Autumn in the Abyss: Teaser #2: Sex, Murder, Noise, Surreal Horror, "Broken Teacup."

1.) You know I kind of just riff when I do these blogs, right?  As in, after this is posted, there will be three or six or a dozen other things I wish I would have said.
2.) I wonder if there should be a warning for this one.  Well, perhaps not this post, but the story it deals with. 
3.) Before you read the rest of this, check out this fantastic Review for the new collection--the first review--by the talented Horror Writer, Brian Fatah Steele.
4.) I'd buy that book.  Autumn in the Abyss pre-order info HERE.  The Kindle version will be available the day of release. That should be 3-3-14. 


After the poetry-driven and quite dense foray into darkness of the opening, title story of my collection--a story that works the mind--the second story works the body.  The genitals, in particular.  Yeah, I just wrote that. You'll know when you read it.  Let me put the opening sequence here, just so you get the shift in tone and dig down into the bad places.  Here's a shard from "Broken Teacup."


***

“The path to knowledge is paved with the carcasses of experience.”

With the statement, he could tell that it understood; shadows rippled as a smile from the void. It spoke:

“You will get me what I need, yes?”

“I will get you what you need.”

~

“She’s just lumpy, misshapen. You can’t really want to—”

“She’ll do, yeah. She’ll do.”

Lemmy and me, we’d been doing this gig for a few years, exploring the depths of perversion and presenting it in one form or another to those willing to pay the price for said perversity. We brought joy to the sickos of the world. 

Why? Good question. It was primarily dark curiosity on my part. And the money, now that it’d started to kick in big time.

But for Lemmy it was different. He was just a walking hard-on at all hours.

I once told him, “You’ve got no soul,” shaking my head at his impudence.

He responded with the expected crude rejoinder: “Who needs a soul when I’ve got a hole?” and proceeded to unload into any willing, unwilling, or just empty hole he could find.

A few years back, just out of high school, I’d been headed for college— I got smarts but what I really wanted was experience— I was sidetracked by a bunch of noise bands that specialized in a kind of aural rape, bands like Whitehouse and their offshoot Sutcliffe Jugend, Smell & Quim, and the True Crime Electronics of Slogun. Lemmy and I decided to join the fray and make our own noisy excursions into the like-minded, sexually depraved world of our heroes.

Our kink was that we went for a kind of “real world” take on things, not exactly original but you had to start somewhere. We scraped the bowels of the small towns in Texas that we frequented for the lowest of the low hookers and suggested the most disgusting encounters imaginable.  We taped the responses and even the encounters for use on our recordings. These tapes were manipulated and we added the appropriate noise accompaniment, guitar and bass cranked full throttle, creating a dense wall of sadistic sonics. The repetitious mayhem sounded like an orgy of hump happy monster trucks. We played up our roots calling ourselves Texas Chainsaw Erection. Our live reputation, replete with the most obscene video accompaniment, got us our first release, the underground classic, Elbow Deep in Love.

Heads turned but our pocketbooks still seemed in cahoots with the poverty line, and we needed money to pursue our interests.

One of the advantages of doing this kind of thing, specializing in such decadent ventures, was that it draws a unique fan base and from that fan base come unique requests.

 

***

It only goes downhill from there as we get to know more about their sleazy career, what their fans want, and the enigmatic Mr. Liu.

Ah, yes, Mr. Liu.  A recurring character in three of the stories here, as well as there’s a slight nod to him in the title story.  A liaison for the forces of the universe, dropping in to keep things in balance.  You’ll see, oh, you will see.  That's when everything falls off the edge of the table into the surreal.  The disturbing and perverse surreal in this case.

I used to write a lot of music journalism that included reviews of many fringe genre material.  Power electronics, death industrial, and the sick, twisted, sex-oriented Noise that inspired this story.   I remember hearing a clip by a band called Taint that might have been the true inspiration.   I think THIS is the clip.  Spin it for thirty seconds, you get the drift.  

After finishing this story, I needed a shower and a brainwash.

Life takes some strange detours.

I told you I was riffing.  This has a fragmented feel to it all.  Ah, well...

Oh, the title.  Here's our narrator's take on a hot young thing he's just spotted.

***

“She’s perfect. Look at her eyes. Check out that desperate look. She really needs something, boys. And that smile, kind of like a broken teacup, some kind of beautiful design scarred, chipped. She’s barely hanging on. Can’t you see it? Can’t you see her future, peering into the broken teacup and reading the tea leaves and there’s nothing left but this dismal existence…?”

 

***

 

Anyway, there's a bit about story number two with the odd name and the surreal final third that might inspire you to join me in the shower as well.  Not, um...er...you know what I mean.

It's a real mess...and one of my fave short stories I have written.  What does that say about me?

D-Don't answer that...


Egad!  Well, okay, so I Google teacups and broken teacup after Googling Texas Hooker, looking for the appropriate pic to add to this and...well...appropriate or not and not really having anything to do with the story, but...impressive?  Oh, it must be tea time! 
O.o