–John Skipp
“Fifth Voyage”
“Fifth Voyage” comes out of WCR’s impressions of East Tennessee; odd jobs and people he met along the way cropped up in this poem, which unfolded for the first time like a dream. He had to smooth the creases and bridge the gaps both to cover his tracks in the real world and to give readers (without his set of keys) something to latch onto. He dedicates this poem to Lucien Freund, crackpot and crackshot. Go-devil.
–WC Roberts
“Day Job”
When I wrote “Day Job,” I was thinking about what it would be like to be a perfect being—an “angel”—and having to spend eternity watching over the flawed, grubby little lives of humans. I’m sure, after a while, even the most perfect being would go a little crazy.
–Merrilee Faber
“A Birth in the Year of the Miracle Plague”
I always wanted to write a zombie story with characters I could care about. For me to care about Joshua (Leper), I had to breathe some life into half of him; and that opened up some doors for him as well as the story.
The idea came to me as I was listening to the song, “Wake Up,” by Arcade Fire—there was this vision of all these children running rampant through the streets of a tattered city, their parents too broken and afraid to show their faces in daylight. I never intended for the story to be about the Miracle Plague in particular, or its aftermath; I wanted it to be about what the remaining children would do with their time after the world rejected them.
–Jeremy Kelly
“Wanting It”
Every good story carries a sliver of truth. As a boy growing up in a small town in Kansas, I “wanted it” more than anyone. There were many ponds and small, abandoned houses in the countryside around my boyhood home. Once I became an unfettered teenager with a car, the world opened up to me. Mysteries crumbled to dust. The world lost a bit of its spark.
I write to find the magic again. I want to be that little boy.
In my experience, nothing is more horrific than knowing you can never go back, you can never replace innocence once it’s lost. I guess that’s what “Wanting It” is about. Some things, once gone, are gone forever.
–Aaron Polson
“Eye, You”
It would be nice to say that this story emerged after a deep and complex meditation on how the narcissistic, compulsive exposure of ourselves over the Internet is making our private lives commodities for public consumption. But it didn’t. The genesis is much more prosaic—the idea came to me after from watching too much reality TV, mostly The Osbournes. Still, I do think the digital conversion of our lives is making us less human, a more consumable product, and may eventually kill us all. And perhaps Google will play an active role in our demise. After all, the popular search engine can be rendered “Go ogle.” Coincidence?
–Joseph Morgado
“Stitched”
Normal. I hate that word. It’s a judgment, a weapon used by the many against the few. Who or what is normal and what gives them—or us—the right to define it? What if some people really do need to wash their hands six times or dodge the cracks in a sidewalk? If they’ve convinced themselves that these little rituals hold the world together, do the rest of us benefit from stopping them?
–Christopher Green
“Ruth Across the Sea”
I love writing flash fiction. If ever there's an exercise in brevity then it's producing a story with beginning, middle and end in a thousand words or fewer. “Ruth Across the Sea” is a story of love and loyalty with a medieval feel. It's a tale of self-sacrifice to keep that love alive. It struck me as I was writing that you don't see much lesbianism in medieval fantasy, and there lay the vehicle for the “little twist ending” that flash fiction can thrive upon.
–Steven Pirie
“Duval Street”
I picked up Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters two years ago and I finished it in two days. I remember thinking I want to write something like this, something that screws with people's heads. I've yet to read Fight Club, but I've read enough of his other work to know that Chuck has the "mess with their head then dropkick them in the face" thing mastered. This was my attempt at recreating that feeling, albeit on a much, much smaller scale and with a minor, however forced, steampunk edge.
Why Duval Street?
I have only been to Key West once. It was one of the ports on a week-long cruise my mother and I took almost five years ago. Assuming we weren't missing anything of interest, we remained on the deck and had a late breakfast, watching as other passengers loaded into a trolley with an ancient paint job and squeaky wheels we could hear over the sounds of sea birds and machinery. We made the mistake of waiting until that afternoon to venture out, leaving us with about an hour to gawk at wild parrots and grab a soda from a burger joint off Duval. I remember being amazed that the place had a second floor and seating on the roof. Besides the Japanese staff behind the 24-hour pizza counter on board the ship, and the ridiculous sunburn I acquired in Cozumel, Duval Street was the most memorable part of the trip. I decided that I would return to the island one day, even if only on paper.
This isn't a story about a place so much as it's about the strange people who live there and the stranger things they do when we aren't looking. It's no secret that we all have our quirks. Some of us are better at disguising them while others can't help but flaunt them. And why shouldn't they? But no matter how much time you devote to perfecting your outlandish outward persona, or building your collection of mutant pets from scraps, you will always inevitably be one-upped by someone who's been there, done that, and succeeded ten times over. Stripped down, a special snowflake is still a snowflake. Accept it or refute it, or move to Utah and spread the fever. Either way, let's have drinks.
–Mekenzie Larsen
“Mr. Many Faces”
Every once in a while, a writer’s subconscious lends a hand in the creative process. Such is the case with a lot of my work.
When you write fiction often enough, it’s my theory you create a relationship with your subconscious, which, at its best, can be a helpful thing. I rather think this was what the ancients referred to when they spoke of artistic muses.
My own subconscious/muse is an important element in my writing. In the best of times, he’s like a collaborator, sometimes suggesting interesting storylines and drawing connections I might never have made on my own. Honestly, I love that guy! He can be clever, witty, or downright silly at times. I’ve laughed out loud at some of the things he’s come up with for me to take credit for.
Other times, though, when he is in a particularly grim mood, he grips me by the hand, takes me to a dark place, and reveals something within myself I didn’t know was there. “Mr. Many Faces” is the result of such an instance.
Specific to what I meant to achieve, I wanted to do a new riff on the old boogeyman theme. I hoped at least to put my own distinct stamp upon it, and I think I succeeded there.
Choosing to tell the tale with a limited number of characters was a conscious decision (to determine just how limited the cast was, you might actually have to reflect back on the story some more once you’ve read it, then drop me a line to see if our numbers match). I also knew from the beginning I wanted to keep Mr. Many Faces himself “off screen” as much as possible, if in fact I would show him at all. This is because the best collaborator I could have, next to my subconscious, is you, the reader, and to achieve your full participation, some spaces needed to be left blank for you to fill in.
I hope you enjoyed the ride, or, if you’re cheating and reading these little behind-the-scenes notes first, that you will enjoy it.
In closing, I’d like to thank Mr. Gary Braunbeck, a fellow author whose work I greatly admire, for kind words of praise when this tale was in its early inception. Thanks also go to Mr. K. Allen Wood and the good people at Shock Totem for giving my story a home in the fine publication you now hold in your hands. I can think of no place I’d rather have it.
ARTIST BIO
Silent Q Design was founded in Montreal in 2006 by Mikio Murakami. Melding together the use of both realistic templates and surreal imagery, Mikio's artistry proves, at first glance, that a passion for art still is alive, and that no musician, magazine, or venue should suffer from the same bland designs that have been re-hashed over and over.
Mikio’s work has been commissioned both locally and internationally, by bands such as Redemption, Synastry, Starkweather, and Epocholypse. Shock Totem #3 was his first book-design project.
For more info, visit www.silentqdesign.net.
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Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 by Shock Totem Publications, LLC.
Shock Totem 3: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted Page 18