I Joined a Cult, But I Still Feel Alone

Posted on by Alex Juarez

“Once Nothing, Twice Shatter” by Tyler Barton

Luther buys cars. It’s what he does, and it’s what his billboard says he does—LUTHER BUYS CARS. He bought my dad’s car. He bought the mayor’s car. He came to a surprise party for my mom’s sixty-fifth and left with her Sportage. Think back. If you lived in Gettysburg in the late aughts, Luther probably bought your car. Maybe you heard about him on TV, about what he built, and you thought, I would never sell that man my car. I’m sorry. I don’t believe it. It’s his aura—smile like the grill of a Chrysler, hair a horse’s mane. Luther glowed gold.

I was en route to leaving town, to finding peace, to ridding my life of so much me, when I crashed into the back of an Integra, transfixed by the riddle of its vanity plate—HEDIE4U. My brakes tried. Our cars veered into the cornfield. The other driver’s baby cried as we waited for the police, and it was raining, pouring, and my door wouldn’t open, and Luther appeared, bearing an umbrella and a guarantee: my Buick was totaled. Bereft. Unsound. With his big vocab, that quiet murmur, the cleft-lip scar, you just hung on to Luther’s every word. I was cold, high, and scared, but his serenity kept me from fleeing deep into the corn. Luther went shhh, and then he bought my Buick. “I’m notarized,” he said, and shook my hand with both of his—so warm. “It’s all legitimate.”

I left my eleven books on Zen in the trunk, took my hamper, and walked to Wawa. I bought so much made-to-order—enough to kill a horse, as they say. “Mozzarella sticks for pumps two through eight,” I told the cashier, sopping. Luther had made me magnanimous. I thought it was my middle-aged life turning over like an antique engine. That night I got a nose ring. Not that Luther was pierced, but his high-tier moxie made the world feel like something you could bring to heel.

Luther bought my car for three hundred dollars, but then I had nowhere to live.

After the accident, I stopped wearing the hat a fan had made me, a red mesh trucker embroidered with the words Brad the Broadcast Bandit. It’d been two years since my shock-jock radio show, and I’d been going by a slew of dumb identities—Greg, Jed, Art, Hal—any name that sounded burped. Todd. I started living in the yard behind my dealer’s double-wide. Basically it was a doomsday shelter dug by shovel and lined with ten-pound bags of rice. That’s where I slept, on rice bag beds. I cut this guy’s grass, loaded his little dishwasher on wheels, and kept his cats alive. His name was—I’ll call him Colt. I owed Colt a lot of money, and he had dirt on me too.

“Don’t just do something,” Colt would say. “Sit there.” Which meant: Do something. And then he’d hop on one of his crotch rockets and tear off into the afternoon. While he was out, I’d clean his trailer, and I’d clean his girlfriend’s trailer; I’d clean his other girlfriend’s trailer, and I’d clean her girlfriend’s trailer. I thought about a billboard that said, TODD CLEANS TRAILERS. At first I figured I might get empty this way, cleaning all day alone. What I wanted was to make my ego go quiet, to learn to think of nothing but the dish when I rinsed it. But then one morning with the radio on, I got lost in my head and snapped a porcelain plate. Then I smashed a glass. Then I whipped the squawking radio at a ceiling fan and left.

So I tried Mom again, walked all the way to her house, offered to cook and clean for a spot on the couch. She lived in an unaffordable split-level that would soon be repossessed because the loans had been written in a language the country no longer spoke. In ’09, that was the story of Adams County, the elegy of the country, really— homes being pulled out from under us like rugs.

Mom raised honeybees and wasn’t fond of taking off her aerated beekeeping veil. She looked like an outer space nun. Through the mesh, she told me my problem was that I didn’t know how to blame myself for anything. I had to start doing right.

“But I don’t want to do anything,” I said. “That’s the point. I want to want nothing.”

“You hearing this?” she said, turning to her hives. “You see what I’m talking about?” I told her I was becoming a wandering monk. I threatened to join the US Army. I gave her a hug.

“What about that nice man Luther?” she said. “I hear he’s hiring guys like you.”

Cars, yes, but it turns out Luther had also bought land, so much land, enough land to kill a horse. In May, trucks drove over to spread dirt into an oval, a track. That’s why he bought our cars—to stock a demolition derby. Even miles away, in town, you could hear vehicles collapsing into one another, and that’s when I came to Luther for a job, holding my hands out like a cup, empty.

Piles of busted rubber tires fenced the track, and I entered slowly, passing teams of men wrenching Jeeps with gusto. In his shed I sat on a red fender and told Luther to make me a driver, a derbyman, a dead-to-the-world heel on the gas. With enough impact, I’d smash the grasping clean out of my body like a pair of dumb dice through a shattered windshield. Luther rocked in his racing seat, prayer hands pressed to his marked lip, eyes shut in one long blink. He wore a white tank top you could see his dog tag necklace through. I poked at an eraser on the table between us. There wasn’t one light on, but the toolshed shone.

Finally he said, “Todd, you consume drugs, correct?”

“What can I say?” I twisted my nose ring, smelling the sour of my cartilage. “Youth.”

We laughed at that. I was forty. The hole was infected.

“Substances deliver you a kind of . . . orgasm, yes?” Luther said, every word a whisper.

I shrugged and did not say: Yes, they used to, they once helped me see all the way to god. “Todd, the goal is to be in a state of perpetual,” he said, pointing to his temple, “orgasm.” I laughed. “And that’s why we’re creating the Track.”

When he handed me a paper, I thought it was his manifesto. He told me to read aloud:

Anybody know what this place is? This is Gettysburg. This is where they fought the Battle of Gettysburg. Fifty thousand men died right here, fightin’ the same fight that we’re still fightin’ amongst ourselves today. This green field painted red, bubblin’ with the blood of young boys. Smoke and hot lead pourin’ right through their bodies. Listen to their souls. I killed my brother with malice in my heart. Hatred destroyed my family. Listen, take a lesson from the dead.

For a second, I felt heroic. I couldn’t put my finger on the film the words were from, but it felt like one where when people fall down, they keep getting back up and keep getting back up.

“I’ll employ you as my anchorman,” Luther said. “You’ll narrate the races. Remind the crowd precisely why they’re here, why they want to return.” I shook my head no. Airtime was the one drug I could not do anymore. If you’re listening to this, you know I’ve relapsed.

Remember the Titans. That was the movie. And Luther—a titan. Tycoon. A tyrant-to-be. I heard people outside the shed laughing, saws coughing into metal. Luther stood up from his cockpit, came around the table, and put his hands on my shoulders. I shivered, but it felt holy.

“Can’t I just clean the dirt?”

“You’ve got to be somebody before you can be nobody,” he said, pulling an I-9 from a glove compartment nailed to the wall. Had he been reading my old mystic books? In his words I heard Thich Nhat Hanh and bits of Be Here Now—ideas rang familiar but newly bold, glossy, like chrome. Luther handed me the form. I read it aloud, but Luther wouldn’t laugh until I signed.

Luther tore tickets. Luther sang the anthem. Luther sold snacks. Luther mopped the johns. Luther meditated alone. And for these reasons, he didn’t watch the derbies. And because he couldn’t watch, it was important to him that the story I told through the loudspeaker rocked. I used a voice other than my natural and hid in a booth made from the detached cab of a Durango. With my microphone and my Diet Mountain Dew, I said everything I saw.

The Excursion is, oh boy, turning, gunning, and the Civic doesn’t know it, but he’s about to get a RUDE wake-up. And on rude, the cars crashed. Mud flew. Every once in a while, something came on fire. I popped addies to keep my focus, E to get the crowd excited. I narrated from the perspectives of the cars everyone loved. Your Avalanches, Chargers, Colorados, and Broncos—anything sounding ripped from the West. They whooped and booed at my command. I couldn’t help it, becoming someone again. My ego ate up every noise they made.

There goes Crown Vic, America’s hero! The crowd would erupt. Lick ’em good, Vic!

One night Luther motioned for me to roll down the window and handed me a thesaurus. I started using careen, incognito, tragicomedy. I said indigent and aroused.

Admit it: when Punch Bug surrenders to the barrel roll, you feel a UNIQUE arousal.

And on unique my crowd would tear a hole through the air.

Sometimes when a part fell off a car, I’d declare a dance-off, and anyone in the audience who wanted that bumper or that mirror or that broken, melting helmet would stand up on the bleacher and shake it. Our camera guy would shoot slow across the rows until I found a dancer I couldn’t criticize. The winner got to run out on the track and pick a prize.

In the parking lot, after all was smashed and done, Luther would gather lingering fans for a last beer, gratis, and do what Luther did best. Often he’d stand on the cooler. He’d whip out this statistic I think he made up, about the average Pennsylvanian spending three hundred hours driving every year. “Each of these precious minutes is spent on a road that’s designed to take them exactly where they’ve been told to go. You comprehend?” Forceful but breezy was the way he spoke. “We’ve forgotten that we can color outside the lines.” Some listeners would stay on, join up. Our crew grew large.

There’s no denying how magnetizing it was to see your own car out there on the Track, broken and totaled but—my god—firing back up again. How the motor always, eventually, turned over. Within a month, we started running double features, Sunday specials. Eventually, Luther lent me a car, not to smash, but to use. It was a Celica, which means cosmic. I backed it up into all of Colt’s motorcycles on the day I left his place for good.

One night in July, I found Luther behind the bleachers, swinging a sledge at a wrecked RAV4.

“Boss?”

“Go ahead and clock out, Todd.” Luther swung underhanded at the front tire, and the hammer bounced from his hands. He sat in the dirt and nursed his wrist. “Meaning farewell.”

“Mind if I take a swing?” I said, not wanting to leave. Luther shrugged.

I swung. I swung, and in a minute it was obvious that all we want is to be young again.

Luther watched me lay into the windshield—once, nothing; twice, shatter—and then asked if I would hold a second. He climbed into the back of the car and sat still in the middle seat. Legs crossed applesauce, he held his hands together at his chest. Luther let his eyelids close.

“Use the vehicle,” Luther said. “Perform your tantra, the physicality of enlightenment.” And I heaved the hammer up, a slow arc, and brought it down like a house. The back bumper cracked and a cloud of spiders poured out. Like a hangnail, that bumper hung on until I slammed it again. I swung until the thing was in pieces. Until the make and the model and the year disappeared. These were things that didn’t matter anymore: the make, the model, the year, the future, the past. Things like what we know. What mattered was the place you built to go inside your head. What mattered was your sanctuary. Not what was coming down all around you.

“But remember, it is only a vehicle,” he said. “Never become dependent on your vessel.”

My knees buckled when the Toyota looked like gum, chewed. Luther’s aura glowed louder than ever. The ceiling liner drooped down around his shoulders. A tear in the upholstery made it look like the car had swallowed his skull. I got in and sat passenger—we meditated together. You could hear the moon. Time got loose.

“What is the first of the five Yamas of Yoga?” Luther whispered. He didn’t wait because I didn’t know. “It is ahimsa, or nonkilling. Then nonstealing, nonjealousy, continence . . . and?”

The last was truthfulness.

Luther made money, so much money, but he only seemed as happy as the guy on top of a consolation trophy—always smiling with his teeth tight. My pay was decent, and I hardly protested when Colt came weekly to collect half my dough. I just gave it over like always.

You have to remember, I was trying so hard not to want anything. I helped the food crew with their gardens and tried to practice detachment: if the tomatoes ripened they ripened, and if they rotted they rotted. Some were stolen in the night, and I failed; I cared. What Luther preached was the abdication of attachment. No more clinging. I gave his weekly speeches to the crew. You must detach from your sense of morality. Without bad there is no good; all good creates all bad. There is no hippie without a cop. The goal here is to start sensing all phenomena as one—no good, no evil, just is.

Luther, my boss. Luther, something else. I didn’t want to let him down, so I helped him transform the Track into a compound. We made bleachers from bench seats, captain’s chairs, the railing cobbled together with pipes. A bus chassis became the foundation for a bunkhouse, though Luther used the term dormitory. Dozens of us worked 24/7. On shelves made of mangled doors, Luther built a library of Eastern thought, and it featured all my old books.

In a month, we had a kind of halfway home built out of automobiles. I wasn’t the only one who started sleeping there. Drivers boarded too, taking turns cooking eggs for breakfast. I’d try to get them talking about their jobs, about how it felt to destroy the body you were trapped inside. “Do you ever get the urge to take the helmet off?” I tried. But they ignored me. Maybe they hated my affinity with Luther, our intimacy, the way he touched my head during meditation? Maybe it had to do with Colt coming by and taking my money every Friday. Our security team made me meet him on the street, and as I handed over the money, you could hear them spitting. They called me Told, as in Does what he’s told.

Luther, they loved. He’d given their lives purpose—kindhearted ex-cons, crabby old men, stupid kids addicted to pills and Monster Energy, women who’d left the shelter forever. They would follow him into battle, me high up on my horse with the bullhorn, calling out Luther’s messages to our rabid audiences: How many of you lost a home? The government and the bankers—they gambled away our lives! The Track is a home. Let go of what you’re grasping for, what’s always slipping through your fingers. Show us you’re ready, sell us your car, join us tonight!

One night, during our weekly RAV4 session, a schoolteacher who’d quit her job to work at the Track came by with a question about using chunks of rubber in the children’s play area. I was cloaked in sweat from hammering the car, and Luther’s head was lost inside the drooping upholstery.

She looked shaky when she said: “Just want confirmation from you before we—”

“Excuse me,” Luther yelled into the Toyota’s ceiling. “Did you observe the two of us before you approached?” She winced. “Never interrupt when Todd and I are fellowshipping!”

It wasn’t like him to yell. The woman left, ignoring my wave goodbye. I remember thinking: Wait, we have a children’s play area? I tried to clear my head, resume concentration, but Luther’s hand grabbed my shoulder: “Who’s the man who takes your money each week?”

“Who?”

“The one who comes every Friday on a motorcycle. Who steals your pay and leaves.”

“Oh, he’s just someone I owe.”

“The only one you owe is you,” he said. “Tell me the truth. What have you hidden?”

The thing with Colt was kind of a shakedown. The drug debts were done, but he had a video of me from a few years back, full throttle on a mix of pills, stealing a Shetland pony from the mounted police unit at Jefferson Carnival. Officers on horses, if you can believe it. One cop had his kid there, holding the reins of this short shaggy horse, posed beside a sign that said BE SOMEBODY! During some chaos with the Gravitron, I snuck the little horse into a field and fed it tomatoes, just so many tomatoes, and by morning it died.

In order to release them from their material lives, we will erase their homes. We will be the Amazon-dot-com of carnage.

Colt had been there, filming, because we filmed everything back then. We thought we belonged on TV. Earlier in my life, Colt had been a wild friend who raised my temperature, plus my supplier—the means for my journey to anywhere but Gettysburg. But the day after the pony’s death, I told Colt I was done for good, and what he did was send the video to my bosses at the radio station. Now that I had left him for the Track, I knew he’d show the cops if I gave him a reason, if I stopped paying. I had a record for possession already. Theft from the cops, the murder of a horse—I could never handle prison. The word for all this was extortion, I think.

“You’re under remote control,” Luther said, eyes closed, his cleft scar trembling.

“Nah, it’s just nothing. I’m not attached to it.”

“Brother Todd,” Luther whispered. “You can’t let something go until it’s gone.”

Next weekend, Luther unleashed a new special event: DOUBLE-WIDE DEMOLITION. In the center of the track, a ramp made of recycled metal led to the front door of a local sap’s mobile home. Luther had given the guy ten large, a gig as a greeter, and a bunk in the dorm, which everyone was now calling a barracks. From the stands, the old man waved at the camera. The engines ignited. Every single onlooker lost it, screaming. You could hear us from space.

Ladies and gentlemen, I said. Prepare yourselves. But I didn’t know what for. I was terrified. Because I think we’re about to cross a line!

And on line, the Crown Vic wrecking-balled through the wall. The owner had left his pictures up, his bookshelves full. The ruined pages caught up in the dust like leaves.

That night, we had a team meeting. Drivers, grounds and food crew, construction, visitor experience, recruitment—all of us. Luther bowed, waved, smiled, and then handed me a script.

Tonight we embark on a groundbreaking drive. We’re bringing the demolition to the customer. In order to release them from their material lives, we will erase their homes. We will be the Amazon-dot- com of carnage. This customer has paid handsomely, and we need the funds to complete the transformation of this dirt lot into the temple we deserve. I need five drivers—and here, the hands went up, just so many hands—you’re going to the Viewbridge Trailer Park off Lincoln Highway, Lot 21. There is one rule, which is to make the place rubble.

I couldn’t comprehend the words I’d been fed, but the address was familiar. Soon, five drivers had their engines revving. I found Luther at the RAV4 and handed him my questions, each one boiling down to Why? and What is this? I passed the barracks and wondered why exactly we needed a barracks. Colt. It was Colt’s address. Don’t just do something. Sit there.

“Your drug dealer is stealing from the whole community,” Luther said, his head in the roof. “Do you want to waste your life being hustled, or do you want to locate peace?”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said. “You know . . . ahimsa?”

“Pain, pleasure—feelings are only chemicals,” he said. “It’s all the same thing: nothing. And, relax. Colt is not presently inside his domicile.” A muffled noise came from the trunk. I’d given Luther my car, my man-hours, my voice. For all that happened at the Track, I was guilty.

And I still am, listeners—don’t forgive me.

“Brother Todd, I understand. Colt was once your vehicle to enlightenment, and his drugs showed you, for a brief moment, the light,” Luther said. “Let all of that go. The light is inside.”

In the dirt I found the sledgehammer and put it through the back window. Screams came from the trunk. “I quit,” I said. “I want to leave. I’m leaving.”

Luther called a car, and in a minute, a Volkswagen was idling beside me. When I got in, the driver—a woman wearing a welding mask—locked the doors. I didn’t know where to tell her to take me, and I felt relieved when she chose the direction. Luther did not wave goodbye.

Minutes later, there I was, sitting shotgun in a Golf, ten headlights beaming on the home I used to clean. We were a spacecraft that, as the engines revved, was about to ascend. I didn’t try to stop it. That night, I only used my voice to scream. An old woman in curlers watched us from a next-door window, shaking her head. We passed through Colt’s weak walls like a gale force, the plastic siding and plywood shattering around us. I heard cats howl. The radio was on inside. When we reached the backyard what we did was reverse.

Colt stopped coming by the Track on Fridays. I didn’t know what happened to him. I still don’t.

By the end of August, we had a mess hall, fitness center, studios where artists made mosaics from the shards. My mom, newly evicted, kept the gardens stocked with pollinators. There was a position here for anyone. We shipped in red clay for the derby surface because dirt slowed you down. Under the new halogen lights, the slick adobe shined. Turnouts skyrocketed, standing room only. The Track was like a university, an outpost on the moon—the dust of crushed glass embedded in the clay and made everywhere we walked look like a Kingdom.

But it started to feel like a jail to me. I took long worried walks past our blooming gardens, through the junkyard, Brothers and Sisters watching and whispering in their own earthy language. Yes, there were issues with trust. To use my car, I had to ask Luther for gas, so I stopped driving. Nobody talked to me. Even Luther was a cold shoulder. Nights I could hear him fellowshipping with others, the sound of hammers on metal ringing through my sleep. I went to the library, looking for guidance, but the only book left was Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

I still narrated the derbies, though poorly. I rooted for and preached about the inner lives of the cars the crowd hated, the ones they booed—the black Bonneville, the knock-off Oscar Mayer hot dog bus that couldn’t turn, the pink VW bug doing donuts in the back. Don’t trust anyone, Punch Bug. Believe in your true essence! Crowds, kids, members of our hundred-person staff would come to the window of my booth and beat the glass. The cars went at each other like bulls, and I was hoarse-throated and high, yelling: Any place you stand at all you are vulnerable! Truly, there is nowhere to stand! To make it out of this ring, you must find a way to be formless! Oh no, the bus is gunning it. Here she comes. Unless you’ve found a way to disconnect your mind from your physical body, folks, this one’s going to hurt even you fuckers up in the nosebleeds!

The night of my last derby, the Crown Vic, fan favorite, was destroying everyone. Vic could take all manner of damage—windows busted, roof caved, bumpers barely holding on. Painted like one of those rocket popsicles, smashed like a stepped-on flag, I called the Vic French just to spite the audience. The only other car left on the track was the much-hated, all-black Pontiac #0.

Long live number zero! You’re an old soul and misunderstood! Our beautiful audience, listen to me: Go home. This is not healthy!

And the crowd chanted back: LO-SER, LO-SER, CRUSH HIM, PO-LICE CRUIS-ER.

More like, Le Cruisiér, I yelled into the microphone. You French fuck!

The cars raced, and the packed stands turned feral. Luther came to my window. I refused to roll it down. He berated me through the glass, asked who the hell I thought I was.

“If you want to leave, Lieutenant Todd,” he said, “there’s the fucking door!” But he was pointing to his forehead. And bleeding from the nose. Out on the track, the car chase ended when #0 finally drove through the black rubber boundary and escaped, but the hero still needed someone to hit. Luther signaled like a coach. Fifty yards away, Crown Vic turned toward me.

Yes, I said into the mic. Do it.

Vic came, pedal down, straight for my booth. I watched it coming. You’re still listening, so I imagine you want to know what I saw: I saw America take her helmet off.

Here comes a pancake! I narrated, gripping the dashboard. Or should I say CRÊPE!?

And on crêpe, the cop car came through the gate like a fist, but I rolled out of the booth before it went up and over, slamming down on its ceiling, my Diet Mountain Dew all over the fractured glass. Unscathed, I looked out at the crowd, their faces elated, bewildered, mouths agape, children crying, the moon above our whole scene doubled-over with laughter. Luther vanished into the crowd of bystanders. The Vic did donuts in front of the concession stands. I saw nothing sacred, no one I trusted. I heard nothing truthful. Then I saw the #0 abandoned in the corner of the ring, which is where I ran, screaming.

The #0 started right away, but the thing was, it didn’t turn left. Fans pointed and yelled as I drove in circles past the stands. When the gate opened up to let Crown Vic loose on me, and the roar of the stands reached tsunami levels, I gunned it for the exit and crashed through the gate door, knocking down half the pit crew. But I was out. I maneuvered right through the parking lot toward the exit, a break in the wall of tires. The engine rattled like a mob of neighbors knocking at your door. Above me: a hole in the ceiling I could see the stars through. The road opened, but there was still this feeling of being trapped, and I thought of Luther’s theory about how we only go where past roads lead, but when I saw the sign for Route 30, the Pennsylvania highway that’s rumored to run all the way to California, a sense of freedom filled me, and I chose it, but it was a left-hand exit, so the car kept going straight—straight through a red light, down an embankment, and end over end. My heart fell into my head, totaled my brain. Have you ever felt your karma clear? I thought I would have zeroed out. Things broke I didn’t know could break when the car landed on its windshield, obliterating the dash, raining debris—but I wasn’t free of anything.

At the police station, they asked me questions, and I asked for help.

“I think I’m in a cult,” I said, and the room was silent. “But I still feel alone.”

Detective Ulrich explained everything they already had on me— the horse, the trailer I helped demolish (the neighbor lady had ID’d me), the reckless driving, the drug possession. Apparently, she had sent a pair of officers down to the Track recently to investigate Colt’s disappearance, but they ended up selling their cars and quitting the force. Ulrich wanted me to wear a wire. Here it was, another cycle. Again I asked the question I still ask to this day: Will I ever escape a microphone? She patted my hand with hers, and if I’d been the old Todd, I might have fallen in love, followed her to war, but no, I didn’t trust her. Trust for people does not exist in me anymore, regardless of the fact that we are all waves breaking on the same shore. Her voice sounded as if it had fallen into a well, like she was speaking through a straw. I kept slipping into some space between awake and sleep, and she interpreted that as me nodding yes.

Not all heroes wear capes. This I know because Luther had started wearing one. I found him the next night out behind the bleachers, lying facedown on the hood of a Focus. At first I thought it was a red blanket draped across his back. For that second he seemed dead, my order to trick some confession out of him now pointless, the tiny microphone taped to my chest just a moot joke.

“Luther,” I said. “Captain.”

“Lieutenant Brother Todd,” he said, still as a statue, cheek squished against the windshield. “I have a new job for you.” His voice was smoothing out, like he was about to buy something of mine. But I had nothing left to sell, so I rushed into what I’d come to ask.

“Do you remember my friend Colt?” I said, sticking to the script Ulrich had given me. The car groaned as Luther rose, the red cloth Velcroed around his bulging neck. He looked dead. “Friend?” he said. He took hold of my shoulders and looked me in the eyes, his pupils almost nonexistent. “You know what I saw in the Middle East, Todd? Bedlam. Chaos. Even our regiments, our own commanders, inept. I’ve been listening to the Tao on audiobook, and you know what I hear? It’s chaos all the way down. If nothing exists, then there’s sure as hell no order. The bank took my fucking house, and I thought I had nothing. The house my father built was no longer mine. But now? Now I have a sanctuary. As do you, Brother! And the government is worried that we found it! They’re watching us, Todd! I’m seeing things, things I don’t like!”

“Are we going to be attacking any more homes?” I said, enunciating.

“Brother.” He touched my head. “I never had a friend like you. Will you do me a favor?”

His boot was untied, and I swear, some part of me tried to kneel down and knot it.

“Please,” he said. “Get into the back of the Focus.” My legs shook as I stood my ground, but Luther grabbed me by the nose ring, pulled me to the trunk. Inside, I tucked into the fetal position as he slammed the door. “Knock once if you want salvation,” Luther said. “Twice if you need hell.” And for what felt like all the years I had been alive, hail the size of hammerheads fell. The loud was so powerful that I could hear my own soul squeaking. I tucked my nose down into the collar of my T-shirt and whispered, Luther buys cars. Luther buys cars. But the codeword wasn’t working, because I didn’t hear sirens. All I heard was Luther’s sledgehammer falling hard against the trunk, the metal pinching down like teeth, pinning me in. Have you ever tried to picture all the people who love you standing shoulder to shoulder in a field? It was just an empty field. Where was Ulrich? Couldn’t she hear me? Listen: don’t forgive me. Don’t feed tomatoes to horses. Only be someone if you have a reason. Is anyone listening to this? Colt and I wept together burying that animal. Man, if you’re hearing this somehow, email me, we’ll have you on, dude, we’ll let you tell it. I say we as if it isn’t just me alone in this studio. Jesus, I hate this part.

From inside that tiny trunk, I could hear the engines of derby cars, their backfires, the footsteps from our hundred-person crew. The whole Track crept close through the quiet night. It was dark in the trunk, but light poured in when the backseat dropped forward and Luther handed me a mic. I accepted it. His script was simple, a long apology, a rant in which I begged forgiveness.

“Anybody know what this place is?” I whispered my final address. “This is Gettysburg.” And when I got to the part about the field bubbling red with the blood of brothers, I went off script and tried my best to give the police reasons to swarm. “We’re going out tonight in cars. We will demo downtown until it is rubble. Sword Store. Gun Depot. Wine and Spirits. We’re going to meet back here and wait for the rest of town to arrive. They might bring guns, but we’ll show them what to point them at. The world. The rest. The country. They might bring pitchforks, but we’ll put them to work in the fields. If they bring torches, we’ll cook s’mores. If they bring dogs, we’ll have pets.” I wondered if I was the only one who could hear the sirens.

“We built something here, a new way of living,” I said, giving it every ounce of personhood I had left. “Put your hand up if Luther bought your car. Now close your eyes. Keep that hand raised if you would sell it again.”

I Am Mother, Hear Me Howl

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

The first time I saw artist Martha Rosler’s “Semiotics of the Kitchen,” I laughed. Made in 1975, the video depicts a young Rosler wearing a long black dress and apron as she stands in a traditional kitchen. Cooking utensils are laid out on the table in front of her, and with a completely emotionless face, Rosler displays for the camera one utensil for each letter of the alphabet—A for apron, B for bowl, C for chopper, etc. Her face remains affectless throughout the video, but as she demonstrates how to use each tool, her motions become more and more aggressive. An ice pick is speared fitfully into the wooden tabletop and a knife, held like a weapon, is stabbed violently into the air. Even seemingly innocent tools like ladles and measuring spoons are displayed with a ferociousness that seems comical until it isn’t. The video ends with Rosler spelling out the final letters of the alphabet “YMCA” style while holding a knife in each hand. As the camera zooms out, she crosses her arms and shrugs as if to say to her viewers, “What of it?”

My first viewing of Rosler’s presentation left me so stunned that I found myself watching it repeatedly. The piece is brilliant in its commentary about the assumption that domestic work is women’s work, but what struck me most was Rosler’s lack of facial emotion throughout the entire piece. It’s precisely this lack that led me to laughing through the first handful of letters until I eventually realized her emotionless face was actually more terrifying than funny. All her passion was channeled into her movements as she juiced an imaginary lemon, cracked imaginary nuts. It was as if her anger—the anger of the woman relegated to so called “traditional” women’s work—could only be showed through her gestures and actions rather than with her own face and voice, and even then, despite the anger, she still had to continue working.

All her passion was channeled into her movements as she juiced an imaginary lemon, cracked imaginary nuts.

As a society, we know that women are angry. Still, we as women are expected to keep this anger close to us like a secret. If we ever do let it slip out, we are labeled “hysterical,” and “crazy”—descriptions that are meant to discredit us and our pent-up rage. Rachel Yoder’s recent debut book Nightbitch explores this anger through her main character, a woman so angry that she believes she is turning into a dog.

A new mother of a young boy, Nightbitch—for that is the name she gives herself—has left her “dream job” of “running a community [art] gallery” in order to stay home full time with her son—a gendered choice made by Yoder that feels deliberate amongst the book’s commentary on women’s work—while her husband, a man who makes far more money than she ever did, travels nearly full time throughout the week for his job as an engineer. For much of the week, Nightbitch lives like a single, stay-at-home mom, filling her days by taking her son to mundane social activities and trying to get him to fall asleep in his own bed. She is exhausted from this mother work, but when her husband comes home on the weekends, she finds that her work does not stop even though there are now two adults able to care for their only child instead of just her.

When Nightbitch tells her husband she suspects she might be turning into a dog, he thinks she is being funny. He does not believe that the mysterious lump on her lower back is really the beginnings of a tail, and he brushes off her concerns about a large patch of hair that has begun sprouting near the nape of her neck. Still, Nightbitch remains convinced of her canine attributes. Throughout her days alone with her child, Nightbitch quietly seethes over the humdrum routine of childcare that has become her life, and she loathes the group of mothers that often attend the local library’s “Book Babies” program. To her, these mothers appear like perfect, put together moms, fully dedicated to their children. She despises them for their seeming lack of struggle, and she tries to avoid them at all costs. However, one day, a pack of dogs who she believes to be the Book Babies mothers in disguise, show up on her front lawn and begin coaxing her into a new, dogged way of life.

She develops a taste for raw meat and begins going out at night to run wild and naked through the neighborhood.

The crux of Nightbitch revolves around Nightbitch’s transformation into a domesticated dog. She develops a taste for raw meat and begins going out at night to run wild and naked through the neighborhood. During these outings, she is a savage beast hunting small animals and capturing them with her bare teeth. She is full of rage and desire, her pent-up emotions from the day spilling out into her dog form. She thinks to herself that “she likes the idea of being a dog, because she can bark and snarl and not have to justify it,” and “if she could not be part of the world of ambition and money and careers, she want[s] to leave it behind entirely and recede into the wildness of her deepest dreams, of her corporeal yearning.” Being a dog is therapeutic for her. It allows her her anger without denying her herself.

Nightbitch can be seen as a domestic take on the werewolf parable, but instead Nightbitch turns into a weredog. Her motherness, that thing about her that is devoted to caring for and nurturing her child, keeps her from morphing into the wild animal of a wolf—her domestication and motherly warmth still present in the form of a common house pet. This domesticated transformation only adds to the idea that mothers, much like our everyday canine companions, are always expected to be a source of comfort and guardianship, as if this house-trained lifestyle is precisely what women have been bred for. Still, her transformation is not without its savageness, a trait she shares with the many female werewolves throughout film.

Women have a lot to be angry about. From a very early age, we’re taught to think of ourselves as the lesser sex. We learn that our bodies aren’t truly our own but rather the property of any boy or man who feels attracted to us. We become accustomed to cat calls and lewd remarks thrown our way, and every woman understands the experience of being told by a stranger that we should smile more. Magazines and advertisements tell us how we should present our bodies. We dread weight gain and blemished skin. We learn to apply makeup so we can appear more attractive and desirable to others. If we aren’t married by a certain age, we’re asked why? If we are married, we’re asked how soon before we have kids? If, God forbid, we decide not to do either of those things, we’re called “selfish,” as if our bodies were never really ours to inhabit but rather nothing more than a vessel for the men in our lives to fill up with children. If we do have children, we are expected to devote everything to them, and if we get angry or frustrated with our newfound lack of self, we are called “bad mothers” and looked at with disdain and pity. If we are women of color or trans women or both, we are constantly looked at with suspicion.

In Soraya Chemaly’s book Rage Becomes Her, she explains, “there is no time of life when [women’s] anger is acceptable. Teenage girls are spoiled, silly, or moody for standing up for themselves. Older women, fed up and saying so, are bitter castrators. Angry women are butches, lesbians, and man haters. We are called Sad Asian Girls, Hot-tempered Latinas, Crazy White Women, and Angry Black Women. It goes without saying that “angry women” are “ugly women,” the cardinal sin in a world where women’s worth, safety, and glory are reliant on their sexual and reproductive value to men around them.” So yes, women are angry and without anywhere to channel our anger, it’s no wonder that women like Nightbitch dream about turning into wolves.

The history of the werewolf dates back centuries, and the depiction of the werewolf in literature and film remains a popular tale today. Typically, when a werewolf is mentioned in stories, it’s frequently portrayed as a man who turns into a wolf-like creature on the night of a full moon. It’s common knowledge that werewolves can only be killed with silver bullets, and if you’re bit by a werewolf but not killed, you, too, will join them in their savagery. Female werewolves are rarely portrayed, but when they are, they typically seem to embrace their transformation rather than fear it like their male counterparts. If we look at films like Ginger Snaps and Trick ‘r Treat—both of which portray female werewolves in one way or another— we find groups of women utterly unafraid of the rage of the wolf that resides within.

We are called Sad Asian Girls, Hot-tempered Latinas, Crazy White Women, and Angry Black Women.

In the cult classic Ginger Snaps, two teenage sisters Brigitte and Ginger are forced to reckon with Ginger’s transformation into not just a woman but also a werewolf. Bitten by a werewolf on the night she gets her period for the first time, she begins transforming into a beast. At first, she’s terrified of the changes—an increase in body hair, sharpened teeth and nails, and the presence of a tail—but as Brigitte races to try and find a cure for Ginger’s transformation, Ginger begins to find herself enticed by her inevitable wolf-like form. “It feels so good, Brigitte,” she tells her sister. “I’m a god damn force of nature. I feel like I could do just about anything.”

Before getting bit by a werewolf, Ginger and Brigitte were social outcasts. Neither were considered attractive by society’s standards, and they actively avoided everything they perceived to be feminine and pure. But as soon as Ginger begins menstruating and boys begin to notice her, it’s clear that her life as an innocent girl is over. Thus, she is faced with a choice: allow herself to succumb to the societal expectations of women or channel her rage into the werewolf inside of her, taking full control over herself, her emotions, and everyone in her life.

To some, Ginger’s choice might read as a lack of control, but I don’t think so. Much like Nightbitch and her recently pregnant body, Ginger’s body is going through a hormonal transformation (not just a werewolf one). Like Nightbitch, these alterations have an effect on Ginger but also on those around her, signaling to others that both women have changed. For Ginger, this means she’s now perceived as a sexual being, something to be desired. For Nightbitch, she is viewed as a mother body, an objectified version of the woman whose only purpose is to feed and care for her young. Because they are both now perceived more as object than as human being, Ginger and Nightbitch come to understand their inner rage. Described as “that single, white-hot light at the center of the darkness of herself,” Nightbitch, like Ginger, decides to make something of this newfound fury by embracing their rage and transforming into their respective dog and wolf forms. By doing so, they find power in themselves, and it’s precisely this power that gives them the strength they need to stand up to society’s standards and fight back.

Puberty and pregnancy aren’t the only ways women are objectified. We also find ourselves diminished to only our bodies by way of what we wear, eat, shave or don’t shave. Often, female rage goes hand in hand with society’s constant messaging that we must look and behave certain ways to be desired, as if being desired is the only goal. Trick ‘r Treat, a horror anthology film written and directed by Michael Dougherty, includes a story about Laurie, a young teenage girl headed to a party in the woods with her sister and friends on Halloween night. Forced to wear a sexualized Red Riding Hood costume—a nod, no doubt, to the notorious fairytale famously involving the Big Bad Wolf—Laurie seems uncomfortable. Not used to being sexualized in this way, she travels to the party alone, and along the way, she is attacked by a local serial killer. Just when the viewer thinks she’s about to be killed, her and her friends reveal themselves to be a pack of female werewolves bent on luring unsuspecting boys and men to the secluded forest where they murder them before transforming from their traditionally feminine bodies into savage, rageful beasts. The women feed on the bodies of the men all while their own bodies crackle and break into hairy, clawed wolves. Having shed their human forms, the women gain power from their “ugly” wolf selves, suggesting that the typical female form—bodies that are constantly subjected to standards that encourage hairlessness, thin figures, and perfect skin—holds women back from embracing their true, savage selves.

Her body, no longer reduced to society’s standards of femininity, is free to be and do whatever she pleases.

When Nightbitch turns into a wolf, she is no longer “that woman anymore, that mother and wife.” She imagines herself ripping out the throats of “men asleep on benches” in the park, and she’s “overwhelmed by her strength.” Her body, no longer reduced to society’s standards of femininity, is free to be and do whatever she pleases. The female body is always being critiqued, but if the female body turns into a werewolf, it can no longer be subjected to criticisms simply because the werewolf body embraces everything that society tells a woman she must reject. Entirely covered in hair, there is no such thing as a Brazilian bikini wax for a werewolf. Mani-pedis do not work on a werewolf’s tough nails, and you can forget about using a pumice stone on rough patches of werewolf skin. To willingly choose the werewolf body is to systematically reject society’s chosen female one, and this choice (or rejection) almost always leads the woman to a place of power. Female werewolves are becoming more and more popular in literature and film. The Howling and its sequel depict strong, rage driven female werewolves that refuse to give up their wolf-like powers. The Company of Wolves can be seen as a precursor of sorts to Ginger Snaps, exploring female adolescence by way of the werewolf parable. YA fiction is filled with stories depicting girls and women turning into wolves, and a handful of comics display similar tales. In Emil Ferris’ breathtaking graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters, 10-year-old Karen Reyes draws herself in her notebooks as a small, unassuming wolf girl, and the release of Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s latest graphic novel Squad tells the tale of four adolescent girls who use their werewolf powers to punish boys for their crimes against other girls. Much like Nightbitch, these stories all embrace the idea of women and girls turning into werewolves to regain a sense of power in the world. In Rage Becomes Her, Chemaly describes the often “common belief that, as women, we are all mothers in waiting, and that, as mothers, we will happily sacrifice our bodies, health, work, and sense of selves,” but this outdated way of thinking simply isn’t true. Women are raging. We’re angry and we’re tired of looking for ways to displace our anger without getting blamed or discredited. Like Nightbitch, many of us “[inflate] with mother-rage” every single day over the sheer amount of unbelievable work, paid and unpaid, that is asked of us. Chemaly suggests that “for women, healthy anger management doesn’t require us to exert more control but, rather, less.” And so I ask you all, in the midst of your own, terrible, unique, beautiful anger, to find your inner wolf, and to howl.

7 Novels About, Or By, Folk Musicians

Posted on by Intern Electric Lit

It’s easy to make fun of the folkniks—those mostly college kids in the late 50s and early 60s who suddenly turned to sea shanties, work songs, and banjos for their musical pleasure. At least, on screen they have served as reliable joke fodder. From the soporific earnestness of the cast in A Mighty Wind, to the pathetic bumbling of Inside Llewyn Davis, to naïve Greenwich Village scenesters in Mad Men, folk fans and their comrades have recurred as fools in modern day media portrayals, inflexibly committed to impossible ideals of authenticity. 

Cover of Svec's novel, featuring football goal post

There are a few so-called folkniks in my new novel, Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs, and I’ve written more than a few jokes at their expense. It is hard to resist. However, I also wanted to grapple with some of the deeper complexities of the North American folk revival, still ongoing, and the long process by which grassroots musical traditions have been variously preserved, deployed, and/or reimagined. What if authenticity was not to be found out in a field or seaside village, but rather to be built in and through communication technologies? What if Woody Guthrie’s fascist-killing guitar could be repurposed or modulated by singers and citizens alike? 

Or, what if a grad student could find, in the basement of Library and Archives Canada, tapes of the folk songs of the Canadian Football League, documented by a late communist song collector from the 60s named Staunton R. Livingston, who had developed a revolutionary philosophy of phonography? What if that grad student could mobilize this knowledge by building an artificially intelligent database of folk songs? What personal, professional, and political destinies would then unfold?

I read a lot of scholarly (and pseudo-scholarly) writing about North American folk music as I researched. I also began to realize that there are already a handful of interesting novels out there connected, with varying degrees of directness, to folk revivalism. Here are some of the ones I like best.

Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem

Three generations of activists in New York City reckon with the influence of Rose, their difficult matriarch. Rose’s daughter Miriam and her folk-singing husband Thomas seek meaningful ways to contribute to history; decades later their Quaker son connects with his father’s legacy; and a stepson, the scholar Cicero, finds himself immersed in the milieu of academic critical theory. With characteristic verve and style, Lethem weaves relationships between individuals and collectivities, history and action, from the Popular Front to Occupy Wall Street.

The Favorite Game by Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen had already published four books by the time his first album was released in 1967. In The Favorite Game, we follow Lawrence Breavman—perhaps the horniest character ever in Canadian fiction—skulking and longing across the streets of Montreal. As Breavman follows his instincts by becoming a poet, he also moves alongside, and then in opposition to, the family, friends, lovers, and city by which he has come to find himself entangled. In his debut novel, Cohen gives us a sizzling, ironic, proto-hippy love letter to desire and its immortalization as art.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was less a musician per se than a folklore and music collector, and author. However, she incorporated music into some of her literary projects in the 1930s. She displays a folklorist’s attention to speech and myth in the writing of her most celebrated book, Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel centers on a young Black woman in Florida who seeks to find her way in love, through a sequence of uniquely challenging partnerships, on her own terms. The evocative imagery of the narrator, and the no less memorable rhetorical power of the characters, make Hurston’s 1937 novel an entrancing work to this day.

The Diviners by Margaret Laurence

Part of a cycle of novels involving Margaret Laurence’s fictional town of Manawaka, The Diviners sees Morag Gunn reaching middle age, floundering in her work as a writer of fiction. The text dovetails between present and past: Morag flees her isolating hometown to pursue a life of the mind, then becomes trapped by marriage with a professor. She connects sporadically with the wandering Jules, a Métis country musician, as she raises their child—mostly alone. Ultimately, it is through Jules’ rarely sung original ballads that both Morag and her daughter find the courage to carry on as storytellers. 

Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie

Long before Jack Kerouac and his speed-addled buddies hit the road, Woody Guthrie had already been there and written a book about it. Bound for Glory is often designated as an autobiography, and it does follow the life of the hugely influential artist from his early years in Oklahoma, marred by a series of family tragedies, to his arrival in New York City as a protest singer. And yet, boasting several memorable sequences—including his days on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, and a climactic, confrontational performance at the Rainbow Room—Guthrie deploys a novelist’s sense of setting and character. I think of it as Huckleberry Finn meets Steinbeck.

Festival Man by Geoff Berner

Geoff Berner’s biting klezmer-punk folk songs are often delivered from the lofty vantage point of sage or seer. But in his novel Festival Man, he has some fun taking on the voice of a less trustworthy character. The shady manager Campbell Ouiniette has needed to take drastic action at the Calgary Folk Fest, his biggest act having abandoned him to tour with a famous Icelandic pop star. Written in the form of found journal entries, this hilarious romp through the contradictions and outright absurdities of the contemporary Canadian folk fest circuit leaves no sacred cow untipped.  

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

Polaris Prize–winning musician and artist Tanya Tagak is internationally regarded for her powerful, inventive take on the tradition of Inuk throat singing. In her debut novel, Split Tooth, she tells the story of a young girl coming of age in Nunavut. Assembling poetry and mythology, autofiction and magical realism, prose fragments and drawings, Tagaq explores the impacts of sexual violence, the landscape of the North, and the experience of childbirth. With stunning language and fearless experimentalism, Split Tooth is a remarkable achievement. 

Poems That Bear Witness to State Violence and Insurgency in Assam

Posted on by Jo Lou

Aruni Kashyap’s debut poetry collection, There Is No Good Time for Bad News, tells the story of India’s diverse and strife-riven borderlands, which have been neglected in Indian books, films, and television shows that have become increasingly popular in the U.S. Kashyap’s homeland, the northeastern border state of Assam, has witnessed an armed insurgency against the Indian government since 1979. The Assam depicted in the poems—the distinctive cultural identity, linguistic diversity, and varied tribal communities alongside its resistance to violent nationalistic integration—offers a powerful counterpoint to the standardized Indian identity enshrined in mainstream narratives: Hindu, heterosexual, and high-caste.

Kashyap’s poems bear witness to the enduring effects of living under protracted state violence. He draws on a range of first-person narrators, from victims and survivors to insurgents and soldiers, to express how violence ripples across generations, and shapes both the oppressor and the oppressed. Crucially, oppressor and oppressed are not mutually exclusive categories: even as his narrators highlight state coercion, they emphasize the ethnic insurgency’s xenophobia towards migrants.      

I spoke with Aruni Kashyap over email about identity, violence, and unexpected moments of beauty.

Pritika Pradhan: Your poems take the form of monologues by a range of characters. Could you tell us about your experience of writing in different poetic voices?

If we don’t critique India’s dark aspects, its human rights abuses, its hollow claims to being the world’s largest democracy, we cannot complain about it either.

Aruni Kashyap: The poems are the result of fieldwork I conducted almost a decade ago—the stories, anecdotes, and shared experiences of the survivors of the insurgency in my home state of Assam, one of many insurgencies in Northeastern India. At the time I was writing my first novel, The House With a Thousand Stories, set amid the insurgency. I grew up during this conflict and witnessed its effects on several members of my family. One of my cousins was tortured. An uncle never remained the same after one of his closest friends was shot dead while they were sitting and chatting in a public place. In high school, my best friend’s cousin was accidentally killed during the Secret Killings of Assam, a period of alleged extra-judicial killings when hundreds of people were killed allegedly by the Indian government to suppress the militancy, which is also the backdrop of my novel.

When I set out to write my novel, however, I was pursuing a master’s degree in English at Delhi University, and found it challenging to write at this remove. So I began traveling to the rural areas of Assam to talk to survivors of the conflict. Most of the poems in this collection resulted from this research—witness accounts and experiences that did not make it to the novel, but which I wanted to highlight and celebrate in some way. In writing these fictionalized monologues, I drew on the testimonio genre of Latin American literature, in which oppressive state agents are held responsible by the survivors of state terror by telling their stories. Writing in monologues enables me to retain a certain kind of immediacy and urgency that gives the speaker and the poem a lot of power.

PP: Your testimonial poems chronicle the history of Assam—and of India as a modern democracy—from the 1962 war to the insurgency from 1979 onwards to the contemporary Indian diaspora. How did this history shape your experience growing up in Assam, and your desire to be a writer and poet?

AK: I don’t want to romanticize tragedy, but I think growing up in a place where life is uncertain—where you are treated by the state as less than equal citizens—has enabled me to understand the differences between, and the value of joy and sorrow much more deeply. I know the value of joy because I have felt sorrow and tragedy so deeply. In that sense, I have had an emotionally rich life due to my upbringing in Assam. The public loss, the strong sense of belonging and identity, our complicated relationship with the larger narrative of the Indian state: these historical forces have made me who I am as a person, a scholar, a writer, and a teacher. 

I think I would have been a writer anyway, even if I was born in Bhutan, which is known as one of the world’s happiest countries. However, as an indigenous, queer writer from a historically racialized and marginalized location, it is my duty to write what I have witnessed. Otherwise, no one would know that such things happened to my community. Writing is also a way of making sense of myself, by narrating the self.

If we don’t critique India’s dark aspects, its human rights abuses, its hollow claims to being the world’s largest democracy, we cannot complain about it either, because if you want a better country, you have to critique it. It is the best thing one can do as a citizen and a writer: to question. In order to achieve that, I had to give the poems global literary solidarity by borrowing the elements of the testimonio. So the collection not only offers a critique of democracy, but also brings the individual perpetrators to a public trial, in a text that would be publicly available for everyone to read. It was artistically challenging to reach there, but it started from a simple place: to narrate what I witnessed, what I was told. I was also inspired by the work of Carolyn Forché, who popularized poetry of witness among American readers. 

PP: The growing canon of mainstream Indian English writers is largely silent on the violence committed by the Indian state against its own citizens in the borderlands. Why do you think this is the case? Does this silence attest to the relative privilege of Indian English writers—most of whom are upper class, upper caste, and male —and their complicity in the Indian state’s Hindu nationalist project?

We need a balance of stories: the story of diasporic melancholia, as well as the story from the borderlands that interrogates the idea of India and shifts our understanding of Indian literature.

AK: In Assam, I went to an English-medium school, where most students were from upper-middle-class families, with little connection to the rural areas where the insurgency and its consequences were brutal. It was in these sites that the violence orchestrated by the state forces was most palpable, where death was every day, torture was normal, and a bomb blast was occasional. But when I talked about these things to my classmates, many did not believe me. In fact, there was a huge disparity in how the conflict was covered in the English media in Assam, and in the local, Assamese-language media (which was bigger but had local reach due to linguistic limitations). When one of the now-folded independent weeklies, Budhbar (“Wednesday”), edited by the slain journalist and novelist Parag Kumar Das, published investigative reports of army atrocities, influential Assamese intellectuals accused them of exaggeration and sensationalism. So you can understand how class-blindness works.

Mainstream Indian English writers and Indian American writers are largely silent about the human rights abuses in India’s borderlands simply because most of them don’t know about it. The mainstream media, in its complicity with the state, does not cover it. In addition, mainstream writers benefit from their privileged position in the status quo. This is reflected in the content of their often beautifully written books: people who can move from one part of the world to another at the drop of a hat; characters who always go to study in rich private universities in the West. It is a body of work that is self-affirming and self-congratulatory, and consolidates the idea of India, while seldom looking inward and critiquing itself. 

PP: The silence of mainstream Indian English and Indian American writers is ironic, considering their focus on anti-immigrant racism and diasporic loneliness. Yet the racism, casteism, and colorism within Indian society and the diaspora is ignored.

AK: This silence is intrinsically linked to the story of Indian immigration. When I moved to the US in 2011 to attend graduate school, I was appalled by the anti-Blackness I witnessed in the Indian diaspora. I was part of a mailing list of Indian immigrants, who would post racist memes about Black public figures. I was truly shocked, and it took me a long time to realize this was because the bulk of the Indian diaspora is a privileged group of upper-caste and upper-class people who have self-selected to emigrate and pursue a life here, and have brought casteism and racism with them. Knowing English is itself the result of privilege in India, with only ten percent of the population being able to read and write in English; of this, only a very select few can attend a private school in India, and apply abroad for their undergraduate or masters. The class and caste privilege that enabled this select group to migrate also insulated them from the reality in the borderlands, where villages in Nagaland and Assam were burnt, where the Indian army dropped bombs on its own citizens in Mizoram: they did not know because they could afford not to know.

However, I am less worried about Indian immigrants who attend Howdy Modi rallies, and openly wear their Islamophobia, homophobia, casteism, and racism. Of even greater concern are those privileged Indian celebrities and Hindu advocacy groups in the United States, who use the language of social justice to center themselves in the American liberal space, by clinging to their marginality, trying to monetize it, while tacitly supporting fascist regimes back home.

I am particularly worried by the so-called “Modi Democrats” who vote for the Democratic Party in the US, even as they support the party of Hindu fundamentalism in India. And this is enabled by the inability of white liberals to read caste and class among Indian diasporas. For the well-meaning white liberal, the brown Indian is simply another person of color, and hence it is hard to see them as perpetrators of racism and colorism. Mainstream Indian American celebrities exploit this simplified liberal view to their advantage. For its own sake, the American literary landscape should listen to Indian writers from marginal spaces. 

However, the global conversation about Indian literature is gradually changing. There is increasing interest in India and in the US in texts from marginalized regions and underrepresented communities, often in translation. However, such conversations are happening in the margins: on the pages of small magazines, small presses, and independent, progressive online magazines such as Electric Literature, Warscapes, and Catapult. But that’s not a bad thing, right? Let the places in the center move to the margins and find us. We need a balance of stories: the story of diasporic melancholia, where the student eats a tortilla and thinks about chapati, as well as the story from Kashmir or Nagaland that interrogates the idea of India and shifts our understanding of Indian literature. 

PP: What distinguishes your poems is your recognition that one can be oppressed while oppressing those more marginalized than oneself. The female narrator of “No One Would Hear Me If I Screamed” wonders why insurgents “terrorize [migrants]/ who were working harder than we were.” How does violence blur the line between oppressor and oppressed?

AK: Firstly, I don’t think violence solves anything. However, I do identify why rebel groups, after years of erasure and marginalization, take up violence as the last resort. Once you have chosen violence as the method, it consumes you and makes you a perpetrator. Eventually, it is the common people who suffer.

Assamese nationalist rhetoric presents the rebel groups sympathetically, as being forced to take up the larger cause of liberation. But it is hard for me to accept that narrative when the insurgents practice their own kind of bigotry, by turning on the common people settled in Assam from other regions, banning Hindi films, and so on, to send a message to the rest of the country. I can identify that this struggle is between the powerful Indian state and the oppressed people, but as a writer, I cannot only see that while overlooking other things. So I try my best to provide a detailed picture. And the project is ongoing: the mistakes I make in this project will hopefully not recur in the future. 

PP: Several of your narrators are women, who are both nurturers and upholders of communal tradition and memory, and targets of traditional patriarchal and state violence. How does having women narrators affects your understanding and portrayal of suffering?

AK: I have women narrators because most of the survivors are women, and they suffered the most during the insurgency. As men left the villages to join the rebel groups, they suffered the loss of their loved ones, and again when these men were killed by the army. Women were tortured and raped by the army during counter-insurgency operations. So the women have stories that are even unknown to the men. Most of the people I spoke to were women. They are able to share not only the public story but also the intimate, daily stories in vivid detail. 

PP: It seems to me that your poems expand the understanding of South Asian literature to encompass traditions and influences not necessarily associated with South Asian, Indian, or postcolonial writing.

As an artist, it is my job to find structure, joy, and beauty in the most horrible situations.

AK: My work is shaped by several literary traditions: Assamese, oral, British, American, African, and so on. If that expands the understanding of South Asian literature in the US, I will be delighted. I hope we will read more texts in translation, from other marginalized literary traditions, to expand and enrich fixed ideas of what is a good story. One of the reasons the US publishing culture is so insular is that they read so little in translation. 

PP: Moments of unexpected beauty and tenderness are interspersed with terror in your poems. Two boys play while discussing how to survive a riot in “At Age Eleven, My Friend Tells Me Not to Wear Polyester Shirts.” It seems to me that such moments serve both as a balm for the violence and pain, and to amplify them.

AK: You will be surprised to know that until I moved to Delhi, I did not know that everyday issues such as public health or inflation could make the front page of a newspaper, because I was so used to the news of bomb blasts and gun battles. I think living in such traumatic circumstances ensured that we enjoy life to fullest. Assam still celebrates one of the largest book festivals I have known: the Assam Sahitya Sabha’s biennial conference, which attracts around half a million people. In fact, we sometimes complain that we in Assam are a bit too happy, that we celebrate too many festivals. I guess that is a way of coping? Perhaps this sort of obliviousness enables us to appreciate beauty. So the poems have everything: beauty and pain. As an artist, it is my job to find structure, joy, and beauty in the most horrible situations. Writing is a way of making sense of the chaos. 

10 Books About Alienated Women in Their 20s

Posted on by Jo Lou

In March 2020, I turned 23. Simultaneously, the pandemic unfolded and my college closed, I flew back to my home in Southern California, I was fired on my birthday, and I was newly single. A week before all of this, I sat in Central Park and read all of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh in a single sitting.

For the months that followed, I told myself that 2020 could be like my year of doing nothing. Like the narrator, I’m a (potentially unlikable) woman** in my 20s who should’ve been “doing life” better. I couldn’t find a job, but I had gone tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a private New York City college education. All of my friends and cousins were in long-term committed relationships, but I couldn’t stop texting my emotionally unavailable ex. After years of recovery, my body image plummeted, and I couldn’t look at a pair of jeans without crying.

Being a woman in your 20s who isn’t following a traditional, cis heteronormative path is like competing in an obstacle course where you are designed to fail—think Wipeout. Social media added to the blows. I spitefully scrolled through an Instagram feed of throwback pictures of real college graduations, ultrasound photos, engagements, and job announcements. Falling out of place from “traditional young womanhood,” made me anxious. 

It can feel isolating and unrelenting to simply exist in your 20s. Thankfully, there is a budding genre that according to one Goodreads Review can be titled “yet another tale about an alienated woman having a quarter midlife crisis.” These narratives capture a world of malaise where you don’t have to have it all together, where you can be bad at your job, and a disappointment to your family, and unapologetically bitter. 

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Broder’s second novel focuses on a 24-year-old Rachel, who has body image issues, mommy issues, and an addiction to frozen yogurt. One day, her usual froyo clerk is gone and his replacement is his beautiful older sister, Miriam. The catch? She is an Orthodox Jewish woman. The two women fall into an intense and messy situationship, where Rachel is driven by a hunger for love, faith, and fulfillment.

Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kōno, translated by Lucy North

Published in 2018 but set in 1960s Japan, Toddler-Hunting is brimming with tales of unsatisfied young women. The titular story follows a young woman who is obsessed with buying clothes for boy toddlers. In “Ants Swarm,” Fumiko is in the midst of an unwanted pregnancy scare. Her husband secretly wants a child, but she daydreams of abortions, punishing the child, and being masochistically beaten while in labor. The entire collection circles unlikable and selfish women who value their pleasures and achievements over what society tells them they should—a clean home, a husband, and children.

Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

When I read the description for this book, I realized, “I have never had an original experience in my life.” Mona, a 23-year-old Chicana, graduates college during a recession only to find herself jobless, and back in her dysfunctional parent’s house. On top of that, (thankfully unlike my life), Mona becomes the subject of a viral meme, “Sad Millenial,” after a reporter captures her reaction to losing the finance job she had lined up. Because of this, she mopes around Tucson, smoking weed in an existential funk, until her mom encourages her to join a support group for job seekers. 

Luster

Luster by Raven Leilani 

Edie and Eric match on a dating app and sext for a month before their first date at Six Flags. Edie, a Black flâneur in her early 20s, doesn’t mind that Eric is in an open marriage. That is until she loses her job for a myriad of reasons—hooking up with coworkers on the clock, watching porn from her computer, and sending sexually explicit emails—and she winds up living in Eric’s marital home. Luster is a so-awkward-it’s-painful tale that takes on a glittering world of its own through Leilani’s prose. You can read an excerpt in Recommended Reading.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Heathers meets Sorry to Bother You, this book takes a look at an MFA program in New England where the girls are up to something. Samantha is not interested in the clique of rich girls in her fiction cohort—who all speak as a unit and refer to each other as “Bunny”—but after she receives an invite to one of their “workshops,” she can’t help but attend. However, things quickly spiral out of control in a sardonic and twisted way.

Sketchtasy by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore 

The queer scene in 1990s Boston was highly divided among race, sexuality, and gender. Angel, an early 20s “Queen,” is desperate to find a place free of the hatred and discrimination that plagues her daily life. She finds herself captivated by the club scene and begins using heavy drugs to evade her past traumas. Overflowing with parties, failed attempts at sobriety, and the ever-present threat of contracting HIV, Sketchtasy grieves for a community few even acknowledged.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

In an impeccable balancing act, Zauner—more commonly known as the frontperson of Japanese Breakfast—details her isolating childhood, aimless adolescence, and distance from her Korean identity and culture while taking care of her terminally ill mother. From the first sentence, the reader knows that her mother will die and Zauner will “cry in H Mart,” but the loss stings on every page. This memoir especially answers the questions of how do we connect to heritage when we have lost our roots, and how to cope with the death of a parent when you don’t feel like you are someone to be proud of yet.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

After an encounter with a racist security guard, Emira—a 26-year-old babysitter—is promoted to “nanny.” Her employer is a 30-something Alix, a writer/influencer/mom/feminist/Hilary Clinton campaigner, and totally not a performative ally. Emira’s new boyfriend happens to be Alix’s ex-boyfriend who ruined her reputation in high school. Emira finds herself stuck in the middle of their white ally struggle, as they drain her agency in her working and personal life. Reid captures feeling powerless as those around you use you for leverage.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

Gilda is a 27-year-old-lesbian and atheist who anxiously dreads the demise of everyone and everything around her. Her neighbor’s cat goes missing in a house fire, she breaks her arm in a car accident, and then she accidentally accepts a job as a receptionist at a Catholic Church. But then she learns that the previous receptionist, an elderly woman named Grace, might have been a victim of an “Angel of Death” serial killer. Gilda and the church staff then take it upon themselves to seek justice for Grace.

The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter

The unnamed narrator in this novel is born with a knot in her stomach. A knot that is so large it is visible when she is dressed. The narrator desires to be “normal,” which is hard in a world where her family has a meat quarry and there are rivers of thighs. The Book of X is an intensely character-driven novel told in fragments, where the use of surrealism expertly highlights how womanhood intersects with disability and body image issues.

Your Fall Reading Horoscope

Posted on by Jo Lou

Imagine: You’re curled up in the corner of your favorite coffee shop, wearing a striking combination of knits/flannel/denim, drinking your favorite coffee and watching the leaves fall outside. You pull out a tote bag with an enviably cool logo and reach inside to pull out the perfect book—but what book is it? In an effort to help you live out your autumnal cafe fantasy, I’ve consulted the stars and found out which new books will be perfect for each zodiac sign. Read on to find out the new releases you should curl up with this fall.  

Aries

How to Wrestle a Girl by Venita Blackburn

This collection of short stories and flash fiction stars girls, women, and queer people who are fighting their way through their lives with scraped knuckles, bruised knees, and very little fear. I think more than a few Aries can relate to that. Read our interview with Venita Blackburn about writing for young women of color. 

A Long Way from Douala by Max Lobe, translated by Ros Schwartz

When Jean’s older brother, Roger, runs away from home in the wake of their father’s death, Jean sets out with his friend, Simon, to find Roger before he can get to the Nigerian border. This funny, affecting, boisterous journey through Cameroon will keep Aries on their toes from start to finish. 

Taurus

Snowflake by Louise Nealon

This family novel/coming-of-age story about a girl growing up on a farm outside of Dublin who begins commuting to Trinity College for classes has everything a Taurus might want: a distant mother figure, a brother obsessed with dead authors, a young women uncertain about her fate and her place in life, a farm. Any book set on a farm immediately goes to the Tauruses, that’s just a fact.

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

Two women in a refugee camp in Greece—one a doctor, one a Syrian refugee—become bonded over a secret illness. Telescope explores the very Taurus themes of home, family, and bodies.

Gemini

Cairo Circles by Doma Mahmoud

Set in both New York City and Cairo in the early 2000s to post-Arab Spring, this book follows a cast of characters across years and continents, through terrorist attacks and romance and kidnappings. Geminis will enjoy reading a book that lets them peer in at the lives of such complex and flawed characters. Read our conversation with Doma Mahmoud about class and privilege in Cairo.

The Pessimists by Bethany Ball

This book is so Gemini I’m going to scream. Set in small-town Connecticut, The Pessimists follows various upper-crust-y couples whose children all go to the same private school. It’s gossipy and lavish and picks apart the wealthy elite in the most satisfying way. I can already feel all the Geminis reading this clicking “add to cart”. Check out our reading list by Bethany Ball about the weirdest schools in literature.

Cancer

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers

Love Songs follows a Black woman tracing her family history back through the generations to understand who she is and where she came from. As if that plot isn’t Cancer-y enough, please note that this book is literally the first novel of an award-winning poet. Read our interview with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about ancestral legacy. 

Savage Tongues by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

A young woman returns to Spain with her best friend to clean out her dead father’s apartment and finds herself confronted with a trauma she’d managed to keep buried since she was a teenager. Savage Tongues deals with grief and memory in a way that Cancers will surely appreciate. Read our interview with Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi about trauma narratives. 

Leo

The Book Of Mother by Violaine Huisman, translated by Leslie Camhi

In this novel about the difficulties of loving a Leo, a daughter must reckon with her love for her wonderful, volatile mother when her mother suffers a breakdown and becomes a more dangerous version of herself. I know Leos prefer to see themselves at their best, but it can be fun to see how you might look at your worst, too.

The Eternal Audience of One by Rémy Ngamije

When Séraphin, a cool Namibian millennial, finally gets to move out of his hometown in Namibia and to the exciting city of Cape Town, he’s thrilled to finally kickstart his life with parties, friends, and sex. He gets all of this—but also, of course, much more than he expected. Séraphin is a textbook Leo, and this book is sure to appeal to any Leos who’ve been craving adventure lately. Read our interview with Rémy Ngamije about writing a novel about immigrant life in Africa. 

Virgo

Hao by Ye Chun

This short collection about language and silence is perfect for thoughtful Virgo. The stories in Hao span centuries and explore the varied experiences of women and their relationships to language, and how this shapes the world around them. Virgos love watching the tiny ripples of big events, and this collection always leans into the ripples. Read the short story “Stars” from Hao here. 

We Imagined It Was Rain by Andrew Siegrist

The loosely connected short stories are all linked by water, and a clear-sighted understanding of complex emotions. Virgos are famously straight-shooters (sometimes to a fault), and they’re sure to love this collection that pierces to the emotional heart of many different, complicated situations. 

Libra

Fault Lines by Emily Itami

Forbidden romance, illicit affairs, a beautiful city—do I have your attention, Libra? This novel about a housewife in Tokyo who falls in love with a man who isn’t her husband and must choose between her old life and her new one sounds like it was written just for Libras. 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

This is perhaps an unexpected Libra pick, but something told me Libras would particularly enjoy it. It’s winter in rural Ireland, just before Christmas, and a coal and timber merchant faces the Catholic Church that’s taken control of his town. It’s a book about doing the right thing even when it’s difficult, an idea I know fair-minded Libras will love. 

Scorpio

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo

When Andrew’s best friend, Eddie, dies by apparent suicide a week before Andrew is supposed to move in with him, Andrew’s life is thrown into chaos. Haunted by Eddie’s ghost, Andrew tries to put together the pieces of his friend’s life to understand his death. Do I even need to explain why this is a Scorpio pick? 

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

A ghost story based in Japanese folklore about a terrifying ghost bride haunting a group of friends who decide to get married in her former home. Again, it’s a Scorpio no-brainer (and a great Halloween read, too). 

Sagittarius

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

How could a book about party girls in a new city go to anyone but Sagittarius? This glittering novel told in diary entries follows party girls Isa and Gala over the course of a summer spent in New York City as they dance and drink and hustle their way through the city. Sagittariuses will feel seen. Check out our reading list by Marlowe Granados about the top party girls in literature.  

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated by Anton Hur

Forgive me for giving you two party novels, Sagittarius, but I feel like we could all use a little more fun in our lives right now. This novel about a Korean millennial in Seoul trying to party his cares away will probably feel a little too real for most Sagittariuses, but the complicated queer romances and spot-on humor will make up for that. Enjoy this book with an ice-cold Marlboro Red. 

Capricorn

In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Åkerström

Three Black women with very different lives are bound together by their relationships to a wealthy white Swedish businessman in this fast-paced, astute novel about race and class in the modern world. A novel that’s simultaneously exciting, thoughtful, and relevant? Capricorns are sure to love it.   

Hurts So Good by Leigh Cowart

I see you, Capricorn. I’m sure you’re acting shocked to find this book here, instead of under Scorpio, but I know that secretly you get it. Caps are lowkey the masochists of the zodiac, and a book about the pleasure and science of pain is perfect for you secret little weirdos. So please, indulge yourselves—I won’t tell anyone. 

Aquarius

The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson

A sci-fi, cli-fi, futuristic short story collection with a title that whips this hard absolutely has to go to the Aquariuses. This collection is as good as it is weird, and it gets very weird (think sentient prosthetic legs and people who make their living stealing from parallel dimensions). Read the short story “The Shimmering Wall” from The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell here. 

Everything Good Dies Here by Djuna, translated by Adrian Thieret

Okay, yes, I’m giving Aquariuses two speculative short story collections—but consider this: you’re going to love them. Everything Good Dies Here is a boundless, unexpected, wild ride of strange stories that take inspiration from genre fiction, classic movies, and apocalyptic literature. Aquariuses will find everything they’re looking for and more in this collection.  

Pisces

Names For Light by Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint

I’ve got two words for you, Pisces: Experimental memoir. Through lyrical prose, memories, and mythology, Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint tells the story of her family’s history and immigration from Myanmar to America. This beautiful book is perfect for pensive Pisces. Read our interview with Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint about what binds a family together. 

The House Of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

Magical boats, talking cats, and sea monsters all populate this magical realist coming-of-age story about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa trying to rescue her missing father. This book is strange and delightful in all the right ways, and dreamy Pisces won’t be able to get enough of it.

Forget Billionaires! The Future Of Literary Magazines Depends On Us

Posted on by Denne Michele Norris

Dear Readers,

In what feels like a never ending cycle of disappointing media news, last week we in the literary community were astonished to learn that after two decades The Believer magazine will discontinue publication. (Since 2017, The Believer has been published by the Black Mountain Institute, out of University of Nevada Las Vegas College of Liberal Arts, and was published by McSweeney’s before that.) I was sharing an Uber with another writer on the way to a short residency when we both saw the tweet. In unison, we gasped. I’m sorry to admit that my second thought was a complex blend of gratitude for the feeling of relative job security and the eerie reminder that everything can change in an instant—sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. 

At Electric Literature, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, we are funded by a mix of grants, advertising sponsorships, membership fees, and grassroots donations. There are both benefits and drawbacks to this business model. There is no guardian angel waiting on the sidelines, ready to jump in and save us should our finances go awry. On the other hand, we aren’t beholden to any person or institution other than our readers and our leadership. We trade the short to medium term financial security of a sole benefactor for the existential security of knowing that we are not subject to any one person’s whims. This allows us to enjoy a certain amount of freedom; we operate without the oversight of someone holding the purse strings, who inevitably juggles shifting priorities and motivations. 

The more people that support a magazine, the freer it is to tell the truth

Earlier this year, EL’s executive director Halimah Marcus and I sat down over cocktails for a virtual live salon. We wanted Electric Literature’s community to have the opportunity to get to know me as an editor and leader. During the Q&A, someone inquired about feeling competitive with peer publications. I said that I don’t feel competitive (other than the rare occasions when we must compete for a piece we want to publish!). So many publications were formative for me—teaching me craft, bringing me through editorial processes that affirmed me as a writer, thinker, and human being. So there’s no joy in the news that another storied publication is closing its doors. Instead, it brings feelings of sympathy for their hardworking and talented staff, and the loss of their vision for the literary community. 

But it also brings anger.

I am angry that another journal—which I deeply respect—will soon close its doors. I’m angry that artistic institutions are forced to operate in a cultural context that so devalues art that a single person or institution can pull the plug. It’s exciting to me that the study of writing seems more accessible than ever, with increasingly diverse MFA programs and workshops offered by journals and local organizations as a viable alternative. But I can’t help but wonder about the fate of the platforms where these writers aspire to publish. If literary journals keep shutting down, where will writers cut their teeth? Where will they gain the practical experience of being edited, of signing a contract, of reviewing proofs, and publishing for an audience that engages with their work?

If literary journals keep shutting down, where will writers cut their teeth?

Literary journals are the rigorous proving grounds that early-career writers need; they are the venues that often propel us from early to mid-career. We gain experience and critical credibility in their pages, which often goes a long way when we’re looking to find agents or publish our first books. And given the consolidation that’s happening in book publishing, and the reluctance of major publishing houses to take risks, literary journals are especially important for writers from marginalized backgrounds. They are the first venues to publish us, to affirm our writing, and to help us build an audience. This, in turn, helps us build careers.  

I’ll never forget the kind words Ann Rushton, editor-in-chief of Bound Off (RIP!), had for me when I told her Bound Off was my first acceptance: “Well I’m most certain this won’t be your last publication.” I still think of her when I need a boost of confidence. Or a few years later, when Esme-Michelle Watkins at Apogee Journal took me through three rounds of content and line edits so thorough, that at first I worried whether or not she even wanted to publish my piece. But when all was said and done, I realized she had helped me find the best version of the story, and shaped my understanding of the novel I’m now writing, which grew out of that work. It’s the work of literary journal editors that first showed me the value of my own writing, and allowed me to believe that my work was worthy of a readers’ time. If literary journals don’t get the support we need—from readers, from writers, from donors, and yes, from institutions—the decline may be slow, but American letters will fall from excellence. Our work will not be read.

We are at risk of losing our literary institutions. After the Black Mountain Institute announced they would cease publication of The Believer, people were tweeting versions of “can’t someone save it?” But rather than waiting for millionaires and billionaires to fund, defund, and subsequently “save” literary magazines, shouldn’t we rally as a community to support them in the first place? Currently, Electric Literature has 1,200 members who contribute ~25% of our budget. Their support is deeply appreciated and vital, but we still carry debt and don’t have a safety net. What if 5,000 members supported 75% of our budget? We would have a steady monthly income to cover our essential expenses; we could pay writers and staff what they deserve rather than what we can afford, and an advertiser pulling out or the loss of a grant couldn’t throw us into a crisis. The more people that support a magazine, the more democratic and diversified it is, the more safe and sustainable it becomes, and the freer it is to tell the truth.

This letter comes to you in the first week of our $12,000 for 12 years campaign, celebrating Electric Literature’s decade plus of publication. If you love what Electric Literature is doing to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive, then join us in our mission by becoming a member. Help us safeguard our future!

Warmly,

Denne Michele Norris
Editor-in-Chief

The Body Horror of Being a Woman

Posted on by Jo Lou

Speculative, surreal stories can be doorways to imagine both what is possible and the effects of trauma and change on the most vulnerable people. Speculative storytelling is expansive, incorporating horror, science fiction, and surrealism to help readers tackle what we are most unwilling to see, highlighting how systemic oppression can break open and create new realities.

In her collection, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You, author Carribean Fragoza immerses the reader in the experiences of Mexican and Chicana women who are navigating intergenerational relationships, abuse, and changing bodies. While each story stands alone, they also feel very cohesive, as if they are on the same looping timeline in which one person’s story dies to bloom another’s. Each story blends the horrific, the magical, and the ordinary so seamlessly that they reimagine our expectations of reality, asking you to confront the grotesque in the everyday violences of our own lives. 

I had the opportunity to speak to Carribean Fragoza about the way that the book deals with experimentation, the body, and where she finds community with other Mexican American artists. 

Leticia Urieta: Where did this book begin for you or what does the title of the book mean to you? 

Carribean Fragoza: I wrote these stories over the course of many years, some of them as early as undergrad at UCLA. When I wrote “The Vicious Ladies” I really felt like I hit on something that I wanted to continue to push. That’s the story of the young woman who graduates from college and goes back to her neighborhood, not really by choice but she has to because she doesn’t really have any other job prospects. And then she has to join this party crew, and she just kind of gets sucked into this party crew in her neighborhood, but Samira, who’s the leader of the party crew, had this very strong voice that was not afraid to speak her truth, even if it made me uncomfortable. She was so clearly dedicated to protecting and holding and uplifting the girls and the women in her party crew that that became a lesson for me and a real point of departure for a lot of what I’ve written since.

Originally I thought the collection would be titled the “Vicious Ladies” and I always thought of it that way but then in conversation with my editor, Elaine Katzenberg, we thought it would be best to use that title, Eat The Mouth That Feeds You, because it touches on so many themes and ideas that are woven in throughout the entire book, mainly the intergenerational connection. I’m just transferring knowledge through bodies through storytelling across generations of women. There’s a sort of complexity to the title that people can sit with. There’s also the cringe quality that makes people uncomfortable. But I’m okay with people cringing through my stories. I think there’s a little pleasure for me to be honest, in grossing people out or making people uncomfortable with my depictions of death and decomposing bodies and bodies being consumed in different ways. As a fan of certain types of body horror in film, there’s a really great way to use that to depict the everyday horrors of the body, and especially of women’s bodies, from a menstruation cycle to a miscarriage. 

LU: That was something I loved most about this book was how you write about the body. There are several stories in this collection that depict aging bodies, dying bodies, the bodies of women being consumed, and bodies in transformation. Why is that something that feels important to you as a storyteller? 

CF: Most of my writing is very embodied, and I make it a point to do so. It’s the perspective that we don’t get to see very often in literature, how women’s bodies are depicted usually from an outsider perspective, usually from the male gaze. It felt really important and necessary for me to write it from a very embodied internal perspective, where the body is experienced, not just gazed upon. Having a female body is an experience that I don’t think gets talked about enough.  I mean sure, we know about menstruation, but even that is so taboo still after all this time. I would love to read more writing from other women or women-identifying people and just understand more how other people experience their bodies. I have this one body and this is how I experience it, and I want to understand how my characters experience their bodies as well. 

LU: I think one of the things that comes out in the stories is trauma’s effects on the body and how trauma could transform and change the body in grotesque ways, but also in kind of beautiful ways. One of the stories that I went back to is the “Mysterious Bodies.” A lot of these stories end with the destruction of the character in some way or even the destruction of the bodies as they were before. Do you feel like that’s one way to depict trauma’s effect on the body, even familial trauma?

There’s a little pleasure for me, in grossing people out with my depictions of death and decomposing bodies and bodies being consumed in different ways.

CF: It’s very important to me to think about how trauma manifests itself in the body, even though we’re not always aware of it, even the trauma of previous generations. I’m also thinking about the life cycle of the body and the transformation of the body from birth to death, especially as a mother of an almost ten-year-old and a two-year-old. I have a two-year-old baby and I watch her grow every day and then I have this almost ten-year-old that’s about to start puberty or is already starting. And here I am, about to turn 40. Here the three of us are, our bodies being in different places.

I wrote “Eat the Mouth That Feeds You” when I first learned that I was pregnant with my first child and shortly before that, my grandmother and my great-grandmother passed away. So I was in this really interesting place between producing future generations and letting go of my predecessors, and trying to locate myself within that, within the family, but also historically. What does it mean to be of my generation, and what are my contributions? I’m giving my body physically to this new little baby. And every time I nurse I’m literally letting her feed off of me. But then also, as a writer what do I contribute to conversations, to actions to change in the world? To be honest, I don’t always know how writing these stories impacts anything, but I think I see something when I get to have conversations like with you or others who feel impacted or touched by the stories.

LU: For several of the characters in the book, such as the narrator of “Eat The Mouth That Feeds You,” or “Me Muero,” there is an acceptance of death, or being consumed. Do you think that there is power there? 

CF: I’m trying to think about how the body experiences violence in being consumed, but then also how we navigate that to find some empowerment. I think in all of my stories I’m trying to find a way to empower the characters. I can’t speak for everybody but so many of us find ourselves in and across multiple generations, in situations that are very difficult, and we still live in a patriarchal capitalist, white supremacist society. And we are still in the position that we’re in within those structures, and we’re constantly trying to navigate that and find our places of power. And sometimes it’s in our bodies, sometimes it’s in spirituality. Sometimes it’s in ancestral knowledge. Sometimes it’s in our own family histories. And so I think for each of us, empowerment looks different, and I was trying to find that in each of the lives of my characters and in their narratives, despite whatever their situation is whether they’re a low-level employee somewhere, taking the abuse or shit from their boss, or whether they’re a mom, like an immigrant mother, just trying to have a daughter and live in the United States. I asked, what does it mean to live in these positions, and how can we create openings within our situations to find our place of power within that. 

My interest in looking at history in general and our particular familial past is to find the lessons. And sometimes the lesson can be a way to move forward, to not repeat certain situations that our mothers or grandmothers were in, but sometimes the lesson is maybe you don’t move forward, maybe you don’t get to be in a better place than your grandmother or your mother. There’s one particular story where the character is talking about how she feels like she ended up in a place where her grandmother was. Instead of doing better than the previous generation, she got knocked back to a place of poverty and abuse, similar to what her grandmother might have experienced. We learn the lessons and we do hope and expect to  “move forward” or progress but maybe that’s not really real for some of us. Then what do you do with those lessons? 

LU: Who do you consider your literary ancestors or community members? 

We’re constantly trying to navigate [living in a patriarchal capitalist, white supremacist society] and finding our places of power… For each of us, empowerment looks different.

CF: One of my influences is vampire literature, like Interview with a Vampire. As a young person back in middle school, I remember reading vampire novels and writing as if I were a vampire, and how that really nourished my writerly self. It really freaked people out, mainly my teachers, because they were thinking, “oh, Carribean is not well.” Anne Rice was a part of the lineage of Gothic Literature that I gravitated towards and Shirley Jackson as well. When I read her story, “The Lottery,” something changed in my mind. I started thinking more about how maybe unconsciously I’ve been influenced in these profound ways by the genre. I hope that newer writers can find their place in this genre as well. 

I have to mention Helena Viramontes who I read and immediately loved. Currently, I also feel really connected to Sesshu Foster, who wrote Atomik Aztex, because he and I are both from East LA and he and I have this vision of revising or rethinking history and thinking towards the future. 

LU: Could you talk more about your work as an editor and community organizer? What kinds of spaces are you creating with publication and the arts collective? 

CF: With the publication of Vicious Ladies Magazine, I wanted to create a safe space for women or nonbinary writers and cultural critics of color to write in their own unique voices that is not policed by the white gaze. I often struggled to get my stories heard and read as a journalist, and so I hope to create opportunities for mentorship and for new writers to get their stories out there in whatever voice they choose to use. They can sound this hood as they want. They can use poetry to write about an art installation. I want this to be a space of experimentation. 

My husband’s a historian and we collect oral histories, we’re building an archive, and we wrote a whole book about the history of my hometown. We started the South El Monte Art Posse (SEMAP), a multi-disciplinary arts collective, which is 10 years old this year. This community has really shaped how I see our stories, and I want to always shout out to El Monte writers like Salvador Plascencia, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Toni Margarita Plummer (Kirkpatrick), and other writers I am in community with like Myriam Gurba. This community and these stories are a way of belonging to a place through these little stories and through connections to small, seemingly insignificant objects and narratives in this archive. So I’m very invested in uncovering new histories, but also in thinking about the future and what we want the future to look like and how does my writing contribute to the future that I want to see not just for myself, because I’ll be gone before you know it, but for all of our future generations, like my kin, my daughters, but also all the new young writers and artists out there. 

His Best Friend is a Bottomless Void

Posted on by Alex Juarez

“Dark Matters” by Courttia Newland

The world beyond his room had grown mysterious, untrustworthy. He spent whole days alone, his parents downstairs, lying belly-down on the carpet, sketching and coloring images. At first, during his early years, Max responded to the graffiti everywhere he went, the characters and wild styles and throw-ups, the improbable mix of colors that seldom met in the natural world. When he grew older he searched above, up toward the light-saturated night sky. His canvas became larger, moving from school notebooks to A3 sheets. He began to conjure nebulae, solar systems, distant dwarf stars that shone pale milk blue, the lifeless glow of dead planets. His parents grew worried. To them his pictures were of nothingness, empty dead space, cold and isolated. His mother complained to Aunt Lina that he’d lock himself away for hours, rarely coming down to eat; and even when he did, he wouldn’t speak. His father eyed him with sullen concern, mouth opening and closing, cigarette poised by his lips, grasping for language never caught.

Max knew what he feared most: the odd looks, that slow creep away, and in strange, laughable contrast, the trailing six steps behind him in every shop, his newfound size met with awe and some distress. The previous summer he felt people thought him charming, possibly lovable. Without warning all that had changed. Now he was a foreign body causing panic. A threat.

He lay stretched on his stomach painting a watercolor cloud of blue in red when Noel knocked for him. His neighbor lived two streets away, so their mothers made sure they walked to school together, hoping to deter rougher neighborhood youths. When the boys reached their school gates they split like torn paper, staying apart until it was time to go home. Max didn’t blame him. He liked Noel. He was short, not self-conscious, confident and popular with girls, boys, and teachers, humorous and knowledgeable without seeming quirky. Once, at lunch, Noel spent ten minutes stabbing every fry on his plate onto a fork with intent precision while the entire population of the school hall watched, applauding as he crammed the soft-spiked bunch into his mouth.

At the knock, Max half rolled over, knowing who it was. There was nobody else it could be. “Come!”

The door eased open, stopped. Noel’s head appeared. “Yes, Maximillian!”

“Bruv. I told you not to call me that.”

Noel pursed his lips in a closed-mouthed smile. “Yes, Max. You good?”

“Yeah. Come.”

Noel entered. Sagging skinny jeans, fresh black Adidas, a matching T-shirt and black hoodie. Noel always had the manners to remove his snapback when he came in the house, which Max’s mum never stopped going on about. His haircut was barbershop fresh, a day old at the latest, making his small head gleam like a water chestnut. Max, in contrast, had on worn trackies from last year, a fraying polo shirt, and his Afro hadn’t seen a barber in months. His cheeks warmed as Noel looked for somewhere to sit, opting for the single bed. The room was small, barely space enough for the thin bed. A single wooden chair was filled with a pile of folded clean clothes. Posters of street murals, Hubble photographs, and rap stars surrounded them.

“Why you lyin’ on the floor?”

“It’s comfortable. Plus it’s the best place to draw.”

“Don’t you hurt your back an’ shit?”

“Sometimes. I haven’t got a desk, so . . .”

Noel craned his neck, tracking the walls. “Man can draw, fam.”

“Thanks. It’s just practice.”

“Nah, it ain’ practice. I could practice years and not draw like that.”

“Everybody’s got their thing, innit?” 

Noel wrinkled his nose. “You reckon?” 

“Blatant.”

A wait, the distance between them more apparent with every second. Downstairs, a clang of kitchen utensils. The aroma of melting coconut oil. Frying onions.

“Bruv, I pree something, you know.”

Max rolled onto his back. Noel was staring out of his window. At the underground tracks beyond his garden.

“What?”

“I dunno.”

Max laughed, stopped. There was a thin shadow of hair along Noel’s jaw he hadn’t noticed before. “You dunno?”

“Yep.”

“Where?”

“The industrial estate. It’s proper mad. As soon as I see it I thought, that’s Max. He’ll know what to do. It’s peak.”

His skin began to tingle. It came from nothing, nowhere. He felt pressure in his veins, the sparkling sensation of a dead arm, and realized he was leaning on his elbows. He sat up. The barricade lifted, blood rushed back where it belonged.

“What is it?”

“I can’t explain. You gotta come, trust. You’re the only man I’ll let see this ting, believe me. Everyone else’s too stupid. They’ll ruin it.”

“Is this a joke?”

Noel stared. His eyes were dark marbles. “Bruv. Do I joke?”

It was empty space, the substance he’d stared up at night after night. It was the vision before his eyes when his lids were closed. 

They held each other’s gaze, and burst into spluttered laughter.

“Nah, but really,” Noel said. “Do I joke about seriousness?”

Max was already on his feet, easing into sneakers that were blackened like plantains, a sweatshirt lined with creases, and over that, a gilet vomiting cotton from the loose jagged teeth of torn seams.

“Come then,” he said, avoiding Noel’s smile.

They rode single file, in silence. Past the small park used by Amberley Aggy more than anyone else, beneath the quiet thunder of the underpass, and onto the busy main road, which for some reason was called a lane. Even their bikes were nothing alike: Noel’s a gleaming thoroughbred, bright red with thin black tires, Max’s a lumbering matte-black no-name, thick-boned with a wide snakeskin tread, rusting and creaking as its wheels turned slow. They cruised at medium pace, Noel seemingly in no hurry. Traffic was snarled up this close to rush hour, granting the ability to ride single and double yellows in lieu of bike lanes, ignoring the momentary panic on car passengers’ faces, unaware of their relaxed, guilt-ridden calm once they were gone. The day was bright, the breeze chilled as the sun began to fall, Max relishing his mild sweat as he bore down on the pedals. When Noel turned left immediately after the overhead railway bridge, he followed.

Traffic sounds lowered. The rolling shush of car tires became soothing, momentary. There was even the sound of chattering birds. Max closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation. His tires whirred beneath him.

The warehouse had once been some kind of factory, but it had clearly been long abandoned. On the upper floors, steps ascended into thin air and crumbling window frames. The only intact ceilings were on floors one and two, which were dark even though the sun was bright, foreboding even from outside. Noel glanced over his shoulder as he wheeled his bike toward the dusty steps; other than that, he hardly seemed to notice Max. He lifted the bike up, toward the blue factory doors. A scrawl of tags was etched on wooden boards that replaced the broken glass. Max thought the doors were closed, locked, as both were straight-backed and rigid, but when Noel pushed there was just enough space to squeeze themselves and the bikes through their resistance. Inside, he kicked one semiclosed; it barked a splintering protest, stuck. Noel wheeled his bike farther inside and so Max left it be, trailing after him.

The ground floor was vast. He couldn’t see the far end, consumed as it was by shadow, the walls disappearing into gloom much as the stairs above their heads evaporated into sky. Everywhere was dust and rubble, as though an earthquake had taken place, leaving the outside untouched. He saw repeated mounds of white plaster embedded with red brick that reminded him of strawberry meringue. Some mounds touched the pocked and cracked white ceiling. Cathedral arch windows beamed stunted blocks of daylight on either side of the boys, but the center of the hall was dark and difficult to make out.

Max found himself stumbling every few steps; on what, he dared not guess. The smell was of mold, damp earth. It clogged his nose and made his eyes feel heavy. The scrape of their feet caused a sea of dust to rise around their ankles. Every now and then there was a downpour of debris as showers of plaster fell from the floors above, thankfully nowhere near them. He stopped pushing the bike to rub his fingers together; they were rough, powdery, and he could taste a crackle of grit between his teeth. In front of him, the dust fog settled. He could just make out Noel’s shadow. He angled his handlebars in that direction and only knew he’d reached him when he bumped the back of his legs.

“Oi,” Noel said, softer than usual.

“Sorry,” Max whispered, following his lead.

“It’s sleeping,” Noel said.

Max was just about to ask what, but he stepped out from behind Noel, and saw.

Beyond the boys, there was a small pile of rubble as high as Max’s waist. On or spread across the crumbled plaster, it was difficult to tell, was nothing. Or rather it was something as far as Max could see, although exactly what he didn’t know: a black patch, dark ooze where there should have been sand-like plaster. There was an absence of light on the ground before them, a hole-like rip in the earth that led into . . . an abyss. It was empty space, the substance he’d stared up at night after night. It was the vision before his eyes when his lids were closed. The deepest part of the night when he lay in bed, roused from dreams. To see it where it shouldn’t be made Max dizzy with uncertainty and he stepped back with a yelp of surprise. He stumbled on an unseen brick, which shot from beneath his foot and made him fall, the bike clattering to the dust in a racket of gears and wheels.

He blanked out for a moment, trying to collect himself. Through holes in the glass roof, the faraway blue sky spun in slow motion. A wisp of cloud traveled on the wind. Noel whispered, “Shit,” and Max only just heard him, thinking he might be in trouble, so he tried to get up; only when he’d pulled himself into a sitting position, he froze. Everything left him. Body heat, voice, his breath.

The dark ooze had moved. It wasn’t spread out on the floor, it was sitting up like him. No, it wasn’t sitting up, it was pushing itself onto hollow haunches. He could see that what he’d first thought of as a random spread of substance was actually manlike—arms, legs, torso, head, all midnight black, all devoid of features. Humanoid. The creature got to its feet, spreading its arms out wide. A man-shaped silhouette three inches taller than him, around six foot four, a cutout patch of blank shape and inside that, dark void. Max tried to peer into the depths. For a moment there was the sparkle of distant stars: galaxies perhaps? The nothing was so deep it almost gave off its own light. Maybe that was what he was seeing? He leaned forward, yearning for more, so captivated he barely registered Noel say: “See? It’s beautiful.”

The being seemed to hear him. It extended a pitch-black hand, fingers reaching, strained for contact. It didn’t move. Noel stepped forward.

“No,” Max whispered from the rubble floor.

Noel ignored him, inching closer, an exhalation of dust at his feet. He touched the darkened fingers and immediately, instead of grasping them, Noel’s fingers began to disappear. It was as though they’d been immersed into a gleaming pool of thick oil. He made a terrible noise, moaning fear and revulsion, deep-throated, growing louder as he fell deeper into the creature’s body. The darkness covered more of him, his knuckles, wrist, forearm, his elbow, and up one shoulder, Noel’s feet beginning to slide closer into the creature, sending roiling dust puffing high, some of which also vanished into the dark form. Half Noel’s torso, his leg, his face, which turned toward Max and let out a roaring scream, until it covered his shaved head, and the substance filled his mouth, cutting off his voice as though a plug had been pulled inside him.

Max yelled something that wasn’t even a word, his throat raw.

The creature sucked Noel in, took his whole body until there was only a flailing arm, a bent elbow, fingers writhing like windblown leaves, sliding inside the creature with a dull pop. Immersion.

He was cold, and so he climbed beneath his covers fully clothed, teeth transmitting code for his ears alone, the image of Noel absorbed into the void of the creature returning like a DVD glitch; repeat, repeat.

It was still. The void became auditory. It turned toward Max, opening its arms. He picked up his bike, pushing it a meter before him, and leaped on, pedaling hard and fast. He only looked behind once, against his will, believing the creature would come after him, but it stood in the same spot, arms wide, turned in his direction. He made it to the graffiti-stained doors, jumped from the bike, wrenched the doors open, breaking three nails so his fingers bled, and pushed himself outside without a care for bumps or scrapes, throwing himself back onto the bike and sprinting hard. His breathing was a harsh, ragged, quiet scream, ripping his chest like smoke, his expression a wide-eyed mask of shocked fear. He rode so frantically cars veered out of his path to avoid collision, and buses sighed to a stop.

At the small park his muscles could do no more and his legs gave out. He fell onto the grass, bones jarring as they met earth, lucky to have the bike roll away and not collapse on top of him, the whine of his breath like the sawing rasp of an asthma attack, sweat pouring from his face and body, soaking his clothes. Old Man Taylor and Ms. Emmes saw him as they returned from the parade of shops, and assumed he’d been smoking, or possibly injecting, forcing a wide space between themselves and the boy, storing the image of him splayed and panting to recreate for his parents.

Max’s chest rose and fell, looking painful, possibly dangerous. By the time it returned to an even pace, daylight had dimmed. The Amberley Road teenagers arrived, sauntering in no clear direction only to pivot on the spot, palms slapping, barking laughter, passing lighters and curses, heads nodding to smartphone music until they noticed Max; then whispering among themselves as they saw him on his back, motionless. They tried to pretend he wasn’t there, yet his presence muted their voices. The strange kid, even stranger now, possibly drugged or the victim of an attack. Unable to tell and unwilling to check, they left Max alone.

When he rose to his feet sometime later, the youngsters were a darting swarm of burning orange sparks. Max lifted his fallen bike and walked it home, stumbling past, ignorant of their hush; group suspicion clouded by nightfall.

Max hurried to his room, marching away from the calls of his parents, the shrillness of his mum’s voice, though she was not quite panicked enough to remove her sagging flesh from the television and see if anything was actually wrong. With his bike safely stored in the shed at the bottom of their garden, he tried to treat himself similarly, locking his door, collapsing on the bed, energy spent, head revolving slowly as a park merry-go-round, throbbing angrily. He was cold, and so he climbed beneath his covers fully clothed, teeth transmitting code for his ears alone, the image of Noel absorbed into the void of the creature returning like a DVD glitch; repeat, repeat.

Beyond his room, the garden, and the untidy jungle of overgrown slope beyond his father’s greenhouse, the underground tracks caught Noel’s attention: the Central Line to Ealing Broadway or Ruislip going west, Hainault or Epping to the east. Every five minutes there was a mechanical shudder, a screech and roar of trains, the glow of carriage windows creating a cinema reel of lights, illuminating gloom. Hours passed. The darkness gained depth, thickened. His mother knocked on his bedroom door, tentative, though it was easy to feign sleep, closing his eyes to cement purpose, wait until she went downstairs, the soft thud of her footsteps on carpet matching the pulse of his fear, still faster than normal. He opened his eyes only when he felt safe, tracing the patterns of rattling trains on the white screen of his ceiling, absorbing their flow without meaning, lips moving as though in conversation with his consumed friend, a whispered dialect that perhaps only they understood.

He tried to imagine himself doing more. Instead of freezing on the spot mute and powerless, reaching for Noel and pulling with all his strength. Picking up a half shard of brick, pitching it at the creature with all his power. Maybe rushing it with a broad shoulder, forcing it to the floor, away. And yet as much as he tried to conjure images of himself in action, they were solemn fragments, still, unfocused photographic moments at best, patchy and unclear. Whenever he attempted to force them into motion they fell apart or resisted, so he couldn’t see the results. And yet he continued to try, eyes red and stinging, a snail’s trail of tears leaking from the corners, running from his temples and onto the pillow as the dark grew stronger, and the cat’s-eye lights of the trains flickered against his poster-lined four walls, and his body gave in and slept, plunging Max into a subconscious well of nightmares and ether.

Something woke him. He kept his eyes closed. The trains had stopped, which meant midnight had passed. His parents had gone to bed. Floorboards and walls ticked, creaked. Max felt no physical sensation. His body had seemingly dissipated, leaving nothing physical behind, only spirit, the invisible void.

He heard night workmen, their noisy clink of metal, and with that, sensation returned. He’d seen them sometimes, guiding a battered flatbed carriage along tracks, mustard yellow, mottled with vitiligo rust. He lay still, eyes closed, absorbing sounds, imagining slow progress. High points of conversation caught his ears, snatches of swearing, and the beam of their mounted spotlight flooded the room, turning the dark behind his eyelids red. He opened his eyes.

The thing from the warehouse rose at the foot of his bed, reaching, arms wide, seemingly larger now, pure emptiness within. Max tried to scream and nothing came out but a strangled whine. He wanted to move only for his limbs to resist, the thing stretching its arms like dark honey, creeping closer until each encircled the bed, and the thing grew taller, spreading up and out until it was a dark, giant mass above and around him. Max’s heart pounded so hard, his skin was so cold, and his fear so paralyzing he thought he might die.

And yet inside the body, he saw something. Now he was closer and the creature had widened like canvas, he could make out a powdered white terrain, the purple glow of something that resembled sky. The curving glow of moons, the shadow of a planet and on what he assumed was the ground, a series of blocked shapes that looked like plateaus, or cliff tops. There were marks in the sand, a trail of some kind. Curiosity broke paralysis, although a residue of fear still caused him to shake, gasp breath, as he sat up in bed, leaning closer. Yes. Yes, it could be. He kneeled before the creature as if he were about to pray, reaching, touching, feeling the ooze creep along his arm, not the sensation of contact he usually associated with touch, but something else, a warmth that transformed his whole body, stilled his heart, and he wasn’t afraid: he was relieved, filling with joy. He released a monotone groan, understanding this was the sound Noel had made upon contact; it was release, not resistance, letting it wash over him until that warm feeling was everywhere, seeing nothing more of his bedroom, only the thick absence of light that embraced him.

A temporary floating sensation, the pop of air pressure, soft, hardly noticeable. Solid ground beneath shoeless feet. Warmth against his soles. The glowing white land. A purple sky, closer now, everywhere, the spray of stars and the planet, heavy and low, half-dark half-red, bursting with its own weight. Beyond that, faraway moons, twin ice crystals, tiny and bright. The trail he’d seen was of footprints, climbing from where he stood, a dual pattern on the sand, the reversed imprint of sneaker soles. They rose, disappearing behind dunes to reappear farther, toward what he’d thought were flat mountaintops from the unimaginable distance of his bedroom, but were actually looming structures, white as the sand. Turrets or towers, Max couldn’t tell. He turned to look behind himself. The creature’s silhouette; inside the body, a distant view of posters, the dull wooden foot of his bed, the night workmen’s spotlight reflecting on his white ceiling. Home.

He relocated the trail of footprints, eyes rising upward. The structures shimmered in half light piercing the velvet atmosphere, blinking silent reprieve.