Spontaneous Combustion Vol. II

By Michael Strand, Maxwell Reagan, Claudia Ionescu and 9 more

Spontaneous Combustion is the classic "play-in-a-day" theater exercise in literary form. Writers gather together and have twenty-four hours to compose a unique piece of pulp fiction based on three prompts. Once the entries are received, the favorites are invited back to prose-slam their short stories for a public audience. In the end, everyone casts a vote and the people-chosen "Top Tales" are published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543929782

Book preview

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Introduction:

The Evolution of Pulp

T. Martin Crouse [Publisher]

Greetings and welcome to Spontaneous Combustion, Vol. II! Thank you for purchasing this book. By doing so, you are supporting unique, 21st-Century pulp fiction made with love by Minnesota artists.

We first attempted this project five years ago in 2012, and since that time we’ve learned a great deal about publishing, writing, and the Internet. We hope this book displays the evolution of Sic Semper Serpent, as well as hints toward the tremendous works of fiction we have planned for the future.

Spontaneous Combustion [here forward SpoCo] is the world’s only book-in-a-day (so far as we can tell), a literary marathon that aims to crowdsource a book’s worth of short fiction in a single 24-hour period.

To that end we provided a limit of 8,000 words and the following mandatory prompts to be included in all stories:

A non-human entity must give sage advice.

A balloon sword must be brandished.

A character must say: Uff da, this lutefisk is limp!

Sic Semper Serpent prayed to the elder-gods of storycraft that a minimum of thirty authors would show up to Magers & Quinn Booksellers in Minneapolis for the writing marathon. To our surprise, more than ninety writers arrived on Oct. 19, 2017, to receive the prompts and try their hand at writing a one-day tale.

The following evening, a total of sixty-seven completed stories arrived in our inbox. At that point, it was time for our editorial team to ‘spontaneously combust’ by reading and evaluating more than 222,000 words–equivalent to approximately half the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy–in a single weekend.

We emerged bleary-eyed and exhausted with our fifteen favorite stories, which we then posted for public review on our website, along with a digital poll for the public to vote for their favorites. In addition, we gathered the writers of the top fifteen submissions to present their tales at a live Story Showcase, again at Magers & Quinn Booksellers.

The top-voted, public-chosen stories are presented here between the covers of Spontaneous Combustion, Vol. II. The first three stories are marked ‘champion’, as they are the topmost-voted stories, and have each been awarded a five-percent royalty contract for life, the prize for winning the contest.

Honestly, the whole book wasn’t created in a day—it takes time to edit, design, and produce the book—but this collection was written in one day, and that’s pretty darn cool! Though the stories are edited for clarity, rhetorical consistency, and errors, no narrative revisions have been made to any of them. These stories are presented here more or less in the same form they were when they emerged from the minds of those who wrote them.

In addition, we’ve imposed no censorship on any work in this volume. A few stories contain adult language or themes, so reader is advised.

You’re bound to find something you like in Spontaneous Combustion, Vol. II. These eleven unique tales span multiple genres. What binds them is the ‘one-day’ nature of their writing, as well as our request that each bend the mind a little. We asked for stories that would enchant and entertain, something distinctive that carries the particular voice and style of its author. The resulting stories are of near-infinite variety, showcasing the full gamut of writers currently active in the vibrant Minnesota literary scene.

What else would you expect from the world’s boldest pulp fiction publisher?

Truthfully, SpoCo is just the beginning. We’re bringing back the dime-store novel for a new century. Whether it’s fantasy with a cosmic twist, magical adventures to distant lands, or psychedelic science fiction, it has a home at Sic Semper Serpent–the independent publishing house dedicated to printing thought-provoking pulp fiction in brand-new formats.

Thank you for reading.

[For more pulpy stories just like those found in this book, check out ‘Everlasting Stories’ at patreon.com/sicsemperserpent]

Preface:

On Socrates and Modern Myth

Michel Strand [Editor]

{Spontaneous Combustion: Noun. The immediate and complete immolation of matter as a result of chemical reaction. The act of bursting into flame without apparent ignition. A fugue state resulting in prodigious creative output.}

Sic Semper Serpent Books created the literary event Spontaneous Combustion [here forward SpoCo] with the intention of engendering fresh objects of modern myth. We wanted to create a pulp fiction revival that could open the throat of the people and bring forth stories reflecting the forms of today’s collective unconscious.

Something from nothing. A kind of literary alchemy, if you will.

We summoned a cadre of ordinary wordsmiths with no previous association and asked them to produce a set of unique modern myths. We provided a few prompts, twenty-four hours, and the promise to publish the best stories in a book.

What we received from our volunteer writers truly astonished us.

In your hands is a collection of stories that include a murderous cybernetic cat; a fortune-telling machine from hell; a trans-dimensional carnival clown; the search for Beowulf’s legendary lost sword; a tree bearing a life lesson; an outhouse sent from God; a demonic invasion from beneath St. Paul; a terrifying descent into a smartphone; the story of a magical refugee; a purple talking snake; and a punishment that is anything but ordinary.

In other words, modern myth of the highest order.

So, dear reader, you might be thinking to yourself: Why Socrates?

Jacques-Louis David’s immortal 1787 work of Neo-Classical art The Death of Socrates graces the cover of this volume. This painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and is among those works open for public and commercial use.

The painting depicts Plato’s Phaedo, which recounts the final teachings of Socrates before his death. Socrates had been tried in court for ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’ as well as ‘heresy against the gods’, for which the appointed punishment was death by drinking poison hemlock.

Though Socrates could have escaped into exile, he decided to make his death the final lesson of his philosophy: how to face the ultimate threshold with curiosity and dignity.

Socrates sits at the center of the painting on his deathbed, boldly pointing upward toward the realm of ideals and the paths of the afterlife. He reaches for a cup containing the poison hemlock, which will end his life. To his right are his disciples, lamenting their mentor’s passing. On his left, holding the deadly cup, is a man with eyes averted in horror. In the far background are his children and wife, Xanthippe, sent away so as not to witness his final moments.

The painting signifies the will to courageously face the hidden, mystical inner realms without fear or hesitation. We chose this as the quintessential image to signify SpoCo, because Socrates’ courage in the face of death is akin to the courage needed by the artist, who must dive into the dark inner ocean of psyche and return with new, nourishing narratives.

The soul, herself indivisible, departs to the indivisible world—to the divine and immortal and irrational, Socrates declared of death. Thither arriving, she is secure of bliss and is released from the error and folly of men—their fears and wild passions and all other human ills—and forever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods.²

We are a people in need of fresh messages from the gods of literature. Hungry and lost, we seek new ways of understanding our collective future. New opportunities to dispatch the soul to explore the immortal realms. SpoCo is just such an opportunity—an excuse to dive deep within the ocean of mind and drag something new onto the sandy shores of reality.

A story is a fragment of the soul. A vibrational frequency of mind slowed to physical manifestation. For as long as the spark of consciousness has glowed in the mind of our species, we’ve been telling stories and making art.

Today is no different from 399 BCE, when Socrates drank hemlock for teaching the truth; or 1787, when Jacques-Louis David created his immortal depiction of the defiant philosopher bathed in the flickering firelight of a new democratic revolution.

We still seek the answers to the infinite questions: What is the nature of freedom? Of creativity? What happens when you die? Where do dreams come from? How about human minds? Or stories?

To be human is to be a conduit for this dark matter we call art. And a publishing house is little more than a room of portals. A factory for living dreams. What you have here in your hands is a condensed dream. Consciousness coded as language. A computer program for the human operating system.

We genuinely hope you enjoy running these stories on your human hard drive. We guarantee you won’t burst into flames. However, you may feel the impulse to be a little creative yourself after reading them.

We suggest you do not fight that impulse.

Make, dear reader.

Make, combust, and enjoy.

---

2 The Works of Plato: Phaedo. Ed. Irwin Edman. The Modern Library, New York, 1928. p. 141.

Beneath the City

Maxwell Reagan [Champion]

Every city has its secrets, and every city will do its best to keep them sealed-off from the rest of the world. These are the places that you cannot go. Where secrets live behind locked doors, behind barbed wire, or buried underground and away from the general public. Walled-up and forgotten, like the jester in that Edgar Allen Poe story. Though none will ever compare to the secrets I unearthed from the catacombs beneath St. Paul.

I was a journalist by profession and an urban explorer by passion. I’d travel the country and explore the deep underbelly of cities across America and write about all things hidden, forgotten and off-limits to the everyday citizen. It was not the most lucrative job I ever had, but it was by far the most exciting.

One cold evening, I sat in a booth with a young fellow at some Scandinavian diner on the east side of St. Paul as I prepared for my next adventure. I sipped on some black coffee while the kid tore apart some dry-looking fish. He said his name was Jackson, a scrubby looking 20-year-old with a huge Nikon camera hanging from his neck, and could take me to the tunnels that lay just beneath our feet for a measly $100.

Uff da! he exclaimed. This lutefisk is limp.

Then don’t eat it! I said, not completely sure what lutefisk was. Tell me more about these tunnels under the city. How did they get there?

I’m not completely sure, he said forking his limp fish. I don’t think anybody really knows. They are man-made, but I’ve heard that the Native Americans built them before St. Paul was even a city.

What do you mean nobody knows how they got there? It’s a complete mystery?

He put down his fork and looked anxiously around the diner.

To be honest, he whispered. Nobody really knows they even exist. The city refuses to acknowledge they are even there and the majority of the citizens walk around completely unaware of what lies just beneath their feet.

How do you know if this is so hush-hush?

I found an old book in the St. Paul public library, he said. It had a map of the city, with what I thought were streets, but they didn’t line up. They weren’t streets, they were tunnels. Miles and miles of tunnels.

I demanded that he show me in person.

We exited the dinner into the freezing February air. He drove me down the snowy streets as I watched icicles fall from the roofs of buildings and shatter on the pavement. I was eager to see what I was dealing with here. How could a city keep a secret of this size for so long? What was down there? And why were they hiding it?

Jackson parked the car and we grabbed our gear out of the back seat. I followed him down a few city blocks and across a busy intersection before we hopped a guard rail and ran down into a wooded glen. The hard snow crunched beneath our feet. He brought me to the banks along the Mississippi river, where he pointed to an innocuous manhole cover, which stood out in the white snow. He pried off the steel cover and disappeared beneath the surface. I followed.

I climbed down a makeshift ladder constructed out