"Closer: Quarantine Journals from a Parallel World" - A Bleak Poem Written March 19-20, 2020

Allow me to really mess with your heads, friends. "Closer: Quarantine Journals from a Parallel World" is a poem, sure, but it's more than that. 

Much more.

There's over a thousand words here, for one thing, utilizing Joy Division's Closer album song titles to distinguish sections; to lead us through the hell to come (at the time, in that parallel world). The timing is the other. 

This poem was written March 19-20, 2020.

Yes, March 19-20, 2020, exactly six years ago today. A few days after the company I formerly worked for sent us home, stating it might be a while before we get back to work...because Covid had sunk its teeth into the nation, and the world. 

As you read this, remember that info. I've maybe changed a handful of words since it was initially written. It came out like this, white hot and bleak as Hell. As bleak as this goes--and it is truly a bleak speculation--the present state of the world, though much different than what the poem posits, actually confirms elements within the poem, about those in a position of power. And how they do not give a fuck about anything but their own vile dreams. 

*I had a note after the poem, but I'm leaving that out to let the poem stand on its own. 

Anyway... 

*

Closer: Quarantine Journals from a Parallel World                                       

(written March 19-20/2020)

By John Claude Smith

 

 

 

All I ever want is to be close to you again—

 

The Atrocity Exhibition

 

The ineffectual leaders who think themselves overlords

Gods

--gelatinous slime, scum scrapped from the bowels of humanity, reptilian and cold-blooded:

Frozen--

Deemed the evidence inconsequential

But if their minions needed reassurance

Lies would be the method of protocol

As usual

Those of us with a bit of intelligence sensed the ripple in the life-waves and understood

Sharks can smell blood from miles away

The travesty played out daily until it became obvious the evidence had merit

 

It was already too late.

 

Isolation

 

One on one with myself for the foreseeable future

A future in question

foreseen or obliterated by ignorance

Apathy

Not mine

I’m sticking to self-imposed quarantine in a room about the size of my back pocket

 

This will not end well.

 

Passover

 

After too many weeks having surrendered to the malaise of hibernation

We are shaken from beneath the rocks of maddening seclusion and into the heart of hope

Rebirth

A sign that things will improve

As filtered through malevolent leaders sowing aberrant ideologies

we can only wonder as to the foundation

--how can anybody think in such deplorable terms during times as bleak as these? --

Having spent time with myself

I need contact

Conversation in the flesh

 —something, anything—

But in what form?

The world is changing—the world has changed-- and continues to change

But this change is mutation

The plague wavers

Yet reshapes itself as well

And sinks its fangs into humanity

Not willing to let go

Draining us of purpose

While the sycophants celebrate in drunken

Hedonistic revelry

I know those running the show

Have other plans…

 

My wariness is a crutch I will lean on until it snaps.

 

Colony

 

Knowing this much

I become a colony unto myself

A different shade of isolation

I am the ruler of the flesh-land of me

While the despicable tyrants continue to drone on and on

From the television screen that never fades to black

Even as I know I’ve turned it off repeatedly

Yet there the smiling monsters are

High and mighty and driven by deception

The fabrications draped over the nation like Christmas lights

 

A wreath of colors like an ever-patient noose.

 

A Means to an End

 

When sanity is embraced by the smirking malice of madness

I find myself on the kitchen floor with a steak knife in my hand

Tears polishing the tiles

Praying to a god I know exited this circus long ago

 

Weakness is the only reason I am still here.

 

Heart and Soul

 

I awaken days later on the carpet of my tiny bedroom

The air smells different

I’d left the window open and am refreshed by the breeze ruffling the curtains

I slowly rise

stand naked in front of the window as so many others are doing

our smiles emit a sound

a hum that can only be thought of as joy

The sound reverberates through each of us

I listen deeper and pick up the strains from the television I’d left on

The television that never sleeps

A vaccine has been forged in the dark soul of this horror

I stare at the heavens and wonder if God is staring back

I wonder if this was the biggest test we will ever have to endure as a species

Then I hear another sound

Like tinfoil crinkling and the crackle of flesh burning

--the smell is present as well—

And realize it is all for naught

Those in charge are still in charge and I can only fathom as to what wickedness awaits

 

Distortions of hope are now sideshow entertainment.

 

Twenty-Four Hours

 

We are told by the evil that has exacerbated this charade the “vaccine” is ready for all

No strings attached

Their smiles are insidious

Their methods have always been vile

These corrupt puppet masters

But the thought of stepping out into the world again

Out of my apartment-like-cell

Is too strong to halt my step as I join the line like everybody else

And take the needle with the poison into my arm

Illusions of freedom cultivated by plague demons are what we’ve accepted

 

Fools.

 

The Eternal

 

A month after what is known as the Second Coming

A curious designation the sinister conmen have stolen from the Christian bible

That they use for toilet paper and subtle mind-control

Their followers no better than dogs lapping up the dogma as if it were law

Barking their approval

Those like myself realize

There is no rehabilitation for avaricious greed of the magnitude

a few dismal blights on the face of this planet have courted

The Second Coming was of our stolen freedom

Their spiel

Their rhetoric

The lies lies lies lies lies

Imprinted on our minds

Bruises tattooed on every thought

Freewill rendered obsolete

Narcistic reaffirmation as to their mighty standing unto themselves

As if they were blessing us with existence

And the followers still cheered

But even on the screen I could see the bloodless realization of their cowardice

The white-faced shock of realization and surrender

 

While I would never give in.

 

Decades

 

The seconds would crawl

The minutes would mock

The hours would chime cheerfully

The months would meander

The years would lengthen

Five, ten, fifteen…

Fifty, one hundred

Two-hundred, five hundred

A thousand

Infinite

And we would all be exactly where we were right now

Locked within rooms

Locked within ourselves

Because the vaccine was nothing of the sort

Just as the plague was nothing of the sort

Simply two steps in a course of action by a handful of sociopaths

—lunatics; devils—

Meant to capture humanity in the palms of small hands and small minds

With ubiquitous omnipotence as their only goal

The vaccine had planted the seed of immortality

The final nail in the coffin of what might once have been a hopeful species

 

Immortality had become our curse, our reason to dream of death

Meandering without salvation

Stuck in the in-between

Stuck

--please hold, your message is very important to us--

 

 

The television volume buzzes louder

As faux idols prance in garments crafted from twinkling diamonds

Glistening gold

And blood

A cockroach scampers across the wood floor of the kitchen

I cherish its company

 

All I ever wanted was to be Closer to you again…

 

I pray to a god I know was never more than frivolous fantasy

That hope suffers as I do

as we do

Alone

Until the sun turns to ash

Or the earth loses its orbit and hurtles into oblivion

Or my heart simply explodes.

*

I would usually say I hope you enjoyed that, but enjoyment might not be the appropriate response. 

In forthcoming blog posts I'll be digging into details about my soon to be published novel, Our Savage Anatomies, among many more poems, short fiction, observations, reviews, meanderings...

Let's Step "Into The Void" with My Black Sabbath Poem

 With the final performance for the original line-up of Black Sabbath imminent, I was reminded I'd written a poem a couple years ago as a response to their song, "Into The Void." I remember reading the lyrics for the song and thinking, "there's a story here," but when I went to write the story, it let me know the proper presentation was as a poem. 

Anyway, reread the lyrics for the song and bounce those off the bleak SF vibe (which is also quite timely, even as I wrote the poem in response to lyrics written fifty or so years ago) I've written here. 

Enjoy! 

Into The Void 

By John Claude Smith (of course!)

 

 

Colossal ships soar into the vast black sea of night                          

 

A baker’s dozen Drakkar dragons spitting flames

as they tear a hole into the ebony sky wide as the devil’s smile

Hurling toward the vast unknown

as dictated by Newton’s third law of motion

     along with undetected distortions within the field of quantum physics   

while abandoning legions deemed unworthy

Noses raised in allegiance with human avarice

     (We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Depravity)

a perception one-sided, the absence of empathy reveals

the sluggish heartbeat of the atavistic adjudicators.

 

Time is the engine of space

 

One finally utilized in interstellar travel

(though still without pure understanding)

The first wave stops second hands on the Great Eternal Clock

The deception lingers unconfirmed as the ships sail onward

Galaxies surrender to their trespass

Universes succumb to the lazy pull

of wave after wave crashing shorebound

upon the abandoned beaches of Infinity

where stars blink into nonexistence

while the wasteland reconstitutes

as one with what they thought they left behind

disgusted by those deemed subhuman

below them while their knees bend

to capitalism and insatiable appetites

bound to unwavering greed

that fuels their ill celebrated escape

 

But to what true purpose?

 

Those left behind flourish without

the cruel components of class of which to bow

no god but Mother Earth deemed worthy

While those who race to the stars

watch as a single second eventually passes

swallowed after months of mastication

     Time now a snail’s pace consideration…

What looms is the bleakest outcome ever imagined

bellies never filled, dreams whittled to dust

their just reward: existence by rote

 

the     empty      embrace      of      immortality

 

all goals muffled in the ears of Hope

the song that arises a harrowing cry to anguish

breath and dreams devoured as they drift forever

 

Into The Void.

And here's a photo of the boys. ;-)

Sadness is the Creature at the Heart of My Surreal Horror Tale, "Photograph."

Many years ago, after a break-up that almost destroyed me (don't they all? Actually, no, they all do not; sometimes they're just necessary), I crawled out of an abyss called Sadness and eventually channeled everything into a batch of short stories, as well as the writing of my first (unpublished) novel, The Corner of His Mind. I believe this story was written at the tail end of that initial burst or perhaps a few years later, a nod to that miserable time. 

It's quite depressing, but has a certain something and, as noted, it includes a creature...or is it? Perhaps it's just the psychological manifestation of Sadness or...well, you'll see.

"Photograph" originally appeared for one week in 2012 on the Phantasmagorium website. It's about 2,000 words long. I've slightly edited it for publication here. 

Enjoy this journey into my personal hell...

***

Photograph

by John Claude Smith

 

“Who so loves believes the impossible.”

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

 

     The man collects the photograph, eyes framed in chaos. 

     “Her name is Alicia, and she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out.  She taught me so much about love, but now…”

     The bartender thinks--pretty girl--nothing more. It is late.

     The man continues with his morose monologue.

     “The mornings and evenings are the worst,” he says, sucking on a cigarette as if the smoke will cleanse his insides, as if the heat will cauterize his misery.

     The bartender towel dries another glass and sets it with its brothers, dull eyes looking up again, his interest negligent. At this time of night, it always comes down to inebriated nonsense or stark confessions of the soul.

     “The mornings are bad because in waking up, usually after broken sleep, nothing has changed. Nothing has settled how I want it to settle. I haven’t pinched myself and awakened from the weary nightmare. I’ve only left many tiny red bruises all over my body. Tattoos of pain that, even though they will fade, I will always see them, remember their blotchy faces smiling at me, content in their ephemeral time on my flesh.” 

     Another deep drag: the smoke never passes by the man’s lips, trapped inside. He raises the bottle and gulps down what remains, tapping his finger impatiently on the counter. Another one, and hurry.

     “The evenings are bad because as they wear on, no matter the distractions of cinema or clubs or window shopping or alcohol”—he tips an imaginary hat toward the bartender— “wandering and wondering, at some point it seems I’m slouched in front of the TV, some movie looped continuously, the concrete evidence of her leaving heavy as an anchor in my belly. I am alone. Lights are left on. The movie plays on. Life goes interminably on.” 

     The man’s voice drifts, swept up like dust, scooped up and thrown away. 

     “But this isn’t living…” he adds, eyes peering into some far-off place that only he can see, only he can understand. Missing her, nothing else matters. Smoke fills his lungs again. The man hopes it fills everything within and chars it as black as his thoughts.

     An intolerable malaise permeates everything. The lights flicker—a sign their lids are drooping with exhaustion? At the opposite end of the bar, the bartender places a sweating bottle in front of the only other customer. He wanders back.    

     The man continues, attentive audience or not. “I really don’t want to carry on with this sadness, sticky and swollen as it fills my head and body, and I don’t really know if I’m going to.” 

     Gray eyes like unstamped coins glance up at him, registering nothing. The bartender is on autopilot.

     “Initially these feelings had stretched into the days, long and languid and suffocating, then they flowed away a bit, but like a lethal tide, they’re coming back with a perseverance that suggests self-destruction.” The man takes another deep drag, his face adorned with a strange smile.

     “And I really don’t care. Without her, the woman with whom I am meant to be with, well, I really don’t care about what is born of this overwhelming dread.” He smiles again. The smile indicates knowledge of something nefarious in motion.

     The bartender’s constant dead-eyed observance reveals nothing. His thoughts are obviously elsewhere, and he is not paying enough attention to the subtleties.     

     “My friend Celine told me when Pete left after twelve years of marriage that the only thing she wanted for months afterwards was to sleep, to blot it out. With the assistance of medication, she was able to drift, but the pain remains to this day. She’s never purged it or to be more precise, she’s never embraced it. There’s no purging this kind of pain.” He abruptly laughs. The laughter disintegrates into a squiggly wheeze. The sound from his throat scuttles about, three blind mice in need of a hole in a wall. “There is resignation maybe, knowing it will be with you always, but there is no getting rid of it.”

     The bartender grunts, “One more?” 

     The man nods his head. Yes, I need more. It is thirsty and needs this vile nourishment.

     “I wonder, with all that sleep, of what my friend dreamed. But I never asked. Sometimes, it’s all too much.”

     More inhaled smoke without release. The bartender notices this despite his lackadaisical manner, then glances up at the clock. Twenty minutes more and this familiar yet strange evening will be a memory. Sleep awaits, something to rest his dodgy vision.

     “My friend’s survival instincts demanded sleep. Mine work differently. I want it to end, but it won’t let me. It insists on…something more.”

     The bartender focuses on the man’s lean, washed-out features. He looks like he’s been bleached. He’s got more in relation with a heroin addict, or a zombie. He watches as the man again draws on the cigarette and coughs, though there is no release. 

     It’s as if he’s eating smoke... 

     “You see, sadness is something more than a sensation that alters one’s eating habits and fills the brain with repetitious drivel about one’s meaningless being.” He taps the counter next to the already empty bottle. “It is something real, manifesting itself as mass within myself, growing--”

     “Excuse me, mister. We got just a few minutes before closing and I think you’ve had enough.”

     Coughing again, harder now, as if choking, the man says, “I think you may be right.”

     The bartender watches as the man stands and leans forward, as if he is going to vomit. He curses the gods for the imposition, not wanting to deal with cleaning up another’s mess this night. He is tired and just wants to go home. Damn it!

     The man buckles to his knees, laughter cutting through the coughing. “Yes, I think it has had quite enough,” he says.

     Knowing it is too late to get the man outside or to the restroom, the bartender circles around the bar with an ice bucket, hoping to limit the mess.

     The man laughs again, louder now: “That won’t be big enough!”

     Asshole. “Just put it under you, try to limit spillage.”

     The man shoves the ice bucket away as something starts to crawl out of his mouth. No uncontrolled rush, no forceful splat, it was more like the concentrated surge as excrement might pass through an expanding sphincter.  

     Black and mottled, lumpy and formless, it pulls itself from within the man’s mouth as his eyes widen, his mouth filling with its heinous presence. It squeezes through him, his throat swelling as it passes, his lips kissed with blood. It is large and it is real and the bartender gasps, his dull eyes awakened with shock. 

     It plops on the floor, still growing, gaining girth as it sits there, moist and full of ugly tremors. The bartender vomits the Rueben and fries he had many hours ago, his body unable to restrain his own disgusting release. 

     The man starts to laugh, mouth dripping blood and saliva and fluids from deep inside, and plumes of smoke finally set free.

     Smoke also coils off the thing. It jiggles like Jell-O. A part of it opens and speaks in the man’s voice: “You see, since I have no interest in living, I’ve rescinded my license as human being and decided that the part of me that is most prominent should have…let’s call it dominium.  It…I may find a better way to deal with my current wretched existence. Anything is better than this suffering.”

     “What are you? How can you talk?” The bartender’s legs buckle, and he abruptly sinks to the floor, stunned. 

     “I have been telling you all along what I am,” it says. “I am Sadness.”

     The bartender scoots away, not wanting to see any more, not wanting to verify this thing with his vision any longer. The only other patron in the bar is now slumped in a booth, sleeping.

     “And I am eternally hungry.”

     The man who had expelled the thing—Sadness—stares into the bartender’s defeated gaze. The bartender tries to avoid visual confirmation, but like an accident along a rain-swept freeway, one cannot help but to observe, usually longer than necessary. The man smiles again, a black hole swirling behind his lips.

     Everything is charcoal black and hopeless. 

     Sadness opens its mangled, misshapen maw, opens it as wide as its body, emulating a putrid, mushy clam. It is all mouth, a quivering, insatiable abyss. The man steps into the black hole, turns to the bartender and says in a voice like wet sandpaper: “Without her, this is all I have.”

     His eyes are stained with tears, but the bartender can see that the man’s heart is stained with loss. Sadness devours the man in one ragged, gurgling gulp. 

     The bartender continues to scoot away, closing his eyes, hoping to wake up in his bed when he reopens them, maybe sweaty and uncomfortable but…not here. Anywhere but here.

     He senses Sadness nearing him, its warmth itchy as a rash. 

     “Are you paying attention now, mister bartender?” Its breath is like the remains of a drenched and simmering forest fire.      

     “Y-yes,” says the bartender.

     “Do you believe in love, Mister Bartender?” Its breath is like tears, salty and sorrowful.

     The bartender wonders what this has to do with anything. “I’m not sure--yes.”

     “You do not understand,” it says, saliva spray indicating anger at the bartender’s ignorance. “You have never loved unconditionally.”

     “I’ve been in love,” says the bartender. “I’ve been in love.”

     “No, you have wanted and not given. Love is a willingness to give up everything for another. Because the other is the one with whom one is meant to be with. It is not a choice, it is a gift, and, in some cases, it is a sentence. A life sentence for one’s soul.”

     The bartender considers the inherent madness of the situation: he is sitting on the floor of the bar, talking to this gruesome thing—Sadness—about its philosophy on love which, if he was so inclined, made him think less about appearances and more about worth, but under the circumstances…he had to wonder what he had been slipped to have slipped so far himself.          

     “Love is the price those lucky enough pay for believing in the impossible. Love is the disintegration of patented realities for the sake of one’s true self and, hence, seeing the world as it should be for the first time, crystal clear and real for the first time. 

     “What really matters in life, Mister Bartender?” Its breath is like sweat pooled in the valley of a woman’s naked lower back.

     The bartender hesitates, thinking: What really matters in life?

     Sadness pounces on the delay: “Are you not paying attention? What matters in life, Mister Bartender”—it’s voice sizzles, like venom about to be spat from the forked tongue of an agitated viper— “is that one opens one’s heart to love’s possibilities…”

     The room falls silent in a way that causes the bartender to open his eyes again. It is empty, except for the snoring man in the booth at the opposite end of the bar. 

     The thing—Sadness—is gone, though the room feels…peculiar. 

     The bartender immediately tries to discount the event as hysteria, perhaps inspired by exhaustion, a frazzled mental glitch, when he notices a photograph on the floor. He picks it up.

     Pretty girl, he thinks, compelled to flip it over. In black ink and through eyes that will never view the world in tedious terms again—an epiphany of understanding moistens and blurs his vision—he reads:

 

     Jeremy,

     With you I believe in the impossible.

     With you I am real!

     I will always love you,

                                          Alicia

***

Yeah. I was not in a good place. But I found my way out of that dark pit and it even pushed me to write novels as well as short fiction. 

Intermission: I've had books published, y'know? Here's the three available titles. (Click on the red highlighted titles to link to the books.) Check them out and pick up a copy or three. Thanks!

Riding the Centipede: my Bram Stoker Award Finalist debut novel.

The Wilderness Within: a trippy excursion into a living forest...and an unexpected finale.

Autumn in the Abyss Redux: twenty-five short stories from my first three OOP collections. 

And here's some Man Ray art that I think works with this tale...in a surreal way, of course! 

An Exactly 500 Word Flash Piece called "Five" in the Ghosts Issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly

That's right! The new issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly, featuring over 50 stories dealing with Ghosts, is out now. And, if you noticed as you glance below at the TOC, there's a tale called "Five" by yours truly that will leave you a twitchy mess. 

I'm not kidding! 

A little history: I wrote a previous incarnation of this story idea perhaps 25 years ago, give or take a few. I remember saying to my girlfriend at the time, "Hey, I want to read this one out loud to you," because I thought it would be...fun. But the story has an OCD element that, while reading it to her, took over my body (and the previous version was five hundred words longer, completely different foundation except for that element which multiplied the twitchiness), and led me to becoming a twitching mess on par with any dancing insect you could imagine...and set her on edge as well. When I was done, I was exhausted! And she thought I was crazy, I'm sure. 

Here's the TOC: 

1. The Haunting of Weird Fiction Quarterly (Shayne K. Keen)
2. The Ghost Summer (Sonya Taaffe)
3. The Backing Track (Garrett Cook)
4. The Companion Volume (Geoffrey Reiter)
5. Down at the Globe (Jill Hand)
6. Defending Brother Tom (J. Edward Zuleger)
7. The Baptistry (Andrew Moore)
8. Pray Harder (Natasha Liora)
9. Hollow (Glynn Owen Barrass)
10. The Haunted Jazz Mag (Andy Joynes)
11. The Price of Vinyls (Mala Jay Suess)
12. Jikoshi (An Accidental Death) (Brandon Barrows)
13. Visitation (Denise Dumars)
14. Graveyard Walk (Frank Coffman)
15. A Polish Ghost (Frank Floyd)
16. The Limen (Chelsea Arrington)
17. Spook Light (John H. Howard)
18. Swipe Rite (Sal Ciano)
19. His Arm, My Ring (Pixie Bruner)
20. The Transient (Manuel Arenas)
21. Bunicuţă is a Ghost (Robert J. Sodaro)
22. That Lonesome Cry (David Barker)
23. Live...Mostly (John M. F. Colton)
24. Hollow Children (Rebecca Buchanan)
25. When Ghosts Haunted Oblivion (Maxwell I. Gold)
26. Diagnosis: Haunted Personality Disorder (Christopher Ropes)
27. Five (John Claude Smith)
28. Subject 42 (Lisa Morton)
29. Root to Rope (Jayaprakash Satyamurthy)
30. The Unfinished Letter (Hayley Arrington)
31. "Do Not Whistle and It Will Not Come to You, oh Lad" (Daniel Braum)
32. The Book of Ghovat (Can Wiggins)
33. The Last Ghost Story (Mark McLaughlin)
34. The Fields of Asphodel (Ashley Dioses)
35. The Deadly Ace (J.C. Maçek III)
36. Skeleton Fingers (Lamont A. Turner)
37. A Gale of a Time (Kasey Hill)
38. Mean Ghouls (Duane Pesice)
39. The Smudged Man (John Paul Fitch)
40. Whited Sepulchres (Joanna Roye)
41. Hengist’s Toll (Erin Banks)
42. End the Beguine (Richard Leis)
43. A Darkening of Shadows (Simon Bleaken)
44. Above, and Beyond (Erica Ruppert)
45. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (Elisa M. Gray)
46. Picture Perfect (Ngo Binh Anh Khoa)
47. Death, My Belov‘ed (K. A. Opperman)
48. Ghost Stories (Peter Rawlik)
49. Thirteen Counts (Scott J. Couturier)
50. Wasted on the Living (M Ennenbach)
51. Make It Go Away (Robert Jeschonek)
52. Shell Shocked (Roger Keel)
53. What the Computer Booted (Don Webb)
54. Twins (Sarah Walker)
55. Field Trip (Michael Thomas Ford)
56. The Piper Calls at 820 Livermere Lane: The Sin-Eater’s Lament (Melanie Crew)
57. Grim King of Ghosts (Adam Bolivar)
58. Mater Nostra (Russ Parkhurst)
59. About the Authors

Yes, what an amazing list of writers. 

Are you ready for this?

Here's the link --> GHOSTS <--

Check it out! 

The Reissue of My Bram Stoker Award Finalist Debut Novel, Riding the Centipede, is Out Now!

 What more do I need to say? 

Macabre Ink/Crossroad Press has put together this stellar reissue of my Bram Stoker Award finalist debut novel, Riding the Centipede, that includes fabulous new cover art--I love the original, I love this one as well; I've been lucky with covers, I tell ya--as well as an afterward that features the origins of the story, including the actual page or two seed idea snippet that mutated into the novel. 

Here's what others said about the novel upon release: 

"A master storyteller who infuses his work with a poet's vision and a madman's eerie gaze at horrible things."—Joe Pulver, Shirley Jackson award winning editor and author of A House of Hollow Wounds & Blood Will Have Its Season

 

 

"Even if you set aside the rich beauty of John Claude Smith's descriptions and the dense atmosphere he builds into this tale of horror both cosmic and man made, it's a joy to observe how he brings all of his marvelous and monstrous creatures together. A poetic sensibility and the cynicism of a classic California private eye meld with the spirit of William Burroughs informing/infecting countless details. And over all, Smith extends the deep shadow of something incomprehensible threatening to overtake the boundaries of detective fiction and its implied logic. Beautiful, crazy, poetic, and strange..." --S.P. Miskowski, author of The Worst is Yet to Come & The Skillute Cycle

 

 

“The breadth of his references— from Frida Kahlo to Celtic Frost (Are You Morbid?), Johnny Cash to Lena Olin, from “The Wounded Table” to Marilyn Monroe—sloshes together to concoct a hallucinogenic broth that’s equal parts surreal, horrific, and compelling. This isn’t a brew to be sipped by the easily offended—the folks within Smith’s debut novel are hardscrabble, amoral, desperate druggies (Burroughs’ preferred term over “junkies”) willing to drag themselves through Hubert Selby-esque levels of depravity to attain their mind altering sustenance. The novel immerses the reader in a world where a P.I. hunts down an elusive target, we experience tragic Hollywood scandals, wallow in deep dark secrets, and witness a villain whose reign of chilling brutality brings to mind a mutant cousin of Anton Chigurh. Smith’s prose is gruff noir, never tumbling over into camp, shot through with veins of luminous poetry.”    

Christopher Slatsky, Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales & The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature

 

 

“Riding the Centipede by John Claude Smith is an impressive, hallucinatory and dynamically written novel that entertains, and provokes depth of thought with visceral prose and poetic hum. More than an ode to the Beat generation, this mythical, psychedelic drug trip mirrors the complexity of unorthodox language, uncommon perspective and nonconforming communicative style made famous by Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Bukowski, yet stands on its own with the very heavyweights it pays homage to. Smith masterfully anchors his story in lush description, cleverly crafted analogy and metaphor, and a twisted and darkly imaginative narrative. Highly recommended.” --Taylor Grant, Bram Stoker Award (R) Nominated Author, The Dark at the End of the Tunnel


"Fans of Burroughs and PK Dick will find a lot to like in John Claude Smith. _Riding the Centipede_ is an intense trip into Bizarro Land." --Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase, The Croning & Not A Speck of Light: Stories

 

 

“RIDING THE CENTIPEDE effects the reader in an almost synesthesia-like fashion. You feel the madness of Marlon Teargarden as you delve into the pages, deeper into the dark frontier. Smith writes in a style that makes the vile seem beautiful. It’s that illusion of beauty, of intimacy, that allows the horrors to flow so easily. And make no mistake, this IS a horror novel – the sights shown within are not for a weak stomach or delicate sensibilities. Burroughs and the beat writers are not the only influences at play here, along with a healthy dose of H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker. RIDING THE CENTIPEDE is something unique, insane, and terrifying… something worth seeking out.” --Brian Fatah Steele, author of Hungry Rain & Bleed Away the Sky

 

“RIDING THE CENTIPEDE is an intense, crazy, brilliant and inspired work of imagination. Totally-gonzo-Beat-horror-experimental-noir-bizarro insanity. I give extra credit to artists who capable of doing something nobody else could do, and this is definitely that.” --Michael Griffin, author of The Lure of Devouring Light & The Human Alchemy

Pick up your copy --> HERE <-- today! It's a ride you won't forget! 

A Weird Fiction Treat That Hurts: Everything Will Be Okay

 "Everything Will Be Okay" was originally published in the now sadly defunct Vastarien magazine. I cannot recall the inspiration, but it goes to a really weird place before a sliver of body horror brings it home. 

As Des Lewis notes here in his real-time review of the issue the tale was in: 

***

"All of this and none of this. Some of this." 

I am sure this must have the most shudderingly excruciation of an ending I have ever read, with genuine physical cringes induced. An ending that cruelly insists on perfecting this word-textured exercise in losing your own identity as well as that of the human woman you may have lived with so very very long (is there any other sort of woman than human?) -- a sort of extreme Senile Dementia transliterated into a memory of your younger self suffering it. Or even younger than that, when your mother told you the title of it. And now, you are old enough to understand that you no longer understand anything and memories lie...lie where? 

"Not within. But on. On the inside of your eyelids." 

***

Yes, this review made me smile. 

Without further ado or a-don't, er...here ya go. 

*** 

Everything Will Be Okay

     A smudge, a blotch. But not. A silhouette etched in light. A negative impression, flashpoint ghost—something moving as celluloid through a stuttering projector. Silent film. But not. All of this and none of this. Some of this. A silhouette, blurred edges. Uncertain allegiance.

     “You’re sleeping.” The voice slips in with the stealth of a cat burglar. Jimmied back door, shoes silent on carpeted floors. But there’s that moment, no matter the cautions undertaken, when something is bumped, something is jostled. You jolt upright.

     “I’m not.” Eyes open to a different light than the dim view you’d witnessed within. The television glare is accompanied by static sound, voices slowly gaining clarity. Words as daggers in your ears, twisting to help them take shape.

     “You are.” She says this then proceeds to suck orange soda through a red and white pin-striped straw. Bubbles battle ice cubes in the glass she holds in her hand.

     “No. I’m not.” But where were you? Not asleep, but not here. Not out here. Not conscious of what you think of as the outside world, which creases the unease that folds thoughts into tiny undefined origami.

     There’s the slight hiss of water as if through a hole before the barrier is compromised, the aural onslaught cacophonous: sound pours over you with the sudden force of a ruptured dam. The hairs on your arms stand at attention. Voices and music, the quirky, eerie soundtrack to the movie you are watching. Were watching. With her. She pulls the straw from her thin lips as if she’s about to say something, but no words follow. Nonetheless, you are compelled to reiterate your status as awake.

     “I’m not asleep. I wasn’t sleeping” But what were you doing? Where were you? And what were you watching? What was that smudge, that blotch, the undefined silhouette?

     “All right, all right. Point made.” She grumbles; you can sense the gurgling sound deep within her chest, perhaps winding through the esophagus, rising to corrode the windpipe. “You picked the movie. You should watch it.” A potato chip crunches between her teeth, somehow amplified in your ears. A crackling assault. You remember a video of a small beetle’s carapace being crushed by the pincers of a larger insect. You remember thinking, no, this cannot be what it sounds like, but whoever did the sound design for this video really captured the all-around sensation that, yes, this is the sound of a beetle’s carapace being crushed by the pincers of a larger insect, before the insect picks the innards out and eats them with twitching efficiency. You pull away from the memory and narrow your focus toward the figures on the television screen. You know these characters, know the movie, yet cannot place any of it within the same bin of memory recollection occupied by the dead beetle.

     “You okay?” The woman seated next to you is also familiar—your wife, perhaps a girlfriend; the closeness of your bodies as well as her casual manner while scratching an itch beneath her left breast signifies as much, but you cannot place her name right now. At this minute, she’s no more substantial than a stranger passing by on the sidewalk. But you can tell by the tilt of her head and the steady gaze from her eyes her focus has also narrowed and sharpened. You know what she is focused on and what you are focused on are not even within the same orbit. Usually, one would be worried about such memory lapses, perhaps victim to a stroke, but you sense nothing negative, only curiosity. The characters on the screen meld with memory, congealing as toffee, something to chew on. A caramel cube. Session 9. The movie is Session 9. One of your favorites, or at least one you have often thought of in that way before, but right now—who knows for sure?

     “Everything will be okay.” You’re not sure why you say this. You’ve never liked the expression. Everything will be okay—the sentence portends catastrophe, tragedy. Everything will be okay is always a lie. Soothing a restless child before turning out the lights and leaving said child in the hands of the creatures that live in the closet, under the bed. The last vestiges of a phone call about a loved one after a car accident, the one reporting the news to you stating, “Everything will be okay,” when okay is not even in the running any longer. A whisper before violence. A wink before murder. An undefined silhouette that draws you back to it, its formation, its purpose.

     “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘Everything will be okay?’” Apparently, the woman who might be your wife or girlfriend—no, not a wife, there is no wedding band—is not convinced. She places her hand on your wrist. Her concern trembles through you. A passing sensation of nausea rises in you, then slides back down into the churning acid within your stomach. “Are you okay, baby?”

     “I’m…I’m fine.” You smile and nod toward the television and the movie, though already you know you need to look inside for answers that might make sense of whatever it is you are experiencing right now. You’re quite sure none of this convinces her that you are okay.

     You realize you’ve been sitting up and forward, as if an impaling post has filled the space where your spine should be. You consciously make the effort to settle back into your place on the sofa you are sharing with the woman. (Is her name Carly? Maybe Candy? Maybe…) You still wear the smile, a theater mask, to put her at ease. As if whatever is unraveling will ever allow her to experience the sense of being “at ease” with you again. It does not matter as you close your eyes.

     The silhouette is back, still distorted around the edges, but at least you define edges because there is movement. It is moving in its stuttering manner; there’s no sense made in the movement. There is sound accompanying the figure, though. Figure? Yes, figure. Muffled sound emanates from the figure. You cannot make it out, but you are sure it’s something vocal, perhaps language. Not just grunts or gargling in the throat. It is with a purpose. You also note you can no longer hear the movie playing on the other side of your eyelids. Your hearing is directed within. You sense as you concentrate you can almost make out what the figure is saying, be it based in language or something equally as expressive yet lacking normal verbal function.

     “Hey!” The woman shakes you from your research. It is as if she’s slipped a burning wire into your ear, prodding the brain, pushing you out of sync with what you need to do. What you need to know.

     Though you’ve opened your eyes again, and your face is adorned in a smile, as before, it’s not you that is smiling. It is the flesh husk you occupy. The flesh husk you’d rather discard so you can continue to investigate without interference. The soundtrack from the movie, though the scene is mostly quiet, screams at you. Screams.

     “Perhaps we should just go to bed.” The woman’s presence has grown irritating. Her constant interruptions are unacceptable. She fondles a potato chip within the bag of potato chips, stops, and pulls her fingers past the crinkled opening. You hear this and the mostly quiet scene and it’s as if all sound from out there, from the outside, is being piped directly into your ears. Your tympanic membranes quiver and you know if you shove your fingers in your ears, it will do you no good. Worse yet, the woman will react in a way that will only stall what you really need to be doing right now. Yet, along with the sounds, the crystal clarity of your vision as you take this all in, the brusque intrusion of light and images from the outside appalls you. It is as if your eyes and ears are being dipped in flames and the process singes with the intent of challenging your focus and aspirations, at the very core. What matters is what lurks within. What matters is what lives within. You battle the inception of peripheral stimulation and ignore the woman as you close your eyes again.

     That’s when you understand that it’s technically not “within” where the figure and sounds originate. The welcomed figure and sounds, not like what surrounds you from the outside like a straitjacket. Your focus is keen. The sounds dissipate and you are back to your eyelids, the inside of your eyelids, where the image of the figure and the sounds that accompany it reside. Not within. But on. On the inside of your eyelids. The figure resides on the inside of your eyelids, where it is struggling to communicate to you. Struggling to gain its own clarity, crispness of lines. Relay to you its message. You are laser focused on the inside of your eyelids, pulling the left eyelid away from the eye, watching the figure move, a little more distinction displayed, a little less static in the vocal message—yes, now you know, it is vocal; it is talking to you—but it is not enough. The action of pulling on the eyelid, pulling it away from the eye, has brought more clarity, but not enough. Yet.

     When her voice once again interferes with what is now your life’s goal, the purpose of the life you’ve drifted through until the gift of intention without question has been revealed to you—not quite revealed to you, but close; so close--you watch from above, out of your body, as you reach over to the scissors she’d used to cut open the bag of potato chips. You observe as you take them in your hand, grip them with intent, only to pull back into yourself as the woman says something you cannot make out and scoots away from you, arms drawn up and shielding herself, before pushing herself up and off the sofa. You smile, oh, you smile, form without function beyond casting illusions of normalcy when normalcy is quite out of the question now. You laugh, further heightening the lie, and she bleats at you, barks at you, and you set the scissors down. You stare at them momentarily. Within this brief sequence of events away from where you need to be, you have aligned a manner and method to achieve your life’s goal, the purpose unclear until you understand the message from the figure on the inside of your eyelids. But now…now you understand how to go about attaining the knowledge you need. The knowledge it wishes to divulge to you and you alone.

     You rise from the sofa and head down the hallway toward the bathroom. As you do this, there’s another blunt bark from the woman; or, at least, from something behind you. All that matters is what is in front of you. What is behind you is the past, and dead. Your future is taking shape just as the figure and its message will take shape shortly. You know what you need to do.

     You enter the bathroom and close the door; lock the door. You see yourself in the mirror but there’s nothing there you can relate to anymore. The face, the features, a dull façade with no substantial standing in your life as you move forward to reveal your life’s true purpose. You open the medicine cabinet, inspect the contents, and close it. You open the drawer to your left and run your fingers over cotton balls and Q-tips, before shutting it. You open the drawer to the right and immediately, your prize is revealed.

     The woman whose vague existence filled the life you lived beyond the inside of your eyelids, had filled the drawers with whatever necessities a woman of her kind—human? Is there any other kind of woman? She is a blank slate now, nothing more—might deem necessary. Within the collection of nonsense items, there is one item that stands out. One item that will assist you in your quest to know what you need to know in order to successfully attain your life’s goals and purpose.

     Tiny scissors.

     For whatever she needed them for—trimming fingernails or stray hairs or who really knows and, with that thought, does it really matter now?

     There is no hesitation.

     You take the tiny scissors into your fingers, slide the tip of your thumb and up to the first knuckle of your pointer finger into the metal loops and open and close the scissors.

     You close your eyes and watch the figure move and think to yourself, it seems more desperate, this movement. The figure seems more desperate.

     There is no hesitation.

     You raise the tiny scissors up toward your eyelids as you pull the eyelid away from your left eye first, still watching the figure, seeing a little bit more, making out a wee bit more sense out of its movements and the sounds that accompany it, yet not enough. Yet. You think about how the slight curvature of the scissors should perfectly accentuate the shape of your eyelid. You think about how the scissors look so dainty, almost polite—the polite scissors, you think, and laugh lightly, only acknowledged by a hitching of your shoulders and a rumble in your chest because you do not hear anything besides the mumbled sounds from the inside of your eyelid. You think, polite scissors wouldn’t really hurt, but you know this is a lie. Just like “Everything Will Be Okay,” which you repeat in your head, because you do not hear anything from outside any longer.

     Everything will be okay, but not during this stage of discovery. Everything will be okay, but right now, this is going to hurt. But you must do what you must do.

     You open the blades as you pull the eyelid away from your left eye and watch as one of the blades slides in front of your vision, blurry silver and set in place. You are confident that in mere seconds, you will be able to hold the severed eyelid away from the eye at just the proper distance to reveal all that the figure and its message have to reveal to you: your life’s goals, your life’s purpose.

     You hold your breath and squeeze, closing the blades…

*** 

Does that hurt? I...I hope so. ;-)

Here's some creepy eye art by the Junji Ito because, well, creepy eye stuff is everywhere in this post.