by Kelso, Chris
THE BLACK DOG EATS THE CITY
By
Chris Kelso
Omnium Gatherum
Los Angeles
The Black Dog Eats the City
Copyright © 2014 Christopher Gordon Kelso
Cover design and illustration © 2014 Matthew Revert
ISBN-13: 978-0615964096
ISBN-10: 0615964095
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author and publisher.
http://omniumgatherumedia.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Electronic Edition
To Jake. Keep the Black Dog on its leash.
I believe each man should be his own guru
—Edward Abbey
Acclaim
“Chris Kelso is a writer of almost intimidating intelligence, wit, and imagination. On every page there is evidence of a great mind at work. Just when you’re wondering if there are actually still writers out there who still feel and live their ideas out on the page, I come across a writer like Kelso, and suddenly the future feels a lot more optimistic. One calls to mind Burroughs, and Trocchi’s more verbose offerings— whilst remaining uniquely himself, in a writer as young as he is, is a very encouraging sign: one of maturity that belies his youth. I look forward to reading more from him in the near future.”
—Andrew Raymond Drennan, author of
The Immaculate Heart
“Chris Kelso sets his photonic crystal gun on KILL and takes no prisoners. My favorite era of science fiction was the 60s “New Wave” when the British magazine NEW WORLDS took front and centre, and there’s a bit of NEW WORLDS here, kind of like Jerry Cornelius using the cut-up method in a bungalow in Glasgow, with a splash of Warren Ellis added for extra flavour. Kelso has a compelling voice. Somewhere Papa Burroughs is smiling.”
—L.L. Soares, author of Life Rage and In Sickness
“Chris Kelso is an important satirist, I think it’s safe to say.”
—Anna Tambour, author of Crandolin
“Come into the dusty deserted publishing house where mummified editors sit over moth-eaten manuscripts of books that were never written… anyone who enjoys the work of my late friend William Burroughs will feel welcome here with Chris Kelso.”
—Graham Masterton
“Chris Kelso’s prose swaggers like blues and jitters like bebop. Dig.”
—Nate Southard, author of Down and Just Like Hell
“Sparky, modern, avant-garde but accessible, Chris Kelso’s book is reminiscent of the most successful literary experimentation of the 60s and 70s, the sort of work that was published in the later New Worlds, but it’s also thoroughly contemporary, intimately engaged with modern life as it is right now. Kelso steams with talent and dark wit and his blend of anarchy with precision is refreshing, inspiring and utterly entertaining …”
—Rhys Hughes, author of Mister Gum
“This emerging journeyman of the macabre has wormed his way into my grey-matter and continues to seep noxious ichor. I feel like I must devour him. Every little bit of him.”
—Adam Lowe
“Chris Kelso’s writing is like a punch to the gut that forces your face against the page. The way his gritty prose carries his imagination is like a bar fight between Bradbury and Bukowski, with the reader coming out on top. The worlds he drags us into are so damn ugly that you have to admire their beauty.”
—Chris Boyle of BizarroCast
“Whether he’s writing about a fictionalized William Burroughs, Time Detectives, or Aliens Chris Kelso aims at the interstices or the Interzones because he understands that these are the people and spaces that define modern life— Kelso is also always funny and twisted.”
—Douglas Lain
“Choke down a handful of magic mushrooms and hop inside a rocket ship trip to futuristic settings filled with pop culture, strange creatures and all manner of sexual deviance.”
—Richard Thomas, author of Transubstantiate
“Guaranteed to uplift the heart of today’s most discerningly jaded nihilist.”
—Tom Bradley
“Chris Kelso is the one your mother warned you about. He is a sick, sick man— bereft of cure and heaped with symptom. His words will taint you irrevocably. Your eyes will want to gargle after reading just one of his stories.”
—Steve Vernon, author of Nothing to Lose
The BLACK DOG came in early winter. They say it started in Ersatz…
Lester Proctor was a patriot of the 14th ward of Wire City. He’d lived in that same cellblock apartment over-looking the smokestack industrial site all his days. Lester loved his little fenced off quadrant so much he brought his children up in the same house on the same street where he grew up himself— despite his wife’s desire to move to another part of town.
Lester noticed his wife’s grief early on. Mary had started drinking more frequently and would often break down into fits of sobbing without any explanation. The kids succumbed to it closer to December. By January they were all dead…
Ersatz
The town had been cobbled together by child pornographers and lowlifes, tax cheats and deranged psychopaths. North of Wire, upwind of Spittle, drive on past the ergs of Shell County, out beyond Moosejaw and you’re there…
Ersatz was fortified with apathy, clotted by corruption. You go to sleep a boy; wake up an old man.
Were you to raise an ear to the air, that low level crackle of urban street-sludge is, in fact, the healthy residue of screaming children, krug parties and unloving rubber-insulated sex. The sidewalks cook the bases of feet to nice n‘crispy. Every deli on the corner sells cuts of innocent, supple flesh. Perfect hunting ground for the Black Dog to prowl…
So when you cross the WELCOME ERSATZ billboard, just lay back, try to relax, prepare for the complicated amputation process of keyhole soul surgery…
—I don’t take nay guff from anyfuckinthing.
—Aye, he’s right enough.
A perfect ecology— the grey towers of compartments, people packed in sardine-tin-tight, holiday destination number ONE. Sky scorched in charcoal black. Everyone here could live in peace, uncensored, uncriticised for their various insanities. Mindless robots endowed with the evil of man…
The man of the hour, Mr. Kricfalusi, emerged into the town from his cubicle.
Montezuma’s Revenge
Her mouth popped open, the smell was of poor dental hygiene, of bloody gums and gingivitis. Baby Guts was Kricfalusi’s buddy, it didn’t matter that he had no medical training. The stink of the Black Dog was all over the girl.
—It’s her fuggin’ teeth. No good for chewin’ or anything…— Kricfalusi complained.
—Yeah, I see it. We can take ’em out?
—Yup… seems the only solution.
—We could get a deal in Shell from backstreet dentists. Van Klee is always on the lookout for teeth and fingernails to add to his Immitant sex objects. I’ll split the trove with ya, 70/30?
Baby Guts owned a hock shop but acted as the Ersatz dentist. What made him qualified was simple— he had a good supply of local anaesthetic. Where he got it no one knew— no one cared.
Kricfalusi crunched down on his knocked-off meds. The girl was called Blossom; she was barely 17 but had lived in Ersatz since she was 9. The Dog feasted on foreign bodies, people who were running away, people
who wanted to forget. The city swallowed her whole, in one gulp. It was Kricfalusi who looked after the girl when she first hit the streets.
Kricfalusi was a murderer but he wasn’t a rapist. He was a mother not a father. Baby Guts was the opposite of this, he used his cock to inflict emotional scars upon the face of the world.
Blossom’s poor dental hygiene betrayed the ease with which she was able to articulate herself— with tele-prompter perfection.
—I don’t deny it, my teeth are a little worse for wear, okay, sure… but where exactly is someone to acquire toothpaste in this town?— Blossom said after closing her mouth.
—She’s got a point— Baby Guts agreed.
Blossom sighed loudly.
—Hey, can I ask you both something?
Baby Guts and Kricfalusi nodded.
—Do you ever feel like a bad character in a bad book?
Both men stared blankly.
—What’s you mean?
— I feel like the character in that short story by Philip K Dick, “The Electric Ant.” I’ve woken up after a horrible car crash, my head has been cut off and I’ve just discovered I’m an electric ant… or an organic robot maybe, and everything I thought was real is just a tape recording.
Blossom noticed the buttermilk sky outside the basement window. The interstate was completely hidden beneath it. Fume clouds full of nightmares were approaching. The thunderhead felt imminent.
—That might be true— Kricfalusi admitted, then added— maybe I’m the one who crashed your car?
Baby Guts gave a wry smile and placed the gasmask over Blossom’s face. She lay back on the stock-room floor, in 10 seconds she was out cold.
—The girl don’t seem so happy these days— Kricfalusi said as he watched her go limp.
—There’s a bug goin’ around. Or could be delirious from her rotted teef…
—You think maybe she’s depressed? All the qualified doctors live in Shell County…
Kricfalusi ran his fingers through the filaments of Blossom’s hair.
—Shit, we all depressed in this fuggin’ town! It’d take something ten times worse than depression to have any impact on a gurl who’s been raised in Ersatz!
—So maybe she’s got something worse? She keeps talkin’ about dyin’ and wakin’ up from purgatory. She’s been getting all reflective. She told me she wants to fight for Montevideo! Does Uruguay even exist anymore?
—No idea.
— It’s like she’s paranoid and… soul sick or something.
—Soul sick?? What soul you talkin’ about?
—I know, I know…
Kricfalusi used to be a famous darts player. There was a time when he could pierce the bulls-eye from 20 yards, every time he’d hit a double— until he developed dartitis (a condition which prevented him from releasing the dart from his grip. It just stuck there vice-tight between his thumb and his index finger.)
—Troof is, I ain’t been feelin’ great myself, maybe it’s rubbin’ off on the gurl?
—Maybe. You still got the ol’ loose puddin’?
—Yeah, it’s relentless. I never had such terrible diarrhoea in all my life. I feel infected.
Kricfalusi leaned on a pile of damp boxes as Baby Guts went about removing Blossom’s teeth.
—Wha’ you sellin’ these days anyway?— Kricfalusi asked, peeking into one of the boxes.
—A teenage gurl’s teef if luck is on our side!
The Aztec Two-Step
The black dog scavenges the dark lanes of the mind— those lonesome footpaths will never be safe again. The Cimmerian demon with baleful breath, diminishing the light wherever it tracks…
—I want to die. The black shuck has got a hold oh me!
It attacks the body like a malevolent virus, eats you inside out. Its ghost travels through human action and words before taking up residence in the victim’s thoughts. From there the Black Dog squeezes into the soul. You know it because he scrunches your stomach into a tight paper-ball and forces it out through your anus. Ten times worse than depression.
Then you’re a goner…
Roughly the size of a large calf, its footfalls are silent— the portents of death hidden behind a cloak of evil.
Infection can cause a profound psychological and physical experience. Victims will become weary. Their sex drive is sapped to a mollusk shell. Insomnia and loss of appetite usually follow. Eventually the corruption of the mind will lead to suicide…
His howl will ruin the night.
~
Lester Proctor was determined not to become inhibited by the Black Dog. He had heard of a miracle drug called The Cure— a lozenge designed by Shell scientists to help subdue the effects of The Black Dog. Lester made it his mission to track down the makers of this drug, obtain it and disseminate it to as many people as possible. He wanted to survive. He wanted us to survive. First he had to get out of Wire City, there were no doctors here.
Having said goodbye to his apartment, Lester left the 14th ward and the city he’d called home his entire life. The bodies of his family sat on the sofa like a Russian doll sequence, it was a nice way to remember them. He made his way towards the turnpike that fed through Ersatz and hitched a ride. The fear of passing through the most treacherous city on the Slave State map didn’t deter him. When a deadheaded driver named Fairfax eventually stopped by the roadside and popped the passenger door open, Lester’s spirits were at the highest they’d been for a month. He thanked Fairfax, who admitted he himself was on his way to Ersatz to live a life of criminality and corruption. This would be Fairfax’s final act of humanity before succumbing completely to the city-way.
—I can take you as far as Ersatz. I won’t be goin’ to Shell.
—That’s perfect buddy. Thanks a million.
Fairfax manoeuvred his Nova Supreme through the cross-town traffic. It seemed everyone was leaving Wire City and heading to one of two destinations— Ersatz or Shell County. People stopping off at Ersatz had given up on trying to outrun the Black Dog. Those passing through to Wire were driven by a deep desire to survive and get the Cure.
—What’s yer mission?
—I’m lookin’ for The Cure…
—Pah, ain’t no such thing. Our only release is a simulation called “Hollow Earth”
—Never heard of it.
—Awe jeez, it’s great! It was created by a small group of extropian insurgents. It’s like a big metallic orb and, it’s like, formed mostly of basalt mined from volcanic rock and excavated ore.
—Huh…
—Yeah, and at the core there are a host of chambers wired up to a super computer by its hub. Surviving humans can have their minds uploaded into the super computer in the orbs mainstay
—No kiddin’?
—Yeah! The device successfully recreates all quantum brain states by means of emigration, so, like, every aspect of the brain gets scanned by a high-resolution electron microscope until it reconstructs each circuit into substrate.
—Sounds interesting— Lester wasn’t really interested by it at all.
—The system has a memory of roughly 800 billion bytes and a capacity of 4 million human personas. Of course, like, everyone has to be more than willing to embrace a life of verisimilitude.
—Great.
—Don’t you think it sounds amazing, people feeling all safe in their terminals with their minds digitally stored? It’s people’s one chance to kill that inner demon of fixed reality!
The spheroid of the sun disappeared, Lester knew he was close.
~
They had been in the car for an hour. The traffic gridlocked around the hinterlands of Ersatz. Lester could see the city and the awful miasma that hid the tops of the tallest buildings there. He could feel the presence of the Black Dog right on his trail. Fairfax had kept silent the entire journey. In spite of his initial kindness there was now something unnerving about the driver. The closer the Nova inched towards the depraved metropolis the more jittery Fairfax became. He was
clutching the steering wheel for dear life, his teeth were gnawing back and forth, top row over bottom set, grinding the enamel to powder. He kept looking in his rear-view mirror. A paranoid edge had infiltrated the car’s atmosphere. Lester felt like an intruder.
—Hey, you okay buddy?— Lester said in his most compassionate voice.
Fairfax swung his neck towards Lester, eyes bloated out of their sockets. His teeth kept grating. He did not reply. Ersatz had already started having an effect. Fairfax was like a different person, Mr. Jekyll transmuting into Mr. Hyde. Lester tried to maintain calmness.
—You know, I can just get out here and walk to the city…?
—Don’t be dumb. You won’t last TWO SECONDS on the streets…— Fairfax laughed maniacally, his head still twisted to an awkward angle, eyes still swelling out at Lester.
