by Todd Grimson
Down in the basement, past the two corpses, through the colored rooms, hearing a chainsaw … Lisa was screaming … Bluestone got through the blue room filled with mannequins first.
Immediately, without fucking around, he shot Steve high in the back, and then, as the heavily muscled killer turned, Dave shot him in the chest, the neck, the face, the rounds rising as the gun kicked and Steve began to slowly collapse, falling on his chainsaw, blood and flesh flying off in gobs from his thigh, the saw making a choking, busy sound, eventually getting stuck.
Veronica resolutely shot Bluestone once in the chest and then was quickly turning to take care of Lisa when Profit Brown’s hollow-point bullet took off a good portion of her head. Was she dead yet? Well, she was now.
“Help me,” Brown said, and Lisa controlled herself amid the carnage. Brown packed the wound with Bluestone’s own ripped shirt; shaking and trembling, Lisa put all her swimmer’s strength into assisting the black detective as he carried Detective Bluestone, who had what was called a sucking chest wound … they took the elevator up to ground level and got the half-conscious policeman out to Brown’s car.
“Pressure!” Brown said fiercely. “Hold it on there!” and he was off, gas pedal to the floor out through the gates, calling on his radio to get the trauma team ready, officer shot, ETA five minutes. A hundred miles an hour, siren wailing, Lisa hanging on to Bluestone for dear life around the curves. She really didn’t want him to die. Not like Tavinho and Code. No.
TWENTY-NINE
A few days later Lisa went to visit Bluestone at the hospital. She brought flowers. She felt very shy. Bluestone’s wife, Kate, was friendly enough in a neutral, observant way, rather as if she thought Lisa was an untrustworthy vixen; somehow Lisa could neither really blame her for this perceived attitude nor, she guessed, do much to alter it.
Kate Bluestone was blond, probably tinted her hair a bit to keep away the gray, attractive in a big-bodied Dutch or German way, and the two college-age children, one girl, one boy, were serious, intelligent, fairly good-looking … Lisa admired them and felt out of place, ridiculous, with her magic and tattoos.
Bluestone himself—expected to live but still in Intensive Care— seemed reasonably pleased to see her, though it might well be that he would remember little of this doped-up time.
The press, the TV, the tabloids … all had greatly relished this whole business. The chainsaw was an irresistible detail. Profit Brown told Lisa that Jennell Fonvergne, a blond TV reporter, was Phil Lancaster’s girlfriend, and Lancaster had gone to the Devoto mansion to mop up, along with the fire department, so it could be presumed he had told Fonvergne all he knew.
Lisa had five stitches in her throat and a few on her back. Her nose wasn’t broken—it was fine. She felt the hangover, though, from all the terror she had been through. It hadn’t “broken” her, but she felt different … it was going to take a while to calm all the way back down. But she was OK.
She didn’t know what to feel. It was so hard to think. Code’s death bothered her a great deal, and Christine’s had come back to her, Tavinho … everybody she’d loved, or so many, were now dead. Being a survivor was shit. It had all started with her, as Veronica said. She couldn’t concentrate, she couldn’t do anything.
Chuck Suede had flown down and spent two days with her, screwing up the schedule of his in-progress production, but it was great of him; she’d needed someone to hold her while she cried.
Chuck, and Raelyn, and Casimir.
When she swam one day, a helicopter filmed her coming out of the pool; since she wasn’t nude, they zoomed in on her face.
Adrian Gee called her, and that was nice. She talked to Track, and to her father, who was in Aix.
But she was having a hard time. She was a murderess. She had effectively murdered Lou, and Wendy Right, and Duane Moyer. She had blood all over her.
What was she now? She was damned, and she wasn’t a victim, she’d done it to herself. To blame Boro was an untenable excuse. She had desired havoc, mayhem, violence; inside she had been curious, she’d wanted the sky to come down.
So it had.
THIRTY
Track brought along a shotgun, and he said he knew how to use it. They drove out into the desert, near Barstow, a long motherfucking drive. Following Mannix, of all people, but his presence only made the shaky story seem even shakier, fishier, more absurd.
Lisa drove. They were going to fetch Mary Siddons, who was strung out on heroin. It was she who had called and said Boro was alive. He wanted $10,000. Then he was leaving, for good. Otherwise … the tape had come on: “I love you, I hate you.”
How could it be? Lisa couldn’t explain it or understand it, but then Mary said, “He says to tell you he never went through the mirror. That was a fakeout. He says he’s not going to kill you, he could have done that anytime. Bring the money, and he’ll go back to the land of his ancestors. Come on, Lisa, I’m fucked up. I need to get straight. I’m sick. Mannix will show you the way.”
So Lisa got the money, and Mannix showed up, a smile on his face, surprisingly dapper and polite, no bandanna on his head, in a used Renault. Track, who had arrived yesterday, was grim and suspicious. He and Lisa had had a little argument about what she was about to do … but in the end Track had yielded. However, he insisted on coming along, and she was glad.
Mannix pulled in at a little roadside café, and when they got out he told them this was the last place to get a Coke. He wanted a hamburger, he said. Lisa was hungry too, so the three of them went inside and took a red upholstered booth. Because of the presence of a jukebox, they fell to talking about music. This place mainly featured Elvis
Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Patsy Cline, and early Charlie Rich. Track put in a couple of quarters to demonstrate that there were no sounds on earth he could not dig.
It seemed like Mannix’s whole gangsta facade was a role he played, Lisa thought. She wondered what powers he might possess. There was no telling, if Boro was still functioning as before.
She ordered a date milk shake and loved it. Mannix had a cheeseburger, a Coke, and fries. The old white waitress might have been prejudiced, or at least not used to seeing many black people out here in the Mojave. Track ate a chili dog and was somewhat sorry. Too much Tabasco, or maybe too long in the pot. He got a date milk shake, following Lisa’s advice, to take with him on the rest of the drive, drinking it like Maalox, to cover up the burn.
Up into the barren hills. Following Mannix in his Renault. After several switchbacks they took a little side road, in dust, away from what looked like the beginnings of a small settlement.
“Uh-oh,” Lisa said, seeing all the choppers parked around the ramshackle house.
“The zombies are all dead,” Mannix said, having parked, walking over to Lisa’s rolled-down window. “Me and this white dude rented a truck, loaded ‘em up, then went down to Long Beach and took out a fishing boat for the day. One by one, we popped ‘em in the head and dumped ‘em over the side. Boro had this thing, he wanted a burial at sea. Some of them used to race catamarans, some kind of shit like that.”
“So they’re at rest now,” Lisa remarked, not totally ironically.
“That was the plan,” Mannix said, and again it was hard to tell what he was getting out of all this or if he saw it as just an elaborate goof. Lisa got out of the car. So did Track, slamming his door, checking the shotgun so Mannix would be sure to see. The latter only smiled and shook his head.
They went up to the house. Mannix went first and knocked. Mary Siddons opened the door, sniffling and trembling in a dirty olive green sleeveless minidress. Her arms were bare, little purple-and-yellow bruises all over them, her skin so pale, so white.
“Gimme the stuff, OK? I can’t wait.”
“Damn, I knew there was something I forgot,” Mannix said, acting it out.
“Motherfucker, that’s really low, that’s low … Jesus, I’m climbing the fucking walls.”
“Mary,” Lisa said, and Mary embrac
ed her, crying, her head on Lisa’s shoulder. Lisa caressed her dirty hair, patted her back, and gradually, in a few moments, Mary seemed to calm down. Her nose had stopped running, the trembling heebie-jeebies of withdrawal melted away.
“What’d you do?” she said softly. “It’s like you put some methadone in my corn flakes, if I had some corn flakes … how did you do that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“She is a witch,” said the tall black man, the one who had previously been mute and, later, catatonic. Profit Brown had once jokingly called him “James Doe.” He came out of the shadows, eyes locked on Lisa’s face.
Track reacted with the shotgun, pointing it, but Mannix motioned for him to put it down, saying, “This is my new brother. Jamal … formerly known as Boro.”
“I jumped into the vacant body,” Jamal said, “when you were pulling me through the mirror. I’m different now.”
“Boro?” Lisa asked, awestruck.
“That’s who I am, but I’ve changed. It’s taken me a while to begin to understand. An awful lot of the old Boro is gone, chewed up by your mother, the cat. Did you bring the money?”
“What do you need it for?”
“Mannix and I are going to go to the source of the Nile.” The tall man smiled. “We’re going to go the hard way, as a test, but still, we need some funds. The powers I helped you find … you still have a lot to explore. And you never did actually pay me for your vengeance on Lou.”
He was maybe six foot nine.
“I know. But you would never come right out and set a price. You kept on fucking with my mind.”
“Maybe I did, but it was for the best. Please don’t blame me for Veronica; she did those things on her own. That was private, between you and her. I’m sorry about your Brazilian boyfriend. Things got out of hand, and Veronica had that gun … I’m different now, very different. I hope you can forgive me for anything unnecessary that I did. I was wrong sometimes, careless. Loose.”
Lisa liked this black man’s voice. She was fearful of being too credulous—she knew Track thought she would believe anything—but if this was Boro, why not take him at his word? She enjoyed the idea of Boro—Jamal—and Mannix seeking out the source of the Nile.
She said, “The money’s in the car. Let’s go get it.”
The wind was blowing blondish dust over the rocks. The pale blue sky above them was so high and huge. Didn’t Mary have anything else? Apparently not. Just what she was wearing. She seemed quite pacified for now. Track said something to her, quietly, that Lisa didn’t hear.
Jamal stood there, majestic in the bright sunlight, next to Mannix. Lisa gave Jamal the paper bag of small bills. It seemed like a solemn ceremony, somehow. She smiled shyly, uncertain of what to feel.
It had always been impossible for her to guess what Boro really wanted, and now it was just as bad, trying to have any idea what was going on inside Jamal. Would he keep turning up?
Track and Mary, taking their time, got into the car. Mary’d be a handful, though she was just a kid. In five days Lisa would be in France, seeing her dad. Would he have anything important to tell her? Probably not. But maybe. You never knew.
Lisa put her sunglasses back on. OK. She’d figure it all out later on.
Readers Group Guide:
BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR
The questions included below are to enhance your enjoyment of BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR by Todd Grimson, either as an aid in group discussion for book clubs, among friends, or to further your individual inquiry into this multifaceted novel. Unlike much of the literature in the contemporary urban supernatural fantasy genre, BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR has elements of many other forms of literature from noir to surrealism to satire, and employs a complex layering of imagery and symbolic references that will provide food for thought for readers and discussion groups for years to come!
1) In describing this novel, author Todd Grimson has said that it is set “five minutes in the future.” What do you think he means by this? How does this add or detract from the narrative? Are there are other works of fiction or movies that you can think of in these “near future” terms?
2) Publishers Weekly, in its review of BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR, described the novel as “perfectly poised on the edge between humor and horror.” In what ways is Grimson able to sustain this balance? In what ways is the novel humorous? Are there particular scenes and/or characters you can identify as being particularly humorous? Is there a corollary between the two responses to humor and horror?
3) Though written in the 1990’s, easily a decade or more before the advent of the current popularity of zombies/vampires/werewolves in literature, BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR features not only zombies, but cannibalism, necrophilia, and other paranormal activity now considered mainstream. How do Grim-son’s zombies and necromancers function differently from the current breed popular in such novels as “World War Z” or the HBO series, “The Walking Dead?”
4) Similarly, the heroine of BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR bears certain resemblances to another popular female avenger, Lisbeth Salander of Steig Larssen’s series “The Millennial Trilogy,” albeit Lisa Nova’s appearance predates Salander by fifteen years. In what ways is Lisa Nova similar to Lisbeth Salander, and how is she different?
5) Throughout the novel, Grimson has interspersed many references to film and filmmaking. For example on p. 50; “She clicked out a video cassette and put in another, a French horror film she’d heard of but never seen, Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes Without a Face), directed by Georges Franju, 1959. How many of these references are you able to catch?
6) On the subject of movies, given that the novel is set largely in Hollywood and in the filmmaking world, you could say that BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR is very filmlike in its structure and plot-development, and also in the very way that the scenes are described, what Grimson has described as “cinematic realism.” Does this technique work for you, and how does it affect the overall “tone” of the book?
7) Grimson has also described BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR as a phantas-magorical novel, one based on his dreams, yet with a novel structure (ie. longform) that dreams generally don’t possess. In this way he sees a corollary between dreams and film. Do you think he succeeds in creating a “dreamscape” novel? Are there particular passages in the book that you can point to that exemplify this quality?
8) Despite the satirical and horror genre elements to BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR, there is also a very realistic and “human” element to the story as exemplified by Lisa Nova’s struggles with her own extraordinary powers, but also within minor characters as well. In what ways is Grimson able to portray the human element against the backdrop of “the horror, the horror?” What about the character of Boro for instance? Is this struggle apparent to you in any other character?
9) Most readers of BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR are not contending with a paranormal talent/ability in their own lives. But if you did find yourself so affected, how would your reactions mirror those of Lisa? How different? And if you could choose your own talent, what would it be?
10) Todd Grimson has said that, ever since he was a child, he has been fascinated by names, and how they define a person in real life and in fiction. Think of “Selwyn Popcorn,” “Chuck Suede,” “Ariel Mendoza,” “Roy Hardaway,” “Boro,” “Track,” or even the heroine’s name, “Lisa Nova.” What names of characters do you like best, and how do they “embody” that character?
BONUS QUESTION: Grimson has said that he was influenced greatly by the Nightmare on Elm Street films and others in the slasher genre. In fact, he claims to have had all his victims die in similarly ghoulish ways as the victims in these movies. Can you identify the ten different ways in which people are killed within the novel, and their filmic counterparts?
Visit the author’s site at www.toddgrimson.com to discover the answer.
Q& A with Author Todd Grimson
(Based on An Interview with Mark Christensen)
What were your key inspirations?
/> Early (Thomas) Pynchon (I don’t like anything after GRAVITY’S RAINBOW), some (Don) DeLillo, less well-known writers such as Witold Gombrowicz (COSMOS), Hermann Broch (THE SLEEPWALKERS), Cesare Pavese (THE DEVIL IN THE HILLS). Ryu Murakami (ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE), William Burroughs (THE SOFT MACHINE is my favorite of his), Philip K. Dick. Charles Portis. And then a ton of films. Some of the Dario Argento and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies - but of course all of this material becomes violently warped when it comes through the milieux I’ve known and what I dream.
What were the most difficult things about writing BNCF?
I had a lot of fun working on it- I actually take pleasure in doing research, and there was a lot of research needed for this project, delving into such areas as fashion, film history, and the lifestory of Nastassja Kmski (which meant I became long-distance pals with Jim MacLennan, a writer in London who was somewhat obsessed with her — he also then edited a magazine dealing with low-budget horror films like Nekromantik and Re-Animator); Mayan history and myth (seeking some background for the vivid dreams I had starring and/or acting as Boro); behind-the-scenes workings of Hollywood… in all of these areas, enormous quantities I never used or touched, such as more than one book on the 1923 murder of director William Desmond Taylor, but also watching endless horror films - especially all those by Dario Argento, over and over, which though not exactly tight or good in the manner of Hitchcock, have a lyricism connecting with the dream-logic sometimes on display in the Nightmare On Elm Street films, which explicitly invoke dream-logic as such - the only time Freddy appears is when you’re asleep. Nightmares I, III and IV have sequences invoking more sheer surrealism than anything Hollywood horror usually does. Falling into mirrors, for instance, came from there.
Was there a primal inspiration for Cherry Flavor—or did it come to you, so to speak, in sections?