by Brian Hodge
He's tenderizing me.
I awake beneath the weight of a roosting chicken. It looks like the original chicken from the restaurant, but I can't be certain. All chickens look alike, even now.
Is that some form of avian racism?
The chicken stares at me, its eyes like beads of red corn, hard and unblinking.
"Go for it," I say. "Let's play, chicken."
I keep staring.
The chicken stares right back.
Minutes pass.
Sweat beads and crawls across my forehead and brow.
"I'm not cracking," I warn the chicken.
The chicken keeps staring.
Then it pecks a button off of my shirt.
Ha.
The damn bird is trying to break my concentration.
No way.
I keep on staring.
The chicken pecks another button. A second bird lands upon my left arm. A third rests heavily upon my right.
I keep on staring, determined to get the best of this chicken.
I can't let them beat me.
The chicken pecks another button. My shirt flops open like a loosened wound. Two more chickens mount my arms. I feel others on my legs. How many more, I can't be certain.
I try to move, but I've sat still for too long. My limbs are number than rubber chicken wings.
It doesn't matter.
I keep on staring.
The chicken pecks at my bellybutton.
"Damn!"
I snap.
I try to rise up.
The chicken pecks again.
Again and again.
I struggle beneath the weight of all these chickens.
Pecking.
Pecking.
There are chickens all over me. Jackhammer-jamming their beaks into me, like dirty orange pincer hooks, tearing, ripping, tearing, pecking.
I scream into a mouthful of beating dusty feathers.
The birds keep on pecking.
I thrash and flap my arms.
I try to stand up.
Pecking.
Pecking.
I look down and see the bird with something long and wet and sausage-like in its beak.
Spaghetti?
The bird tugs.
I feel a sharp pain.
Inside me.
Damn it.
The bird stands there staring at me, the first coil of intestine caught in its bright orange beak.
"There we have it."
I look up to see who is speaking, knowing who before I even see him.
"There we have it for certain sure."
It's the cook.
Standing over me.
Like a god, or a living judgment.
He even does his little funky chicken strut.
A final victory jig.
Then he squats down beside me. He digs at me. I feel his fat fingers root through my open wound. The fingers feel cold, as if his hands are made of ice, yet I know the cold isn't the cook's fault.
He catches hold of my exposed gut and begins to unravel it. Like a long wet skein of yarn, twisting, long soft rubbery wet sausage spools, dumping it link by link into a small iron cauldron, whistling softly through his teeth.
"There we have it," he repeats.
"Have what?" My voice is a husk, empty and dry.
"The end of your tale."
He pulls the last few curls of gut rope from out of my gaping stomach. Then he pinches out a lump of something hard.
He shows it to me.
For a minute it looks like a moon.
A tiny golden moon, but it's an egg.
A solid golden egg.
"There it is," he says. "The rent for the next year."
He smiles.
His teeth, all fine and even like kernels of fine white corn.
All I can do is stare.
I should be dead.
Shouldn't I?
How long does it take to die?
I have to say something.
"What's it all about?" I ask.
"Shh," the cook sooths. "Don't waste your words."
I open my mouth and I cough out feathers.
I try to speak.
Nothing.
Not a sound.
The cook hooks the cauldron onto the end of an old fashioned balance. He shifts weights and stones, like an ancient checker player readying his match.
"Hmm," he says. "Heavier than a heart, but lighter than soul meat."
"What's it all about?" I ask.
He looks down at me.
He smiles, like a saint, standing beneath the tallest of trees.
"You have to answer the questions," he explains. "You have to pay for your eggs."
He reaches down with both of his hands.
They are large and capable and merciful.
He cradles his palms about my temple, as if he were about to deliver a long wet kiss.
Then he smiles, as soft as a lonely wet sunrise.
"What came first?" he whispers.
"I'm sorry," I answer.
The cook squeezes his hands together.
The last sound I hear is the cracking of an egg.
Afterword
Some stories you lay out like road maps. You are in perfect control. You know exactly what you are doing and where you are going with it.
We writers call those sorts of stories fiction.
And then there are those stories that sweep you up and carry you off and leave you beaten to death and smelling of bad liquor in some far-off uncharted speck of universe where you never been before.
We writers call those sorts of stories life.
These four stories are written that way. I wasn't sure where I was going at any point in the journey.
Call it a fever dream.
Call it peyote.
Call it untrustworthy.
Call it home and don't you dare try to put a leash or a collar around its neck.
The first of these stories – Plague Monkey Spam – was originally published by Bad Moon Books in the year 2008. Tim Waggoner, a man with a finely honed sense of the fantastic wrote a wonderful introduction to this novella – but you'll have to hunt up a copy of the original novella to read that introduction.
There is also an afterword that was written by myself and inspired by a gray wooly sock monkey by the name of Mr. Mookey.
You want to read that, go get the original.
Sorry folks, but Bad Moon Books was good to me and I've got to leave them some secrets to keep.
But I will tell you that Plague Monkey Spam was my attempt to discover the secret heart of storytelling.
Hopefully you've read it by now, unless your e-reader is working in reverse.
The second story "Gnarly Ho-Tep Hoedown Two-step" was originally written for an anthology of stories based upon that Lovecraftian demi-god, Nyarlathotep. The anthology never reached print and the story remained, slumbering on a secret disc in the bottom of my slumbering-story-trunk. It is kind of a tall tale, gumbooted salute to the land of red neck rumdrinkers and the gods of the darkest cosmos imaginable.
I recommend a plateful of fish cakes and some French fried potatoes – with salt and vinegar – as well as a bottle of stout and a rum chaser before you read this story.
Oh wait, it's too late isn't it.
The third story "Hunger Time at the Midnight Mall" was originally written in a slightly different version for my first collection – long out of print. I resurrected the story, pruned it and pumped it full of new life and brought it this collection. It is a story that was written with Wal-Mart in mind – and it is one of the weirdest yarns that I wrote back in my prosaic years.
The final story in the collection is called "The Last Curl of Gut Rope" and it originally appeared in a wonderful collection called CORPSE BLOSSOMS. I recommend you hunt the collection up – not just for the sake of my story but for all of the dark and wonderful yarns that are included in that collection. There are a hell of a lot of good names in that book – Tom Piccirill
i, Steve Rasnic Tem, Bev Vincent, Gary Braunbeck, Bentley Little, Scott Nicholson, Ramsey Campbell – a hell of a lot more besides.
The story, as you may know now, is my answer to the eternal riddle of the chicken and the egg and it remains as one of the darkest and weirdest and singularly most disturbing yarns that I have ever written.
So there you have it. My afterword and the lowdown on where the heck these stories came from. Only if you really want to know where they really came from than I recommend you go back and reread Plague Monkey Spam – a journey to the heart of Story Country.
Yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
SCARY REDNECKS AND OTHER IMBRED HORRORS
By Weston Ochse & David Whitman
Praise for Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors
"The more I read and re-read this collection, the more I am moved by the stories. I really can't recommend this one enough. I will say that it's more than its cover promises. Several of the stories are as touching as they are chilling. A few are hilarious. Almost all of them are absorbing. This is impressive." –Doug Clegg
"This is better than the hype. I don't want to go overboard, but stories in the book will remind many readers of the good stuff by Edward Lee and Joe Lansdale and probably Bill Faulkner. There were times, reading some of them, when I was put in mind of Flannery O'Connor."–Richard Laymon
"Once a year, the field of horror literature produces a short story, novel, anthology or collection that pushes the limits, breaks new ground and raises the genre to new heights. This is such a book. Their voice is unique, a mix of Edward Lee, Tom Piccirilli, Nietzsche, Sam Kinison, and Steinbeck. Place those ingredients in a blender, shake well, and the result is this book." –Brian Keene
CONTENTS
Introduction (by Ray Garton)
Catfish Gods
Some Things Were Better Off Not Talked About
The Appalachian Easter Outhouse Feud
Carryin’ On Like It Was the End of the World
Ingredients are the Secret to Great Taste
Circus Clowns and Elephant Cracks
A Chorus of Earthly Rage
Them Bats is Smart, They Use Radar
Humanitarians
I Saw Renny Shooting Santa Claus
The Sterility of Earthly Rage
It’s a Sick World
Morty’s Appalachian Amusement Park
Peaches
Sweet Little Piggy
Silence
Scarecrows Scare Demons Don’t They?
Wandering Minds
Fishes Dream of Lonely Things
Night of the Hunters
Introduction
"You might be a redneck if ... "
How many times have we heard that? It's always followed by a punchline — usually, I must admit, a funny one. Those punchlines have provided a good living for southern comic Jeff Foxworthy. As funny as Foxworthy is, though, it's impossible to ignore the fact that he's putting muscle on the already substantial frame of one of the last remaining accepted stereotypical misconceptions: The Great White Redneck of the South.
The Great White Redneck lives in a trailer, drives a pick-up with a gun on the rack across the back window, and regularly attends exhibition events involving giant trucks. There's usually a battered car up on blocks in front of his trailer, but if not, look for a sink, a toilet, or an old swamp cooler somewhere nearby. The Great White Redneck's hygiene is suspect, his sexual proclivities degenerate and often illegal in most states, and according to most of those punch lines, his family tree doesn't have a whole lot of branches on it.
Foxworthy is certainly not responsible for this stereotype, and he is far from alone in keeping it alive. You'll see the Great White Redneck in movies and TV shows, always with a drawling southern accent. I'm sure I've been guilty of breathing life into the beast somewhere in my own work.
We should know better, of course. We should be able to look at these hollow stereotypes and laugh at them, not with them. We know people from the south are not like that — we've met and know them, we've worked with them, we've read them. Some of the most wonderful literature ever written has come from the south — Samuel Clemmons, Horton Foote, Flannery O'Connor, Larry McMurtry, William Faulkner, Joe R. Lansdale, Carson McCullers, on and on — it's a long list, and we all know that.
But somehow, that stereotype remains healthy. In a way, it makes us sadly predictable.
Along comes a short story collection called Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. Doesn't exactly sound like a book that's going to suck the life out of that stereotype, does it? In fact, it appears to be just the kind of thing that will keep that stereotype up on its feet and walking around ... with its jeans dropped in the back and its hairy butt-crack showing, of course.
So who are the two guys responsible for Scary Rednecks and other Inbred Horrors? What are they up to and what do they have to say for themselves? What do they know about the American south and its people?
Weston Ochse was born in Wyoming, David Whitman in Pennsylvania. That hardly makes them southerners. However, very early in life, Weston was relocated to Tennessee, David to Florida, "which," David says, "isn't exactly what you would call the deep south, but there sure were a lot of what I would call Good Old Boys around."
If I'm not mistaken, Good Old Boys are a more refined breed of the Great White Redneck of the South. They appear to be quite prevalent in Texas. I'm not sure, but I think one way to tell them apart is by the size of their belt buckles.
Growing up in Tennessee and Florida, I'm sure Weston and David came into contact with plenty of people who could rightly be called "rednecks." And yes, there are rednecks, they do exist. Most stereotypes are not complete falsehoods, they are gross distortions — like all good lies, stereotypes usually include a grain of truth somewhere in their history. The biggest distortion about the Great White Redneck of the South is that he is not, by any means, southern. He is everywhere.
I live in California, and I am surrounded by rednecks. I'm serious, don't get me started, you'll wish you hadn't. They bear a frightening resemblance to all those comical stereotypes you see in the movies and on TV — except they are not southern. Even though they've never left the county, many of them drawl when they speak, but a drawl and a southern accent are two entirely different things — the people I'm talking about drawl because they're too lazy to speak properly.
The idea that America's southern states are populated solely by rednecks is, of course, simply not true. But David Whitman and Weston Ochse, if not southerners by birth, were brought up in southern states. The stories in their collection are distinctly southern. They are solidifying the tissue that links southerners with rednecks ... aren't they?
They met when both subscribed to the Horror Writers e-mail list, and later decided to try collaborating. Although their styles are different, they discovered an interesting chemical reaction. David has been writing since childhood, when he wrote short stories and comic books. Weston, on the other hand, came to writing later, at the age of 30. While David's affection for the horror genre dates back to his childhood, Ochse's roots are in science fiction, his interest in darker fiction more recent. When they aren't writing, David is a psychologist and social worker, and Weston is an interrogator for the U.S. Army.
What would inspire them to put together a collection like this? Do they believe the stereotype to be true?
In a GothicNet interview with writer Brian Keene, Weston said, "I am from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I am white. I am Christian. I have blond hair and blue eyes. Shit, I am the poster child for all politically correct groups; I am the definition of the one to hate. ... I hate stereotypes."
So ... are they rednecks?
David calls himself "neurotic and sometimes introverted" and says he listens to jazz. Weston drinks wine and likes to watch Wolfgang Puck and The Christopher Lowell Show on television, for crying out loud. These are things that no self-respecting redneck would be caught dead doing in any part of
the country.
So what's the deal?
"I think that rednecks are the last great heroes, sometimes," Weston says. "They think of the result rather than how they look. Rednecks are universal."
Universal, not southern. The redneck is everywhere, and, I believe, within all of us. Jeff Foxworthy's punchlines make us laugh, but every once in awhile, one makes us nod and maybe frown a little, doesn't it? Because it's just a little too close to home, right? How many of us have not, in some private moment when we knew we were unobserved, said our name as we belched? How many of us, when surrounded by children at some well-fed family event, have been unable to resist the urge to execute the "pull-my-finger" maneuver? There's a little of it in all of us, I think.
But does the collection contribute to the stereotype? Weston says, "I don't know."
While it certainly does not set out to shatter stereotypes, I think this collection contains enough humanity to avoid doing any damage in the other direction. Its primary aim is to entertain, which it does quite well. It's a darkly comic, sometimes hilarious, sometimes haunting and moving ride through a landscape both ugly and beautiful.
But still ... why that title?
"What we did play on," Weston said in the GothicNet interview, "was the prejudice of the public when we chose our campy title, Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors. It virtually guaranteed that someone would pick it up thinking, 'Hey, I have an uncle who is just like this.'"
Ah-hah! So that's what's going on! We've been played! Hell, I fell for it.
And good for them. It's precisely what we deserve for being so damned predictable.
–Ray Garton
Catfish Gods
by Weston Ochse
Trey sat on the community dock, staring out across the green August water of Chicamauga Reservoir, his tanned legs swinging gently, fingers gripping the rough gray wood as thoughts of pleasure and mortality mingled within his thirteen year old mind. His grandfather had died six months ago and there were times when the heat and the bickering of his family and the memory of the loss became so much, he needed to be alone. He would sit and remember every word the old man had spoken; every action and every smile. He basked in the memories. All grandfathers are special, but Trey felt his was even more so. It was as if, the man’s mere presence could calm the world. It was as if he was a God and when Gods die, one never forgets.