Issue 51 December 2017

Poppy fell the moment Carlos showed her his feet. She’d never met a man—or rather, a civilian man—with feet uglier than her own. But ballet slippers weren’t any kinder to toes than combat boots were.

Before she saw him, she’d planned on making a tactical retreat from the reception. It’d been a mistake to take leave for this wedding, an even bigger one to wear her dress uniform. Coming home never worked. Hadn’t she learned that by now? Too many awkward questions, too many thank yous.

What made her pause at the ballroom’s entrance, Poppy couldn’t say. She didn’t see the groom twirling his bride or the bridesmaids in clouds of chiffon floating across the parquet.

Only Carlos.

With uncommon grace, he crossed the room. He navigated the maze of chairs, tables, and guests like a man intimately familiar with each muscle of his body. When he landed in front of her, he didn’t speak but merely held out his hand.

“I don’t dance,” she said.

“Everybody dances.”

“Not me. I march.”

He tipped his head back and laughed. “I can dance well enough for both of us.”

And yes, he could. Demanding to see his feet came several glasses of champagne later.

“Stay,” he whispered the next morning. “Spend the week with me. You can come to rehearsal. I’m dancing the role of the steadfast tin soldier.”

She laughed at the audacity of it, of burning a week’s worth of leave in New York City, with this beautiful man whose world was so different from her own.

“Do you know anything about being a soldier?” she asked.

“That’s why I need you. You can be my technical advisor.”

“No one will believe that.”

Everyone did. Or, rather, they indulged their principal dancer. She taught Carlos how to drill with a wooden rifle. During breaks, he taught her how to hold herself so he could lift and spin her around.

With Carlos, she could dance. With Carlos, she was weightless.

At the airport, he tucked a necklace into the palm of her hand, the pendant an exquisitely engraved poppy.

“We both have demanding mistresses.” His words were so soft she barely heard them above the clamor of traffic and travelers. “You don’t need to come home to me. Just come home.”

She wore the necklace every day in Afghanistan. Poppy no longer regretted attending the wedding, or even wearing her uniform. Her only regret was never seeing Carlos dance on stage.

They wrote letters, the old-fashioned kind, hers torn from a notebook, the paper encrusted with sand and dotted with dirty fingerprints, his on the back of paper placemats, or cleverly crafted in the margins of playbills.

Then her world erupted in fire. When the burn subsided to mere embers, it was too late and Walter Reed a world away from New York City. Still, Poppy vowed: she would see Carlos dance.

Sleeping Beauty gave her the chance.

She had flowers delivered to his dressing room—white roses laced with red poppies. That way he’d know. That way, if he didn’t want to see her, he could hide until she abandoned her vigil at the stage door.

Poppy waited there, her head still buzzing from his performance, her weight sagging into the crutches, her foot heavy in its cast.

Her cheeks flamed when she caught sight of him emerging from the door, her skin hot against the December air. He scanned the alleyway behind the theater. The moment his gaze met hers, he froze.

“Bet my feet are uglier than yours now,” she said.

He exhaled and laughed. It was only then she saw the poppy tucked in his lapel. He took in her crutches, her foot in its cumbersome cast. His eyes grew somber.

“My steadfast soldier.”

“I’m home,” she said.

He moved close, fluid and graceful, and cupped her cheek with his palm. “So am I.”

All at once she was weightless.

April 14, 1994, Mubaro, Rwanda

The girl waits. There are only the silver threads of a web swooping precariously over the top left corner of a splintered window frame. There are no rays of warm light seeping through mottled glass. There is no slight breeze, no swaying jacaranda branch heavy with purple blossoms her mother sometimes plucked before church and pinned to the brim of her straw hat. These simple luxuries disappeared hours, perhaps days, ago.

She is not sure how long she’s been curled up in the darkness, under the frame of a stepladder tented with a blue tarp. Long enough so that there is only the faintest odor of paint, turpentine, urine, and a piney cleanser. Long enough that her empty stomach no longer gurgles, and the certainty of a machete blade slitting her neck no longer brings up the sour taste of fear. For as long as she can remember, her family has lived with the threat of death—maybe today, maybe tomorrow—as if each day is a gift, so easily snatched away. It occurs to her that fear is what has given the Hutus their power all of these years. The boys who sometimes shove her into the dirt while walking to school and steal her lunch. The men who come to take her father’s crops or burn the fields if he refuses. It is some small comfort that they no longer have power over her.

The girl presses one eye against a ragged triangle of light, scraped open with a nail she pried loose from the window frame. It only distracts her mind for a few seconds at a time but that’s enough to suppress the urge to run from this place. There is nowhere to run, nothing to do but wait. Nose pressed to plastic, there is only the shimmering web; no screams, no church bells clanging, no shattering glass, no gunshots that pulse behind her eyes, no ache in her groin, no pieces of prayers.

There is barely enough room, even knees pulled to chest, between the steel rails of the ladder. Still, the girl rocks back and forth, back and forth. She pulls an oversized flannel shirt down over bare knees and hooks it under curled toes. She hums without making a sound, the force of her breath vibrating in her chest, a Kinyarwanda lullaby her mother used to sing at bedtime while stroking her hair. Umama sings to her, still, louder than the bass pumping from a boom box, primal and urgent, too loud to be mistaken for music.

She waits, watching the web until the shiny black insect with spindly golden legs floats back into sight. It’s a relief to see the spider fortifying her home, spinning away. As long as the spider is in view, there is a small hope that the soldier who wrapped his shirt around her and ordered her to wait, to make herself small and quiet and hide somewhere safe in her mind, might also return.

This is not your usual holiday issue.

There are no jolly elves or mistletoe garlands. No perfectly decorated trees full of fairy lights or any other toothsomely sweet tableaus appear in our stories this December.

But this is a holiday issue.

In Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami writes:

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

If you’ve been through the storm, you understand. We share this strange communion. If you’re in the storm, and you can’t see your way to the next step, that’s okay. Just know that the storm will be over one day. When it is, those of us who have weathered the storm will be here waiting for you. And for those of you who haven’t yet walked through your storm, maybe you’ll remember this or maybe it will pass you by, but when your storm does come, I hope you remember that you’re not alone.

I promised that this was a holiday issue. And it is.

This year, December is a celebratory issue—because the storm can be weathered. Life can be hard and cruel with its unexpected twists. But it’s only because we love that we hurt. It’s only because we hope that we can be disappointed. And as long as we continue to love and hope, even in the face of pain, we win.

Our stories this month are about persistence, hope, and ultimately, love—even when it hurts.

Returning to Flash Fiction Online, Charity Tahmaseb brings us “Steadfast,” a beautiful yet modern retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.”

Jennifer Haupt’s “The Girl Waits” is an encapsulated moment in one girl’s life. Yet it has an enormous dynamism not often found in such small, quiet stories, and that’s the underlying tension of hope.

John Wiswell returns to Flash Fiction Online, and no, it’s not April (his usual month for FFO appearances). Read “The First Stop Is Always the Last.” Grief, self-doubt, and hope play out in second chances, all set on a city bus.

And finally, to round out the issue is Stewart C Baker’s “Excerpt from the Diagnostic and Necromantic Manual, 5th edition Regarding the Departed” (previously published in The Sockdolager).

To sum up this issue, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from Stewart’s story.

“(The practitioner) must be willing to accept that pain is universal, and that beauty can, like a sudden surge of snow, be deadly.”

4.200 – Reuniting with Departed Lovers, Pets, and/or Network-enabled Electronic Devices, Alternate Methods for

In some rare cases, the methods laid out by section 4.100 (Classic Necromantic Rituals) will fail to return loved ones—or their devices—to life.  In such instances, the practitioner or her client may feel the onset of despair.  As though caught in an avalanche in the Italian Alps, she may seem to hear the loved one’s voice fading away forever.  The sky may press in; the sound of passing helicopters may bring on a mixture of trepidation and relief.

These feelings are mere homonculi of the mind and can be safely discarded.  (Should these feelings be the work of actual homonculi, the practitioner may benefit by referencing “Demonic Mind-Parasites, Potentially Non-Fatal Methods for the Removal of” in section 3.402 of this manual.)

As ever, it is useful to recall that magic is—at its core—a system of symbolic transactions.  The universe and the practitioner’s place within it may be successfully reconfigured by novel and arresting metaphors, well-executed public happenings, or straightforward refusal to accept the reality and permanence of death.

The following suggestions were automatically generated during the mind-absorption process performed by the original owner of this manual.  While they may prove effective, the International Federation of Necromantic Practitioners hereby disclaims responsibility for any dimensional collapses, magically-imbued housewares, ruptured fourth walls, homicide charges, and/or heartburn which result from their use.

4.201 – Listing of Methods

4.201.1 – Compose a lament in the traditional style of your choice.

Relevant cultural norms and practices should be accounted for.  If possible, the practitioner should take the time to research these beyond her somewhat tenuous present understanding.  She may wish to ask the departed’s family or manufacturer for input, recalling their first-hand experience with the culture of the deceased.

Do not use iambic pentameter, as it may attract lesser demons and pedants.

4.201.2 – Using Meliglaf’s Mellifluous Menagerie, transmute a favourite toy/keepsake/accessory into a string quartet, ensuring that the violin is not played by too flashy or condescending of a performer.

The practitioner should also take care that she does not recall how they first met in a busy New York subway, the only two to stop and listen to an extemporaneous performance of the Helikopter-Streichquartett (sans helicopters).

4.201.3 – Cook a hearty breakfast for two.

One never knows.

4.201.4 – Transmit half-remembered promises to SETI as encrypted files so that they appear to be extra-terrestrial contact.

The following may be acceptable subjects: A child and a home and a family dog; a moonlit anniversary night spent with wine and song and a hot tub; a trip to the pet spa; the latest Bluetooth headset.

The resulting storm of speculation and subsequent disappointment at the hoax, combined with the repeated transmission of things important to the practitioner and/or client’s loved one, pet, or electronic device, will on certain days in certain months of certain years destabilize reality, allowing the practitioner to reach through the veil of death and retrieve him, her, or it.

4.201.5 – Call loudly from the western-most base of a mountain which overlooks a lake.

In some cultures, bodies of water can act as a gateway to the spirit world.  West is the direction in which the departed go. The practitioner can take advantage of these two facts by loudly and clearly calling out the name or model of the departed while facing west near a lake.  The mountain serves to reinforce the weight of her longing and regret.

This one takes time, so remember: persistence is key.

(Note that 4.201.5 should not be attempted in winter.)

4.201.6 – Write synonyms for heartache on your ceilings, walls, and floor until your cheap studio apartment appears to vanish behind the shadow they cast.

Do not mistake the shadow for clouds or for rescuers.  No rain will fall; no relief will come.

4.201.7 – Cast oneself from a skyscraper while singing the final lines from Verdi’s Aida, dressed only in a suit jacket and a tub of day-glo orange paint.

So unlikely a combination of events inverts the flow of time.  The practitioner may return to that breathless moment at the Met when she fumbled the ring from her rented tuxedo and proposed.

Time may or may not resume its normal course.

Provision of a trampoline or other device at the base of the building is recommended, or success will be a transient thing.

4.300 – Acceptance as Necromantic Ritual

If all methods in sections 4.100 and 4.200 fail, the practitioner may wish to stop taking refuge in the pretense of seeking to help a “client” and accept the reality of her loss.

In these instances it can be comforting to view natural death, as well as the rituals used to reverse it, as a symbolic transaction.  While the pain from such a permanent loss never truly vanishes, it can be made to lessen through daily rituals as diverse as meditation, consigning this manual to a fire, long walks on quiet beaches, or calling up unstoppable armies of the damned to wreak havoc on the world.  Laughter (mad or otherwise) can be cathartic.  In extreme cases, the practitioner may even wish to consult a psychiatrist.

Whichever method the practitioner chooses, she must be willing to accept that pain is universal, and that beauty can, like a sudden surge of snow, be deadly.

Previously published in The Sockdolager, November/December 2015. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

Last month I talked about writing during the Ebook Revolution Hysteria of 2010-2013 and how this crashed against the realities of not only the market and my own stupidity but also the compounded tragedies of being unemployed, beginning a divorce, and having my mother killed by four different kinds of cancer all within months of each other. I’ve written in FXXK WRITING: A GUIDE FOR FRUSTRATED ARTISTS about this period, living in crushed quarters with a combination bathroom kitchen (“The Bitchin’”), working every kind of job you could imagine to make rent and create a small nest egg. But in that chapter I largely focused on the non-writing I did (improv, teaching, history). But I did write a little. And I have mixed feelings about it.

See, there’s a lot of writer tough-guy BS about writing no matter what. That “real” writers are the ones who don’t let anything stop them from getting their daily word count. Lost a job? Get back to writing. Wife leaves you? Get back to writing. Mom dies? Get back to writing. In other words, a tough love version of Alec Baldwin’s inspiration speech from Glen Gary Glen Ross.

Such thinking is pure grizzly shit, as the late Tom Piccirilli used to say. It feeds into a masochistic, workaholic, hyper-capitalistic mindframe about will, production, and value that doesn’t much jive with being an artist or decent human being beyond a kernel of wisdom (keep working hard at your craft to get better). And yet, when we are at our most vulnerable we often succumb to the strongly worded message from media around us. I had wedded my identity to being a writer (and future success to boot) for so long that when my life collapsed I still gave writing a shot. I felt like if I stopped, I would stop being a person worthy of . . . well, anything.

The first opportunity arrived when everything was on fire. Thanks to DEATH MATCH and my other books about fighting and martial arts, I had a very, very small reputation as “that guy who writes wrestling novels.” So when Paul Bishop, editor of the late lamented FIGHT CARD series contacted me about writing a short novel set in the world of wrestling, I said yes. How often do you get asked to write a novel?

Keep that question in mind as we march along.

RISE OF THE LUCHADOR was written in fits in starts during a period of re-wiring my brain after tragedy. It’s a fun, violent, and brutal story of a real street fighter from Brazil forced to hide in the world of pro wrestling. When I was interviewed about the book, Renee Pickup noted that for all the fun and fisticuffs the story’s emotional depth shocked her. The motivations in that book reflected my own thoughts on life and death and what makes the former worth living before the latter takes over. Grim and introspective was my jam.

I then wrote a serialized fantasy novel for my Ridlerville Newsletter called THE KING OF SATURDAY MORNING. It’s an unabashedly weird nostalgia novel about a guy who knows WAY TOO MUCH about Saturday morning cartoons being shoved into the world where all those shows live and how he gets his ass handed to him all over the place. I wrote it in crazy short chapters because with the hours I was working I couldn’t bother to do otherwise. I’m not sure if anyone read it. I’ve never heard anyone mention anything other than thanks for sending it out. It’s never been properly published. I enjoyed writing it, but when it was done, I was spent. I can’t really remember why I wrote it other than to prove that I could still do it and, maybe, have fun with a zero-stakes project.

I also tried to write “just for fun.” Tried my hand at a romance novel. Then a sword and sorcery thriller. And for the first time since I started writing novels I gave up. I didn’t push these suckers to completion. I ran out of gas. All the tough guy bullshit about finishing your work ran through my head . . . but I didn’t care. So what? They were experiments. Add them to the pyre. Who fucking cares? It was roughly the same time I realized I had to give up writing academic history. Journal articles took forever to get published and paid nothing but “credibility” which I could not trade for food or eat. Such things were for the luxury class. And so the momentum for prose died.

But the bug of storytelling kept biting. Most of 2014 was spent writing comic book pitches and scripts. I sold one, came SO CLOSE to selling a complete graphic novel to a great independent publisher, and worked with some amazing artists (including the incredible Yuki Saeki, who did the cover of FXXK WRITING). But after working sixty-hour weeks, six to seven days-a-week, the idea of writing a novel that wouldn’t pay shit when I was done after a year of labor was not going to happen.

And yes, I had other novels in existence that I thought of as assets. The problem? My agent at the time wouldn’t represent my fiction. They loved my historical work but didn’t know the markets that I wrote in and wasn’t interested in trying. So, yeah, I shoved these novels around but I didn’t make it a priority.

I’d occasionally tinker on a short story, and sold a few for okay money, but with the flame of enthusiasm flickering out I was thinking “FXXK WRITING” more and more. I didn’t care about being a novelist. I had written fourteen novels, thrown away about three, and so far it had meant a lot of joy, a lot of delusion, and a pretty good skill set no one wanted to pay for.

And that was fine. I didn’t miss it. I had joy in my life from teaching, doing improv, sketch comedy, pitches, and occasionally throwing my name in the hat for history fellowships and other kinds of work. Indeed, the time I used to spent writing novels I primarily spent filling out endless cover letters, job application, and more. Writing novels didn’t’ mean shit.

And that was a boon. I’d invested too much of my identity into a means of production. I thought my value as a human being was only via what I could produce. It was when I abandoned that goal I made profound friendships and got my mind out of the dungeons it had been chained to for years. I saw that writing was a way to hide from the world, justifiable solitude, and an excuse to not engage with others (it’s all the other wonderful stuff, too, but when you STOP and take a hard look at yourself you realize sometimes your escape into art is a way to avoid living or making decisions).

I started to have less and less patience for artists who considered themselves better than other types of people or jobs. I had ZERO patience for successful writers who thought publishing rewarded talent and creativity and was inherently fair: when you have no money and no job and are running out of comic books to sell for food, such people become patron saints of the 1%. I had a very fun, very stressful life that didn’t include writing novels. There was nothing lacking. There was no secret desire. I wasn’t looking to write a new novel. And if I never did, it would have been great. My life would still be worth living. I was content.

February 2016. I was producing improv shows, creating sketch comedy troupes, reading amazing memoirs and weird history, writing “FXXK WRITING” and traveling the world on a history fellowship. Writing up my research, which had taken me from California to the UK to the Philippines, I went to lunch with my friend Nick Mamatas. Nick and his family were a boon and offered advice, food, and support when I had next to nothing. He said a publisher was looking for someone who might be interested in a writing a pulpy historically based urban fantasy series. Would I be interested in pitching them some ideas?

That project became HEX-RATED, the first installment of THE BRIMSTONE FILES.

Sixteen years of writing short stories. Four years writing fourteen novels. Two-plus years saying “fuck novels.” And now a two-book deal?

SEE? IT’S JUST THAT EASY! YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!

Help Jay keep Brimstone alive by buying HEX-RATED, which was favorably reviewed by NPR, Publisher’s Weekly, and Barnes & Noble! See my grandmaster of horror Brian Keene called it “Deliciously uncomfortable, wonderfully gritty, and a worthy successor to the occult detectives of old.”