Tachycardia and Other Tales

By Matt Lambert

These are tales of dystopia, future and past, and represent the authors first foray into fiction. The themes are timeless and the people explored include Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Elvis Presley, John Brown and Sid Hatfield in places such as New York City, Washington, DC and deep in the heart of West Virginia. Bourdain and Krauthammer are channeled here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543945881

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Copyright © 2018 by Matt Lambert

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54394-587-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54394-588-1

I am moving into fiction and starting with short stories. Years ago, when I unconsciously started looking for artistic ways to express myself while choosing science and medicine as fields of study and vocation, I started with a very old form of storytelling- poetry. I then decided that these poems were best told while set to music and I developed my musicianship and became and independent singer-songwriter. I then got the crazy idea to write a couple of books about healthcare reform.

Even though I had some ideas well suited for it, I was hesitant to start writing short fiction. After all, it’s not like it is the jazz age and the golden era of the genre. But once I started thinking about it, it is the lithium-ion age and perhaps there are some parallels. There is a pretty good chance you are reading this on your tablet or cell phone and short fiction fits well on those devices. Because of said devices, attention spans are shorter and this art fits well with that condition. I have also been impressed with the loyal followings that have been developed by serially streamed fantasies on Netflix and other outlets. But even more, I learned from writing Unrest Insured, that the lithium-ion age is very similar to the jazz age, in that our world today shares many of the same social and political conditions that were present a century ago. The stock market is booming, driven off of speculation, while there are wealth disparities that we haven’t seen since the roaring twenties. Nationalism and totalitarianism are on the rise again because we are too stupid to remember where those movements got us last time. Our young men have been at war for over fifteen years and many of them share the same sense of being lost as those writers and readers who emerged from the first great war. All of this, coupled with a lack of any other current creative ideas, is pushing me this way.

Two of these pieces are dystopian and set in the future, reflecting my time in DC and NYC while the other two are set in the West Virginia past. I know I will never make it big (artistically or financially) writing about WV, even in times such as these, when it has such a disproportionate (and negative) cultural influence. But West Virginia truths are a little more true, almost third world true, and they make for good storytelling. Bourdain found this out the hard way. Friends of mine from the coal fields joke that it was his visit to McDowell county that pushed him over the edge, confirming that the current conditions there are worse than any developing country he visited on his many travels. Whether that is true or not, we will never know. But it does leave us with one less storyteller, a void which I hoping to fill here.

Special thanks to Preston Raulerson, John Logar, Meredith Damore, Robin Keller, and Brian Menzies. King for a Day is dedicated to Rick Brewer for obvious reasons.

Written in:

New York City

Washington, DC

Davis, WV

Snowshoe, WV

Welch, WV

Miami, FL

Caye Caulker, Belize

Contents

Tachycardia

Her Elevens and Nines

King for a Day

Pocahontas Purgatory

Tachycardia

He had lived long enough, and the world had changed enough, for the last two truths of his childhood to become untrue. The first of these truths was that the 6:00am Staten Island ferry would depart from the St. George Terminal and arrive at the Whitehall terminal on the southern tip of Manhattan at precisely 6:25 am. Yet here it was, at 6:29 am on the morning