The Magnificent Inheritance

When I first came back home there were kids who pursued me. I can’t even write down what they said to me. If I wrote it down and then one day this computer broke down and I had to take it to the shop then I would get arrested and put in the special wing. They said it like a kid might have asked a grown-up for a cigarette when I was a kid. Or like a pretend kid in a comic when I was a kid would have blown a raspberry at their neighbour.
I stopped jogging.
Being afraid of children was the sign either of the apocalypse, or your own breakdown. I went with the simpler explanation.
I lived in the empty house. I didn’t fill it up. Didn’t bother it.
I slept with all the lights on. I remembered the feeling of getting burgled again and again when we were young. The worst part was just before you ran down the stairs with your dad and just after. Running down the stairs was alright.
Or maybe the worst part was when your brother cried for “no reason” when it was all done. Or maybe it was the stony face of your dad.
Maybe it was sitting in the empty room with the lights on and new dust patterns where the telly and record player had been. Tellys were big back then. Burglars worked hard. Now they probably run away with an iPhone or something.
Maybe that is why they kill you in your sleep now. An excess of energy,.
I had been around the world, quietly. Now it was okay that I didn’t fit in. When I went for a drink with my mates they bought weird stuff, cocktails etc. I think they were trying to make me feel better.
“Are you gonna sell the house then?”
“Yeah. Do you think someone will buy it?”
“Yeah. It’s a house. Someone will do it up. Some lad with a big dog. Why don’t you get a dog.”
“But I’m selling the house.”
“I think you’re still gonna want a dog, mate.”
There is a samurai sword in the big bedroom. I used to think it was real. Dangerous. Now I am not sure. It’s definitely a nice souvenir. I think it could be sharpened.
This and a fake watch and piles of clothes and papers that I can’t handle: The Legacy. And leather jackets that I give to one of their old friends every time one comes round. I have 21 cans of Carling Black Label left in the fridge. And 3 leather jackets. Some have flakey elbows. Others don’t, but make me look like a giant wallet if I ever try one on. I am a man who can’t wear leather jackets or any kind of hat. Or sunglasses.
I don’t jog but why not go for a walk? I walk down the old road to town. Pakistani kids won’t bother me, will they? They watch me, though. Two big lads follow me down to the old market place where the clock stands. It is at the exact same time it was last time I was here and I was 4 foot 1. Infrastructure investment is low here.
The Pakistani boys sit on the bench next to me, drinking Tango.
“Alright, mate,” they say.
“Alright, lads,” I say.
“You from here, mate?” they ask.
I say yes. I can’t ask them. It would be insensitive.
“What do you lads do?”
“Nowt.”
“Nowt. Yeah…you do nowt. Do you ever go to that Chinese place and get the curry chips?”
Was that insensitive? The curry.
“Charlie’s? Yeah, mate. Sound, mate. Chung gau feio ming chung!”
“I’m an orphan, lads.”
“Sorry to hear that , mister.”
“It’s my own fault. I thought I had to go around the world. It took a long bloody time lads. When I got back, I had an empty house. But the world is spinning round, innit? I could have stayed. I could have learned Chinese with you lads at Charlie’s.”
“You on the smack, dad?”
“Nah. I’m not on the smack.”
Then I start laughing. I’m laughing because smack is like leather jackets and hats and sunglasses to me.
“You’re on the smack, mate!”
“Hey listen, lads. Have you got like uncles and aunties and stuff in your house?”
“Cause we’re Pakistanis?”
They stand up and walk away.
“I have an empty house!”
I go home.

Coastal by Quiet Riot Girl

Coastal, by Quiet Riot Girl

The cliffs are falling into the sea. Nobody lives there anymore, except for the foolhardy, the suicidal, and the romantic (though suicides are the most romantic of all). Everyone else has moved inland. So if tourists insist on walking there, and do so at their peril, they stumble across abandoned cottages along the way. Some look like they have been left suddenly, as if the occupant woke up one morning and sensed something ominous, and just packed some belongings into a bag and walked out, forever. One of the cottages near Mariners’ Head still has the table set for breakfast. The edge of the cliff is approaching fast and soon the teapot, the plates and the butterdish will tumble to their end.

The village is still intact, but people are making plans already. The coast road is blocked off and the area has been put on the urgent rehousing list. Residents have always been resilient, and stubborn too. They won’t leave without a fight. But how can you fight the ocean?

Life is mundane, apart from the overhanging threat of destruction. People mind their own business, do what has to be done. That kaleidoscope of colour that briefly appeared, even here right at the very edge of the world, full of MTV and Internet Porn and Kinky Sex Stories and Anne Summers parties, came and went and disappeared without a trace, like the houses that fell into the sea. Sex is for procreation now, and occasionally to keep warm on winters’ nights. The ‘modern’ seems like a distant memory.

But the men of the village are haunted. They do not speak about her, but they know about the girl that wanders the clifftops, who occupies one of the abandoned cottages. They know she can take them back there, without warning, back to that era of debauchery, of pleasure and pain, of instant gratification, extremity of feeling. Sometimes, against their better judgements, some of them even go looking for her. One man went onto the cliffs at night and never returned. The official story is that he drowned, but the men of the village are not so sure.

In the pub, the only place where the air is still full of hope and possibilities, conversations can be stopped dead, just by mention of the cliffs. A stranger might think it is because of the situation everyone is in, and the women assume that too. But the men know different. They will look down, into their pint glass, fall into silence, laugh nervously and change the subject. It is almost as if she has visited them right there.

This is where ‘rumours’ would come in useful. Many ghost stories include the line ‘rumour has it’ somewhere or other. But there are no rumours this time. Just shadows under some men’s eyes, a sudden flash of life in someone’s expression. A sigh. It is not much in the way of evidence. But it all adds up.

When she walks in her long white cotton gown her blonde hair blowing behind her in the breeze, her mind is empty. When a figure approaches her along the path, coming towards her, not seeing her at first, she does not know what will happen next. When he sees her and stops, hesitant, maybe even fearful, she just turns her back on him and starts to retrace her steps. Sometimes he follows her, sometimes he turns back himself. Not all men are curious.

When they arrive at the cottage she walks in through the door silent. When he follows her in the atmosphere changes. There is no turning back now. When she hears him gasp, at the sight before him, the game has begun. But still, she doesn’t know how it will turn out. The room is bare except for a heavy wooden table and two chairs. On the table is a pile of equipment, laid out neatly. Whips, canes, rope, blindfold, handcuffs, hoods, chains. And a knife. On the wall of the room there are various hooks. He takes it all in.

She removes her nightdress to reveal a pale naked form. She looks at him with such intent, that he is infected with it. Suddenly he knows what to do. Anything could happen, but now it is up to him what that anything is. All those years of abstinence, or worse, of boring married missionary sex, are enough to bring the animal to the surface of any man. This one is roaring and growling already. He handcuffs her hands behind her back in one deft move. He pushes her towards the wall and holds her there. She feels his breath on her neck. She feels the coldness of the stone against her skin. She feels him pull her hair and whisper, ‘bitch’. It has been such a long time but he hasn’t forgotten. He is angry about what he missed. He is going to make her pay.

Fucking a ghost is like fucking a woman, but quieter, and more exciting. She is a blank canvas. He knows he can do what he wants with no comeback.  That’s what turns him on. Imagine if there were never any consequences to anybody’s actions? This is how he approaches the situation. On the table the knife glistens temptingly. His conscience is a clean slate. And he always wanted to know if ghosts bleed.

It turns out they do.

By the time he has finished with her, there is nothing much left but blood. It only takes one cut, horizontal across her perfect belly, to open the floodgates. It cascades in crimson rivers out of her over her skin and onto the knife, his hands, his naked body. She does not make a sound, but her expression freezes in terror and pain. Good.

He doesn’t know quite why but he bends over her then and licks the blood pouring out from her body. He swallows the thick, metallic liquid as if it were some kind of elixir. It is giving him new life, restoring his sense of being a man. He almost laughs. To think he’d forgotten he was a man at all. He won’t forget now. He licks and drinks and swallows. He cannot get enough.

It all happened gradually, so most people didn’t see it coming. Bit by bit, sex became sanitised, criminalised, censored, stolen. The newspapers and internet were full of phrases like ‘pornification’ and ‘sexualisation’. Once there is a word for something it tends to be closely followed by action. Far away from this coastal village, in suburbs of cities, in boardrooms and courtrooms, men, the dirty dogs, were being castrated, figuratively speaking. Laws were being made. Women were crying ‘rape’ and ‘harassment’ with no provocation. A man only needed to look at a woman a certain way and he could be locked up. So men started to keep their desire to themselves. Pornography became a pleasure of the past. Even wanking seemed dangerous, subversive.

He didn’t pay much attention then, he was too worried about his livelihood, about the oncoming disaster, but now he knows. His manhood has been eroded. He wants it back before it falls into the sea forever.

When he has taken his fill he fucks her one last time. He finds her cunt, drenched in blood and shoves himself in. His mind is empty except for an overpowering feeling of victory. He feels like some kind of hero. He pounds her corpse-like body and empties his sperm into her. He feels so potent he thinks this alone might bring her back to life.

But the ghost remains limp and sodden on the floor. He pulls out his cock and goes over to the washbasin in the corner of the room. He washes himself as best he can. The water is freezing. The blood is starting to congeal and dry. He dresses quickly. A flicker of doubt wanders over him, but he brushes it aside. This is a ghost story. They always turn out the same.

As he leaves the cottage, he glances back and regrets it immediately. The carnage is horrific and it makes him retch. It  might be a slasher movie. The final girl is not looking too clever. But still, intoxicated with his own power, he strides back up the coast path confidently. She had it coming. They had it coming. He is a man again at last.

When the police knock on his door the next morning, he is surprised to see them. It’s not that he thinks it was a dream. He can still taste her blood in his mouth. He can still feel the tension in her flesh, as it resisted then yielded to the pressure from the knife.

He knows it happened. But he can’t see how he’s done anything wrong. She was a ghost. He was helping his fellow man. He was saving them from crumbling and falling into the sea. He explains all this but they don’t believe him. The police are all women these days. They never believe a man. He must have forgotten the rules.

After it is all over, after he has been taken to the city, to ‘justice’ (capital punishment has made a comeback and this is an open-and-shut case), after the remains of her body have been removed, and the equipment taken as evidence. Everything goes back to how it was before. The cliffs keep on eroding, the villagers remain anxious and cautious. More cottages are abandoned. The ocean is making its inexorable way towards them.

But something has changed. Men start to talk to each other. Instead of staring into the bottoms of their pint glasses, they share a glance, they ask each other questions. They tell each other what’s on their minds. And when they go home to their wives, to their girlfriends, they look them straight in the eye. They take what’s theirs. The land has shifted slightly. The terrain is different.  

Rumour has it, (for rumours are allowed to flourish now) that his ghost walks the cliffs at night. The men call him ‘hero’ under their breaths.  But they don’t approach him if they see him. Unless they are foolhardy, suicidal, or romantic. That is another story.

By Quiet Riot Girl

Editor, Games Perverts Play: www.gamespervertsplay.wordpress.com

Homepage: www.quietgirlriot.wordpress.com

How One Of Them Remembers Their Conversation

Typical!

How can you say that to me?

Easy…

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Can’t you see?

No, I need more. I need you to feel

I’d throw everything overboard-

-I’m drowning already

-Just to be with you

I’m touched-

No really. Let’s move things forward

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Really

Touched

Really

Touched

Really-really

T-t-t-t-tou-ched

No real-

-More-touched

No real-No real

More-typical

No-let’s-really

More-typical

Really

More-typ

Really

Easy

Ree-ee-eally

Easy-easy-easy

Ree-ee-eally

Feel

No really-see

Feel-typical

No ree-ee-eally-throw

More-typical-drowning

Can’t-thr-thr-thr-throw

I’m drow-I’m drow-I’m drow

See

Feel-Need

Thr-thr-thr-throw-you

Typical-need

Over-over-over

Typ-typ-typ –

-Overboard-

-Drowning-need

Everything

Need

Everything

Need

Everything

-Typical

Let’s-

Feel-more

Let’s-

Feel-more

With-

More-need

With-

More-drowning

How-

-ready

How-

-ready

How –

Easy

Over-

I’m

Over

I’m

Over-everything

-Easy

Everything-over

Easy

Just every

-Touch

Just every

-Touch

Just every

-Easy-touch

Me

Touch-

Me

Already

Touch-

Me

No

H-h-h-how-

Easy

H-h-h-how-

Easy

To be

You

Can’t-be

You

You

You

You-s-s-s-say that-how

E-e-e-easy

S-s-s-say that, s-s-s-say that

E-e-e-e-e-e-e-easy

How-ow-ow

Easy –

How-ow-ow-ow-ow

Easy-

-Over

Easy-

Over-over-over-

-Touched

Board-board-board

E-e-easy-touch

Can you say that?

E-e-easy touch

C-c-can you say

Touch-e-easy

Every-me. Every-me. Every-me

Touch-

M-m-m-m-m-m

Touch-

Me-me-me-me –

-Touch-

-Me-me-me-me

-Touch-

-Me-me-me-me

Typical-touch

Move-me

Typical-touch-me

Move

Typ-

Forward

Typ-

Forward-move

No

To me

To-you

To me

To-you

To me

No-to-you

To me

You to

Over-throw

You

Over-throw

No-you

Throw-over

No-you

Throw-over-me

I’m-you-I’m-you-I’m

-Board. B-b-b-board

-Typical

See-

-Feel-touch

See-

Feel-

See-

Feel-

See-

Feel-touched-drowning

No re-ward

Feel-no more

With-no re-ward

Feel-no more

Can’t

Feel-no more

Re-ward-over

Feel-no-more-need

Over-

Easy-

Over-see

Easy-

Over-see

You-more

Over-see

You-more-

Over

More-

Over

Already

Over

Already-I’m

Over

Already-I’m

Over

You-already

Just

Need

Just

Need

To be

Drowning

To be

Typical

To be

Easy

Every

I-

You-

I-

You-

I-

You-

I-

You-

Typical

 

I’M ALL CUT UP

 

The New Libertines. Year Zero on tour in 2011

Katelan Foisy, who epitomises New Libertinism, in action with eight cuts gallery and Year Zero for last year’s show Lilith Burning

Last year the world let us put on some shows. This year they’ve even invited us to some festivals. But don’t worry, we’ve not crossed over to the festival mainstream – we’re talking fringes and sone of the fabbest shows in town.

“We need writing that serves up the whole of life, in the smallest microcosms maybe, single truths told in single voices, but told in the full – the ugly and the beautiful; the hopeful and the despairing; the angry and the aspiring; that wrings art, words, life itself until they offer up every last secret, every hidden pain, every unexpected and delightful pleasure; that gives life in the full. Free from judgement. Free from taboo. Free from pretence.” (Dan Holloway, The New Libertines)

eight cuts gallery is delighted to announce its 2011 New Libertines tour. The New Libertine movement, if it can be labelled a movement, stands for human experience in its glorious, messy, complex entirity, and stands against everything that is blank, bleak, and brutal, one dimensional or slick in contemporary culture, especially current literary culture. With roots that spread to burlesque, Beat, fin de siecle France and ecstatic mystics before slapping its influences around the face with a knuckle-dusting of postmodern wit and Modernist anger, New Libertinism is a celebration of light in dark corners, desire in the face of boredom, despair hidden beneath the underskirts of affluence – of everything it means to be human.

4 April 2011, Albion Beatnik Bookstore, Oxford, 6pm FREE (Not the Oxford Literary Festival)

4 June 2011, Stoke Newington Literary Festival, 4-6pm at Baby Bathhouse, entry £4

13 June 2011, Albion Beatnik Bookstore, Oxford, 6pm as part of Oxfinge, entry £4

more dates tba incl The Literature Lounge at Covent Garden Poetry Cafe

Who’s involved

lucy ayrton
slam poet extraordinaire and hammer and tongue regular

penny goring

commander-in-chief of the new libertine movement, author of the forthcoming collection of shorts and poems zoom zoom

anna hobson

star of oxwords’ no reading alone and the life force of oxford creative writers

dan holloway

literary death match winner, author of the man who painted agnieszka’s shoes, contributor to transgressive anthologies. your mc for the night, and for your sins

federay holmes

marc nash

experimenter, word-twister, raconteur, friday flasher, typographer, author of A, B & E

renee sigel

wonderful poet and part of the ground-breaking art and poetry shawback redemptions collaboration

joan barbara simon

author of mut@tus and long time walk on water, playwright and performer extraordinanaire 

helen smith

author of alison wonderland; “at the very least a minor phenomenon” (the times)

anne witchard

Anne Witchard teaches at the University of Westminster. She is the author of Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie: Limehouse Nights and the Queer Spell of Chinatown and co-editor of Gothic London: Place, Space and the Gothic Imagination. She is currently working on a book called Lao She, London and China’s Literary Revolution which aims to redress the sidelined story of China’s place in literary modernism.

Susanna Starling performs at last year’s Lilith Burning

with music from the one and only experimental electronic artist Rabid Gravy and double bass phenomenon Susanna Starling, host of the legendary Queen of Clubs Cabaret

Live Blogging — My Mother’s Death Bed

It’s been many hours since she last spoke, but her breathing is steady, loud and labored.  My sister and are sitting in a shit-smelly room in the Albany Medical Center, 5th floor, neurology unit.  My sister is reading her kindle by the light of the patient’s bathroom.  I am writing this backlit by my mac.  The music is something Bach-like via Pandora.  It’s not exactly a softly lit, pastel colored hospice room.  There was no room at the hospice, but at least they got my mother out of the “stroke room” where an eager neurology resident made idiotic statements about an 89 year old woman with advanced CHF and coronary artery disease making “a full recovery” in 6-12 months.

When confronted with the information that she’d had a heart attack as well as a storke and cardiology had told us they couldn’t treat the blockages because of the stroke risk,  Doc Bollywood didn’t blink.  He just said, “Well, that was cardiology. I’m talking from a neurological standpoint.”
To which my brother-in-law replied, “Are you saying she can live without a heart? Who do you think she is, the Tinman?”

That actor had it wrong.  Comedy is easy; dying is hard.

Physical therapy also stopped by earlier. We sat  astounded.  “I guess she’s tired.  We’ll come back later.”

Yeah, tired.  She’s just resting.

Not everyone who works in a hospital is crazy.  Only the doctors and the physical therapists. The nurses get it.  Comfort care when nothing else can be done.

My mother hasn’t said anything in the last six hours or so, and hasn’t said anything we could really understand since yesterday. — though there was a moment earlier  today when I thought she understood me perfectly and I imagined I understood her grunted, garbled reply.  I was telling her how great Jack — her husband, my father was and how much he loved her, how I still felt his presence, and the caring never dies.

She looked at me, and mumbled something, which I imagined was, ” He was a great husband and father.”

I agreed.

Now my sister and I just sit in a dark room and wait.  My mother gasps for every breath.  She was gripping our hands hours ago — holding on for dear life.  Holding on to dear life. But that’s stopped.  Her knees are bent up, the way we remember our father’s being.

On the phone to my friend, a nurse practioner in New York, my friend overheard the 9 PM announcement telling all visitors to leave.

“That doesn’t apply to you,” she said.

“I know,” I told her.

They finally gave her morphine.  A tiny bit.  My sister was worried.  My mother once had a bad reaction to it.  It was after a fall.  She was in pain, but the drug made her paranoid, hostile.  “I don’t want her to go out that way,” my sister said.

But finally my sister agreed it was time.

1 miligram to start.  It’s already quieted the breathing.

We’re staying the night.  Maybe in shifts.  I used to work a night shift in a hospital.  That was years ago, psyche, not medicine, but still it seems familiar to be here and odd, watching the woman who gave birth to me, contracting into herself, becoming smaller, smoother, more fetal.

Her strangely unwrinkled face.  Dying has a beauty too. It is as elemental, fundamental as birth, but not celebrated.  Still, there’s nothing tragic here.  We are not meant to be too long lasting.  None of us gets more much more than a century, and no one gets out alive.

The morphine is helping.

22 March 2011  6 pm – 10:30 pm

— Marion Stein

Midwestern Gothic: A Literary Journal

Hello hello! Been a while since I’ve added any writing to Year Zero, and apologies for that, but wanted to share with everyone a cool new venture I started with a friend of mine: Midwestern Gothic.  Here’s our official “About” statement:

Midwestern Gothic is a quarterly print literary journal out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, dedicated to featuring work about or inspired by the Midwest, by writers who live or have lived here. Midwestern Gothic aims to collect the very best in Midwestern fiction writing in a way that has never been done before, cataloging the oeuvre of an often-overlooked region of the United States ripe with its own mythologies and tall tales.

From misc.

We’re prepping Issue 1 right now and it should be out later this month (also available as a digital copy).  Please check out the site, and if you want, sign up for our newsletter here.

Cheers!

Many Morning

 

you be the author, I’ll be the pen – push me leaking & looping

 

DRESS ME DOWN!

 

Or is it like being a beauty – racing yourself to the kiss off

Or is it like breast-feeding your baby – essential elemental mental

Or is it like smashing plate glass – overflow downdraw method

 

Just because of because – he bled glass water, blood sunshine

 

Or is it like glorification – always missing the point

Or is it like detoxification – meds trolley rattle & insects

Or is it like TV – licenced for boredom & bollocks

Or is it like disposable lighters – four for a quid from the pound shop

Or is it like Russian roulette – empty chambers & chance

Or is it like tubal ligation – delivered severed & shut

Or is it like mummy’s best dress – fodder for moths in the wardrobe

Or is it like sucking dick – get good at choking on empty

Or is it like dessication – flaking dead on the sheets

 

That’s romance to me

 

Or is it like anyone else – transient terrestrial & trotting

Or is it like lacy fretwork – tracery bracket & buzz saw

Or is it like trapped voice – strangled & garbling solutions

Or is it like heated words – sailing true to the target

 

Or is it like you – effusive non-commital erratic

 

Or is it like pistols at dawn – smoking & heavy with bullets

Or is it like macrame – full hitch & double half hitches

Or is it like jousting – lady’s favour & dodging the maimer

Or is it like origami – folding & creasing four corners

Or is it like you told me

Or is it like a wrist with no pulse

 

DRESS ME UP!

 

I like death breath (angel)

I like inky blue fake

I like yellow frayed

I like soft choke pills

I like a bare-back bitch on a donkey – aren’t I

 

I fear there is no God. I know there is no God. I fear this. I fear I have no faith. I fear death. I fear love. I fear responsibility. I fear there is no one person I could love completely and for ever. I fear myself. I fear my body and brain. I fear my addictive nature and the way it tricks me. I fear my mood swings and instability. I fear money. I fear poverty. I fear my anger. I fear ageing. I fear fat. I fear food. I fear relapse. I fear my perversity. I fear my sexuality. I fear I will not get what I fear I want. I fear what I want. I fear I will not get what I need, let alone want. I fear lonely drunken drugged-up defeat. I fear arthritis. I fear hip replacement. I fear ugliness and stupidity. I fear violence. I fear war. I fucky hate it when I can’t get through to you. I fear people. I fear outerspace and The Klu Klux Clan and the gas chambers and murder and rape and Vikings on horseback who will slash my spine and pull out my lungs to make the sign of the eagle.

 

squanderfuck

look at me

look at me laughing

f

fill the glasses with water from the tap in the bathroom

free hand, you know

fool about like that

u

us here, tall and naked

us everywhere save in the bed

us, laughing and calling our names

c

cervix turned brighter

collided while swerving

crazy frightful spin towards the earth

k

let’s go look at the kamasutra

look at the karma krakatoa

look up into the sky and keen

fuck

look at me

look at me hanging

She Blinded Me with Science

*** Author’s Note: This short story originally appeared in the anthology Words to Music. Please have a look at it to see 48 more stories, all written to different songs by 40 authors. ***

Vasiliy Ivanovitch hurried along the muddy road towards the town hall. It was the only place in the village where there was a radio, and he loved listening to it whenever he had a moment to spare. Such moments were few and far between for a farmhand at a Siberian Kolkhoz.

As Vasiliy passed people, they always nodded and smiled to him. Who could not feel pity towards that little man, all bent and clubfooted and with a face like a dried prune? And yet, poor Vasiliy was the hardest worker at the Kolkhoz of the Victory of the October Revolution. Early in the morning, he’d be there to see to the cows, and his little shack by the dung heap would always have the last lamp flickering.

He was so proud of the Kolkhoz. He was old enough to know the life of a serf, although out here, exactly who owned the land meant little. But in the Revolution, that glorious period of violence and revenge and Proletariat victory, he had gained his freedom and was now able to inject his meager strength for the good of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Vasiliy had heard that today there’d be a special radio program. It would be broadcast from the sky! Yes, the ingenious designers at the Antonov Aircraft Factory had produced the largest airplane in the entire world, the Tupolev ANT-20 Maksim Gorky. It was big enough to contain a radio transmitter, along with a printing press, a photography laboratory, and a portable cinema. The plane toured all of the USSR, spreading the good word of Communism and the teachings of Stalin.

POWER at GPP Featuring YZW

Online anthology Games Perverts Play is dripping with Year Zero writings in its new issue, “POWER”

Necrothing POW! Er … by Penny

 

Photo Fit by Dan

 

Quick Brown Fox by Rob

 

The Unified Three Year Product Trajectory by Horne

 

Copula by Nash

 

and great stuff from Quiet Riot Girl, Elliott Deline, Mark Simpson. And illustrations too.

-M.H.