Kip Manley's Blog, page 7

Things to keep in mind (The secret of sitting bolt upright in that straight-backed chair)

Many readers of The Night Land, and more still who give up on the book, gag on its prose; The Night Land is a famously “difficult read.” For The Night Land, Hodgson devised an eccentric, faux seventeenth- or eighteenth-century style, convoluted and orotund, which even Lovecraft found “grotesque and absurd.” A few critics have supported Hodgson’s stylistic choice (Greer Gilman in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Nigel Brown in “An Apology for the Linguistic Architecture of The Night Land”), but Murphy mounts an innovative defense. He asks us to see the difficulty of reading as an intrinsic element of weird fiction, a twinning of the reader’s efforts with those of the characters’—

Mayhem (Act II)

George’s, it says, in red and yellow letters in a curve across the big front window. Shoes Repaired. A worktable behind a counter’s mounded high with shoes of every shape and color. On a stool before it Frankie in a bulky green fleece pullover, dark hair washed and brushed and tied back, cheeks shadowed with soft black stubble. “Just a, just a second,” he’s saying, a blue and brown running shoe in one hand, a square-toed black Oxford in the other. “Gordon,” he says. “How’s this?” Strings and woodwinds cycle through a somberly repetitive phrase from the clock radio on the worktable by the pile of shoes. The old man in a pale green chamois shirt standing next to him takes the shoes in his hands and looks them over, tilting them this way, that. Nodding. “You’re starting to get the hang of this,” he says. The wall behind the worktable’s lined with wooden shelves partitioned into regular cubbyholes each just large enough for a pair of shoes. Running his hand along a shelf, tap-tapping, stopping to slip both shoes inside an empty slot.

“Okay,” says Frankie, turning back to the counter.

“The hell, Frankie,” says Jo.

“Yeah,” says Frankie, “been a weird few weeks, I guess.”

“Anyone like some tea?” says Gordon. Jo shakes her head without looking away from Frankie, who says, “No, thanks.”

“Something herbal?” says Ysabel, unzipping her parka.

“I’ll put a kettle on,” says Gordon, ducking through a curtained doorway. Two voices high and rich soar from the clock radio, di-ek eni awik kher ka-ek, shesepi su ankhi yemef. “So,” says Frankie, standing, leaning his elbows on the counter. “There’s this guy. He’s coming for you.”

Mayhem (Act I)

Jo removes her jacket, and “You don’t have to,” says Ysabel.

“I shouldn’t have said anything about the damn heater,” says Jo, draping the jacket over Ysabel’s bare knees.

“Now you’re going to freeze,” says Ysabel.

“No,” says Jo, wrapping her arms in her satiny red blouse about herself, “I’m gonna snuggle.” She leans close to Ysabel, working a corner of the jacket up over her lap, pressing closer as Ysabel looks up, about the mostly empty bus, then leaning to one side lifts her arm up and free to drape it along Jo’s side. “There,” says Jo, laying her head against Ysabel’s shoulder. “See? Cozy.”

“You are so absurd sometimes, Jo Maguire.”

“Only sometimes?”

Weakly lemon-colored sunlight dapples them, shimmering between needled branches through the windows to the right. Up behind the driver an older man sits stiffly upright facing that sunlight, a brown banker’s box in his lap, a grey trilby on his head. A few rows ahead of them a woman her head down hands up fingers pressed against white earbuds. The trees thin a moment to the right and they rush past a cluster of yellow bulldozers and backhoes, a patch of earth scraped raw next to a clean new house with black shutters. “Now what?” says Ysabel.

“Which term?” says Jo. “Short, or long?”

“How about when we get back to town?” Ysabel’s stroking Jo’s close-cropped hair.

“I think I have to go see Erne.”

“Erne.”

“Yeah.”

“Jo, you’re not going to– you can’t think you’re going to just, challenge whoever it is.”

#IZM2025

I've written before, about my, well, I wouldn't say discomfort with the zine scene, no, I mean, maybe I'd go as high as out-of-placeness, but you put it like that, I mean, I tend to feel out of place just about anywhere I go, so. City of Roses is a number of things, a website, some books, an epic, an oddity, what I do with what time I can spare, but it has always been a zine.

Mayhem (Opening)

“You said you were going to kill me,” she says, her voice gone soft and thin.

“I might,” he says.

“What is this,” she says. “What are we doing.”

“Magic,” he says. “Take up the blade.” Closing one eye, the other hidden beneath an eyepatch cupped there beside his sharply angular nose, naked on his back on the floor, his wrists bound up over his head with a sheer black stocking, tied to a pole that braces a little yellow table above them both. His long black hair spread over the grimy linoleum like a fan. In the aisle between two lines of those little yellow tables, orange plastic chairs bolted to the poles to either side, she’s kneeling over him, one leg stockinged, one leg bare, black lace stretched taut about her wide round hips. Her long black hair threaded with white ribbons and silvery spangles that sweep over his narrow chest, his belly, her breasts brushing against him as her hand still in a black and white striped arm sock closes about the hilt of the long knife beside him, a slight curl to it, and no point but a sudden wedge of a tip. “It, it feels real,” she says.

“Of course it does,” he says, opening his eye.

“I mean, it doesn’t, it isn’t–”

“Don’t touch the blade,” he says. “Not with your hand.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to do anything–”

“Hush,” he says, sharply. “By the hilt. Both hands. Firmly.”

“It’s real, isn’t it,” she says, the blade upright before her face. “I mean, it’s sharp.”

Changel (Closing)

A screwed-up twist of paper on the scarred wooden table before him, yellowed in a pool of streetlight from the tall wide windows. He contemplates it a moment, tilting his head this way and that, long black glossy hair slithering over a shoulder as he leans a little to one side, and then with both hands carefully carefully begins to pick it open, this corner, that fold, gently smoothing it bit by bit against the wood, careful of the spots of old grease here and there, wiping his fingertips from time to time on the thick white napkin to one side. Burger Chef, it says over and over again in pink letters under a stylized orange chef’s hat. Super Shef, repeated again and again. Unfolding the last bit with a crinkle he takes up an edge of it and with a sweep of his hand turns it over. Scrawled letters in purple crayon say BILLY.

He sits back in the high wooden booth with a gentle smile, lifts a glass of water in a little salute to the wrapper and takes a sip. He scratches his cheek by a black eyepatch, tugging at the skin, and there is a glimpse of something wet and ruined underneath. “Excuse me,” says a woman.

Changel (Act IV)

That stern and rough-hewn hawk caged in his fingers the Duke’s leaning on his cane by the glass-topped café table, still in his long and camel-colored topcoat, a red-brown derby on his head. “Was there a riot in here?” he says as they open the door. Behind him by the bulky blond wood armoire Jessie arms folded in a double-breasted pinstripe coatdress, her hair in a tight bun, her lips carefully red.

“Get out,” says Jo, unshouldering the duffel bag and laying it and the narrow box on the floor. Ysabel behind her still in the little hallway kitchen.

“I came here out of concern,” says the Duke, “and frankly, I’m even more concerned, now–”

“Get out,” says Jo, laying a hand on the glass table-top.

“Words were said,” says the Duke. “In haste. By both of us, I’m not gonna deny it, but in all that heat I had a little light in mind and I’m worried it didn’t articulate in a fully appreciable manner. So maybe–”

“Get. Out,” says Jo.

“Breakfast,” says the Duke. “I can get us a private dining room at the Heathman, full spread buffet, we can talk, undisturbed–”

“We already ate,” says Ysabel, as Jo’s saying, “Dammit, Leo, get the fuck out of my apartment.”

“Jo!” snaps the Duke, and he tumps his cane-tip on the carpet. “Listen to me. This is important. If you cannot keep a roof over her head then all bets are off.”

Ysabel steps up close behind Jo then. Jessie’s looking down at the pile of clothing by her feet. “The fuck is that supposed to mean,” says Jo quietly.

Changel (Act III)

“Such a nothing time,” says Becker, “three in the morning.” He snaps the little phone shut and lays it carefully in the worn leather shoe on the floor by a discarded pair of jeans and a big plaid empty shirt. “You stay up till one, sure,” he says, sitting up in the dimly greenish streak of light from the louvered windows lining one long wall of the narrow room. “Two, even, you can go back to sleep for three or four hours. That’s like a full cycle. Enough to keep you going.” His knees tenting the crazed tangle of quilts and blankets and sheets. He scratches the dark hair scattered sparsely across his chest. “Four o’clock, you can give up, get up, go make some coffee.” Folding his hands behind his head. “But what the fuck can you do with three in the goddamn morning?”

Pyrocles his head laid on one arm folded like a wing eyes closed smiles sleepily beneath his crookedly drooping mustaches. “You can keep everyone else around you awake.”

Becker shifts on his side, looking down at Pyrocles. “It’s not insomnia,” he says. “It’s not misery loving company. I just don’t want to miss any of this.”

“I know,” says Pyrocles.

Changel (Act II)

Pushing a dead lawnmower along the verge of a rolling field of dying grass an older man in a charcoal-stripe three-piece suit unbuttoned over a sunken bare chest, his head quite bald, the skin of him dark with old grime. The only sound the rustle of the grass and the squeak of the lawnmower’s wheels. Up ahead in the darkness a cul de sac, a crumbling concrete pad under a broad flat gas station awning, a big roadside sign whose unbroken panel says Leathers Fuels. An old maroon sedan on four flat tires.

He stops pushing the lawnmower, steps around it, minces carefully toward that sedan arms out hands a-dangle, his last few steps a sudden waddling rush until he’s squatting by the trunk. The maroon of the sedan is scaled with rust, orange and white and grey, mottled with moss and lichen, grey and green. The windows dark where they aren’t streaked with green and blackish red. His back to it he scoots along careful with his bare feet toenails long and jagged sharp, clicking absently against the gravel. The handle of the passenger door is clean and almost gleaming, but he’s looking past it at the knob of the door lock just visible through the smeared glass. He lifts a hand to brush aside his collar and touch the polished silver torc that’s clamped about his knobby neck.

He stares at that lock.

He stares at it wide eyes buckling under his heavy brow, his jaw and throat, his shoulders trembling, his whole frame quivering with some motionless effort, staring at it until with a click the door lock pops up and he catches himself, doesn’t fall, one hand on concrete, one hand on the door. He pounds the concrete once and lifts his hand closed about the handle of a push dagger, the wide stubby blade of it sprouting from his curled fingers. He gently, gently pulls the door open.

Changel (Act I)

“You cut your hair!” cries the Duke as he opens his white door.

“Well, yeah,” says Jo, standing there hand-in-hand with Ysabel, Jo in a black leather reefer jacket, Ysabel in a short white parka lined with thick white fur. Jo’s hair cropped very short and dyed a deep wine red.

“Your coats?” says the Duke. From down the dark hall behind him a burst of music, someone singing wake at night always the same, I call your name but you sleep right through and love is the light in your face!

“Why don’t you go find Jessie?” says Jo to Ysabel. Letting go of her hand.

“As you wish,” says Ysabel, slipping out of her parka.

“Huh,” says the Duke, watching her head down the hall, her grey cardigan dress quite short and tight, her matching thigh-high socks.

“Yeah,” says Jo, taking off her jacket. “She’s loaded for bear.”

“It’s a look,” says the Duke, turning back. “Whoa.” Jo’s in a bright red strapless dress also quite short over black leggings. “You’re, ah,” says the Duke. “You’re wearing lipstick.”

“I figured ducal function meant formal,” says Jo. “Ysabel picked out the dress.”

“Well, there’s formal,” says the Duke, “and there’s, well.” His blousy pyjama pants paisleyed in purples and browns and greens and a very pointed pair of Persian slippers and a silk shirt in some nameless harvest color. “C’mon. Let me get you a drink.” Jo heads down the hall and he follows, their coats draped over an arm. “Did I, did I mention I like your shoulders?” he says. “Because I like your shoulders.” Jo’s smiling.