EconoClash Review #5

By J.D. Graves

The Circus is back in town. The fifth issue of your favorite cheap thrills is over the top and proud of it. We’ve got sci-fi/horror/noir/crime/and humor just a page turn away. Behold stoners hunting UFOs, distracted workers causing nuclear meltdowns, detectives fighting crazy cat ladies, pharmacists surviving dystopian futures, Ukrainian mobsters, no luck assassins, demon conjurers, slime-ballers with dirty mags and a twinkle in their eye, haunted insomniacs, and finally a family’s favorite pet alien and his need to boo-boo.

Edited by J.D. Graves with stories by Die Booth, Aristo Couvaras, Adam S. Furman, R. Daniel Lester, Cameron Mount, David Rachels, Aeryn Rudel, E.F. Sweetman, Cynthia Ward, and J. Manfred Weichsel.

Strap yourself in Thrill Seeker—we’re excited to take our Quality Cheap Thrills down and out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463988152

Book preview

WELCOME THRILL SEEKERS

Just returned from Bouchercon 2019. Met a lot of folks that I know from our indie lit world and a few I should’ve. Got to meet Joe R. Lansdale, Shawn Cosby, Jim Wilsky, William Dylan Powell and Eric Campbell and the rest of the Down & Out Books crew. I caught a cold from one of the panelists. My nose is running down my face as I type these words. I’m coughing every two minutes. My eyeballs are on fire. So in other words, I’m great how about you? If you are holding this in your hands now…I already know the answer. But neither of us are doing as well as the most interesting person at the Con…whom I didn’t actually meet. Hector Acosta and Christa Faust pointed him out to me as well as to anyone who passed their table at the bar.

They called him the Dancing Man. And sometimes the moniker fits the crime. Everyone gave him a wide berth to work his magic. A glass of Chardonnay rested in front of him. Ear buds blasting what could only be the greatest music ever made. The waitress informed us Dancing Man listened solely to Boy George. It had to be some deep cuts, his moves were so much beyond the limited Karma Chameleon. All alone in a crowded bar, Dancing Man fandango’d, fox trotted, balleted lyrically for over forty-five minutes completely alone and completely careless that a room full of writers were staring and slightly jealous. It was the best metaphor for what we do here. All of us creating our own little piece of magic for others to witness and not giving two fucks what anyone thinks. Don’t mind people grinning in your face. Just like the Dancing Man, the circus is back in town. There are so many quality cheap thrills inside these pages you can smell the peanuts and elephant dung. And just like our cover’s homicidal trapeze artist dispatching a laughing clown with a katana—these stories are over the top.

We’ve got sci-fi/horror/noir/crime/and humor just a page turn away. Behold stoners hunting UFOs, distracted workers causing nuclear meltdowns, detectives fighting crazy cat ladies, pharmacists surviving dystopian futures, Ukrainian mobsters, no luck assassins, demon conjurers, slime-ballers with dirty mags and a twinkle in their eye, haunted insomniacs, and finally a family’s favorite pet alien and his need to boo-boo.

Strap yourself in Thrill Seeker—We’re excited to take our Quality Cheap Thrills down and out!

—J.D. Graves

Back to TOC

CALIFORNIA COMMUNION

Cynthia Ward

Dude! You don’t believe in UFOs? They exist, man. They totally exist. I know. I was in one!

When? On a camping trip, dude. Me and Steve hit the road last year, went way the hell up north. Past San Francisco. Past Mendocino! Major road trip.

Dude, another Pacifico here. Great.

Yeah, we’re both too young to drive. So what? It was one of Steve’s weekends with his dad, but his dad was like away for the weekend, boning some dumbass starlet. So Steve loaded up his dad’s SUV with his dad’s beer and camping gear—

No, we ain’t "lucky to still be here!" We knew what we were doing. My family used to go camping all the time before Mom and Dad split, and Steve goes up in the San Gabriels a lot, roughing it in the canyons and stuff. You know what he’s like, into that back-to-nature hippie shit.

We went way up in the redwoods and—no, we didn’t take any boards, man. We didn’t go surfing. Stop laughing, dude! Really, we didn’t hit the waves. All the beaches are so crowded all the time, dude, even in Baja. We wanted to get away from it all, and we did. We camped beside this lake in the middle of the redwoods between Eureka and Crescent City, and it was totally great. Nobody around for miles.

Yeah, we probably weren’t supposed to camp there, but hey, nobody stopped us. So it’s legal, right?

We rolled a blunt and cracked some brews and cranked Hollywood Undead on the blaster and…

What is that shit on your iPod? Jay Z! Dude, rap sucks. Don’t you got any Hacktivist or Sworn In or Bone Crew or—Limp Bizkit? Jesus, is that the stupidest band name in existence, or what?

Yeah, DVSR’s hardcore motherfuckers. Kick it!

So, anyway, me and Steve had a totally rippin’ party. Coulda only been improved by some buff babes. But maybe not. Chicks can ruin things. They probably woulda whined about there being no electricity or cellphone service or something, you know?

Anyway, me and Steve got totally drunk off our asses. It was great, dude. I sold a Buick and passed out under a tree!

Woke up lyin’ in my puke. My mouth tasted like I licked the bottom of your dad’s fridge, man, and I had to take the piss of my life. It musta been after midnight, ’cause the fire had burned out, but I was on the edge of the trees, and the stars were real bright, so I could walk around without tripping over a goddam tree root. I pissed in the lake.

While I stood there hanging the wang for like an hour, I stared at the moon. Except it wasn’t the moon. It was this giant U-fucking-O!

Dude, it seriously wasn’t the moon. It was hovering right above the lake, like maybe twenty feet up. And it had this, like, weird dark beam shooting from its belly to the lake.

I kept blinking ’cause I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and after a while my eyes cleared up and got used to the darkness and shit. That was when I noticed the beam was like rippling or something.

Dude, that was when I realized. It was sucking up water! I figured the aliens musta run dry during their trip to Earth. Space is really far away, dude.

I could see the UFO fine now. ‘Way finer than I wanted to. It was like giant round thing, like a Death Star that was nearly the size of the fucking lake. Dude, I was pissing ice cubes.

I zipped up, in a hurry to get way the hell away from there, and caught my dick in the zipper. I yelled loud enough to wake the dead, but Steve snored on. But another weird beam shot out of the ship—and zapped me!

I went out like a light.

When I woke up, I was totally fucking naked. I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see where I was, ’cause there was this bright light right in my face. But I could feel a tube shoved down my throat, and straps holding my body flat on some metal table that was colder’n the surf in January in Alaska.

And when my eyes finally got used to the light, it was just in time to see an alien fixing to shove a probe up my ass!

Dude, shoot me another Pacifico. I need it.

So there I was, surrounded by like a dozen aliens, and…

What did the aliens look like? Like nothing on Earth, dude! A bit like the scrawny little gray assholes in—what’s that old movie your mom’s stepmom likes? Yeah, Independence Day.

I was surrounded by those bastards, man, and I swear, one of them was trying to slip me the butt-probe! I tried to kick that ugly fucker’s face in, but my legs were tied down good. I tried to scream, which did not work with a tube in my throat. Dude, I ain’t ashamed to admit, I tried to beg for my life. I thought they were gonna carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I mean, I was strapped to a table!

But they didn’t kill me, and if they took a look where the sun don’t shine, I don’t know about it. One of the aliens tapped my arm with a metal tube. Didn’t hurt, but it musta been some kinda knock-out shot, ’cause I passed right out.

When I came to, they musta been done with their exam. I didn’t have the tube down my throat anymore, and there wasn’t a probe up my ass. But I was still strapped down, and three aliens were still there, standing around staring at me.

Then there was this like really weird noise. Dude, it sounded like the scratchin’ on some old rap record, but gargly at the same time. It made the aliens whip right around.

We all saw this alien stagger into the room. He was the only alien I saw from head to toe, and he was naked as a baby. But even a baby’s got parts, dude, and the alien