Last Bender

The Wovel
 
On Morning Edition today there was a piece on The Wovel, an audience plotted web novel. It is also a wheeled snow shovel, a device (judging by the number of Google hits), that is more familiar to people than the evolving literary form. The story presented it as an innovation, and a way for […]

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monozone was deep into panic. Beneath the zippered, gridlocked surface, under stockings, panty shields and contact lenses, inside the ironed shirt, the benzedrine suit jacket and gold crown, brushed into the rug, pinned up for the wig, tanned and henna’d, straightened, permed and dreadlocked panic surged and raged and churned and lifted till every […]

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
          Every time I shut my eyes to sleep I saw exploding glass. Or felt the man’s blood rush down my fingers. I shook and chattered my teeth and soaked the sheets in sweat. At last I fell into a deep senseless sleep.
          So senseless I failed to notice the alarm, the garbage […]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
          Wet wind blew against the windshield. We got out and walked, hands deep in P coats, through the smell of boat fuel and tar and the distressed cries of cattle punched to their knees in the abattoirs. Then more machinery, then the bells and horns of freighters cutting the rain and fog.    […]

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
          At 9:15 Stronghole kicked the door in. That made it 100%, cause everything else was fucked up too. His shoulders were so big, he had to turn sideways to get in through the door. For two seconds we stared each other down, eye to eye, until he smiled. I didn’t move. I put […]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 
 
            Bunuel may have been gone, but the giant hole he left behind was slow to close. Laraby would be pissed all right that he couldn’t be bought. I could hear it in my head. Standing up behind that desk turning purple. Asking, “Name me the cop who can’t be bought.”   What am I […]

CHAPTER TWELVE
At first my eyes felt like smashed oysters. The soft inside all mixed up with the shell. Slivers of light noisily never aligned. My mouth full of blood and tooth chips. A gluey crust between my lips.
            I was afraid to move. Afraid to feel the damage. I didn’t want to reach down […]

CHAPTER ELEVEN
            On the way home I drank a half gallon of warm tonic water and twisted through the dial in search of something besides cooking shows. It took that and two aspirin dissolved beneath the torrents of bubbly drink to go over Clara Turback. She made some sort of a twisted sense. What seemed […]

CHAPTER TEN
            Despite vigorous protest I left Linda a C note to pay my part of the check and drove uptown to twist Clara Turback’s arm. For the second time that day I found myself budging along with the creeps, the shysters, and the shaved freaks who push numbers and little guys around for kicks. […]

CHAPTER NINE
            “I’d like to suck his cock,” she said, looking very fem in her lowcut, black dress, drop earrings, and gold necklace. “Look at those ass cheeks. Shit, they show right through.”   She kicked off her burgundy suede pumps. “I wonder what his fingers look like.”   She stretched and wiggled her toes, coral tipped […]