GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007 Read online

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  Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing

  www.gudmagazine.com

  Copyright ©2007 by GUD Magazine on behalf of contributors

  First published in 2007, 2007

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  Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine

  Instigator: Sue Miller

  Editors: Julia Bernd / Sal Coraccio / Kaolin Fire / Sue Miller

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  Layout: Sue Miller

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  Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine (ISSN 1932-8222) is published twice yearly by Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing, PO Box 1537, Laconia, NH, 03247 USA. Subscription rate is USD $18 per 2 issues; USD $10 per individual copy; USD $3.50 for electronic copy (PDF). This publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews without express written consent of the publisher. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007. Visit us on the web at gudmagazine.com. Contact GUD: [email protected]. Thank you.

  Cover art: An Bradan Feasa (The Salmon of Knowledge) by Oisin Mac Suibhne

  CONTENTS

  Electroencephalography by Darby Larson

  Charging the Inspiration by Cameron Gray

  Arrow by Nadine Darling

  Drive Thru by Kenneth Darling

  Hello Goodbye by Lavie Tidhar

  Aliens by Jordan E. Rosenfeld

  Not in the Yellow Pages by Lesley C. Weston

  The Intrigue of Being Watched by Rusty Barnes

  really nice on drugs by Timothy Gager

  Your personal ground zero (to franz wright) by Timothy Gager

  Moving Boxes by Timothy Gager

  Spring by Magali Cadieux

  Natural History by Gini Hamilton

  Unzipped by Steven J. Dines

  The Trial by Christopher S. Cosco

  Hunting Season by Rusty Barnes

  Growth by Caleb Morgan

  Max Velocity by Leslie Claire Walker

  The Illiterate Sky by David Lenson

  The Banker Calls for Three Martinis and a Pipe by Cami Park

  Sisyphus of the Staircase by Cami Park

  Steps to Darkened Ends by Ali Al Saeed

  In the Dark by Sean Melican

  The Prophet: two figures by Ilona Taube

  Fear Not Heaven's Fire by Jaine Fenn

  Experiment: Love by Brian Conn

  Anything by Matt Bell

  Women of the Doll by Nisi Shawl

  The Gods of Houston by Rebekah Frumkin

  A Doorbell by Kenneth L Clark

  In Defense of the Boll Weevil by Kenneth L Clark

  Catholic Girls by Kenneth L Clark

  Item 27 by Mike Procter

  Mad Dogs—nonfiction by Christian A. Dumais

  Jimmy's Luck by Tammy R. Kitchen

  Cover Art: An Bradán Feasa—(The Salmon of Knowledge). by Oisín Mac Suibhne

  * * * *

  Electroencephalography by Darby Larson

  PART ONE

  On a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of summer, on Seventh Street just outside his house, as he was walking home from the grocery store, he almost tripped over a cardboard box full of nuts and bolts and large metal springs. He set his groceries down and inspected the contents. Each spring was about a foot long, six inches in diameter, sturdy. The nuts and bolts were the size of fingers with rings.

  At that moment, Dean decided he would build a robot, a human-sized robot that would perform tasks like loading and unloading the dishwasher and dragging the garbage cans out to the street the night before trash day. He only needed to acquire energy converters and metal skin. He set the box in his garage, because in his garage, he decided, was where the robot would be built.

  The effort involved would be considerable, but the reward exquisite. He wouldn't lift a finger for the rest of his life.

  * * * *

  Dean's house was one of only three along Seventh Street. His father owned all three houses, suburban replicas of each other painted slightly different shades of gray, and lived in the house next to Dean's. Across the street was a field of weeds, home to a family of moles. Seth, Dean's brother, lived in the third house with his wife Misty and six-year-old daughter Michelle.

  Dean regarded Seth as an idiot who would rather spend his time laboring than stopping to think about what he could be doing so as to not have to labor so much.

  Seth was a welder by profession and ran a small auto-body and welding shop from his garage. Dean had no profession and lived off an inheritance entrusted to him and Seth two years ago when their mother had died of heart failure.

  The day after Dean found the box of parts, he went next door to his brother's house and made a deal with Seth to deliver several mangled pieces of sheet metal, taken mostly from wrecked Cadillacs, to his house the following day, in exchange for his fixing his brother's broken computer.

  * * * *

  The morning after he fixed Seth's computer, Dean walked outside to find a large pile of scrap metal on his driveway. A Post-It note was attached to the pile. It read:

  thank you Dean for fixing my computer, it works great, you are truly a genius, here's the metal you wanted, I gave you a little extra, love your grateful brother, Seth

  Dean needed the metal to be inside his garage because inside his garage was where the robot was going to be built, not out on the driveway. Did Seth think he was going to build a robot out on the driveway for all the world to see?

  * * * *

  Neal, their father, a skinny man with long silver hair, was a genius like himself, and so it was his father who Dean approached about energy converters.

  Dean entered his father's house and found him sitting in the living room in his favorite leather recliner, reading a newspaper.

  "Dad, I'm looking for some kind of converter that will produce electroencephalographic current."

  "Check the basement."

  * * * *

  Dean carried a cardboard box full of energy converters from his father's basement to his garage and set it down next to the other cardboard box full of nuts and bolts and springs. Each converter was a small metallic box about the size of a Rubik's Cube, with a tiny spindle for winding it up and several wires protruding from two opposite ends.

  The scrap metal was still out on the driveway. He walked out and picked up a small piece of metal, brought it into his garage, and placed it next to the two boxes. He looked back out at the pile of metal. At that moment, he began to get a real sense of the amount of physical effort he would have to exhaust in order to build the robot. The design and schematics were in his head, no problem, but the task itself would require the use of welding tools, a hammer, wrenches, a soldering iron, forearm muscles.

  He sat down at the desk he kept in his garage, rested his head on the wood surface next to his computer, and fell asleep.

  * * * *

  Neal and Seth were in his garage when he awoke. They were standing over the two cardboard boxes, looking down at them. He asked them what they were doing. They said they had come to ask for a favor: would he mind watching Seth's daughter Michelle tomorrow while the two of them went to the city to salvage some metal from a recent automobile accident
.

  "Where will Misty be?” Dean asked. Getting her hair done. He thought quickly, then said that he would watch Michelle in exchange for them building his robot for him. He would draw up the specs, his father would have no trouble interpreting them, and Seth could weld and hammer.

  "I'm in. Sounds fun,” his brother said.

  "What do you need a robot for?” his father said.

  Dean decided he would baby-sit his niece at his father's house next door because there was more food there and Michelle, who already weighed a hundred and ten pounds, ate more than the average six-year-old. They also agreed that Dean would watch her for two days, the first day while Seth and Neal went to the city and the second day while they built his robot.

  * * * *

  PART TWO

  On Dean's first day of baby-sitting Michelle, he let her play in the back yard of his father's house while he read a newspaper in his father's leather recliner, a piece about how corporate greed was destroying America, about how greed was one of the most primal sins.

  Michelle came into the house, leaving muddy footprints all over the kitchen floor, then took a pint of strawberry ice cream from the freezer.

  In the bathroom, Dean ran the bath water, took her clothes off, and set her in the tub while she ate ice cream with a large metal spoon. He went back to the living room and finished reading while she took a bath.

  Hours later, he awoke on his father's couch to silence, sat up, and went to the bathroom to check on Michelle.

  She was floating face-down in the tub, the empty ice cream pint bobbing next to her head. He took her wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing.

  Her heavy, soaking body dripped as he pulled her from the tub and carried her to the basement, where he laid her on her back on his father's old table saw. Sawdust and spilt motor oil covered the basement floor. Above a dusty green sofa, a few energy converters sat on a shelf next to some ancient textbooks. A large iron safe about the size of a miniature refrigerator, with a combination lock and four little iron legs, stood next to the table saw.

  Dean quickly took a couple of energy converters from the shelf, set them next to Michelle's head, picked up his father's electric drill, and switched it on.

  He dug the spinning drill bit into her head a few inches above her left ear, pulled it out, then dug into her head again an inch above the first hole.

  Using a soldering iron—though not entirely sure how well solder would attach to anything biological—he began to connect the wires from an energy converter to Michelle's neurons, now exposed through the holes in her head. The solder seemed to attach okay.

  He made an incorrect connection and, with frustration, disconnected the entire converter. Without thinking, he set it down, wires tipped with hot solder, atop the iron safe next to the table saw. The safe suddenly came to life, turned itself around on its four stubby legs, and waddled away, up the stairs and out of sight. Dean watched it curiously, then returned to Michelle's head and began connecting a new converter to her neurons.

  Every electroencephalographic energy converter is pre-wound, lasts a few hours, and then needs to be wound again. The safe would wind down eventually. So would Michelle.

  Dean took off his watch—a wind-up watch—a gift from his deceased mother, and carefully disassembled it. He rigged the gears of the watch to the small spindle that stuck out of the converter, then reassembled the watch.

  As he made the last connection of converter wire to the final neuron, Michelle opened her eyes.

  He mounted the energy converter to the outside of her head and let her sit up. She hopped off the table and ran back up the stairs. Dean fell onto his father's dusty old green sofa and, stricken with exhaustion, fell immediately asleep.

  * * * *

  Later that evening, when Seth came by to pick Michelle up, he asked about the large metal box attached to the side of her head.

  "It's nothing,” Dean said. “Just a little experiment, you wouldn't understand, and if you wouldn't mind winding up the watch attached to the box before she goes to sleep tonight, I'd appreciate it."

  * * * *

  On his second day of baby-sitting Michelle, Dean brought her back to his house and they sat in the corner of the garage while Neal and Seth built his robot.

  The noise in the garage, heavy steel against heavy steel, soon became unbearable, so he moved to the front lawn, sat down against a tree, and watched Michelle run in circles around the pile of scrap metal still in his driveway. He drifted in and out of sleep. At one point, his niece stopped running, instinctively picked up a cockroach that had scurried out from under the pile, shoved it in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

  * * * *

  It was dark when Dean awoke, staring up into the tree he had fallen asleep against. He stood, stretched, and walked past the diminished pile of scrap metal in his driveway. The mood was quiet; everyone had left. He looked into his garage. His robot stood motionless in the exact center of the floor, staring back at him.

  * * * *

  PART THREE

  When Neal's wife Angel had died of heart failure two years ago, a few weeks after the funeral, he had dug up her remains in a fury of mourning and brought her back to his house in the middle of the night. He had cut off her head, attached an electroencephalographic energy converter to her brain, attached her head to the top of an old mahogany grandfather clock, and attached the spindle of the converter to the pendulum of the clock. Since then, she had remained attached to the clock against the wall in their bedroom, unbeknownst to the rest of the family.

  Early on, she was content, talking with him about current events and laughing at his jokes, but over time she grew agitated, stopped responding to him, cried violently for no reason, tried to bite his finger whenever it was in range, screamed at the sight of him.

  He stopped winding her up as often as before and began to relish the time she was left unwound.

  Worn out from helping Seth build Dean's silly robot, he stood in front of her now, debating whether to wind her up a little. It had been at least a few months since she had last been ticking. The last time, he had tried to gag her mouth with a sock so she wouldn't scream, but she had managed to spit it out.

  He went to his dresser and extracted a sock, came back, and stuffed it in her mouth much more tightly than last time. He turned the wind-up key near the torso of the clock a few notches. The pendulum rocked and her head, which had been resting to one side, slowly lifted.

  She made eye contact with him and tried to scream, but the sock did its job.

  Even though there was no conversation, he found comfort in just seeing her eyes open again, her head full of motion.

  Then a noise came from the living room, and he left to investigate.

  * * * *

  As soon as Neal appeared from the hallway, Dean's robot, standing in his living room, ran toward him, its shiny metal hands open and aimed at his chest.

  * * * *

  While Neal was unconscious, his old iron combination safe, the one he had kept in the basement, walked toward him, opened its door, sucked the wedding ring from his finger, then closed its door and walked away.

  * * * *

  When Neal awoke, he looked down at his chest and saw an energy converter attached to his heart.

  The converter had been modified. There was a hole where the spindle ought to be. He stood up and looked around.

  Back in the bedroom, Angel had spit out the sock and was looking furious, breathing heavily through her nose. Neal took the wind-up key from the grandfather clock and inserted it into the energy converter attached to his chest, wound it as tight as it would go—which wasn't very far because it was already pre-wound—then inserted the key back into the clock.

  Angel screamed at him and he instantly put his hand next to the pendulum, stopping it from moving. Her head fell to the side. He grabbed a handful of her hair, ripped her head from the top of the grandfather clock, and dropped it on the floor. He lay back on his bed and smiled at the ceiling. He
was having a sudden and overwhelming realization that he was more evolved than any other human. He was a genius, had invented the electroencephalographic energy converter on his own, had invented life, could control life.

  He turned his head and caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Admiring himself, his utter superiority, his shiny silver hair draped across the pillow, he fell peacefully asleep.

  * * * *

  PART FOUR

  Seth lay on his back, sweaty and spent, Misty attached to his arm like a leech, licking the length of the vein bulging from his giant biceps. The wall clock in the living room struck one. Misty's sexiness was dangerous. She relentlessly kept herself in shape, addicted to health.

  Years ago, she had been professionally diagnosed as a nymphomaniac. Seth had thought it funny, that something like that was diagnosable.

  Veins turned her on, she had told him, made her feel like they were animals.

  She kept licking up and down the length of his vein until he asked her to cut it out, get some sleep. She got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

  Seth got out of bed also and walked to the kitchen. There he found the refrigerator wide open and empty, remnants of food and containers strewn about the kitchen floor.

  Michelle was passed out on the couch in the living room. Seth stood silently over her, watching her sleep. He soon realized she wasn't breathing. He held his hand to her nose and felt nothing. He poked her shoulder a few times, said her name, grabbed both shoulders and shook her back and forth.

  She awoke for a moment, then passed out again.

  Seth looked at the metal box attached to her head. He had forgotten to wind the watch on it like Dean had asked him to. It was now stopped.

  He wound it a few times.

  Michelle suddenly came to life, grabbed her father's pinky, and bit into it, down to the bone. Seth pulled his hand away quickly and shouted. Michelle hopped off the couch and ran out the front door.

  "What's wrong?” Misty had come into the living room.

  "Michelle bit me."

  "Where is she?"

  "I don't know."

  "What happened to the kitchen?"