Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted Read online

  PUBLISHER/EDITOR

  K. Allen Wood

  ASST. EDITOR

  John Boden

  ASST. EDITOR

  Nick Contor

  NONFICTION/SUBMISSIONS

  Mercedes M. Yardley

  SUBMISSIONS

  Sarah Gomes

  DIGITAL LAYOUT/DESIGN

  K. Allen Wood

  COVER DESIGN

  Mikio Murakami

  Established in 2009

  www.shocktotem.com

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the written consent of Shock Totem Publications, LLC.

  The short stories in this publication are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The views expressed in the nonfiction writing herein are solely those of the authors.

  ISSN 1944-110X

  Printed in the United States of America.

  NOTES FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

  Welcome to issue #3!

  I think you’ll like what follows—at least after I blather on a bit. I’ll make it quick. Promise.

  So our third issue. On time! After everything that happened—or to be more accurate, went wrong—between our first and second issues, we put a lot of hard work into getting this one out on time (though let’s hope I don’t eat those words, considering, at the time of this writing, it’s a cold evening in November) and making it bigger and better than before. The latter we achieved—this issue is our biggest yet!—but whether or not it’s better is up to you, the reader, and your particular—and hopefully varied—tastes.

  Because we’ve got variety aplenty.

  How about a new short story from the black-humored Godfather of All Things Right with Horror, John Skipp? I can’t imagine you’ve read anything like this one before. How about a tale from Joseph Morgado—told in second-person! Go on, roll your eyes; it is, after all, the universal response to such a thing (not to mention usually justified). But this one is different. Give it a chance; I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

  Then take a ride with Ed K.

  Stroll down Duval Street.

  Run through the meat forest.

  Seek out ghosts at the old farmhouse.

  This issue is full of fantastic fiction from many of the genre’s up-and-comers: S. Clayton Rhodes, Tim Lieder, Amanda C. Davis, Aaron Polson, and many more. Nonfiction is once again presented by that foxy gal Mercedes M. Yardley.

  We also have interviews with bizarro heavyweight D. Harlan Wilson and Count Lyle, lead singer/guitarist of the brilliant Ghoultown. Both very cool cats.

  And we have some firsts...

  Throughout 2010 we hosted bi-monthly flash-fiction contests. Each was a unique prompt-based contest where participants had just one week to write and turn in their entries. From there, each participant, save a few, read the stories and voted for their top three—and most gave invaluable feedback on each story, ensuring that everyone came away a winner on some level—and the First-Place winners received a prize, such as a novel, anthology, a magazine or two. In November, fellow writer and friend Jeremy Wagner acted as guest judge. He went through the winning stories and picked an overall winner: A fine little tale from Steven “Seven” Pirie, which can be found in this issue.

  Also in this issue, the first installment of Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, a new collaborative series between our very own John Boden and UK-based—and tattoo-covered—writer Simon Marshall-Jones. Each forthcoming installment will focus on bands and musicians and music genres—even individual songs—that call upon the darker side of subject matter. It should be a good ride.

  And I think that’ll do it.

  As always, Dear Readers, my staff and I wholeheartedly appreciate your continued support of Shock Totem and its authors.

  Dig in and enjoy!

  K. Allen Wood

  November 15, 2010

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Notes from the Editor’s Desk

  Victim of Changes

  An Editorial

  by K. Allen Wood

  Bop Kabala and Communist Jazz

  by Tim Lieder

  The Meat Forest

  by John Haggerty

  Tying Notes to Bricks

  A Conversation with D. Harlan Wilson

  by John Boden

  Drift

  by Amanda C. Davis

  Worm Central Tonite!

  by John Skipp

  Fifth Voyage

  by WC Roberts

  Strange Goods and Other Oddities

  Voracious Black

  Narrative Nonfiction

  by Mercedes M. Yardley

  Day Job

  by Merrilee Faber

  A Birth in the Year of the Miracle Plague

  by Jeremy Kelly

  The Outlaw Fringe

  A Conversation with Count Lyle

  by K. Allen Wood

  Wanting It

  by Aaron Polson

  Eye, You

  by Joseph Morgado

  Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, Part 1

  by John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones

  Stitched

  by Christopher Green

  Ruth Across the Sea

  2010 Flash Fiction Contest Winner

  by Steven Pirie

  Duval Street

  by Mekenzie Larsen

  Mr. Many Faces

  by S. Clayton Rhodes

  Howling Through the Keyhole

  VICTIM OF CHANGES

  An Editorial

  by K. Allen Wood

  If you can’t change something, then change the way you think about it.

  I learned that axiom early in life, as a young boy powerless against a dark tide that swept away everything that I held dear. It wasn’t until I was an adult, however, that I truly understood the verity of that simple statement.

  But this editorial isn’t about my stunted childhood or things quite so dramatic. Precisely the opposite, in fact. It’s about growing and shifting perspective and being open to change, especially that which cannot be stopped.

  To be more precise, this is about electronic publishing.

  Ten years ago, give or take, I righteously refused to accept the so-called digital revolution that was battering the foundation of the music industry. It was that dreaded tide again, creeping inexorably closer; but this time I knew its intent, and I stood defiant against it. As a longtime musician and music fan with a collection that rivals that of an indie record shop, I simply couldn’t entertain the thought of owning anything that I couldn’t touch. It’s a tragic notion: You can have it, but you can’t touch it.

  So I planted my feet firm, chose the side of the righteous, and declared the existence of digital music to be a fad. Just another form of media with a little buzz behind it to make people stop and listen for a moment, but ultimately destined for the Halls of Failure, right alongside the MiniDisc, the LaserDisc, and Corey Feldman.

  Foot, meet mouth. Nom nom nom.

  Despite my protestations, along came sites like MySpace and MP3.com, which offered bands and musicians a free platform to release the
ir music—digitally. (Yes, I realize music on CDs is in fact digital, but I’m obviously talking about music without the physical counterpart.) Eventually, these sites incorporated ways for bands to offer their songs or albums as pay-per-download. You could buy one song, two songs, five songs, the whole album. But you’d never get a physical copy.

  The good news (from a purely selfish fan standpoint) was that, at the time, this didn’t work too well for bands. I saw it as a sign of failure, indication that the nuisance that was the digital-media craze was dying its unavoidable death, that things would return to the way they had been.

  But the good news was also the bad news. So-called fans had quickly learned that digital media could be obtained for free, if one knew where to look. That, of course, was an act as simple as opening your eyes. The craze did not go away, as I had expected and hoped; instead it spread far and wide, across the globe, carried by the fart winds of Al Gore’s damnable Internet.

  I was not pleased.

  Soon after, the once indomitable walls of the music industry began to crumble, and with it, my defiant resolve.

  Cut to today, and the music industry is nothing like it was just a few years ago, let alone ten or fifteen. Countless bands have taken control of their own music—and destiny—relying on new technology to get their art into the “hands” of listeners, all without the help of the big bad music industry. Not always a good thing, of course, because quite often—this being both sad and ironic—these bands charge more money than any record label would ever have charged, and for a lesser product, usually in the form of a doomed-to-not-play-in-three-years CDR in a cheap cardboard sleeve.

  But that's a rant for yesterday. The point is, things changed right before my obstinate stance. I could take my bitter cookie and go home, nibble on it in a dark corner and weep for the return of the good old days, or I could take a deep breath, clear my head, and approach it from a different angle.

  Today, I own a Creative Zen 30GB MP3 player—which holds roughly 7,000 songs—and I love it. I spent over a year slowly ripping the nearly 8,000 CDs in my collection (yes, I know that’s ridiculous) to a 1TB external hard drive. I have enough music for around 250 days of 24/7 playback—and I love it! I've even bought numerous digital releases, but mostly those with digital-only availability, or as in some cases, a bonus track otherwise only available on the expensive import. I don't love that so much, but if that's the only way to get it, I'm content to accept it. Hell, I installed iTunes!

  The music industry has changed, and so have I. Rather, I look at the changes that have gone on within the music industry from a different, clearer perspective.

  Which brings me, at long last, to the publishing industry. It's also changing, as everyone knows. What the music industry began to go through more than a decade ago, the publishing industry is going through now. I'd love to rail against the tide of technology and rant about e-books and e-readers, but I know it's pointless. I can't stop it. Neither can you.

  The good thing is that books, like CDs—and even the vinyl record, which has seen a steady growth in popularity among the younger generations over the last decade—will not disappear in our lifetime, despite some literary prophets predicting, by way of divine baloney, its sooner-than-later demise.

  Though I long for the days when the physical medium reigned supreme, and will always opt for real, tangible books from my favorite authors, I've embraced the digital side of publishing. No fuss. No protest. Nada from me. Because like the MP3 wasn’t the future of music, I know the e-book isn’t the future of publishing (not anytime soon, anyway). The e-book will, however, be a big part of it—and hopefully, for the sake of the industry and its artists, not as easy to “steal” as music files.

  Either way, I’m on board.

  This past October, Dean Koontz released a digital-only novella called Darkness Under the Sun, a sort of prequel to his novel What the Night Knows—which, at the time, hadn’t yet been released. I was excited. Despite Koontz being my favorite author, I hadn't giddily anticipated a new Koontz release for a long long time. Not because I like him any less; I’ve simply become accustomed to his clockworklike publishing schedule. Just like I know there will be a new Terry Brooks novel every fall. It’s the nature of the business for novelists, but when things get predictable it tends to rob the reader of that exciting sense of anticipation and mystery.

  Darkness Under the Sun, however, was a departure for Koontz; it was new territory for him, therefore new territory for me as well. And I was excited.

  I now own a Kindle. And guess what? Yep. I love it. Since it arrived, I've downloaded and read Ur, a novella by Stephen King, written exclusively for the Kindle and which uses a pink Kindle as the main plot device. I’ve also downloaded the complete works—novels, essays, short stories, poems—from Poe and Lovecraft, both totaling less than five dollars. I've downloaded—legally—twenty or so classics for free; some of my childhood favorites, like The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, and The Empty House, by Algernon Blackwood. I have a few other freebies on there as well, plus some small-press releases, like the three most recent issues of Apex Magazine. All housed in a tiny-little gadget, with room for thousands more.

  Technology is both scary and amazing.

  Scary because it can so quickly and effectively change entire industries, thus lives, as we’ve seen with music and are seeing now with publishing, and amazing for those very same reasons.

  Take Draculas, for instance, a collaborative Kindle-exclusive novel written by J.A. Konrath, F. Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch and Jeff Strand. I bought it for $2.99. Not a bad price for an e-book. But in addition to the novel, there are perks you will never find in a print edition: An interview with all four authors where they discuss the writing of Draculas; scrapped scenes and two alternate endings; “Serial,” a short story written by Crouch and Kilborn; “Cub Scout Gore Feast,” a short story written by Kilborn and Strand; and yet another short story, “A Sound of Blunder,” written by Kilborn and Wilson. Then there are author biographies, bibliographies, excerpts from the authors’ other works, and a collection of over seven hundred e-mails which gives the reader—or aspiring writer—an extensive and informative behind-the-scenes look at the writing process of Draculas.

  For $2.99.

  Will all e-books give the reader this much? Probably not. But it’s possible. Of course, it’s possible with print books as well, but hardly practical. That’s the key difference. E-books have opened the door to a realm of possibilities previously unheard of—or at least unthinkable.

  Stephen King and Dean Koontz are already testing the waters with exclusive material, and the aforementioned Draculas showcases in a big way just a tiny fraction of what’s possible—and inevitable—in the future. In time, authors will utilize this technology and others to change the way stories are told: There will be audio and interactive video; there will be tie-in stories, like Koontz's novella; there will be interactive tales that put the reader right into the story, making them an active participant in how it all plays out. The possibilities are endless, and I foresee great things to come.

  Many of you who read this will shake your head, declare me a loony, and insist you’ll never touch an e-reader or read an e-book. Some of you will stay true to that sentiment.

  But I find this to be an exciting time, as a writer and a reader, and I’ve embraced it wholeheartedly.

  Yes, it’s a fact—e-readers don't look or feel or smell like real books, but remember this simple truth: The story is what matters most, not the manner in which it is delivered.

  At least, it should be.

  BOP KABALA AND COMMUNIST JAZZ

  by Tim Lieder

  I met Ed K. in circumstances of glorious abandon. I was in a supermarket outside Hibbing, smoking Camels. I asked him for change and he blessed me with Marxist doggerel. I thought he was Chinese, but he said he was Korean. The next time I saw him, he was playing a tenor saxophone in a church near Brainard. He squeaked and squawked. His rhythm was spo
tty. His tone was weak. Ed K. was a convert to the road, to the life, to the random eventuality.

  I’d see him many times afterwards, always in extreme unexpected places. I’d go to a Russian tea room with a girl that I couldn’t stand. Ed K. would be at the next table playing chess. I’d find myself at an after-hours party in a bar catering to fraternities and Ed K. would be hitting on the blond waitress with green streaks in her hair. I was once in Chaska selling hot dogs from a push cart and Ed K. came up and stole one. He even dated my cousin. My old college roommates loved him; he had been their main supplier.

  Ed K. smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much coffee. He was tall for a Korean. I think. When he wore leather, he owned it. When he wore a suit, it wrinkled around his arms; made him look cheap. There were weeks when he’d push the macrobiotic vegan diet. Other times he’d pull the mandatory 28 days. He was Ed K., the musician, the poet, the prophet, the Communist, the seeker, the drug addict, and the preacher.

  His preaching ultimately brought the trouble. After I’d known him for a year, I was driving him to preaching gigs in Stacy, Sheboygan and Nimrod. I felt obligated because I was in his car outside Stevens Point, Wisconsin, when he wrapped it around a flag pole. Long story, and you don’t want to hear it, but I was in the back seat fighting and fucking Virginia. She’s married now. I hear she’s happy. I can’t say if he crashed it when we were fucking or fighting. Probably the former because I bit Virginia’s tongue.

  After he lost his license, it didn’t take much for him to convince me that sin atonement was predicated on serving Ed K. I didn’t mind. Truth is, I was curious. I didn’t even know about his preaching before I became his driver. He never told us about his Jesus life when he was rambling fantastic on Aleister Crowley and Karl Marx.