The Apocalypse Reader Read online

  THE

  APOCALYPSE READER

  THE

  APOCALYPSE

  READER

  EDITED BY JUSTIN TAYLOR

  Thunder's Mouth Press I New York

  THE APOCALYPSE READER

  Compilation and introduction copyright © 2007 by Justin Taylor

  Published by

  Thunder's Mouth Press

  An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  245 West 17th Street, 11th Floor

  New York, NY 10011

  First printing, June 2007

  Pages 316-18 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56025-959-6

  ISBN-10: 1-56025-959-0

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Book design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth &Associates, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  For my parents, who read to me

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION | Justin Taylor

  NYARLATHOTEP | H. P. Lovecraft

  THE APOCALYPSE COMMENTARY OF BOB PAISNER | Rick Moody

  SWEETHEARTS | Stacey Levine

  FRAISE. MENTHE. ET POIVRE 1978 | Jared Hohl

  WHAT IS IT WHEN GOD SPEAKS? | Diane Williams

  KRAFTMARK | Matthew Derby

  THE HOOK | Shelley Jackson

  SIXTEEN SMALL APOCALYPSES | Lucy Corin

  THE LAST MAN | Adam Nemett

  EARTH'S HOLOCAUST | Nathaniel Hawthorne

  I ALWAYS GO TO PARTICULAR PLACES | Gary Lutz and Deb Olin Unferth

  AN ACCOUNTING | Brian Evenson

  SQUARE OF THE SUN | Robert Bradley

  THE END | Josip Novakovich

  SOME APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM OF THE SHORTAGE OF TIME | Ursula K. LeGuin

  THINK WARM THOUGHTS | Allison Whittenberg

  THE ASH GRAY PROCLAMATION | Dennis Cooper

  POLE SHIFT | Justin Taylor

  MISS KANSAS ON JUDGMENT DAY | Kelly Link

  THE STAR | H. G. Wells

  WHEN WE WENT TO SEE THE END OF THE WORLD by Dawnie Morningside, age 11 ¼ | Neil Gaiman

  I AM 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT I AM' AND YOU ARE AFRAID OF ME AND SO AM | Tao Lin

  THE ESCAPE―A TALE OF 1755 | Grace Aguilar

  SO WE ARE VERY CONCERNED | Elliott David

  GIGANTIC | Steve Aylett

  THE END OF THE FUTURE | Colette Phair

  CROSSING INTO CAMBODIA | Michael Moorcock

  '80s LILIES | Terese Svoboda

  THESE ZOMBIES ARE NOT A METAPHOR | Jeff Goldberg

  THE RAPID ADVANCE OF SORROW | Theodora Goss

  THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION | Edgar Allan Poe

  APOCACALYPSE: A DIPTYCH | Joyce Carol Oates

  AFTER ALL | Carol Emshwiller

  SAVE ME FROM THE PIOUS AND THE VENGEFUL | Lynne Tillman

  CONTRIBUTORS

  PERMISSIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS, AND IN some cases absolutely bottomless gratitude, are due to the following individuals and institutions, whose various efforts on my behalf have included, but are in no way limited to: personal, professional, and material support; extreme love, hot coffee, relentless faith, honest criticism, inexhaustible patience, home-cooked meals, and unsurpassed bartending.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to:

  All the contributors to this volume;

  Action Books, Alt.Coffee, Broadview Press, Eldritchpress.org, The Graduate Writing Program at The New School, The Hungarian Pastry Shop;

  Joshua Bilmes, Carl Bromley, Jill Ciment, Julia Cohen, Michael Cohn, Shanna Compton, Dan Fowikes, Michael Galchinsky, David Gates, Andrew & Caryn Goldner, Gavin J. Grant, Dien Huynh, Amy McDaniel, Richard Nash, John Oakes, Amanda Peters, Robert Polito, Ryan Reed, Jennifer Rumberger, Shya Scanlon, Jeremy Schmall, Michael Silverblatt, Tom Steele, Eva Talmadge, Frederic Tuten, Lukas Volger.

  INTRODUCTION

  THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS, TILL ALL THESE THINGS BE FULFILLED.

  -MATTHEW, 24:35

  You HOLD IN your hand thirty-four short stories about the Apocalypse.

  People have been telling me this is an especially timely book, but the fact is that, historically, every single generation has imagined itself uniquely in crisis and fantasized that theirs will be the one that witnesses The End. The twentieth century was unique mostly in that it marked the moment when humanity became capable of bringing Apocalypse upon itself, but even the novelty (if not the menace) of that prospect has long since worn off. If this is a timely book, I think the reason is that the topic is perennially timely. It is also, as Frank Kermode puts it in The Sense of an Ending, "infallibly interesting."

  It's worth pointing out that the word Apocalypse comes from the Greek, and literally means "a revelation" or "an unveiling." It can be used to describe cataclysmic changes of any sort. Revolution, for example, or social upheaval. The American Desegregation movement was Apocalyptic in that its success necessitated the destruction of a certain way of life. (That we're better off without it is not the point.) There are micro-Apocalypses that mark moments in our lives: childhood's end, a relationship's sudden implosion, Death.

  There are no excerpts in this book. Even ostensibly "self-contained" excerpts seem unfulfilling to me, and frankly, I don't like them. I have limited this book's scope exclusively to the short story, the ultimate in "self-contained" literature, that eternally embattled form that writers are constantly told "does not sell" or "has outlived its usefulness" or other nonsense. This anthology is a celebration of the short story's inexhaustible vitality, as well as an in-depth (though certainly not exhaustive) survey of its variety.

  The forms these stories take, the styles they adopt or invent, the concerns they have, the places and positions and eras their writers come from, and the boundaries they push are as varied as the types of Apocalypse they engage. There are funny stories and deeply touching stories; gory ones and heady ones; stories that focus on an individual or a small group and stories that take on (or take down) the whole world; there are a few very long stories and more than a few very short (or "flash" or "short-short") stories; there are "realistic" and "experimental" stories; overtly and implicitly political stories; utterly apolitical stories; stories that could be classified as belonging to this or that genre (New Wave Fabulist, Horror, Satire, etc.); and stories that defy any attempt at classification. Some are the work of best-selling authors or cult favorites, and others are by people I can guarantee you've never heard of. At least one story has been published elsewhere as a poem.

  Each story addresses both of the book's themes in a unique and exciting way, but more than that, each one contains that fundamental, irreducible, something that is indescribable, yet always discernable, in great writing. In short, I picked stories that I love and that I want to share with the world.

  There are brand-new stories by Shelley Jackson, Matthew Derby, and several others; some (such as Gary Lutz and Deb Olin Unferth's collaboration) were written especially for this book. There are classic stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells and H. P. Lovecraft. There are hand-picked favorites by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Rick Moody, and Michael Moorcock; a rare Joyce Carol Oates story
, published years ago in Ontario Review but never before collected; Terese Svoboda's 0. Henry Prize-winning "80s Lilies"; and plenty of surprising, exciting, disturbing stories from authors you know, or only thought you knew, or will be thrilled to discover (Steve Aylett).

  Dennis Cooper's "The Ash Gray Proclamation" pushes his minimalist aesthetics to a radical new level in order to capture and satirize the claustrophobic, reactionary, Apocalyptic atmosphere of post-9/1 I America. More than just extremely provocative, it is extremely important, and I am honored― ecstatic, in fact-to have put this story into a book for the very first time.

  Now let me direct your attention to those people whose obscurity I earlier guaranteed. Be the first one on your block to know about them, because today's underground sensation is tomorrow's #1 hit. You heard it here first; now tell your friends.

  Robert Bradley sent the only unsolicited submission that made the final cut (it also beat out several I had asked for). His contribution, "Square of the Sun," is feisty and unpredictable, with a real mean streak-the kind of story that slaps your face and laughs at you for crying, but still offers to finish you off before it goes to sleep.

  Adam Nemett's "The Last Man" is funny, but not ha-ha funny, unless it's a hushed, nervous giggle. Jeff Goldberg's "These Zombies Are Not a Metaphor," on the other hand, is ha-ha funny, so go ahead and laugh loudly.

  If this book were a baseball team, Jared Hohl's "Fraise, Menthe, et Poivre 1978" would be batting cleanup.

  Elliott David's "So We Are Very Concerned" is deliciously gruesome, and counterpoints the neo-Beckettian agoraphobia of Tao Lin's "i am `i don't know what i am' and you are afraid of me and so am i." These two hypercontemporary short-shorts sandwich Grace Aguilar's "The Escape―A Tale of 1755," the longest story in the book by a good thousand words. Aguilar was a British Jew whose very decision to take up the pen defied the conventions of her day; her work broke new ground in the history of female Jewish self-representation. Her work has been largely unavailable in a nonacademic context for roughly a century. Steeped in the real history of the Spanish Inquisition, from which her parents fled, and the lives of the crypto-Jews, who openly converted to Christianity but maintained their true faith in secret, "The Escape" is probably the most difficult story in this book to get through. First published in 1844, the same year as Hawthorne's "Earth's Holocaust," it is even more heavy-handed than that story when it comes to moralizing and pedantry, but it is absolutely worth putting yourself through, or else it wouldn't be here, so I hope that you will exert the extra effort. If you do, there's a kickass Apocalypse in it for you.

  A word on sequencing: I eschewed obvious and convenient organizing principles like alphabetization or chronology, and went for what felt right. It's the logic of the mix-tape or the Grateful Dead bootleg, and as far as I'm concerned all tracks segue. You, however, are encouraged to hunt and peck, pick and choose, see what suits you, what repels and what draws you back. Thank you for reading our book. Now that we have reached the end of the beginning, we are ready to begin the End.

  -JUSTIN TAYLOR

  Halloween, 2006

  Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York

  THE

  APOCALYPSE READER

  NYARLATHOTEP

  H. P. Lovecraft

  NYARLATHOTEP ... THE CRAWLING CHAOS ... I am the last ... I will tell the audient void... .

  I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a daemoniac alteration in the sequence of the seasons-the autumn heat lingered fearsomely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.

  And it was then that Nyarlathotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old native blood and looked like a Pharaoh. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, yet could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences-of electricity and psychology-and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the dreams of nightmare been such a public problem; now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in the small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky.

  I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city-the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; that what was thrown on a screen in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and that in the sputter of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not.

  It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nyarlathotep; through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on a screen, I saw hooded forms amidst ruins, and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments. And I saw the world battling against blackness; against the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning; struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators, and hair stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about "imposture" and "static electricity," Nyarlathotep drave us all out, down the dizzy stairs into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We sware to one another that the city was exactly the same, and still alive; and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the company over and over again, and laughed at the queer faces we made.

  I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious involuntary formations and seemed to know our destinations though we dared not think of them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the tramways had run. And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon, we could not find the third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn; for as we stalked out on the dark moor, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Trackless, i
nexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plodded dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind, for the black rift in the greenlitten snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished; but my power to linger was slight. As it beckoned by those who had gone before, I half floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable.

  Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monstrous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.

  THE APOCALYPSE COMMENTARY OF BOB PAISNER

  Rick Moody

  INTRODUCTION:

  John Composing on Patmos

  I USE THE K.J., or Authorized Version, where the thees are thees and the thous are thous. Ever since I was a kid I used it, ever since the sixties, ever since St. Luke's Parish in Manchester, N.H. You don't get the same kind of line in the Revised Standard Version. You don't find "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (1:8), with its Elizabethan implications of damnation and immortality. Which is pretty much how Revelation begins.