Tag: Bookstodon

I should not have read Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (a zero-stars review)

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

This book was notorious when I was a kid for being so extreme and gruesome. Straight talk: it’s not that gruesome. Yes, there are graphic depictions of torture and sexual violence that are basically in the ballpark of stuff happening in conflict zones right now. That this really happens to real people is gruesome and outrageous; that some guy typed it up in 1989 feels trite.

Anyway, what really is truly extreme and gruesome in this book is its absolute moral cowardice. Ketchum sets up an interesting premise–not the sex torture of the orphaned girl next door, but the narrator’s (David’s) complicity, how he lets awfulness roll forward despite liking this girl, despite being a “good guy” and “All-American Kid” (echoes of King’s “Apt Pupil” there).

That premise is interesting, because it matches the vast majority of us: we’re good people, and we let bad things happen all over the world all the time.

The problem is that Ketchum pulls the punch. Inexplicably, he attempts to transform David into a hero in the final act–despite the fact that there’s no set-up for it, and Ketchum seems entirely incapable of pulling it off. That might be fine; it could still be a solid three-star book if David tried to play the hero, then faceplanted (as he does in the novel, as he must, because the situation is so hopeless), and Megan (the victim of these outrages and everyone’s leer, readers included) had poured her fury and rage out on him.

Instead Ketchum paints this kid–this coward, this bystander, this rapist-by-proxy and torture fanboy–as the hero, and forces Meg to be his forgiving damsel.

And it just makes me want to fucking vomit. It’s a mediocre book that’s only shocking if you’ve never read a newspaper’s international headlines. It’s an advertisement for never holding anyone accountable for anything–save for the victims; “What was she doing alone with those boys? What did she expect, dressing like that” and so on and so forth ad nauseam, ad infinitum, world without end, amen 🤮

A Canticle for Leibowitz ★★★★★

(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)

This is a re-read (or really a re-listen for me). The first time I read A Canticle for Leibowitz I was maybe 17 at the oldest, so almost three decades ago now. Reading old books is a comfort, because it reminds us that even our most painfully modern woes—A.I.! Self-driving cars! A broad American passion for alluring misinformation coupled to a contempt for facts spoken by the “wrong” side!—were old and well-worn decades before I was born. This books is from 1959, and it’s third section literally opens with a guy working in his office and getting super frustrated with the malfunctioning A.I. he’s trying to dictate a letter to. Soon thereafter he and his subordinate have to dodge autonomous semis while crossing the street to get to the cafeteria. 😂

Setting aside Canticle‘s mild antisemitism(*), it’s refreshing to read religion in a scifi book written by someone who doesn’t have contempt for religion, but neither idealizes it, either. Miller (who I understand to have been a devout Catholic by the time he wrote the novel) respects that religious institutions, like any and all institutions, are political and can be petty, because they are operated by humans (who are political and petty). But he also highlights that religious institutions aren’t *just* petty political vehicles. He acknowledges the reality that people don’t cleave to religion out of fear or contempt or cruelty or because they hate the Other, but rather out of love and comfort and, believe it or note, a true and legitimate desire to bring about a good and just world.

We have religion in America now—right alongside our malfunctioning A.I. and glitchy self-driving cars. We’re gonna have it in the future. It’s absence in scifi is as weird and non-credible as the bizarrely small number of Black people in the Detroit depicted in Robocop.

(*) A “Wandering Jew” character plays a major supporting role in all three sections of this A Canticle for Leibowitz. I think enough people categorize the “Wandering Jew” as a foundational antisemitic trope that this should be a fairly non-controversial opinion. But I also know how the Internet works, so if you’re legit interested in discussing what precisely reads as antisemitic to me in this novel, feel free to reach out. Happy to chat.

New (Old) Horror/Folktale: “It’s an Old Story”

“It’s an Old Story” is a recent riff on a late-medieval Kabbalistic demon tale recounted by Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kaidanover in his collection Kav HaYashar (“The Just Measure”), first widely published around 1705. (Here’s a direct link to a translation of the original story in-situ: Kav HaYashar 25:3.)

This story is brought to you by the generosity of my Patreon patrons. Supporters get access to exclusive horror and SF stories, an odd short film, interactive short fiction, and more.

“It’s an Old Story”

by David Erik Nelson

Cover art for "It's an Old Story", a short story by David Erik Nelson. The cover features an A.I.-generated image of a Jewish shtetl and its demonic mirror shtetl.

You wanna hear a story? It’s an old story; everybody’s heard it–everybody thinks they’ve heard it. Yet maybe still . . .
            OK. Once upon a time, back in Poland, there was a man, a rich rich man. He had land, he kept a shop, he had fancy clothes, he had chests and chests full of gold and jewels with big locks and heavy keys.
            But despite all these riches, he was a miser. Wouldn’t give a shekel to a beggar or a dime to charity, not even the burial society, not even on Rosh Hashanah. He couldn’t even stand to spend a penny to buy himself a sweet.  
            But this was not to say he was a total sonofabitch. He was a shopkeeper and a landlord and a miser, but also he was a mohel–you know what a mohel is?
            A mohel does the circumcisions on the newborn boys, to consecrate them into the covenant with HaShem. To make them Jews. So he’s a little like a doctor who only knows one surgery, a little like a rabbi who knows only one prayer. But very respected. And in this, the miser was generous and joyful: no matter how far the journey, he went when called, whistling all the way. No matter how much the hassle, he refused all payment.
            One day a stranger comes to town, comes to the miserly mohel, and says his wife has just had a son.
            “Mazel tov!,” the miser cries. He’s only too eager to journey with the man–who warns him that it’s a long ways and bound to be a hassle. The miserly mohel won’t hear any it. He locks up all his chests and cupboards, locks his doors, hangs his knot of keys on their cord around his neck, and off he and the stranger go, up hill and down dale, over the river and through the woods, the miser’s keys jingle-jangling at every jaunty step, like wind chimes in the springtime.
            All the while, the stranger makes light conversation: The weather’s been good (but not too good), the wheat has come in well this year (but not too well), and prices at the market are fair (neither high nor low, but just as they should be).
            It grows late. The sun sets. The miser gets nervous being out in the dark in the woods with a man who, truth told, he doesn’t know from Adam.
            They walk on in the dark of night. The moon never rises, the stars never come out, it is as black as a rabbi’s hat. The miser’s gut sinks. His chest gets tight. Not good out here. Not good at all.
            He reaches out as he walks, but his hands don’t brush a single leaf or limb or trunk. He feels no breeze. He hears no bird, no cricket, no babbling brook, no browsing deer. The world has gone cold and silent, empty as the grave.
            Silent, except for the stranger. The stranger, he never stops prattling about inconsequentialities, his tone never shifting. The sun’s been warm, the breeze cool. The rain has been wet, but the dust dry. Bricks have been quite heavy this year, and yet feathers still very light.
            The miser follows that steady voice through the Void, his hand tight around the reassuring weight of his keys, solid and real in that dark that’s darker than dark.
            Other men, in such moments of extremity–a soldier, for example–might find themselves caught between a desperate desire to flee home to their families and their iron-clad loyalty to their nation and ideals. The miser, he finds himself caught between his obedience to HaShem, and his desire to see his gold, safe and snug in his lockboxes. He knows this is a shameful dilemma, but also knows it’s true. No sense lying to himself, in the privacy of his own skull. He knows what he is.
            Given how he passed the night, you’d think that the miser would greet the pinkening of the sky like a robin greets the melting of the snow. But no, if anything, the sunrise makes it all worse.
            ‘Cause when the sun rises, it does so in the east and west at once, like a man peering into your bedroom window and straight into the mirror on the other side. This double sunrise shows a landscape like the miser has never seen, not even in dreams: a misty mountain with sky both above it and below, trees rooted in the air with branches growing from both ends of the trunk. There isn’t a single mosquito or bird, not a buzz or a tweet. The only sound is little streams, crystal clear like heaps of broken glass, chuckling to themselves as they tumble up the rocks toward the peaks, and the gentle flutter of the tiny yellow leaves that rain down all around them without ever touching ground.
            This stranger has brought him to a place where nature is unnatural. God forbid, the miserly mohel thinks, gripping his old familiar keys, I am in Sheol.
            Soon they arrive at the stranger’s home, a lovely and sturdy chalet–which, of course, it gives the miser no joy to see. Seeing a lovely home in Hell is like finding a gold coin in your mother’s deathbed. Bitter. Worse than having nothing at all.
            They go around back and enter through the cellar hatch in order to come out into the bright, sunny second-floor bedroom. There the miser sees a grand bed, four-poster with canopy and curtains, and in the bed a lovely wife with a beautiful baby boy at her breast.
            In that moment, his joy at seeing such a scene, it overwhelms his terror and despair.
            “Mazel tov!” he shouts. “What a lovely wife! What a beautiful child! You are truly a fortunate man!”
            The stranger smiles a smile honest but unsettling, like a smirk bent down the middle by a funhouse mirror. “Indeed–“
            “Dear,” the wife in the bed with the babe at her breast gently interrupts, “Do you mind terribly going down to check and be sure the cook is on schedule? I worry she won’t have everything prepared for the feast without me there–“
            But already the proud papa is shushing his wife. “Or course! Of course my darling!” and he rushes from the room.
            Immediately the new mother’s smile falls away, and her exhaustion shows through.
            “Listen!” she hisses. “You are not among men. These are demons. All but me. I was lured here by their riches, their grace and beauty. But they contain no Spark of Creation, and so cannot have their own children. Now I cannot leave. My son cannot leave. Thank God you are here to perform his bris, and consecrate him to HaShem! As a show of my gratitude, I’ll tell you the one thing you must know: take nothing while you are here. Not a sip of drink, not a bite of food, no gifts or payment. If you accept nothing from the demons, then come nightfall–when the suns meet at the zenith of the sky and set into each other–you may leave. But only if you’ve taken nothing.”
            Before the miser can ask any questions the stranger–the demon father–returns, eager to get the mohel down to the schul, where he is to be honored with leading the morning prayers before the brit milah ceremony.
            The morning service runs smooth as silk, although the mohel is terrified. There is not an empty seat in the sanctuary–and yet, when he closes his eyes to say the Shema, it is as though he is in a deep cave, all alone in the cold dark. The crowd is completely attentive, hanging on his every word–but also completely silent: not a shuffled foot, nor a creaking pew, nor a single breath or cough.
            Nonetheless, The bris, it goes off without a hitch. The baby boy, he is brave and strong and hardly fusses. The mother, she weeps with joy.
            Then begin the festivities. There are long tables outside the schul, heavy with big braided loaves of challah, with roast meat, with vegetables and fruit in quantities like the mohel has never seen. Sweets and cakes. Wine and beer and cider and milk. Exotic liquors and tea.
            Heedful of the young mother’s warning, he doesn’t nibble a single bite. Doesn’t sip a single drop. Just keeps his hands on his keys, a reminder that if he keeps to the straight and narrow he’ll be back home again soon.
            “You don’t eat!” the demon father says. “If none of this is to your liking, then I’ll have anything you want made. Anything you could imagine.”
            The mohel declines. He isn’t hungry, he says. Participating in this simcha is sustenance enough.
            The demon nods, his smile symmetrical and knowing. He gets up and motions for the mohel to follow. They go back into the demon’s beautiful home, passing through the grand front door to find themselves in a long stone hall deep within the earth. The demon takes a lamp down from the wall and leads the miser to a stout door. He opens the door to display a treasure trove, silver cups and platters, tea services and samovars.
            “Take your pick,” the demon says. “As fair payment, for having come so far.”
            It is the finest silver Mr. Miserly Mohel has ever seen. Some primordial want in him cries out to touch it, to inspect this teapot, ring those forks. But the mohel steels himself, grips his keys, conceals his trembling, and scoffs. “Silver?” he scoffs. “I have all the silver I want.”
            The demon shrugs and heads down the hall to the next door. He opens it, and the mohel is dazzled: the room is full of gold, gold chains and gold lamps, golden ewers full of gold rings, heaps of gold coins stacked high on groaning tables. “As much as you want,” the demon says, “my gift to you on this day of my son’s entering the covenant with the Lord.”
            Is it beautiful? Yes! The miser’s fingers yearn to test the heft of those rings and chains.
            But still, it’s not his gold, in his lockboxes, back in his home in his shtetl. And that gives him the little bit of steel he needs to hold back.
            The mohel waves off the offer. “I couldn’t possibly. My gift and payment is to have served HaShem, to have made your wife smile, to have seen your whole shtetl feasting.” He says this in earnest, because it is true.
            The demon smiles, shrugs it off. “A learnéd man once told me that all gold is demon gold: It glitters and dazzles, but contains no shard of the Spark of Divinity. It comes up from the mud and dirt, and can only glitter with the reflected light of HaShem.” He shrugs again, continuing down the hall to a third door. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a learnéd man.”
            With that he opens the third door. The mohel is speechless: this room is small, just a closet, plain and unfurnished. The walls are covered in iron nails. From the nails hang bunches of keys.
            But none of that astonishes the miser. Not really.
            “Not gold,” the demon muses knowingly. “Not silver. Those left you unimpressed. But something in this room catches your eye, does it not?”
            “Those,” the mohel croaks. He tries to wet his lips, but finds himself completely dry-mouthed. “Those,” he repeats, pointing to a bunch of keys off to the left on the upper half of the far wall. “I would know those anywhere. Those are my keys.” The miser gropes around his neck. His keys are gone.
            “Are they?” the demon asks. “Curious. Because these are all demon keys. Only demons can own them or use them. Are you certain they are yours? That you’ve used those keys?”
            The mohel tries to speak, but he is so very dry.
            “Tell me about your father,” the demon asks.
            Such an easy question, the mohel is eager to answer. “He was a very fat thin man,” he wants to say. But somehow that’s not right.
            The demon smiles and nods encouragement. But the miser, he feels jammed up, like a man who’s bit off more than he can chew, let alone swallow.
            “Or your mother?” the demon cajoles. “Tell me about her. Tell me about your sisters and brothers, the place you were born, the first cutie who ever caught your eye. Details, details; it’s all on the details, nu?“
            The mohel gawps like a fish flopping on the floor of a boat. He discovers that he recalls no father, no mother, no sisters or brothers or childhood. His whole life has been his shop and his land, his locks and his gold. “Why didn’t I know?” he wonders, feeling like an idiot. “It’s all so obvious.”
            The demon smiles a broad and honest grin. He is glad to have brought back–well, if not precisely a rabbi or a doctor, something that was a little of both. A start, at any rate.
            At last the unpalatable notion slips down into the miserly mohel’s gullet. He can see clearly now, like a drowning man who has finally finished failing to rise.
            “Perhaps now you’ll accept a drink of our wine? Some little nosh from our table?”
            It’s then that he feels it: a momentary, wrenching sense of loss. He wants it to be the knowledge that he’ll never see his neighbors or congregants or shopgirl or errand boy again. But it is not them he mourns; he mourns that he’ll never see his gold again.
            And he is ashamed.
            But in the murky depths of this shame he discovers that he would also miss those moments when he closed his eyes in prayer, a newly trimmed baby boy in his arms, and felt himself reflecting some faint glimmer of the light of God.
            That had at least been a start, had it not? A hint of some possibility beyond Redemption or Salvation, perhaps? A hint that the worm who yearns to be a bird might at least aspire to being a moth.
            Finally, the miser accepts the demon’s offered cup. He sips the wine. And the wine is good, refreshing his parched throat. The wine is, in fact, ambrosial, neither too dry nor too sweet, neither too lush nor too puckery.
            He sighs, resigned, feeling the truth soak into his brain like the wine soaks into his stomach: He is home again, home again, for better or worse.
            At least for a time.

Copyright © 2024 by David Erik Nelson All rights reserved
Cover art image generated by Descript’s janky AI

If you’re looking for a monstrously overwritten 1870s guide to NYC brothels, then you’re in luck!

…’cause the whole damn thing is digitized online: and free for all: A Vest Pocket Guide to Brothels in 19th-Century New York for Gentlemen on the Go

Choice bits include these sick burns on pg. 19 (original page numbering):

Text from "A Gentleman's Directory (of NYC Brothels)" published in 1870. Reads: "The establishment Spring street is a house of assignation kept by Hattie Taylor, It is 8 third class house where may be found the lowest class of conrtezans. It is patronized by roughs and rowdies, and gentlemen who turn their shirts wrong side out when the other side is dirty. The house NO. 114 PPL05 is kept by Mrs. Palmer. It is a low eatablishment and frequented only by the fagends of the community."

and this bit:

Text from "A Gentleman's Directory (of NYC Brothels)" published in 1870. Reads: "No. 127 W. 26th street is & ladies boarding house of the second class, kept by Madame Buemont. There is a report of a bear being kept in the cellar, but for what reason may be inferred. There is not anything else attractive about the place."

I’m gonna admit that I’m extremely naive and just say it: I cannot infer the reason the bear is kept in the cellar. Our sex ed class didn’t cover this. Can someone please explain?

I also love the reasoning highlighted on pg. 7 (annotation #3), because it’s literally Skinner’s “I was only there to get directions on how to get away from there!” gag from the the old “Marge vs. the Burlesque House” episode of The Simpsons:

New Horror Story: “Can the Master’s Tools Dismantle the Master’s House?”

(This story is brought to you by the generosity of my Patreon patrons. Supporters get access to exclusive horror and SF stories, an odd short film, and more.)

Author’s Note

“Can the Master’s Tools Dismantle the Master’s House?” asks the truly pressing question of our time: Should I bring home that rag doll my wife and I found while checking out the fall foliage?

I wrote this story almost four years ago. It’s my COVID story and, in a way, my George Floyd/BLM story—albeit one more about privilege than race.

When I started submitting it for publication (about 6 months into the pandemic) it was turned down as being “too soon/too topical.” Several editors (each of whom have bought longer stories from me since) said basically the same thing: this is too of-the-moment; it won’t age well, or necessarily even really make sense in a few months.

Book cover for "Can the Master's Tools Dismantle the Master's House?", a short story by David Erik Nelson. The cover features an image of a faceless rag doll in a brown suit, drawn by Jane Iverson in 1936.

But the thing is, all the stuff I feel like I was talking about in this story, it hasn’t gotten better. If anything, it’s gotten worse. Time hasn’t healed these wounds much at all.

Meanwhile, the story has gotten no closer to publication. Usually, I’d just assume a story that doesn’t sell after four years and dozens of submissions simply isn’t a good story. I’ve written not-good stories. They seem like a good idea at the time, but you look at them again after the twelfth “Thanks, but this isn’t a good fit for us” and realize that the idea might have been good, but your execution isn’t.

But here’s the thing: I honestly don’t believe this is a bad story. I think it’s a good story. But I also think it’s a really uncomfortable story, in a way that’s gotten even more uncomfortable in the last four years. (I also have past experience with that: writing stories that are extremely uncomfortable for most readers, and not understanding that until the story has been rejected a few times and some kind soul finally explains what’s glaringly obvious to everyone but me That’s what happened with one of my earliest sales, “Exit Exam, Section III: Survival Skills, Question #7.”)

That said, “Can the Master’s Tools…” might just be a bad story.

Either way, it’s short. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say about it. I’m on Mastodon at @dave0@a2mi.social, or can be emailed directly: dave@dave0.com

Thanks!

“Can the Master’s Tools Dismantle the Master’s House?”

by David Erik Nelson

            It’s your wife, LaSonia, who finds the doll. She pulls it free of the frozen leaves, laughing. You laugh too, laugh along. But looking at the thing makes you want to puke.
            There’s really no other way to say it: The doll looks super-duper racist.
            Boneless arms dangle and jounce as LaSonia peels away frozen leaves, revealing eyes that are wide white iris-less circles sewn onto a black cotton face. Thick red embroidery-floss lips bend into something more rictus than grin. Mud-matted wooly hairpuffs peek out around a red scrap of kerchief.
            Pale, awful somethings—like water-logged corpse fingers or fat white worms—just barely peek out from under the skirts of the black-faced doll’s dark-blue gingham check dress.
            You’re so revolted by the squirming white worms that you almost slap the doll from her hands. But you can’t stomach the idea of touching it.
            LaSonia squeals, “Oh. My. GOD! I haven’t seen one of these since I was tiny!”
            She flips the doll over and pulls the dark check skirt down to reveal another doll—or, really, another half doll. This doll she’s found in the frozen leaves is something you’ve never seen before, a ragdoll composed of two doll torsos sewn together at the waist, “joined at the skirt.” The worms hadn’t been worms at all, but the second doll’s pale arms.
            LaSonia later explains that it’s called a “topsy-turvy” or “flip doll.” This one was hand-made, not mass-produced—more collectible, if no less racist.
            The second doll’s dress—previously hidden under the Black doll’s dark checked skirts—is a fancy pink block-printed calico. Her pale head has bee-stung lips stitched in the same red embroidery floss as her dark sister’s. Her blue eyes are heavy-lidded. A tangle of yellow yarn hair hangs out below her “Ms Muffet” cap.
            “Mommy and Mammy,” LaSonia explains. Two sets of arms, no legs to run away on. “My auntie had one just like this!” she marvels. “She kept hers on a high shelf, alongside her collection of glass whale oil lamps. She got it from Gram”—a.k.a. City Councilwoman Montgomery—“who’d got it from Great-Great-Gram”—the first Montgomery born free—“who swore she’d got it from her own Gram—”
            “—who strangled a Johnny Reb, stole his horse, and didn’t stop until she hit Pennsylvania and discovered the saddlebags held an infantry company’s payroll,” you finish numbly.
            It’s easy to be proud of LaSonia’s family tree, which is stout and tall and broad and deep-rooted. She’s a bona fide Daughter of the American Revolution. Thirteen generations of Montgomeries have cobbled together scraps of the American Dream. Your own family tree is little more than a hacked shrub with just a single pair of forks: On Mom’s side a couple of scrawny Jewish Kindertransport babies, imported to the UK from Nazi-occupied Poland, malnourished and pale as boiled potatoes. On Dad’s a set of Romanian pogrom orphans. All the rest of that tree? Ash and smoke coughed out of Holocaust crematory smokestacks.
            You frown at LaSonia’s doll and mount a weak argument, mumbling “black mold” and “mildew” and “allergies.” LaSonia gives you The Look™. The doll comes home with you.

#

            The doll takes up residence on the shelf above LaSonia’s desk—sometimes Mommy-up, other times Mammy-up. “Momma Mammy” watches over every minute of LaSonia’s Zoom lectures and remote office-hours.
            You object. LaSonia laughs it off.
            “She’s my guardian angel, Abe. Or maybe my Kali,” LaSonia winks, “Destroyer of Negative Forces and Remover of Obstacles.”
            In the weeks since she found the doll, LaSonia’s bank inexplicably reversed a fee, a local “Men’s Rights Activist” abruptly stopped hassling her, and her stalled dissertation finally escaped editorial-review purgatory.
            “Besides,” she adds, “it’ll be a great addition to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, once the university reopens.”
            But you can’t get used to the doll. Seeing it up on her shelf makes you nervous. You’re unnerved by the smugness of the White sexpot in her little cap, childishly revolted by the Black mammy imprisoned under her skirts, ashamed of both these ridiculous feelings.
            One night you dream that you hear a scuttling in the front hall. Upon investigation, you discover the doll creeping along the baseboards, tumbling in sloppy boneless cartwheels. She turns to look at you, Mammy-side up. Dark eyes slowly scan you head to toe, unimpressed. Her wriggling black arms lift her skirts, so that the White mommy can peer out. White Mommy winks and pantomimes a smoochie-mouth kiss at you. Then they mount the wall, scuttling like a spider, and squeeze through the few inches LaSonia left open at the top of the window to let in the night breeze.
            You awake standing in the hall, alone, your skin stippled with goosebumps.

#

            You keep hassling LaSonia about the doll. You can be that way, picking, picking, picking, argumentum ad attrition. Back when you were both undergrads, LaSonia had quit talking to you for a week after you two had gotten into just such a slow simmering argument. It was about that Audre Lorde essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In all honesty, you weren’t even really arguing about the essay, because you’d never read it. You were arguing about the title; the claim felt so transparently absurd: a hammer will smash the patriarchy just as handily as it’ll smash a nail or window or a baby’s skull, right?
            But this argument you actually care about. You argue that doll is a pathogen vector. You argue that it probably harbors bird mites. You argue that she should email the curator of the Jim Crow Museum; if he wants it, you’re happy to drop it off on your way to work. If he doesn’t, the thing should get trashed.
            LaSonia finally snaps: “If the doll’s so dirty, why the Hell you always playin’ with it, Abe?”
            “You’re nuts!” you snap back. You’d never touched the awful thing, not in the woods, and not since she’d brought it into the house. You’d assumed it was LaSonia who flipped and posed the doll at her whim.
            The realization comes with an icy and nauseating abruptness: your dream of the doll in the front hallway was no dream. That was something real, which you really saw.
            You open your mouth to speak, but your phone saves you from whatever you were going to say. It’s your dad.

#

            At the start of the pandemic you and your dad had gotten into the habit of nightly video chats. You’d had never really been that close. But he’ was’s bored, confined home alone, far from the boardrooms and conferences he adores. Meanwhile, as an “essential worker” in a prison infirmary, you’re permitted to leave the house daily, do “real” things, talk to “actual” people. In Dad’s estimation, your life choices have abruptly flipped from mildly disappointing to endlessly fascinating. You’d be lying if you said it hadn’t been a gratifying turn.
            “How’s Dr. Puddin’ Pops?” Dad asks.
            Does that sound racist? You think it does, but you know it isn’t. The inmate he’s asking about—a once-popular Black actor and comedian, now a half-blind octogenarian—actually was the spokesperson for Jell-O Pudding Pops once upon a time. Back then, he was widely regarded as “America’s Dad.” Now he’s America’s Serial Date Rapist.
            Most of the prison population has tested positive for the virus. They have to isolate in their cells. Because America’s Bad Dad is elderly, and thus at high-risk for complications if infected, admin transferred him to isolation in the infirmary with you. The arrangement is half reverse-quarantine, half internship. He sleeps on a cot in your office, makes you both coffee and Cup O’Noodles, answers the phones, and jokes around with your patients via intercom. It probably helps that he played a doctor on TV for so long.
            You want to talk to your dad about the dream that wasn’t a dream, about LaSonia and the doll. But you can’t find a way to bring the conversation around After an hour you both say, “I love you” and hang up. You go to bed.

#

            The doll troubles you. You can’t talk to your dad about it. So you do the next best thing, and talk to America’s Dad about it.
            You two sit together in your little office wearing surgical masks. He’s old, mostly blind, a felon that never finished college, yet still does a better job of looking like a doctor than you do.
            America’s Dad listens patiently, hands laced on the head of his cane, his good ear cocked to you.
            “Your Black wife found a pickaninny doll,” he reiterates, “and it makes you ‘uncomfortable’?” He chuckles, leaning back, eyes blank but crinkling with that mischievous grin you’d loved seeing on reruns as a kid. “My dad’s doll made me uncomfortable, too,” he reminisces. “Until it was mine.”
            Your throat squeaks: “What?”
            He gives you The Look™, despite being blind. “You’ve gotta open your eyes, son.”
            Maybe he’d have said more, but one of the patients out in the ward buzzes the intercom. “Dr. Jell-O Dad,” the patient calls out to the blind comedian, “Do a Russell!”
            Dr. Dad’s milky eyes sparkle. He presses the intercom button and launches into a 60-year-old stand-up bit about his younger brother. That same brother—now a congressman—disowned his big brother on national TV three years ago, sponsoring a bill named after one of Dr. Jell-O’s victims. Inmate NN7687 doesn’t seem to harbor any hard feelings about this.


#

            The pandemic has taken away so many things—bars, birthday parties, road trips, libraries, religious services—but it gave us one thing we never would have had otherwise: Visibility. In the months since the stay-at-home orders, we’ve seen the kitchens and living rooms and studies and dens of countless celebrities.
            And once you start to see it, you can’t believe you never saw it before:
            That schmarmy, bow-tie loving right-wing news guy? There’s a fat, crocheted Mammy on top of his fridge, leaning against a teddy bear cookie jar.
            The electric car impresario who seemed to have lost his mind, touting bleach-drinking “miracle mineral water” cures? A clutch of plastic pickaninnies, eyes and lips perfect shocked circles, crowd his side-table.
            That erratic former rapper who’s declared he’s running for President on the “Record Release Party” platform—and inexplicably keeps rising in the polls? A faded wooden “Shuffling Sambo” doll sits in his home office’s broad window. Seeing that stung, because your dad and his dad actually sorta-kinda know each other, having grown-up together in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
            Even in the Oval Office you spy a minstrel doll—a “golliwog” in blue jacket and red bow-tie, big eyes and wide red lips surmounted by an explosive shock of picked-out afro. It sits tucked among the framed photos just behind the Resolute desk.
            That night on your call with Dad, you must be staring, because he finally cranes around to look up at his own bookshelf. A sock monkey perches there, an old one, made from real Rockford Red-Heel socks: “Mr. Lips.” He’s sat up there for as long as you can remember, leering and repulsive: Thick red grinning lips. Staring white eyes. A big, chipped, wooden button shaped like a fat slice of watermelon sewn to one hand.
            Dad turns back. “You know I already promised Mr. Lips to your sister,” he says. “She obviously needs him more; her company is just about to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.”


#

            The next day, in the prison infirmary, you ask America’s Former Dad how people get these dolls. He smiles slyly. “You don’t get them; they get you.”
            You ask if everyone who has a doll is a total piece of shit like him.
            He does not flinch. “No,” he says. He names two prominent judges, a retired basketball player, a CEO, and a civil rights icon—all legitimate American saints. Each has their dolls.
            You start to ask “Why—?”
            The old comedian cuts you off. “They get the job done, son.”
            “What the hell does that mean?”
            He somehow manages to give you a side-eye, despite being almost entirely blind. You remember your dream that was not a dream, of LaSonia’s topsy-turvy doll tumbling out into the night, hellbent on destroying barriers. You imagine that scrum of plastic pickaninnies somehow derailing an SEC investigation. You recall the incompetent boob’s incomprehensible rise from real-estate shyster to Our President.
            You wonder how the dolls can possibly do these things—do they scuttle around whispering in the ears of professors and stuffing ballot boxes? Or are they more like voodoo dolls, gathering in moonlit cabals to work their sympathetic magic?
            And you wonder if the how of it really matters. Your dad was supposed to be in a morning meeting on the 102nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower on 9/11. He missed it because he suddenly fell ill and crapped his pants in the town car on the way there. You and your family had called it “Luck”—but had it been luck? Or had it been Mr. Lips?     
            “You know what my mistake was?” the elderly comedian asks you.
            “Drugging and raping 62 women?” you spit.
            His face sours momentarily, and then smoothes. America’s Dad, firm but forgiving. The sonofabitch.
            “My mistake was getting rid of my doll,” he says. “I believed my own lie: that I was better than the Devil. That civil rights hero I mentioned? He was ordained clergy, and even he didn’t get rid of his doll. He didn’t like it, and I know he never asked it to do a damn thing for him, but he kept it safe and sound—until it got burned up with the rest of his belongings when they firebombed his house. And you know how that turned out.”
            You did. Everyone in America with a high-school education did: bleeding out on a grocery store parking lot just four days after the fire, assassinated by an idiot.


#

            Late that night, LaSonia asleep, you creep home from a double shift at the prison. You and the Devil finally have your little talk.
            “I don’t like you,” you tell the tupsy-turvey doll, “and you don’t like me. But we both love LaSonia.”
            The doll sits on her shelf, White-lady end up, smirking. You take a breath.
            “We both love LaSonia, and LaSonia hates …” You name the ex-rapper, the son of your dad’s old pal. LaSonia doesn’t give a shit about him—musically or politically—but any fool can see he’s riding the rails straight into being our next nightmarishly unqualified President.
            Does the doll know you’re lying? Does she care?
            You don’t know. Does a hammer care what it’s swinging at? Who holds it? Or does it smash and drive nails because smashing and driving is what it’s for, and being useful is its own deep fulfillment?
            Mammy peaks out from under Mommy’s pale skirts. She winks.
            You take a double dose of Valium that night. Your sleep is deep, dreamless, and overlong. You wake up late for work.
            Rushing out of the house you glimpse Momma Mammy up on her shelf, holding illimitable dominion over all—but no longer alone: she has her white worm of an arm hooked around the wooden Shuffling Sambo’s crooked elbow.
            Driving in, you hear on the radio that the FBI and ATF have raided Mr. Record Release Party’s ranch. Turns out he’s been a naughty, naughty boy.
            You pull into the fenced and barb-wired prison parking lot, thrilled in a way you’ve never felt before.
            It’s a dark thrill, more in the gut and pelvis than in your heart. Like a towering thunderhead, that dark thrill is heavy with possibilities.

Copyright © 2023 by David Erik Nelson All rights reserved
Cover art: Jane Iverson, Rag Doll, c. 1936, NGA 27514, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82172132

Know Some Nerds? Wanna Give ’em Books as Gifts?

I write horror, SF, and DIY stuff—occasionally in book form. If you want autographed/personalized copies for your lovelies this holiday season, I can help!

Here’s the rundown on what I’ve got on hand:

  • Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids: Just like the title promises. A weird range of projects: Tickle boxes that shock you, PVC didgeridoos, sock squids, and more.
  • Junkyard Jam Band: DIY Musical Instruments and Noisemakers: Again, we like titles that make description redundant. These are oddball little homebrew instruments and effects: an electric ukulele, a synth or two, thumb pianos, lofi audio effects, etc.
  • There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel: Fresh out of college Taylor lucks into a cushy job in human resources. Now he’s tangled up with dishonest bosses, domestic terrorists, meth dealers, the “Problem of Too Many Hitlers,” and threats to space-time integrity. What’s a fella to do?
  • There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House (a cosmic horror novel): Downtrodden Glenn and his none-too-bright sidekick Lennie work for a crooked real estate baron flipping houses in downtrodden Detroit. But this latest flipper has some odd geometry, a really off library—and a knack for keeping itself occupied.
Limited Offer: Autographed and Personalized Books!

🚨 LAST CHANCE🚨 to get “There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel” for 99-cents!

My latest darkly comic scifi novel goes to full retail price tomorrow; get it while it’s still cheaper than basically anything else you might treat yourself to:

“An intriguing take on minimum wage employment and how it can be made to pay.”

John Fairhurst

What if your great new job had dire consequences for space-time integrity?

Fresh out of college and unsure what’s next, Taylor has lucked into a cushy job in human resources. Most companies keep costs down by outsourcing and off-shoring. Taylor’s bosses are different. They’re committed to staying “100% MADE IN AMERICA”—by bringing in cheap labor using a time portal. But their latest batch of “New Guys” aren’t like the others… 

“The movie pitch to the Sci-Fi Channel would be Breaking Bad meets Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book. If this all sounds a bit grim it is anything but. Like Breaking Bad this has a strong streak of black humour running through it and is very entertaining.♥♥♥+”

SF Magazines

Can Taylor untangle himself from corporate HR, domestic terrorists, the problem of “Too Many Hitlers,” and threats to space-time integrity?

Cover art for "There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel" Shows a young man in business attire silhouette against a high straight-walled passage, facing down the flaming concentric rings of a time portal.

“The big pleasure of this story is watching all the pieces come together. Rating: ★★★★★ Fun story with a sophisticated plot.”

Rocket Stack Rank

Two Pics, Two Points: New Story, New Rock

First, as you may recall, I was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award this year.

🚨SPOILER ALERT!!!🚨 I did not win.

But I did learn that all of the finalists get a “token”: a nice smooth river stone, suitable for all your smoothest, roundest river stone needs. Pictured above is mine.

Second, on the day this came in the mail, I also got my contributor copies of the Sept/Oct 2023 Asimov’s Science Fiction, featuring my most recent novelette, “The Dead Letter Office.” That’s shown below. Look for your copy wherever delightful nonsense is sold.

Asimov’s is also running an interview with me about writing in general, this story in particular, and my history with the magazine, who’ve been publishing my drek for about 13 years now (my first pro sale was to Sheila Williams back in 2008, although that story didn’t see print until 2010, I guess).

The cover of the Sept/Oct 2023 issue of "Asimov's Science Fiction" shows a eerie swampy forest with a wolf stalking in the distance, and hails this as their "Special Slightly Spooky Issue!"

“There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel” Now Available for 99-cents!🙀

My latest time portal novel is now on sale for just 99-cents (cheaper than the cheapest cup of coffee). 

“An intriguing take on minimum wage employment and how it can be made to pay.”

John Fairhurst

What if your great new job had dire consequences for space-time integrity?

Fresh out of college and unsure what’s next, Taylor has lucked into a cushy job in human resources. Most companies keep costs down by outsourcing and off-shoring. Taylor’s bosses are different. They’re committed to staying “100% MADE IN AMERICA”—by bringing in cheap labor using a time portal. But their latest batch of “New Guys” aren’t like the others… 

“The movie pitch to the Sci-Fi Channel would be Breaking Bad meets Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book. If this all sounds a bit grim it is anything but. Like Breaking Bad this has a strong streak of black humour running through it and is very entertaining.♥♥♥+”

SF Magazines

Can Taylor untangle himself from corporate HR, domestic terrorists, the problem of “Too Many Hitlers,” and threats to space-time integrity?

Cover art for "There Was No Sound of Thunder: A Time Portal Novel" Shows a young man in business attire silhouette against a high straight-walled passage, facing down the flaming concentric rings of a time portal.

“The big pleasure of this story is watching all the pieces come together. Rating: ★★★★★ Fun story with a sophisticated plot.”

Rocket Stack Rank

My novelette “This Place is Best Shunned” has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Read it for free!

My story “This Place is Best Shunned” (Tor.com, July 2022) has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award!

The Shirley Jackson Awards honor Jackson’s defining contributions to modern literature by annually recognizing “outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.” I’m tickled pink to have been nominated, as “psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic” are pretty clear the bullseye I’ve been aiming to hit for the past couple decades.

Here’s their official press release:

2022 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominees

Boston, MA (June 2023) — In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, The Shirley Jackson Awards, Inc. has been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories:  Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Fiction, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.

The nominees for the 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

  • Beulah by Christi Nogle (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • The Dead Friends Society by Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall (Encyclopocalypse Publications)
  • The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books)
  • Jackal by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
  • Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai (Jaded Ibis Press)
  • Where I End by Sophie White (Tramp Press)

NOVELLA

  • The Bone Lantern by Angela Slatter (PS Publishing)
  • Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • Catastrophe by Deirdre Danklin (Texas Review Press)
  • Lure by Tim McGregor (Tenebrous Press)
  • Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (PS Publishing)
  • The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu (Amazon Original Stories)

NOVELETTE

  • Azeman or, the Testament of Quincey Morris by Lisa Moore (Black Shuck Books)
  • “Challawa” by Usman T. Malik (Dark Stars:  New Tales of Darkest Horror)
  • “Sweetbaby” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, October 2022)
  • “This Place is Best Shunned” by David Erik Nelson (Tor.com)
  • What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (Amazon Original Stories)

SHORT FICTION

  • “Brother Maternitas” by Viktor Athelstan (Your Body is Not Your Body)
  • “The Church of Divine Electricity” by Emily Mitchell (The Southern Review)
  • “Dick Pig” by Ian Muneshwar (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 112)
  • “Halogen Sky” by Wendy N. Wagner (VASTARIEN:  A Literary Journal, vol. 5, issue 1)
  • “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” by Kim Fu (Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

  • And At My Back I Always Hear by Scott Nicolay (Word Horde)
  • Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)
  • Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted by RJ Joseph (The Seventh Terrace)
  • Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House)
  • Splendid Anatomies by Allison Wyss (Veliz Books)
  • We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe (Nictitating Books)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

  • Chiral Mad 5, edited by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)
  • The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, edited by Doug Murano (Bad Hand Books)
  • Other Terrors, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason (William Morrow)
  • Screams From the Dark:  29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)
  • Your Body is Not Your Body, edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone (Tenebrous Press)

2022 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS CEREMONY

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented in-person on Saturday, July 15 at 8pm at Readercon 32, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.