Husk

Corey Redekop

Description

It's not like Sheldon Funk didn't have enough on his plate. His last audition, for the reality television series House Bingo, had gone disastrously wrong. His mother was in the late stages of dementia. His savings were depleted, his agent couldn't care less, and his boyfriend was little more than a nice set of abs. Now, Sheldon also has to contend with decomposition, the scent of the open grave, and an unending appetite for human flesh. Plus another audition in the morning.

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770902664
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Husk a novel Corey Redekop
ecw press



For Cathy,
for reasons that should be obvious.
&
For Elda,
who asked me to write a book she would like.
Grandma, please close the book now.



Acknowledgements
My undying gratitude to:
Cathy, the love of my life, the sweetener in my granola, my muse, my amusement, who can make me laugh with a look, and with whom I am more in love every day. Except Thursdays. Those days are just for “me time.”
Jen, the greatest editor anyone could wish for, one so fearless and sure she could honestly tell me I had spelled “fuckadeedoo” wrong.
Mom and Dad, for being there time and time again (and again, and once more after that).
Anthonie, for keeping me honest on my word count. Damn you to hell.
Judd, for his photographer’s eye.
James Morrow, one of the finest novelists out there, who coined the phrase “tattered ambulatory cadaver” in his wonderful novel Shambling Towards Hiroshima , and was kind enough to let me steal it. If you haven’t read his Godhead Trilogy, you’ve missed out on some of the greatest satire of the twentieth century. I feel sorry for you.
Everyone at ECW Press who worked so diligently to get this book into print, a fine troupe of publishing artistes who put up with my rage-saturated demands and nightly bouts of weeping over the phone, and were decent enough to never mention in public that certain incident I’m sure they all remember with great horror and shame. You guys are the best. Hugs!
Mocha, the strangest, spazziest feline on the planet. What kind of cat is afraid to jump?
Every author, actor, and director who brought zombies to life. You filled my head with horrors innumerable, with blood and viscera and unspeakable filth. Weird that I should thank you for that, but there you have it.
Every person who liked Shelf Monkey and suggested I keep at this writing thing.



The following is a work of fiction.
Any errors discovered within are purely the result of your fevered imagination.
You really should get that checked out.



I miss breathing.
Sounds stupid, yes. Autonomic system was always there for me. Did the work whether I remembered to inhale or not. Took breaths in and out unfailingly. Never let me down.
Except that one time.
Chug-chug-chugged along no matter where I was, what I was doing. At sporting events (there were a few I recall) my breathing always clicked into overdrive without my having to shift first, supplying copious molecules of oxygen to the blood, organs, muscles, brain.
Something that was always there.
Like sunsets.
Rainbows.
Complex if I ever thought about it, but why would I? Taking things for granted is a core component of the human experience.
Nevertheless, I miss it.
There are other things to miss. I know this. Doubtless, people will criticize me for miserably pining for the overrated sensation of thickly carbon-dioxided atmosphere rushing down into my lungs, then up and out again. In and out.
Back and forth.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
So many other things out there to miss. Bodywise, anyway.
Getting a good scratch going? Scraping your keratin against that pesky chigger bite? That’s a good one, I give you. Although the itch preceding it is rarely as fun.
Come to think of it, I miss the itch, too.
Blowing my nose. I always enjoyed that. Getting a solid three seconds of blow into a tissue, feeling my insides — for that is what it is, the mucous, the snot, it’s all you, tiny chunklets of moist soul, part and parcel of the whole — feeling effluvium flee my sinuses and escape into the warm, dampened confines of an eager two-ply.
Good feeling, that.
Nice sound, too, very unique. People praise the low baritone of a lengthy belch; where’s the love for a high tenor nasal evacuation?
Now, no need exists. I tried blowing my nose, once, near the end, just for old-time’s sake. Just to feel something again. A jellied chunk of matter loosened itself from its perch, clogged the passageway until I had to go in after it.
I didn’t try again after that. I can’t prove it, but I’m positive I knew how the theory of relativity worked until that happened. Einstein’s theorem, vanished forever in a snort, blow, and excuse me.
Sex. They all get to that eventually. The number two question from every interviewer, after the obvious. What about sex. What about erections. What about fucking. What about waking up from a sex dream with a throbbing birddog so engorged it throws off your center of gravity as you bumble your way toward the toilet. Do I miss it? Is my existence even worth the trouble of unbridled continuance without the possibility of bumping very uglies once in a while?
Not really. I can’t claim to have ever been a Casanova, but I did okay for myself. A boner is only as good as the blood pressure behind it. That’s hardly an issue anymore.
Arousal is an impossibility anyway. I don’t see people as objects of desire. It’s impossible to.
I can recall a time when the mere glimpse of a bare muscular leg could instill in me bouts of gleeful dizziness. When that velvet cleft of skin between the buttock and the thigh was all I ever wanted. I would bury my face there and know true happiness. I hunted for that spot in every person I met, every actor who walked across a screen, every glistening hunk of pumpflesh that teased me from the glossy safety of the stroke mags I kept in the backyard shed, rolled up in an old paint can, hidden away from the prying eyes of the all-knowing mater Funk.
What did I know.
Men, women, all the same to me now — curves, mounds, arms, legs, aureoles, scrotums, breasts, cunts, pricks. All meat. We are nothing but bone and shit and offal encased in bags of rotting meat. When you make peace with this conclusion, arousal ceases to be an issue.
No, it’s breathing that I spend the most time contemplating. I miss breathing in. I miss inhaling particulates of grass and dandelion after I mow my lawn. I miss becoming overwhelmed by second-hand smoke as I enter a bar.
I miss yawning. Good Christ do I miss yawning. Taking an enormous gulp of air, throwing my entire body into the act in a writhing spasm of glorious inhalation. Feeling bones shift and crack as my ribcage expands under the pressure. Getting light-headed as oxygen reserves deplete into the red zone.
I would give anything to experience that sensation just one more time.
Just one tiny yawn.
Lord, but I do miss it.



Shock



“Jesus Christ!”
If I had been more self-aware at the time, more in possession of my faculties, I would have remarked that ‘Jesus Christ,’ as epithets went, was a touch on the nose.
That’s a resurrection joke, by the way.
I was not yet in that frame of mind, however, my ready wit as limp and wilted as fast food lettuce while flash grenades exploded behind my eyelids.
But I will admit that later, upon reflection, I got quite a shame-faced giggle out of it.
q
I was everything.
I was the vacuum. Eternity. I floated free, one with the macroverse.
No sense of self.
No awareness beyond the ink.
No up.
No down.
No time.
I was all. There was no I. There was only all.
w
All was all.
e
Then.
Disruption.
Noise.
Sounds. Far away.
Somewhere, deep in the gray goo, an impulse gathered itself together out of surplus atoms and hurtled over the vast chasm between two thought-deceased neurotransmitters.
A spark formed, gaily glittering in the all.
Starting a process.
Completing a chain.
Commencing a reaction.
Ruining everything.
It was not noise.
There were voices.
Peaceful nonsense syllables in the dark. Easy to ignore. Aural detritus caught in the back eddy of the cosmos, I told myself. I returned to the void, attempted to once more rejoice in absence.
But the damage was done. The veil had been pierced, threads began to snap.
I fell through the big empty.
I became aware.
r
I did not float. Weight pressed in around me.
m
I lay on something.
Something hard.
My shoulders were cold. My back was cold.
Accompanying this was simple knowledge.
I have shoulders. I have a back.
Time materialized.
There were events occurring around me. A logical flow of connecting intervals moving forward through the ages.
Three seconds went by. I already had a past. The recollection of chill on my skin from moments before. My birth already a memory.
Here, then gone.
Another sound, closer. The clank of metal. A sense of movement, the blackness sliding away as I drifted forward.
Light. Everywhere, such magnificent light. Rods and cones protested at the intrusion of their slumber, vowed mutiny at this cruelty.
I was grabbed and lifted, my back hauled up off the surface, air rushing to fill the space.
Too much light to focus. Could only stare.
Voices. Indistinct, muddled, a language outside my experience.
The speakers drew closer.
I became cognizant of myself as an entity distinct and individual from the all. Alone, abandoned.
Loneliness washed over me, grotesque, fathomless.
The voices continued, louder now. Words became burdened with purpose. Layers of context draped over vowels and consonants as my synapses slowly organized themselves into battalions, began firing in sequence.
Comprehension.
“ mjkm grimhly slttygh dftll are we recording?”
“Check.”
Light.
“Ho-kay, we have here a Caucasian male, age approximately, what would you say, Jamal?”
“Fortyish? Mid-thirties?”
“Split the diff, approximately thirty-seven years of age, 170 pounds, thereabouts.”
Sharp explosions behind the voices, curses, mechanical screams.
“Shit, hold on, forgot to turn off the teevee.”
“What’s on?”
“Dunno. Van Damme, I think. Bloodsport ? Th