Psychedelia Gothique

Psychedelia Gothique

Selected Short Fiction

DALE L. SPROULE

Arctic Mage, Toronto, 2013

Psychedelia Gothique, Copyright 2013 by Dale L. Sproule

Cover copyright 2013 by DLSproule

Interior design and layout by DLSproule.

Prologue copyright 2013 by David Nickle

All rights reserved.

The stories contained in this book are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblence to persons living or dead is coincidental.

Published in Canada by Arctic Mage Press, 222 Parkview Hill Crescent, Toronto, ON M4B 1R8

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Sproule, Dale L., 1953 -

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN: 978-0-9919406-1-5

Acknowledgements

My wonderful life-partner, Laura Belford – for all your support, for giving me some low/no-pressure time to put this collection together and for your inestimable contribution as copy editor.

All the members of the Cecil Street Writer’s Group since I first joined in the mid-90s. And to the members of the Victoria Writing Group, especially Gerry Truscott. You’ve all seen and helped me with at least one or two of these stories.

All the editors and publishers who have considered, accepted and printed my work over the years, especially Don Hutchison, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Mark Lefebvre at Kobo Writing Life for valuable advice putting this package together and getting it onto the market.

My kids Lauren and Sheena, my step-kids Carly and Connor and my former step-kids, Jen and Jason (and his whole family) for making it imperative that I be a good role model and finally finish a big project or two.

Sally McBride, for remaining my friend and colleague.

And thank you at last to the Toronto Arts Council for their 1998 grant which enabled me to complete a number of these stories.

The Stories

Psychedelia Gothique

Foreword by David Nickle

Nice Day for a Trip

Fourth Person Singular

Labour Relations

Lifestreams

Metropenance

Showdown in Kitschtown

The Onion Test

Memory Games

Flushed

Corrosive Agents

Exposure

Razorwings

White on White

Bad Copies

Touching the Screams

Masks of Flesh

About the Author

Foreword by David Nickle

Dale Sproule and I met face to face for the first time in Winnipeg in 1994, for the Worldcon there. I admit that I was predisposed to like him. Earlier that year, he'd sent me a note, telling me he'd read and dug one of my stories, and asking me to send him a new story for a magazine he and his [then] wife Sally McBride were starting up. And I sent him one, and sure enough, there it was in Issue #1 of TransVersions.

Dale was living in Victoria at the time, and I was in Toronto, so the science-fictional bacchanal that is a World Science Fiction Convention was our only face-to-face contact for awhile after that – really, we didn't catch up much at all until he upped stakes and moved to Toronto a few years later, and we started hanging out more regularly.

But I started regularly paying attention to Dale's artistic output – both fictional and otherwise – immediately. How could I not? Dale Sproule's stories and paintings travel to dark and surprising places.

I remember first reading Fourth Person Singular in 1994, when it appeared in Don Hutchison's Northern Frights 2 (the same anthology that contained the story of mine that Dale had liked so well) and shivering with equal parts horror and writerly envy, as he laid out the terrible childhoods of Barry and his brother Wren in a house haunted by their monstrous father.

That story's in this collection, right near the start. If you start with it, it might lead you to believe you're in for a run of Faulkner-esque journeys into the pain and madness of shattered families. But follow that line too long, and you might just pull a ligament, trying to parse it with the metafictional flights of Labour Relations, the splatterpunk excess of The Onion Test, the pure gonzo comedy on display in Showdown in Kitschtown and Flushed.

Some of these stories haven't seen the light of day for some time, but when they appeared, they did so in a spotlight. Labour Relations first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; The Onion Test in the long-lamented and highly respected Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine. Flushed, as well as Exposure and of course Fourth Person Singular were showcased in the Northern Frights series.

There's also innovation on display. As long as I've known him, Dale has aimed to innovate in a way that allows him to take more control of his work and how it appears than is considered seemly, at least among the more timid of our brethren. In a climate that was not friendly to speculative fiction pulps, Dale and Sally started up TransVersions and kept it alive for years before passing the reins along.

The novelet Razorwings appears later in this collection, and originally it saw life as the beating heart of a website that Dale put together in the late 1990s. The site was meant to document the adventures of Jaynie Razorwings, a twisted denizen of Faerie, both blessed and cursed with a glamour that hides then reveals her true nature as she's grown. The website didn't take off, being as it appeared more than a decade before the time of Wattpad and Amazon and all the ways that a creator can reach an audience today.

But Razorwings is here, in all its dark and terrible glory. Like the other stories in this collection, it invites you to join in on a dark and surprising ride – to sip a potion that will show you worlds that skew deep and strange and wonderful.

So what are you waiting for? Climb aboard, drink deep and keep your eyes open. Dale Sproule has some things to show you, and trust me when I say you won't want to miss even a blink's worth.

Nice Day for a Trip

Ball slapping asphalt followed by an outburst of soprano shouts. Dull thud. Voices swell and then the rhythm starts again. On the street, staccato-clicking rumble races past and in its wake a monstrous roar changes pitch and merges with the hum-drum hum at the periphery of awareness. Faintly at first, but mounting like panic, a siren wail splits the soundscape. The fissure spreads. And from the deep recess, the meaning of life whistles past in a single, never-ending scream. The sky disappears.

Either they’ve finally dropped the bomb or Pink Floyd has attained world domination. There’s always a choice. Life is a series of choices. And there is evidence to support the latter option.

Time has reversed. Sometime in the summer of ‘85, it turned around. There were signs. The new taste of Coke® yielded to Coca-Cola Classic®. Live-Aid re-united the Who, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The public affection for Trivial Pursuit® became a fervour. They should have called the game Wish Fulfillment.

Look around. It’s all coming back. I Dream of Jeannie, I Love Lucy, Mayberry R.F.D.. Even Mr. Ed is on his way. Or is that just someone playing coconut shells?

Turn on the radio. Who do you hear? Moody Blues. Yes. The Monkees? Keep listening. You never know when they’ll play something from the new Jimi Hendrix album. New?

Now you’re catching on. Davy Jones is crawling out of his locker. The Days of Future Have Not Passed.

Walk to the newsstand. Watch as the vendor snaps the twine on a bundle of Esquire, Life, Look. And over there, High Times.

Now you understand.

Maybe it started when Speilberg decided to take us Back to the Future. Back. He knew where to find it. You could see it even in his earlier films. The nostalgia. The wish.

Now it’s your turn. Make a wish. Make a choice while there’s still time.

It’s a straight line, from the days of acid rain to the days when acid reigned. For over ten years after high school, you worried about flashbacks that never came.

Well, here they come now.

Ummagumma.

With a hiss and a snort, the guardian of the underworld closes in. A horizontal monolith with laughing windows and blast-furnace breath. Number 9…revisited. The destination changes as you watch. From Crosstown to 1967. Magical Mystery Tour. All aboard! Passengers in long hair and woolen ponchos turn to stare out the back window at the mushroom cloud, secure in the knowledge that it’s just a hallucination. Far out! The road ahead is paved with black light posters. The oblong sun is glowing purple.

The future is a funny shade of bright.

Fourth Person Singular

"And he is the mad eye of the fourth person singular

of which nobody speaks

and he is the voice of the fourth person singular

in which nobody speaks

and which yet exists

with a long head and a foolscap face

and the long mad hair of death

of which nobody speaks

And he speaks of himself and he speaks of the dead..."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti HE

Every night since I was seven years old he’s swooped down at me out of the darkness of sleep: a pale, skeletal boy with thin arms thrust out like wings, eyes like white domes in black craters, mouth open as he screams acceleration.

His name is Wren.

It’s been over 30 years and the images haven’t even begun to fade. Maybe writing it down will help exorcise my ghosts.

In 1961, when I was six and my brother, Wren, was nine, we would huddle together on his bed pulling his thick blue bedspread over our heads on those nights when the screams came from the basement. Several times each year, tortured voices wavered up the heat ducts, sometimes sounding like men, sometimes women. Sometimes they would wail for hours although one night, a single excruciating plea of stop! was followed by silence. Wren and I put our ears to the metal vent in the hardwood floor, listening for more, but instead heard the door downstairs slamming and Dad stomping up the stairs. I barely had time to scramble back to my room and pull up my covers before my door swung open and Dad came in and kissed me goodnight.

He smelled like the stuff they use to clean hospitals, the scent of pine heightened until it makes your nose smart and your eyes water.

Smashing, cursing sounds told me he was going into Wren’s room. Dad hardly ever came upstairs, so he didn’t remember Wren’s forty or fifty model airplanes hanging on fishing line from the bedroom ceiling; a network of filaments like a massive spiderweb.

The next morning at breakfast, Dad spoke. Renfield, he said, being the only person who ever used my brother’s full name, I want you to take down those airplanes.

You broke four of them, Wren replied sullenly.

A spoonful of cornflakes stopped en route to my lips as I watched Wren mirror Dad’s stare, a shrunken reflection of our father’s stubbornness and passionate intensity.

Move them or suffer more losses than you already have. Understand?

Yes sir, he muttered, playing it safe for once. My relief slipped out in a sigh. Then, with no more trepidation than saying pass the milk, Wren asked, What is that screaming we always hear coming from the basement?

I wanted to grab my brother by the shoulders and shake him and shout Shuttup you idiot! This man made Mom disappear. He’ll make you disappear too and then I’ll be alone with him. Don’t leave me alone with him! But I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

Looking up from his magazine, Dad sounded genuinely puzzled. Screaming? He turned to me. Have you heard screaming, Barrymore?

Avoiding Wren’s glare, I said, No Dad.

He hears it just like me. Tell him, Bear.

I couldn’t.

An interminable silence later, Dad suggested, I have a proposition for you, Renfield. Come into the basement with me when I get home from work tonight and I will show you everything there is to see.

I hoped Wren would somehow read the silent plea in my eyes, but without according me even a scornful glance, he flipped his long black hair out of his eyes and said, Naw. Guess I don’t want to know all that badly.

We will see. Dad nodded, then looked at us one by one. Neither of you have mentioned this imaginary screaming to anyone outside of this house, have you?

No, I answered, hoping Wren would chime in and we would speak in a single voice like we once did.

Instead, my brother wondered aloud, How could we tell anybody, if you won’t let us out of the house, Dad?

You sneak out sometimes while I am at work during the day. I found that yellow plastic bowl you left beside the garage the other day.

We had used the bowl to feed our neighbour’s Irish setter. Their house was around the bend in the road and we never wandered that far, so we’d never been close enough to overhear the dog’s name. Going over to inquire might start them asking why we weren’t in school. So I blessed the dog with a second name; Robin, like in that song Mom used to sing. When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbing along...

The lecture droned on, ...going out any more. I have to trust you to be good boys, Dad gave Wren a fatherly smile and tousled his hair. If you told anyone about this screaming, they would quite likely send you to a psychiatrist. Do you know what the psychiatrist would do? Perform a lobotomy operation. Just like they did to my father. They drilled a hole in his forehead, inserted a knife, and sliced off the front of his brain. We don’t want anyone doing that to you, now do we? I want my family safe and sound. Keeping your mouth and eyes and ears shut is the best way to stay safe and sound, Renfield.

I thought keeping the door shut was the best way.

Are you being smart?

No sir. You told us...

Do not ever get smart with me.

Yes, s...

"Mouth shut, correct?"

Wren nodded.

Dad got up and walked straight out the kitchen door. My brother and I listened to the rattling of locks and latches, the departing footsteps, the uneven rumble of the Rambler’s engine and the crunching of gravel as Dad backed out the driveway. Then Wren said, I’m going down to the basement. You wanna come?

I shook my head and pouted. You’ll scream, I warned.

Huh?

Going down there will make you scream like all the others.

Dad goes down there, said Wren. He doesn’t scream.

I trailed my brother upstairs, unable to muster a better argument than his. We struggled to lift the window in his bedroom.

Get something to prop it open!

I brought the wastebasket from the bathroom and watched as he climbed onto the porch roof. His legs, his head, and finally his hands seemed to sink into the greenery as he climbed down the trellis.

After a few scary minutes by myself, I decided to follow, but on my way out, I hit the wastebasket with my shoulder and the window came shuddering down at me. Certain I was about to be decapitated, I threw myself back into the room, escaping with no worse injury than bruised elbows and a sore bum.

I’d seen the wastebasket bounce off the gutter into the yard, where Dad was sure to find it. My struggles to open the window couldn’t budge it.

Had I locked my brother out forever? I had no idea what to do next. Break the window? I scanned the room for a tool, in case it came to that. On the floor were clothes and empty boxes from his model planes, but no balls, bats or other outside toys. Being too young to assemble the many models Dad had given me as gifts, I’d passed mine along to Wren who had thrown out the cars and boats, but added the airplanes to his collection.

I looked up. Even if I could reach them, Wren would kill me for throwing one of his planes through the window. I’d once broken a wing on a model he was working on. He didn’t talk to me for a week.

I looked down. I was standing on the furnace grate. Kneeling beside it, I tried unsuccessfully to pry it out of the floor. Then, lying flat on my stomach, I put my lips to the open vent. Wren?? Are you down there? I shouted timidly. Receiving no answer, I yelled again and again. When I stopped, I could hear my own small, hollow voice still echoing through the ductwork.

The door behind me opened and I whirled, surprised that Wren had found another way in.

But it wasn’t Wren.

Dad stared down at me, his face blank and grey as usual. He was still in his blue suit as if going off to work but he obviously hadn’t gone.

We were...uhhm...playing hide ‘n’ seek, I stammered, unable to lie quickly or convincingly enough. I’m IT. Wren is hiding.

Wordlessly, Dad turned and headed back down the stairs.

How had I failed to hear him return? Dad must have read our minds again. He must have parked the Rambler on the road and snuck into the house on tiptoes.

I laid there on the cold floor until Dad called me for supper hours later. Wren wasn’t there. Hopefully, he’d seen Dad coming and run away. I never asked, never spoke at all, never even looked up from the canned spaghetti cooling and congealing on my plate. Dad sent me to my room.

I curled on my bed, clutching my knees to my chest as I listened for my brother’s screams. There were screams; although not those of a child. A man’s voice gibbered and wept for a long time before his screaming started. It was loud at first, his voice gradually weakening, becoming hoarse and merging with the rustling of leaves in the nearby trees, the rushing of water in the creek, the pumping of my own heart.

Wren was in bed when I peeked in on him next morning.

Needing to know if he was alive, I slipped through the doorway, crept up beside the bed, reached out and tentatively touched him on the shoulder. He didn’t move. I shook harder, then tried to roll him onto his back, but he resisted.

Go away, he said in a voice I barely recognised.

Are you hurt? I whispered.

He made me watch.

But he didn’t hurt you? I asked.

He made me watch. Wren said again. Now go away.

What did you see?

The screams. I saw the screams.

Who was screaming? I asked.

He didn’t answer so I grabbed his shoulder again, shook harder, asked more loudly, Who was it? Why were they screaming?

Breakfast, said a man’s voice from behind me. Dad had stuck his head in. I turned and saw him smiling warmly. As suddenly as he’d appeared, he went away and I heard a number of distinct thumps as he descended the stairs two at a time.

Dad must have heard me asking Wren about the screams, which, even from the sanctuary of my bedroom, sounded full of pain and fear. I didn’t really want to know what the screams looked like. I didn’t want to talk to Wren anymore. I didn’t want to go downstairs for breakfast. I didn’t know what to do.

Wren got up and I followed him down to the breakfast table. My brother stared vacantly at me as we sat down, although I’m sure