by Ryan Ridge
Death Dines Alone
He orders takeout from his favorite Thai place and settles into the faux-leather sectional in front of the Apple flatscreen with his green tofu curry and avocado spring rolls with peanut sauce on the side. By now, Death is a California resident. He’s got a little bungalow in Echo Park. Tonight, he’s watching for the first time Ingmar Bergman’s classic, historical fantasy, The Seventh Seal, in which a medieval knight encounters Death by chance on a cinematic beach in Denmark. The knight, who’s been erstwhile playing chess alone, challenges Death to a match. Death accepts. The knight takes the white pieces, and Death gets the black ones. Death pauses the film midscene to balk at Bergman’s representation of him as a pale, cloaked figure. Sure, I rock a black cloak, he thinks, but underneath it, I have a shredded bod and a much better tan. Death unlocks his iPhone and downloads a free chess app on iTunes. He plays the computer and loses. Plays again. Loses. He savors the feeling. He loves loss. He plays again. This time he kills the computer. Bummer.
A More Comprehensive List of Casualties
God is dead.
The self is dead.
The selfie is dead.
Surf is dead.
Turf is dead.
Love is dead.
Latin is dead.
Liberalism is dead.
Neoliberalism is dead.
Conservatism is dead.
Advertising is dead.
Marketing is dead.
The press release is dead.
The dollar is dead.
Bitcoin is dead.
Net neutrality is dead.
The blog is dead.
The vlog is dead.
Web design is dead.
Silicon Valley is dead.
The gig economy is dead.
The sharing economy is dead.
The shopping mall is dead.
The supermarket is dead.
The video arcade is dead.
The video store is dead.
The DVD is dead.
The CD is dead.
The guitar is dead.
Punk is dead. Disco is dead.
Death metal is dead.
Pop is dead.
Rock is dead.
Gender is dead.
Irony is dead.
Modernism is dead.
Postmodernism is dead.
Minimalism is dead.
Maximalism is dead.
Print is dead.
Stationery is dead.
Poetry is dead.
The novel is dead.
The author is dead.
The auteur is dead.
The audience is dead.
And on and on until the end when everything is dead, including the sun.
Death is dead, too, of course, but checking himself out in the IKEA mirror just now with his shirt off and his pecs flexed, he thinks: Damn, man, I look alive! Don’t I?
Jobs
By the end of the fiscal year, Steve Jobs calls and says, “Your job sucks. I quit.”
Death says, “Joblessness is the best job, Jobs. This is the future. Everyone is history, bud. Mostly thanks to you and your damn innovations.”
Jobs begins bawling. “Thank you for the kind words,” he says, and hangs up.
Death considers getting back to work. He’s confident he can build out the business, scale up in order to take folks down. Ultimately, killing is his calling, he knows it, but first, he’ll black out another week on a California bender.
See You
Death orders another Bloody Mary at the Gold Room on Sunset. It’s a quarter till one on a Sunday afternoon in sunny Los Angeles. The place is empty except for a C-list actor in Ray-Bans indoors who says he’s leaving town after this drink because he’s had enough of California for one lifetime. Death asks the actor where he’s going.
“Home,” the actor says.
“Where’s that?” asks Death.
“Kentucky.”
“The dark and bloody ground,” Death says. “Sure, I’ve been there a bunch. I practically live there most Februarys.”
The actor nods. He finishes his beer and knocks back a shot. Then he stands up and tosses a tip on the counter. “See you,” he says.
“Not if I see you first,” says Death.
No Captain, No Ship, No Sea
That night, Death dreams of a ship in a bottle. The ship in the bottle is floating between yachts at Marina del Rey. A storm. Lightning. Thunder. Huge waves crash into the bottle until the glass cracks and it’s just a tiny ship in the stormy Pacific. There is no captain. Then there is no ship. Death watches the small ship float for a miraculous moment before it’s swallowed by a wave. Then there is no wave. Just sea. And darkness. Endless darkness. Cue thunder, an iPhone alarm. He is risen.
Death Goes Fishing
He rents a pole at the Santa Monica Pier, but he doesn’t catch anything all day. He speeds back to his bungalow in the Mini at dusk. He plays Xbox: Rock Band. John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Drums.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks first and foremost to Linda Bruckheimer and her generous support of the Series in Kentucky Literature.
Enormous thanks to Sarah Gorham and all of the other incredible folks at Sarabande Books, especially Kristen Miller for her genius editorial guidance to which I’m indebted. Thanks to Alban Fischer for the amazing design work. To Joanna Englert and Danika Isdahl, thank you. Thanks also to Jonathan Lethem for seeing something in this manuscript early on and selecting an excerpt for the Calvino Prize.
Thank you to Ramona Ausubel, Brandon Hobson, Jonathan Lethem, and Leesa Cross-Smith for your inspiring writing and kind words.
Much gratitude to Padgett Powell, as well as the creators of Cleverbot, Brother Jerome, and Sensation Bot.
Thank you: Mel Bosworth, Nathan Brockman, Scott Carney, Ryan Daly, Ashley Farmer, Paul Griner, John Kim, Gene Kwak, Michelle Latiolais, Holly Ridge, Barrett Share, Abraham Smith, Andrew Tonkovich, John Wang, and Mike Young.
Thanks as well to the editors of the journals in which these pieces previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms under slightly different titles:
PERIODICALS
Autre: “Jackson Browne,” “Fire Consumes Businesses near the Freeway,” “Modern Times,” “Pilots,” “Church,” “Extras,” “Game,” “Climate Change”
Cheap Pop: “Coyote”
Collagist: “American Literature”
Consequence: “Kilroy”
Corium: “Cockroach”
Country Music: “Horses in Heaven,” “Mirror World”
decomP: “State Secrets”
Dogzplot: “Midnight at the Bethlehem Bar & Grille”
The Dream People: “On Broadway”
elimae: “I Guess I Soured,” “22nd-Century Man” Eyeshot: “New Bad News”
Faultline: “Elliott Smith,” “The Wax Museum,” “Echoes of Echo Park,” “The Second Detective,” “Last Cigarette,” “Adjuncts,” “Echo Parking Meters”
Flaunt: “Diary” Fou: “Beyond the Barricades,” “An Out There Out There” Ilk: “The Architect of Detroit”
Jelly Bucket: “The Big H”
JMWW: “A Place beyond That Place”
Juked: “The Summer He Went Swimming”
Monkey Bicycle: “Noir,” “Instant Classic,” “The Robot” NAP: “Integrity”
Pindeldyboz: “Home”
Post Road: “All Americans”
Right Hand Pointing: “Neighbors,” “If I Were a Thoroughbred”
Santa Monica Review: “Babe Ruth’s Bachelor Pad,” “The News,” “Postal,” “Echo Park,” “Red Hill,” “Unemployment Office,” “Island Time,” “Unending,” “On Acid”
Sixth Finch: “Electricity City”
Southern California Review: “The Future”
Vestal Review: “Death Goes Fishing”
Weber: The Contemporary
West: “A Novel Idea,” “Deadhorse”
Wigleaf: “Dogs Named Desire”
ANTHOLOGIES
A Book of Uncommon Prayer, edited by Matthew Vollmer (Outpost 19 Books, 2015): “Three Prayers for Artists”
NOTES
“Hey, It’s America” was published, in a much different form but under the same title, as a limited-edition chapbook by Rust Belt Bindery in 2012.
“22nd-Century Man” was published as a limited-edition chapbook by Sixth Finch Books in 2013.
In 2016, an excerpt from “Echo Park” won the University of Louisville’s Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction and appeared in Salt Hill #39.
An Italian translation of “Coyote,” translated by Andrea Gatti, was published on December 8, 2017, by the online publication Tuffi Rivista.
I would also like to thank Rye House Press in conjunction with Rope-a-Dope Press for printing a broadside of “Lost” in 2013.
SCOTT CARNEY
RYAN RIDGE was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of four chapbooks as well as four books, including the hybrid collection American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2015). Ridge’s past work has appeared in American Book Review, DIAGRAM, Lumina, Passages North, Post Road, Salt Hill, Santa Monica Review, and elsewhere. An assistant professor at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, he codirects the Creative Writing Program. In addition to his work as a writer and teacher, he edits the literary magazine Juked. He lives in Salt Lake City with the writer Ashley Farmer.
SARABANDE BOOKS is a nonprofit literary press located in Louisville, KY. Founded in 1994 to champion poetry, short fiction, and essay, we are committed to creating lasting editions that honor exceptional writing. For more information, please visit sarabandebooks.org.