Jesus of Scumburg

By Leo X. Robertson

Jesus DeJesus is the lead singer of the Nazi Sympathisers, a punk band whose music excites its audiences into a frenzy that results in the complete annihilation of whatever city the band plays in. When Jesus is reunited with his high school crush at a gig in his home city of Scumburg, his disorder-centric

• Language: English
• Publisher: Planet Bizarro
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915546272

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Leo X. Robertson

Cover by Adrian Medina.

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.K. copyright law.

Praise for Jesus of Scumburg

With Jesus of Scumburg, Leo X. Roberson offers a deeply unsettling anti-gospel, bad news for a world beyond hope of repair. Straddling bizarro and splatterpunk, this short, loud, and maniacal novel embodies (and disembodies) what those genres do best; Roberson scalds the mind's eye, taking us on a break-neck tour of a hypnagogic nightmare world so that we can see our own world more accurately once we wake, for, roiling amongst the viscera and sadistic nihilism in this book—in fact, inseparable from it—we can find disturbingly familiar theologies upon which so many of our institutions have been built.

Carl Fuerst — Author of The Falling Crystal Palace

We can't stop here, this is splatterpunk country.

Jesus of Scumburg is a vile journey of nihilism told with an ironically tight and beautiful prose. This book asks you to draw a line and crosses it again and again. It is a bizarre, surreal ride that will leave your head spinning. As it came to a purulent head, I could only wish it was twice as long.

Megan Stockton — Author of quiet, pretty things.

Robertson writes with a wonderful and unique edge, sharp enough to cut you in ways you've never been sliced before.

Mark Matthews, author of Milk-Blood

Leo X. Robertson's latest novella is a dark and hilarious tribute to GG Allin.

Ben Arzate, culturedvultures.com

Jesus of Scumburg

Leo X. Robertson

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Planet Bizarro Press

Contents

1. Chapter One

2. Chapter Two

3. Chapter Three

4. Jesus: Origins

5. Chapter Three Again

6. Chapter Four

7. Chapter Five

8. Chapter Six

9. Gila: Origins

10. Chapter Six Again

11. Chapter Seven

12. Chapter Eight

About the Author

Other Titles from Planet Bizarro

Chapter One

Jesus DeJesus stood on the rainy rooftop of a fifty-story-high car park, enshrouded in the crepuscular shadow of the surrounding high-rise apartments that crowded around the building like inflamed skin around a festering ulcer. Jesus was a disease and a savior of the drunk punks fanning out in front of him in a dry bean of bitterness and rage. He rocked out for them at three a.m., with his brother Earl on guitar and latest lover Steve on drums, while dressed in a coat of fake fur that he’d stolen from a charity shop–he thought?–and he wore it open and off the shoulder so the approaching night could see the undulating waves of puppy fat that bulged as he crouched for a signature piss. His dick poked out his fishnet Y-fronts, which were browned by overuse, and a dark stream permeated the soiled concrete between his cowboy boots, which shone in the urine-tinted light from hot pervasive lamps that colored the artifice of his world, the falseness of his prematurely aged skin that hollowly housed a howling soul that yearned for release, to return to its home, some sweet and hidden hell. Jesus sang for his soul, bellowed out Motherfucker Fuck You Cause I Wanna Die:

Fuck you motherfucker

I hate to watch you try

Fuck you motherfucker

Why don’t you fucking die?

If I woke up as you

I’d gas myself and fry

But you don’t have the guts

To even watch my suicide

Never be free (Oi oi!)

Like me (Oi oi!)

I wanna die

I wanna die

I wanna die

I wanna die

Yeah! Jesus screamed, staggering about, cupping a lukewarm palmful of his own piss and flinging it at his audience.

Fuckin’ do it! a grungy-looking kid called out.

The fuck you say to me? Jesus called back.

You wanna kill yourself? Just do it already you fuckin’ poser!

You come up here and say that to me! Jesus said, and they both knew what came next. Jesus had this kid in a headlock and they spun around.

The promise of release Jesus offered was too sweet. Now the other sticky kids piled in with pulping fists, their kicks kicked just to kick, no matter the receiver, because Jesus taught them: trust nobody; love nobody; fuck everyone.

A scrabble ensued. Jesus was down to just his dog collar and his boots: the crowd had torn off his fur coat, and his Y-fronts had retired when no one was looking and sopped into the pool of piss.

The punks were off; they’d met their catalyst; he’d done his job: now everyone jumped on cars. A raven-haired boy buggered his buddy on the slope of a BMW’s rear window, and three shorn-headed girls stomped on a Jeep while elatedly cutting each other’s stomachs with shards of glass, licking up each other’s blood and giggling.

A girl in a tight pink polo and skirt of green tartan punched her arm through the window of a sedan and opened its back door. She leaned in the angle that the open door created as if reclining in a jacuzzi, and she turned her head to Jesus, spreading her legs open so he got her meaning.

He saw her through the mob and grinned, revealing the black cracks that ran across his upper teeth where the reparative work, after last year’s curb-stomping, began to fail him. The tartan-skirted girl looked afraid as Jesus made horns with his fingers and tore through the kids like a bull, tackling the girl and landing along the backseat with her.

He shuffled up her skirt and felt between her legs.

Shaved, just like you like it, she said.

What’s your name, honey? he said.

Gila.

I’ve never fucked a Gila before.

She tittered at this, incredulous and clearly pleased to be the first, breathing in his sweet scent of sugar-coated carrion rotting on an abandoned beach. Not that he would have been able to perform,