Night Life

by Derek Fisher

The city poisoned by modernity. Climate hell annexes the skin. Last vestiges of enjoyment packed to the brim, citizens competing for pleasure as the city burns. Everyone cramming into confined spaces, bars, sex clubs, prison cells, tombs. Chemicals pumped into the air meant to prevent the inevitable only further the suffering, mental and physical. A man tries to remember what he does, or did, for a living, if he had a family, what they looked like. He wanders. He drinks in bars and clubs. He can't remember. He is recalled by the government, given a task. He’s to find a place of enjoyment that doesn’t exist. All unregistered businesses are to be snuffed out. They monitor his every move. They are inside his mind. If he completes his task, death toll goes sky high. Mass graves will be dug under urban bridges. He exists in the night. Glowing glass buildings dominate an endless skyline. Highway overpasses, burning trees. Scorched afterthoughts of places once memorable. A city reduced to a sequence of decaying code. Please refrain from excising pieces of the self. All segments of biological matter must be accounted for and registered. The experience of existing exclusively at night has been studied and comprehensively peer reviewed by the organization, and results show that there is no discernible difference between the normal exposures and this inexhaustible darkness. There is nowhere to go but inside.

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Brandon W. Teigland · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prospect of participating in the dark ideal of neodecadence—explored by the disaffected Derek Fisher in the book “Night Life”—condenses into an image of historical decline, social decay, and personal depravity. This work is preoccupied with the putrid decomposition and transhuman ordure of a city’s sadomasochistic sphere where pseudo-political infections run rampant, and Babylonian buildings act as hermetic iceboxes against the daymare of heat.

[David Kuhnlein · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Each sentence of Night Life barks like an exploding head."

full review in issue 1 of Beyond the Last Estate

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