Somewhere In The Dark...
Last spring I was annoyed with the bizarro fiction movement. It's kind of bullshit. People attempt to write second-rate David Lynch movies as surreal, nonsensical novels. Big fucking whoop. Woo... "We can mix splatterpunk bullshit with cyberpunk cliches and vaginas growing out of the ground." Impressive. It takes at least a 4-year-old to curse a lot and write crazy dream imagery with no real eye toward flow, grammar or spelling. Because it's all PUNK and shit.
I decided I'd see how stupidly easy it is to write something like that by churning out a Lynch-ian metaphorical novella based around an idea I had back in 1999. It was surprisingly easy as long as I didn't start thinking about anything.
A couple of the better bits:
The street was a mirror, warping in time to the sound of the sky breaking down. It bled out, red, across the blackness in the dying of the light and he stared into it, waiting for the moment that the color would erupt into the void and be consumed.
Night fell on the street, slowly and with the hesitation of the lover, walking away for the last time. The sky looked back and was gone, leaving him to the night and the crumpling sound of the asphalt under assault.
His face dripped and his hair stuck flat, everything melting off his body in the blackening gloom. Jacket stuck to shirt, shirt to flesh, flesh to the earth, hearing the exhaust of hovering aircraft overhead and the city called out for blood. Somewhere it was calling his name and his choices collapsed until only one path remained, the only path that had ever been left for him.
His black aura filled the vacuum and, even unaware, the automatons moved away to give him a wide berth. His soul was a ghost ship, unfettered, and the fear kept all eyes away from his darkness. A wave of silence crept across the throng as he passed, a shiver of contempt bleeding into the world. The chatterers fled and the dark smiles, taught muscle pulled across the rack of bone exposing long teeth, crushed into a sneer of disdain.
Bodies in motion, only slowed by friction. Bodies in motion, staying in motion, forever. Except his.
Maybe someday I'll work on it more, as it filled the time and I churned out about 2 chapters in 15 minutes.