work out a perfect introduction that would just prevent it right off the bat, you know: the terror. So, like, I tried saying, very first thing: Your penis won't be touched. Your testicles won't be touched. I mean, okay, maybe I wouldn't say it exactly that way, because I do have to manually manipulate the testicles, and sometimes the penis, if it's large enough to get in the way, which can make the procedure much more difficult, as you can imagine – and we'll get into this more later – but I intended that line to just mean I'm not going to injure you, you know, I'm not going to cut off your penis. That's very straightforward but I tried out all kinds of phrasing. I even tried just saying that: I'm not going to cut off your penis. And I even pulled out a diagram, or I'd have it propped right up here when they came in, before they even came in, actually, and I'd point, you know, first thing: None of this stuff is going anywhere. I promise. And I'd point to the penis and the testicles. But no, that wasn't it, that wasn't the problem at all, of course. I know that now. I was wrong. I thought maybe it was just, I don't know how to say it, the association of the whole thing. These guys had a deep fear of the urology clinic, or what the word implied, I guess, I thought: urine, penis, testicles, semen. They had a fear of those things. Or more like a fear of the parts of the body, of what the body does or can do. They had a fear of these things, but, well, I realized it was even simpler than that: the body. These guys were coming in terrified of their own bodies. That's what it was. The body. The self, the physical self. They were being confronted with their own bodies, the reality of their beings, I guess, all the wires and bolts and tubes and screws. Not literally, I mean, not literal wires and screws – and we'll get into this more later – but the whole physicality of it made them uneasy. Now, again, uneasy isn't the right word, it's beyond that, deeper than that. Like I said, it's terror. I was telling them that they had a thing called a penis, a thing called a scrotum, but then that was it, that was all it took, because that opens it all up. Sitting here and saying the word penis was like leading them to Medusa and telling them to look right in her eyes. Everything else was just the predictable aftermath of that little glance, that little glance at the truth, I thought, you know, after really thinking about it. After really trying to understand and work through it, these consultations I'd have and what happened in them, what went wrong, working through when they really began to cower, all that, and asking myself What set them off? Man, I'd ask myself this and think on it for a long time after, I'd think about it at home, you know, or in the car, and I'd come back the next day with a new theory, some new idea of what was doing it, what was igniting it, this real terror. I mean, I should clarify, they weren't running out of the office screaming. Nothing like that. But I know that look. I could see it. The terror. I could see it in their eyes, in their whole being, really, this deep dread opening up in them and draining them, right in front of me, sitting where you're sitting now, basically, and they would sort of gasp for air a little bit, gasping like a fish or something, you know? Have you ever been fishing? Then, right, you know what I'm talking about, how a fish will sort of gasp, sort of open and close its mouth, almost like a reflex. Well I guess it is a reflex, I don't know. You assume they're gasping for air, but fish have gills, right? That doesn't make sense, really, no, so it's something else. I never thought of it that way before, but that's what it is: terror. These men were terrified, just like the fish is terrified. The fish isn't trying to breathe the air, it's simply reacting, it's just a reflex, an autonomous movement. It's feeling out of control, and it doesn't know what to do, so it does that, for some reason. That's how these guys would look at me as soon as I said the word scrotum or the word ejaculate or something like that, as soon as I pointed at the diagram, as soon as I even gesticulated toward their lap, sometimes, even. Little fish mouths opening and closing. Gasping. And I realized that ultimately it was just whatever finally caused them to really understand that: Yes, yes, I have a body, and my body has genitals, and my genitals do things, they make things, they shoot things out, sometimes, even, and I have to sit with that understanding, I have to really confront it, really accept it, and I'm not prepared, I can't do it. Or maybe it's just the body, that simple reminder: I have a body, that's it, isn't it, I'm not just a floating, like, ghost, I guess, but I'm real, I'm a body, or I'm in a body, and my body functions, or, well, it functions for now, and maybe it won't always do that, maybe it's already falling apart, and, you know, someday that will end, and so will I. And that's terrifying. I can understand that, now. I didn't understand that early on, doing these consultations. But I understand it now. And not everyone reacts that way, obviously. Maybe it's just something about Wellsborough, even. I don't know. I thought I could just walk in and be frank, talk to an adult like another adult. And it didn't work. I didn't understand it then. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, you know, and I'd daydream, even, about, like, walking in and saying Hi there, I'm Dr. Razzle, and hey, listen, one: you have a penis, and two: you're gonna die. And I have a penis and I'm going to die. And there's nothing either of us can do about that. And everyone with a penis is gonna die, and everyone without a penis is gonna die, because we're all just bodies, we're just blood and guts and we have like a hundred years max and then it's over forever and we need to be adults about this because I'm here to help you get a vasectomy. So I'm gonna step out and do some paperwork, and you can think about that for a minute, and when you're ready, I'll come back in and we'll talk about the procedure and what to expect. Isn't that ridiculous? I never did that, obviously. And maybe it wouldn't have helped anyone. Or maybe it would have. I don't know. But I was feeling so desperate, I remember, that it felt good to imagine it, to just think of these extremes, to work through some really out there idea and picture it, you know, close my eyes and feel it, live in that moment, and I think it helped me, too. It really helped me think it through and really understand it. I stopped myself once and thought, Alright, why am I imagining this? What am I trying to solve, really? It was the terror. It was always the terror, in the end, and that wasn't about me. It wasn't about the procedure. It wasn't even about the guy's perineum or prostate or vas deferens. It wasn't about pee or poop or jizz or blood or anything else so common and trivial as that. But it was about something even more simple, even more central to everything, the most common thing, the most simple thing, I guess, really. It was about death. They were afraid of death. That's what terror is. It's not just any fear, no, it's the fear of death. And I thought about that and thought about that, you know, sometimes angrily, sometimes frustrated, I guess, and sometimes desperate, just so over it, just so willing to do anything to help these guys move past it, and sometimes it made me sad, too, of course, thinking about all these guys coming in and of all things I have to be the guy who reminds them of their own death. All these guys, you know, who never had to confront it, never gave a thought to their own end, it seemed like, until of all things they step into my urology clinic office and sit on my chair and of all the things in the world it was me saying the word scrotum and bam! There it is: You're gonna die! And It wrecked me, in a way, for a long time. I felt stuck. It felt impossible to move beyond that. But eventually, you know, thankfully, I realized there was nothing I could do. Nothing! It's nothing anyone can do, really. It's something that not even religion can do, if you think about it, and, hey, that's religion's whole thing, isn't it? To prepare you for death? To explain death? To help you come to terms with death? I don't actually know, but that's how I think of it, anyway. And yet, I thought, you know, everyone is still afraid of dying, even religious people. Despite having religion, they're still afraid. The most ardent believer, convinced, fully sold on life after death in Heaven, even, still at the end: afraid. And if it really is everyone, then maybe the Pope is afraid of death, even. Maybe all the Popes were afraid of death, still, right at the end. And it's so obvious, right? Of course they would be afraid of dying. How could they not be afraid? But of all people, you would think, you know, maybe the Pope could accept his own demise, I mean. But I believe it, I truly believe it, that even the Pope fears death. He has to. And I bet if the Pope were from Wellsborough, and he came into my old clinic, he'd be the same as anyone else. He'd be terrified. He'd feel it. He'd feel the terror. That's death. That's what death does. Even Jesus was afraid. I remember that, from church, I don't know if you're religious, but I remember that. Jesus on the cross: Why have you forsaken me? He felt it. Jesus felt the terror. The son of God, or God himself, right? God incarnate, God walking on the Earth, and it's still the same. The terror was the same. It's all the same. And I thought about that and I realized I had no other option. I had to give it up. I had to accept it. I mean, it was death. Everyone has to accept it. Not just their own death, I realized, but everything else that death does. Death was doing this to my clinic. I couldn't help these guys. I mean, I could help them stop having kids, but that was about it. If even Jesus Christ himself, God on Earth, were afraid of dying on the fucking cross then I certainly have no business making anyone feel better about dying. So I gave up. But, like I said, it's not really an issue around here in Weston. And now I can just focus on just using the consultation to say okay, we can do the procedure, and we'll get into this more later, but here's what it's gonna involve: there's a visual inspection, some manual manipulation, some lidocaine to numb the area, a small incision, a snip, and some minimal stitches. But again, if I were doing it blindfolded, I could pretty confidently skip the visual inspection, especially if I were doing it to myself, obviously. So that would just leave the anaesthetic, which, again, is local, it's like, you know, procaine, like at the dentist, and you just need to inject it into the scrotum without penetrating the testicle. Which, I mean, that's pretty straightforward. So the blindfold wouldn't really impact anything. And, thinking about it now, I've found better results standing next to the patient, you know, facing the same direction, like this, which for some people makes things easier, or at least feel less invasive, less clinical, so, yeah, no, I could do it. I could do it easily. Send me back five years and hand me a blindfold and I'd do it, probably in under twenty minutes. Bam! Anyway, why don't you hop off the table here and, if you feel comfortable, pull down your bottoms. I'll close the blinds. Thank you. Ah, okay. This one'll be easy.
Read More »

THE GROTTO by Jim Ruland

July 4, 2025

I

Seamus receives a key

“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.  

II

Seamus contemplates a mural

It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.  

III

Seamus makes a discovery

Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?  

IV

Seamus solves a mystery

The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam  across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.  

V

Seamus impersonates a childhood hero

The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?  

Interlude

“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key. 

VI

Seamus receives an unexpected invitation

A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.  

VII

Success at last

A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.  

VIII

Trouble in the grotto

After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off.
Read More »

THE LAST GREAT NORTH AMERICAN HOCKEY TEAM by Eric Subpar

July 2, 2025
I awake on a Saturday. It is my birthday. All my friends are here. My wife is telling me about the preseason. Kevin is still coming. Don't blow out the candles until Kevin arrives. I won't, dear. Her father tells me about the Los Angeles Kings. I unwrap a Los Angeles Kings jersey. I’m a fan of the L.A Kings. My son asks if we can throw the puck around a bit outside after the party. That'd be great, son. My wife's father asks me about the roster. Think we got a shot this year? That rookie's a phenom. Sure as hell is. The candles burn, and Kevin arrives. Hello. My wife embraces Kevin. My son embraces Kevin. I embrace Kevin. I am jealous of Kevin. His ability to enter a room. He tells me to make a wish and I make a wish and I blow out the candles. Tell us what you wished for, Dad! Can't or it won't come true. We all laugh. I bet you wished for something like this. Kevin hands me a present. No bigger than my hand. I open the present. Season tickets for the Los Angeles Kings. For you and the whole family, Kevin says. My wish has come true. I wake up on the first day of the season. Time for the hockey game. I pull on my gift jersey. I help my son into his jersey. My wife puts on a Kings sweater. It fits tightly. I drive to the hockey game. My son sings the Canadian National Anthem. Do you think the Kings got a shot this year? We got a rookie. Do you think the other teams think their rookie is a real phenom? I try not to think about it. But it's our rookie who is a real phenom. First class potential, right? Right, son. I feel bad for the other teams. Me too.Great seats. Kevin spared no expense. He's quite a friend, isn't he? The best. Right near the penalty box. But our guys won't spend too much time there. Not our guys. During the American anthem, the players of the Los Angeles Kings and the players of the away team stand at attention. This is the first time I lay eyes on the rookie. His hair is styled in a rolling black mullet. He has a thick beard. His smile lights up a room. He has bright green tape on his stick. Hank Bang. Number 11. That's the rookie. I see someone in the crowd holding up a sign, Will You Marry Me, Hank?! A bit premature, I think. But I don't tell anyone. The puck is dropped. The Los Angeles Kings are dressed in all black uniforms. The other team in white. Nobody scores across the first couple of lines, but their play is exhilarating. Hypnotic. As though sourced from a dream. I smile. I bang on the glass with my fists. My son waves an inflatable noise maker and bashes it against another inflatable noise maker. Then Bang's line enters the ice. The rookie on the fourth line. Right Wing. The Center passes the puck along the edge of the ice, but Bang is laid out by the opposing Defense Man. Slow to get up. Following the action, Bang returns a hellish hit upon the opposing Center cutting through the middle. The Defense Man, the Bruiser throws down his gloves. Bang follows suit and the two tussle, before Bang unceremoniously levels his fist across the Bruiser's jaw and sends him to the ice. I howl in delight. Bang is ushered to the penalty box and I've never felt closer to God. After his five penalty minutes are up, the game is all Hank Bang, laying hits and scoring goals. Ending his first NHL game with eight points. A rookie record. The Los Angeles Kings Have Found Their Star all the papers say. On my drive home, I am ecstatic. Excitement pulses through me like electricity. I sense my son loves me more. So does my wife. Revelatory. This is one of the greatest days of my life, and I can't wait for the next game, my fingers fidgeting over the pages of the book I read to my son just before bed. With such a tremendous initial outing, I expect even better from the rookie phenom as his skills grow. The sky is the limit. First Class potential.The days fly by. I again awaken on game day, buzzing with excitement. I put on my jersey. I help my son. My wife wears her sweater. We drive. They wear their black jerseys again. The other team in whites, but different whites, or perhaps the same whites with different accent colors. The puck is dropped and our team scores ten goals to the opposing team’s two and they win another one. Two and Oh. Helluva a start to the season. Exhilarating. Bang is awarded First Star again. He records his first hat trick. And is already appearing in the radio sports chatter for the Calder Trophy, the award awarded to the most phenomenal rookie each year. A bit premature, wouldn't you say? I don't know, my wife answers. Kevin seems to think he has a shot. When did you see Kevin? The day after the last game. After work. I told you. I don't remember, I say. Well, it was a busy week. I carry my son's sleeping body in from the car. Poor guy. Tuckered out.By the end of the first month of the season, Hank Bang is a front runner for the Calder. Bang is also starting Right Wing for the Los Angeles Kings, who have yet to record a loss. My team is like an extension of me. They are winning. I am happy. I couldn't be happier, in fact. When the zamboni runs its circles, I try to think of what could make me happier, and that makes me sad, but then my son arrives with the popcorn and the Los Angeles Kings return to the ice to lay down another thrashing.For weeks, the same. The Los Angeles Kings in their black uniforms. The other team in their uniforms. A walloping ensues. Hank Bang leads the league in minutes played, goals, assists, penalties, plus/minus, hits, penalty minutes, short handed goals, power play goals, hat tricks, fights, and blocked shots. He's a real phenom for sure, dad. Sure is, son. Say where'd your Mom run off to? Don't you remember, Dad? She had her dinner tonight with Kevin. Oh yes. He's a real pal. The best a dad could have, ain't that right? Think they'll win tonight, son? If the Goalie stays true. Can't outscore Bang though. On the car ride home, I listen to sports radio. Hank Bang is a generational talent, they say. A bit premature, I tell my son but my son is asleep. He should win the Calder.  At home, my wife isn’t there. Dinner must have gone late with Kevin. He’s a real talker. And a hell of a listener to boot. I tuck my son into his bed. I ask if he wants me to read to him but he shakes his head no. And before I know it, it is already the NHL playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings exited the regular season without a single loss. Top of their division. Top of the league. Eighty-Two and Oh. Forty-one of those wins, I was present for. Never missed a single home game. The team has broken every statistical team record, while Hank Bang has broken every individual record. Two hundred more goals than the previous record. A plus/minus above 500. I am so proud of him. I wear his jersey to every game. I feel instrumental to his success. My jersey makes a contribution. I turn to ask my son if he thinks they will win the Stanley Cup, but his seat is empty. Oh, that’s correct. He didn't come with me to the game. He must have had a prior engagement. Season tickets are a full-time commitment. Not for the faint of heart. Not everyone can love the Los Angeles Kings like I love the Los Angeles Kings. Not everyone can love Hank Bang.The Los Angeles Kings have won their first playoff game. A real shellackin', sports radio called it. I drive home faster than the speed limit to share with my family. The excitement. But my family is not home. My family hasn't been home since I left for the game. When was the last time they were? They’re missing an all-time season. Sports radio says the playoffs are another beast entirely, but the Los Angeles Kings beat their opponent handedly. Perhaps, this round's opponent just isn’t up to snuff. But there must be a challenging opponent coming up, right? The beast awaits. I begin to wonder what the other playoff rounds look like. I turn on the tv. It is a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning players are dressed all in white. The same uniforms he'd seen them play in, but the Montreal Canadiens, to my shock, are not wearing their usual white uniforms with red and blue flourishes, but instead their entire uniforms are made up of that garish red and blue. It hurts my eyes to see. I watch the game, nonetheless. The Montreal Canadiens’ Center scores a goal. The camera zooms around the arena and settles on a trio of celebrating fans. They look strangely familiar, and as I stare longer at the family, I recognize them to be my son, my wife, and Kevin. All three in garish red Canadiens gear. I am upset. I go to bed. The Los Angeles Kings have made it to the Stanley Cup. I admit I was doubtful, but I knew we had a phenom for a rookie. And Hank Bang is absolutely that. The other team in the Finals are the Montreal Canadiens. I hope to see my family attend the game. But they only attend the home games when their team wears that red and blue. I almost vomit. But the Montreal Canadiens aren't a good team. Same as the other teams. No match for the Los Angeles Kings. No match for Hank Bang. The Los Angeles Kings win the first three games of the series by a wide margin, but the final game of the season is in Montreal. I watch the game on TV. Sure enough, my wife and my son and Kevin are at the game. My son in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My wife in a Montreal Canadiens sweater. Kevin in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My son banging red and blue inflatable noise makers. How can they not see that it is in fact the Los Angeles Kings that is the greatest North American hockey team of all time? How can they smile and laugh rooting for the Montreal Canadiens when the Los Angeles Kings will clearly win the game? A travesty. I feel good watching the Los Angeles Kings demolish the Montreal Canadiens. The Kings, led by Hank Bang slice agile lines across the ice, lay a succession of glass-rattling hits along the boards, and unleash a firestorm of shots upon the opposing goalie. Pure domination. Never even close. And as the players celebrate, I look in the crowd for my wife and my son. I want to see the distraught look on their faces. A look they never would have had if they’d stayed loyal to the Los Angeles Kings. But they aren't present. They must have driven to their home already. A different home than the one I sit in, watching the game on the television. Still, I await their arrival. Perhaps, now that the season is over, I can figure out where it all went wrong. But when I check the mailbox, I find an envelope from Kevin. Inside are tickets to the upcoming season of Los Angeles Kings hockey. Another season. I can't imagine what improvements the rookie phenom will make in his sophomore season. How much better could it get?
Read More »

A LIVING SOMETHING by David Nutt

June 30, 2025
My wife looms at the ledge of the bed. The cold meat of my brain, freezer-burned with slumber, is still in defrost mode. Meanwhile, my wife has already risen, showered, powdered, dressed, breakfasted, read the morning news, cried about the morning news, genuflected and regurgitated, and undressed again. Now she stands naked in the middle of the room, like an unflappable art-class model, waiting for her indolent husband to get up and do something meaningful, and maybe felonious, with his life. I can’t fake it anymore. I get up and go to the closet, where we keep the new suit piled atop the canoe cushions we used at four months, the pillows we passed off as five.I try to chirp the theme music from some public-television programming—the kind of children’s show that takes place in a psychotropically colorful wonderland populated by ragged hand-puppets and a smattering of adult actors, always in supporting roles, who teach sensible, low-impact morality lessons while struggling to beat back the melancholy tide of time. I whistle three trilling notes. My wife interrupts me with a dejected sigh of her own and reaches ceilingward. “Just strap the fucking thing on,” she says.I glide the foam mold over her upper body, negotiating its blunt juts and bony angles, her knuckled spine, the curled shrimp of her ribcage. She resembles a famished insect sliding into its shell. Sure, she could do it herself, but it’s the collaboration she needs. A co-conspirator. Someone to share the secret and blame, and maybe, too, some kind of vestigial love. I double-knot the flesh-colored straps and tuck the washing-instructions tag inside the hollow bowl of her armpit. “How do I look?” she asks, draping a floral-print maternity shroud atop the big belly. The shroud is sized extra-large to create a bit of ambiguity about the duration.“Like six months,” I say, a little too hesitantly.My wife fixes herself in the mirror and turns smoothly, like a showroom automobile on a rotating stage, something too glossy to believe, let alone buy. Her face empties. The lower lip starts to jiggle. “I look like I’m nine months,” she says. “I’m ready to rupture.” Me, I am doing my usual hangdog grovel, the one look in my repertoire I do not have to falsify or embellish. “They only had the one size in stock. You still appear ravishing to poor cretins like me.”She takes my loose face in her hands and lifts it, me, to the light. Semi-sweetly, she says, “Who are you fucking kidding?”“There is literally a shell of ice around my brain. If you give me a few minutes to thaw—”“We are so hopeless,” she says.I lie: “I don’t think that at all.”She releases me but holds to her reflection, glaring hard at the boyish hips, the vitamin-deficient skinny and pall. “You’re going to be late for work.”“I’m not going to work.”“You’re still going to be late,” she says.

***

That first slothful winter: I sat in my car, the heat low, the radio off, depriving myself of the commuter life’s few amenities—in lieu of legitimate penance, I suppose—while the car sat in one undistinguished parking lot after another. I wasn’t looking very diligently. I just stared at the slabs of opaque frost my breath left on the windshield. How spectacular, the things the body did when nobody was paying attention, when nobody cared. Instead of music or talk radio, I listened to the clamor of my shivering organs and somatic departments, tabulating the chattiest offenders. Curdled fluids, tired fibers, damaged loins. All my spooky nooks were gossiping about me. I etched my initials in the frosted glass, X’d them out, then wrote different initials. When I returned home at the end of the day, my wife was on the couch, beta-testing a new breed of pout, one that combined compassionate disappointment with compassionate disgust.“What happened?” she asked. “Huh?”“You’re limping.” “My leg got crampy from sitting all day in the car.”“You were in the car? How can you get one when you’re sitting in the car?”The television was muted, flickering in the dark. I tried to flutter my eyelids to synchronize with the strobe. All any of us want, I guess, is an allegiance with something. Even something inane.“It’s like an arctic expedition out there,” I said, peeling off my itchy mittens and wool scarf and false beard. “They’re bundled up and getting pushed in strollers, or they’re leashed up and dragging their parents across the frozen tundra. I’m not fast enough to chase sled dogs. I can’t loaf around the stores like those do-gooders from the Salvation Army.”Her pout solidified, aged, fossilized. I could count the gloomy pocks and cragged ridges now imprinted across her frozen tundra. So many ancient, incredulous creases.“The office called,” she said.“What did you tell them?”“I told them there were complications. I said the doctor sent us to the hospital, and the hospital was sending us to a specialist.”“That’s smart.”“I feel like we’re the stupidest people alive.”“That, too,” I said.I left my goulashes in a puddle of muck by the door, and I joined my wife on the couch. She was watching her wildlife program again. This episode featured a pride of lions gorging on a buffet of eviscerated zebra carcasses. Black-white-red stripes striated the screen like an experimental test pattern. Our clandestine panics and emergencies seemed to be articulated so purely in the wobble. The most unnerving part was the lack of sound. All that ferocious churning, the lazy and thoughtless carnage, zero repentance, not a single groan or complaint or scream of thanks. I turned to my wife and tried to find her face in the dithering half-light. Her lips were stained brownish, as if she had been feasting on chocolate mousse. Better than the wallpaper. She was balancing a mug of hot cocoa on the stuffed koala that was bulging out of her sweatpants—the second of her stomachs. The hand towels kept slipping out.I laid a hand in her lap.“Please don’t touch me,” she said.I nodded. “Because of the complications. We’re going to see the specialist. We are living the role. Just like those TV lions with their talent agents and SAG cards and publicists.”“You should ice that leg.”“I’ve had enough ice for one day. Can I get you anything?”“Yes,” she said. “Please get off the couch.”  “What else?”“Go out.”“Where?”“Try another parking lot. Maybe an elementary school or playground or pediatrician’s office. If you stay here, we’ll never get pregnant.”

***

Springtime delivers its own silver platter of ripe disappointments. I spend my mornings loitering on a half-acre of grim, sun-scalded blacktop outside one of five Discount Utopias in the tri-county region. I avoid the popular supermarkets because their parking lots are populated by squads of embittered teenagers in dirty khakis and too-large smocks who tend the shopping-cart corrals and pretend to look competent. Discount Utopia has no such extravagance. The clientele is a mix of whiskered retirees living on fixed incomes and young unwed women who cannot possibly bear the thankless burden of motherhood alone. Best of all, management is too miserly to refurbish the outdoor sodium lamps or install security cameras. This rankles me as a citizen and potential customer, but as a needy, skulky father-to-be, I am content to exploit the lapse.I never venture into actual stores. Sadly, I no longer have the disposable income to make superficial purchases that justify my public sharking. My wife and I live off the dividends of her dead parents’ stock portfolio, which is not as robust as it used to be. I can barely afford to put gas in the car that I can barely afford to lease or insure. I’ve been on alleged paternity leave at work so long, I don’t think I have a job anymore. I also don’t think I have the chutzpah to call up my company’s HR hotline and ask if I can have my old position back, or maybe get a different position, or at least pay the office a perfunctory visit and box up my things. It’s midday. I’m hunched at my car’s front left tire, pretending to fix a flat. Occasionally I stand up and sulk around, scratching at the cheap nylon wig that hugs my head. Nobody stops for me. Nobody offers any help. Certainly no Good Samaritans with small, fledgling Samaritans in tow.After a while, I notice a bagboy with an unflattering flattop and a face of pusillanimous acne, lingering at the corner of the building. He’s sneaking a cigarette on his lunch break. I imagine this violates some stodgy corporate protocol, but I am probably not the best person to lodge a complaint with his shift supervisor. Maybe this makes us allies of a sort? Maybe not. The young guy coolly observes my helplessness charade, his lank fame leaned against the brick wall like a bracket too loosely screwed, his sloughy potato face leaking smoke. The kid’s dawdling makes me nervous, and I decide I better flee. I kick the tire a few times. I shrug like it’s no big deal. But I can’t find the keys to my car. I’ve misplaced them. When I glance up again, the kid has flicked the butt and is wiping the ash off his apron as he strolls over. He wants to give me a few helpful pointers.“That tire isn’t flat.”“Thanks,” I say.“Look at that tread. You’ve barely driven on it.” He has a particular gloat in his voice, but there is something uncertain in his expression, a weird fissure or breach. His eyeballs are skittering in their sockets.“Anything else?” I ask.He scans the expanse of the parking lot, formulating some special notion behind those rootless eyes. He sidles up next to me. “I get it,” he whispers. “Pretending your car is busted and you’re stranded here, so some lusty lady will pick you up, take you home, and serve you a dish of piping-hot poon. It’s a good shtick.”He winks at me.“You’ve got the wrong idea,” I say. “I have a wife.”“That’s cool, man. Did you skeez up on her in a parking lot, too?”The kid flashes a nervous smile. He tries another wink.“Stop winking at me,” I say. “You look diseased.”He slouches against the adjacent car, a station wagon with more rust than paint, and fusses his nametag: Karl. Maybe this is just me, but I find something greatly destabilizing about spelling Karl with a K. He lights another cigarette and tries to smoke in stoic solitude. I can tell the hypotheticals are niggling him.“I met my wonderful heterosexual wife,” I explain, “in one of those comedy improv classes that were all the rage a few years ago. The point had been impressed upon me by several colleagues and supervisors that such a class might help me burnish my social skills, which apparently needed a whole lot of burnishing. I had big dreams of being a normal human being.”“Did it help? The class?”“Of course not. But I met a strange, pretty, shy woman who was just as lonely as me, and just as unfunny, and we started a hopeless, laughless life together.”“My folks met in Al-Anon—” “I’m unspooling a narrative here, Karl-with-a-K.” The seventeen-year-old gives a stiff nod, worldly and resolute, as if bluffing knowledge is the same thing as knowledge itself. Maybe that’s true, and this bagboy career is but a springboard to some loftier trade, like bagel slicer or latte flunky. Either way, he hasn’t traded the agony of adolescence for the agony of adulthood just yet, and those sour teen years bring a wisdom and pain of their own. We’d all do well to heed the lessons of the Karl-with-a-Ks of the republic. They will be the ones, after all, who will usher us into assisted living facilities, ladle out our pills and morphine drips, and launch our ghastly ashes into space.“The narrative?” he says, urging me on.I tell him she wanted a child more than anything, probably more than she wanted a husband. But there was a minor problem. I’d already had the procedure done.I point to my groin.“You got circumscribed?”“Yes,” I say, grinning. “Circumscribed. Exactly.”It had been an extreme course of action, perhaps, but I had been a pitiful bachelor for so long. The loneliness may have deranged me. I wasted most of my twenties and early thirties going to craft fairs, yoga retreats, prochoice rallies, anywhere single women might congregate and need companionship. But they must’ve smelled the desperate pheromones wafting off me, and they stayed away. I thought I’d be alone forever and that’s what I deserved. The vasectomy was a form of revenge against myself. Then I met this sweet woman who suffered a crippling sadness and believed that having children would fix the terrible, broken thing inside her. I didn’t want to disappoint this woman. I didn’t want to lose her. I acted as if everything was fine. Maybe a miracle would stumble along and save me. It had happened already, my meeting her. Maybe it could happen again.The kid rubs his haircut, so short and unforgiving, I can tabulate the dents in his scalp. He also has this weird cauliflowered ear that seems a consequence of some barbaric junior varsity sport.“They can reattach them,” he says.“Huh?”I look down. He’s doing the groin point, the unseemliness of which is now apparent to me.“I wasn’t castrated, Karl. I’m not livestock.”He nods evenly. “Science.”“Anyway I already tried that. There was this dodgy surgeon in a strip mall. I should’ve found someone more reputable, someone with steady hands who wasn’t quivering on gin. This hack was all I could afford. He hacked me up, all right. Now the machinery is totally kaput. I didn’t tell my wife about that, either. What could I say?”I catch him side-eyeing the store entrance. His interest is flagging, but I’m not ready to let him leave. This confession stuff is invigorating. Unfortunately, I can’t speak this way to my wife. Her brittle constitution just couldn’t handle it. Ergo, I need to purge every last ounce of honesty from my system before I get anywhere near hearth and home.“It’s strenuous work, pretending you want a child,” I tell him. “You don’t happen to have any younger siblings or cousins, do you?”The kid chuckles and gives his patchy skull one final rub, then traipses off, back to the store, before I can grab him and wrestle him into the trunk.I locate my car keys, glinting, on the ground. Maybe I have a gaping hole in my pocket, the same size and shape, roughly, of the gaping holes in my head and loins and life. Maybe all of me is one large rupture, too tatty and moist to ever be stitched back together. I grab the ring of keys and—I don’t know why—I pitch them overhand, with mild fury, at a nearby car, not realizing the car isn’t empty. Some haggard guy pops up from the backseat, where he was evidently napping. Is he homeless? Jobless? Familyless? Is he an unfortunate guy or a lucky guy? What are the odds he’s a disgraced genital surgeon looking to redeem himself with a little pro-bono work?I shrug and meekly wave. Then I do my funny, joggy walk of shame to fetch the keys from underneath a battered hatchback. I notice this vehicle is also occupied: an old dowager wielding a pair of scissors, clipping coupons from the local pennysaver. I check another car, and another, and another. Dozens of people are sitting in dozens of vehicles, their postures cramped, their faces vacant, everyone waiting for some miracle or accident or statistical fluke to restore order and comprehension to their day. In the last car, I see a glazy, hunched shape in a rainbow-striped shirt and corduroy dungarees, tiny and alone. I scrunch closer. But it isn’t an abandoned child. It’s a CPR doll that some sadistic prankster has buckled into the backseat. The molded-plastic face looks a thousand years old. The decal eyes gaze back at me, an expression of blank, readymade oblivion—and the awful joy of it.I hustle home.

***

My wife is in our bedroom with four years’ worth of funeral wear spread flat on the bed. I’m not sure what she’s trying to tell me, standing there, silently reviewing all that mournful black. I’m in the doorway with a wine-in-a-box that I’ve been ferrying around in the boot of our car for months. Neither my wife nor I drink. Honestly, we don’t do much of anything aside from bicker and grieve the loss of a future that was never ours to claim. Now she’s afraid of leaving the house, and I’m afraid of her fear. I sometimes wonder how it would look on TV, a wife who likes to play dress-up to baffle her biology, confuse her uterus, into fertility, and a husband who lurks the world’s loneliest parking lots, too cowardly to steal children he doesn’t really want. I don’t know if we’re living a harmless sitcom or one of those vulgar true-crime shows.It’s late evening. Despite a fine selection of morbid clothing, my wife is still wearing her cheetah-spotted bathrobe. No preggers suit, no plush belly. She gives me this tolerant yet terrorized look. There’s a great frenzy of eyelash involved. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Nothing.”“Honey? Baby?”“Don’t call me that.”“Tell me,” I say, trying not to stutter the words. “Is this…another miscarriage?”My wife folds her arms and ekes out a low moan. Near the baseboard behind the bed, where she thinks I won’t bother to look, is a strip of pink sirloinish paint that resembles a living organ, a living something, where the wallpaper has been finagled and peeled away. My emaciated wife is secretly stripping the house bare and cramming it down her digestive tract. Then she vomits up the chewed chunks, along with her meals, her sadness, her spite. I have heard that pica is a risk for pregnant women, but their disconsolate impostors, too? Perhaps there is a special degrading flavor in wallpaper that we all long to taste. Here’s another fear: The more our little prenatal ruse gets drawn out, the sicker and weaker my wife grows, so I must prolong the ruse, if only to protect her from reality, making her even sicker, weaker, etc. The destructive urge? I understand that. It’s the cleanup that confounds me. We bury another bedraggled bath towel in the backyard, and we start again.

***

This morning belongs to a field trip of senior citizens who are bused in from a retirement enclave outside of town. I watch their leisurely parade across the blacktop with their twinkling wheelchairs and chrome walkers, a coagulated mudslide of tweed, pilled flannel, garish polyester. By lunchtime, the housewives arrive in their shapeless muumuus and defeated sweatpants, and several hours after that, the five o’clock business crowd, i.e., my people, their neckties loosened, shirttails untucked, trailing their usual draft of smothered despair. In between the clusters, I spot several truant teenagers, a few runty, genderless individuals of ambiguous age. No children, though. The daylong sun is cooking me into my vehicle’s upholstery, and in a fit of heat-infused delirium, I fantasize about grabbing one of the old folks, lashing it like a Douglas fir to my rooftop, and speeding home. Maybe I could fasten a pink bow around the senior’s skull and make it shout “Mommy!” as I drag the poor thing kicking and crying through the front door. Then, I don’t know, maybe I reward it with a lollipop or pension or something?Eventually, I get so restless I climb out. I walk around the car. I walk around the lot. I walk all the way into the store. I know I should sidestep the one-way mirrors and hidden cameras and loss-prevention experts masquerading as incognito shoppers, but I’m just too tired for any more subterfuge. Assorted customers amble in the aisles, aloof and distracted, trying to desperately suppress their pitiable dreams long deferred, the cravings and nostalgias and wry hopes that have both buttressed and doomed their lives, and mine. I don’t encounter any abandoned carts or deserted offspring. These people have watched too many news programs. They’ve seen too many horror movies. Right now, their children are safely at home, locked in the basement with electronic monitors clamped on their ankles, GPS chips imbedded behind their golden smiles.Then, as I’m standing in the party-supply aisle, mired in reverie, I’m nearly T-boned by a woman navigating an overloaded cart. She grumbles an apology, and I step out of the way, whereupon I notice, rather helplessly, the child slotted in the cart’s foldout seat. I feign interest in a rack of crepe streamers and bend around to get a better look. What I see mortifies me. The toddler has a face so mean and crumpled—red meaty cheeks, wet chin jutting—so utterly judgmental, I could almost be staring at a picture of myself.I’m already sorry it is happening: I clench up, set my feet, rear back, and I smack the child so hard it tumbles sideward into a bin of holiday tinsel. The shouting is instantaneous. They tackle me from all sides. Customers, shelf stockers, managers, cashiers, custodians, the lone security guard waddling out of the restroom with his pants half-hitched. The entire world descends upon the party aisle—upon me, screaming, too, at the bottom of the heap—and everyone begins pulling me apart, ligament by ligament, broken piece by broken piece, and I feel like finally, finally I must have done something right.
Read More »

HITTING THE BOARDWALK AND THE BEAT: AN INTERVIEW WITH JESSAMYN VIOLET by Rebecca Gransden

June 27, 2025
These actors are cracked. Out from under techno-creep overseers rise the rejects, the dropouts, and the freaks. A counterculture funhouse, home to strung out hedonists, underground musicians, magic practitioners, and those just looking for the next party. With Venice Peach (Maudlin House, 2025), Jessamyn Violet creates an alternate reality that seems too wild a proposition and yet right around an interdimensional corner. Politics and show business intermingle in new and strange ways, as LA’s free spirits are put to the test. I spoke to Jessamyn about this unruly book. Rebecca Gransden: Step right up here, Pop Stars and Punkers...Welcome to the Strangest Show on Earth.The world of Venice Peach is one of spectacle. It speaks the language of the sideshow, of show business and the circus. What draws you to the carnival?Jessamyn Violet: The two most primal draws to the carnival are A) knowing that you are also a freak and wanting to be with your people, or B) the fascination with freaks because you secretly wish that you were freakier. For me, I was a freak AND a geek from an early age, and that’s why I enjoy living in and writing about the carnival atmosphere. It’s always a little off-kilter; you can feel the dysfunction lurking close beneath the surface. There’s an intoxicating mix of fun, pride, and production magic in the air. When I first moved to Venice, there was the original Freak Show on the boardwalk, which was more of a weird, dusty cabinet of curiosities. They had the two-headed turtles and snakes out front to draw a crowd. Over time, some reality TV money came in and it grew into a full-fledged performance featuring an electric lady, a guy who would put a fish hook through his nose, a bearded lady, and more. Some crazy stuff went down, and it basically disappeared overnight. The boardwalk really hasn’t felt the same since. I ran into the bearded lady at a dive bar in New Orleans this past fall and she still didn’t want to talk about it. RG: When did you first have the idea for the book? How long did it take to write?JV: This book came to me in the early fall of 2016 in a way no other book has. We were facing that election and I could sense what was about to go down. I wanted to go to a place in my head where all the worst had already happened and the characters were on some sort of wayward, weary “uptick” again. It was my version of pressing an ambiguously optimistic fast-forward button, I suppose. I wanted the characters to feel hope, and to feel sexy, and to also be inevitably doomed. The first draft came to me faster than any before, in just over two months. Of course there have been years of revisions since, but the “first take” came out from somewhere pure and almost prewritten. I had the “lightning fingers.” Just like it’s supposed to feel, but hardly ever does. RG: A strange and wonky energy tugged and pushed at all those wandering the Venice Beach boardwalk at dusk. Drifters and vagrants scattered in search of shelter. Robotic security scanned the souvenir shops as the owners shuttered their doors and windows, preparing for a tumultuous night of hot gusts blowing in from Santa Ana. Airborne grit and grime coated the heaping piles of abandoned technology and covered benches and turbo-tennis courts like dirty snow. Outside gyms and the silicone skate bowl grew littered with fallen palm fronds and feathers.Venice Beach is your location. How did you settle upon this place as the main focus of the novel? In what ways does the version of Venice Beach shown in the book differ from the reality?JV: Venice Beach has always had a profound effect on me. I moved clear across the country in 2006 just to take a chance that I’d be able to live here, and I’ve held on tight ever since. It’s a place that helps me make more sense to myself, gives me a deep inner peace…. Basically, a soulmate manifested as a place. And since I couldn’t marry it, I wrote a fictional tribute to it. My only hope was to be able to capture it in a way that conveyed the full range of the colors, art, creativity, characters and electricity in the air, here; that demonstrates the freak haven that it is and will hopefully always be. You can go out wearing absolutely anything and people don’t bat an eye. As someone from a small town, this feels endlessly refreshing. All types of people can be found in Venice Beach, making it arguably the best people watching in the world. The juxtaposition of the boardwalk and Abbot Kinney Blvd, as gritty as it can be glamorous. Venice Peach’s version of Venice is kind of like the real one on hallucinogenics. I wanted the book to be a trippy reflection of it – a place where bizarre people collide and accept each other for their differences, but distorted enough that you could believe you were in an altered version of it. RG: Until recently the idea of a robot president would’ve horrified most voters of whatever political persuasion, now it doesn’t seem an unreasonable option. How do you view the president’s role in the book?JV: The weirdest part about the robot president role, President TBD 3000, is that I wrote it before AI took off… Back in 2016, I’m not even sure I’d heard the initials yet. It was just a funny (in its awfulness) idea to me. I could never have guessed that it would become so much more relevant – and maybe even possible. Hard to comment much more without spoilers, but… I think that President TBD’s role in the book holds up eight years later, miraculously. RG: A juicy peach with dark glasses adorns the front of the book. What’s the story behind the cover?JV: The cover art is the work of Venice muralist/street artist Muckrock. Her artwork is everywhere in Los Angeles, especially Westside since she lives here in Venice. I’ve been a fan of hers as long as I’ve lived here, and Muckrock is someone who shows up for her community in pure punk rock fashion. My band Movie Club collaborated with her in 2019 for a music video, and she was so cool about it that it became my dream to have her design cover art for my Venice-based book. I gave her no real direction, as it should be when you hire a master of their craft. I just said, “Do your version of a Venice peach,” and Muckrock spray-painted this icon onto a wall in an alley here in Venice Beach in about 20 minutes. You have to work fast when you’re a street artist. And as expected, she nailed it. It has since been covered up, sadly, but that’s how it goes in the world of street art. But it will live on forever on the cover.  RG: Magic practice and the act of divination is part of the Venice Peach world. What led you to incorporate the ideas of witchcraft and Tarot into the book?JV: Venice Beach has as much dark magic as light, and is a potent place for witchcraft. Tarot readers are all over the boardwalk. Psychics are posted up on corners with neon signs. Tourists love to get their futures told and palms read here. Sacrificial animals have been found on the beach. A raw food cult used to have a members-only “garage” here, and I got to peep it a few times because I was trying out the raw food diet and hanging out with members with names like Pineapple Head and Vanilla Bean. There are all sorts of interesting stories about the now-abandoned cult/church structure on Rose Avenue that a famous actor from the 90s used to own. Sexy cult stories… No one has bought it since. I’m practically dying to see inside, and have often imagined posing as a buyer just to get the tour. RG: All together, there was an effortlessness to their sound that made Tiny Tin Heart an analog band that the locals had come to know and love like they were the next big thing – though it would be near impossible to reach that kind of status because the live music scene had almost completely died out. Most venues had transformed into sports bars or DJ-fueled nightclubs. And it was known that fame, in general, took longer than ever these days, thanks to the oversaturation of Everything On Earth. Music, and the music industry, plays an important part in the novel. How has your individual experience in that world fed into the book?JV: I’ve been playing and listening to music as often as I write and read books my whole life, and I often feel compelled to write musician characters that include perspectives on the music industry. I try to include a lot of angles – from the characters who do it as a hobby, to those relentlessly driven by burning passion, to the ones primarily in it for fame and fortune. Being on the frontlines of the indie music scene, I often marvel at its advances and setbacks. Too often, things get lost in translation. It’s wild to see how many talented performers struggle and sabotage on platforms because they don’t get the results/response they feel they deserve. Artists can do backflips for attention and only sometimes get it, and even then, the translation to lasting fans, ticket sales, record deals and profit margins is far from guaranteed. Big agencies keep reviving the old days of music – reunion tours, giant nostalgic festival lineups – because back when music was only sold in tangible form, people would listen over and over to the same bands and the songs came to really mean something to them. Nowadays, it is truly difficult to make a lasting and sustainable impact. We see more and more small venues folding, and that is a hard thing to watch. But we must continue on in the face of adversity, and hopefully inspire others to do their part to never let the indie music scene die because community support keeps people putting themselves out there. There’s a rare form of connective energy that is passed through the early stages of growth that is absolutely essential to both the performers and the listeners. And that is the point that Tiny Tin Heart is at in the book, they’re creating that energy through their music, fueled by community support in an illegal underground speakeasy.RG: Did you listen to music while writing the book? Are there bands or artists you would recommend to Venice Peach readers?JV: I almost always listen to music while writing… During this first draft I was obsessed with Frank Ocean’s Blonde, which had just dropped at the time. I had Warpaint’s entire repertoire on heavy rotation. These quirky Canadian bands I’d discovered called The Unicorns and Mother Mother. Tame Impala’s first two albums. “Lo-Fi Hip Hop Beats” Youtube playlist as well. RG: The titular Venice Peach is revealed to be a juice and smoothie place. What is your best ever smoothie?JV: OK, I am lazy when it comes to making smoothies and I reeeeeally don’t enjoy paying $20 for one, so I don’t really drink them often… but if there was a Venice Peach Specialty Smoothie, these would be the ingredients:-Frozen white peaches-Almond milk-Dash of fresh mango-Dash of cinnamon -Coconut cream vegan yogurt-2 scoops protein powder-Bee Pollen-Maca Powder-CBD oilAnd it would inexplicably cost $8 so everyone could afford to GET SOME!RG: Your characters face encounters with robotic police, and many aspects of society function under surveillance. They confront the dilemma of whether to reluctantly kowtow to a technocracy, or consider resistance. What is your own relationship to the technological aspects of contemporary life? What, if anything, do you resist?JV: I’ll try to harness my tendency to rant on this subject… but I resist nearly everything. Even dumb things. I’m contrary by nature, and decidedly a luddite. It’s in my blood and my star chart, I think. I’m a triple Taurus. I’ve never used any form of AI that wasn’t forced on me (Google, Meta, looking at YOU). Updates drive me insane and I delay until forced, and then see red about being forced. I’ll never own a Siri or Alexa and only speak to them if absolutely necessary, and they seem to sense my hatred because they never do what I tell them anyway. I fight to do things the hard way because I am a stubborn bull, and I don’t want to get soft, spoiled and lazy, or forget how to do things myself. RG: Bobobo was deeply devoted to a female duck, but she was unfortunately not faithful to him, as she couldn’t resist having offspring each year. It drove him wild but he stayed by her side (or usually in the murky water underneath her).How do you describe your creation, Bobobo? JV: Hehehe… Bobobo is a paranormal creature who willed himself into existence. For years, I’d been playing around with this idea for a children’s book, “Cassandra and the Canal Creature” – but every time I tried to write it, the canal creature just came across as creepy… Venice Peach was finally (and shockingly) the right home for the concept. It turned out to be the complete opposite of a children’s story, the storyline mounting to perhaps the dirtiest scene I have ever written. There is a certain vibe to the canals that I’ve always felt could produce a uniquely magical being, and the canals are both pretty as well as pretty scummy and dirty, and I guess that had to come through in the being’s personality as well. I could not tell you where the name came from. Absolutely no idea. And for some reason, in my head his voice has always been that of the great narrator of Winnie the Pooh, Jim Cummings. RG: It was probably nothing. But the part had come to mean too much at this point. Gerard’s entire future depended on landing this role. The director, Ty Beck, was one of the last few directors worth working with. The industry had completely gone to shit and most productions out there were written by algorithms starring holograms. Gerard was only interested in doing the real thing, and therefore hadn’t sold his image, voice and likeness profile off yet.Which movie would each of your characters choose as their favorite?JV: Really fun question. They’d have to all be classics… Odessa’s favorite movie would be Natural Born Killers. Stevia’s would be Return to Oz. Auggie’s would be Dude, Where’s My Car? Dr. Phil’s would be the original Blade Runner. Bobobo’s would be E.T. Cassandra would dig Tank Girl. Gerard would love industry meta flicks like Tropic Thunder and Bowfinger. And Matt Bogart would claim a tie between Pulp Fiction and Swingers. RG: Classic band tensions and twisted dynamics plague the novel’s group Tiny Tin Heart. Clashes of personality, ego, and music direction arise, as is a common story. How did you approach this aspect? Any real-life bands or artists an influence?JV: Hah! Too many to count … Yes, a life spent collaborating with and observing all sorts of musicians has influenced the way I portray the band members. All writing is a collage, I think, of life experience, your hopes/fears, and what the plotline benefits from. But as far as the matter of whether there are any direct references here, there are not. Each of the members of Tiny Tin Heart is entirely unique, and also a mass conglomeration of musicians who came before them. RG: Venice Peach introduces the concept of superdoom. How does superdoom differ from ordinary doom?JV: I had a lot of fun with the concept of “superdoom on the supermoon…” Feels very SoCal. It’s intended to be silly, but also feels very real as far as the hyperspeed humanity has been entering of late. As a millennial, it has truly been wild to watch the acceleration within the span of my own lifetime. Ordinary doom was for people to speculate about humanity in the 1900s. The 2000s increasingly feel like a superdoomed time, a period in which having optimism for the future gets more and more hard. I look back on my college years and think about how differently I got to envision the future than the kids in college right now, and that feels both sad and special, you know? The world was still holding itself together a little more tightly back in the early 2000s. Then I graduated and went into the previously thriving magazine industry, and things took a downward turn. So I parlayed into film and TV production, which is also somehow in an insanely tumultuous state right now. And that’s just my own experience. So many people in so many industries have been doing the same shitshow shuffle at lightspeed lately. And I feel for the newer generations who may not get to have rosy optimism at any point in their youth. To me, that is the real definition of what superdoom is. RG: Auggie was pissed off. During the Venice Pier portion of their afternoon walk, Cackles the cursed seagull had latched onto Auggie and Rusty. It was understood through local folklore that whomever the gull latched on to would fall victim to hard times. The ugly bird trumpeted his terrible caws of doom while hovering over him and his poor dog, thoroughly creeping them both out. Fishermen pointed and clucked at them sympathetically while the gull’s grim shrieking painted everything with a dark and ominous foreboding.Rusty the Dog, Fonsie the Snake, Cackles the cursed seagull, Pansy the cat: Venice Peach is a damned menagerie. Your animal creations are gifted with some of the most memorable scenes in the book. How do you view the animal presence in Venice Peach?JV: It is an odd and funny animal cast in Venice Peach! I’ve always been obsessed with animals. When I was little, I used to want to be a zookeeper. Animals hold so much charm in their personalities and presence, and I just wanted to honor their contribution to the overall Venice vibe. I have always been a firm believer that animals make everything better and think that certainly extends to fiction as well. Another thing about animals is that they’re hypersensitive, but also immune to our politics and social bullshit, so they are the most clear and unbiased readers of the room, and it’s always so fun to play with that. RG: Venice Peach presents a warped, funhouse mirrored version of contemporary politics and social trends. What roles do satire and absurdity take in your work?JV: A big one, I’d say. I grew up enamored with Mark Vonnegut and Tom Robbins, and their styles imprinted deeply into me. In my opinion, there’s no better way to make sociopolitical commentary than through satirical fiction. It’s a language all of its own, a timeless way to present the times. It’s kind of like drawing a caricature of society, enlarging certain aspects and adding weird flourishes. And as for the absurd – everything is already so absurd these days, it only seemed natural to piggyback off of that. For me, there is terrific tension when you realize you are suddenly immersed in a world where anything can – and probably will – happen. RG: Two months later, his wife had announced that she was having an affair with his best friend and leaving him. That was when Philip officially gave up on partaking in emotions altogether. He surrendered to the betraying nature of human beings, the crushingly individualistic, overwhelmingly capitalist society he lived in, and the numbness that the societal structure demanded in order to survive. He wanted nothing more to do with anything even slightly related to caring. Underlying the wildness of the book is a sense of aching dissatisfaction, and your characters express mixed feelings on the world they inhabit. They are reared on devices, in therapy, struggling to relate to others on even a basic level, and hungering for intellectual stimulation. What do you view as the dark heart of the book?JV: Ah, poor Philip… The psychotherapist who is tragically unable to fix himself. He does, however, make some attempt to break through his own walls eventually… I suppose the dark heart of the book is that humanity is pretty screwed, and things will surely get even more grim, but the truth is that we’ve never really figured it out, have we? No one can point to a time in which things were “sympatico” here on Earth. Even the dinosaurs seem to have done something fatally wrong, hah. So why not break through our innate discomfort and inherited despair to make our best, most honest and brave grab at joy that we can? We shouldn’t let anyone or anything repress our ability to do what we love and be who we truly are. It’s just like the Beastie Boys said, you have to fight for your right to party, you have to fight for your right to get a good vibe going and protect that flame. RG: Ever since the Hollywood zombies had almost captured and converted Gerard into their gruesome and feral kind, he’d been on a junk food sex spree to end all junk food sex sprees. He’d gotten off with only a fractured ankle, and the titanium air-cast he wore to heal triple-time turned out to only help his game. Sympathy was apparently a major turn-on for some women. And he had major survival horniness. It all combined into one perfect sex storm and suddenly there weren’t enough women in the world to satisfy him.Freaky characters mean freaky sex, and your characters approach this with gusto. How did you approach this aspect? Are there any scenes that didn’t make it into the book?JV: Hey, now… Sounds like you want a Venice Peach “Deleted XXX Scenes” black-market chapbook, here. I guess I should get on that in case what’s already in the book isn’t spicy enough for *ahem* some people… No seriously, the coolest thing about publishing with an indie press is that 9 times out of 10, they are down to keep all the good parts. I’ve gotten lucky twice in that department. I’m someone who is always disappointed by authors who skip forward to the next morning right as a scene is getting good, so I like to “put out” in the literary sense. It’s all in there, baby. As for how I approached writing the dirty scenes, it’s hard to say. The sex lives of these characters feels like just another facet of their personalities that’s already there and I’m just pulling up the curtain. RG: Do you have an ideal reader in mind when writing?JV: I think most indie fiction writers are writing for their own amusement, then crossing their fingers and praying that what they enjoy is somewhat marketable and relatable to others. When shopping this book around, one small press told me it was “more on the commercial side” than what they publish. It weirdly gave me hope, even though it was still a rejection. Originally, I wrote this to compete with Netflix and HBO shows on an entertainment and pacing level, because let’s face it, they are the most popular storytelling platforms out there. It’s a good thing writers can easily compete with their budgets, as our imaginations can do anything for free. RG: When you reflect on the writing of the book, what comes to mind? Are there associations of place, people or time?JV: Absolutely. As mentioned, the first draft was born in the fall of 2016. I had shattered my leg skateboarding that previous spring and was finally somewhat healed, so there was a strong feeling of gratitude to be in motion, to have made it through that hard time. I was in love with the show Bojack Horseman, and had never before wished I had been in a writing room to that extent. I was working in production, and some of the people and experiences were inspirational to the book to some degree, so I will always remember what I was working on at the time. RG: Venice Peach is released by Maudlin House. What attracted you to work with them and how have you found the process?JV: I first came upon Maudlin House and publisher Mallory Smart through her very cool calling card; her podcast called Textual Healing. It’s all about the music we listen to while writing, and I was delighted when she agreed to have me on the show. It was spring of 2023 at the time, and I was gearing up for the release of my first novel, Secret Rules to Being a Rockstar, which is about dysfunctional Hollywood musicians in the 90s. It was a great chat, and Mallory was truly supportive of my mission. It left me with a feeling we should work together more. I was excited to blurb her music-centric book I Keep My Visions to Myself last year. Then we got together with two other authors who write about musicians, Claire Hopple and Kirsti MacKenzie, and recorded a group episode of the podcast Rock is Lit thanks to the amazing host Christy Alexander Hallberg. It only seemed like a natural fit, by this point, that my weird book with three musical main characters would find its rightful home at Maudlin House, a music-loving indie press with the motto “Keep Maudlin Weird.” Mallory and her partner (and husband) Bulent have been very open to my ideas on the cover design as well as interior edits. Publishing is such a grueling industry, so it feels like such a gift when you find people who are chill to work with, responsive, and down to go the distance to see your dream through. RG: Fuck the future. Join the freak circus.What’s next for you? JV: I’m actually going to be living in the freak circus all summer… I’m also a drummer and my band Movie Club is going on a “Psychedelic Circus” tour to celebrate the book release. We have dates in Venice (Townhouse, 6/10), San Francisco (Make-Out Room, 6/11), Eugene (Sam Bond’s Garage, 6/12), Portland (No Fun Bar, 6/13), Seattle (Baba Yaga, 6/14), Olympia (The Crypt, 6/15), Bend (Silver Moon, 6/17), Santa Cruz (Sub Rosa, 6/18), and Culver City (Village Well, 7/12). We're also producing a Maudlin House x Movie Club Musical Reading for the 40th anniversary of Printers Row in Chicago at Gallery Cabaret on Saturday, Sept. 6th, 2025. The event will feature over a dozen rockstar readers performing spoken word over Movie Club's live instrumental rock n' roll. The goal behind these “Psychedelic Circus” events we’ve been putting on in Los Angeles (six pretty epic ones so far) is to incorporate a sense of broader community in live events, joining talents that usually get separated in one rocking variety show of sorts. Why shouldn’t writers get to read to live rock music? Or theremin players get to sit in for full band anthems alongside burlesque dancers? Each date will feature local special guest performances, plus I will be doing short readings from Venice Peach over ambient guitar. I hope to meet many fellow freaks fighting the future out on the road. Godspeed. 
Read More »

WE FOUND AN ENORMOUS HOLE by Quinn Adikes

June 26, 2025
We happened upon the enormous hole by chance. It was a tremendous hole. The largest I have ever found. Perhaps twenty feet in diameter and located in some woods along the Southern State Parkway. The walls of the hole were perfectly flat and thus of unnatural design, although I cannot say who would have dug such a thing. I could not see to the bottom. I threw a rock in and listened to it bounce against the walls, and listened to the sound grow fainter and fainter and eventually vanish altogether. Of course I urinated in the hole. My need to urinate is why I happened upon the hole in the first place. I found the lack of report unsatisfying.Bladder cleared, I trudged back through the tall grass. Stewart waited in my car’s passenger seat. I give Stewart too much credit: it was not We who found the hole. The hole finding was done by Me and Me alone. If Stewart says otherwise, know that he is a liar and that his generation is brain damaged from lead poisoning. I told Stewart through the window to hold on a bit longer, I needed to make a call. He did not look up from his phone, but gave an okay sign with his thumb and index finger. P. answered. She said, Yes? I said, The hole you are looking for is eastbound off of exit 42. Beyond the grass. Watch for the swaying pine. Then I hung up. Being cryptic was a running joke between P. and I.I returned to the car and told Stewart of the enormous hole. Obviously he wanted to see for himself. I assumed this would be a quick thing, so I trudged again with Stewart in tow. The swaying pine which would possibly not be swaying by the time P. arrived swayed over us. Presently, this pine swayed quite a bit. More so than the other pines, at least. Its plumage was robust. Stewart and I stood at the edge of the enormous hole and gandered.“It makes me wonder,” Stewart said. “This life is full of beauty and mystery and there are so many things that we’ll never find.”Waxing poetic again. There was little in the way of mystery in regards to this hole and even less in the way of beauty. I said, “Howsabout we go back to the car and get out of here. I would like to eat. I am withering away.”“But who would dig this thing?” he asked. “I do not know, Stewart.”“I can’t see the bottom at all.” He went down to his stomach and peered over the edge of the hole with his phone flashlight. “Me either, Stewart.”“I’d like to climb down there and have a look.”“I’d like to leave, Stewart.”“Somebody dug this hole for a reason and I, for one, am itching to discover that reason.”I would never have told Stewart this, but I wished to be long gone before P’s arrival. P. and I have a speckled past and I still to this day find it best to avoid her in person at all cost. Stewart in the mix compounds things. Based on where P. lived and her style of driving, I estimated her arrival to land within the next twenty minutes.“I have three hundred and fifty two meters of climbing rope in my backpack,” Stewart continued. “This pine tree is more than thick enough to support me. Although I don’t like how it’s rocking.”Before I could respond, Stewart began tying the rope to the pine. The pine swayed in a way that could possibly have been interpreted as annoyance, if pines got annoyed. “What is your plan for getting back up?” I asked. The sides of the hole were near perfect in terms of smoothness: this hole-digging was the work of a professional. “I reach the bottom, you untie the tree, you retie me to the car hitch, you pull me out. I thought you were the college boy.”I often grow tired of Stewart, but an unfortunate fact is that we will be together until the bitter end. And I will admit a fantasy of this bitter end glided across my mind as Stewart donned his climbing harness, as he slid the rope through the appropriate hooks and carabiners, as he pulled the rope taught and leaned back against the edge of the hole, and as he hopped back and descended into the cave. Yes, the wicked fantasy glided in a most elegant way as I listened to his feet slap the wall. But despite the occasional fantasy of Stewart’s death, I still love the guy. Those things are not mutually exclusive. I would never, say, loosen the rope from the swaying pine and listen to Stewart plummet to his doom. No, I stood on the edge of the cave and watched him hop his way down. I yelled, “How’s it looking down there, buddy?” My voice echoed and his voice echoed back, “Like a cold, dark hole.”“It is enormous, is it not?”He said, “This hole is of a depth unencountered in my years of hole-diving.” Which is something I knew to be true. “I want a photo next to it when we’re finished,” he said. There was silence, and then he asked, his voice growing feint, “Do you ever wonder if there are irreconcilable differences between the generations?”I lied. I said, “I am unsure, Stewart. I would prefer not. I would prefer that you and I are basically the same. But who knows, the world changes and with it so do we.”I could not make out Stewart’s reply. It grew dark. A red Corvette pulled up behind my car. This red Corvette belonged to P. She got out of the car but kept it running. She stepped into the headlights and I felt small eruptions in my gut. P’s hair is the color of Autumn. She always smells like a fresh batch of snickerdoodles. I still to this day find the scar on her face pleasing in an unconventional way.  She paused in the headlights and sashayed. She knew what she was doing. Then she pushed her way through the tall grass and said, “We’re going to have to check ourselves for ticks.” She noticed the climbing rope. “Why in the name of the lord Jesus is Stewart doing that now?” Just then, the rope went slack. For a moment, we thought there had been an accident, but several tugs on the rope indicated that Stewart had in fact reached the bottom. “I admire Stewart’s bravery,” P. continued. “He’s a man who doesn’t shy from risk. A man who knows just what excites a woman. A man with arms muscular from a life of hard work. I’d like to wrap myself around a man his age and climb him like a primate.”I walked to the edge of the hole. I spread my arms out wide. I closed my eyes and fantasized about leaning forward, the rush of wind parachuting my clothes and watering my eyes.“Don’t be ridiculous again,” P. said. “I’m only talking ish.” “I’m just hungry,” I lied. “We can hit that diner you like so much. The one with the pork flambe.”Stewart’s rope continued slacking and tightening. The pine continued to sway.“Don’t you have work to do?” I asked.“A hole this enormous is going nowhere,” P. said.“What do you think is down there?”“Probably a hole lot of nothing. Get it?”Stewart’s rope slacked and tightened in an impatient manner. I find the older generation pushy. They want what they want and they want it now. I untied Stewart’s rope from the swaying pine and retied it to my car hitch and P. showed me how to tie a figure eight. I wanted to yank Stewart out of this hole and be done with the night. I was hungry for pork flambe. I wanted to feast. P. remained at the hole to supervise.Stewart left my car radio on a vintage jazz station. Velvety trombone filled the cab. I switched to four wheel drive and crawled along the shoulder of the parkway. Every couple of feet I braked. If the rope went slack after braking I would know Stewart was out of the hole. I figured that part out by myself because Stewart was right about me being a smart college boy. I turned the jazz off and rolled the windows down so that I would be able to hear of any developments from P. The commuters had already gone home. Cicadas buzzed, a bat skittered overhead, a light breeze carried from the south. It was overall a peaceful scene. In the rearview, I watched Stewart’s rope lit up by my tail lights. The rope pulled against the non-swaying trees and created a sort of pulley system. Stewart only bought quality rope and so there was no worry of fraying, but if I floored the accelerator, something tragic would have happened, or even if perhaps I simply untied the rope. I hit the brake. The rope was still tight. I shifted the car to park. Yes, both options were tempting. But Stewart and I will be together until the bitter end. I shifted to drive and continued on at a steady ten miles per hour. I braked once more and the rope went slack. I got out of the car and heard P. and Stewart calling my name.
Read More »

ORCAS, or LIFE & ART & MAGIC & BEAUTY by Aaron Burch

June 25, 2025
My buddy Pilot comes to visit. Says it’ll do him good to get out of town for a couple days—new scenery, change of pace, leave the normal life problems and complications and stresses behind. But also we’ve been wanting and meaning to hang out for a while. The new scenery and change of pace and leaving behind of life’s problems and complications and stresses are all bonus. Icing on the cake, cherry on top. All that. It’s sunny out, blue skies, warm. It is beautiful, in that way that can feel unique and special to the Pacific Northwest.  We make pizzas. I got Lili a pizza oven a couple Christmases ago, which means I got us a pizza oven a couple Christmases ago; we’ve made pizza once, sometimes twice a week, every week since. Mostly for ourselves, but also when entertaining. When friends come to town and we replace life’s problems and complications and stresses with food and ease and friendship.Pilot raves about the pizza, and we say we know, because we’ve gotten good at making pizza and we know it. Still. When he raves about it, it makes us proud. We eat and drink and share stories and volley compliments back and forth and round and round.Making food for your friends. Sharing time with loved ones. Beautiful, warm, sunny, Pacific Northwest blue sky days. Getting good at something. Sharing that thing with others. Friends giving you honest, proud compliments. Friends, in general. Gifts, all. Life can be gifts, all the way down, when you let it be.Lili asks Pilot how his summer has been so far, and he says he’s been writing a lot. Lili knows that, because Pilot’s been sending me new stories as he’s been writing them, and I keep telling her about them, but she nods and tells him that’s great.I can’t publish any of them cause they’re all about my divorce, Pilot says. But it's all that's coming out right now, he says.I remember that, I say. Meaning, getting divorced. Meaning, it being all I could think or talk about. They’re really great, I say. Each is more fun and stupid and inventive than the last, I say. As a compliment to Pilot and also to Lili, though she knows. I’ve said that to her before, too. We have a few more beers, and tell some more stories, about writing and divorce, about friendship and food, about life and art. 

***

The next day, we have a lazy morning. In the afternoon, we walk down to the waterfront for happy hour. Oysters and tuna tartar and beef skewers and pineapple shrimp and cocktails. It’s happy hour, so everything is discounted, but we’re on the waterfront and so everything is expensive. We complain about the prices, while ordering more than we can eat and second and third rounds of drinks. We each agree when someone else says how beautiful the day is; we each, when it is our turn, say how wonderful life can be. Full and a little tipsy, we walk along the waterfront and Pilot says he really wants to see an orca. Do you think we’ll see an orca? he says. How magical would it be if we see an orca? he says. I guess it isn’t really orca season, is it? he says. I kinda feel like it would solve all my problems and complications and stresses and be magical if we get to see an orca, he says. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen an orca here along this waterfront. It feels both like I have and haven’t. It feels both impossible and likely. I tell Pilot we’ve seen a few seals swimming around in the water and that always feels special. He asks if there’s sea lions here too, and I say I think there are but I can’t remember for sure. We don’t see an orca.We don’t see any seals or sea lions either. It’s ok. We go out for tiki drinks, and we share more stories and we re-share the same stories we’ve already shared and we recap everything from earlier in the day, and the night before. Lili is giggling her drunk giggle and Pilot is glowing like he doesn’t have a care in the world and my face is warm like I probably got a little too much sun.At our table inside the tiki bar, we’re on an island, or in a boat, or under water. Maybe all three. We’re pirates and sailors and explorers and mermaids and mermen and sea captains. We order another round. We cheers orcas.The walk and the day and our lives and the the view of the water and the sun on our faces and the tiki bar and sharing stories and sharing meals and getting drinks together and escaping our lives for a couple of days and friendship—ours, specifically, but also just friendship, in general— and getting to tourguide a friend around somewhere you love? Gifts. Magic! There can be magic anywhere—everywhere—if you know where to look. That isn’t really what this story is about though.

***

Revisiting this story months after first writing it, I’m unsure what it really is about. I’m unsure if I knew at the time, when I first wrote it, and have since forgotten; or maybe I was always unsure and I wrote that sentence as something of a reminder to figure it out at some point during revisions; or maybe I was unsure, but I was ok with that, and I wrote the sentence just because I liked the sound and feel and idea of it.I’m leaving it now.I like the sound and feel and idea of it.And what it’s really about isn’t really up to me, anyway. That’s for you. To decide, or to decide that it isn’t up to you either and that it doesn’t really matter.That’s ok, too.

***

The next day Pilot returns home, and Lili and I take the ferry to one of the nearby islands. She’s never been on a ferry before, and I’m reminded how special it can be to experience something with someone for their first time. The ferry ride is fun and cool, and the views are beautiful, and it all feels a little like make-believe. And then watching all of that through Lili’s eyes, reflected on her face and in her smile and radiating out from her whole body, makes everything even many-fold times true. On the island, we drive along the coast and comment on the tide being so low. We walk through a farmers market; we eat lunch and have a drink; we walk through the downtown like tourists to whom everything is new and discoverable and anything is possible. We drive across the island to a park and we go on a hike through the woods and then we walk along the beach. We see a sign about local sea animals. The sign tells us about the seals and sea lions and porpoises and orcas in these waters. The sign places them on a scale of how frequent they can be seen, from common to occasional to seldom. We drive back across the island and get another drink and another meal. We drive along the coast going the other way and comment on the tide now being so high. Magic! we say. Magic! we both believe, in this moment, even if not in others. 

***

In that previous draft of this story, Pilot was Kevin. Because the stuff in this story that actually happened, happened with my buddy Kevin, when he came to visit.I’m unsure why the change.When I first wrote this story, I was in the middle of a burst of writing. Every few days, and sometimes every day, I’d write a new short story, inspired by something Kevin, or our other friend D.T., texted to our groupchat. I’d copy and paste it into a Google doc and use it as a springboard into another 600-1800 word piece of autofiction about us, and writing, and friendship, and telling stories and life and seeing art and magic and beauty everywhere you look. D.T. texted that he needed a break from life, and so I wrote a story about a guy quitting his job and driving around the country, visiting friends and meeting strangers, buying a boat and learning how to sail, becoming a follower of different religions and denouncing others, all looking for meaning and for purpose. Kevin texted that divorce was like God sawing off parts of your body, and so I wrote a story about God telling a woman to saw off her partner’s limbs, adding in narrative references to the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. God didn’t tell the woman in my story to sacrifice her partner, only to saw off his limbs, and also He didn’t stop her at the last minute like He did with Abraham. When I told my girlfriend about that one, I expected her to make fun of me for writing story after story after story after story where Kevin and D.T. keep popping up, but instead she glommed onto the surreal body horror part. Which surprised me, because normally she looked at me like what the fuck are you talking about? when I described one of my more surreal or speculative stories, but also because I’d forgotten that was even what the story was about. I’d gotten so distracted by how Kevin and D.T. keep popping up in them. She told me she used to have this idea for a story about someone cutting off their skin so it would grow back healthier and blemish free.I could write that story! I said, and went and got my laptop and opened up a blank Google doc and started typing. In the story, the narrator cuts off his skin so it will grow back healthier and blemish free. He works from home and orders delivery and never leaves the house, waiting to reenter the world as a whole new version of himself. But his skin never grows back. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to make of this miscalculation. Doesn't have any idea how to make sense of this world at all, now that he thinks about it. He has an idea. He sits down and writes a story and when he gets stuck, these two characters, his friends, Kevin and D.T., appear out of nowhere in the story and tell him what to do next, or they do something funny, or they say some non sequitur that doesn’t literally tell him what to do next and isn’t technically funny, but it makes him laugh and gives him an idea for how to proceed. He finishes the story and sends it to the Kevin and D.T. in his story.I sent the story to the Kevin and D.T. in my actual life.Is this your whole thing now? D.T. texted.I like it, Kevin texted. I didn’t say I didn’t like it, D.T. texted.I like it, too, I texted. They’re fun. I keep trying to write something fun and stupid and inventive, I texted. But every story just keeps ending up being earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted.But that’s fun and stupid and inventive, too, Kevin texted. That’s just your version. I wrote the bonkers version and yours is just a little happier and like you had a good day, he texted.Are they just dumb and repetitive though? I texted.They feel like iterations, but not really repetitive, Kevin texted.And so what if they are repetitive, D.T. texted.The so what and also the word iterations gave me another idea and I wrote a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story about a guy writing a story. I lost track of how many levels or layers of story-within-a-story it was. I told my girlfriend about the story, describing the story itself and also my writing it, and how I sent it to Kevin and D.T. and they said it was earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted, and how that surprised me. I told her about how writing is weird, how you’ll have one idea and start writing it, but then it will become something else without you meaning it to, sometimes without you even realizing it, and she looked at me like I was stupid.She knew all that.I’d told her some version of that a million times.I kept writing stories like this. I didn’t know what to do with them; they felt too meta for anyone else to care, but they were so fun and Kevin and D.T. said they were fun and when I told my girlfriend I finished another and described it to her she’d roll her eyes and look at me like you’re so dumb or like what the fuck are you talking about? but also she’d say it sounded fun, and she’d laugh, and it would light up her face and the room and our lives and the world and God would smile down on us and say, Aaron, that one was even more fun and stupid and inventive than your last, and also even more earnest and open-hearted.And then, time passed, and I revisited these stories. This story. I again feared it was dumb and repetitive, but I also liked the idea of it being in conversation with some others I’d written. So I changed Kevin to Pilot.Pilot is the name I sometimes use for a best friend character in my stories. The Pilot character is usually a fictionalized version of one of my friends, though not any one of them specifically. It rotates. Sometimes it's  an amalgamation. It’s never my friend who is a pilot, though. That would feel too on the nose. In the last story I wrote about a character inspired by my friend who is a pilot, his name was Matt. That isn’t his name, though it is the name of another of my friends. My friend Matt has appeared in a couple essays I’ve written, but I don’t think ever a fiction, so I’ve never changed his name to anything. He made an appearance in a piece of fiction by my ex that was kind of about me, and she changed his name to Luke. He jokes about that sometimes. But then, I couldn’t help myself, so now there’s all these sections that are still and again about Kevin and D.T.It is kind of dumb, and repetitive. Or iterative. And I don’t know what it’s “about.” But it feels fun. And just might be the bonkers story I’d been chasing. Though maybe even just thinking that means it’s actually the most earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted. It’s the most everything. Which is maybe what the story is about. Fun and stupid and inventive, or earnest and nostalgic and open-hearted, every story seemed to be about how, every now and then, if you’re paying attention, if you’re open to it, the whole world can be about anything and everything. 

***

On the ferry ride home from the island, Lili and I go to the top deck and watch the island recede behind us. The sun is starting to set and it’s bouncing off the water and everything is lit up in gold. There’s a whale off the right of the ferry, a voice alerts us over a loudspeaker. Everyone on the ferry runs to the right side of the boat, hoping to see the orca. My girlfriend gets there first. I saw it! she says. I saw the whale!We’re all staring at the water, staring into the sun bouncing off the water, looking around, looking for a quick glimpse of something to prove that magic is real.I see something in the water. It submerges, surfaces a little further away, then submerges again. A seal or sea lion, probably; a fin of a porpoise, possibly; an orca, maybe even. I keep watching and watching and watching and watching and watching but don’t see anything else. I wonder if Lili saw the same thing I did, or something else. I wonder if she saw the orca and I missed it, or if she saw a seal or sea lion but wanted it to be a whale and so believed it was, or if I saw a whale but am too doubtful and so believed it wasn’t. The same voice over the loudspeaker now tells us that we are almost to shore and to return to our vehicles. Our trip and our journey and our day is almost over.But first I close my eyes. I feel the sun on my face and the crisp air on my skin. I’m silent and still and unthinking.I open my eyes and see an orca, and then another, and another, and another, and another. They’re everywhere. Cresting, submerging, spraying water up through their blowholes, swimming all around us. I watch and I smile and I laugh.I close my eyes again, and when I open them, the whales are gone. Just like that. We return below deck and get in our car and wait to be told when it is our turn to exit the ferry, back to the mainland, back to our normal lives. 
Read More »

NEW WAVES AND NOWHERE ROADS: AN INTERVIEW WITH BRANDON TEIGLAND by Rebecca Gransden

June 20, 2025
With the short fiction collection My Child is a Stranger (AOS, 2025) Brandon Teigland offers a close reading of possible futures. Teigland’s exploratory voracity lays the groundwork for an examination of impulse, whether towards the limits of art or the human. The realm of theory has to live in our very real, fleshy heads, at least for now, but what happens when assumptions break down? I spoke to Brandon about this questing and interrogative collection. Rebecca Gransden: How long has the compilation of My Child is a Stranger taken you? What was the process of choosing the stories for inclusion like?Brandon Teigland: Over the past decade, while writing and publishing three other books, I was also assembling this collection—eighteen stories written between 2015 and 2025. In that time, the culture of contemporary fiction has changed. All the stories I've included in My Child is a Stranger are in some way about the time of their writing, whether they explicitly address the issues of the day or not. Everyone knows what these are: globalization, economic collapse, inequality, technological upheaval, environmental degradation, mass displacement, terror, war, and, with these, shifting ideas of what it means to be human.Is there a common thread among these? Probably not. As Jean-François Lyotard would say, there is no overarching metanarrative to explain and justify everything. There are only outcomes—ideas lived out in all their messy complexity. The 'child' in the title comes from Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity, where he cites Isaiah 49: My child is a stranger, but a stranger who is not only mine, for he is me. He is me, a stranger to myself… However we relate to children in our own lives, the figure of the child—whether as an evasion or an embodiment of hope and despair—tells us something of the fears we as a species have for the future and what hope we invest in it.RG: What does the posthuman mean to you, and how does it manifest in your writing?BT: Posthumanism is a strange institution—one that allows us to be everything, anything. David Roden’s Disconnection Thesis suggests that posthumans would be radically different from humans because they would be 'disconnected' from existing human forms of life, practices, and conceptual frameworks. This disconnection isn’t just physical but involves a deeper ontological rupture—meaning posthuman beings may not be understandable in human terms, as they would operate outside the assemblage of human social systems.I see two kinds of posthumanism: ‘open’ posthumanism, which is unrestricted and capable of embodying anything, and ‘closed’ posthumanism, which imposes its own self-chosen limitations, restricting what posthumanism can be. I find both compelling and a little suspect, which is why I consider my writing a type of speculative posthumanism.Roden’s speculative posthumanism contrasts with critical posthumanism, which focuses on deconstructing the human concept within cultural and philosophical contexts. Instead, he considers the possible emergence of new kinds of beings beyond our ability to conceptualize—an unpredictable evolution where technology, biology, and autonomy break free from human structures. This aligns with my interest in posthumanism as a post-existential, almost unknowable state, where identity, transformation, and alienation lead to forms of existence outside human comprehension.To ask, ‘What is posthumanist literature?’ is to examine how writers might explore these feral forms of fabulist fiction. Literature is bound up with what it’s like to be us, to be human. How we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves. Posthuman literature matters not because it helps us understand who we are today, but because it asks who we might become, or not become, tomorrow.RG: “The Last Shape” explores themes of aging and decay, of the ravages of time. You highlight how the pursuit of ‘beating’ time, the thirst for life extension, can lead to a state that pollutes the living environment. How do you view the concept of deep time? What is the contemporary relationship to the idea of primitive memory and evolution?BT: In “The Last Shape”, Professor Ali Abbasi, a biogerontologist, ventures into California’s Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in search of Methuselah, haunted by dreams of being trapped among its twisted pines. He realizes these trees endure not through vitality but by existing in a half-dead state, mirroring his fear that extreme life extension leads to stagnation and detachment.As he ascends, he encounters a breath-like entity dormant within the roots, suggesting that longevity is not just biological but an unnatural disruption of time. When he descends, his own breathing has changed—his body altered, his humanity uncertain. The story critiques the philosophy of senescence as a postmortal impasse, where longer lifespans sever us from evolution, erasing primitive memory and disrupting the natural balance. Deep time, embodied in these trees, reveals that life and death are inseparable, and immortality is not a triumph but a corruption of identity. The pursuit of preservation doesn’t just pollute the environment—it pollutes the self, rendering us unrecognizable. True continuity lies not in defying death but in accepting the decay and renewal that sustain all life—offering no solace beyond nature’s endless cycle.RG: We each have to face our own apocalypse. The collection confronts apocalypticism on both a personal and societal scale. How do you view the modern era’s version of apocalypse? Is there an apocalyptic zeitgeist in the literary scene?BT: The apocalyptic realism of contemporary literature is an as-yet-unstated movement, forming new waves around writers who are realizing that there is no limit to what literature can do: it can do anything it wants. It can be raw, risky, and random—deliberately unfiltered, uncensored, and unprofessional. Most significantly, it can embrace a wilder edge, a kind of optimistic nihilism—something like a Crowleyian call to 'Do what thou wilt.'RG: I chose the wrong means of escape. I took an awkward shortcut that led me right back to where I was, left to compound the horror of living there, in that place of no escape, with the exhaustion of the journey. Empty-handed and up to my ears in student debt. If I wasn’t a destroyed human being then, I am now. Stagnant and useless. Full of false sensation. False scorn and feeble hatred. Not knowing which it really is, scorn or hatred, I laugh.“The Naysayer” pays particular attention to the concept of ‘giving up.’ What does ‘giving up’ mean in this story? To what degree did you consider structure in your approach to “The Naysayer”?BT: “The Naysayer” is a novelette written with the experimentalism and exploration of postmodernism and pessimistic fiction, chronicling a protagonist who internalizes failure as a metaphysical and existential certainty. The narrator, a disillusioned student burdened by debt and an eroding sense of self, isolates himself in a rented room where he discovers a lost manuscript, A Theory of Giving Up, written by the enigmatic Detlef Stefan. This "taxonomy of failure" becomes the narrator’s gospel, shaping his understanding of human effort as futile and resigning him to a state of inertia.Giving up, in this story, is not simply surrender; it is a conscious philosophical act, an assertion of negative will, a final form of resistance against a world that demands constant forward motion. Structurally, “The Naysayer” parallels this philosophy by rejecting conventional narrative resolution, unfolding in recursive loops of failed attempts, lost texts, and abandoned thoughts. Each passage feels like a false start, a directionless intellectual meandering that reflects the narrator’s inability to progress in life. The disquiet of “The Naysayer” is not in catastrophe, but in its quiet insistence that all roads lead nowhere.RG: How do you feel about the idea of anonymity?BT: I prefer to be a known unknown—recognizable yet obscured, present but absent. Absolute anonymity doesn’t interest me, but neither does full visibility. Slavoj Žižek describes the “Bartlebian act” as a quiet refusal, an opting out rather than direct resistance, like Melville’s scrivener who “would prefer not to.” Writers like László Krasznahorkai cultivate a similar aura of mystery, remaining at the periphery of mainstream literary consciousness while exerting undeniable influence. Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms take this even further, fragmenting the self into multiple voices, each existing independently while the author remains elusive. In an era of constant self-performance, there’s value in resisting that pull, letting the work speak for itself, and leaving just enough space for the writing to haunt the reader.RG: I’m afraid to begin this story, a story with no definite end. There’s no single structure I can name here, no crystallized normality around which I can base the experience of my life, nothing that I can’t doubt any more than I can doubt the very room where I’m writing this now, a room in a city in a postanthropic culture on a planet in space. On an old bed, I lie down passively, supine, in a kind of resignation, and wait for the end.Are there stories that you are still afraid to begin?BT: “Cathedral of Spiders” collapses the boundary between fiction and nonfiction by making myself a character, testing how far self-mythologization can go before dissolving into alienation. The work teeters between self-aggrandizement—casting myself as the last human, the final perceiver—and the ironic deflation of that role through solipsism and cosmic insignificance. Writing becomes both an act of creation and self-destruction, a manuscript that longs to be burned yet refuses to end. I feared this erasure—not just of identity, but of the distinction between fiction and reality, between writing and self-annihilation, between the author and authored. The text spirals endlessly, a voice narrating its own extinction, unable to stop.RG: What does the future mean to you? Where would you like to take your writing?BT: The future is a place where writing literature is impossible—extro-literature. Extro-science fiction, as described by Quentin Meillassoux, explores worlds where science cannot be used to explain existence. It rejects science’s ability to establish objects or theories, confronting the idea that the laws of nature are not logically necessary. In a similar way, extro-literature suggests that writing itself becomes impossible in a future where meaning dissolves, where narratives are no longer anchored to human logic or perception.All my writing questions the limits of human-centered storytelling. I’m trying to understand how a posthuman novel both embodies and reshapes its own form—how a posthuman novel functions. If writing itself becomes impossible, what remains? Perhaps only fragments—stories that can no longer be told, slipping away. If posthumanism severs us from our origins, then posthuman literature must do the same—breaking away, leaving no meaning behind. 
Read More »