Short Fiction: Gift

It was Christmas morning, back in an era where calling it as such was simply frowned upon instead of bordering on a hate crime. Erik Kramer had been waiting for this day for weeks but still managed to sleep until noon when it finally arrived. Feeding a lazy and unhealthy lifestyle always has to take precedence, even when matched against the great passions. Passions like the love of personal computing. Yeah, it’s right up there with the need for social recognition, meaningful employment and the in-out.

“Well, look who’s finally up.” His father was at the kitchen table casually reading an engineering journal as if it was one of those “guess who showed her crotch getting into a car” celebrity rags. His kind eyes glistened behind glasses that were something of an engineering feat in their own right, held together by faith and more than a little tape. It was cheaper than buying a new pair and Mr. Kramer was never one to put the needs of Big Lens ahead of his own interests. “Thought you’d want to get that computer going right away. Even I wanted to open it, but you know, proper decorum.” He emitted a burst of high-pitched laugher, but quickly regained a serious demeanor. This was an issue of importance and that was not to be forgotten.

             

“Sorry Dad, I was just real tired.” The younger Kramer began filling a bowl with a cereal that had more in common with the items found in the candy isle than the bread one. Coated on sugar glistened in the noon sunlight, reflected off the drifting snow outside the house.

            

“Well, a growing boy needs a lot of sleep. That’s what they say.” The bespectacled gaze remained fixed on a peer-reviewed article about new advances in engine tolerance. Silence, broken only by the steady crunching of a not-quite-complete breakfast now prevailed. It wasn’t long before an empty bowl clattered its way into the sink.

            

“Ok Dad, let’s pop this sucker out.” The excitement that had been barely bottled up over the past month, since the gift’s selection became official, now came in one nearly overwhelming rush. He felt light-headed, despite the ample amount of simple sugars now powering the organic machine. This was, after all, his first time. Using the school computer lab didn’t count. This time the sweet fruit of centuries of applied mathematical and electrical research was all his, to have and to hold.

            

Erik had recently turned seventeen and was working on his Junior year. It had been a year spent buried in studies, frequent visits to said computer room and more and more isolation from an increasingly irrelevant peer group. For the most part it wasn’t missed and he could easily convince himself that nothing of value was being missed by forging friendships primarily with inanimate devices, but sometimes the loneliness would creep in and start to gnaw. The solution was to retreat further. He’d started taking his lunch in the chemistry room and sometimes passed entire days without saying more than a few words to someone his age.

            

No loss, though. They were just fucking wasters and jocks and rich phonies anyways. Last year, for example, they made a hero out of a Freshman who knocked some other knuckle dragger out. Yeah, what a hero. Fuck ‘em.

Discarded plastic bags, packing peanuts and the like soon blanketed the floor of the living room like a highly unusual indoor snowfall. From these various baby-chokers emerged the various components that would provide the necessary vehicle for the journey down the amazing highway of information that was slowly emerging as something Big Business regarded as a fad with limited mainstream appeal and many from the older generation regarded as the new C.B. Radio.

             

Not his father, though. This was one of the nice things about having a tech-geek in the role of Baby Daddy. If anything he was the one struggling to keep up while Dad rattled off technical specifications as if they were statistics from a hero athlete or something. Erik was just glad to upgrade from a word processor that was little more than a glorified typewriter to a true cutting edge machine that would probably stave off obsolescence for at least six months, maybe even a year.

            

“She’s a beauty all right. You be sure to treat her like the lady she is.” The computer now occupied the place of honor formerly reserved for the King Typewriter, Mark III. With that special combination of grinding, flashing and fanning that signals the beginning of any true romance the device came to life. The day was finally here. From now on every event would be designated by whether it occurred before or after the beginning of the personal internet age.

            

It didn’t take long to get online and begin the journey down the amazing hole of technology. At some point his father left the room, but the departure went completely unnoticed. It was almost a form of the astral separation, leaving the mortal shell to become part of pure technology, no more distinction between man and machine. Dinner was replaced with a bag of chips and a bottle of carbonated sugar and even that seemed like a considerable imposition considering the importance of the techno-merger that was being consummated. By the time Erik came up for air it was eight the next morning. He noted the time, shrugged, and went back into the online life substitute.

            

A full week passed and it was time to go back to school. While other human units had stories of vacations and family and all that other flesh-n-blood In Real Life nonsense, there was only one issue of concern for the newest citizen of the online world.

            

When can I get back on the computer? Everything else dissolved into trivial unreality, if it had ever had any substance to begin with.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.    

Underground and Beneath

I’m sick as all fuck. Liver blown to hell from inhaling stuff that looks like water but isn’t, knees all busted from being on them so damn much, back wrecked from the weight of the world, all that and more. I’m old. I’m not even sure of the exact age, but it’s been several decades since the flood, the tribulation, the day, the time when everything changed forever and it’s a really big deal and we’re all the witnesses to it. Truth is, nothing really changed that day, but that’s the voice of experience and ruined internal organs speaking. Back then, I thought it was important, too.

The death of civilization, that is.

I went for a lot of walks after everything went into the cocked hat of destiny or whatever they’ll call it. Earth abides, green everywhere, really kind of nice. Shame that time in The Garden couldn’t last forever. When the skeletal-muscular system says enough, you have to listen. Force of will might make history, but it never won a long campaign with bad joints. When you’re fucked, you’re fucked.

I’ll be taking another walk soon, but it will probably be the last one. For awhile, I mean. Didn’t mean to get all dramatic and maudlin there. I’ve got many more years of chronic pain and memories of dead friends to look forward too, probably. Yeah, I guess my memories and everything else that makes up the big “I am” could go into the dark nothing that we all flee in vain from before I even make that last walk for awhile. I doubt it, though. The universe has a sense of humor, I think, even if it runs pretty dark. It wouldn’t let me cheat it out of one last punch line.

Some would call it karma. Fuck ‘em.

I’m taking another drink. Real bitter stuff, right from a still. Lucky to see straight after years of one hundred proof window cleaner and endless solitary vice. But, again, it wouldn’t be funny if I couldn’t see what’s to come and nature observes the laws of humor as certainly as gravity and the strong force and Noah’s flood making Grand Canyon in about twenty minutes.

The flood. I called that earlier, didn’t I? The end of the age of miracles, the age of glowing screens in every palm, high definition pictures of food and dear diary verbiage splattered all over invisible wires. I was as much a part of it as anyone, maybe more so. On top of that I received the special dispensation of living through the fall from grace and deep into this new era, this age of dirt and fucking and big nothing and life goes on, bro. Setting up that punch line, the perfect delivery and build-up. Called and chosen.

Tomorrow I walk. Maybe make a cane out of a tree branch, or a full walker out of a stump or the like. It’s too important, everything has been building up to this moment. Non-participation in destiny is not possible.
They think it’s still there, underground, just sleeping. We’re going to try to wake it up. I have to be there, I’m the old guard, the wisdom of the ages, the one who has done everything except make a black baby. I’ll know what to do when we find it. I’m like the shaman, the worker of wonders, the man who is so old and so completely wrecked behind the eyes that ordinary physical and mental entropy is mistaken for mystical truth by the young and dumb. If they only knew, but they will, in time.

Wake it up, bring back the old world. There’s no way, no chance, but I still have my part to play for the old cosmic laugh track. Think of it as a penance and maybe it won’t be so bad. I deserve bad, there’s no doubt about that. Who fucking doesn’t? Worst prayer in the world: give me what I deserve.

Old world coming back, that’s the hope of youth. It still lives in parts of my mind, parts that just refuse to die despite my best efforts. Maybe take one more anti-freeze cocktail. No, I still recall it well. Right before the end, feeding into the fortune of information we were blessed with. We were like Gods back then, speaking wonders into existence. Yeah, it was glorious. I could tell you.

Fuck, this drink is harsh.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

Iron

High School fucking sucked. September of the Fish year wasn’t even over and Joe Smith had already had more than enough of it to write a steady load of god-awful rejection misery poetry for the next century. This was not what the television and the Cinema Industrial Complex had promised in the lush fantasies they painted.
   
It couldn’t be chalked up to simple life loser-ism, either. Eighth grade had been awesome, good friends, easy classes, girls developing and discovering that loose behavior is often rewarded in western society. The next four years looked to be overflowing with more of all that good, plus getting high on all sorts of drugs and pounding crotch. Instead of LSD-drenched stickers and girls gone wild he had entered a world of freshman kill days, hours of dreary homework each night and a total and complete failure to deploy the pocket rocket. Somehow all those dear old friends were always in different classes on the other side of the impossibly sprawling campus. In their place was an endless sea of faces riddled with skin problems and naked hostility toward grade nines. 
   
There he was, on all fours picking up scattered government texts after having them unceremoniously “dumped” by an upperclassman. He was getting used to this routine, it had already happened at least a dozen times. Granted this was still better than another fresh fish who had lost three teeth to a toilet seat during a swirlie-gone-wrong, but that thought provided small comfort at best. Who knows what the next kill-day would bring, after all. He might end up left for dead in a locker or broom closet. 
   
“Pick that shit up, boy. What the hell are you doing?” It was the grizzled voice of a man from the Greatest Generation, or at least the Less Great But Still Not Bad one that had fought communism and the fear of nuclear incineration with the awesome weapons of toughness, conformity and duck-and-cover. An Old Lion, in other words. The voice, coarsened from decades of smoking ultra-high tar selections, demanded respect. “Come on, get up! Show some spine!”
   
The owner of the voice was one of the school’s instructors in the physical culture, or at least that was the official cover story. It was just as possible, maybe even probable, that this member of the Old Guard was actually a deranged but basically good-hearted drifter who had infiltrated the school for inscrutable reasons. The incredible power of confidently acting like you belong somewhere is not to be underestimated. Just strut around like you own the place and very few people will call you out on it. This is especially true when the individual in question is all stoic ruggedness and decades old barely legible Marine corps tattoos
   
“Get up! Shit!” A wrinkled, spotted claw enveloped Smith’s soft upper arm and brought him back to full verticality with a single exertion of ancient sinews. “You gonna take that shit the rest of your life?” Sometimes silence is the only answer a person can manage. “Well? Cat got you?”
   
“Nah…no, sir.” Fluid filled gray eyes seemed to look into his soul. Even the relaxed grip of that claw easily restrained the tremendous natural impulse to turn and run. The bell rang. He was late. At this particular moment that could not have been more meaningless. The tomes of political correct thought were still littering the ground, completely forgotten. There was only this moment, this life-changing confrontation with something that was more an elemental than a fellow human being.
   
“Don’t lie to me you little fuck!” Despite being the only two still in the halls of learning it seemed impossible that no one heard this outburst from the old man of dubious actual authority. Maybe it was heard and simply ignored through fear. Smith was shaking as if in the clutches of an epileptic aura. It was a small blessing that his underwear remained unsoiled. “Yeah, you’re the type that never fights back.” The words came as a Camel cigarette flavored hiss. “That’s your generation, no fucking balls.”
   
“Please don’t kill me!” At the time the plea seemed perfectly sensible. This was going to make one wonderful funeral for his family: dead at fifteen, biggest accomplishment was figuring out how to masturbate, killed by a crazed veteran of foreign wars in a high school hallway. Freshman kill day wasn’t supposed to be literal, for fuck’s sake.

“If I was gonna kill you, you’d be dead already, just like all those yellow heathens I bagged for Uncle Sam.” The gravely whisper was now barely audible. “No, I’m going to change your life. Meet me in the school gym at 3:30.” For a moment the grip loosened and even the beginnings of a smile were evident on the age-devastated face of the veteran. “You can’t even imagine what I’m going to do for you.”
   
Just as quickly, the smile vanished and the grasp became tighter than ever. “If you aren’t there, I’ll hunt you down like one of those damn reds.” Determined madness blazed under the watery surface of his eyes. A few moments later he was gone, leaving the First Year dazed and disoriented.
   
Suffice it to say very little actual learning took place in that afternoon’s Pre-Algebra class. Somehow “zero the hero” seemed less important in the face of an imminent encounter with mortality at the hands of a real life Iron Man. One scenario after another flashed through a mind that was not yet fully formed. He imagined push-ups ‘til puke, followed by having an unloaded pistol pressed to his head and repeatedly fired without result until he’d been completely reduced to quivering jelly. Then the real pain would start. Maybe it would have been best if the old soldier had just dropped him in the hall. Quick and merciful, as opposed to the Geneva Conference outlawed prisoner of the high school war torture that was awaited.
   
Yeah, this was a long way from taking “roof hits” in between getting sucked off by sexually precocious and totally legal jailbait.
   
“Smith! What is the answer?” The mortality fantasies melted away. On the board was the number “7” with brackets around it. What kind of witchcraft was this?
   
“I don’t understand.” If his first month needed a motto, this one would have sufficed.
   
“Just provide the answer.” Oh, well. That’s what you wanted. Fuck.
   
“Twenty Nine?” The entire class was silent for two heartbeats and then erupted into studio-audience at a buddy sitcom style uproar. He barely even felt the sting. What was looking like a fool compared to actual, imminent, physical dissolution? It doesn’t even rate.
   
The final bell rang and he performed the dead man’s walk down to the school’s weight room. He’d only been there once before, during an orientation. That brief visit was enough to dissuade any return. Everything in there seemed to be rusted or falling apart from neglect. This was the lair of monsters, not any normal, right thinking Fish Year. But there he was. The man from the old guard was waiting. It was time to die.
   
Twenty minutes later he was squatting for the first time in his life. It hurt, it felt ridiculous and the fear of being murdered hadn’t entirely dissipated. In spite of these things he felt drawn into this new world. Muscles were filling with blood, violence chemicals were being released into the gray mush and a connection was forming to a forgotten past, a past when man was nothing but another animal. No, more than that and not even a little bit less. The smartest, toughest, baddest animal on the planet. The vilest beast with the mind of genius. On to the dead lifts. The weights hit the cracked, wet concrete floor with a satisfying crash. He let loose a primal howl. The rugged golden ager gave his silent approval, arms folded over his chest, an unlit cigar hanging from cracked lips.
   
There was no turning back after that initial rush. For months he met with his new mentor after school. The lifts steadily increased as fall turned to winter. He was slowly transforming, deep within a cocoon of iron and brick. The slow process of evolution, ape-creature to master man, happened in secret over that long cold winter. The mystery of nature, the change that is unseen but completely undeniable. When he emerged from the crucible in the spring he had become a man. There was a freshman kill-day that corresponded with April fools. An upper classman tried to dump his books and earned a fist to the face that knocked him out cold. As he was being taken away to begin his suspension he saw the wrinkled face for what would prove to be the final time. It was glowing with pride.
   
He might have died, he might have simply left content in the knowledge that his job was done. Smith never did find out, but so much of what the remnant of a past age taught was now internalized, from diet and exercise tips to how to be a man. The actual physical presence of this strange benefactor had begun redundant. The young man continued to train and soon found himself becoming the king of the school. The respect was earned, and with it the hot, hot birth canals that are inevitably offered up to the alpha male. He wished it would never end, that he could stay in this world forever.
   
Then it did and he was forced out into the adult world. This time, however, there was no one to guide him.


Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

The Five Minute Rejection and Other Tales of Success

I’m a bit of a mess. A quick survey of the Fortress of Righteousness where my writings are painfully birthed is all that’s necessary to confirm the veracity of that statement. There’s teetering stacks of badly dog-eared books, scattered bottles labeled with double-headed eagles, crumpled papers scrawled with nearly illegible genius, an unconscious woman whose name I don’t remember, various office supplies…the usual stuff. I’d hire a maid if I thought there was even a chance that she wouldn’t judge me and/or report what’s going on to the authorities.
   
Despite these sloppy tendencies I also carry a strong streak of Teutonic order and efficiency in my genes, the same traits that have done so much good for the world, provided you ignore certain selected portions of the last century. That ancestral memory must have been holding the stick when it came time to sell my second novel, because I decided to make a rigorous documentation of the submission process. I know, it’s almost unbelievably exciting, but please stay calm and fully clothed while I explain.
   
I kept a list of all the people and institutions blessed by my unsolicited attentions, making sure to include dates of submission and rejection. I felt a little like a scientist, gathering data, lying like crazy, having bad hair, all of it. Despite this veneer, I didn’t even have a hypothesis, if you can believe it. I was confident the gathered data would prove useful, somehow, and I was totally vindicated.
   
Like all the best stories, it started with an e-mail. Based on hard-earned experience in the blood-soaked trenches where the “submit and wait” wars are waged and the ultimate victory is slowly creeping closer can’t you tell, I expected to have to wait at least a week before the “no.” Wrong. Try 300 seconds. I’d apparently sent a profanity-filled query letter for an anarchistic novel that also featured numerous threats directed toward the United Nations to a publisher that specializes in “cozies” for elderly ladies.

   
Someone less wise than your humble narrator would probably conclude that the lesson here is “actually research the people you submit to, maybe swear less and cut down on the non-sequiturial menacing.” That’s the wrong lesson. Well, all right, it maybe has a small bit of validity to it, but there’s something bigger to draw from all this.
   
Rejection is good. Failure is good.
   
If you’ve never lost you’ve never tried anything hard, if you’ve never heard “no” you should have kept asking for more until it finally happened. This is pretty radical thinking for a society that increasingly wants to insulate everyone from any and all competition, but we’re writers and dreamers and undead pornographers, so if we can’t handle it, no one can. Success is built on a thousand failures, friends. Go out and start getting those failures.
   
It isn’t personal, you’re still that special miracle and exact center of the universe, so don’t get discouraged. My goal for my next novel is to get rejected one hundred times. I bet I fail to reach that goal.

Author Interview at BTS

Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

When I found out that radiation will actually kill you instead of giving you super powers, most lawyers are significantly less awesome than Perry Mason or even Matlock and your typical professional baseball player didn’t go 0 for 30 in Little League competition. I was twelve.

I write to clean out my mind. It’s cluttered with story ideas and if I’m going to get any conventional thinking done I’ve got to evict them. Once it’s been written, I can stop obsessing over it.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

Trying to come up with new and exciting ways to describe cups of coffee and their contents. Battling the auto-format when “Word” decides there’s not going to be a space there, my own opinion notwithstanding. Fixing the endless “their/there” mistakes.

To be a little more sincere, I think the most difficult part is consistency, especially on days when I’ve decided to write but the blood-soaked gray just isn’t offering up anything good. Some days are a lot better than others.

The occasional “drink break” doesn’t hurt, either.


Read the full interview here.

Excerpt from "Posts from the Underground"

Gonna Set New Personal Records Today

Broseph Smith
Posts: 6,486

I no most of you homos dont even lift so u cant rlate to this or nothin but im all fired up to hit the fukkin gym. theres been so much fuarking shizit lately im gonna go fukin crazy in there prolly and beat all my prs. yeah, its fukkin on now.

***

Rockandrollallnight
Posts: 2,867

I liked the part where any of this actually happened and/or was documented.

***

Bow to the Masters
Posts: 12,024

In before phaggots who don’t even lift make idiotic comments and show off their ignorance.

Edit: Too late.

***

LastTractionHero
Posts: 4,115

Please keep us all motivated with lots of progress pics and videos. I want to see what you got, man. Annihilate those fukking weights, bro! Bring down the pain, we’re all ready for it. This is SPARTA!!!!!!

***

 “You’re not going to throw up, are you?” The fair young maiden avoided eye contact while abandoning her hair twirling routine to fully express the annoyance and repulsion at said possibility.

“Just give me the key, all right?” They say that a good reputation takes a lifetime to earn while a bad reputation can be obtained in a matter of seconds. The exchange, in addition to being of the highest possible literary quality, was an object lesson in that particular old saw. A few drunken misadventures several months earlier had effectively erased years of disciplined form, weight re-racking and wiping down sweaty surfaces. Indeed, it completely overshadowed all of that good and had become the sum total of his earthly value as far as the employees at Twenty Four Shred were concerned. There was probably some sort of lesson buried in all this, but honestly who fucking knows.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.” Mumbling incoherent oaths the Man who Actually Lifts negotiated serpentine hallways, found lockers, discarded the garb of an ordinary citizen for the uniform of the Iron Soldier and prepared to set new standards in the realm of moving heavy objects without any particular end objective.

It was coming up on midnight. Some reporter who looked drunk and/or stoned was soundlessly passing on the news, his weary features identical on ten different monitors. A few other lost souls were milling about, apparently done with their workouts but choosing not to leave for whatever reason. He had the weights all to himself, more or less. It was a special providence, a preview of what heaven would be like for the muscleman, assuming he somehow made it because of a clerical error or the like.

Forty Five pound plates slid on to the bar, finding their place with a satisfying metallic clang. Four bells, ready to lift. It wasn’t long before the minimalist preparation for the “dead” was completed and it was time to go testicles to the drywall and shatter preconceptions about what is and is not possible in the arena of raising something to waist level. Every last ounce of strength was deployed as our hero lifted the bar, struggled for one terrifying second and then snapping the bar up to belt level while simultaneously straightening his body to a posture worthy of a finishing school. In his mind the three white lights for “good lift” came on and he let everything crash to the floor, the hellacious collision caused by gravitational forces nearly drowned out by screams of victory. The concrete wall was punched repeatedly and even given a headbutt before an explosion of red pin pricks in front of blurred vision discouraged further self-abuse. The record had been set and it how belonged to the ages.

Adrenaline continued to flow freely, to the point where the pain generated by the injurious behavior that had been part of the celebration quickly faded and than was replaced entirely by a flood of mind narcotics of the “good job” variety. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to stop there. In this elevated state anything was possible, not just major dead lifts. It was time to squat. Calloused hands balled into fists in anticipation of another tough battle. It happened, but not in the way that was expected. The rack was occupied. It was one of the lost souls, an unbelievably ordinary looking middle age slice of American mediocrity. He was doing curls. In the squat rack. Curls. This could not stand.

Even under the best of circumstances Joe was hardly what you would call even-tempered and right now chemicals generated by triumph and bodily damage removed any free agency that might otherwise have been present. In essence, what was about to unfold had very little to do with free will, if anything.

Before we get to the highly satisfying violent mayhem it should be pointed out that the weight room, like any other social construct, has a complex system of symbols, taboos, mores, stigmas and other two dollar concepts that are dispensed in low level sociology classes at your friendly local diploma mill. To an outsider this complex societal contract can seem nearly impenetrable, but the proscriptions can be distilled down to don’t bother others and don’t use the various stations incorrectly. Our half-way to the grave slice of average was in violation of both and grievously so by performing a wimpy “impress the holes” routine in an area specifically reserved for going all out with the balls out. This is the sort of thing that would make Ghandi beat your ass, let alone a jacked out, stressed out, balls out serious lifter whose pursuit of pee aars is being thwarted by your crapulence.

“Hey bro, I got to squat here. Move.” Across the room ten monitors were simultaneously displaying an image of a hot piece of ass being zipped into a body bag. Outside there was only darkness and a few lights from the parking lot hovering in the air like a will ‘o wisp. Heavy silence descended inside the Temple of Belief. The one other silver ager in the giant well-lit room rushed for the door like someone fleeing a wild west shootout. The silence now hung heavy as the offender of etiquette continued to transfer dumb bells from the belt to the shoulder and back, without a care in the world, as if nothing had been said and a hulking mass of well-defined muscle wasn’t well within punching range.

“Yo, chief, I’m talking to you. You hearing me pal?” Smith was now right on top of Mr. Ordinary. After a few moments of tense uncertainty his presence was finally acknowledged as the lukewarm sample of humanity ceased his exertions and turned partway, facing his inquisitor at a ninety degree angle.

“I just got three more sets. You can wait.” The voice was barely a whisper but it was clear and easy to understand. The actual content was far more difficult to get a handle upon. Three more sets? Of curls? In an otherwise empty gym? With me waiting? This was madness.

Perhaps confused by the way events were now unfolding the Forklift Engineer and Big Truck Pilot actually took a few steps away, even giving his back in what is generally a sign of submission among great apes.

The screens were showing the damage the second bomb had caused at the university. A different reporter, a little older and hopefully a little more sober, was walking through the rubble while making expansive gestures. He was talking, but with no sound it was impossible to imagine what insights were being offered. Probably “look at this fucking mess” or the like.

Mr. Smith spun back toward the violator of unspoken norms as if he was dodging one of those open field tackles in pig bladder ball. Two quick strides and he was on his victim like a tiger taking down a gazelle. The embarrassingly light free weights crashed to the ground, soon to be joined by the two men locked in mortal combat.

“Die, die, die!” Red haze fully descended as Joe flailed wildly at his prey. The young lady from the front desk, perhaps summoned by the man who had made a discrete escape before it all “went down,” took one look at the human insect fight and ran back to her station to make a telephone call that for once was not about ohmaigawd and allied concepts.

***

"Posts from the Underground is now available paperback and e-book.

"The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here. 

"Posts from the Underground" Now Available

My second novel "Posts from the Underground" in now out in both Kindle and Paperback format right here. You can read a free excerpt below. "Posts from the Underground" is a wild ride into an invisible world, finally providing an unlooked for and amazing answer to the age-old question of "who are these people?"

A fascist on disability. A cold steel and sex appeal musclehead. A college senior who believes trolling should really mean something. They’re making Posts From the Underground.

The trolling had been successfully accomplished and yet the pleasure obtained fell short of even the imitation Twinkie that Erik Kramer had just consumed with a single ravenous snapping of jaws and clapping of chins. Granted, there was pleasure, but with everything that had happened recently a large part of his being was now numb to it. The latest New Bremen murder was all over the news and there was talk beginning that a serial killer or something wicked sexy like that might be operating in the otherwise practically comatose pocket paradise.

The police had been back at his door. The dead man, a hard-drinking, wife-hitting, factory-working, shit-kicking, conspiracy-loving overall fuck-up had expired from multiple stab wounds less than a block from where the hit-and-run voyeur had entered into eternity and the department was now operating under the assumption that this was not simple coincidence but indicative of some sort of larger pattern. In a city where there hadn’t been a murder in three decades suddenly having two red pins in the precinct map, practically right on top of each other, was luridly suggestive and small minds were running in overdrive. Facing a situation reminiscent of something the moron box might vomit out on a Thursday night even the wisest of us can fall into folly, let alone someone who needed three tries to pass a police examination.

The questions had been flying and it was clear right from Jump Street that the computer poseur was no longer considered some sort of heroic body-finder but rather was now perhaps the only suspect in a crime wave that was threatening to drown everything good and decent in a sea of spilled blood. Somehow it made it a lot less fun and even the fact that he would make a very unattractive and inadequate prison bride was cold comfort.

They kept asking the same thing over and over, questions about where he was on the night of interest. “In a fucking basement pretending to believe views that I actually don’t in order to provoke a response from various online communities including virulent racists” was not the answer they wanted, apparently. They just kept hammering away, every word dipped in rich creamy disdain, the same sort Kramer had feasted on in happier times. Yeah, it was quite a statistical anomaly that the lair of his extended adolescence had suddenly become Grand Central Station for violent passages into the afterlife. Yeah, sometimes being exposed to an amateur human dissection experiment conducted with an automobile was indeed capable of damaging a person’s psychological health. Yeah, he was a weird fuck. It was all shaping up into a nice little package. When your best alibi is a time stamp on a post calling for Aryans to exterminate all Canadians and annex their lands on a site called New Wehrmacht Reporting it’s understandable that you might end up as a person of at least medium interest.

Still, when all was said and done and all the good/bad officer psychodramas concluded there was no actual evidence to link him to either crime. Simply not owning an automobile made his actual participation in the auto-erotic fender massage unlikely and the other crime involved the difficult anaerobic routine of several repetitions worth of knife in-out, an activity that would be difficult for someone with his considerable carriage and poor cardiovascular conditioning.

Then they left. All the usual bits about not leaving town and keep it in your pants and so forth were offered during the retreat back to donut land or whatever. It wasn’t like there was anywhere to go. Unless he had another very understanding close relative somewhere else, but this was not the case to the best of his knowledge.

Back to the internet. The latest thread was already on the third page, quite an achievement for a forum that probably had less than twenty active posters. Erik sighed and tried to force his fingers to type something that would create more outrage, but writer’s block descended heavily.

In a few weeks he’d be back in school. Senior year of college, last call for irresponsible naval gazing and lotus lunch and then what? Some fucking cubicle somewhere? Loading toner into a printer, but failing over and over until it becomes a struggle worthy of Greek mythology? Kissing some old reptile’s ass to get ahead? All of the above, probably, and it was all uncertain and alien. Nothing he’d done or was doing was providing anything even resembling actual preparation for any of that. Instead he was regressing, descending back to the sand box, to dirt eating, to pointing a finger and laughing. Just be sure to point that finger right away, before you get singled out yourself.

The phone was ringing again. Ah, to be wanted. The adoring public wanted to hear about his latest misadventures. Who am I to deny it?

Leaving a half-finished post accusing other faceless net abusers of being insufficiently dedicated to worldwide revolution he went to grab the call. He’d soon wish he hadn’t, but that’s doing things in the real world for you.

***

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.