Author: Carl Vandine

Mick sat by the fire and looked at the globs disconnecting from the roaring flame—and he’d burn like a candle in the face of a jester.

”You care to explain that again, bub?” asked Billy as he rubbed his mustache and took a swig of Peatown Pilsner. The small group of twenty-eight to thirty-oners looked on at Mick and his mind slowed down to a molasses drip.

“You said ‘The government’s afraid of us all getting along’ right?” replied Mick. “I wrote an entire thing about it.”

The men in his audience sat looking while their wives giggled to each other.

“It was like 50 pages,” continued Mick. “It told about how this country was built on abuse and how everyone and everything is a victim in this evil god damn system that they built with intention to keep people like us divided.”

Dame tapped his Jordans and scanned the faces in the group, hoping and praying his friend would reel himself in and earn his invite to the backyard kickback.

“America isn’t one nation. That’s just a lie they told us to keep us grinding away for the almighty American dollar, which has portraits of slaveowners all over it.”

The group played quiet mouse while Mick rambled on. “If you were a rational person you’d move on from American identity. Dame can tell—“

Deidra yelled “Swish!” and the group nodded in approval and pointed back at her, while she began a conversation with Tabitha.

“Remember that time in Mr. Swisher’s class when I snorted all those salt packets from lunch?”
“Yeah before Obama got rid of all the salt,” replied Tabitha with her eyes rolled.
“I almost passed out,” said Deidra as she laughed. “My head got light and dizzy.”

Billy put his arm around Piper and said “Come on babe, you’ve got some stories.” Piper took another drink from her wine cooler and retreated back into her safe space.

An Appalachian wallflower is easily trampled.

Mick continued. “Obama was just another figurehead they selected to start wars and bomb children.”

Billy looked at Mick. “Fuck that guy. He’s the reason I couldn’t get on at the railroad.”
Dame stopped tapping his foot on his adopted ground and asked “Why couldn’t you?”
“He shut down all the coal,” said Billy.
“Not true,” said Mick. “He wanted cleaner coal, but that’s beside the point.”

The group murmured while the fire roared on, just whirring and cracking and hissing like a cat fight on down a Westpit road.

Tabitha asked “Then what’s the point?”
Mick replied. “The point is that we should have never been dependent on the coal barons but they took our mines from us and made us rely on their fake mo—”

Piper chimed in with an attempted quip and projectile vomited all on the fire, dimming it temporarily while the fumes lifted into the humid Kentucky sky and the group migrated to the garage… the men minus Mick talked about their jobs at the City of Shawnee and all the things to do Monday.

“Don’t trample me,” whispered the Appalachian wallflower.

Sucking on a sawed-off and wundrin where it went wrong—there’s always someone else and Andromeda’s been long gone. Jake held the weapon in hand and screamed and fussed and whimpered and felt his phone vibrate. One last time.

He removed his thumb from the trigger and barrel from his mouth to reach for his phone. Ron Drip.

“What up,” said Ron when Jake answered. “You got a minute?”
“I think,” replied Jake as he set down the shotgun.

Ron continued. “Fight Kyova is throwing an amateur card. We should sign up.”
“The fuck you mean sign up?” replied Jake with one askew eyebrow.
“Sign up and give it a go,” said Ron. “Find out what you’re made of.”

Jake was made of star matter, as Ron had once told him. He didn’t know himself beyond that but he looked up at the mirror for the first time in weeks and saw red and howled like every Ozzy song.

“That’s my dawg,” said Ron with a grin. “I knew you had it in ya.”
“Do you think I have a chance?” asked Jake. He weighed in at 187 pounds the morning prior, and Ron wanted to fight in the lightweight division.

“Not at all,” said Ron. “But you need this.”
“Maybe you’re right,” replied Jake.
“It’ll wake you up.”

Jake pondered for a moment. “I’m gonna do it.”
“That’s my fucking brother,” said Ron as he shuffled his phone. “I’ll talk more later. Jim’s down my back about tickets.”

Jake hung up the phone and hung up his gun on his living room rack with a bottle of Jack, and he cracked that motherfucker open and took a swig and coughed and threw up. Ron had a stronger stomach.

Jake walked out the front storm door and looked at his hometown with paranoid eyes and a newfound dilemma. Andi ran off in a hurry from Jake and determined to make him a weasel, but Jake’s newfound purpose lingered in his mind.

One last time.

Once in a while men find themselves wishing they’d made better choices and better decisions, but there’s not much one can do when he’s stuck in a slumlord’s wet dream and a grotesque dog is all up in his face, its tongue dangling out like an old geezer’s nutsack.

“I used to work with Carli,” said Jane as Brendan entered the front door to her downstairs apartment and her dog growled something fierce at him. “That’s where I remembered you from!”
“Oh,” replied Brendan. “That’s not a good thi—”
“She never talked bad about you or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Brendan decked a flat smile and rolled his hunter eyes at Jane as he paced through her dished-up kitchen and into her living room—there were no doors in her apartment, and the bathroom wall was caving in, but she was just glad to have a place to stay, she’d say.

“You can sit on the couch,” said Jane. “I’m gonna go to the little girl’s room.”

Jane gestured at the torn-up pleather couch and pulled up her boyshorts into her crotch. Brendan caught a glimpse or two and looked to his left as she exited the room, only shifting his gaze downward as her footsteps softened in the distance. He sat down on the soda-covered sofa and grabbed her remote to open the tube.

“Harley!” yelled Jane. “Get the fuck back in your bed!”

She was yelling at her mutt, of course, but Brendan jumped and then squirmed as the little yorkie mix ran up at Brendan and jumped on the couch. Harley sniffed Brendan all over and then ran to the hallway and dropped about three or four pellets on the cold hard wood as Brendan looked at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the drywall. One, two, three.

Here came she, barreling through the hallway while her platinum blonde hair dangled in the air, narrowly avoiding the dog shit she casually ignored.

“So all that stuff that happened with Carli,” said Jane.
“All what stuff?” replied Brendan.
“You know…”

Brendan closed his eyes and mouth and ears and sighed through his freckled nose—the girls in school called them angel kisses when he was a littlun, but there were no angels to kiss in this hall of Hell.

Jane continued. “All that stuff where she trashed her apartment. Was that real?”
Brendan’s sweat evaporated damn-near immediately. “Yeah, and it was my fault. She only left because she was scared.”
“Scared of what?” asked Jane.
“Scared of me.” Brendan looked down at his wrist and the uneven scar running up the side. “I wasn’t the best boyfriend.”

Jane looked on at Brendan, expressionless.

“I mean she wasn’t exactly hot shit either,” said Jane as she clapped her hands at the mutt on Brendan’s lap. “Harley, get down.”

Brendan replied. “She was good to me.”
“Every ex I’ve had has beat me,” said Jane as Brendan typed in a song title.
“Have you ever heard this song?” asked Brendan.
“No sir,” said Jane as she grabbed his hand.

They sat in silence for the first and last time and listened to Poachers and all kinds of stupid shit. Brendan looked around the room as she rambled about some shit he probably couldn’t recall — other than a casual confession of meth addiction — the moment he left her house in a panic when the thoughts of Carli crept up on him like a stalker in the DMs of a youngin.

Counting cracks and cracks and cracks and wondering where all the confidence went.

“Yeah, can I get a bowl of yer Brunswick stew?”

Mick recognized that accent. He didn’t hear it often, no. In fact, he’d never heard one in person, but being chronically online pays off sometimes, doesn’t it?

See, the patron at the register was from a faraway land, one Mick only dreamed he could visit someday. She looks like a real Australian thought Mick… and then he realized what that meant.

Mick looked up at the woman, who stood about six foot two and wore a black Tammy’s Tintin hoodie—a literal photo of their storefront, its hot pink paint simmering on a sunny day. The Aussie continued her order and Mick’s fingers fluttered to record it. He finished the order and felt a surge run through his veins so he pondered a question and blurted out a quip.

“I’m gonna ask a variation on a question that I’m sure you get all the time…”

The Aussie’s eyebrows raised.

“But I’ll go out on a limb and say you’re from Perth… Western Australia.”

The woman’s eyes widened and her head turned as she looked at Mick, asking “How’d you know?”

Mick replied. “There’s a musician I listen to and he’s from Perth.”

The musician, of course, couldn’t be Kevin Parker, no, because that would be too on the nose. But the reality is that it was, and Mick had long admired his creative energy—in fact, when Mick’s hair was long and freeflowing like a parrot, he aspired to style his hair like Kevin Parker: brown natural roots and a gradient to blonde tips, but the kicker is that Mick never had the confidence, and he sold out, violently chopping his hair off in a nervous breakdown after his breakup.

Mick continued. “I also had an Xbox friend from New South Wales, and I could tell there was a variation in those accents.”
“Yeah,” replied the Aussie. “We tend to talk a lot faster than they do on the other side.”

Mick smiled… here was he, a man searching for identity in a homeless hometown, speaking to a woman who didn’t belong but belonged as much as anyone. Mick asked the Aussie how she ended up in Shawnee, and the Aussie smiled.

“I married a Kentucky girl.”

What is a Kyova?

Well I’ll fill you in—Kyova is a ten-county region in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia containing around half a million.

Kyova was the runt of the colonial litter, peaking with the dawn of the automobile and then dying in the middle of its voided warranty like a Ford. The first European settlement was Collinsworth in 1775 and the rest followed after. These new inhabitants encountered a complex series of mounds scattered throughout the land and upon excavation of these mounds, the settlers discovered their true origins—the mounds were burial grounds for an ancient civilization we call the Adena, who became the Hopewell tradition and Fort Ancient culture. The people would fall victim to the smallpox epidemic of the 18th century and much of their history is lost to time.

The Kyova region rose to prominence with industry—the geographical location on the mighty Ohio River and its tributaries made sure of it. Meat packing, shoe manufacturing, even the production of baseball gloves! It was like fate willed it.

Collinsworth boomed in population from its founding until the 1930s, going from 3,000 to 80,000 in just 50 years. Shawnee’s population peaked at 30,000 in 1960, and Peatown at 40,000.

And then the industry went and left and wrecked the shit out of the region. They pumped out all the jobs then pumped the people full of fucking pills.

The Kyova tri-state has a perpetual dark cloud hanging on it. It was ranked the most miserable place in America last decade and an opioid epidemic looms over the region. Collinsworth was once dubbed America’s overdose capital. Cancer deaths are in abundance. Good jobs are scarce, and the dream of every child is to escape to greener pastures.

For some, the dream passes on to their children.

2018

These are the scars of a starving artist so why should I ever be biting my tongue?

An irresponsible libido entered Mick’s eardrums as he felt a drop of sweat drip down his forehead and a core memory emerged. A litter of youngins squatted on a cobblestone porch trying to make a name for themselves… 2119 Almond Avenue in Shawnee it was, yep.

“What up everybody,” said a ponytailed motherfucker in a T-shirt and jorts as he smiled at the group. “I’m Ron Drip.”

“Hey Ron!” replied Mikey as he adjusted his wire glasses. “It’s good to finally meet you, man!”

The twentyagers shook hands as Ron from Arnton settled into a lawn chair and grabbed his copy of the poorly-written script. As far as cinema… well, Ron had never acted. His lane was rap—he grew up in the ghetter on South Ninth Street right behind ZoominAmerica. At twenty-two he chose to venture out and expand his massive stock.

See, there is no stopping fate when that performer comes out. Some are born with it and some learn it along the way, but the bottom line is: that boy was a natural… and so was Mick, and they both got the shit beat out of them in the first flick. The second one? They became the bad guys, and they got to beat the shit out of everyone else, and it was awesome, or so they thought, but nobody ever really watched it and the producers stopped promoting the films when Mikey had a nervous breakdown and gave up filmmaking.

The scene trauma bonded through art, and they soul-bonded through 2am conversations and prank calls and night drives. In a town with no university, this was the college experience of a subset of young adults—Mick and Mikey and Carissa were anxious at nineteen, but twenty-two year old Ron never let them see him sweat. Nope, it was against his religion, that motherfucker, and he partied and partied until the cows died a few years prior—his college experience.

A wave was a brewing, yes sir, like a surf latte—and they chainsmoked on that porch and chainsmoked on that porch and chainsmoked on that porch when the legal age was still eighteen, of course. The natural drawl of time ebbed and flowed like the Mighty O, and Ron’s wheels torqued their way into a bad verbiage.

“Yo Mick,” said Ron as he tapped Mick on the back of the shoulder. “You have a nice camera right?”
“Yeah it’s alright,” replied Mick. “It gets the job done I guess.”
“You ever thought about taking photos for rappers?”
“What do you—”

“I know a lot of people and we’ve got this thing going at the lodge,” said Ron as he continued. “I’m on the board now. We’re doing shows there. I want you to take photos. I will pay you American dollars to do it.”

The shoulder tap started a partnership that lasted—Ron Drip and the rest of the Arnton gang detonated in Kyova, and the Collinsworth rappers on up the river scanned their sets in fear… or so Mick thought, because paranoia was his daddy and the pacifier fell out long ago. Ron put him on though, and the other rappers utilized his services. They paid him real money, and he earned enough to brag about it to his parents… until Snappe came along with his camera.

Competition mode began for those sh ifty bastards. One was anti-social and one was hyper-social. Both neurodivergent men knew what was at stake. They were in a documentition for a throne no one cared for… a dying form of art in a changing digital age, and Snappe saw the writing on the wall and went for it while Mick stuck with stills and burned himself out of the edge that made him different. He fucked around with video… but his poverty-ass mindset never let him buy the proper equipment to edit the videos he shot. Maybe that was an excuse he made for lack of drive.

A new artist sprung up on the scene like a cock in the morning light: Parker Loudpack, an odd and scrawny feller from another ghetter in Arnton. Snappe shot a lot of content for him, and Mick bought a modest amount of weed from him. Parker had the image and the sound… that drugged out pitched down pop punk sample emo rap style… I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, right? And the face tats, man. He had them all over, so anything was fair game… Snappe knew he had a viral moment in the sleeve, and he launched it.

Parker got a new tattoo on his forehead for a famous podcast: NoCucker. He got it tattooed right there above his right green eye and sent it in and got what he wanted—the host sent attention his way and his debut single hit 100k views.

“All my friends say that I’m blowin up…”

Mick took some photos for Parker too, but he wasn’t very associated… he was an outsider to their scene and he knew it, yet he knew he could outrap any of them too. He had a concept album, and he’d tell you all about it, and he might even let you hear a beat or two from it, and if you were a very close friend he would rap it for you while he drove you around. He didn’t have a lot of those.

Imagine devoting years to an artform, and sitting on the sidelines while a bunch of artists do what you always wanted to do… and you’re photographing them. Did Mick get artcucked? The world may never know, but the truth is that it ate him alive and he absolutely hated Parker at one point in time because he obtained the one thing Mick always wanted: a viral moment of fame.

Mick didn’t stop creating anything but life, and all the others stopped creating anything but life, and well, it’s hard to write a bar when you’re stuck in the bar to escape your fucking family for a few hours after work. Parker fell to the same fate as the other men, just more slowly. He had his moment and a cult for a few years… but fate willed it that he too would remove his face tats and return to normalcy and fatherhood.

Like a river, like a wave.

Fluorescent fucking lights flickered loudly in a dull building—the HeavenTower, Shawnee’s tallest structure other than the big ass hill behind it. Chris stood at the water cooler with Jimmy and shit-shootin took precedence over their chores, except for those damn Prozac Chris was popping into his mouth.

“Tatum’s not gonna win MVP,” said Chris. “They’re not even gonna win the series.”

“Whatever dude,” disagreed Jimmy. “Boston’s got this.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s a long series and Luka’s gonna go off.” Chris paused and pondered and shot a sly little grin. “Everybody acts tough when they’re up.”

The conversation dissipated and Chris quietly returned to his cubicle—a lone island in a sea of swordfish. His eyelids called LifeAlert—a new call popped up on his screen and a fucking weirdo was on the other side, he was sure. Chris hovered his mouse to the green phone icon and clicked it. Show time.

“Holy Hills Medical Center, this is Chris.”

“Yeah uh,” replied the woman on the line. “I’m with Paul Revere and we’ve got a situation.”

“Okay dear,” said Chris. “What’s up?”

“Y—uh we’ve got an employee who appears to be having a psychotic break.”

Chris leaned forward and opened his notepad. He started typing symptoms left and right: paranoia, delusions, grandiosity, slurred speech, and the whole nine yards. He clicked hold and watched a basketball highlight video and took the call off hold and said “The best I can do is April 6.”

“A—April?” replied the woman.

“Yeah,” replied Chris. “We’re pretty booked up.”

The call ended and he opened his chatbot and typed something in and he sat idly for a while before those social cues that always escaped him came calling.

Jimmy glanced across the room at Chris. He felt chipper after his multi-mile run that morning. He felt more powerful after drinking his protein shakes and pumping his gym weights and eating his eggs and bacon that morning. A childless bachelor at thirty-one, Jimmy charmed his way through any room. His study of seduction and charismatic nature was a perfect storm of downpouring douchebag. He hid his insecurities like a married man hides his mistress, but he saw the good in people.

He was ready to strike.

“Hey Chris.”

Chris looked up and rolled his eyes as they connected with Jimmy’s and he reluctantly walked over to the laidback jokester along with some other coworkers. They all knew Jimmy had a loaded wordweapon.

“I got fired from my job at the keyboard factory,” said Jimmy with a devious grin. “They told me I wasn’t putting in enough shifts.”

A laser beam of laughter cheneyed from the silence and echoed throughout the ominous god damn ass office. Chris cracked a timid smile and headed back to his cubicle thinking I can’t succumb to Jimmy’s aura. He surveyed the room and sat down to code a couple of lines while the decibels rose higher than a red-eye flight.

The laughter became contagious and infected the proles like a pandemic virus—a parasite with no end in sight. Breathing became a luxury for the growing group of jesters, including Jill, a young coder fresh out of college. A real looker with a brighter mind, and Jimmy had his sights set on her. In between bouts of laughter, Jill said “That’s a good one, Jimmy.”

Jill hunched over with her guttural guffaw and grabbed her stomach tightly, tears streaming down her aesthetically arresting face. Her smile was wide like a white polar bear on the salmon trail. She panicked and peeked around the corner while her coworkers continued to crack up. She looked Chris directly in the eye, and for a moment, they shared an embrace as Chris pulled out his phone and called his wife. Jill gasped for air and her face turned blue and she fell to the ground and shook something fierce.

Her peers chortled, despite their worried words, and their chilling fates became untimely deaths. The lungs of the wheezing workers stopped one by one, and twenty-one people died from laughter on that menacing morning… except for Chris, of course, because why else would we write about him?

Chris calmed his way through the carnage and called the emergency services. They cleaned up the scene and Chris went home and walked through the door with his shoulders hunched and his head down.

“Honey, I’m home,” yelled Chris as he dropped his backpack on the ground and untucked his blue-and-green-checkered shirt. No response. “Honey?”

He walked down his home’s hallway adorned with pictures of family and friends and his stomach churned. Chris turned the corner to enter their bedroom, and his wife stared at him in silence, her grin widening and her eyes piercing his soul. She wailed and then laughed maniacally. She fell over, grabbing her stomach and rolling on the floor, and a seizure snapped her neck and killed her instantly. Chris sat on the bed and spoke to himself.

“Laughter is the best medicine.”