A STRANGE EDGE JOINT

APRIL 2018
 Editor’s Introduction:
How to Be Absurd

As the editor of perhaps the only absurdist ezine in America right now I feel it is
my duty to take the time to teach absurdity to you, dear reader. What is absurdity? How
does it work? Does it have a boundary and, if so, what is on the other side? Perhaps you
had a story rejected by this publication and you want to ensure you understand what
we consider an acceptable level of absurdity. Whatever questions you may have will be
answered here and if they are not addressed below then they are not the right questions.
Firstly, absurdity is a theme or tone that expresses the inherent meaningless of the
human condition, or of elements of that condition, or of elements of human interaction
that are hoped to be communicative. It has developed from a quasi-existentialist
paradigm into a form of surreal theater and then a backhanded epithet that some
people—though clearly not you, dear reader—consider a collegiate synonym for silly.
But I assure you that I am very serious about absurdity. It is not silly to me. And I will
now teach you, step by step, how to write a piece of absurdist flash fiction.
Absurdity must always be grounded by a character who thinks they understand their
world. For our purposes, let’s say this is a thirty-six year old man dining alone in a fast
food establishment after work. Certainly he is aware that dining alone is considered a
desperate act by some, but he has long ago made peace with this notion. Still, he tries to
eat as quickly and inconspicuously as possible.
Now, this character must be confronted with something he doesn’t understand,
something that defies his view of the natural order, something that is both at once
disturbing and almost laughably insignificant. For our purposes, this interruption of the
norm will be caused by a slightly older gentlemen of approximately fifty years who
approaches our protagonist while he’s still trying to rapidly finish his meal. The older
man starts talking to the protagonist, as if he wants to start a conversation. This is
already getting absurd because who does this? Who just approaches a stranger who is
eating alone in a fast food restaurant and starts talking to him? Not only that, but the
older man has a purpose in mind. He’s going to ask the protagonist to do something for
him, something that not only makes the protagonist very uncomfortable, but something
that the reader cannot relate to ever asking someone to do. In this case, the older man
says this: “I’m sorry to disturb you here while you are eating, but I notice you have
French fries and, well, you see, I took too many ketchup packets and I hate to waste. I’m
very waste conscious. I have this packet left over, so would you mind using it for me?
I just really don’t want to be responsible for any waste at all, can’t bear the thought of
this ketchup packet being thrown away because of my carelessness. I couldn’t live with
that. I know a large fry requires exactly four packets of ketchup yet I foolishly grabbed
five, so please, help a brother out.”
This guy has also talked for an absurdly long period of time. We’ve all had people
approach us in public with pitches or solicitations, and they always seem abnormally
longwinded. This keeps the story relatable for the reader. You don’t want to make your
story so alienating that people start putting your book down and cursing yourself for
not understanding human emotions. They might start to think you are a robot. A lot of
amateur absurdists make the mistake of trying to appeal only to the intellect, but people
with only intellect do not read short fiction. They are too busy looking through
microscopes and building rocket engines. No, the concertedly intellectual do not read,
and many of them cannot read. Theirs is a world full of shape-language and math games.
There is a reason why there is no English translation for 2 + 2 = 4.
But I fear I digress. The older man has approached the protagonist 1) to not only
interrupt the order of things but 2) to charge the protagonist with an absurd request.
The older man 1) is making a request that the protagonist has no wish to honor, he
doesn’t want to eat ketchup from a packet this older man has been fondling, but 2) the
protagonist can see no reasonable way to not go ahead and agree to the man’s insane
terms. He says that he will, of course, use the ketchup packet and that the older man
need not worry about any waste.
The older man is relieved that the protagonist is willing to go against nature in this
fashion, to eat another man’s ketchup. Thanking the protagonist profusely, the older man
promptly leaves the fast food restaurant. The protagonist watches him as he leaves, still
barely able to believe what has just happened and what he agreed to. The older man walks
away and begins crossing the street. He is promptly struck down by a passing van and
killed dead. This adds to the absurdity for a few reasons. The older man had claimed he
couldn’t live with the idea of wasting that ketchup packet; now he is no longer living.
Also, this is a technique called non sequitur, where a seemingly unrelated incident
follows another that would seem to require a more rational and intuitive resolution,
such as—the man just leaves forever and is not hit by a large motor vehicle.
You could end the story here if you were not a brave and committed absurdist, but
let us instead soldier on: The protagonist is shocked, but also relieved that now he has
no reason to eat this unwanted ketchup packet. He will not feel guilty for letting down
the older man because the older man has met with the ultimate disappointment—a
senseless death. Having mostly lost his appetite after the horrendous road accident, the
protagonist rises and walks to the trash can to throw away the remainder of his food
and, of course, the ketchup packet.
A split second before his tray is dumped, the older man’s ghost appears to the
protagonist and wails: “What are you doing? You made me a promise! Not only are you
tossing my ketchup, but you are wasting so much good food! I can’t stand the waste!
There are millions of starving kids in Haiti! I’ll haunt you if you do this!”
This is of course absurd for several reasons. Firstly, the protagonist’s expectations
are once again dashed: he was expecting the older man to stay dead. The natural order
has once again been upset. A ghost has appeared and told him not to waste food, which
is absurd on its face because this behavior is too disgraceful to accept from a ghost in
the real world. But this is a story, not the real world, and we can make ghosts do
whatever we want to serve the absurdity. Also, the mention of Haiti is absurd because
they don’t even use ketchup there.
The protagonist, feeling both guilty and afraid of being haunted, proceeds to accost
all the customers in the restaurant, trying to get them to accept the rest of his food.
They all have no problem telling him where to get off, which adds to the absurdity. Our
“reasonable” man is the only one who is now behaving unreasonably. He thought he
knew the rule: if an older man tells you to eat his ketchup, you must eat it to avoid being
rude. But it turns out there is no such rule and never has been. Joke’s on you, rhyme and
reason. Finally, the protagonist is reduced to having to pay a teenaged goth girl twenty
bucks to eat the rest of his food. He makes sure to especially emphasize to her that she
must under any circumstance also use this ketchup packet. She agrees, and he retreats
to the other side of the restaurant to keep an eye on her, ensuring she actually does
what she agreed to do. She eats it all and uses every last drop of ketchup, which is in
itself absurd, because when was the last time a teenager didn’t waste food and honored
their word?
Now the protagonist turns to the ghost with a sense of relief and self-satisfaction.
If we wanted to end the story now, we could have the ghost start laughing and say, “So
fucking long, douchebag!” as he flips the protagonist off, then disappears. You could go
that way, and that would be absurd. But this is the part of the story where you could
work in Newsies.
Our work here is not yet done. The ghost doesn’t disappear or flip the guy off.
Instead, he thanks him and he adds: “I know I’ve asked a lot of you already, but I have
this DVD at my house, Newsies, have you seen it? It’s great. I can’t stand to think of
that DVD going to waste now that I’m dead. I was just thinking, there are millions of
kids in Haiti who have never seen Newsies. Would you please drive to my house, break
in, take the DVD, buy a ticket to Haiti, fly down there, and travel the countryside
showing the movie to as many of the children there as you can before you die or are
killed?”
The protagonist feels at this point he can’t say no. He is already committed to
carrying out this older man’s increasingly ludicrous requests. So he drives to the old
man’s house, breaks in, grabs the DVD case for Newsies, buys a ticket to Haiti, flies
down there, and it is at that point he makes an astonishing discovery—the DVD case
is empty! The older man had left the disc in the player and forgotten to put it back. This
is absolutely absurd because older men of approximately fifty that own copies of
Newsies are so meticulous about the organization of their material possessions that
they always, and I mean ALWAYS, put their copy of Newsies back in the case
immediately after they finish viewing, sometimes even before they finish viewing it,
having seen it so many times that the rest of the movie just plays out in their minds
with crystal clarity, and they know all the words to “The World Will Know (Reprise)”
and “Carrying the Banner (Finale).” I mean, who doesn’t? And who doesn’t know all the
dances? Some kids in Haiti? Forget about them, who needs ‘em? They don’t even eat
ketchup, I heard. I’m not all that big on ketchup, to be honest, but I sure as hell eat it on
my French fries. You’d think that would be a big thing in Haiti since they are French
fries and those guys speak French creole, but apparently they eat hardly any fries at all.
One time I saw a sign in a fast food place that said “French fries” on it and I thought it
said “French fires.” I thought that would make a good name for a story. It would probably
be about how in France the firefighters dress like mimes or something. Or maybe mimes
there have the power to put out fires. Or maybe you can’t see the fires because French
fires have mime powers. They will burn you invisibly and you are superfucked if you
are trapped in one of those goddamn invisible boxes that mimes are always getting
trapped in.
Anyway, I think I was trying to say that mimes are French.
 “Man!” Dennis said, making a sweeping gesture with one hand at the palatial dining
room in which he and several other dinner guests sat at a long mahogany table laden
with gourmet food and drink. “You really have done well for yourself, Franklin. This
house is unfrigginbelievable.”
“Indeed,” Franklin said. He had been condescending, arrogant, and downright rude to
his guests all evening—all of them college friends he hadn’t seen in years whom he’d
invited to his estate only to show off his wealth. Yet his guests, none of whom was
wealthy, had patiently endured their host’s jibes and somewhat inhospitable hospitality
for this chance to see how the other half lives.
“I’ll say,” Allison said, after sipping her wine. “By the way, this wine is fantastic!”
“Of course it’s fantastic,” Franklin scowled. “What, did you think we drank Sutter
Home around here, Allison? That’s an 1867 Château Grand de Zeilleur. I settle for nothing
but the best.”
A butler’s gaunt face peeked over Allison’s shoulder. “May I take your plate, miss?”
“Yes, thank you.” A white-gloved hand reached in to remove her dinnerplate.
“And a friggin’ butler!” Allison said after the cadaverous, old, bow-tied fellow
disappeared into the hallway with his twin stacks of dishes. “I don’t think I’ve ever met
anyone who had a butler before.”
 Nick, probably the biggest asshole in the room next to Franklin, shook his head in a
mixture of admiration and disdain. “So does that fucking guy do anything you tell him
to do?”
“Pretty much. Within reason, of course. I don’t think he’d light himself on fire if I
asked him to.”
“Would he do a little jig for us?” Nick asked, inciting chuckles from the other guests.
“Nick!” Allison said. “You’re such an ass!”
Franklin snapped his fingers. “Jeeves!” The butler emerged from the hallway.
“Sir.”
“And his name is Jeeves!” Dennis said, prompting more laughter.
“It is when he’s on the clock,” Franklin said. “Jeeves, be a fine fellow and do a little
jig for us, won’t you, old boy?”
“Of course, sir.” The butler thrust his elbows out to his sides as his feet launched
into a somewhat labored pattern of taps, clicks, and stomps.
“Faster!” his employer demanded. The butler obeyed.
“Yeah, faster, you goofy, old turd!” Nick bellowed. “Hahaha…” Though visibly
fatigued and running short on breath, the butler sped up even more.
“Alright, you can stop now, Jeeves,” Franklin said after a minute.
“Will he punch himself in the face?” Nick asked.
“Nick, stop it!” Allison said, cupping a hand over her mouth in a perfunctory attempt
to mute her giggles.
“Well, how about we find out now, shall we?” Franklin said. “Jeeves, be a fine old
chap and punch yourself in the fucking face for us.”
 “Of course, sir,” the butler said. He balled a white-gloved hand into a fist, closed his
eyes, and struck himself firmly in the cheek.
“Again!” Nick and Dennis said in a cruel chorus. Nick added, “And harder this time!”
to the mirthful approval of the guests.
The butler did as commanded.
“Again!” Allison joined in. “And even harder this time, you goofy, old fucker! Tee-
hee-hee…”
During the course of the next hour, the guests directed the butler to immerse his
swollen, bloodied face into a bowl of custard; punch himself in the nuts; crawl around
on the floor while making goo-goo-ga-ga sounds; piss into a wine glass and dump it over
his head; and sing, for their riotous pleasure, and to the best of his ability, “Never Gonna
Give You Up” and “Gangnam Style.”
Everyone, the butler excluded, was having a great time. As the night wore on,
however, the host laughed less and less as he cast nervous glances at the grandfather
clock on the opposite side of the room with increasing frequency, the hour hand drawing
closer and closer to nine o’clock.
“Good times!” Dennis said, finishing off his third snifter of cognac while the tired,
beat-up, begrimed butler stood at the end of the table shoving handfuls of mashed
potatoes into his pants by someone’s order. “Hey, Franklin. I don’t mean to pry, but
we’re all very curious, so I’m just gonna come out and ask you: Where’d you get your
money?”
The other guests nodded and murmured their approval of the question. Although all
eyes were on the host, Franklin’s fearful gaze was on the butler, who glared back at him.
“Yeah, Franklin,” Nick said. “Whaddaya do for a living, hoss?”
“I’m…I’m a butler,” Franklin said.
The room erupted in a fresh outbreak of guffaws.
“Seriously,” Allison said. “What do you do?”
 “I’m not joking. I’m a butler.”
The laughter died down as everyone realized Franklin was being sincere.
“Pfft! So what the hell does a butler get paid nowadays?” Nick asked. “A billion
dollars? Ha!”
“Yes,” Franklin said. “A billion dollars a year.”
“You’re yankin’ our chains, man!” Nick said. “Who the hell would pay a butler a
billion dollars?”
Franklin pointed a shaky finger at the butler just as the clock began to toll nine.
“That’s right,” the butler finally spoke, sliding one hand inside his waistband to
reach deep into his mashed potatoes-stuffed underwear to extract a sloppy handful.
“Hey, dickhead,” he said, turning to Nick as he held the potatoes in the air and cocked
his arm back. “Hi. My name is Randy. Have some butlerdick-flavored mashed potatoes.”
Dumbstruck, Nick was too slow to dodge the gob of butlerdick-flavored mashed
potatoes that slammed into his open mouth.
Cradling his forehead in his hands, Franklin sank low in his chair. “Man, I’m so
fucking fucked. I’m about to have my ass handed to me tonight.”
“Do you mean…that you two are each other’s butlers?” Allison asked, uncertainly.
“Yeah, you brainless basic bitch,” Randy said. “I pay your friend a billion dollars a
year to be my butler, and he pays me a billion dollars a year to be his. We switch back
and forth. I’m his butler for twelve hours, he’s mine for the next twelve. And so on.”
Randy yanked a cloth napkin from the table and proceeded to wipe the blood, piss, and
custard from his face. “And my shift is over, which means you assholes can all get the
fuck out of my house before I call the cops.”
Randy bunched up the soiled napkin, chucked it at Dennis’s aghast face before
turning to Franklin. “Oh, Jeeves, old boy. My Satanic orgy guests will be arriving in
about an hour or so. Go heat up the rocks in the sauna and draw me a nice hot bath. Then
go tell the chef to boil up about twenty lobsters. And get this fucking dining room
cleaned up.”
“Yes…sir,” Jeeves-Franklin whimpered.
Allison said, “But I don’t get it. Who actually owns this mansion?”
“I own it when he’s the butler,” Jeeves-Franklin said dejectedly. “He owns it when
I’m the butler.”
Allison knitted her brow in confusion. “So each of you spends the entire billion-
dollar salary you earn on paying the other’s billion-dollar salary?”
“That’s right,” Randy said.
“But where did that billion dollars come from originally?” Allison asked.
“I earned it by working for him as his butler,” Jeeves-Franklin said.
Allison turned from Jeeves-Franklin to Randy. “If that’s the case, then where did you
originally get the billion dollars to pay him?”
“From working as his butler,” Randy replied.
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Allison said. “One of you had to be the first to
hire the other as a butler, or else this would go on for infinity. Also, if all the money
either one of you ever has is exactly a billion dollars, but you’re constantly giving it
back and forth to each other and never spending any of it, that means, technically,
neither one of you ever has any money. Like, not even a penny. No money to pay your
mortgage or even to buy food.”
Jeeves-Franklin stood up from his chair. He and Randy stared at each other with
panic in their eyes as they simultaneously came to the grim realization that neither one
of them had likely eaten anything for a very long time—possibly for infinity! They both
died right there on the spot, their rapidly decaying flesh raining to the floor in a fine
gray dust, leaving two upright skeletons facing one another for a beat before they too
collapsed into separate piles of brittle bones.
“I still don’t get it,” Dennis said after he and the other guests rose from the table to
gawk at the remains of the two billionaire butlers. “If they never spent any of their
salaries on anything other than each other’s salaries, then who bought all the food and
booze we consumed tonight?”
“I did,” said a weird-for-weird’s-sake, gigantic, karate-choppin’, pogo stick-hoppin’,
Atari 2600-headed, lobster-clawed, vampire-zombie platypus right before it tore Dennis’s
stupid face off his stupid, wet, beet-red, screaming skull.
 Jane has an eye infection. “It looks pretty severe,” I tell her. She sips coffee. Her
eyes are brick walls. She says, “I hate doctors.” I sip coffee. I hate Jane. She touches
one brick wall, then the other, and says, “Will you call someone? I’m too upset to use
the phone.” She blinks, eyelids rasping over brick. I call the doctor. “Holy shit,” says
the doctor, “that sounds pretty severe,” and he hangs up without another word. Jane
sips coffee, her brick walls watching me with an expression that says, “Well?”
I take crayons from the flowerpot, and I lean toward Jane and draw eyes on the brick.
When I finish, she throws her coffee in my face. “My eyes are brown,” she says, “not
green.” The coffee melts my eyeballs; they run out of their sockets, stream down my
cheeks like I’m crying.
Jane stabs a crayon into each empty socket. The crayons, two shades of blue,
protrude like nails. Impassioned, Jane pounces on me. She has always wanted a blue-
eyed lover.
My eyes write on her walls.
The Queen of Velcro is fuzzy and black on one side, and has sharp plastic
teeth on the other. Her lovers are kept in a state of suspense, never knowing
which side of her to please. But the truth is, she can only achieve satisfaction
by pressing each opposing side of herself against the other till they adhere,
then attaining release as she pulls herself apart in a long, ripping sigh.
 The doctor tells me I have the Blu, so I slap him across the face and make several
vulgar inferences regarding his parentage.
“Yes,” he says, rubbing the handprint from his cheek. “That’s typical of your
condition. Other symptoms may include wandering phantom hair follicle syndrome,
fourth-dimensional libido, and random outcroppings of assorted vegetables.” He plucks
a baby carrot from my neck and rabbits it. Gravity pulls on the corners of his lips. He
uses his index fingers to self-impose a smile.
“You’re fine,” he says. “Everything is fine.”
“What’s my prognosis?” I ask, shivering uncontrollably for an inordinate amount
of time. My sweat turns into ranch dipping sauce.
“Well,” the doctor pauses while he searches my back for cauliflower. He settles
on broccoli, swabbing my armpit with the head. He places it on his tongue using an
unnecessarily elaborate gear-and-pulley system. “At such an advanced stage-” his
speech is impeded by a partially-full mouth. He signals for me to wait while he
finishes. “Excuse me.” He walks across the room, cracks open a bottle of hydrogen
peroxide, and chugs. He finishes and lets out a gratuitous Ahhh noise. “Where was I?
Oh, yes, the dying thing.”
 “If I die,” I reply. “The universe dies with me.”
The doctor strokes his long Freudian beard.
“That does complicate things,” he says. “Let me see what insurance will cover.”
The doctor leaves the room. A Little Golden Book randomly manifests on my lap.
The title words play a round of musical chairs before settling on the Hopsalong Battle
Frog the at Armageddon of Happy. I crack the cover.
I sit in the cafeteria of a psychiatric hospital. The entire room is covered in blood. I
look across the table and see Hell anthropomorphized.
“She watched as his lover for her died,” an omnidirectional disembodied voice
says.
I take off running. I become trapped in a thirty-two hour montage of me sprinting
down corridors. I find the exit and stumble into a booth at a local diner.
“What’ll it be?” the waiter says, tapping a scratch pad with a pencil.
I try to decipher the menu, but the letters become micro-cockroaches and scurry
off the laminate.
“The usual,” I mutter.
Everyone else in the diner is eating slices of π. They choke on the numbers,
metamorphose into Violet Beauregarde cosplayers, and die. The waiter brings me the
chef’s salad.
I close the book. The door to the room opens itself. Shuts. Opens. Shuts. The doctor
steps through.
“Good news,” he says. “I spoke with your insurance. They said they’ve never
heard of you, but they did give me this.” He renders a 9mm pistol and hands it to me.
“Good luck.”
I shove the barrel into my mouth and squeeze the trigger. A black hole forms at the
back of my skull. All of creation circles the drain until there’s nothing left in the
universe except for myself, half of a rocking chair, and the sound waves produced by
Jefferson Airplane when they recorded White Rabbit.
 I balance the rocking chair at an angle, sit cross-legged, and begin harvesting
myself.
Feed your head…
Feed your head…
 Hello, again. It is I, The Late Peter Sellers,
bringing you another interview. You may
recall the life-debt I owe to the good people
at The Strange Edge for retrieving my
corpse from that wine barrel in Billericay
and calling upon the magic of Victor Drai,
producer of Weekend at Bernie’s, to
reanimate me. To pay off this immense
debt, they set me to the task of interacting
with real live writers, possibly the
strangest creature yet known to man to
(probably) exist.
Today, I had the unique opportunity to
interview Brian Evenson. He’s the author of over a dozen books, including Last Days,
The Wavering Knife, Immobility, and The Warren. His work has been compared to
everyone under the sun in the most favorable of ways, and he’s a really fine chap, his
people assure me. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, then you are seriously lacking in
a literary vitamin that is extremely difficult to get from other sources. His darkness,
humour, and ingenuity are so notable that I have even mentioned them here. If you are
a curious newcomer or simply a general pinchpenny, you can get a free book, Another
Way to Fall, from Concord Free Press that includes his weird novella “Baby Leg” here:
http://www.concordfreepress.com/another-way-to-fall/.
I would like to note that Mr. Evenson, if that is his real name, arrived several days
late for the interview, driving a weather-beaten Volkswagen Fox. He wore a wide
brimmed fedora and large sunglasses, and also sported a bandana in the fashion of a train
robber. His suit, I’m quite sure, was an Armenian knock-off of Armani. He brought his
own Postum to drink. When I offered him water (free of charge) to mix it with he,
however, declined and simply spooned small amounts of the beverage powder into his
mouth, making an “ahhhhhhhhhhh” sound of satisfaction after each spoonful. I had been
warned in advance to expect all of these things.
After his immense thirst for dusty grain had been (apparently) quenched, I
commenced the interview proper.
The Late Peter Sellers: So, Brian, I like to ask this question of all my interviewees to get a sense
of where they are coming from. What is your absolute favorite movie featuring me?

Brian Evenson: Hmmm. Can we instead say which my least not-favorite movie featuring you is?
You’re very good in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, but I think I’d have to go with Being There in
which you seem to almost not have a personality at all and only to reflect the personalities of those
around you back at them. Acting like you’re not there, particularly when the movie is called Being
There, is no small thing, and is a major accomplishment.

TLPS: Why, thank you. Would you say that Being There had any impact on your life or your
work?

BE: Yes, it did, as a writer. It made me spend less time asserting myself and more time paying
attention to what other people were saying and doing. It made me attentive to the human nature
going on around me, almost as if I were an alien observer.

TLPS: Oh, that is unfortunate. Moving on, as you started writing the stories that would be collected
into your first release, Altmann’s Tongue, how did you categorize your writing? Thitherafter we
have heard it called everything from literary, to transgressive, to dark crime, to “hipster horror,”
even occasionally regarded as bizarro fiction. But what, in your mind, were you trying to do?

BE: I didn’t know quite what to call them. At the time, I think I called them “Innovative Fiction,”
which for me meant they weren’t quite literary and weren’t quite genre. I was just trying to write
stories that were things that I would want to read, which meant well-written stories with often a
fantastical element and a dark edge.

TLPS: Who or what were your influences at the beginning of your career? And do you feel that
shifted at all as time went by?

BE: Kafka and Beckett were really important to me early on. They’ve remained important but
have perhaps faded more into the background a little. These days, I find myself returning to Gene
Wolfe, who I read when I was a teenager, and Robert Aickman. But there are also books like
Kathryn Davis’s Duplex which I find really amazing for their refusal to stay within a genre. There
are lots of others.

TLPS: I’ve seen other interviews in which you comment that sometimes your favorite stories work
for reasons you don’t fully comprehend. How do you think that works? And is that something that
draws you to fiction and art in general?

BE: If I can see how a story is achieving the effect it has on me, it kind of limits the effect. Some
of the stories I love the most are things like Isak Dinesen’s “The Monkey,” which has a mind-
blowingly weird ending and which has a powerful effect on me each time I read it, though I’m not
always sure why. Yes, I like fiction and art that has a powerful effect on me, but if I can see “That’s
how the author does it,” the effect drops off. Some of Raymond Carver’s fiction had that effect the
first time I read it, but by the second time I read it I could see how it was doing what it was doing…
Good fiction for me is very conscious of language, rhythm and sound, but also a bit inscrutable; it
partly hides what it’s doing to the reader, but does it nonetheless.

TLPS: What would you say is your weirdest novel/novella, and what are your four weirdest
stories?

BE: Weirdest novel would almost certainly be Last Days, which is about a religious cult that
believes in amputation as a way of getting closer to God. My novella “Baby Leg,” which Concord
Free Press just published paired with a novella by Paul Tremblay in a book called Another Way to
Fall (and which you can get for free, including free shipping from Concord Free Press) is a close
second. That’s kind of a mad-scientist-meets-noir novella. Weirdest story would be “Any Corpse”
in A Collapse of Horses, which opens with flesh calling from the sky. Runners up would probably
include “The Adjudicator” in Fugue State, “The Sladen Suit,” in Windeye. After that, it’s kind of
a toss-up.

TLPS: Which was your favorite book to write, and which is your favorite now, and is there a
correlation between enjoying the writing process of the work and your enjoyment of the finished
work?

BE: My favorite book to write was probably Last Days, just because it’s such an over-the-top and
nuts book. It’s probably still my personal favorite, though I think The Open Curtain, which was a
finalist for a lot of awards, is probably the better book. But that book was hard to write; it took me
almost six years. So, yes, I do think the fact that Last Days was fun to write probably figures into
it still being a favorite. One of my favorite stories is “Windeye,” which I wrote very quickly and
which basically wrote itself—usually I go through a lot of drafts, but that story was pretty much
there after the first draft. So, maybe there is a correlation between how much I enjoyed writing
something and how much I like it after…

TLPS: Have you ever written a character about whom you think: “I’m sorry Peter Sellers is dead,
because he would have been perfect to play this part when Macon Blair or Jeremy Saulnier or Trey
Edward Shults finally adapts my work into a very successful independent film that might see
release by A4 or Netflix… perhaps even Fox Searchlight.”
BE: All the time. I could see most of my stories being done with all the roles played by Peter
Sellers.

TLPS: And on that same trail, if you had your druthers, who would you cast in an adaptation of
Last Days and who would be your pick for ideal director?

BE: I’ve sold the rights for that book four times. Currently there’s a very good screenplay by
Damien Ober (if you’re looking for weird, check out his novel Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream
America, which imagines what America would have been like if the internet had been around in
the 18th Century, along with aliens and a whole lot more), and we have a director and actor attached
that I’m very happy about—keeping my fingers crossed that it gets made. So, in other words, I
can’t answer your question for fear of jinxing the real possibilities…

TLPS: Have you ever owned a Volkswagen Fox?

BE: Absolutely not. But my son and I did go see a red fox a few weekends ago.

TLPS: I know you must be tired of this question, but regarding the LDS Church, do you think
Tom Cruise is actually secret Mormon? I can show you some very astonishing clips on YouTube.

BE: It would, definitely, explain a lot about Tom Cruise.

TLPS: Is it true that you are not the original Brian Evenson, and merely took up the mantel from
the previous BE?

BE: Yes, it’s kind of a Boys from Brazil situation, but in this case it’s the boys from Provo, Utah.
I was produced in a vat as all the Brian Evensons are. We are allowed to take on the role until our
genetics begin to break down, then the next Brian Evenson is brought out of the next vat, the brain
is transferred, and he, or we, go on.

TLPS: Now this may be slightly embarrassing to bring up, and I’m sure any writer hates to lose
track of his work, but it seems, thanks to the Mandela Effect, that two of your very popular
children’s books, Fudge State and Clip-Clop The Horse, have simply vanished from our current
timeline. Would you like to describe what you remember of these lost works for us, as we people
of Earth 1.085 shall never have a chance to read them?

BE: Fudge State is about an almost paradisiacal land in which the ground is made of fudge and
everyone can eat fudge at any time for free. It was funded by the North American Fudge
Association, but does present my honest opinions on fudge—they had heard me speaking about it
on YouTube, so sought me out. Clip-Clop the Horse is about the infamous Rochester horse beating
of 1893, but told in a style appropriate for children. “Clip-Clop” is the sound made by the golf club
(a four iron, I believe) as the dastardly golfer Roger “Red” Mannekin performed his evil deed.
Why these books have vanished, I am at a loss to say…

And then the man vanished right before my very eyes. Or I fell asleep and Brian politely
sneaked away without disturbing my slumber. One or the other occurred, I’m quite sure.
Mariner Market
Cannon Beach, Oregon

“Why don’t you guys wait outside?”

It was less a question than a directive.
“I’ll get the tide map and be out in a minute,” said my wife, who was waiting in line
with our two daughters.
I grabbed my son’s hand and left the store without any beer.
Outside on the stoop, I saw a pair of seagulls across the parking lot scrounging
around inside the back of a pickup truck. The truck had a cap, but the rear flip-up window
was missing. The gulls had breached this entry. A mound of household goods filled the
bed.
I imagined the truck owner’s spouse saying:
“Get all your stuff and get out!”
“But I don’t want to.”
The truck owner loaded up the bed of their truck with everything that they held dear,
which was cleaning supplies and detergent.
The gulls rummaged through the debris. The larger gull dislodged a package of Tide
washing machine tablets sitting atop the heap of memories, shook it free, and pulled the
package out into the parking lot. The smaller gull stood by on watch. Once on the
pavement, the larger gull tossed the Tide with its beak, but the Tide stayed in.
 No one paid any attention to the gulls, except my son and I. Everyone in Cannon
Beach was used to the tide coming in and out everyday.
Making no headway against the Tide, the frustrated bird attempted to fly off with
the package, but it was too heavy. The smaller gull got in on the action. Crows swooped
down. A group of tourists stopped to watch as the murder grew, but after a minute the
crows and the tourists passed on their way to the next ice cream shop or to the saltwater
taffy store across the street.
I walked over from the entrance of the store with my son and shooed the gulls away.
The gulls asked who was going to do their laundry now, and begrudgingly gave up the
Tide. I grabbed the package between my thumb and my index finger and tossed it back
into the truck through the invisible rear window.
The gulls descended to try their luck again. Two bicyclists rode by and scared the
gulls away.
“Let’s go!” yelled my wife. She held the tide map in her hand.
“But I don’t want to.”
The gulls came back.
Buckling up, I saw the owner of the truck emerge from the store and thwart the gulls
of their soapy desire.
We drove back toward our campsite. I wondered out loud what would make those
gulls so fixated on attaining that Tide. My middle daughter said:
“They longed for that Ocean Breeze.”
 I’m in my office.
The smell of coffee brewing excites me. My nose hair tingles and sways like blades
of grass on a field.
Grass is what cows eat, I shouldn’t think of this.
My co-worker walks in, a fat (cow) fuck wearing a black dress with big white circles
on it, looking like a big ol’ (cow) REDACTED.
“Would you like some coffee, Andy?”
Her breath smells like minty toothpaste, a smell not at all unpleasant.
“Thank you, REDACTED, I’d love some!”
My smile is as big as the moon.

I’m on the third floor corridor. The door to one of the infirmaries is open in front of
me.
I hate having to see patients. I’m not a doctor, I’m just a glorified secretary.
A patient walks by, probably walking around as to prevent bed sores.
“What nice weather we’re having,” the man says. He’s a tall, skinny black man, with
most of his teeth missing. And also both of his eyes.
Move.
I walk into the infirmary, and the smell of death hits me, a smell not at all unpleasant.
The patient I am supposed to visit is on the far left corner of the room.
I go to it.
The cow is old looking. Its leathery skin is cracking, and its breath is irregular. And
smelling of minty toothpaste, which I hate.
 “Would you like a hug, my son?”
I cringe with the thought of touching the diseased animal, awkwardly propped up in
a human-sized cot.
Yes, I say. I would love a hug.
The tears come while I’m in the embrace of that beast.

I’m on the roof, but this isn’t the final scene.

“What are you doing, Andy?” the co-worker asks me. She’s holding a pot of coffee
in one hand, and a mug in the other.
I’m on the ledge. I turn around.
“Sorry REDACTED, I’m just getting some fresh air. The AC is busted, you know. A
person shouldn’t have to spend so much time in an office hotter than hell.”
The (cow) smiles at me, slobber coming out the side of her mouth.
“Hell is not hot, silly. It’s actually very cold.”
Interesting, I say.
“It is”, she says. “Just look down and you’ll see the snow.”
I look down from the ledge.
A mass of dirty snow fills my vision. I can’t even see the ground.
“Neat,” I say.
“Yes.” Her voice is right behind me, on my neck, my arm hair tingles and sways like
blades of
(grass)
“Grass is what cows eat,” I say.
Her arm extends and hugs me from behind. Her hand is a hoof.
“Yes, it is. Now, look closely at the snow.”
A tongue finds its way to my left ear. It feels good. Very good.
 I feel my dick hardening, and I pull it out.
Another hoofed hand slaps my arm.
“No! Look at the snow!”
I look down and see that it isn’t really snow. The giant mass down there is cows.
A giant agglomeration of cows.
“Is this how dying feels?” I ask (the cow) her.
“Yes, it is”, she says, with a breath that smells like minty toothpaste and death.
A smell not at all unpleasant.
She pushes me, ever so softly. I close my eyes and smile as I fall, opening my arms
and letting (the cows) them envelop me.

I’m in my office.
The smell of coffee brewing disgusts me. I can only think of shit and piss and death
and decay when I think of coffee. No sir-ee, nope! I can’t handle this.
Sitting up straight on my chair, I try not to puke.
My co-worker walks in, a fat (cow) fuck wearing a black dress with big white circles
on it, looking like a big ol’ (cow) REDACTED.
“Would you like some coffee, Andy?”
I look up, and she takes off her wig, her teeth, her whole face like a rubber mask.
She’s a tall, skinny black man.
I can’t refuse, it wouldn’t be polite.
REDACTED didn’t raised no little shit. I’m a certified gentleman.
“Thank you, REDACTED, I’d love some!”
My smile is as big as the moon.
Casey Babb, Feh. The rich. With their apologies.
 “I think the fridge is evil.”
“The fridge can’t be evil,” she says, working on her Sudoku puzzle from bed.
“Did you move it to the bottom of the stairs?”
“Do I even look like I could make that happen?”
She doesn’t.
“I can’t go outside. The fridge won’t let me out.”
She groans without looking up from her puzzle. “Nothing is stopping you from going
outside.”
“Every time I get close it haunts me with apocalyptic visions.”
“You’re lazy.”
“I need cigarettes.”
“Lazy.”
I look down the stairs from my perch at the top. This is how things were when I
woke up. I make the decision to be brave, but not even halfway down the steps the
goddamn freezer part cracks open and I am assailed with terrors: I see people on fire,
everywhere, people in the streets screaming, people driving cars while on fire. I hear
the cries of completely engulfed street vendors as they make hot dogs for customers
who are also burning. This whole thing is annoying as fuck.
“Dude, come on, I just want out for a pack of smokes.”
“Leave it alone and come to bed.”
 I return to our bedroom and pace around.
“I don’t want to be a prisoner in my own home, our home.”
“You’re not. Just ignore the fucking fridge and come lay with me.”
I go back to the standoff and take a seat at the top of the stairs. After a few moments
I scoot down a few steps. Nothing. A few more. The ice machine rumbles and I scurry
back to the top.
“Come on, I just want a cigarette.”
There is a pause, and then a single smoke tumbles out of the part where you’d
normally get ice.
“Really?”
I carefully approach the offering. The fridge does nothing, so I scoop up the cigarette
and scramble back to the room and close the door.
“Look!” I offer up my prize for scrutiny. She looks up from what she’s doing.
“See, our refrigerator is not evil,” she says.
“It’s not menthol.”
“Well, maybe it’s a little evil.”
“Do you think this is safe?”
“Oh my god, just smoke the fucking cigarette and come to bed.”
I fish a lighter out of my pocket and light it up.
“I think this is an ultra light.”
“They don’t call them that anymore.”
I take a long drag and right before I declare my love for the satanic fridge the cigarette
flares up and the cherry falls to the carpet. I smoosh it out with my foot, but it burns
through my sock.
“Ow, fuck.”
“Dude,” she says. “Let me do my puzzle.”
 The cherry burns through the carpet, and into the floorboard. I search around for
something to get at it, and find a long pair of orange handled scissors. The flooring comes
up way easier than I expected. Between the floor boards and the ceiling below sits a
layer of dry trash. I pick up a handful of smoldering bills, spam mail, receipts, and
grocery bags.
“Look at this!”
“We live in a shitty building, what do you expect?”
I hold the smoking cherry in the bundle, but it goes right through all that paper. I
catch it with my bare hands, but it is too hot to hold onto. I drop it and watch as it burns
its way down again.
“Help me!”
“Look,” she says, setting her puzzle down so I knew she was serious, “you are really
starting to piss me off.”
I run into the bathroom to fill up the cup by the sink full of water. I pour it into the
hole.
I look into the little spot where it had gone into the carpet. The smoke stings my
eyes, but I can see that it the fucking thing is still lit. I let out an exasperated sigh.
“Cut it out,” she says. “Really. I’m not saying it again.”
“We have to douse it before it burns us all down.”
“Let the neighbors downstairs worry about it, just come to bed.”
“What if they’re not home?”
“I don’t care. I just want to finish this.”
I sprint into the bathroom to grab the ceramic cup we keep our toothbrushes in.
Maybe I can catch the fucking thing before it kills us all.
The fridge taunted me from the bottom of the stairs.
“Look, you’ll burn up too if we don’t take care of this.”
I took a defiant step down. It’s just a fucking appliance.
 Both doors swing open to reveal a refrigerator full of spoiled food. Maggots writhe
in moldy Tupperware dishes. I gag and stagger back.
“Fuck it. Okay, you win, I’m going back to bed.”
“Finally, that’s all I wanted,” she says as the smoke rolls along the top of the
stairway and into our room.
 Am I on the asteroid? I’m not sure. The dream moves slowly now, and is confused
about where it is. I can touch the surface of the control panel and I can feel that it is like
cold marble, and I can marvel quite lucidly at the lack of features in its white surface
except for the subtle mineral swirls running through it, and wonder where I learned how
to operate it, but I am only in a bubble of lucidity, in a vast, blurry sea of unknowns. I
do not know where the asteroid is in relation to my ship, or to anything else. Nor do I
know why I must land on the asteroid. I have some anxiety about whether I am bumping
up against it or whether I have landed on it, or whether I’m even close to it at all.
I begin to feel sleepy, and I let my cheek rest against the cold, hard control panel. A
variety of beeps and clicks erupt from within my body and I remember that I am a part
of the ship and it is a part of me. There are certain controls and indicators that have
been installed in my body to facilitate actuation of ship functions and improve general
perspicacity. I sit up again and mutter some words of control.
“Deactivate touch sensors alpha through mantid.”
I consider this for a moment before adding what seems a prudent command, though
I am unsure why.
“Suspend hominid formatting.”
My left elbow chirps a three-toned acknowledgement and I stand up, finding that
many things are beginning to come back to me. I remember that the asteroid is important
to a group of people who inhabit a small fishing village somewhere in South America. I
had visited them by airplane. They had entrusted me with this ship, which had been left
in a mountain cave by Elders. They had asked me to locate this particular asteroid, which
they called the “Humming Vault” and to bring to them whatever is inside of it.
 I am walking along an extremely long hallway on the spaceship that is interrupted
by a series of rooms. Some of them have dusty office desks with typewriters and old,
metal-bladed desk fans. There is a radio on somewhere and it is playing very old
scratchy music that I don’t recognize, and it occurs to me that the music is old because
I am so far away from the Earth. There is a sense that other people are on the ship, but
I see no evidence of them. I pass through other rooms with dusty kitchen appliances
and finally come to a room where long cafeteria tables and chairs are piled haphazardly
to the ceiling, and I climb over and around and through them until I reach the end of the
hall. I climb a very long spiral stairway of rough cut granite which leads to a dimly lit,
dome-shaped room. The floor of the room is made from smooth blocks of pink quartz
and a pit is set in the center of the floor with a small fire burning inside. I feel with great
certainty that I have arrived at the heart of the ship. I raise my hand and speak the
necessary words:
“I invoke the lawful forestation of the Colonial Mind. I stand with my hand.”
A pink quartz stone rises from the floor. Hinges and a purple and gold lid become
apparent on the top of it. I wave a hand over it and it opens. Inside is a terrible thing that
releases a cloud of white vapor that fills the room, drifts through me, and tears away at
parts of perception and memory. I know instantly that the thing is a Huangi. It has a
moist-looking, mottled tan and rust orange skin and looks something like a sea slug, but
floats an inch or so from the bottom of its box, emitting a brilliant purple glow from
underneath its slowly undulating body. It is immensely powerful and intelligent, and
dangerous. I feel a great terror that is quickly replaced by confusion and the box closes.
I seem to understand my mission now, but not on a level I am aware of.
The Huangi has given me the ability to float up as high as I want in this room. There
is no ceiling here now. It goes up and up into a haze. A thick dull pink fog. I ascend for
quite some time and must be floating very high by now. I cannot see anything and I am
beginning to get sleepy again and I forget where I am and what I am doing. My face is
brushing against something hard and rough and bumpy and I reach out with my hands
and grasp it.
It is the asteroid. I pull myself onto it, through the fog, unable to see what I am doing.
Now I have gotten my legs and my feet upon it and I am able to stand up and see where
I am. The pink fog extends several inches above the surface, making it impossible to see
the ground, but looking around I can see the asteroid is quite large and has gently sloping
foggy dull pink hills which I begin to walk among.
I can see no stars here, and the silence is as enormous as the blackness above me. I
do not understand what has become of time.
I am a younger man and have just met my new college roommate here on the asteroid.
I feel a great kinship with him immediately. There is a sense that we have explored
Austin together in the past and we are talking about how being here together reminds
us of that. We can both picture the time on the bridge quite vividly.
There is a magnificent walking bridge that comes up near the river and slopes
through golden sunbeams high over the city, and back down towards a dormitory where
we will be roommates together. We recall that as we crossed it we marveled at huge
ants walking upon its cables, and glimpsed pterosaurs off its sides, riding the updraft.
It isn’t the bridge that we are reminded of now, or the city itself, or the animals, but
the feeling we had that day, of being together in joy and wonder and exploring something
for the first time.
As we walk, we realize that he is my grown son. That he has traveled forward in his
life and I have traveled backward in mine, and we have met here to do this vital work
together. We want to hold hands, but we do not, for we are young serious men.
“There is a vault here,” I tell him, “and finding it is important.”
“I agree,” he says.
We walk until we come to a cave set into a prominent outcropping of dull red rock
that the mist does not cling to. There is something very disturbing about the darkness
inside of the cave. It is not dark because there is no light inside, but because the air
itself is black, opaque.
We stand before the mouth of the cave for a few moments and a deep, rending dread
wells up along an exponential curve in time. We both fall to our knees in slow motion,
clasping each other and moaning. The darkness pours out over us and we fall into a half-
sleep and are like twins entwined in a womb, blindly and mindlessly pushing and pulling
and grabbing and gnawing on one another, and something is tearing at my memory again
and much is forgotten when the sleepiness finally passes, and the darkness lifts.
I am alone before the cave and can see a yellow glow from within. There is a
malevolent vibration in everything. A disorienting, uncomfortable hum that permeates
me. I do feel dread, but something has changed. The way has been opened, and I am filled
with new strength and resolve.
I feel as though I have eaten a profoundly satisfying meal. I am as heavy as two
people when I stand up and walk inside.
 The creature moving toward us appeared to be human at first. It was dressed like
one anyway, although its chocolate-brown turtleneck and tan corduroy slacks were
clearly the products of a tackier time. It had emerged, rather casually, from the bushes
in front of the cafeteria as we passed. It was, truth be told, this display of peculiar
nonchalance that struck me. It could have been a coincidence that it just happened to
come out of the foliage at that particular time, and I admit that that would have greatly
appealed to me because I like the notion of a lackadaisical universe, but I had serious
doubts.
When it reached the sidewalk, it extended its left hand in a gesture that one might
expect to see from an undertrained competitor who has fallen behind in a footrace and,
in a state of near-exhaustion, is imploring his friends to “wait up.” This engendered
within me a sense of vague dread, not only because of the unsettling nature of the
situation but also because I had been that “competitor” on more than one occasion. My
companion, who had been lost in his own thoughts, had not observed what was going on.
“Hey, Frank?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s that guy?” I indicated with a quick backwards nod.
 He glanced back. “Couldn’t say.”
“Does he look strange to you?”
“Sort of. It doesn’t look like he has any eyes. I mean, there are sockets, but there
doesn’t appear to be anything in them. Maybe it’s just the lighting.”
“He has a lot of facial scars, too.”
“Maybe he was in an accident. Or maybe he’s one of those extreme-body-modification
enthusiasts.”
“I don’t know, but he’s creeping me out.”
“Everyone creeps me out these days.”
“Do I creep you out?”
“No exceptions, man.”
“That’s reasonable.” I looked over my shoulder again. The creature was still behind
us, but it hadn’t gotten any closer. “You know what? Super Mario World is a great game,
but I’ve always hated Yoshi.”
“What are you talking about? Everyone loves Yoshi.”
“Mario doesn’t need a mount. It’s ridiculous. I wonder if you can make it through the
game without using him.”
“Have you tried?”
“To be honest, I’ve never had many opportunities to play it. My dad refused to buy
another console after the NES.”
“I know what you mean. My dad used to go into clock stores and say to the
salespeople, ‘This timepiece says 5:30, but what time is it really?’ But I’m not sure that
you’re in a position to be complaining. What good is there in having such a strong
opinion about something like that?”
“What good is there in anything?”
“You’re taking Philosophy this semester, aren’t you?”
“Two semesters ago.”
“Doesn’t sound like you paid attention.”
“I tried to, but the professor was absent a lot, and she liked to leave her toenail
clippings in charge. She’d just pile them up on the desk. Suffice it to say that the lectures
lacked polish.”
“How does one refer to toenail clippings? I mean, what’s their gender?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re without gender.”
“Well, maybe in English, but most other languages assign gender to everything. We
decided to bow out of that for some reason, but in the interest of inclusiveness I try to
incorporate it into my own speech.”
“How many times in your life have you had to refer to an individual toenail
clipping?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You can always use ‘they.’”
I rolled my eyes.
As if in response, Frank turned his eyes to the side. “You think he’s following us?”
“It’s hard to say at this juncture. When we reach the corner, let’s take a left and see
what he does.”
“Eating a tongue is kind of like eating a fruit pie.”
“What?”
 “Don’t ask me. Ask Soren Kierkegaard. He’s the one who said it.”
“Why did you say it?”
“I don’t know. The philosophy thing, I guess.”
“I’d gladly ask him. Where does he hang out these days?”
“I saw him at a boat show a couple of weekends ago. At least I think it was him.”
“The one that was at the mall?”
“Yeah. It’s nice to be able to grab a Hot Dog on a Stick while gazing at nautical vessels
in a non-maritime setting. Don’t you just love the hats those guys wear?”
“Sailors?”
“No, the Hot Dog on a Stick employees.”
“I can say with complete conviction that I’d walk a mile across hot coals to get one
of those hats.”
“You could just get a job there instead.”
“That’s where I’d draw the line.”
We took a left at the corner, walked twenty yards or so, and stopped next to a copse
of trees. Sure enough, the creature followed right behind us. At this point I was starting
to get really anxious, and I had no idea how to contact the authorities. I wasn’t even sure
that there were any authorities. Should we try to lose it or confront it?
“Hey,” Frank said, waving at the thing. He’d made the decision for us.
I gasped. “What are you doing?”
He shrugged. “I typically try to avoid using the direct approach, but I figured it might
work in this case.”
The creature eased to a stop three feet from us. It still had its hand out. I could now
see that its skin was tanned like leather, misshapen, and stitched together. Its eyes were,
in fact, missing. It didn’t appear that it had any teeth, either; its nostrils were free of
cilia or dried mucus, but, oddly, it did have a handlebar moustache. Its hair was long,
black, and shaggy and hung from its scalp in lifeless waves, like a radio frequency that
had been lost on the far side of the dial. Its fingernails were yellow and cracked, and the
lines on its extended palm were dark and deep. It was, by all appearances, nothing more
than a shell of a human being, a macabre balloon filled with inscrutability.
“Is there something we can do for you?” Frank asked.
The thing’s head moved slightly, and its hand retracted to its side, forming a fist. I
took a step back, fearful of what might happen next, but Frank kept his position. The
sun was beginning to set, and a slight breeze stirred the creature’s vestments, which
were a few sizes too large for its wispy frame.
“Maybe it thinks we’re crows,” I offered.
Frank gave me a puzzled look. “You think it’s a scarecrow?”
“Maybe.”
“We don’t look anything like crows.”
“No eyes, dude.”
He considered this. “Besides, scarecrows don’t pursue crows. They frighten them
away, or at least they’re supposed to. Plain and simple. Once they’re gone, they don’t
give them any more thought.”
“Well, most of them aren’t ambulatory.”
“Not in this dimension.”
Just then, a strange sound, a kind of exaggerated whooshing, came from behind a
nearby hillock. Frank and I turned to look, and a large, oddly shaped figure appeared in
silhouette. As it moved into view, it became clear that it was a dinosaur.
The creature moved enthusiastically toward it, reaching into the pocket of its pants
and producing a shiny, red apple. The dinosaur’s long tongue shot out and seized the
fruit, and the giant lizard lowered itself to the ground. A pair of white, birdlike wings
slowly appeared from within the lizard’s shoulders. The creature mounted the
dinosaur’s back, which was outfitted with a fine-looking saddle, and shook the reins.
 The dinosaur and its grotesque rider rose into the air and disappeared into the
crepuscule. Whatever the creature had wanted from us had clearly been forgotten.
Frank smiled, pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket, and pointed it toward
the sky. “Does this change your opinion?”
“Not really, no.”
Contributators
Andrew Wayne Adams is an Amerikan-Kanadian writer, artist, and politician. His books include
I Have No Idea What I'm Doing (a short story collection) and Janitor of Planet Anilingus (a
novella). He lives in North Korea.

Brian Auspice exists in the hollow space between the cigarette burn and the frame. His latest
book, Life Is What Happens Between Advertisements, was published in December 2017 by Bizarro
Pulp Press. All roads lead to https://www.bauspice.com

Mark Allen Berryhill never learned how to read. He just madly taps at the keyboard because the
clickety-clack noise makes him happy.

Douglas Hackle is the author of IS WINONA RYDER STILL WITH THE DUDE FROM SOUL
ASYLUM? AND OTHER LURID TALES OF TERROR AND DOOM!!! (short stories),
CLOWN TEAR JUNKIES (short stories), and THE HOTTEST GAY MAN EVER KILLED IN
A SHARK ATTACK (a novel). A selection of his short fiction is also included in the BIZARRO
STARTER KIT - RED from Eraserhead Press. https://douglashackle.wordpress.com/

Pedro Proença is a writer and composer from Rio de Janeiro. His short fiction appeared on Bizarro
Central and was published by Fireside Press, Bizarro Pulp Press, Dynatox Ministries. His first
book BENJAMIN was part of the 2015 New Bizarro Author Series from Eraserhead Press. He
lives with his girlfriend Sarah and their cats. He really loves instant noodles.

Bram Riddlebarger is the author of two novels, Earplugs (Livingston Press) and Golden
Rod (Cabal Books), and a poetry chapbook, Chez Filthy (JKPublishing). He also had a story
included in the Dead Bait 4 anthology (Severed Press). He lives in Athens, Ohio.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Syntax &
Salt, VICE Terraform, Evil Girlfriend Media, and the anthologies Gigantic Worlds, Aphrodite
Terra, and Tragedy Queens. Her poetry book, The Futurist’s Mistress, is available from
mayapplepress.com. “The Queen of Velcro” previous appeared in Furious Fictions (1989).

Matthew Stephen Sunrich is a professional organization enthusiast who has cleared out a space
of approximately ten square feet to call his own in rural northwest Georgia. He enjoys comic books,
sword & sorcery and horror literature, categorizing things for no apparent reason, and dreaming
about Jonathan Winters as an antiquing centaur. His inspirations include Monty Python, They
Might Be Giants, Richard Brautigan, and H. P. Lovecraft. He has previously published a book
about the fantasy heroine Red Sonja, which is not currently in print, so yeah.

Matt Vest was born in the Etheric Kingdom of Augathahn, unacknowledged son of one of the
seventeen autonomous pseudopods of local fungal deity, F'ngat Haclutlyt. He has projected this
portion of his form through the astral wall surrounding this planet in order to communicate
information that could be important in the event of an emergency, and to sample specific varieties
of cheeses he finds interesting.

Casey Babb is a working artist or some shit. Who cares? http://www.breakingbabb.com/

The Late Peter Sellers has been active since 1980 when The Living Peter Sellers retired. He has
mostly done interviews of obscure authors and antagonized people in internet forums.

The Thomas Brothers are a team of, I can only assume, two brothers who produce quite usable
cartoons to fill the void that Gary Larson left us when he decided to give up his life’s calling in
1995. One or the other or both did the cartoon included here. Their mother, Dotti, seems very nice
and supportive. You can reach them at thomastoons@yahoo.com if you should happen to need
some cartoons.
Y’all come back now, y’hear?