“Press Conference”

AN EXCERPT FROM THE TOWER BY KING WENCLAS

“Bobo!” Rick Romeo barked. “The press conference begins in twelve minutes. You have to be there.”

The bizarre looking mascot, who’d been skulking around the facility, raised a costume hand in acknowledgement while running off. Not necessarily in the right direction. The stadium was so huge, had so many levels, turns, and byways, corridors of blue, orange, or green, Rick wasn’t sure the mascot knew where he was going. But if anyone knew the facility better than Rick did it was Bobo.

A gum chewing office staffer named Connie ran up to Rick with what she said were seven important phone messages come in during the last thirty minutes. They’d been scratched onto memo pad sheets with imprinted cartoon characters on them, “URGENT!” written in thick letters at the top of each one in Connie’s exaggerated handwriting. Connie’s hyperbolic personality was easily sent into high gear by impressive voices on the phone.

Were they now using unauthorized memo pads? Tychon wanted everything in the office to carry the team logo.

Rick perused the memos while Connie stared brazenly at his face, which a few of the young female staffers were fond of doing. Rick ignored that.

“They’re very important,” Connie said, still chewing gum, any moment about to blow a bubble.

Connie’s south side accent jarred in this environment. She came from Rick’s own sprawling neighborhood. Anna’s revenge– he’d chastized Anna once for hiring from the mass of applications only dull-witted rich kids from the Old Line. Rick noticed one of the calls was from the mayor’s office.

They stood in a wide, blue carpeted walkway on the second level. Rick’s eyes became distracted by activity outside the sweeping glass window to the side. He spoke into his hand-held radio.

“Keep that flake Sheila away from the entrance,” he told his security force.

Sheila was a street artist who hung around the stadium painting portraits of anyone who gave her a few bucks. She kept up on anything happening here, as today. Rick had chased her off more than once. Keeping unlicensed vendors off the property was a constant battle. Tychon ordained all concessions be in-house.

Rick’s radio beeped while Connie continued to stare at his face.

“Reporters filing in,” a voice informed him.

“Ten-four,” Rick responded. “Keep me apprised when the coach appears. Bobo also.”

“Ten-four. Out here.”

Rick hadn’t decided if the team mascot was crazy or just stupid. He had different worries about the head coach. Young Connie, who was nineteen, popped a gum bubble. He handed her back the memos.

“Connie, they’ll just have to wait.”

Rick was already striding down a corridor to get to the media room.

The head coach was a special problem, a laconic type from the deep South, that if you asked him something he’d take five minutes to answer, accompanied by sighs, grunts, and coughs which indicated either weariness or total disgust. If forced to talk it’d be with a glare through eye slits in his bulldog white face. He used this effectively on reporters, adding to his every response the attitude of, “You must be really stupid for asking me that.”

The coach held undisguised contempt for East Coast journalists. In his way, he was as arrogant as Tychon or Rick Romeo. Rick worried the coach would have enough of this circus and leave.

Rick walked briskly toward the Media Room, scanning broad walkways for stray journalists. Various security personnel signaled A-OK. His radio beeped. The voice of McGunn, Rick’s second-in-command.

“Coach is in the room,” McGunn said. “Polka Dot arriving now.”

Polka Dot! The delinquent clown. Possibly the worst looking mascot in the league. Tychon had designed the costume himself– one of his few creations to go wrong.

Rick Romeo positioned himself in the open entrance to the Media Room, prior to closing the doors. Sports reporters holding cups of coffee took their seats inside. Grabbing chairs at the back were several stadium staffers, including Anna; Todd, the sales manager; and a couple from Legal engaged in a poorly hidden romantic affair. The coach’s press conferences were a good place to hide, to flirt, or to sleep. Several reporters already were yawning.

As Rick turned, his hand on one of the doors, an aggressive redhead stared through him as if her eyes could command him out of the way. Though she barely came much above the height of his chin, her demeanor suggested she would stomp him into the carpeting if he didn’t make room for her. She wore press credentials around her neck. A spoiled brat journalist.

“You know the rules– or should,” Rick said. “The coach doesn’t like latecomers.”

“Who are you?” she asked. “Mr. Authority? Lord of the Stadium? Keeper of the Door?”

He continued to block her way as they sized up each other. She crossed her arms and looked at him with amusement.

“Are you made of granite?” she asked. “Are you square and fit into a box?” Then she brushed away his arm and entered the room.

The sideshow began. Bobo stood in the right front corner, fidgeting noticeably. A full contingent of reporters. Team colors of blue, green, and orange criss-crossed the ceiling and walls in broad strokes. At the podium, an indolent, insolent coach. The coach grimaced and pointed. Questions began.

The first questions focused on the condition of the defense and prospect of stopping the Laser a few games from now. The encounter would test the team’s progress.

As Rick watched, his brain signaled a warning. He became alert, wondering what was happening. The snippy redhead had moved herself into the front row. Oh shit. This could be trouble. Rick was trained to anticipate problems. He saw one now. His hand instinctively went to his radio, in the same way, in a different situation, it would’ve reflexively grabbed a weapon.

The coach drawled out an answer to another softball question. He knew by now the easy reporters. But, the redhead– she’d positioned herself closer to the center of the row, reseating the stooges of the press. Having her way with them. In control. The coach blinked, pointed– at her.

“Coach, what I’d like to know”– a clear and strong voice– “is your opinion of this facility. This beautiful stadium which you and your team are privileged to use.”

Rick moved closer up the side aisle.

“Yes, ma’am,” the coach said.

“Are you aware, Coach, that the public paid for this, for all this largesse, including the luncheon we’re going to feast on afterward?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That the possessor of all this, this magnificent palace, paid for by we the taxpayers, one Arthur Tychon, still owes the city millions of dollars and no one not anybody will talk about it? Least of all the lapdogs of the official media?”

Rick brushed past the mascot to position himself behind the coach. The redhead scanned around herself.

“Is there one of you with an activated mind?” she asked. “Or are you so used to Tychon doing your thinking for you you’ve forgotten how to engage your brains? Are you jellyfish? Do you care that this mad sport, the entire business, is a reflection of caste, or that the athletes like disposable gladiators pumped up by hormones and drugs are destroying their brains and bodies, that many of them will be dead by age fifty, or disabled, or brain damaged, all to sustain profits for a handful of plutocrats? You study plays between the lines, you scribes of the press– you journalistic experts– you analyze and debate every trivial detail, but are unable to see outside the lines to notice more meaningful and dangerous plays taking place in boardrooms, more significant and expensive plays, I assure you. Isn’t that right, Coach?” The coach gurgled and sighed and cleared his throat a few times.

“I’m a football coach, ma’am.”

The reporters she’d called lapdogs were furiously sending texts and tweets. They’d recognized the voice as soon as she began speaking. The same message they sent via cellphones went up immediately as headlines on local news websites: “It’s Her!”

Microphones and tape recorders pointed in her direction. Cellphone cameras and professional photographers clicked away. Rick Romeo stepped in front of the coach and grabbed the microphone.

“Do you have another question?”

“I have a lot of questions!”

Her eyes weren’t intimidated by his. Their eyes collided. Rick stepped back.

On her way out, amid the tumult, she ran hard into Bobo, who did a reverse somersault and landed on his back, where he remained for a full minute. No one could tell if his injury was real or an act.

Newspaper headlines the next day: “IT’S HER!” “CRUSADER REVEALED.” “THE BEAUTY BEHIND THE VOICE.”

(The Tower is available here.)

“The Princess”

Chapter Three of an unfinished novel, Nightmares of Detroit

(Read Chapter One here.)

(Read Chapter Two here.)

The Sewer Rat was now in a worse environment, amid the remains of enormous factories which made him feel like an ant. He was in Hell itself. On his face dropped the polluted smell; on all sides the steel strewn lots and towering furnaces of the industrial world. The furnace of the city yet operated; that which had once powered the entire planet. Black iron outlines against cascades of red. Roaring huge semi-trucks bursting from fenced-in yards, Sewer Rat almost run over without being seen by the monsters. They were far worse than the dogs. The tires of Rat’s bike went punctured and flat from nails and metalled scrap. (His feet were protected by steel-toed boots.)

Sewer Rat raised the bike over his shoulder and walked in-between narrow spaces next to fences. On one side spread the remaining industry of southwest Detroit; on the other, to his left, as if he could fall over an edge into it, lay the surging river of the straits of Detroit which grew in power as it went downriver before exploding in one last force of release toward Lake Erie; gigantic terminals and factories rising like a wall around it. A spectacular picture. Behind, he knew, without seeing it, was the Ambassador Bridge. He saw everything in his mind’s eye. This was a hard inhuman world of inhuman scale. The hardest world. The toughest city. How could any living creature survive in it? Only rats could.

The man turned his path away from the river toward a large railroad yard spreading between the monster factories; a gray repository of pollution which made the ideal hiding place. The Rat had worked in it when he was in his early twenties, ten years ago or so. He knew the yard well.

As he walked to it, up a slowly rising hill, across an avenue, he passed a black-spired Catholic church built by Hungarians or Poles a hundred years ago, now closed. He passed dingy gray shops and saloons which still served stray workers, hiding aged old-time residents, and impoverished black welfare mothers; even a scattering of Mexican newcomers; sparks of life in a city written off as dead. The people were as beaten-down as their environment. He passed a soot-coated cemetery of decaying monuments which no one visited. The relatives of the dead had abandoned the city decades ago. Ahead he could barely see– only because he looked for it– the silhouette of the railroad tower that was his destination.

Still carrying the bike, heavy and painful now on his shoulder, the Rat climbed a steep hill of weeds buried in snow. He clutched desperately with his left hand for a grip, his hands cold with his gloves gone. He arrived at the top and gulped cold air, his eyes alert. Silently and carefully he stepped toward the shape of the gray tower when movement noise a shadow a pair of searing large eyes caught his attention– he hissed his mouth snapped eyes bristled the bike off his shoulder thrust behind him as he grabbed the human in Rat’s territory with both hands around the throat. “Yikes!” he heard in the squeak of a soft voice before he squeezed the life out of the person. In his hesitation he felt surprisingly strong hands around his wrists while he stared with shock into a young white woman’s face. Helpless before her strength or her illusory beauty he stopped his fight. He stepped back or was pushed back.

“Hi there,” the girl said after a pause, regaining her composure, though her lips trembled.

She carried the bearing of a training he’d never encountered. It occurred to the Rat that he knew who she was, had heard of her the way one hears of personages of a city, such as Mr. Five; such as himself.

“Don’t trust any white woman in Detroit with good teeth,” his lunatic brother with admonishing finger had advised him once. “They’re undercover cops. No one else has health care.”

This girl had fine teeth yet looked too young to be an undercover agent. She continued shaking, her stoic front unable to hide her fear. The Rat grunted. “Follow me,” he told her.

He glanced behind him to make sure she did. The young woman wore a new looking poncho and baggy trousers, was lean and almost his height. Her large eyes reflected what little stray light existed in this long railyard through which few trains any longer passed. They approached a gray vertical tower blending into, yet at the same time looming out of, the noxious sky.

“Wait here,” he said as he disappeared along the side of it and reappeared with a long crowbar he’d hidden: the tool of bar-men who opened rail cars and banged them shut. The rat saw an image of three gleaming puller engines bringing trains out of the underground rail tunnel from Canada with tremendous power. Before seeing them one would hear them coming in a roar of noise, vibration shaking the tower, its walls and floors, three yellow diesel engines pulling a hundred-car train leaving a layer of soot on everything as they went by.

It was a big joke in the Del Ray neighborhood years ago that Hungarian immigrants would hang their just-washed sheets on clothes-lines behind their shack houses only to see the white sheets tint brown from the polluting shops, slaughterhouse glue factories, and diesel engines of the neighborhood– as well as from the huge smokestacks of the nearby Mammoth complex. Bizarrely, the never-ending pollution had been a sign of economic health: available jobs. Now that most of the jobs were gone, only the layers of pollution were left.

The Rat used the crowbar to force open the heavy metal door into the tower. The girl hesitated. “It’s getting colder,” he said, motioning toward the sky. “This is refuge.” She stepped in and he pulled the heavy door closed behind them.

He was out-of-practice talking to women. Try not to scare her, he thought, though some quality about her scared him. It was a factor beyond his comprehension– maybe that, unlike with the dogs, he was now encountering an animal more intelligent than himself. With an instinct of survival he sensed this. The question was whether she realized it herself.

Yes, he’d heard about the girl, a runaway from the declining neighborhoods of Grosse Pointe; the once-glamorous haven of the automotive rich which was now in a state of collapse. The turning clock. “The Princess,” people called her. He’d wondered if she existed for real and now she was right in front of him.

The building smelled of sulfur, soot, and urine. The Rat made his way up the metal stairs which rose in darkness. The girl followed. They passed several doors numbered “2,” “3,” “4,” in large bright painted letters before Rat pulled one open. They entered a room at the top of the tower, window overlooking the entire yard.

Beyond lay the awesome smokestacks of Mammoth Motors pouring lighted clouds of fiery orange smoke toward the heavens. A living beast. It never failed to be an impressive sight for him. Once it’d been the wonder of the world. “The Arsenal of Democracy”: At its birth the greatest industrial complex ever known. Yet it throbbed! The company a heartbeat away from bankruptcy but not silent yet. What maneuverings took place to save this corporation, this city, in the offices of their headquarters; what conversations between the powerful executives, their many designers and engineers? They existed in a circle of activity and knowledge far above him.

The girl continued to shiver, a look of displeasure on her features.

“The john’s in the basement, all the way down,” he told her. “Kind of smells.” A men’s john at that. Underground dungeons. He’d have to use it himself. For now he took off his jacket and pulled blankets out of a steel locker against the wall. Two large gray metal desks faced each other in the center of the room.

“Do I have to walk all the way down there?” she complained. “I mean, is that the only one?”

Preppy irritation; unwillingness to walk alone through the unfamiliar darkness of the solid structure. Then she was gone. Again, something about her cautioned him: a ready ability to overcome fear.

As he gazed at the belching old smokestacks which never stopped, he sensed that everything was related. The sweep of police cars and helicopters were connected to the fate of what sat like a resting giant before him. Did someone feel they could save Detroit by capturing the likes of him? A last desperate battle for control had opened. The girl returned and the Sewer Rat shut down his thoughts.

-Karl Wenclas

“The Dogs”

CHAPTER TWO OF NIGHTMARES OF DETROIT

(Read Chapter One here.)

Traveling too fast up an overpass across an expressway, the bike hit a patch of ice in the snow and went out from under him, the Sewer Rat landing flat on his back. Embarrassed, he scrambled back onto the bike and rode down the bridge toward downriver and the industrial heart of the city, which Rat could already sense outlined glowing and terrible in the distance.

He had more broken territory to get through first; had planned his journey to bypass the zone of the dogs. The remnants of the city before him were a transplanted illusion. He saw at the same time the sprouting, barren cold wilderness that once was and would be again.

Why he was still in this city, he didn’t know. He’d fallen so far there was no place to flee to. “The last white person” living in the black city, his infamous brother had mocked him as once, with blue eyes flashing, before trying to throw Rat and his Detroit smell out of his cheap suburban house (everything for the guy a physical or psychological test), this leading to a living room brawl upturned chairs knocked-over lamps reawakened yellow-haired warrior brother who’d boxed in the army hitting the Rat with jabs and flurries of punches absorbed by the head and shoulders backs colliding with thin plasterboard walls, house shaking, a quick bout between brothers amid the comical debris of a tiny room. Afterward Sewer Rat walked dazed bloodied and angry toward the closest far-away bus to take him back into the darkness of town as his brother smiled primitively from the excitement of battle while standing like a prehistoric barbarian chieftain on his cheap sunken working-class suburban porch.

The story of Rat’s life was escaping, forever running somewhere, searching to find a nook of security, refuge from the violence of this mad city. Ever had it been for him, since he remembered. Ever would it stay.

He was the last white person in the city but not any longer, he’d seen or at least heard of new faces appearing on the streets, refugees from the swiftly declining suburbs. The entire area had been thrown into chaos, the machine falling apart, people flying off from it becoming wandering lost souls.

As he rode he noticed a panorama of a hundred tiny lights ahead, reflections of the snow he guessed. Only when in the midst of their raging eyes and throaty snarls did he realize he’d miscalculated; their region had spread.

Entire abandoned sections of the city had been taken over by packs of wild dogs, this one of them. The Sewer Rat pedalled faster, too late to back out. The dogs were of all colors, one notably white, like a wolf, others darkest black, all with red demonic eyes, running eagerly trying to hit his bike, teeth snapping at his feet. A chorus of barks echoed from dozens, scores of them. A hundred, their numbers grown, their primal voices building in force, more dogs rushing from shadows to join in. “Oh shit,” Sewer Rat said. If the bike slid now, if he fell off, it was over. He dropped his gloves so his hands could grip the bike handles with more feel and control as he stood on the pedals and increased his speed.

From the corner of his eye Rat noticed dogs rushing to cut him off. He had to outrace the fastest of them, those mad beasts bounding eagerly toward him. The air swept cold against his face and all he saw was frigid blackness ringed with ice rubbled buildings hostile sky sweeping insane no-man’s-land city, he was alone in it with no one to save him. “NO!!” he shouted as the bike shifted side-to-side wildly from his frantic pedalling, among the dogs one of them at the same time about to be ripped apart by them flesh-and-blood in their hungry mouths he’d die unknown and unmourned. Around him a symphony of bullying barking in-his-face close noise and aggression pissing him off. No different from people: brave in a crowd. He’d love to tackle the bravest of them in a fight one-on-one, to the death. It’d not be like the fight with his brother (despite his impossible reputation, a memory of a warrior past his best); there’d be no holding back. He’d rip out the dog’s eyes, tongue, and throat.

The entire pack of dogs stopped suddenly at an invisible line marking their territory. They stood looking after him with tongues out and mocking triumphant smiles.

“Assholes,” the Rat said, speeding ahead then turning in his madness around, firm control over the bike, riding back in the other direction from where he’d come as fast as he could. The dogs stared uncomprehending at him then went scattering in all directions as Rat on his bike like a big dog crashed through their line, Rat yelling in a powerful crazed voice as loud as he could. He laughed at the idea of his aloneness in this wasteland. He could yell all he wanted and no one heard; nobody cared. He yelled and yelled, and howled, then left their territory before the dumb animals could regroup. He still had a long way to go.

NEXT: “The Princess”

-Karl Wenclas

“Nightmares of Detroit”

CHAPTERS FROM AN UNFINISHED NOVEL

1.) THE SEARCH FOR MR. FIVE

Most put-upon creature on the planet the Sewer Rat.

He made his way through the most put-upon city through destroyed closed warehouses shops sidewalks bridges, past crumbling landmarks like the decayed hulking green decayed stone iron train station, vast green flowing smelly Detroit River rushing relentlessly behind it.

The air was gray chilled, a foot of snow on the ground. The foul smelling Sewer Rat sensed a snap in the wind beyond the cold. Something was happening. He’d sensed the moment once before several years ago. Within minutes came the impression of movement on the once-silent streets. He heard helicopters, felt the presence of police cruisers nearby bolstered by outsiders; a vast sweep looking for fugitives, including himself.

The last time there were more questionable denizens to round up. There’d been more life– raucous bars like the Cass Corridor saloon he’d been in when a phalanx of huge black vice cops lined patrons up against a wall to frisk bodies check ID cards– Sewer Rat had slipped through the cursory examination then. More lethal subjects had been in that very room. Next to them, at the time he’d appeared harmless.

Given his brother– the fact of his brother; that he lived– Sewer Rat guessed he was a particular target of this round-up. They were looking for someone!

(For Mr. Five? This notion appeared momentarily at the back of his head.)

Trapezoids of icy structures on all sides as he slid down a slick sidestreet, his feet cold inside his workboots. A closed tiny ham sandwich diner which had served local shop workers: it’d been shuttered for eight years, dark barred interior showing dust and cobwebs.

To live as he had, homeless or on the verge of homelessness, existing on the streets or in tiny rooms in druggie hotels; in prostitute near-flophouses; in abandoned buildings or the interiors of barely-operating blue-smoke-billowing cars; amid the ruins of a city, on the constant verge of extinction, for years, does something to a person. To live without dreams or hope with the feeling only of survival makes a person too-beaten down and crazy to operate again in the organized world. To be seen as, and to be, an alien creature to all one encounters gives one hardness and bitterness beyond conception and redemption.

(No doubt he exaggerated his plight. In his madness; guttural-voiced grunts his only communication with most people; scarred-eye and weather-faced; he saw himself as others saw him but not as he was in reality.)

He had a few friends left in this town. For instance: Benny the Blind Man.

Sewer Rat trudged Benny’s way now, finding Trumbull Avenue, a street of fallen-apart Victorian mausoleum mansions which by a miracle of neglect yet survived; too irrelevant to be bulldozed.

Some of the tall narrow houses on the long street had been restored in a gentrification project twelve years ago; most of the pioneering gentry had fled, Detroit a city which, beyond all logic and expectation, never rebounded. Others of these ancient structures were charred shells. Benny’s hideout was between the two extremes. His house was a wreck but it had intact windows. Its bannisters, frames, and plumbing hadn’t been gutted. By a quirk of bureaucratic ignorance water ran inside. There was no electricity, which Benny scarcely needed anyway. (For heat he burned neighborhood scrap wood in the fireplace.)

Benny’s house had the kind of medieval fortress iron bars over his windows and doors which imprisoned most remaining city residents. The barred door now stood battered and broken, grillwork on the lawn, the entrance wide open. The police or Feds had already been there.

“Benny!” Rat called as he bounded up uneven steps.

Benny sat in a rickety Victorian armchair at the center of the junk-filled orange room, too stunned or pissed; old, weak, or blind; to close the entrance. The door had been knocked off its hinges. Sewer Rat propped it up to stop the wind.

“You mother-fucking trouble making white sewer rat asshole– wuz they looking for you?” came from the old man whose angry wide-opened eyes showed blankness.

He was stocky, of wide frame, but scarcely over five feet in height (presumably he’d once been taller). In age he must be at least ninety. This man WAS Detroit; he knew everything, the entire history of the city, its rise and decline, not just the riots of ’67 but the even bloodier race riot of 1943. He knew the city’s Gilded Age, the glorious 1920s when the Automobile was still new and Detroit’s industries were King; when wealth, new mansions, and sudden skyscrapers like the gold-topped Fisher Building proliferated. When the train station was gigantic, gaudy, and bustling with people. The richest city in North America it’d been, if not on the planet.

Could this rise and fall have occurred in one person’s lifetime?

The inside of the junk-filled house looked more wrecked than usual. The storm troopers hadn’t messed around. Rat took a large swig from a bottle of Jack on the floor next to Benny.

“Thanks,” he said to the ancient man, who tolerated him because he ran errands now and again. Rat had in fact bought this bottle, from a tiny decrepit party store half-a-mile of urban devastation away from here.

Rat felt the warm liquid fall into his stomach then swim into his head. His tired feet throbbed, tingling with the illusion of warmth the whiskey provided.

“They never said what they wanted,” the small-headed brown old man moaned from his rickety chair. “But I figured it must be you!”

To the Sewer Rat Benny appeared to be an amazement or carnival freak; a preserved talking Egyptian 5,000 years old. Maybe that was why Rat liked him– Benny was as much a freak as himself.

In reality Sewer Rat hated blacks– or at least had been raised by his father to hate them. This from the days when the city consisted of two armed camps; battles of territoriality everyplace as Detroit changed from a white town to a black one, full of violent atrocities mythical and real on both sides. Rat’s brother had been in the midst of high-school gang fights of blood and chains before moving on to other infamies. It was where he’d first made his rep and obtained his supposed leadership ability.

“They’re looking for leaders, Pops,” Sewer Rat said to Benny. “I’m a lone wolf. It’s how I’ve survived. This city is up for grabs and whoever wants it has to destroy his rivals.”

He had no idea who’d want the city. Even the rich rappers and drug lords found haven outside the city limits. Yet Rat sensed that the force behind the helicopters federal agents and SWAT teams believed something of value remained; some unknown jewel or hidden treasure, undiscovered, unmarked, unseen, the merely legendary. Maybe only the spirit of the meaning of the glory and wealth of Detroit’s fabled days.

He climbed narrow stairs to the top room, where he sometimes stayed. In back of pipes behind a panel in a wall he retrieved a small roll of bills. Every rat needs an emergency cache. His hand clutched the small roll in the room’s shadows. He’d become used to living in a blind man’s house, used to hiding in the city in holes without light so that, like a blind man or a rat he could operate without light. When he cared to shave, he did so in cold water without lamp or mirror to guide him. When he moved outside he could do so by instinct more than sight.

He unlocked a ten-speed bike chained to a cold radiator. He carried it on his shoulder down the stairs to the main room and set it down, leaning it against a thick plaster wall. Benny stared ahead blindly but knew what Sewer Rat was doing.

“I’ll be right back,” Rat said, leaving the bike.

He walked half-a-mile to the tiny store, a layer of dust on its tiled floor; windows grimy and gray. The Chaldean store owner behind a faded plexiglass barricade seemed pleased to see him. A young street urchin stood to the side: an undernourished black youth with yellow teeth and a cold stare; no doubt a member of this or that band of predators roaming the streets. (Or one of Five’s people?) Sewer Rat noted him without so much as glancing at him. The biggest mistake newcomers to the streets make is wanting to befriend the residents, naively believing this will give them safety, when instead it heralds them as marks to be played. When Sewer Rat traveled the streets he was deaf, dumb, and blind to all around him yet at the same time saw everything. In nature the opened eye is a beacon. To not pass with eyes upon any living thing was to become invisible. Rat had mastered this art.

In the brutal store Sewer Rat’s stare was no less cold and contemptuous than the youth’s. Rat’s scars of survival displayed themselves on his face. He purchased a pound container of baloney, a loaf of white bread, and a two-liter bottle of soda. The items were dust covered.

“Thank you, boss,” the store owner said. Rat glanced at him but made no other acknowledgement.

Back at Benny’s he drank some of the soda and split the bread and baloney. His share would go with him, in a jacket pocket. The rest of the soda and food he left with Benny as rent payment.

When night fell Sewer Rat took the bike outside down the house’s shattered steps. The snow-filled city spread in all directions. Hints of blue lights and sirens illuminated distant portions of the sky.

“Sees ya, old man,” he said gruffly to the figure in the chair before propping the broken door back in place. “Take care of yourself.”

Sewer Rat had a hard journey ahead of him to the safety of a better hiding spot.

NEXT: “The Dogs”

-Karl Wenclas

“Bart Wellesley Westen”

(from a 90’s literary zine, Reasons to Vomit)

Though Bart Wellesley Westen is from Southern California, he is adjusting to life in New York City. “Where are they? Are they after me yet?” he yells as he ducks behind a davenport in his million-dollar penthouse apartment. “I’ll smash your face if you come near me.”

Bart is fabulously popular. His novels are the rage, because they depict the more trendy if awkward aspects of modern upper class American life: rape, murder, and dismembering women, to name three. Many critics have given his work bad reviews, ignoring the intrinsic artistic merit to his sado-masochistic descriptions of blood and violence. “Reality, man!” he shouts while crawling among his plants. Then he pauses to urinate in them. This calms him down. “Man, look at these things,” he comments about the plants while zipping up his fly. “They’re all dying. I wonder why? And I paid thousands of dollars for them. Hey man, do you know anything about plants?”

Bart wears a dull gray suit, with tennis shoes and sunglasses, has neat, short hair, projects the image of a square young businessman on LSD, seems any moment able to flip out. The song “Holiday in Cambodia” by the Dead Kennedys plays in the background. Bart paces the room with Richard Nixon paranoia, muttering about plants, then sits down. He opens his mouth to speak, begins to reel off brand names in a stream of consciousness– “SAKS SONY SANYO SNUGGLES SEARS WOOLITE WENDY’S RIGHT GUARD TIDE DOWNY MASTERCARD MAZDA AMARETTO BAYER ALLSTATE WRIGLEY’S L.A. GEAR BUSCH BUD MOBIL EXXON MITSUBISHI IZOD REVLON MAALOX MILLER MR. CLEAN JOHNNIE WALKER J & B PEPTO BISMOL BIG MAC KENTUCKY FRIED CADILLAC”– anything he sees from behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses. Bart is the perfect product of commercial culture: his eye has been trained to so notice labels that now labels are all he can see. After several minutes of this bombardment of mindless madness I realize a TV plays on the other side of the room– red and blue flashing zig zag lines of light inside a distant box. This is where he receives the brand names. I walk over and turn the television off. Bart falls instantly silent. His hand begins to shake; the sunglasses move about as Bart waits frantically for more sensory input, like a heroin addict in need of a fix. I ask him a question.

“The reaction to your latest book, I Think I’m Crazy, was pretty strong. People were upset by your graphic descriptions and the theme of causeless irrationality.”

“It’s society man. It makes us do these crazy things. We can’t stop it. We’re out of control. That’s the price of being rich, man. They indulge you and give you everything you want and you’re this greedy glutton with no mind. Give us a Jag, and it’s not enough. A Corvette, man? Made in America? Get outta here! A Porsche, man. That’s not good enough. I can’t be seen with that. It’s old news. I gotta grab everything. Anything I can get my hands on. Mass consumption. Out of my way. I’ll run you down. I want all of it. Man, it’s tough to be rich. Try it some time.”

“The charge has been made that your generation of affluent writers is not interested in the rest of society, say, in the poor.”

“The what? Who? What are you talking about? Yeah, I see these people slumming around on the sidewalks. Who are these people? Where’s their cars? And the way these retro dudes dress, man. I just can’t relate to losers like that.”

“Did you have a difficult time coping with the sudden fame that fell upon you after the publication of your first book, Born to Be a Zero?”

“You got it, man. I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, someone sent me a letter, man! I can’t be bothered by this shit. I told him, Listen, dude– I’ll tear your fucking heart out– you got that, man? Sending me your letters, man. People calling me on the phone. I can’t be into this literature gig. That was supposed to be lyrics, man. For a record album– friends of mine. I sent it to the wrong fucking publisher and they publish it in this fucking book.”

Bart begins to cry, shaking his head in disbelief.

“And people bought it. And I became famous. I can’t take this crap. I never meant for this. I want to be on the outside. You get it? I want to be a regular human being driving around Malibu in my Lamborghini and getting in fights in clubs in L.A. And they got me in New York. Living like this. All the fucking maids, agents, lawyers, telephones, requests, contracts, leave me alone! I can’t take it. My mind’s about to fucking explode, I want out, I want to be free, I never asked for this shit!”

Bart becomes suddenly calm, leans back, lights a cigarette, takes off his sunglasses. His eyes are perfectly clear.

“Of course, when they send the checks I cash them,” he tells me in an offhand manner.

-Karl Wenclas

Karl Wenclas Interview

BEFORE taking on editorial duties at New Pop Lit, Karl Wenclas helped run the notorious writers group, Underground Literary Alliance. A group which embodied Indie literary culture and the philosophy of Do-It-Yourself. In-line with what many in the music business had been doing– for years. No sucking-up to the giant conglomerates– EVER!

Say what you will about the ULA, but it was a group of writers who never sold out. (Were so in-your-face that, contrary to some false stories still making the rounds, they never had the chance to.)

Anyway, a pair of ex-ULAers, Patrick King and Wred Fright, have been documenting and preserving some of the history of that historic literary group. Included in this effort are a series of interviews with leading ULA personalities. Including this interview:

Garage rock? How about garage lit! Given the growing power of monopolies of all kinds in recent years, groups like the Underground Literary Alliance are more necessary than ever. Time for a comeback?

Writers Versus Robots!

THIS BLOG has been fairly inactive of late, due to computer glitches.

However, we’re back on it briefly to announce an important issue– a petition aimed to raise awareness of what ChatGPT and other AI devices will soon do and in fact are doing to the worlds of literature and publishing.

Too many books and writers to compete with now? Prepare for a coming deluge, as more “bot books” are produced within days by those-who-aren’t-necessarily-writers but still want books with their name on them. Or, for that matter, opportunistic real writers producing a dozen genre novels a year now, who’ll realize they’ll be able to increase that by a factor of ten, or more (120+ a year) and thereby increase their income.

Many of us, needless to say, write for other reasons– such as the pursuit of art and the expression of soul.

Anyway, the petition– which has a modest ask: that AI-generated books be labeled as to that fact. Clarity for readers. Protection for writers. Who could possibly object?

Please read and sign:
https://www.change.org/SavetheWriter

Thanks much!

Aim For the Snyder Brothers

by Bud Sturguess

photo Chris Pietsch c/o AP

My brother and I roared down the highway in a 1991 Camaro. It was one of those cars that you knew the last guy who drove it was the king of his high school. You could still smell it in the upholstery.

We soared in that Camaro. We broke the sound barrier. But we didn’t feel it. We didn’t feel anything. I guess that’s what got us in the rusty Camaro in the first place: being numb. Not feeling. Wondering if we were still alive. That’s why we robbed all those banks. As a test. To see if we were really alive. The biggest things in the news were Ukraine and the doomsday comet everybody was scared to death of. But even those things didn’t stir us.

You hear about bank robbers, sweating bullets. Full of adrenaline. The rush and the power. The power over the tellers and the big fat bank president as their eyes blaze in terror at the sight of a pair of Maverick 88s.

Not loaded, soulless. Two shotguns as empty as the both of us, my brother and me.

I guess the experiment failed. We were still numb. We were still nobodies. We felt it. Feeling like nobodies was about the only thing we did feel.

And being nobodies, we couldn’t understand why the state troopers were so determined in their pursuit of the Snyder brothers: a rotten old Camaro, two empty shotguns, thousands of dollars in cash, useless, ruined by a sudden blast of pink.

We didn’t think of it at the time but, how much harder would their boots would have hit the gas, how many more state troopers would have joined in the convoy, if we’d been somebodies? Me a poet, poet laureate no less, my brother a surgeon, saving lives for free in Haiti.

Why were they so concerned about us now? I was too full of Zoloft and Zyprexa to win a Pulitzer or craft the next Leaves of Grass. My brother had too much vodka in his brain to dig around in somebody’s spleen, even at a charity hospital.

We weren’t even that impressive as bank robbers – no shells, no shouting, no masks. (I had the idea we wear Donald Trump masks, just for a gag, but we forgot to buy them. Too foggy-minded to remember, I guess.)

We didn’t even tell anybody to get down on the floor. We didn’t want people face down on cold marble. We didn’t want to make some trembling young lady just out of high school open the vault and dump jewels and gold into our Trick or Treat bags, so to speak.

Trick or Treat – my brother and I never brought up Halloween. The  

Halloween I was 11 and he was 9. We got lost and our cousins ditched us. Some older kids, bigger kids, started chasing us. I grabbed my brother’s hand and we ran as fast as we could, outran those punks.

We never made a pact, never said a word, but it was an unspoken agreement that we’d never speak of that Halloween – his hand gripping mine, mine gripping his, clinging to each other. Talking about those things can make you drop dead from shame.

I could’ve thrown up on the kitchen floor the day I was 16 or 17 when our mother said to me, “that Halloween night was so special to me, the way you and your brother took care of each other like that.”

I wasn’t above pretending to vomit.

She put a curse on us one day when we were fighting: “someday, you two will be all you have.”

Enough to make you shudder.

So, it was obviously agreed that we didn’t hold hands as we roared down the highway. His knuckles were bony as ever gripping the wheel. Mine were fiddling with the radio. At least one of us had the presence of mind, wasn’t too numb to know we needed a good car chase song. A short song, a good rock and roll song. Four minutes or less. That’s all I figured we had.

I found some good stuff: “Proud Mary,” “You Shook Me All Night Long”… I even stumbled across “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.” But none of it fit just right. My brother preferred silence in the car anyway, as a general rule. Anywhere we went, the only time he played the radio in that Camaro was to listen to Now This on NPR.

Boring.

NPR was even more meaningless to us now, all those updates on Ukraine and the doomsday comet they said would miss the planet anyway. We had no need, no use for the news as state troopers jammed up their CB’s with the Snyder name.

Those rotten, vicious Snyder brothers who held up the Merchant State Bank and gave an old lady a heart attack when she saw our twin Maverick 88s (the only thing about us that looked alike if you ask me).

Not that we didn’t deserve a good killing. That old woman never did anything to us. She probably never did anything to anybody. Probably never even went to a barn dance. She was probably at the bank to withdraw a crisp new 20 dollar bill for her grandson’s birthday. Next thing she knew she was a pale white lump on the lobby rug.

It was a waste of an old lady’s death. She should have died at home, surrounded by her loved ones. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

All those sweet things that could give you diabetes.

There wasn’t a shell between us Snyder brothers, but it was all the same. We killed that poor old woman. Same as if we were the Dillinger gang, or those two guys in all the body armor in L.A. I saw a documentary about it – the Battle of North Hollywood. One of the guys was Romanian, I think. The cops had to bring in a freaking tank to stop those guys. Lunatics. 

Not us.

We were just as rotten as they were, but we were just the Snyder brothers.

It was a mercy killing, some might say, when the comet hit the Camaro. What are the odds a comet all the way from outer space, another galaxy maybe, would zoom to Earth and land smack-dab on a ’91 Camaro carrying nobodies? Two unknowns with empty shotguns and useless money?

I could B.S. you and say it made us exceptional. Two in a million – two in a trillion – just the fact that a freaking comet destroyed us in a high speed chase. But that would be a lie. I think so, anyway. Though, you can’t help but wonder at the accuracy of that comet. Divine accuracy, some might say.

In any case, if God did it, if He sent that fireball from space just to blow us up, I have to disagree with His choice of weapon (but not His motive, mind you). It seemed like a waste of a comet. A perfectly good, beautiful brilliant comet.

Plummeting from the grandeur of the heavens just to obliterate two nobodies.

Bud Sturguess was born in the small cotton-and-oil town of Seminole, Texas. He now lives in his “adopted hometown,” Amarillo. Sturguess has self-published several books, his latest being the novel “Sick Things.” He is a collector of neckties.

Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba

by Stephen Baily

“Ten, please.”

“You got it.”

After leaning out into the lobby to check if anybody else was coming, he pulled the folding gate shut, hit the starter button, and eyed me in the convex mirror above his head.

“Here for an interview?”

I blinked. “How did you guess?”

“You have that look.”

“What look is that?”

“Like a cringing dog. Listen, I know it’s none of my business, but you want some advice? Before you go in there, take a deep breath and say to yourself, Napoleon at thirty was master of France. Trust me—it works like a charm.”

The charm didn’t seem to have worked too well for him—or at any rate his uniform was so seedy I had the strong suspicion, if he turned around, I was as sure to smell booze on his breath as he was to smell it on mine.

“I’ll give it a try.”

“Good man. Here we go. Tenth floor. Skinn and Flynt Publishing.”

I was unprepared for the vastness of the space I stepped out into. It could have done duty for an airplane hangar, if it hadn’t been broken up into a maze of workstations. At the counter opposite the elevator, the big-haired receptionist pointed me to a distant tall window.

“That’s Mr. Eichelberger under it.”

In his shirtsleeves, with his tie loosened and askew, he waved me into a chair drawn up close to his own, without bothering to look up from the Danish he was scarfing down over his desk.

“So. Why do you want to work here?”

“I don’t.”

He lifted a brow. “Come again?”

“As I told you on the phone, Marylee Bradley is a friend of my wife’s, and she happened to mention to her you have assignments for freelancers.”

After wiping his mouth on his wrist, he clasped his hands behind his head, so that his elbows stuck out like bat wings above his sweat-soaked armpits. As he tilted back in his chair, the button over his gut popped out of its hole, affording me a glimpse of the hairs matted on his navel.

“I assume you brought your résumé?”

I shook my head. “There wouldn’t be anything on it, other than that my degree’s in comparative anatomy.”

“Let me guess what you’ve been doing since you graduated—writing a novel, am I right?”

Without waiting for me to reply, he continued: “Is there anybody in this town who isn’t writing a novel? What’s yours about? The travails of a sensitive adolescent, no doubt. What would the world do, I wonder, without sensitive adolescents?”

His chair complained loudly as he returned it to the perpendicular and, leaning forward, laid a heavy hand on my thigh.

“Kidding aside, I’m not unsympathetic to your plight. I’ve been there myself. I know how it is.”

I was still trying to ease my leg away without being too conspicuous about it when he withdrew his hand and reached into a drawer.

“You lack the background, true, but—for Marylee’s sake—I’m willing to give you a shot.”

My hopes, which I’d allowed to rise, sank when he produced from the drawer, not a thick manuscript, but a single sheet of paper.

“We ask every applicant to take this. That desk over there is free. You’ve got half an hour.”

I pretended to be oblivious of the smug glances I attracted from the vicinity as I sat down at the desk he’d directed me to.

“Correct the following passage for grammar, punctuation, and spelling,” the instructions said. “Do not rewrite. Use standard proofreader’s marks.”

Never having heard of standard proofreader’s marks, I figured I was cooked, till my eyes descended to the text in question.

“Isabel,” it began, “was a small small boned girl, whom her parents worried made too big of a fuss over dietery compliments.”

After reading this sentence again to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated it, I resolved to seize the possibility it offered me of bluffing my way out.

“Back already?”

“Excuse me,” I apologized to Eichelberger, “but I find it hard to believe someone who writes like this could get a book accepted.”

He laughed. “You’d be surprised.”

“Not to speak of the tone-deaf diction—the solecisms—the sloppy spelling and punctuation—the author—even supposing she has X-ray vision—is flat-out wrong.”

“About what?”

“As you may have forgotten, the two hundred and six bones in the human body fall under six categories: long, short, flat, subdural, sesamoid, and irregular. Small, you’ll notice, isn’t among them.”

“So, if I understand you right, you’re saying Isabel should be rejiggered into a short, short-boned girl?”

“I’m saying Isabel should be left to stew in her own shortcomings, because she doesn’t deserve rejiggering, let alone publication.”

He paused, unembarrassed, to button his shirt.

“Tell you what. No need to finish that. Leave your number at the reception desk and we’ll be in touch if and when we require your services.”

Another elevator than the one that had brought me up took me back to the lobby. Alas, its operator had no sage counsel for me to reflect on as I walked down Park Avenue South past Union Square and across Fourteenth Street. The row of secondhand bookshops on Fourth Avenue called to me to no purpose. They might have been so many dingy cemeteries for moldering authors. At Astor Place, a guy shuffling toward me stopped and stuck a hand in my face. The hand was clad in a ragged mitten that was missing its thumb. In an access of fellow feeling, I searched my pockets and finally dug up a nickel he examined with disdain.

“Napoleon at thirty was—don’t you know—master of France.”

Or so I’d have had him say if it had been up to me. Had it been up to me, I’d also have had him say he was on his way to bum some money off an elevator operator of his acquaintance. Only of course it wasn’t up to me and what he said to me in fact was: “Thanks for nothing.”

A small object that could only have been a nickel ricocheted off the back of my head and skittered along the sidewalk into the gutter as I turned east on Eighth Street. The light was changing on Third Avenue, but I gambled with my life and won, and—except for a badly confused rooster that crowed at me from a second-story fire escape—proceeded unmolested along St. Marks Place till I came to the fifth walk-up from the corner.

My wife, who was spoon-feeding some kind of orange mush into the baby in her high chair, raised her head like a cobra when I let myself into our two rooms.

“Marylee called.”

“She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

“She said her boss thought you were demented.”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“As if it wasn’t bad enough I had to crawl to my parents for the rent, you had to go and make a fool of me in front of my friend. No, don’t bother looking in the cabinet. You won’t find it. I poured it down the sink.”

>>>><<<<

STEPHEN BAILY has published short fiction in some fifty-five journals, including, most recently, Bullshit Lit (forthcoming), Ink Sac, Mercurius, Mad Alice, and Horror, Sleaze, Trash. He’s also the author of eleven plays and three novels, including “Markus Klyner, MD, FBI” (Fellow Traveler Press, 2021). He lives in France.

Betty

a story by Andrew Graber

As I began looking at old photos of Betty and myself, the tears came dripping from deep within my eyes. Last month, Betty was involved in a fatal car crash. She was the love of my life, and she felt the same exact way towards me as well. I remember so vividly, the very first time that we had met. I met Betty on one of those online dating sites about two years ago. After exchanging a couple of messages on that dating site, Betty and I had agreed to meet at a local diner for a cup of coffee.

As soon as I began looking into Betty’s eyes and chatting with her, I knew she was exactly what I was looking for in a woman.

Betty was so intelligent, and we both shared a lot of the same interests. After having our coffee and conversation that night, I hugged Betty and asked her if she would want to see me again.

She said yes, I would love to see you again Edward. I really enjoyed my evening with you tonight, Edward. 

I remember that we had both waved goodbye to one another as we both had gotten into our cars. 

After that, we started seeing one another at least three or four times per week. Every time that Betty and I met, our love for each other had only gotten stronger and stronger. Betty brought out the very best of me, unlike any other woman that I had ever met.

Everything was going great between the two of us, until last month when I heard my phone in my apartment ringing.

It was Betty’s mom. I knew from the tone of her voice that something was terribly wrong.

I was completely devastated by what Betty’s mother had just shared with me. I just stood there in total disbelief, as I was unable to get any words out of my mouth. Betty was cremated and her mother gave me a bit of Betty’s ashes for me to keep.

After that, I noticed that my anxiety was getting really bad. In fact, sometimes I would experience delusions and hallucinations when my anxiety had reached its boiling point.

The days went by, and somehow I managed my anxiety without seeing a psychiatrist.

Although no woman in this universe could have replaced Betty, my loneliness was getting the very best of me. That being said, I joined the exact same dating site that Betty and I had met on. I searched around for women that had similar traits as Betty had. I also looked for women who had similar physical features as well.

I sent about seven messages out to these women who reminded me of Betty, but I never heard back from any one of those women. I took a break, and made something to eat. After cleaning up, I decided to log back on to the dating site again. I had noticed that one woman had sent me a message, but she did not have a photo of herself on her profile page.

In this woman’s message, she asked me if I would be interested in having a cup of coffee with her at her place. She had said to me that she thought that we would be a good match for one another.

She told me that she lived by herself in a very small city.

If you like country living, you will surely like where I live, she wrote in her message. At the end of her message, she said that her name was Betty. Oh my goodness, I said to myself, after knowing that her name happened to be Betty. I sent her back a reply, and I told her that I would be delighted to have a cup of coffee with you. After sending my response, within two minutes, I had gotten a message from Betty. In her message, she gave me directions to her house.

Betty also asked me to come over tomorrow at about two o’clock in the afternoon. If I do not get a message back from you, I will assume that you will be coming over to my house tomorrow at two o’clock, she wrote.

I logged off from the site, and then sat down on my favorite chair in my living room. What should I do, I said to myself? Betty lived about fifty miles from my apartment.

Is it worth traveling all that distance, just to meet a woman who I do not know at all?

The odd part about this was that her name happened to be Betty. I found that to be very peculiar. I got up from my chair, and got back on my computer. I searched on the internet for the best way to get to Betty’s house. I printed out a copy of the driving directions, and then I shut off my computer.

What have I got lose, I said to myself? If we didn’t get along, at least it would be a nice ride going into the country.

My mind was made up, as I then started listening to some music. After that, I decided to call it a night. After about a few minutes of tossing and turning, I eventually fell asleep.

Tomorrow came, and I took my morning shower. After that, I made some breakfast. After cleaning up, I listened to some music.

While getting lost in the music, I happened to glance at my clock in the kitchen.

I noticed that it was nearing noon, so I started to get ready for my date with Betty.

I locked my door, and got into my car. I followed the driving directions, and I was on my way to Betty’s house. After about an hour or so of driving, I turned off of the expressway.

According to the directions, I should be at Betty’s house in only another ten or fifteen minutes, I said to myself. As I was getting closer and closer, I was driving slower and slower. There is Betty’s address, I said while I parked my car right in front of her house. I got out of my car, and began to walk up to her front door. I rang her bell but no one answered. I rang her bell two more times, and finally, I began to see her front door opening up very slowly. Oh my god, I said to myself. I hope that I am not having another one of my delusions and hallucinations, as I was standing on Betty’s front doorstep. No my dear Edward, this is not one of your delusions or hallucinations. Please give me a big hug and a kiss, Edward. Since I died in that automobile accident, I have missed you so very much. 

Do you mean to tell me that you are really Betty, I said? The Betty that I loved more than any woman in this universe?

How in the world can it possibly be you, Betty?

Don’t question it, Edward.

Just be in the moment, and give me a hug. As I began looking into Betty’s beautiful eyes, I started to hear a loud noise that startled me. Do you hear that loud noise, Betty?

No, my love, I do not know what in the world that you are talking about? Stop acting silly and give me a hug, Edward.

Now, do you hear that loud noise, Betty? How can you not hear that noise, Betty? Finally, I had realized what that loud noise was, as I reached over in my bed, and turned off my alarm clock that was ringing on my little night table.

After I got out of my bed, I headed into my bathroom to take my morning shower. I pulled my shower curtain open, and I was unable to move or talk.

Standing inside my tub was Betty.

<<<>>>

Andrew Graber was born and raised in the northeast part of the United States and currently resides out West. Besides writing stories, he also likes to create various types of art. On occasion, he likes to sing as well.