Inside me.
Damn it.
The bird stands there staring at me, the first coil of intestine caught in its bright orange beak.
"There we have it."
I look up to see who is speaking, knowing who before I even see him.
"There we have it for certain sure."
It's the cook.
Standing over me.
Like a god, or a living judgment.
He even does his little funky chicken strut.
A final victory jig.
Then he squats down beside me. He digs at me. I feel his fat fingers root through my open wound. The fingers feel cold, as if his hands are made of ice, yet I know the cold isn't the cook's fault.
He catches hold of my exposed gut and begins to unravel it. Like a long wet skein of yarn, twisting, long soft rubbery wet sausage spools, dumping it link by link into a small iron cauldron, whistling softly through his teeth.
"There we have it," he repeats.
"Have what?" My voice is a husk, empty and dry.
"The end of your tale."
He pulls the last few curls of gut rope from out of my gaping stomach. Then he pinches out a lump of something hard.
He shows it to me.
For a minute it looks like a moon.
A tiny golden moon, but it's an egg.
A solid golden egg.
"There it is," he says. "The rent for the next year."
He smiles.
His teeth, all fine and even like kernels of fine white corn.
All I can do is stare.
I should be dead.
Shouldn't I?
How long does it take to die?
I have to say something.
"What's it all about?" I ask.
"Shh," the cook sooths. "Don't waste your words."
I open my mouth and I cough out feathers.
I try to speak.
Nothing.
Not a sound.
The cook hooks the cauldron onto the end of an old fashioned balance. He shifts weights and stones, like an ancient checker player readying his match.
"Hmm," he says. "Heavier than a heart, but lighter than soul meat."
"What's it all about?" I ask.
He looks down at me.
He smiles, like a saint, standing beneath the tallest of trees.
"You have to answer the questions," he explains. "You have to pay for your eggs."
He reaches down with both of his hands.
They are large and capable and merciful.
He cradles his palms about my temple, as if he were about to deliver a long wet kiss.
Then he smiles, as soft as a lonely wet sunrise.
"What came first?" he whispers.
"I'm sorry," I answer.
The cook squeezes his hands together.
The last sound I hear is the cracking of an egg.
Afterword
Some stories you lay out like road maps. You are in perfect control. You know exactly what you are doing and where you are going with it.
We writers call those sorts of stories fiction.
And then there are those stories that sweep you up and carry you off and leave you beaten to death and smelling of bad liquor in some far-off uncharted speck of universe where you never been before.
We writers call those sorts of stories life.
These four stories are written that way. I wasn't sure where I was going at any point in the journey.
Call it a fever dream.
Call it peyote.
Call it untrustworthy.
Call it home and don't you dare try to put a leash or a collar around its neck.
The first of these stories – Plague Monkey Spam – was originally published by Bad Moon Books in the year 2008. Tim Waggoner, a man with a finely honed sense of the fantastic wrote a wonderful introduction to this novella – but you'll have to hunt up a copy of the original novella to read that introduction.
There is also an afterword that was written by myself and inspired by a gray wooly sock monkey by the name of Mr. Mookey.
You want to read that, go get the original.
Sorry folks, but Bad Moon Books was good to me and I've got to leave them some secrets to keep.
But I will tell you that Plague Monkey Spam was my attempt to discover the secret heart of storytelling.
Hopefully you've read it by now, unless your e-reader is working in reverse.
The second story "Gnarly Ho-Tep Hoedown Two-step" was originally written for an anthology of stories based upon that Lovecraftian demi-god, Nyarlathotep. The anthology never reached print and the story remained, slumbering on a secret disc in the bottom of my slumbering-story-trunk. It is kind of a tall tale, gumbooted salute to the land of red neck rumdrinkers and the gods of the darkest cosmos imaginable.
I recommend a plateful of fish cakes and some French fried potatoes – with salt and vinegar – as well as a bottle of stout and a rum chaser before you read this story.
Oh wait, it's too late isn't it.
The third story "Hunger Time at the Midnight Mall" was originally written in a slightly different version for my first collection – long out of print. I resurrected the story, pruned it and pumped it full of new life and brought it this collection. It is a story that was written with Wal-Mart in mind – and it is one of the weirdest yarns that I wrote back in my prosaic years.
The final story in the collection is called "The Last Curl of Gut Rope" and it originally appeared in a wonderful collection called CORPSE BLOSSOMS. I recommend you hunt the collection up – not just for the sake of my story but for all of the dark and wonderful yarns that are included in that collection. There are a hell of a lot of good names in that book – Tom Piccirilli, Steve Rasnic Tem, Bev Vincent, Gary Braunbeck, Bentley Little, Scott Nicholson, Ramsey Campbell – a hell of a lot more besides.
The story, as you may know now, is my answer to the eternal riddle of the chicken and the egg and it remains as one of the darkest and weirdest and singularly most disturbing yarns that I have ever written.
So there you have it. My afterword and the lowdown on where the heck these stories came from. Only if you really want to know where they really came from than I recommend you go back and reread Plague Monkey Spam – a journey to the heart of Story Country.
Yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
Thanks
To Crossroad Press for one more e-book
To Roy Robbins at Bad Moon Books
To RJ Sevin at Creeping Hemlock Press
To all of my readers
And
All of those folks who swear they'll never read me again
And lastly but never least
Thanks to Belinda who daily teaches me how to dream
In the words of Mr. Mookey
Weird Ones Page 13
