Everything Here is the Worst Thing Ever

We’re not going to talk about Justin Taylor. Maybe we should, because the caption to the above photo suggests such, but we are still waiting for our copy of Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever to arrive in the mail. And, even then, it will probably take us weeks to get to it.

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A Well-Trained Cat

Good Afternoon, folks. The Pacific Northwest has been covered in rain and that means our poems are getting wet. In a recent drive from Portland to Seattle there was nothing but rain; during a run this evening there was almost-rain/almost-hail liquid everywhere. Thus, we are advising poets in the greater northwest region to write poems indoors only. Please apply for an Outdoor Book License if you plan to take any books of poetry out of doors for fear that their pages and spines might dampen and curl!!!

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Now That's A Debate!

Controversy paves the way for book sales. According to the cliché, there is no such thing as bad publicity. That may or may not be true. After all, the psychological toll can be disastrous. We’ll never know how Mike Penner/Christine Daniels wanted to be remembered, but his controversial real-life test was bold and groundbreaking, especially for a sportswriter. The truth behind Shakespeare’s identity continues to stir debate, as it should; it is one of the great superunknowns. Following suit, literature’s relevance is the newest question hitting the technological airwaves. But it isn’t really new, just redefined. Brenda Wineapple is ready to yell; she’s Guernica’s new nonfiction editor. Finally, The Millions interviews Jonathan Dee and asks, is he the under 40 author of The Great American Novel? Let the debate begin. – Andrew Geer

It wasn’t something you thought about and then one day there were three. Well, well. And now it was the easiest thing in the world to conceive. Except sleep. It all came flooding back when your guard was down. But I didn’t like to talk about it on the waking side. I didn’t like the images.

I put the shotgun barrel-down in the passenger foot well and the 9mm on the seat above and started a cigarette glowing and set a cup of ice filled with the clear strong stuff into the cup holder and started the car. I was big as King Tut.

“Tut the Nut,” I whispered to my gaggle of friends.

Amidst the 38 miles before you found the outskirts of Lubbock there lay some ten or so overpasses with those squat concrete pylons that collect the dead. On most occasions they merely collect parts. Big plan number four, the doozey, I meant to force Melvin and the Haystack smack into the center of one, head-on, and I liked my chances. Darkness, you understand, would be my friend. The guns…the guns were there in case I had to finish it. Which was bad. The whole premise being to make it appear an accident. For the cops and everybody. Buy me enough time to floss. One way or another though they had to die and that was why the booze rode shotgun.

The highway had long gone quiet, waiting on the big show. A car or two approached from the opposite direction, passing us well across a dark broad median. Melvin and Haystack rolling along at seventy-five and me trailing them near and just far enough. Melvin, the rat boy, had stuck their car on cruise control and was holding them sure and steady and someday I was gonna wanna thank him. Just not on this trip, buddy. Not on this go-round. But I owed him and trailed him just so, the eyes blind to a future that was closing fast. But whose future one might inquire? Theirs or mine?

Gritting my teeth at the thought of it, the mug stretched tight at the corners, I waggled my neck to stay loose and rolled my eyes. But I never glanced at the rearview, just hung onto the wheel and let everything flow straight on down the centerline. I didn’t want to spook myself, flare up yellow in the night. Instead I feathered the gas pedal, closing on them a yard or two a minute. Slowly, slowly, a leaf gone lazy on the stream of time. In the distance, one could just make the rumble of the falls. Oh, brother.

I flew off the interstate first chance I got and turned on the headlights while jetting up the onramp and did a rolling stop through the stop sign and dropped down the entrance ramp on the other side and onto the interstate once again. As far as the boys were concerned, just another brush salesman, late for the buffet. I stayed back a quarter mile and timed it with the little clock in my head, just to be sure. It timed out all right. I poured myself some moon juice and fingered the auto, like a nice boy holding his crank.

Twenty-three miles out from Lubbock I started the count. I counted the one-mile signs and the reflectors and then the thumps of the expansion joints in the pavement. I was pretty keyed-up. I was at that range where one could nearly make out the Haystack — in my mind at least I could see him plain but the mind will play tricks. Once fear has moved in. Once cold fear has bought the house next door.

And a strange thing began to happen. You know it was dark when Karen began to pry into my thoughts that way, though she didn’t belong there and I refused her and would not let her in. I told her to stay out you bitch and spit her from my mouth violently and with some anger and when I glimpsed the rearview this time the pieces were all there. Moving, lying, sick at heart. I tore my eyes away fast, only not fast enough. That part of you that dies took a blow right then, and went down, down, but somehow you always get up. I lit another smoke and let go the handle of the gun. I needed both hands on the wheel.

So you run your eyes a last time round the circle, take in all the faces, those one million dramas in life number five. And the faces fly by and Charlie’s went by and it was always red. The rest were a sandy or a gray, but Charlie’s was always red.

‘Rhymes with dead,’ I whispered but only with my eyes.

Haystack, his name was Haystack and I had called him…no matter his name, I hadn’t forgotten. Only my own it seemed. I’d neglected to remember my own…

You forgot what it was that jumped you here, didn’t you fella?

“Just kill ’em.”

‘Yeah’.

“The motherfuckers want your ass.”

Yeah. Just kill ’em like they never were. And you better twist it in that fucking rat boy. You better gut him.

“Kill ’em dead.”

‘That’s right.’

Over and over, the chances thinning out, every six miles another overpass, on the section lines I guess. Goddamn but it got dark. The only life the one or two farmhouses passing in the distance, abandoned lights bobbing here and there off the bow, drifting away from the interstate like drifting out to sea. But I couldn’t look now. I was froze and drunk and I had them in my sights. There was no way to tear my eyes away now.

“It’s you or them,” I heard from below, along with a hissing sound I couldn’t place. It ate at me that I couldn’t place it.

“Just break the ice, eh, Maddock. You remember. You were always the one to handle it, to put out the fire. Remember? Maddock, the big hero.”

“Fuck them and fuck you you piece of shit. You do it or I’ll do it now. You better do it you…”

Yella piece a shit.

“Ready? Get ready to do it, you. It’s all you gotta do is do it…”

— — —

It’s mile marker 570 if you ever get out that way. This time or your next time around. Drive out on a dark night, no moon, stars I guess, I wouldn’t know.

It’s marker 570 but you’ll smell it before you get there. Haystack and the rat boy and my bowels splashed on the concrete. Metal and stone and flesh. Burning rubber. The burning flesh and the glass everywhere.

You know the animals heard it and later, closer, they smelled it. I don’t suppose any of them would hazard coming right in, grabbing the rat boy’s arm and shaking it. But you gotta know, the animals, they’re always hungry. Unlike us. We got plenty free time, enough to fly to the moon.

Mile 570 or thereabouts. Go see. See what you can do if you put the mind to it. The wonderful, crystal mind with all its facets, its sharp edges. Only try and not look dead on. It’s a cold heart reflecting back.

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David Musick lives and works in Denver, Colorado. This is his first published fiction.

Just like this picture, these stories are too good to pass up. Here’s this week’s recommended reading from online magazines. Fiction so good it’ll leave a tattoo on your head!

Enjoy.

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