Mescaline Franklin, my publisher, sponsor, and sometimes gonzo drinking buddy from Camden New Jersey—which, I think is on the 5th level of Hell, where Baltimore is on the 6th level—has apparently been collecting disaffected writers from the internet fringe. Along with an incomplete draft of a first chapter of what I suspect is a novel, Mescaline sent me the following e-mail:
“James, I’d like you to check out a sample from my new writer I just picked up. The kid’s name is Junger Hass—met him at a comic book shop up in Newark. Dude doesn’t even talk, but writes on the palm of his hand and shows you his thought—when the palm is filled up, he’s done talking. This isn’t even near ready for publication, but I’d like you to take a look and give us some feedback.”
Mescaline, my feeling is this guy is a stark visceral read and I like it. I realize that a new guy doesn’t want much of his stuff out there until it’s done, so I’m snipping about 400 words and posting it as a sample, just so readers get an idea of what Hass is about—and I think it’s something worthwhile. I don’t know where he’s going with this story, but you can count me in.
To Assemble The Dead
I. Hate The Living, Love The Dead
I wanted to stay in that room for the rest of my life, curled up like I was twenty nine years and eight months or so ago.
Not moving, as still as the carcass of a cockroach somewhere in a dank and dark basement, barely breathing, with my eyes closed and that churning pit that I called a stomach whispering into my ear.
"Don't go back, please. Please, stay here a little while longer. What difference could a few more minutes make? Please, honey. Stay in here a little longer. Damn them all to hell."
Amongst the cardboard boxes, canisters, plastic drums, syringes, and sealed sterile kits. "Why not stay forever? Sleep. Go to sleep forever and no longer care. To finally and quite blessedly not care about what was eating you. Not worries, anxieties, microbes, vermin, insects or 'beloved ones'.
My answer to the pleading of my GI tract, which was really the coward in my brain trying to pawn it off to the lower organs, was the same."We don't get to do that anymore, remember. If you are not living, you are 'beloved'. I don't want to be 'beloved' just yet. I prefer to be 'hated', thank you very much."
There was no way for the lying coward in the medulla oblongata to answer that. When one refuses to play the game one cannot be defeated. Better yet take the damn game and throw it off the table and smash the fucking thing to pieces. Then kill the players. Motherfuckers, in my universe you are all 'beloved,’ you just don't know it yet. The things I think day in and day out. Do you bastards really want to know what I think?
I won't tell you.
You'll find out after the fact. You think I'm stupid? I'm part of Generation Dead, remember? Those hated souls who had the audacity to be born in the 2030's (and a lighter shade to boot); a decade into The Great Resurrection. Oh, we must pay dearly for that crime.
Oh yes. To be spat out by the bitch empresses thanks to the weaker and inferior male gender. You think I don't know? To think there are still things you hide and refuse to be explicit about in this day and age is puzzling? 'Beloved Ones,' indeed, I know your game.
Yet still I do my part to keep the whole thing going.
James,
as your resident German reader, I thought you might be interested to learn that Junger Hass is (linguistically) German and translates as Young Hatred.
Regards,
Herzog
I once tried to teach myself German out of a book like I did with Greek. I fared so poorly that my translation of two 40 words too as many hours and made no sense. However, I assume that Junger Hass is a penname after this notice, unless you have unemployed welfare mothers over there naming babies after heavy metal bands.
Thanks for the heads up, Herzog.