Tag

From the Grave

From the Grave: “Viper” by JS Breukelaar

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the seventh in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have JS Breukelaar, author of American Monster, with an excerpt from a novel entitled “Viper.”

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

1. KILL NOIR

Dean’s mother tells her book club that San Diego has never been her final destination. She’d leave in a flash and be back in Brizzie before you could say Margherita. Leave Chalmers, she tells book club, with nothing but memories of his sun-kissed trophy-bride from Down Under that he can choke on or wank on — makes no difference to her.

“Not to mention the old folks. He screwed them over good and prop-pah,” Mackenzie would say sounding, or trying to, like a Guy Ritchie gangsta. Mackenzie with her physiotherapy certifications and shoe fetish.

Pop and Gammy—Pop was a natty little dresser who came to America from some Hungarian schletto to end his days scuttling around a peach-toned twilight home at the edge of the Pacific. Lost to the silent winding hallways and views out faux-bevelled picture windows onto the wrong crashing blue, crows rising out of the aspidistra. Dean riding shotgun on Pop’s Little Rascal, loving the way it glided silently to the dining room where the Mexican valet would reach for the keys and soberly park it in the lobby. Dean loves that bit. Residents’ soft-shoe shuffle to plates of steamed sole on the arms of blow-up nurses. Ah, Southern California.

Aaaahhh…blow-up nurses. In the bathroom Dean goes to work on three glow-in-the-dark pimples, a volley of blood-pus to hurl onto his canvas — the volcanic red and seeping yellow of cave art. He is the remote hunter of the Kimberlys painting prayers on the walls of his mirror cave. He brushes his teeth. Practices his smile, basic variations on a soul-train theme.

Dean has Mackenzie’s green eyes but definitely a little too close-set. In the centre of a narrow forehead above a single eyebrow, a scar where there was once a large mole that looked a little like a mouldy-looking eye until Mackenzie had it removed. Kinky alien hair inherited from Pop, and a wide nose scheduled for surgery. Bad hair like the grocer’s nephew at the market who went to Dean’s last school, packing up the grapefruit and string beans every Saturday afternoon. A raft sailing darkly off to one side of his head.

But here’s a thought: Dreads.

Heavy hair that looks good in a hood with lips soft and moist like a baby animal. Hung. He practices his stance: eyes half-closed, now open wide and stricken and now downcast in terminal sorrow. Dean flails his arms against the speed of pain. He bowed his head against the onslaught. Prepare to dive or is it die?

The bathroom sink starts to overflow.

Dean drifts into his mother’s room. Showered and shaved, but not well. Softly closes the door on a cool white space, vast Chinese rug and wall-to-wall Sony and Pacific glimpses out a humongous window framed in amber waves of drapery. He sinks his hands into her panty drawer, withdrawing, it doesn’t quite close. He elbows a pile of bedside paperbacks onto the floor and finds her Xanax, one/two of which he ritually pops while listening now to the front door softly close. She’d approached it silently from her office, like a cat burglar in six inch Manolos, hadn’t wanted him to hear her leave and try and stop her, not that he does that any more.

February 23, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave

From the Grave: “Duck, Duck, Indiscernible” by David James Keaton

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the sixth in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have David James Keaton, author of The Last Projector.

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

…you know, you hear things that remind you of stuff, and you see things that make you nostalgic, but it’s the smells that are absolutely heartbreaking because if you know what annoyed her the most, it’s driving with your windows down, and you might think it’s a burn barrel or food or skunk, but what you’re smelling is really all the green, of course, so I stuck my gum next to hers on purpose, but when I’d tell her a story I’d always say, “For a second there, I thought I saw…” and that drove her fucking nuts because you’d think, “What do you mean? I’m changing,” which is why I told that teacher I was watching the mailbox everyday and asking it to please save my life and why the gum never moved when I wasn’t looking and why that didn’t mean anything and why there are worse fates than that though, like how she could be accidentally strangled by too many rubber ducky Mardi Gras beads when the only thing she hates worse are puns, the last refuge of the weak-minded, as she called it, beacause the ones with the ducks are the ones that the drunkest girls demand after debasement, but it wasn’t like I was waiting for an acceptance letter to anything, but I was, you know, agent, college, girlfriend, just to find out if she’s dead so that I could imagine going to the funeral, not remembering what she looked like, having to open the coffin to make sure and how much her friends and family would love that because they remember and I remember her asking me why I didn’t read my breakfast boxes like she did, so what do I care when I’m already asking if sarcasm works when you’re talking to yourself and I know for a fact that it sure doesn’t sound like it, so don’t ask me what the hell I’m doing because everyone hates jokes, no matter how much they laugh or how much truth is in them, and everyone hates quips, even if they killed your dad, so consider how angry I get when a kid spits in my path or a volunteer fireman cuts me off the road or a cop pulls me over for no reason and how often I daydream these murderous thoughts because it may have been closer to the truth would be if I’d have asked that mailbox to save someone else’s life instead or if I had grabbed that cereal box and pouted while I read the ingredients to her out loud or if I had any idea that’s how sarcasm sounds of if this has anything at all to do with thumb wrestling, but I thought she was angry because she was reading it, too, only it was just because she could see the full bookcase looming behind me with that mysterious buzzing making me wonder how many phones I actually own when we hit the road and he turned into duck, duck, indiscernible by the time I’d circled over him the third time, and okay, yeah, I had a book on thumb wrestling book, hoping to strengthen the one that remained in case of a comic-book confrontation over a beach blanket, but in truth, I lied, and I’d shot a revolver twice before I knew there really was a book with two holes all the way through for each of the thumbs, and each page was an arena, like a baseball diamond, a boxing ring, a basketball court, and the hardest one, because the edges of the holes dug into your skin, a football stadium where you had to push the other thumb across a goal line, which is exactly like playing with all the crab claws on the roof top of our vacation home in South Carolina where the seagulls dropped them when they were finished eating, but as a kid, I had no idea what they were or how they got up there, just as I didn’t know if he left his phone in this car before he was thrown out, the same way he left that book, called “Thumbstruck,” but Jay called it Cuntstruck, and said we should play the games with everything but our fingers, but they should have called it thumb “stuck” because the holes were way too small for anything and bullets move slower than you think they do like when we were at that shooting range and I felt like I could reach out and grab every one of them, but just like there’s less stars above our heads, bullets aren’t as fast as we think, officer, Sergeant, whoever, and I’d like to enter this text message as evidence, please, Your Honor, so remind your lackeys that cops shouldn’t carry Tasers for their nonlethal alternative and they should carry ice scrapers, not the little ones, but the ones with the brush, the serious ones, and you probably think that I once said that might be crossing a line and my girlfriend wouldn’t appreciate it, but come on, even though his thumbs were strong from the hitchhiking, it would be a draw if you just look at it or look at that or look at me, so even though he could probably punch a hole in a truck tire with that left thumb after so much thumb wrestling all his life, he wouldn’t win, and this is why I should have taken his thumb with me because that’s what a hitchhiker is doing, trying to offer it to you, and everything would come right off in our hands like it was meant to, so, if you’re ready, one, two, three, four let’s declare a thumb war, especially when someone’s touting my neighbor’s dad’s gun, a weapons shot at least twice if you count those seagulls over the cornfield, three times if you could all the Mexican food we ate and how, later in bed, my fingers burned the hell out of her insides, but it’s better if you stop before you hit something, which, not coincidentally, is exactly the reason most gun laws were necessary, and the reason we kept that squirrel, even though, if anyone would have seen it the first day, we would have been in trouble, just like when I was busted for having 73 cats and a praying mantis for pets, all in this car, and, yeah, se swore I did it on purpose, but you have to do it twice to do it on purpose because the first time is always a learning day if you look real close at that truck, a vehicle that is the 33rd saddest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, besides that turtle in the veterinarian’s office, but that first month, it had to be hidden really, really well, until it’s just bones and then it was okay to put anywhere, so ask yourself whose shit is bigger and I’ll always swear that when my shit stops at a red light and a hundred clowns jump out, a joke I only make because I thought you hated jokes, so that’s a message I’ll save on the machine, reminding me that this why you can’t save certain things and why flesh bad, skull good if you’re a collector and why if I run out of gas and have to siphon, it would be worth everything and why if I spill it all over me and can’t get rid of the smell, and why I will know he was wrong and why the truck drives through that tunnel with less than an inch to spare and why do I imagine myself lying up there in that inch between the truck and the tunnel every time and why I had already heard the lecture about how reptiles tend to shut down during surgery, so because of all of the friendships I made in the waiting room, I did get to see the x-rays of a turtle bursting with the eggs it couldn’t lay and listen to someone decode its last words, “five, six, seven, eight, don’t trust a thumb to masturbate,” if you remember that I still love the smell of gasoline it’ll give me a reason to tell him this when I drive over his legs again, like you saw at movie theaters, that popcorn sizes are now labeled Large, Extra Large, Family Size, and That Shit I Just Took, which I know is silly out loud, but I’m talking about the big ice scrapers, officers, and I should know because I got hit with one of those by a girl, and it was no joke, mostly because it was so big and it had that damn brush, which I also know this because I found the list I made when I was a child when I followed her into the room to say goodbye to her turtle and there it was in the center of a bed with an EKG flatlining behind it and she laughed and turned it off, telling me that without that noise that people would mistake it for alive for at least another week, something that is as sad as that guy who came outside and found a last. lonely car that looked like his, then discovered his key worked in every car door, something that happens a lot more than you think, something that happens about as often as me driving over you or him, but I must have stumbled headlong through a soup can pyramid in the grocery store that day, and that cinematic shit’s as foolish as you can look out in the wild, and that’s why the miserable stock boys stack them that way, obviously, to impress the girls at the register, like when you say things like, “My shit was so big, it blows bubbles when I swallow gum,” but I don’t get that at all, but I believe you when you say bean soup is good as long as I don’t chew it and that the last words of Dutch Shultz were similar to this and also involved bean soup, and that I enjoy girls with numbers on their shirts as much as I hate them on boys and that baseball caps are neutral ground, sure, like the church in Highlander, but only if you’re wearing headphones, ’cause you need to wonder what she’s listening to if you’re pretending you’re in an indie movie, but you pretend you’re her if you’re in an indie novel, and a scratch on her hand will make you wonder what happened in both, just like an 8-ball in her fist will make you wonder what game she stole it from and if they’re still chasing her, and how everyone should be eyeing the stop sign instead, as long as it’s the right stop sign, not this stop sign, but that stop sign, the one where stealing it would cause a real wreck, not make a cool necklace, so you keep walking with a gas can if you ever get up, not because she ran out because the can she’s carrying is tipped too low, as if she’s leaving a trail of fuel behind her on the road to ignite, as if a turtle is a pet with few rewards, which it is, as if maybe, just maybe, I’m getting ready to ask her where that trail of gas starts when she asks me for a light, if I wasn’t talking to myself, but there’s just no way to organize a discussion when the turtle won the race like it says in the Bible, next to the passage that explains that, even alone, we structure it all as if someone is listening, like when I pick another thumb off the road to replace the ones we’re losing, the ones that are weak, but you do know you can’t make me sick, and if you think so, you should try the impossible and gross me out, like describe when you’ve ever taken a shit but it doesn’t quite come out and you’re flexing your asshole and it feels like it’s chewing it instead because that shit is nasty, nastier than me asking where you’re headed when I don’t care or what’s that in your hand or do you thumb wrestle or where did you drop the quotation marks out the window and what’s that in your hand, even though I know it’s a frog I found on the side of the road that looks more like a spider, making that shit about judging a society by the nature of its frogs all the more compelling than judging a society by the nature of its prisons, but look at the damn thing, a frog with eight legs is something you can’t tell me is normal, and you can’t tell me things aren’t changing out there on the road, just like you can’t tell me it’s the frog’s fault or the turtles fault or we all have thin skin, which means we’re too easily affected by our environment and the thumbs fly right off, but it’s okay if you don’t see us growing eight fingers to replace them all because you’re going to need all the fingers you can get when I let you out just as soon as I’m going fast enough…

February 3, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave Literary Scene

From the Grave: “The Inside Juice” by Court Merrigan

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the fifth in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have Bud Smith, author of Moondog Over the Mekong with an excerpt from a dead project called, “The Inside Juice.”

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

So the Division Head sat him down and asked what he wanted. Not out of this company or this job or this quarter but what he wanted. Since what he wanted was nothing you could tell a DH he bumbled into a monosyllabic mutter that thoroughly demonstrated he was devoid of all reasonable ambition. The DH sat there tapping a gold pen against his teeth which was the kind of habit he himself was scared of because it’d be murder on your dental. Which was why he took this job in the first place. Because he was scared. Back in the lobby there were plastic plants and piped-in watersounds to replace the angel fountain and the 4 others he’d rode up with from the branch office were still upstairs. So he stayed in the lobby all morning and well into afternoon eating soggy pretzels from the basket at the Welcome Desk where the receptionists smiled brightly from inside their glass service cubicles and did not ask if he was headed back upstairs. He was afraid to try out the security guys and besides it was a heatwave out there. They were getting worse every year. Also outside even children turned bandit if you looked to be carrying anything worth anything and even though he wasn’t he probably looked like it. There were no benches or chairs because it wasn’t the kind of lobby you loitered in though it was the kind of lobby where everyone seemed to know what it meant when you went came back downstairs that fast.

In the offices upstairs after the DH was done with him he thought maybe he ought to hang around. Have some chitchat. Get some inside juice. But the offices weren’t any kind of place for loitering either. Everyone looked all harried with their scheming. Besides what good was inside juice going to do him now so he hit on the hope the driver would run him back to the branch office but that was crazytalk with gas high as it was. Everyone said it was good of the company to provide drivers and the streets were clogged with old schoolbuses and minivans ferrying around worker bees like himself to good companies. Sitting in traffic with a handkerchief over his mouth he was not always so sure it was such a good thing plus a schoolbus wasn’t much deterrence against bandits but the company couldn’t do everything. Yep he was into the company but good ever since he got married and scared and joined the workaday world because the future wasn’t going to stop its looming and he had nothing to confront it with. Certainly not any money. The company made you feel you were making positive progress on your family’s future whether you wanted to or not. Also he was a little ashamed at his wedding that he was 30 and his parents had to pay for their own hotel rooms and his younger brother gave them a His ’n Hers selection of handmade Thai silks from a business trip to the Far East. He got to thinking that if his brother got married he wouldn’t even be able to afford to go. Then he lucked into this job with its shot at the legit world and now after 4 years he guessed it was mostly luck he’d kept it this long.

Along about midmorning came a monsoon torrent of the kind it used to be you could only see in movies but now were practically normal. The street flooded with turds and candy wrappers that washed up against the glass lobby doors. Grayswirled water leaked in no matter how many towels the receptionists in rubber boots applied to the bottom of the doors. He stood on the ledge with the plastic plants and the driver where the fountain used to be until sewer-reeking brownwater had started shooting from the angel’s mouth. Out on the city dyke the deluge had probably stopped work again and the saltwaves kept on rising while upstairs the DH was probably talking about Visions of Market Excellence. No one at the company seemed to doubt the right combination of Core Proactive Strategies would carry them through so who was he to doubt it. Obviously no one. Seven hours he waited in the lobby until the last person turned up and they could head out to the minivan in the sunhaze which had already dried the muck to a glazed dust which would mingle with the fumes he’d breath in on the company bus tomorrow.

The minivan at least had windows that shut although no air conditioning. The driver turned off the engine at stoplights which he thought was bad fuel economy and what little circulation there was stopped altogether. The sweat dripping off his earlobes splotched his shoulders and who knew whether it was him or the damp-armed man next to him that reeked. Of course body odor was a Retroactive Issue. Any good company man and / or woman could tell you only a Proactive Strategy could get you out of the Problem Trap and into a Solution Mindset but he had no solution to the pretzels roiling in his stomach. Although possibly it wasn’t so much the pretzels as all the things he didn’t know about the future which never arrived but nevertheless went skidding past. The minivan swerved around a hunched-over junk vendor pushing a cart. He tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him to pull over. When the driver snarled What the hell we just got going he said For God’s sake pull over.

He nearly impaled himself on the gearshift when the minivan lurched to a stop. He scrambled over the woman who’d been the second one to come back downstairs but must have scented the pariah on him and didn’t stand near him in the lobby. There couldn’t have been more than half a dozen shadetrees left in all the city but he stepped right out into the shade of a big one which sheltered a fetid pool with a surface coagulated to goo. Under the expressway he leaned against a cracking pillar near a row of tin shacks. Rows of underaged eyes watched him dry heave till he thought his guts were ripped from intestines to anus. When his eyes cleared he saw the driver leaning out the window yelling something he couldn’t hear over the roar of the expressway. Then the minivan was gone and he was a very very long way from home or anywhere. Filthy half-clothed children crept out of the shacks and one squatted beside him and said Hello Mister. He said Hello yourself and the child said Where you going? and he said Nowhere I’m going to get.

The children gathered in with various sharp objects but that was alright. The future was all gone off his shoulders and he had nothing in the world to be scared of.

January 26, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave Writing

From the Grave: “I Wonder What My Skull Will Look Like” by Bud Smith

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the fourth in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have Bud Smith, author of F-250 and Tollbooth sharing an excerpt from a dead novel entitled, “I Wonder What My Skull Will Look Like.”

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

I lived in the junkyard for about a year. It wasn’t my kind of job. I did it because I was able to stay there for free inside the tire pile, as long as I remained undetected.

In the quiet of the evening, when the work of the day was done, and the workers went away, I locked the gate from the inside, and hid. Then it was just me and the junkyard dog.

The tire pile was more beautiful than it sounds. I can imagine just what you are picturing.

I found a cave in there that I could enter from a crevice around the back. From the outside, it appeared as any other typical junkyard tire pile, but if you crawled inside, you’d see I had the place furnished rather nicely.

My tire pile was better than a lot of the real homes that people call home. But, I guess, a person with enough determination can call anywhere home.

One time, I heard about someone living in the rafters of a bridge. He liked it there, was comfortable, even ran a power cord. But one day, the bridge started to lift up. Before he knew what was going on, he was vertical. His bed pointed at the sky. Luckily he was wedged in and couldn’t fall. He’d never considered that the bridge might be a drawbridge. Every house has its downside.

My tire pile had a living room with a TV. A fridge, a couch and even a bookcase with some discarded library books and magazines from the dentist across the highway. The receptionist in there liked me. She gave me all the magazines when they were going to throw them away.

The tire pile was good for me. It didn’t bother me to not have a lawn or a telephone or a mailbox. I didn’t mind not having to shovel the driveway when it snowed or paint the shed when it needed painting. Actually, the roof I had constructed for myself within my mole hole was known to leak when the tires above shifted around from a fresh dumping of new tires, or removal of some old tires from the top of the tire pile—so I got my handyman fix just fine by managing that battle with caulk and spray foam insulation.

January 19, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave Writing

From the Grave: “Post Persona” by Troy Weaver

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the third in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have Troy Weaver, author of Witchita Stories sharing an excerpt from a dead novel entitled, “Post Persona.”

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

Tell me a story a story yes and one that involves a fat old man a story a story and the fat old man okay okay I’ll try a fat old man with deeply closed eyes lies down on a perfectly made bed in a small white room it is dark save a dim lamp on a little oak end table he cracks every knuckle he has and opening his mouth sniffs at the air he rubs at his eyelids a moment then stops with an abrupt jerk at the elbows he is wearing a nice suit it is a dark brown tweed affair chestnut a red tie chokes about his throat he reaches his wrinkled left hand and loosens the Windsor knot he stretches his mouth open further as if to yawn he doesn’t yawn his jaw looks nearly unhinged and yet he opens it wider his teeth are just little nubs of yellow and white the teeth of a child he keeps his mouth open continuing to stretch it beyond all logic and probability and beneath his is a suitcase and prays the suitcase will only ever stay beneath him oh lord have mercy beneath his under a bed under a floor under some earth

You scared the hell out of me I’m the lucky one in that respect what are you muttering about you can’t scare me like that unless well loud sounds will make my heart jump up into my throat but only if they’re really loud and unexpected otherwise I man I wish I could’ve seen the look on your face you wouldn’t be able to bear the look on this face you know I haven’t always been this way I’ve seen some strange things before In fact I just keep seeing all of the things I’ve already seen over and over and over and over ad infintum alright ALRIGHT I get it now it’s all just ear-memory and muscle-memory the new ones anyway do we always have to talk about this you try living like this you need a better attitude I need a better attitude MUAH look at you all ready to go all packed up and eager and you didn’t even want to go on this trip even last night you told me you didn’t want to go I don’t I never do but you always drag me along anyway I do and what for fresh air open a window we don’t have to travel for fresh air we do and we are going to just as soon I pack and take a shower so sit tight I show my teeth to you you bastard arrr

Wake up leave me alone I wasn’t in there that long that means nothing to me I know are you hungry starving me too I don’t want to go why are you packed I’m not sure you never want to go and yet you always go you have to go it will do you some good you know that you don’t get a choice in the matter anyway so just start accepting that as a value I know mother real nice

Don’t burn them again put a sock in it then I’d really be in trouble one step away from Miss Keller God you sound funny when you laugh Miss Keller you’re one to talk mister manly man still what you sound hilarious you should hear yourself alright alright alright I get it ya fuckin’ joker don’t be a dick I hate my laugh it’s pleasant enough shut up seriously it’s not bad so quit acting of foreskin you were making fun of me first you can dish it but you can’t take it it’s the other way around let’s just drop it I’m sorry I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings ah god me too I’m sorry I was a dick for no reason at all we were just having fun eh of course we were are those eggs done yet pretty much I know I’m just waiting for you to hand me my plate stupid I’m starving hold out your hands there’s not any pepper on this sorry when are we leaving anyway when we finish eating but I have something I want to give you before we go present just something I thought you could use a new roommate eyes kind of anyway something that’ll help I think with your darkness that’s impossible you didn’t get me eyes c’mon just give me a little hint eat up we have a long day ahead of us keep it down with all that long day ahead of us business do you want it or not oh I want it alright here then so this is it huh a cane you got me a freakin’ cane and so surely a cane I was afraid I’d offend you but you never know out there in all that I may not always be there for you it is so you can find your way without me I suppose of course it is well thanks anyway you’re welcome now hey I’ve got it I’ve been itching all day to tell you do you want to hear your diagnoses well it doesn’t matter because I’m telling you anyway what I think you might have traits of paranoia a slight almost undefined Oedipus complex and also a tendency towards pedophilia well if not now in the near future I feel it is evident you have got to be the stupidest son-of-a-bitch in the world where do you come up with this stuff you told me yourself that the only thing Freud was fit for was death and in that way you’re just like him eh but death is the only thing fit for anybody who ever lived is it not and that’s what I say about all that you you can be such an asshole and stupid-faced calm down as of now it is only speculation fuck off you lunatic we’re leaving now so get off your ass pilgrim

January 12, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave Literary Scene

From the Grave: “Toomoth” by J David Osborne

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the second in an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear.

This time we have J David Osborne, author of Low Down Death Right Easy and Our Blood in its Blind Circuit sharing an excerpt from a dead novel entitled, “Toomoth.”

If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

Langley’s job options were limited. He trolled Monster. None of it seemed doable. Didn’t know what the fuck a Technical Adviser did. Craigslist was next. Those jobs seemed more realistic. He copied down phone numbers and thought about checking the For Sale section for couches, then thought better about it. He turned his computer off and sat on the floor where the couch used to be and tried to think of ways to get Carla back.

He purchased a Glock 19 from a handgun pawnshop on 19^th and Lee. He’d been nervous, walking up to the frog-painted façade, intending to simply go in and get a few pointers on how he might end up with a permit and maybe, one day, eventually with a gun, but the alligator woman behind the counter had set her Beth Moore paperback to the side and coughed and told him, “Hell, son, you can take one of these bad boys home today, if your qualified.”

“How do I qualify?”

“You a felon?”

“Uh…no.”

“Got any warrants?”

“I’ve had one, once.” He felt stupid even as he said it, like he was bragging. It was a nothing warrant, a clerical screw up on a speeding ticket.

“But do you have one now?”

“No.”

The old woman waddled around the counter and flipped up the divider and came right up to him. She looked into his eyes and clawed around the pockets of her jeans. Lit a cigarette and blew smoke in his face. “So you qualify.”

“Good.”

“But.”

“But what?”

“Did you bring it?”

“Bring what?”

The alligator woman smoked thoughtfully. She looked him over, turning him over in her mind. Trying to figure out if he was playing her or just stupid.

“Your permission slip.”

Langley had the feeling when he walked into the shop, that you’re-in-the-grocery-store-and-that-weird-looking-guy-is-really-happy-to-have-his-bag-of-chicken-nuggets-could-he-be-retarded? feeling. Something about the shopkeeper’s underbite, and the way she ground it and muttered to himself tipped him off, but, like with most people with the feeling, the realization that this person was, in fact, not all there, he suddenly felt the urge to play along, to patronize, but for the love of God, not to look in the eyes.

January 5, 2015 0 comment

Fiction From the Grave Literary Scene Writing

From the Grave: “The Simulation City” by Michael J Seidlinger

written by Michael Seidlinger

** Bring me your tired, derivative, overwrought dead manuscripts, yearning to be erased from memory… This is the first in what I intend on becoming an ongoing series where authors get to share a piece of a novel/writing project that died long before it ever could have proven its worth to its parent, its master: the author. Instead of letting the maybe-horrible, maybe-unbearable Word doc remain untouched in some far off and forgotten file folder, why not let the readers at ENCLAVE have a look? Think of it as closure. They won’t laugh, I swear. Starting things off, here’s an excerpt from my SimCity novelization attempt-gone-awry. If you are interested in having an excerpt featured in the “From the Grave” series, be sure to email me at michael @ coping mechanisms dot net. **

It’s not just a game. It’s an escape, a diversion, an exercise in principle. As in, you want something to do that doesn’t involve the same run-around, the same workday, the same frustrations. The frustrations are neck-deep. These days you can’t seem to sit still. Anxious all hours of the day and night, you are one clock tick away from giving into the frustration. Every single decision is momentous, no matter how insignificant they really are. What to eat for dinner? What brand of shampoo? A,B,C,or D? Should you call the parents or should you call in sick? Will she be voted off the show or not? Why can’t you sleep? Should you take sleeping pills? Aren’t they addictive? Do you smoke too much? Do you drink too much? Did you really buy those pills from that one dealer-guy at that party the other weekend? Where are they? You can’t find them. Did you really take them? Did you really say those things to that one colleague? Will you be fired? Why haven’t you had a date in months? Are you getting fat? Are you a couple blinks away from getting eye cancer from staring at screens all day?
Tune it out. You walk the streets back to the apartment. You can’t face the smoldering body heat, the crammed spaces of a subway train. You’ll take the long walk. You tell yourself that you could use a long walk. You hit every green light, forcing you to wait until it’s safe to cross the street.

Above you hear the rumble of thunder. It’s one of those days, weeks, months, years…

You keep your gaze trained to the dirty sidewalk.

There is nothing to see that you haven’t already seen. You don’t hate the city. It’s more like you’ve never enjoyed living anywhere. You have no “home” and yet you don’t believe there is a town, a city, that’ll fit your personality.

Ill-fitting, you occasionally glance around at the street signs, making sure you’re going the right direction.

When it starts to drizzle, you duck into the nearest store.

It’s one of those videogame stores. What’s with videogame stores and smelling like a mixture of potato chips, grease, and body odor? You avoid eye contact with the store clerks, walking the aisles, looking at the overwhelming wall of game cases, cover art all trying to grab your attention.

You almost didn’t go with a game because there were so many to choose and yet none of them stood out. You looked up and down the aisle but really –

January 3, 2015 1 comment