Bukkhead.com

fiction by Jason Edwards

Dear Barbara: as you know, I died last week, so you can imagine my surprise when I found myself a few days later, clawing my way out of the earth. I didn’t have much sense of self at the time, only an insatiable hunger, but I’m certain I looked a fright: clothes hanging off of me in states of accelerated disrepair, flesh ripped and torn in places, bones exposed, etc. Hair matted with dirt. Maggots and the like in evidence. A fright, I said? I must have looked a horror!

And that hunger I mentioned: terrible. Terrific, even. I didn’t know what I wanted until I saw it: a young woman running down the street, blonde, screaming. I chased her of course, and eventually realized there were others like me also chasing her. I use the word chase, but it was hardly that, as all we could manage was a rotting shuffle. It was maddening, and most of us, me included, moaned loudly as we pursued.

Somehow, we caught her. I mean she would disappear, we would follow her scent, then lose that and sort of just maintain momentum of direction, then she would reappear again. She’d hide behind a piece of cardboard, or on top of a roof. I vaguely remember a crowd of us pounding against the glass of a door at the mall, until finally it broke and we poured in, reaching, clawing, grasping. There were gunshots, and the firing of a shot gun. Heads exploded. It was rather exciting.

There were people other than the blonde, running this way and that as well, but many of us were focused only on the girl. Something about the way she ran. It was almost as ineffective as the way we ran. She seemed to fall down a lot. She sobbed more or less constantly. And I don’t know how to put this: she was not built appropriately. It’s hard to say how, though. She was top heavy? I mean, she was not fat, she was sort of skinny (when we finally got her, there wasn’t much to go around). But her chest was not the right shape for the rest of her body. No matter how she ran, or jumped, or fell and got back up, her chest didn’t really heave and bounce like it should have.

I know its cliché, Barbara, to say that in horror films the black guy always gets killed first, or in science fiction its always the red shirts. But the whole time I and the others were chasing her– and it seemed like days– there was this inevitability about it all. Like she deserved to die? I don’t know if that’s a very nice thing to say, but I’ve been dead for a week now, and have only had the one meal– the girl– and perhaps I’m a bit irritable, so forgive me. And I admit, it could have just been a kind of zealousness on my part that made me so confidant she’d be my dinner, eventually and soon. Such hunger! Another cliché, I’m afraid: it was a force of nature.

We kept at it, all of us; what else could we do. Some of us became the worse for wear. Clothes became more and more ripped to pieces, more and more of our graying flesh was torn from our bodies, black ichor pouring from open wounds, and so forth. Is a zebra a white horse with black stripes, or a black horse with white stripes? Where we bodies with skeletons exposed, or skeletons holding up dripping tufts of decaying muscle? But we never stopped shuffling.

A shotgun blast rang out in the night, and I don’t know if any of us had enough sense left to make anything of it, except that it meant something warm and delicious was nearby. We went after it. Through a wooden fence, hammered into splinters. Through a field thick with dead grass and desiccated bushes. Across a dried creek. Some fell—they continued to claw their way along. Eventually we came onto a scene, a camp fire almost burnt out, that woman on her knees, sobbing, shotgun in her lap, bruises rising on her cheeks and arms, shirt ripped half off. A man in front of her, pants pushed down to his thighs, a gigantic hole in his back that went straight through to where it had come from his chest. The smell was invigorating.

She obviously hadn’t seen us until we were right on top of her (despite our moaning). Some of us jumped on the blasted man, and the sounds of their ripping, gouging, chewing was nearly erotic– that is, erotic if your only emotion is hunger. I and a few others grabbed at the girl. She tried to run, but was blind in the night, tripped once again, and we had her. We had her, Barbara, we had every last morsel of her.

Turns out her breasts were fake, and you might have laughed when one of us bit into them and they deflated sadly. I ate mostly from her leg and buttocks. One fellow seemed keen to crack her skull and eat her brains. I’m tempted to make jokes about blondes and brains, but you’re a blonde, Barbara, I know, and never much appreciated that sort of thing.

And since we’re on the subject of you now, Barbara, I suppose I should get to the point of this letter. It’s been a few days since I fed, and even when I was eating that poor girl, my hunger was never slaked. Not even a little. If anything, I’m hungrier than ever. None of us has seen a living soul since that night, and so we’re left to wander around, to try and deal with our own brains rotting in our heads, decay robbing us of memory and reason.

But I still have some memories, and I remember you. I remember once thinking how delicious you would be if I ever had to eat you. And now I think I do. I have to eat you.

I’m coming to get you, Barbara.

fiction by Jason Edwards

Let’s say you come into the middle of a conversation about fly fishing. And let’s say you don’t know anything about fly fishing. How long before you finally realize that what these two people are amicably chatting about is fly fishing? And let’s be clear, it will be an amicable chat. Can you imagine a conversation about fly fishing steeped in rage? You’re no psychiatrist, but even you could figure out that if two people are shouting at each other with words pulled from the vocabulary of fly fishing, spittle and blood-red cheeks and bulging eyes and stiff fingers poised pointed and poking heaving chests, the real subject at hand isn’t fly fishing. Something deeper, something historic. But don’t get distracted. You sit down in your favorite booth at the diner, the waitress already knows what you’re going to order, but she gives you a menu anyway and wanders off to get you a diet sprite. The only diner in pretty much the whole world that serves diet sprite. And in the booth behind you, two guys.

Let’s say one is called Zdenek Fibich. That’s a coincidence, but one of those coincidences that you don’t know about. In addition to not knowing anything about fly fishing, you know nothing about the famous Czech composer. And neither did this guy’s parents. They’re Czech, sure, emigrated. But Fibich isn’t the most uncommon name for those people, and neither is Zdenek. But you don’t know any of that. And Zed says something about how he really likes what she did with the sinker, with the granulated flecking, green and yellow, makes for a swirly kind of bite. Don’t giggle. Here’s the waitress with your diet sprite. Tell her: cheeseburgers fries. She’s not listening because she already knows.

And the other guy’s called Dave or something. How many Dave’s do you know? Probably thousands. Or, if not thousands, enough who know people who know other Daves until it numbers in the thousands. That’s a lot of freaking Daves! Dave replies something along the lines of her greeber has a nice tug too, and she used real fake ocelot fur for the flange mixer. Not too shabby.

Figured it out yet? What they’re talking about? Fly fishing? The trick is to not think about thinking about it. Rather, let your mind wander. Fish be eating flies. Have been for millions of years, evolved over the course of tens of millions of years to recognize that vibration in the water, jump up, chew on a tasty fly. And along comes man. Evolves over a few million years himself, but over the course of only a few hundred thousand, figures out fish, and over only ten thousand or so, figures out society, and over only a few hundred or so, how to build fake flies and fish with them. Well god damn.

Here’s your cheese burger. Toasted bun, cheap-ass cheese but melted just right, soggy onion soggy pickle. Remove tomato, pepper it and eat it alone. Remove lettuce leaf, roll into a lettuce-leaf roll and dip in mayo, eat alone. Open bun, squirt ketchup on bun, use crinkle-cut french fry to spread ketchup around. Close bun, take bite, take sip of diet sprite, listen to Zed say something about ocelot fur’s probably more expensive than necessary for a worker. A show , maybe, but c’mon. You got to stick those things in the water, eventually.

The book you brought with you? Ignored. What is it. Something by Richard Brautigan, or Percival Everett? You’ve read it before, no big deal, the burger’s delicious, as always, it’s a nice day outside, sort of overcast and drizzly and there’s talk of snow, but a nice day in the sense that after ten million years of evolution you’ve got a cheeseburger and all the fish have got are fake flies.

So now have you figured it out yet? That they’re talking about fly fishing? There was a clue, Zed mentioned water. And then Dave said back something about it’s all for show, really, since if a man needs to eat that bad, he oughta just go to the supermarket anyway.

See? Water, eat, that must mean fish. And those words, sinker, flecking, bite, greeber, tug, flange mixer. They’re all made up words, they’re not the words you would recognize if you knew anything about fly fishing. But since you don’t, those words are as good as any, and you need to focus on other words, like water, and eat.

I’m guessing you’re a pretty smart guy. Yeah, you’re stuck in your ruts, with your diet sprite and your cheeseburger and the way you eat the tomato. I know, I know, no sense in putting ketchup on a burger that’s got a tomato on it, and you like ketchup more than you like tomato. I get it. Listen to me, I’m complimenting you, I’m saying despite these ruts– for good reasons or bad, okay? Calm down– despite these ruts, you’re probably a pretty smart guy. You probably figured out that Zed and Dave were talking about fly fishing pretty darn quick.

But that’s where you fail, see. Sorry, but it’s true. Because, smart as you are, as soon as you figured out that they were taking about fly fishing, even though you don’t know anything about fly fishing, you stopped listening. So, you didn’t learn anything about fly fishing. You and your cheeseburger and your crinkle cut fries. Decent tip for the waitress. Hoodie and walk in the rain back to work. You didn’t learn anything. So much for evolution. If you had been one of those fish, you never would have learned how to bite.