“Jack... it’s so cold... Did you let the pilot light go out?”
“Jesus, when my wife finds out, she’s gonna kill me—”
Fiedler reached for the radio, but Morton pinned his hand to the desk hard enough to leave a mark. “No, Stu. Listen...”
The voices were faint and brittle, but there was no shutting them out. They used the shell of the generator as their larynx, and the crackling of the cold fire that bathed them for their breath.
“Ynez... darling... there’s something you have to know...”
“...Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb—”
“Mommy, I’m scared—”
Fiedler bolted for the exit, double-hulled and soundproofed, but the voices spilled out and followed him into the night.
“Sure…” Morton peered nearsightedly into the dark, unscrewed the lid on a tarnished silver flask and took a long, searing belt from it.
“You know what I miss, Mort? I miss smog. I miss purple sunsets, and harvest moons, and oil slicks...”
Morton took the flask and scoured the chill out of his bones with three short, sharp shots. “Everything that turned to oil was alive once, too,” he said.
They toasted oil, dinosaurs and darkness. They killed the flask just as, two by two all down the avenue, the streetlights came to life.
An Afterword by Jeremy Robert Johnson
First, a heartfelt thanks goes to You for checking out this Swallowdown Press title and letting Cody Goodfellow’s magnificently weird shit into your cranium. Your continued support for the independent press ensures that oft-beleaguered authors with no desire to write tween vampire romance will still have access to essentials like beer and tacos (though we will go without tacos if we have to).
Second, welcome to Planet Cody. If you made it this far, and if this happens to be your first exposure to his work, then you are now aware of the truth: Cody Goodfellow is The Business. And these odd/astonishing tales keep rushing out of his fingers and on to the page without any sign of relenting, so watch for more from Cody and Swallowdown in the near future, including the wild, mind-bending novel Perfect Union.
As an author I have immense respect for Cody’s talent and eerily glowing imagination. As a reader I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. And as a publisher I am lucky enough to read his new stuff early, which means I can tell you he just keeps getting more berserk and spellbinding. Stay tuned (and be certain to check out his Perilous Press epic Radiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk and manic duets with horror icon John Skipp in the meantime).
Third, it’s nice to see you again. Swallowdown Press entered a sort of existential coma for the last few years (as indie presses often do), but now we’re awake and we’ve grown a crazily long beard and we’ve acquired a two-to-three year roster of amazing books from diverse folks like Cody Goodfellow, Forrest Armstrong, Mitch Maraude, J. David Osborne, and more. The next few years should be fun for fans of strange/smart/surreal fiction.
And fourth, VIVA BIZARRO! The Weird Wave rolls ever onward!
Take care, friends,
JRJ
Portland, OR 2009
Cody Goodfellow was born in San Diego in 1970, and almost immediately adopted into the Free School, a nomadic hippie apocalypse cult whose existence has been repeatedly denied by the FBI. Roaming the back highways of the Southwest in ice cream trucks, subsisting only off trash from rest stop dumpsters and semi-annual ritual cannibalism on high hippie holidays, he enjoyed a blissful semi-feral childhood until 1981, when the Free School was savagely massacred and sacrificed by a rival drug-running Santeria cult in Baker, California. How Goodfellow alone walked away, and how he survived in the hostile Mojave Desert for the next thirteen years, remains a mystery. When discovered by authorities digging through the trash behind a Boll Weevil franchise in El Cajon, his vocabulary was still limited to words appearing on Jethro Tull eight-tracks.
The road to rehabilitation was long and arduous, but when Goodfellow finally began to speak out about his brutal ordeal, his harrowing autobiography was dismissed as a product of false trauma or Munchausen Syndrome. After alternate careers as a cult deprogrammer and psychic surgeon failed to take off, he turned to harvesting his apparently false memories for profit. Under the supervision of a professional hypnotist, he automatically writes accounts of experiences he does not remember, but subconsciously believes were real events in his life.
Cody Goodfellow has written three solo novels—Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk, and Perfect Union—and Jake’s Wake, The Day Before and Fruiting Body with John Skipp. His short fiction has also appeared in the recent anthologies Mighty Unclean, Monstrous, The Bleeding Edge and Up Jumped The Devil.
He lives in Los Angeles.
Alan M. Clark hails from Nashville, Tennessee. His illustration work has appeared in books of fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, young adult fiction and children’s books. His awards include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. As a writer, he has sold short fiction, nonfiction and four novels.
alanmclark.com
“Cronenberg’s THE FLY on a grand scale: human/insect gene-spliced body horror, where the human hive politics are as shocking as the gore.” -John Skipp
Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. A potent mix of bad drugs, bad dreams, brutal bad guys, and surreal/incredible art by Alan M. Clark.
An uncanny voyage across a newly nuclear America where one man must confront the problems associated with loneliness, insane dieties, radiation, love, and an ever-evolving cockroach suit with a mind of its own.
“A David Lynchian nightmare set in a Russian gulag... Osborne’s debut is paranoid, cold, brutal, haunting, mystifying (in a good way), and totally unforgettable.”- PAUL TREMBLAY
The hip hop lovechild of William Burroughs and Dali...
"WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is fucking terrific. Jeremy Robert Johnson is dancing to a way different drummer. He loves language, he loves the edge, and he loves us people. These stories have range and style and wit. This is entertainment... and literature."--JACK KETCHUM, author of “Off Season”, “The Girl Next Door”, and “The Woman” (w/Lucky McKee)
Table of Contents
Introduction by John Skipp: Heavy Lifting, for the Lunatic Bastard in You!
Baby Teeth
El Santero
A Drop of Ruby
Champagne Room
Feast of the Ixiptla
Hinterland
The Good News About God
Magna Mater
His Station & 4 Aces
Burning Names
Atwater
Conscientious Objector
In His Wake
Losers, Weepers
Batteries
Afterword by Jeremy Robert Johnson: What You Need to Know
Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars Page 20