Shock Totem 5: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  What are your thoughts on some of the negativity that seems to try to separate the field?

  JK: Egomaniacs just waste a lot of your time, not to mention their own.

  I think you’ll find a fair share of them in all the arts no matter how good they are at what they do. Picasso certainly wasn’t very nice to women. Ike Turner used to beat up on Tina regularly. The same with competitiveness—it’s a waste of time and energy.

  I think of the story about Jerry Lee Lewis opening for Chuck Berry one night and at the end of his set, dousing the piano with lighter fluid and saying, “Follow that, nigger!” I’m not in competition with Stephen King or Graham Joyce or T.M. Wright or any of the young folks coming up. They’re colleagues. And I celebrate their successes. We need more great writers, not more great egos.

  JB: Great point! One of the sadder things happening within the genre is the evaporation of the magazines. So many have closed up and blown away, and there doesn’t seem to be many coming along to take their place. What would you like to see happen in terms of the small press? What could breathe a little life into the field? Do we need more magazines, people taking the time to read and support the ones that are out there, in addition to one another?

  To that matter, do you believe the argument that the genre is in any real danger to begin with? I sometimes think it’s like the hobo with the “The End Is Near” placard, you know?

  JK: I’m of the hobo theory myself. People have been telling me the end is near since I started in this business. Writing is always a precarious enterprise, no matter what you write. As long as there are really good writers working in the genre, it’s going to survive and even thrive. And there are plenty of them, with new kids being attracted to it all the time.

  The only real danger is from publishers, who tend to want to pile on the bandwagon every time they sense a new “trend.” That happened in the eighties, when you have thirty Exorcist clones and forty V.C. Andrews clones cluttering the bookshelves. And publishers are like paparazzi. They climb all over one another looking for the next big thing and then dump it as soon as the novelty wears off. As to the magazines, it’s a bitch to make them last, I know. But I can say without reservation that Shock Totem has a shot at it once word gets around. It’s a real class act, filled with real honest-to-god writers. So I wish you guys well.

  JB: Thanks for the praise!

  With the successful transition of your work to the film medium, I wanted to ask, which is more fun for you? Do you enjoy the movie aspect more or the writing? I’m sure each have their drawbacks and perks, and I imagine it is nice to break things up once in a while.

  JK: It is nice to break things up, you’re right. Short-story writing and nonfiction are a lot of fun, too. I prefer novels because while I’m writing one, I know where I’m going to go each day and it’s just a matter of getting there. There’s a continuity of days. Writing a film or novella takes less than half that time. And short fiction’s basically a one-or-two-day walk in the park on a sunny afternoon.

  I gotta say, though, it’s great fun to see your story turn into a film, especially a really good film like The Woman.

  JB: If you weren’t a writer, what is one thing you would absolutely love to do, something that would surprise or shock your fans? Like open a roadside diner or maybe a cactus nursery in New Mexico.

  JK: That would be either archeology or paleontology. Digging in the dirt.

  JB: I totally wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a kid! Odd. Have you ever been on a dig or anything like that? Are you a history buff?

  JK: Yes, way back when. I went to upstate New York once with Niles Eldritch, one of the curators of the American Natural History Museum to dig for trilobites. It was a good time.

  JB: Let me shift gears here a bit. We at Shock Totem love our music. How important is music to your work? I picture you as a fairly eclectic man, in regards to musical tastes. Tell us who or what you dig...if you please, as well as how it may or may not factor in to your creative process of writing.

  JK: I can’t listen to music or anything for that matter when I write. I need to hear the music of the words in my head, their rhythms, the vowel sounds and the consonants and the patterns and refrains. I could easily write stone cold deaf.

  Who and what do I like? Well, I was raised on show tunes and then raised myself the rest of the way on Elvis and 50s rock ‘n’ roll. I still need to hear The King and do-wop and the Wall of Sound every now and then, and Sondheim always still moves and delights me.

  But I’m an old hippie, so my favorites are mostly of that era, though punk and modern guys like Nick Cave are in there, too. I like a good lyric—Tom Waits and Randy Newman immediately come to mind on that score. And I’m big on Lady Gaga.

  JB: Somehow I had already pegged you as a Tom Waits fan...and I cannot argue with any of those artists you mentioned. I’m not familiar with Lady Gaga, aside from what I see in the press, which I don’t really read. I’m not much of a fan of pop music, especially the modern stuff. I am usually impressed when musicians foray into literary pursuits...Nick Cave’s novels are great. Swans frontman, Michael Gira, put out a killer collection of short fiction and poems. I cannot for the life me understand why Waits never gave us a novel—it would have to rock.

  Have you ever aspired to any musical pursuits? I guess what I’m getting at is, a lot of artists seem to be “schizophrenic” in their talents...painters, writers, musicians.

  JK: Once upon a time I was a singer. Get me drunk enough and I’ll prove it. Tried to write music a few times, with results that made me respect the guy who wrote “Purple People Eater.”

  JB: I know you’re a very well-read fellow, and I love checking in to your messageboard to see what you’re currently reading. You’ve mentioned so many great things which I have then checked out, or simply made me smile by naming something I have been a fan of for some time (Portnoy’s Complaint and The Painted Bird, for instance). How many books do you read typically and what genres are you most fond of? What are your thoughts on the whole e-books vs. dead-tree books debate?

  JK: I keep a list of all the books I read so that’s an easy one. Over the past few years I’ve averaged one-and-a-half to two books a week. When I wasn’t writing full-time it was more. But I read all over the place. So-called “literary” fiction to suspense and police procedurals to comedies to nonfiction and biography, even the occasional play or poetry. Actually I don’t read that much horror. Only if I know the writer’s work well or it’s recommended to me by someone who does and whose taste I respect.

  Seems to me the jury’s still out on e-books and their overall impact. But I suspect they’ll find their niche audience and that books will, too. I see no reason they shouldn’t live side-by-side, at least until we run out of trees. I’m going to Switzerland for a week in a couple of months. I’ll probably buy an e-reader for the flight there and back rather than lug three or four pounds of books along. But when I come home, I’ll want to smell the paper.

  JB: How daunting a task is that reading list to keep up with? When I was about 12, I bought King’s Danse Macabre and it had this appendix of “All the books I feel are important to the Horror Genre,” which I used as a literal checklist...and many of them were not horror, per se. Who or what are a few authors or works you feel are important yet sadly overlooked in the classic department or that should be required reading?

  JK: I just enter a book onto my list as soon as I’m finished reading it. That way I don’t re-buy the damn thing every time they put a new cover on it.

  Required reading should include T.C. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, Pete Dexter, Stewart O’Nan, David Mitchell, Philip Roth, Larry Brown, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Jim Harrison, Carl Hiaasen, Donald Westlake, Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver—good grief! There are so many more!

  JB: What are some books that have knocked your socks off in the last year or so?

  JK: I’ve read a lot of fine stuff this year but the ones that really got und
er my skin were Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theatre, David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, Sara Langan’s Audrey’s Door, Jhumpa Laihiri’s The Namesake and The Interpreter of Maladies, Joyce Carol Oates’ You Must Remember This, Lee Thomas’ The German, T.C. Boyle’s The Women and The Road to Wellville, and all four issues of Shock Totem Magazine.

  JB: I’ve read The Road to Wellville and the Langan book...actually a few of hers. Fantastic stuff, she’s a great author.

  That’s really all I have in the manner of questions. I’d like to thank you again for taking the time for this and the kind words you’ve said on our behalf. Take care of yourself. See you soon!

  JK: Thanks.

  HIDE-AND-SEEK

  by F.J. Bergmann

  I have traveled this country

  more miles than I can count,

  sometimes running, sometimes

  seeking. What I find doesn’t last.

  I love the short hot nights of summer,

  when heartbeats quicken, and life

  compresses to brief spurts before

  vanishing into darkness.

  Hitchhiking is easiest. They always

  listen to my stories—which never end

  like the ones they have heard—and long

  after dark turn onto a dirt road, almost

  overgrown, ending in forest.

  A brief struggle, quick thrusting

  movements, spreading wetness.

  By sunrise, the whispered instructions

  have become nearly inaudible.

  Winter finds me in a failing diner,

  in nondescript clothes no one will ever

  remember. A kind waitress offers

  coffee, stale pie, her wasted life.

  Everyone has impulses they regret.

  All roads lead toward the horizon,

  somewhere I haven’t been yet.

  F.J. Bergmann frequents Wisconsin and www.fibitz.com, functioning (so to speak) as editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association (www.sfpoetry.com), and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (www.mobiusmagazine.com). Her poetry, science fiction, and what falls between those worlds has appeared in Apex Magazine, Brain Harvest, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and regular literary journals that should have known better. A fourth chapbook, Out of the Black Forest, will be published by Centennial Press in the summer of 2012.

  ABOMINATIONS

  EYES OF A STRANGER

  by Nick Contor

  Her name was Ruth.

  The first things I noticed were her eyes. They were a striking shade of green, and wide. She loved to glob on mascara, but I thought they were nicer when she didn’t. They were oftentimes haunted; by what, I didn’t know for sure.

  Ruth told us things gradually. I had read her file, of course, but the stories filled the gaps, little pieces of a larger puzzle. The picture was far from complete, but over the course of a few weeks, I was getting an idea of the outline.

  There were alcoholic parents, and a younger sister for whom she felt a responsibility. Someone has to take on that responsibility, I suppose, but it’s a pretty poor state of events when a girl who should still be playing with dolls is shouldering it. She told me about an all-night drive across three states, made when she was just thirteen. Her sister was buckled beside her, their father was passed out in the backseat.

  One evening Ruth looked at me typing away on the computer and shared something positive, but just as personal, just as private: “I write sometimes,” she said. Her dark hair partially hid her eyes, but I saw the need. I looked at her poems. She was squeezing the poison out onto the paper drop by drop. It’s a damn fine way to get free of it. The words were sometimes stilted and maudlin, but the emotions were real and raw. The building blocks were there, just waiting to be assembled. I still wasn’t quite sure how to stack them myself, but couldn’t we learn together?

  “It’s good” I said, only fibbing a little. “Maybe we can critique each other’s work, submit some of them to a magazine”. I shrugged, not wanting to appear like I was promising anything. Those big green eyes shone at the thought of having a magazine print something she had written. We’ll do that, I silently promised. We never got the chance.

  Ruth had come to us from a group home. Really, it was more like a hospital, or a minimum security prison. Doors were locked. School classes were taken on site. Free time was monitored. Cameras were everywhere.

  We looked at other kids, as well. We took them to lunch and talked about what we expected from them, listened to what they needed from us. We practiced active listening, one of those therapy buzzwords that simply means paying attention. These kids drank it up like water. Their stories were all different, but the themes were depressingly similar. They never listened to me, they hurt me, they rejected me, they scared me.

  We would be different, I hoped. These kids needed something different. We had been through classes and background checks. We had therapy, and we learned to become amateur therapists ourselves. We were taught techniques to restrain violent kids without hurting them or allowing them to hurt us. Surely that was knowledge that we would never really need, right? It’s a nice thought, buddy, but don’t plan on it, I told myself.

  Woven into their words were the real stories, but you’ve got to pay attention to hear them. With practice, you can pick up the signs, try to predict future behavior, but it’s a joke, really. No one can predict the future. You roll with the punches and hope they don’t bruise too deeply. With a five-year-old son and a pregnant wife, I knew that we were vulnerable, as well.

  Eventually, we chose Ruth, and she chose us. She was good with our son, and excited for the upcoming birth of our daughter. We began to think of her as a family member, our daughter. We were growing to love her. The summer days rolled away; fall started sneaking up on us. We celebrated my son’s birthday.

  One day, after church, Ruth told us she was tired, and felt a little sick. She skipped lunch and went to her room and closed the door to take a nap. An hour went by, then two. “Do you think she’s been napping long enough?” my wife asked. “Maybe we should see if she’s hungry now.”

  The door to Ruth’s room was closed, so I knocked softly. “Are you awake? Can I come in?” I asked. Muffled through the door, I heard her answer yes, so I pushed it open and walked inside.

  It took me a moment to process what I was seeing. I felt confusion, and then, to my shame, a flash of anger. My muddy state of mind only lasted a second or two, but it felt like longer. Ruth had made a mess of her bed, but there was more...

  Staining her bed sheets was blood.

  “What have you done?” I asked softly. Her eyes met mine, but she didn’t say anything, just looked at me, the fear in her beautiful green eyes was raw and unfiltered. I could see a glimpse of her private self. The mask was off. She was terrified. And there was so much blood.

  I called for my wife, not daring to leave her alone again. She held out her hands, and I took the razor blade from her, pinching it carefully between thumb and forefinger. It was from a disposable safety razor. Ruth had broken the plastic off to expose the steel, and had hidden the pieces under her bed. She must have had it for some time, planning for this, because she had not entered the bathroom before going to her bedroom. I had a difficult time wrapping my head around Ruth planning for something like this.

  There was a prescribed procedure, so we followed it, calling the social worker who was our supervisor. Ruth ate a bowl of soup while we waited for her to come. As she ate, Ruth told us of the nightmares she’d been having; of faceless amorphous creatures that pursued her when she closed her eyes.

  Ruth had grown close to the youth pastor at church, so with her permission, we called him, and asked him to meet us in the ER. The doctor was a pro, but I saw his eyes widen slightly. I could relate. Shallow cuts covered her arms and legs, over three hundred in all. Had she done this before? I hadn’t seen any evidence of it. She wore shorts and short-sleeves often, so
I didn’t believe it. Didn’t want to. But I learned, later, that people who cut are often secretive about it.

  At the time, I knew very little about cutting, or self-injury. Even now, I can only relate to it intellectually since I’ve not felt compelled to self-injure; but I know a thing or two about feeling overwhelmed and coping with it in self-destructive ways. Cutting is not a suicide attempt, it can even be a way for a person to avoid suicide or produce feelings of euphoria, like drug use. It is a way of dealing with emotional pain by causing yourself physical pain, and it’s far more common than I had ever imagined. It’s certainly not limited to your stereotypical “emos.”

  That night, after Ruth had been treated, the decision was made to take her back to the group home. She would need supervision that we just couldn’t provide. The home was three hours away, and we could have let the social worker take her, but it didn’t feel right. Not for someone we had grown to care for so much. The drive was mostly quiet.

  We had a tearful parting, hugging her (but gently, of course) and reassuring her that we still loved her. I felt numb. We sat in the lobby of the home and, responsibility over, I unmasked myself at last. I put my head in my hands and cried for the first time since entering Ruth’s room. We talked with the social worker, and she assured us we had done nothing wrong. “The doctors were the ones who released her in the first place,” she pointed out. “They thought that she could handle being in a home situation, too. You shouldn’t blame yourself.” But I did. Ruth had kept her secrets well, but weren’t we supposed to be helping her cope with these problems? It tasted like failure to me.