The Convulsion Factory

Endnotes: The Ticking Of An Unfriendly Clock

Once upon a time, an exceptional writer named Peter Straub wrote a sprawling, dark fairy tale of a novel called Shadowland. I happily gave myself over to it for several days, probably to some detriment of the college classes I was taking the autumn it came out in paperback, now within reach of budget-conscious students.

Its coda — just a handful of pages — Straub titled “The End of the Century Is in Sight.” Now, as then, it’s a deceptively simple phrase that invokes bound less wonder. A phrase of transition, of natural magic and horizons, is how it struck me, perhaps because it’s mythic, in a sense, and undeniably true.

The end of the century is indeed in sight … and a good sight closer now than when I first read those words nearly fifteen years ago. Not only the end of the century, but the millennium, as well. How privileged we are, how anointed. How many people get to witness the rollover to a year with that many zeroes?

The last time, with the Old World mucking about the Dark Ages and the New lying undiscovered by all but those who already lived here in no great need of discovery, Europe succumbed to millennial fever, running rampant with rumors and signs, fears and portents of catastrophe. Traditionally there’s a swell in interest in all things spiritual, supernatural, and unexplained at the shutdown of any century. Add another zero and, on a purely mathematical basis, chaos should jump by a factor of ten. As the year 1000 approached, hordes of pungent and not terribly well nourished people remained unswayed in their belief that the planetary warranty was about to expire.

While the joke was on them, we shouldn’t feel too smug. Despite the past millennium of learning, with the shadow of 2000 falling ever closer to our heads, it should be no surprise when prophets again rise up, with zeal equal to that of their Old World forerunners, to make the same proclamation. Some say it’s already begun, and with the Branch Davidian cookout in Waco still in plain hindsight, who can argue?

But here’s the part that prophets always seem to overlook: Measurement of time is a human construct. A construct based on planetary orbit and our dance with the sun, true, but our spinning blue oblate spheroid neither knows nor cares what year it is, and regardless of which Creator you believe in, if any, I defy anyone to posit a sound reason why that Entity should follow our arbitrary timetable.

Which leads us to the inevitable conclusion:

If the end of this century — much less this millennium — is the final one witnessed by anything resembling present civilization … who is really to blame?

A few weeks ago my love and I were spending her birthday in St. Louis when we stopped by a small art gallery, where I bought for her a piece that we both found haunting. Afterward we talked awhile with the director, who by now appeared to have forgiven me for earlier starting to unsheathe a Japanese tachi leaning against the wall and invoking his keen admonition not to. As I’ve done with a lot of friends over the years, I’d simply demonstrated once more that I’m one of those people who isn’t happy until I’ve played with the sharpest thing in the room.

Later, when we were talking — while he was showing us knives honed from railroad spikes, so I knew all was forgiven — he said, “I think the next ten years are going to see the emergence of a very different configuration for this country.” There was nothing particularly optimistic in the way he said this; more a grim and clear-eyed resignation in its inevitability, and he was obviously no believer in imminent Utopias.

Which may explain the presence of that Japanese sword.

It’s stuck with me, what he said, because at that time this collection was in the midst of being compiled, its final novella still taking shape, and much of what he’d implied that day was elemental in the stories that I’d deemed thematically appropriate to include. Although I sense that what the gallery director said was less an example of synchronicity than simply something on a lot of people’s minds lately.

Such nebulous pessimism has been gathering momentum over a number of years — and maybe I’m way off, I’m only free-associating — but I’m wondering if it wasn’t first forecast in the hinterlands, with the demise of family farms, in much the same way a troubled ecosystem is first heralded by an abrupt decline in the number of amphibians. Of course, what begins in the remotest regions has a way of reaching the most populous — viruses come to mind — mutating along the way and leaving few unaffected. Yesterday, Steinbeck’s Tom Joad. Today, Andrew Vachss’s Burke.

The Dustbowl of the Great Depression, a complex bastard of unsound economics and short-term environmental gain, may have been tamped back down into viable terra firma, but its spirit of waste and desolation has scarcely been banished. It’s only packed up and moved into a new neighborhood, probably not very far from the one where you live. Perhaps closer still.

The Chinese have one of the most sublime of curses: “May you live in interesting times.”

And we do. And if it’s true that between readers and writer there can exist a kind of extended familial bond, then certainly times have been interesting enough to furnish plenty to write home about.

As I began to approach the idea of a collection, it occurred to me that, while there are plenty of exceptions, much of my work from the past few years has tended to fall into one of two broad territories: that of urban decay in its many manifestations, and that of a more spiritual or dare I say religious nature, although one hardly free of antagonism toward orthodoxy. More than once these camps have combined forces.

As the idea of a collection became reality, I found myself compelled to group stories that felt related somehow, even if they were only very distant cousins, providing a thematic unity beyond their having the same byline. And, I hoped, preferring a view comprised not only of parts, but coalescing into a greater whole.

The opting for urban corrosion was done in an almost offhand manner, publisher John Pelan having no preference, and so that was that. Although I’m still hoping for a chance to gather those more overtly spiritual stories, along with a few others that exist only in seed form, waiting to be written, under a title something like Cathedral or The Bones of Angels. Or maybe I won’t like either of those when the time comes.

It’s not complete, this roster of decay. It’s missing various other pieces new and old that wouldn’t have been at all out of place. But with only so much room you choose the representative best that you can, hoping that they work and play well with each other. Nor will you find any solutions to the problems, either, except maybe that cities should brush after every meal.

For those curious enough to look behind the scenes, here are a few of the reasons why, whence, and wherefore:

Godflesh. This came about because I like casual visitors to be nervous whenever they use my bathroom. My selections for loo reading tend toward the bizarre, books from Re/Search being particular favorites, such as The Modem Primitives (with that infamous photo of the bifurcated penis), the Industrial Culture Handbook, Angry Women, and Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist (with that infamous photo of the nailed scrotum). Feral House is equally welcome, and their second edition of Apocalypse Culture contains quite a fascinating article on various historical spiritual applications of gluttony and anorexia, plus select Gnostic groups’ penchant for amputating whatever they could spare. It also made reference to porn actress Long Jean Silver, whose missing foot provided inspiration for one of this story’s tenderest moments. I’ve since had occasion to view one of her taped performances, an experience I can’t particularly recommend, but if you insist, it’s … memorable.

Childhood At The Lost And Found. I wrote this to appear in the final issue of the late and much-lamented The Horror Show, which over the years published eight of my early stories and gave me not only an invaluable training ground, but served as an introduction to several good friends. I still miss it; have found that nothing else since has been able to inspire the delight of first turning a new issue’s pages. While I’ve updated a few cultural references to contemporize the backdrop, this is otherwise one of those stories that seems even more appropriate now than when it first appeared, with the family values bandwagon having since ricocheted toward the reactionary end of the spectrum. Not that advocates don’t have some valid points, but too often they’re either so much calculated hot-button political posturing, or so drenched in Judeo-Christian pathos as to be pushing another agenda entirely.

Androgyny. Some writers can get full-blown stories out of their dreams. I am not one of them. Joe Lansdale can reliably invoke them with his wife’s popcorn when he needs an idea. Someday I must write, begging for a sackful. I find my own dreams to be generally uncontaminated by anything approaching usable narrative structure, but have still sometimes managed to turn imagery and impressions into story seeds, which is what happened here. I had this dream in which I had nipples all over me, then spent a few days wandering around intrigued by this, until it hit me: All these nipples have to be here for a reason — they must be here to nurse something. And if you can’t fathom what this story is doing in a collection whose theme is decay, then you’ve probably never been to New Orleans, which proves that even decay can be beautiful.

In A Roadhouse Far, Past The Edge Of Town. More vignette than story, this; a chance to indulge in a sick joke or two. Good friend Sean Doolittle called this my “Mickey and Mallory story,” and I admit to enthusiastically digging that spate of mid-nineties outlaw road movies like Natural Born Killers and Love And A .45 and in particular the director’s cut of True Romance, even if Christian Slater does get seven shots out of his revolver when he blows away Gary Oldman. That urge to rampage arises occasionally. Especially when publishers don’t pay on time. I maintain that it’s an entirely healthy attitude.

Naked Lunchmeat. 2011 update: The original entry for this story was a snarky rant limning an unfortunate situation surrounding the book it was initially written for, and could’ve been subtitled “How To Totally Mishandle A Sure Winner Of An Anthology And Make Sure It Never Gets Published Because The Publisher Had To Shoot It Through The Head Like One Of The Zombies It’s About.” If you really want to read it, track down a copy of the original hardcover edition, because I’m not reprinting it here. Sorry. Really. But no. Old, expired rancor is nothing I want to resuscitate. I try not to do grudges anymore. I try not to even give the appearance of doing grudges.

Here’s what counts. My first anthology sale was to John Skipp and Craig Spector, for their landmark Book of the Dead. Sharing my first table of contents with a bunch of people I idolized? Cartwheels for miles. John and Craig co-edited a second volume, then went their separate ways. Then things got … messy.

“Naked Lunchmeat” eventually made it into John’s Mondo Zombie, effectively the third and final installment in the series. It’s an affectionate and highly compressed pastiche of William Burroughs’ most infamous work. The idea came about by my wondering why, after the first two volumes, Doug Winter should have all the fun of writing parodies. Over the years it’s given copyeditors fits because they apparently weren’t familiar with Burroughs’ original, and the splintery, fractured permutations of its prose, which I’ve even toned down a lot. But was that ever good enough for them? Did that spare me the need of undoing their alleged corrections? Do I get that time back? Nooooooooooo!

And is this another rant starting? (Deep breath.) No grudges, no grudges…

Cancer Causes Rats. This comes from an anthology called Cold Blood, conceived and very well-executed as a cross-genre affair, blending mystery, horror, suspense, and generally concerned with murder, my contribution being a chicken-and-egg look at the media and serial killers. I don’t believe that the media creates them, but wouldn’t say it discourages them, either. The main thing I’m proud of is that this story predates by years both Natural Born Killers and morphing as Hollywood’s most overused special effect. In an odd bit of genuine synchronicity, a couple of weeks ago, as I write this, I was phoned by a guy in Madison, Wisconsin, who owns/runs an indie label called Bovine Records, and fronts a band called Thug. Thug, a heavy, sludge-core type band, recorded a song based on and titled after the story, and last week I got a copy in the mail and found it to be a grinding, pummeling piece of work that ends in a noise loop featuring the word “mutate.” I love the whole idea, since the basis of the story was something being triggered to metamorphose into a new form.

Mostly Cloudy, Chance Of Kurt. A few weeks after Kurt Cobain shot himself, I woke up one morning and this story was just there. I went straight to the Macintosh and started writing, and finished it over the subsequent three mornings, almost the way some people begin their day with a head-clearing cup of coffee. And when it was finished, it felt as if something had been put to rest. The suicide of the weatherman is also true, happening around the same time, but in St. Louis rather than Chicago. And in gradeschool gym class, I really did catch a softball between my knees. Briefly.

Heartsick. Clark Perry, my close friend and Siamese twin joined at the id, also has a passion for those ineffable Re/Search books. I was visiting him in Tampa when he showed me a bit he’d recently encountered in Those Who Are Not Like Us, a volume devoted to old-time circus freaks and other human oddities. It concerned a fellow whose body had ossified, and thus he couldn’t move, and had to be toted around wherever he went. Came the fateful day, then, during the inevitable circus tent fire, that in their haste to hurry him to safety, his bearers dropped him … and he shattered. When later I felt like doing a story about what seems to be a deepening of people’s fear of/inability to connect emotionally, I could think of no better metaphor than this.

Extinctions In Paradise. I suspect it’s true for most writers: that the way something turns out is the wholly random synergy of any number of diverse elements that happen to collide at the same time: aesthetic influences, news clippings, chance observations, personal issues going on in the writer’s life, whatever. As with any good pot of jambalaya, you make the volatile best of whatever happens to be on hand. When Ed Gorman invited me to do a story for the Werewolves anthology, I had no interest in approaching it from the standard Larry Talbot scenario. But I’d recently read a sad and wonderful novel called Imagining Argentina, and had been left with an itch to try something more within the magical-realism vein that’s pulsed through much South American literature. Maybe a year prior I’d been touched by an article about an elderly photographer who daily set up his antiquated gear near a fountain; in which South American city, I no longer remember. I’d long felt impotent and sick whenever I would read of death squads in Rio de Janeiro killing street kids. I was also in the midst of an ongoing editorial page debate with some Christian fundamentalists, seeing firsthand their mania for distortion of facts in service of their vision of the First Amendment. Then, too, I’d recently gotten Concrete Blonde’s Mexican Moon CD, and kept picturing Johnette Napolitano as Doña Mariana, with that earthy sensuality of hers. I wrote the last few pages listening to “Heal It Up” on infinite repeat — it just seemed to help. Six months in either direction and a very different story may have been written. But I’m very glad that Ed called when he did.

The Meat In The Machine. I like industrial music, and felt like doing a story about obsession and transformation amongst a few of the artists recording the soundtrack to our fin de siecle. Fellow enthusiasts will no doubt recognize in the Giger Sanction’s stage show the inspiration of Skinny Puppy, who have the distinction of playing the most harrowing concert I’ve ever been to. After this club show — on what has since turned out to be their final tour* — I met instrumentalist Dwayne Goettel, who died of a heroin overdose in August of 1995. Brap on.

* 2011 update: True for several years, but surviving members Ogre and cEvin Key reunited for a one-off show in 2000, and the band has been active again since 2003. And there was much rejoicing.

Extract. I suspect we all share a dread concerning our teeth that goes beyond the subjective to the most primal layers of our limbic brains. In the wild, a toothless animal will be nearly defenseless and probably starve. A literally toothless person needs proxies, or a reliable blender; the metaphorically toothless inspire only mirth in their enemies. For as long as I can remember I’ve had a recurring nightmare in which my teeth grow huge, then wobbly, then start to crumble … yet I’ve never had a single cavity. My theory is, since as children we’ve all experienced a complete set of teeth falling out, this is all the foretaste of decrepitude and decay we need to scar us forever.

Liturgical Music For Nihilists. This is still too fresh and ugly in mind for me to say much, other than I wanted to conclude the volume with something that would entwine all the main themes running through the stories that preceded it. It took longer to write than I thought, and I can’t say that it was ever much fun.

2011 update: Okay. I suppose time enough has gone by.

The original seed: driving through those Chicago hinterlands time after time, fascinated by those desolate-looking parcels of field and woodland. They seemed very eerie to me … the possibility of some terrible, awe-inspiring thing going on inside one, hidden in plain sight, but that no one ever noticed, even as thousands, tens of thousands, drove past it every day.

There really was a slaughterhouse within walking distance of my childhood home, and I can just barely remember an adventurous winter trip there. It was abandoned by the time I was in high school, and gone a few years later as the surrounding neighborhoods expanded and digested the trees and land. The same fate erased just about every place I used to play and go wilding. It got leveled, mowed, civilized, buried under foundations and vinyl siding.

The “Khashab” brothers were real, and the younger one did backtrack fifteen or twenty steps one afternoon to help me pick up an armload of books, but that was the sum total of our lives’ interaction. A few years later, after his father burned his sister, I thought of how kind and gentle he seemed, even to a stranger, and wondered what kind of scars a thing like that was going to leave on him, too. The question has never left.

But looking back, what strikes me most is the amount of then-unknown truth and prophecy in this piece. To flip Kierkegaard around and put the punchline at the end, “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.”

*

Heartfelt thanks go to all the editors/publishers who either commissioned these stories, or otherwise liked them enough to run them when they came in cold and unexpected: Michael Garrett & Jeff Gelb, David B. Silva, Tom Monteleone, Richard Chizmar, Richard Gilliam, Ed Gorman & Marty Greenberg (more than once), Jasmine Sailing, and Stefan Dziemianowicz, who bears no resemblance to the Stefan of “Heartsick,” insofar as I know.

Sincere gratitude to John Pelan for liking the extant pieces enough to want to group them together with a few new ones; and to Phil Nutman, Doli Nickel, and James Powell, for contributing in ways that I could not; and to Wildy Petoud and the Bluesman for … well, they know.

Appreciation is also extended to Sam Adams, Wicked Pete, Juan Valdez, and Creamy Saint Brendan, for always being there when I need them.

Brian Hodge

Vernal equinox, March 1996