Face of the Screaming Werewolf

By Ken Gage

AUTHORS FOREWARD

The following selection is monophonic. Please adjust your stereo accordingly

Heres a little yoga for the dead before you enter the next cultural traffic jam (on your way to making that fine tortured living in the modern past). Any ordinary levels of awareness make me want to kill that climb toward self-reconfiguration until you and I are declared as equal as any fellow subhuman reduced to the sum of his or her multiple intelligence quotient. Do you stare until the shadows cast light? Are you a fellow conspirator?

Any spaceman-writer worth his anti-radiation suit knows that power floats, that youve got to build a fable to outlast the fads and popstars and media clatter, and youve got to document social deflations and disintegrations -- its got to be sold solid, before the warranty expires. Flesh, steel, concrete, rockets, dollars posts, girders, laser beams, words. Do you want people to say, He was an okay scribbler? Had his helmet on backwards?

No, you want to be the Sphinx of scribblers, the one who etched his thoughts into stone and dared people to turn the heavy pages. Throw the helmet to Theseus and start gathering flowers and beechstaves in the folium et volumen. If you settle for less, theyll chuckle derisively, He took a stab at writing and killed everything he wrote. Journey to spaceman nowhere.

Or maybe you are the Sphinx of readers?

Most folks are seeing the world through a brain-tank of bubbling water and institutionally globalized poverty. Real eye-popping, from their phosphenes all the way down into that hippocampus. Tlcemsaio oiasmsaio. Dr. Wilder Penfield, an American surgeon, discovered he could induce hallucinations in the brain by applying the probe of a 60 volt D.C. charge. Theremin music penetrates, burp of lithium-6 isotope hits the Bhutanese refugee. Olmec-age negotiations remind us that the erosion of moral character is built on a series of thankless tasks (and grit smaller than one zeptometer). Oiasmeclt tlcemeclt. Los diableros hablan. All government is illegitimate. Love is a two-person conspiracy. Dont want to stumble, stand still. Tlcemsaio oiasmeclt tlcemeclt oiasmsaio?

What are the qualities of a good conspiracy? Tight lips. And a backwards wall is just a llaw waiting for demolition. We are privileged to share this planet with persons of all backgrounds and degrees of mental defects and reading habits.

Opposites and dualities and apostates are part of the same scheme. A robot looks down one of lifes pathways and sez, Looks kinda dirty.

Of course its dirty -- its a dirt trail! You want it swept???

Neat concrete or asphalt would make for a nicer st/roll. (Especially if youre driving an electric wheelchair instead of a pair of hairy, chimpanzee-like legs.)

Neat versus dirty or clean versus clutter; control versus free spirit; sterility versus life. Same things. Dont get your foot caught between the extremes while becoming who you are. You will be forever changed even by the end of this paragraph.

People must, of course, create their own meanings and reasons to live. At least most people. As a gladly-suffered screwball, I shouldnt cast too many aspersions upon the habits of the unreflecting herd; the others, content to follow the make-believe of yet others still, probably mill about semi-consciously, driven by various addictions, phobias and animal impulses. I am a bookwriting animal, however, and these art projects occupy the otherwise empty, meaningless hours of my life, when not pursuing various addictions, phobias and animal impulses.

In print, this is my first book. Its title is stolen from a Jerry Warren film -- a film which he, in kind, stole from Mexican filmmakers. Now the circle is broke

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2006
• ISBN: 9781477176757

Ken Gage

Ken Gage writes from the “traditional” school of rebel-rousers, Hell-raisers, Surrealists and other extremists. He claims to belong to the Communist Party of Outer Space, where he “brokered the Neptunian Alliance before the secrets of Dementia-Five were known on planet Gorth.” He particularly enjoys the works of Ray Bradbury, H.R. Giger, William S. Burroughs, Anton Szandor LaVey, J.G. Ballard, Howard Stern, Paolo Soleri, Genesis P-Orridge, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, H.P. Lovecraft, Alex Jordan, the Marquis de Sade, among others.

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Copyright © 2006 by Ken Gage.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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CONTENTS

A Preface (or Introducing the Werewolf…)

An Introduction

One: Wake the Dead Slowly

Two: Canine Candlemas

Three: Satan on the Subway

Four: Rotting Carrots

Five: Wrestled-realities and Wraw Butterfly Cups

Six: Acanthus

Seven: Dr. Coffin’s Tea Party

Eight: Here in the Arms of Assassins

Nine: A Harlotry of Justice

Ten: Still Alive in the Control Room of a War Universe

Eleven: Diary of a Madhouse

Twelve: Point Us to Paradise

Thirteen: Eyes of the Traveller

Fourteen: Catastrophe at Cloud Nine

Fifteen: Orgy of the Damned

Sixteen: While You Were Out

Seventeen: Rosarito Beach Dream Sequence

Eighteen: Kingdom of Shadows

Nineteen: Little Devil Details

Appendix: Psatanic Psalms

For my first wife, Marie

and my first Boston Terrier, Zhom-B

A PREFACE

(OR INTRODUCING THE WEREWOLF…)

WHAT IS A werewolf? A werewolf is a shapeshifter. So is Ken Gage. He is a mental shapeshifter.

It is hard to grasp what is happening here. Now and then a writer comes along that shakes things up, changes all the rules, reenvisions the world. Think about an Italo Calvino, James Joyce, or Donald Barthelme, who revolutionizes literature and language itself. Maybe a Pynchon, John Barth as Goat-Boy, Vonnegut, Umberto Eco, Gabriel Marquez, Harlan Ellison, or the more recent DeLillo and David Foster Wallace. Remember how Ezra Pound poured all of literature, history, and philosophy into the forge of poetry and then helped T.S. Eliot become king of the Wasteland before self-destructing? Genius is like that. Only this portrait of genius was drawn by H. R. Giger. Gage is truly the alien within.

A recipe for success: Throw in Wittgenstein and Derrida, stir with Foucault’s Pendulum, churn liberally in a cyberpunk blender, throw on floor for Pollock salad moment, have slip-and-slide sex, break the plates, rinse, and then flush with wine-soaked music. A William Burroughs Word Virus infection comes to mind. It is an orgy of thought.

Ken Gage’s work is like a kaleidoscope. All the literary elements are poured in and then the viewing mirrors broken and realigned. Every page turned reveals a brand new vista, something dazzling and unique. You might say this is the dreamscape of the psychedelic Mayan astronaut returning to his Von Daniken reality.

Discovery of the inner nature of the werewolf is one of those private moments, like when you originally found a battered copy of A. C. Weisbecker’s Cosmic Banditos (when still out of print and unknown to the general public), or stumbled over Carlos Castaneda’s Toltec don mysticism for the first time—suddenly you get it and no one else in the world does. Of course, the joke’s on you, because we’re all already there. You are part of the inner circle now. The arcane club, the secret society. We are all lunatics worshipping the hysterical grimoire on the altar of experimentation.

But remember, as Arturo Riverte-Perez teaches us, sometimes it is better not to belong to clubs. Sometimes better not to know. Knowledge is dangerous. If you are faint at heart, worried about your future or, more importantly, your sanity—please, stop now. Do not read this book.

A sample with which to Gage the same exit for everyone:

Whoever said that one should honor one’s mother and father was the original unfit parent, a bad archetype passed down through years of intellectual fog. If God could design a god completely opposed to Himself and if He dared to worship it, considered the robot-maker, would He have the power and imagination thereby to transform Himself? But gods cannot undo themselves. Satan is inside-out and rightside-left. This is a sample of touched minds; this is not a séance for the living.

Touched minds, indeed. A Terry Pratchett maxim: In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. This book will explode in your face. However, everything unfolds from it. Kind of like the nuclear Trinity blossom. A beautiful rose that burns away flesh with hurricane force radioactive firestorms. Enjoy the mutation of your soul. Rejoice.

I warned you. Read at your own risk. Things will never be the same.

Thomas Fortenberry

Charlotte, North Carolina, 2006

AN INTRODUCTION

WRITE AN INTRODUCTION. He wants me to write an introduction. He has asked a person who earns her living writing statistical studies for corporate consumption to write an introduction to a decidedly non-linear, surreal novel. I doubt I can escape the years of education and career that have left me shackled with a linear narrative style. I fear I may not be capable of the task this madman has laid before me.

Of course, if I were capable of more, I would have written this damned novel, so I shouldn’t concern myself with a few paragraphs.

It is hard to fathom anyone becoming bored while reading anything that Ken Gage writes. Well, assuming that you are the right sort of reader. Witnessing the spillage from his brain can be an exhausting experience for the uninitiated or the mentally lazy. It can be an exhilarating experience, however, for those who are tired of having our food pre-chewed for us. (I operate under the delusion that I fall into the latter category, in spite of the linear writing style and occasional linear behavior. I have Ken fooled, anyway.) The best thing about reading his words is knowing that there is at least one person out there who peeks behind the carnival funhouse to see what the carnies are doing.

Somehow at this point I feel the need to mention how Ken uses words. Artists who are thought-provoking and different and surreal are not that hard to find—read any literary journal published by a university fine arts program and you’ll know exactly what I mean. What is harder to find is someone who knows how to string the words together in a way that makes the reader think, Damn, I wish I was that clever. I’ve given in to the urge to read his words out loud, just to hear them fall out of my mouth, or maybe to test if they will fall out of my mouth. Like saying Susie Sells Seashells at the Seashore three times fast.

A few words of advice for those of you who might be virgins to the weirdness herein. This novel is written differently than most—you owe it to yourself to read it differently than most. I assume you already know that difficult is not undesirable, or you would never have picked up this book in the first. Expect to get lost at times, and don’t be afraid to backtrack. You are not expected to give an oral report to the class at the end, nor will you be tested on your comprehension. Surf the words, enjoy the peaks, and remember that having the waves knock you on your ass occasionally is part of the experience.

Cindi Jean McElhaney, May 2006

ONE

Wake the Dead Slowly

. . . I always love this peaceful time of night, when long buried thoughts favoured by the gloom and silence steal from their graves and haunt the scenes of faded happiness and hope.

—Charles Dickens

FALLEN TO WITH an appetite, Satan hits the bottom of Hell and discovers the top of the cupboard door. No longer is his mind sated feasting alone on the memory of heresies and horrors, on the remembrances of werewolves and swamp monsters. There at the heartless pit of never-ending torment, the Old Fiend finds respite in a repast of words. He pulls open the cupboard door and takes out this book.

*    *    *

Are the beginnings ended as soon as they are begun? Pure hubris—unless you are, in fact, less than omnipotent. Or have worms in your soul. When I look out on society, I can no longer see myself; we need an advanced course on intermediate elementary-ism.

We were going to the theatre, just Eloa and I, to see a film, starting an evening which seemed loaded with promise and leading to, perhaps, a near-passionate conclusion sometime in the early morning hours. That had been my intent. Regardless of one’s personal agenda, the course of all things can change—and more often does—under even the slightest tampering of unknown powers. Tonight that change came at the hands of the theatre’s manager when he mysteriously replaced Mog McKlay, the regular money-taker at the ticket counter, with someone else.

Hi, Ken, she said.

Oh, Mara, hey. This is Eloa, my girlfriend.

Eloa smiled, nodded.

That’s an unusual name. Is it Greek? asked Mara, holding up her money-taking palm.

Eloa shook her head in reply while I said, "Yes, it’s very Greek, very classy. We’d like two tickets to see Face of the Screaming Werewolf." I put my cash on the counter.

Mara smiled and I could see the smallest nudging of those outer forces at work.

Classy, she said, tearing two green tickets from the ticket roll. Ken and I saw this one together just a few weeks ago, when the film first played here. Lon Chaney gives a dramatic performance. You’ll love it.

Eloa grabbed the tickets faster than I could think. Come on, I’ll get the drinks and popcorn, she said, pulling me along.

Mara watched us whisk away toward the refreshment counter in the lobby. I looked back, to see if she was still staring, but she was gone, having apparently abandoned her post.

A small crowd was milling about, waiting to use restrooms, waiting for those who were in the restrooms to emerge, playing video games, chattering freely, acting foolish or posing like statues. Great Pyramid of Yucatan and Aztec curses aside, I’d make that Ann Taylor in no time, an older male voice boasted; another one sounded in, somewhere from a commotion of moving persons, Never resurrect mummified werewolves! Then I heard a familiar one and moved in that direction.

Moggie! exclaimed Eloa when she saw Mog McKlay manning the refreshment counter.

Whatchya two seein’? asked Mog while getting our popcorn.

The werewolf picture.

Mog chuckled. If it ain’t werewolves, it’s swamp monsters. Why you always seeing the worst pictures here? He beamed at us, his eyes huge and distorted by the thick-lensed glasses he wore, perhaps the thickest ever made.

I shrugged. I couldn’t answer in the time it would take him to make our drinks. But we had discussed it before. Mog was a Christian; not inwardly, but his parents had made him believe he was and, furthermore, believe there were no higher aspirations. He viewed all horror films as tools of Satan and had told me several times that the reason I valued junk—like comic books and monster movies—so highly was because I was working as an agent of the Devil to deceive humanity into worshipping filth and turning its back on the real treasures of the world, subconsciously of course. Mog’s warped view of life is what made him so endearing, in small doses. He was an upstanding American stukach to the end; hated drug-users, abstract art and overly complicated thought puzzles. He nearly died in an automobile wreck a few days later, but ultimately recovered and killed himself slowly over a decade of alcoholism. Some people are dead long before the flame is full-extinguished.

We want to take a trip on the glory train. Humansville, man, pure humansville! My words washed through him like Kill Devil Rum and all night orgies disguised as politics. He took them as a cue to launch into his brand of self-deprecating humor. I wished I had brought the sudoku from the morning’s paper along. No place for talent-based judgments in an artless void.

You know, you gotta have damn good eyesight to see through glasses as thick as mine. And he chuckled. And the awkward moment sat before us too long, frozen and recorded in the eternal wake. Writing is a terrible habit. Mog could be funny and never realize it, even trying so hard with a line I taught him.

See you later, Mog. We paid for our popcorn and soda pop and proceeded to be seated in the dimly lit theatre, sipping our drinks.

I killed time being nonsensical until the movie-trailers began. I even recited a poem for Eloa’s amusement that I had written that morning:

"Doctor Jekyll, come out to play…

   There’s so much fun to be had.

The music hangs heavy; the night, young and dark.

   And the women and drink ain’t too bad.

"So, doctor dear, come take a swig;

   Your vials of life are yet full.

Come show the world that beast within

   That human shell of your animal.

"Doctor Jekyll, drink up, drink down,

   Your bottle of Satan so clear.

When you awake you know you’ll find

   No savior, no saint in the mirror."

The waiting is always worse than the movie, no matter how bad the movie might be. And if one isn’t feeling overly social, one tends to wander through one’s mind-clutter. At this point, I was thinking about a used bookstore I had visited in Milwaukee sometime around 1995. I had been looking at old monster magazines there, like Castle of Frankenstein and Famous Monsters, when this old man inquired about why we kids—meaning me apparently—were so attracted to evil things nowadays. Never one to turn down a chance to toy with someone’s head, I offered philosophically that if good intentions paved the path to Hell, maybe real salvation and goodness could be found on an intentional journey into Deviltry. He wasn’t phased at all by this supposition, nor amused—his mind had also considered this possibility, and my original idea no longer felt original, nor mine at all.

I think you’re right. I’d swear on Gideon’s gallbladder, he said (sure, he did) and went on to discuss an episode he had recently watched of a TV show, entitled Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing, with another patron in the store. And, at that moment, I could no longer see how living in the past could be any worse than living in the present or even living in a future that does not yet exist—or living in the fictionalized reality of television… or magazines.

I paid him for my evil monster magazines and left, not sure if we both were crazy, or both saner than most of the planet. Spin the hyperversatility eliminator and you too can water the mail, empty the plants, answer the garbage, read a phone and get an emotional promotional not subject to any credit approval nor goings purchased with passes out of a book—the adulation of sex-starved masses, of cave-dwellers drinking from cardboard glasses as thick as mine.

It began.

Our film began, and names flashed on the screen in the usual bold white lettering… Jerry Warren, Landa Varle, Lon Chaney, Donald Barron, Raymond Gaylord, Face of the Screaming Werewolf, MCMLXIV, other details that seemed abstractions far removed somehow from representations of pure thought. Mutual interests and pursuits, like money and sex, looked clouded in the pararealism of black and white. Almost from the start, I had forgotten Eloa, Mara, Mog and that place considered absolute reality in the darkness behind me. I entered an on-screen world at Dr. Edmund Redding’s Cowan Institute… la Casa del Terror? I couldn’t make sense of the scenes, the Mummy turns into the Wolf Man and scrambles histories together with discordant legends. Was I viewing the most convoluted of filmic tales or something else?—a nonlinear secret of unexpected urges, looked like unexpected orgies.

Want a taste of religion? I think Mara asked me, placing her hand on my lap. Lick a witch, she whispered. Maybe. Maybe not.

The room looks more lab than hospital. Its occupants seem unaware that a werewolf is climbing the outside walls of the building, perhaps dictating by psychic automatism. Doctor Edmund Redding and his two assistants prepare to hypnotize