bigskywhiteclouds

June 2001 | back-issues, fiction

a novel excerpt by Jeffrey Allen Walker
([email]jallenwalker [at] netscape [dot] net[/email])

MY APARTMENT’S MAGIC WINDOW (WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1994)
Please let this be the last day. Let me get hit by a bus or shot or vaporized. Just don’t let me have to come back here again. When I was a planner in Minneapolis I wrote a couple of articles that were published in some trade magazines and had a few guest columnist pieces in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, we called it the Strib. I never complained about seeing my name in print, but I wanted more. I wanted to write a great novel that criticized the American way of life and moral system. But in order to write, I had to understand. What better way to understand than to participate? But being an active member cuts down on writing time. It’s a very mild catch-22. No bloodshed. Nobody’s feet get cold. Nobody’s guts spill out. As a result of internal debate between going out to experience and staying in to write, I did nothing except write a few guest columnist pieces for the Strib. No great novel, no critical acclaim.

EREMIA

June 2001 | back-issues, fiction

a novel excerpt by Aidan Baker
([email]aidanbaker [at] hotmail [dot] com[/email])

My CD collection is like a calendar of boyfriends. It’s not very extensive, my CD collection — ergo, my love life, obviously, hasn’t been very extensive…

Every time I go over to my CD holder to put some music on, I’m confronted by this array of albums, songs, digitized sounds, that are, yes, mine, but all reminiscent of some man, some boy who used to be part of my life. Not even boyfriends, lovers, in some cases — just some guy I had a crush on.

I remember reading something recently about the brain and smell: When your brain records a smell, it records everything else along with it — a record of your surroundings, your actions, your companions. When you smell that smell again, whatever that smell may be, all the other recorded information comes flooding back along with the olfactory memory. I think it’s the same with aural memories. With music.

Statue Of Liberty

June 2001 | back-issues, fiction

a storella by Jerry Vilhotti
([email]vilhotti [at] peoplepc [dot] com[/email])

“Why Biagi? Where do you go?” his wife said totally confused by his behavior since his father died.

He couldn’t say. In his mind as vivid as the color of her blue eyes, he could see himself again crossing the German school yard, where no longer a kindergarten existed, shooting from the hip and behind the wall of his aim staggered a “nazi” clutching at his throat as if a raw clam were crawling up through his mouth.

“B”, as his close friends called him, took up his jacket as if it were a rifle and left. He was all ready late for his date which was his seventh in just two weeks. He had a lot of catching up to do since his long walk from Northern Africa to Germany.

As Nero Played The Fiddle

December 2000 | back-issues, fiction

Hysteria. The head has become so steeped in sickness and depravity that it now feasts on the tender, manicured hands that were once used to hold itself up with. This masochistic cannibal is none other than the conservative and charming town of Naperville IL. Metaphorically, much like the urban legend of a young boy who upon rousing after a nights slumber discovers a tiny boil on his neck, as the day progresses the ‘tiny’ boil advances in growth to become a seething, tawny cyst. When the slightest pressure is applied, the fetid contents bursts to the surface to reveal hundreds of pulsating suckling arachnids pouring out of the gaping wound. That’s right, the seemingly flawless pearl among oysters, the ‘Gold Coast’ without the coast, was torn asunder by the writhing inner turmoil of several occurrences, in two months time.