Zelda Rising

By George Hook

Zelda Rising tells the story of an empathetic young woman named Crystine who runs afoul of a perverse male stranger as she works to create a cozy refuge for booklovers in a Chicago space she calls Zelda Rising Books, in honor of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife. The novel Zelda Rising revolves around this world of books that mean much more than reading, for very lives end up depending on them. It offers up a range of colorful characters from Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood who are drawn into the center of Crystine's bookstore, for better or worse, and must face their own unfulfilled dreams and mortality after she is gaslighted and dies tragically. Mystery pervades Zelda Rising until violence becomes the only solution.  Definitely an engrossing, succinct read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781977273628

George Hook

George Hook is a fiction writer and former editor of the Arts & Letters page of The Wall Street Journal/Europe. He regularly performs at open mikes throughout Chicago and is part of the writing community of the University of Chicago Writer’s Studio. His short stories and other fictional pieces have been published by FreezeRay, Flying Island of the Indiana Writers Center, Thrice Fiction, Danse Macabre, The Joe Bob Briggs Fanzine, The Spectacle of Excess, and Ansible. He is also owner of HookLook, Inc., a corporate editing and writing service.

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Zelda Rising

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2024 George Hook

v2.0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Much thanks to Doctor Tara Palmatier for her insights into borderline personality disorder, which informs much of this book.

Listen to me, you ugly little crook. I’m talking language you can understand. I’m not worried about the cops. If you’re under suspicion, it’s to me. I’m the one that counts, because when I find the one who did it, he dies. Even if I can’t prove it, he dies anyway. In fact, I don’t even have to be convinced too strongly.

Mickey Spillane

For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter take it so solemnly – as though the world’s axis turned within it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There’s more to life than just books, you know/but not much more

Morrissey

For

Mary Veeder and Phyllis Eisenstein

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SO, SO WHAT

CRASH PALACE

A FLIP OF THE COIN

THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY DONUTS

PRELUDE TO A DANCE OF DEATH ON CAT’S PAWS

DANCE OF DEATH ON CAT’S PAWS

THAT PURE JIGSAW FEELING

OVERGROUND

CARCASS

HELTER SKELTER

MIRAGE

METAL POSTCARD

NICOTINE STAIN

SWITCH

SUBURBAN RELAPSE

SWING, BATTER, SWING

SO, SO WHAT

Let’s say, one morning, this guy, he goes into a woman’s apartment and finds her dead. And now you’re probably wondering, right off the bat, how’d he get in?

He had his own key, is how.

Now, the first thing he hears entering the place is coming from out of the bathroom: water drip drip dripping. So, let’s say this guy now starts to thinking: she probably forgot to turn off what sounds to him like the shower, because, well, she’s had things on her mind of late, mostly business, what with her having to close the bookstore she owns because of The COVID that spread out there in the streets of Chicago.

So he goes to check out the bathroom. And there she is: crashed out … water drip drip dripping from the faucet in the shower all over her naked body that’s curled up at the bottom of the stall and into her open mouth and her eyes,

Seeing what went down, the guy takes out a cigarette pack from the breast pocket of his shirt and he lights up a cigarette. Then he stands there, smoking, just looking down on her, watching the water drip drip dripping on flesh and bone, not making a move to shut it off, still looking at what’s left of her until he finishes off his cigarette then heads into the kitchen to find an ashtray to stub out the butt.

In there, he then sees her cat roaming around, looking lost. This guy we’re talking about, he never really liked that mutt cat of hers, but during those bad times of The COVID lockdown, she wanted somebody to keep her company, somebody who didn’t argue or hassle with her in her apartment.

Like this guy did.

So this cat, it’s meowing, it looks hungry, it’s sniffing around an empty plastic bottle of bargain vodka with its red screw top lying on an oriental rug, along with pieces of the jigsaw puzzles she was working on. And this guy, he’s thinking, well, this woman in the shower, she has been doing some heavy drinking lately: all this mess, it figures.

Now what else does he happen to see but medicine bottles lying open on a couch, three of them, empty. He checks out the bottles and, yeah, they’re her psychiatric meds. So he nods his head, he takes out his pack of cigarettes, he lights up another one.

And there he is, smoking, thinking that he should really clean up her mess like he’s done many times in her bookstore. But then he decides, maybe it’s best to leave things as is.

Now for me, I have three questions on my mind about what’s happening here. Call them Question A and Question B and Question C.

Question A: Does this guy run out of the apartment and tell the first person he runs into on the street that, hey, there’s a girl in her apartment up there who looks in pretty bad shape, what do we do?

Question B: Or does he walk, real calm like, from her place and go outside, thinking, I’ve found dead bodies before, so, so what?

And Question C: So what am I doing, asking these questions?

Because I just happen to be the only one left that I know, looking for an answer, is why.

CRASH PALACE

Hey, glad to be back here, where all is right with God in His heaven, and where a saint of a guy is always around to lend an ear to what needs saying… and that would be you, St. Gary, my favorite bartender of all time. You and God, His angels, His other saints … all Crash Palace regulars.

Like the black velvet painting of St. George you got going on the wall above the bar mirror, him slaying the dragon to save the princess in distress, and, over there by the wall, that statue of the ever-popular St. Sebastian, all buff and hot with those kinky arrows stuck in him like a bloody pincushion.

And over there, there’s St. Augustine sitting at his desk, eyes to the sky, waiting for words from on high about what to lay down next in that book of his he’s got waiting in front of him – all high minded and theological God stuff.

And St. Gary, you guys, you sure have the whole godhead thing going down in the Crash Palace: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. In here, He’s here, He’s there, He’s everywhere, not only styling the Trinity, but more, much more.

There’s your life-size Jesus by the door, like He just walked in the joint, carrying the weight of all the crosses we bear on Him: looking totally sliced and diced in the face, what with all those thorns lodged in His skin from the crown of them He’s wearing on his head.

You got your Pieta of Him slouched over dead on the lap of his crying Jewish mother. And you got your Holy Ghost doing His dove thing, flying over the heads of the loyal followers of the Jesus too.

And look at that: you even brought back that awesome pinball machine I remember from the old days, my friend. The Stations of the Cross.

How many hours did I spend in here playing The Stations of the Cross: Bing, bing, bing: Jesus on the Bumper Mount of Olives. Bing, bing, ring: The Baby Jud … oh, sorry, getting way, way ahead of myself here … okay, just Judas screwing over Christ for the almighty coin. Ring-a-ding-ding: the holy whore wiping his face off when He falls down from lugging the cross through the alleys. Ka-ching: Jesus getting nailed. Rattle, rattle, rattle: Jesus walking from the tomb.

You know, dude, I always wondered what happens if you tilt the thing. Do you then get locked into some Purgatory pinball machine in a dungeon you have in the basement so you have to play your way out, or something? And if you lose at that one, you get tortured by red-hot Devil Girls pitchforking your balls then shooting them into the machine?

Yeah, I missed that pinball machine, not to mention you guys. And I didn’t even hear you were gone until … well, I just wasn’t making the Chicago bar scene that much anymore and then something happened that sent me to 2771 North Lincoln, thinking, I’ll just have a club soda or two at the Crash Palace because I need to get outside myself, see what’s up.

Instead, I find another bar at this location. Pretty nice, friendly kind of place, just that, it was missing that special ecumenical feeling I guess you could call it that I would get hanging in here with you guys.

But not now. Now you’re here, and I think you’re here to stay, at least, for tonight and into the early morning.

You know, St. Gary, not only this bar itself, but I also greatly missed the Wax Trax Music scene in the Crash Palace. Yeah, for sure, I could never get enough of that gutbucket roar of industrial techno rock trash beats, Chicago style.

But it was not only Wax Trax, St. Gary. It was the Crash Palace where, back in the day, I first heard the album whose songs I just can’t get out of my head now. You used to play it all the time. That one by the Greatest Woman Who Ever Lived and her band. Called The Scream, first album of Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees.

See, there was this girl I knew who makes me think of The Scream all the time. One of those earworms I can’t out my mind when it comes to her, cause I can just hear her living then dying on the beat of its black-on-black songs.

Which puzzles me.

And which means … I may need a drink later on to get it all together. That kind of drink. But for now, make my drink the Hi-NRG Bull Run that you do up so well here, you know: Red Bull and Mountain Dew. No doubt, that’ll keep me going as I put together the puzzle about this place called Zelda Rising Books.

So, if you stay with me here, St. Gary, hey, I promise I’ll make it worth your while. All you’d have to do is accept the 30 AA gold coins I have in this purple velvet bag I just placed on the bar here for services rendered. But only after you listen to what I have to say about that place, that place called Zelda Rising Books.

A FLIP OF THE COIN

So, about these 30 gold AA coins in the purple velvet bag then.

Okay, when you first start going to AA meetings, you’re new to everything in them, like, all of a sudden, you are hearing story after story about wasting your life getting wasted.

Now, one of those stories I heard was from a regular at what was my home meeting, talking about relapse bars in Chicago one time. He was saying, there’s these bars somewhere in the city that’ll take AA coins for drinks: you know, those coins they give you on your anniversary, with the roman numerals for each year you’re clean and sober, with words on them like Keep Coming Back and Let Go, Let God, know what I’m saying?

Now, this story kind of stuck with me. Where are these mystery bars anyway: how would you find them? I doubt you’ll see them advertised or anything: not exactly what they’d call out on a sign at the cash register, not something like: we take cash or credit cards, but no personal checks.

These relapse bars, they’d have to be real nasty dives. Like, I’m thinking one of those places where they sell dollar draft beers and you’re sitting there drinking one after another, wondering how can they sell them so cheap, are they watered down? Then trying to guess how they’d do that.

Or here’s another one, those little bars at discount liquor stores with names like Holiday Liquors. With chain link around the counter in case somebody wants to shake down the clerk for what’s in the register at three in the morning or make a grab for a cheap plastic screwtop vodka bottle then run with it, without paying. Dark bars without windows: holes in the wall where people deep in their cups go to hide.

Anyway, here I am at the Crash Palace, staring at that weird crucifix where the Baby Jesus is nailed hanging over the bar mirror, and wondering, would you, St. Gary, ever take the 30 gold AA coins like these ones in this purple velvet bag I left here on the bar for 30 drinks?

There, caught you smiling. I thought so. Well, St. Gary, 30 drinks and I’m thinking, after all these years, time to PAR-TAY, as they say.

Well, not a PAR-TAY, more like a private wake. For a girl name of Crystine and her bookstore, her Zelda Rising Books. So I’m asking you, my favorite bartender of all time, would 30 gold AA coins help pay for me drinking her off my mind?

Because I’m tired of living in pieces, I just want her to rest in peace.

THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY DONUTS

So, what about this Crystine girl at the center of my puzzle?

Well, here’s an example of her: you remember that polar vortex in Chicago? When it dropped for a week to 10 below zero, and that’s not counting the wind chill factor coming off of Lake Michigan, even? Brutal.

Now, I will always think Crystine when I think polar vortex. She seemed to own it, like she owned Zelda Rising Books up on Clark near to Devon. Or at least, until everything went permanently cold for her, if you know what I mean.

See, from what I hear, at the time of the polar vortex, there were these Jesuit-trained kids from Loyola University out there in Rogers Park from the audio-visual department roaming around with all their video gear, looking to shoot something with a human interest angle for a class project about how people were handling the polar vortex. Except the only thing they could find so far was some guy who threw his hot coffee into the air for them to show how it exploded into an ice cloud, it was that cold. Besides that, nothing else to shoot.

But being Jesuit trained, they’re not about ready to let some polar vortex situation stop them from meeting their mission, not them. They keep march, march, marching along under a clear, crystal blue sky where even the sun looks frozen and through a fierce Chicago hawk slapping its wings upside their heads.

So eventually, they end up on that part of Clark up near Devon where a long concrete island divides two lanes into four. In this particular area, all you’re going to find there is some dive bars, rows of auto service-repairs-parts garages, and a chain-linked, fenced-in concrete lot full of parked taxis next to one of Chicago’s very own 24/7/365 doughnut and coffee joints that have been known to stay open even over Christmas and New Year’s.

Only here, during the polar vortex, this very own Chicago 24/7/365 doughnut and coffee joint on Clark I’m talking about is closed tighter than a meat locker. When they see this, the Loyola U kids later told the student newspaper that, hey, when one of Chicago’s very own Chicago 24/7/365 doughnut and coffee shops is closed down, there’s no point continuing on with this Jesuit mission of theirs: they might as well get out of this unholiest of unholy cold snaps ever recorded, ever, and return to campus for a long winter’s nap in their warm rooms.

But you know what, St. Gary? These kids also told the student newspaper that just when they were walking across Clark to turn back … all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they spot a light behind the logo on a window of a used books store.

This place, it’s called: Zelda Rising Books. And the logo I’m talking about, well, it’s got one of those bathing beauties from out of the twenties. Wearing a swimming cap, a one-piece, striped swimsuit, with straps showing off her bare shoulders, that goes down to just above the knees, so if she