Chris Lux Hayes has typed up a coven of novellas in the fantasy: magical realism genre.¹ The author rallies his wits and cooks up novellas when his short stories and novelettes experience nervous breakdowns and run amok with war clubs and machetes like suicidal party animals.
¹ Crikey note: According to Etymology Today, “coven” is the collective noun traditionally used to characterize a gathering of novellas. Also, “Garbage Day” was initially written as an 8,300-word novelette.
GARBAGE DAY
Word Count: 40,000
Born into a tribe of seaworthy Arctic nomads, Yuka Cikuq clicked into place as a U.S. Navy SEAL. Gorman, a 95-pound Belgian Malinois, served as his combat assault dog. Veterans of the Zwastika Hybrid War in the Balkans, the two battle buddies are now world-weary retirees.
They are lounging in their backyard on a July morning when a neighbor girl, Monica Bluewood, stops by to share a story about the new garbage people who hang out at a deserted farmhouse, the place on the outskirts of town where all the bluebells grow. Henry, Yuka’s son, is also present. Henry and Monica are both 13 years old.
Monica tells Yuka and Gorman about how an older kid at her school saw one of the garbage people exit the farmhouse and throw a rock at a hornet nest on the porch. A giant hummingbird flew out and killed a barn cat.
The older kid also described how the garbage people drive a garbage truck that’s totally black like a hearse. They travel as a crew of five. The driver looks like a Mafia executioner. A hardcore crone rides shotgun. An alien hunchback and hot fairy girl ride outside on the back of the truck. A huge fairy dog rides on top.
Yuka and Gorman soon learn Monica is certain the garbage people plan to abduct her and whisk her away to their fatherland in another dimension. That news drags our heroes out of retirement and into another foreign conflict—this time around with the garbage people and a gang of their lethal brethren back home.
Excerpt from GARBAGE DAY
Yuka digs deep and focuses his vision. The girl does not have butterfly wings, but he can feel her paranormal energy like radiation from a meltdown. Her face is humanlike, but unnaturally lovely and imbued with a kind of malevolent innocence. Her eyes are human-shaped and fitted with luminous green irises. Her gaze seems fueled with a soulless wisdom as though she was once lit up by a zombie sage.
Her skin is poreless and pale. Her hair is thick, long, and so richly coppery red as to seem almost alive. She wears bib overalls the color of rock lichen over the body of a lingerie model; one of the garment’s buckle-loop straps has slipped off a bare shoulder. Yuka gets the idea she has nothing on underneath.
“My name’s Vitt,” she says with a grin, showcasing shapely teeth as white as snowdrops, but also faintly serrated. “That’s short for Vittoria and I’m ever so pleased to meet you.”
Yuka checks a verbal response and takes in his surroundings. They are at his house in Shakti’s office on the second floor. He is seated in his wife’s rolling desk chair. Vitt looms right in front of him, sitting in an armchair with the posture of a charm-schooled scholar. Gozz lounges in a corner, panting and drooling. The bully kutta regards Yuka with a dull smirk, his phosphorescent eyes blazing like the pilot lights of a supercooled inferno.
Terror froths to life in Yuka’s guts when gruesome visions of his wife, son, and dog barge into his mind. Yuka watches the uprising from a remote space in his awareness and simply breathes. He smiles politely at Gozz and turns to face the fairy girl. “You goobers declared war on the wrong planet.”
“Look at you,” Vitt says, laughing. “Humans blow every fuse when they see us. We might as well give them a lobotomy with a jackhammer.”
“You’ve got some odd edges,” Yuka admits.
MOTHER PLANT
Word count: 19,500
Higgs Luzon and his wife, Mantra Killaway, are making a marijuana run to Minnesota from their home in central Wisconsin. Highway patrol officers haunting their return trip are the least of their problems.
Mantra has a stalker: her husband’s ex-girlfriend, who is known in some quarters as a killer-whale demon. Mantra is an MMA fighter and a rising star when she lands her first UFC flyweight bout. She has no idea her opponent is actually her stalker, who is known in some quarters as an accomplished shapeshifter.
Unfortunately, the fight represents only a shadow of horrific troubles to come.
Excerpt from MOTHER PLANT:
Mantra retained her maiden name for career purposes. She’s a professional MMA fighter with a 12–1 record, a sleek downrush of ice-blonde hair, and hypnotic, Alice-blue eyes. Two weeks ago, she stepped up in class and made her UFC debut. Her left eye is still shadowed by a lurid, yellow-violet bruise—that’s right, a duotone shiner. She winces when she takes a deep breath and grunts when she bends or twists her body.
My job’s not nearly as risky, but I know how to wring the truth out of risk. I work 55 hours a week as a senior life actuary at the Travelers Group hallmark campus in Willow Ridge, a high-end exurb of Wausau. I rake in $374,000 annually with stunning benefits. After that, it’s mostly boring. Actuaries are accountants who couldn’t stand the excitement.
“I think we’re here,” Mantra announces from the Volvo’s front bucket. Her voice is subdued, approaching somber. She’s dressed down in a scoop-neck tee, jeans with rips and holes, sneakers, and a tattered jean jacket. She’s wearing a souvenir ball cap from the Tachi Palace in California, but her hair is otherwise loose, spilling to her waist.
The cap is special. I bought it for her at a gift shop as we were leaving the casino on our way home to Minnesota. The night before she had knocked out Faith “Rockhead” Horton to take the Elysium War Zone flyweight title. Mantra flattened Faith one minute and four seconds into round one with a left hook MMA analysts likened to a captive bolt pistol, the device employed at slaughterhouses to bump off cattle, swine, and slipshod employees.
That was my wife’s eighth pro bout and her seventh as an Elysium fighter. She went on to defend her title four times, increasing her knockout streak to 12. On top of that, her KOs are the kind where the referee instantly scrambles to protect the downed fighter.
Tapology took notice, ranking her #6 on the online network’s list of Undefeated Female MMA Prospects. Two weeks later, UFC matchmakers started pounding on Elysium’s door after Unified Women’s Mixed Martial Arts ranked Mantra Killaway the #17 flyweight in the world. She did not have a UFC out clause in her contract, but her promoter, a fighter-friendly altruist and MMA graybeard, was happy to see her graduate to the premier league. Mantra was born to fight in the deep end.
“Yeah, that’s the place,” I agree while steering our sedan into the spacious parking lot.
“Not what I expected,” she says, perking up a little. “So germicidal, futuristic, and posh. I’m thinking they sell bionic beaker bongs and shatter imported from outer space.”
Okay, imagine a deviant Apple Store that sells myriad forms of recreational cannabis instead of iMacs and Apple Watches. That’s Mother Plant. The store is located in a swanky strip mall on Gun Club Road in the trendiest enclave in Red Wing.
“Fuck bitches. Smoke weed. Eat cereal,” I remark out of the blue.
Mantra puffs up a giggle in surprise. “My husband, the power stoner.”
HYENA IN THE HENHOUSE
Word Count: 21,500
Haldol Stomp is running for mayor of Bapeewug, Minnesota. Everyone knows his opponent, Mercedes Mutton, is going to win dashing away. Everyone except Brumby Stomp, Haldol’s nephew, who has arrived to “work” on his uncle’s campaign.
Brumby has an alternative job history that doesn’t show up on his bogus resume. His skillset is the kind most appreciated by U.S. Intelligence Community offshoots that prowl the trenches of the deep state.
In other words, Brumby is James Bond minus the charm, accent, and license to thrill. People familiar with Brumby, however, would not bet on 007 if the two ever nuked it out in a fight.
Brumby’s overseers are not particularly interested in Haldol Stomp’s unprincipled connections to upper-crust criminals in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Brumby’s focus is centered on his uncle’s dealings with a billionaire Black Sun fascist whose roots weave back to the prehistoric evil of proto-Nazi thought and faith leaders. The fact that this assignment shakes out as a family affair is not a happy accident.
Excerpt from HYENA IN THE HENHOUSE:
I hand an elderly man a hand fan that looks like a ping-pong paddle. Haldol Stomp’s bloated face occupies both sides of the fan along with the slogan, “We Stand Our Stomping Ground.” I’ve got a bunch more fans in a satchel I’m carrying along with some other chum, including buttons, bumper stickers, and various branded doodads.
I’m not wearing Stomp apparel, however, just a Cuban shirt, cargo shorts, and my hiking sandals, all beyond broken in. My bloodstone-brown hair has been growing uncut for three years at a rate of seven inches a year, dropping its length in Jesus territory. My oblong face has a thuggish cast that’s hardly lamb of godly. My build is mayhem-grade bruiser. Sugaree says I look like a Mafia peacenik with a grudge.
“What the hell’s this thing?” the elderly man wonders crankily as he accepts the fan. He’s wearing an unsightly golf shirt, flannel slacks, and a Colorado Rockies baseball cap. His footwear doesn’t match. The left is a hospital-white walking shoe, the right a decaying penny loafer.
“Can we count on your votes next Tuesday?” Sugaree asks, looking from the man to his female companion, who is likewise elderly and looking more than a little off. “Haldol Stomp is the only man alive who can eradicate the gruesome corruption of Mutton’s tyrannical administration. We are doomed without his unrivaled business acumen and American-made leadership.”
The elderly woman’s hair is dyed an inconceivable tint of lavender and constrained in a vintage poodle cut; her paisley housedress must date back to the 1950s. The liver spots on her neck and arms look like leprosy sores. One of the spots has all but absorbed the tattoo of a mermaid on her right forearm. Her nose is pierced with a septum ring, one with a tiny dangling greenish pearl. Someone should tell her the pearl looks like a booger. Then again, maybe that’s the whole idea.
“My husband’s a lifelong Christian Communist,” she reports, giving Sugaree a sinister smirk, “and I’ve never voted for anything except the best contestants on The Voice. I’m still furious about Emily Ann Roberts getting shanked.”
The elderly man clears his throat and looks right at me. “My name’s Stewart Heston, but everyone calls me Human Stew because I had an apocalyptic epiphany after watching the movie, Soylent Green. Acts 2: 44, right? ‘And all that believed were together, and had all things in common.’ Really, son, what could be more red and evangelical than green crackers made from real people?”
“Now with more Mexicans and Muslims,” the elderly woman adds. She scratches her right eyebrow with a middle finger while leering at Sugaree.
“Are you going to vote for Mercedes Mutton?” I ask the elderly man.
“What’s the imperative issue in this election?” he counters.
“Well, we have lots of issues to tackle,” Sugaree speaks up, giving him a helpful smile. “Economic concentration, education unification, infrastructure rationalization, tax and crime cancellation, environmental reorganization, immigration suffocation—Haldol Stomp has brilliant and comprehensive plans for absolutely everything, all fine-tuned to elicit precision solutions for every last citizen of Bapeewug. Of course, we also have to look closely at jobs and healthcare.”
“Yeah, but those aren’t my issues, are they, sister?” the elderly man objects. “What’s the goddamn fucking bedrock issue for people like me? Huh, sister?”
Sugaree opens her mouth, but is slow coming up with an answer. She glances my way, the motion reluctant, as if consulting a lackadaisical subordinate goes against anybody’s better judgment. She starts to say something, but the elderly woman interrupts.
“Retaliation, honey,” she hisses. “Like fucking yesterday already, capeesh?”
“The day in and day out of reckoning,” the elderly man concludes, performing a tottering military salute.
MUTANT IN THE MANGER
Word Count: 21,500
Christmas is coming in too hot and horrible for Putnam and his wife, Zemmy, daughter, Galilee, son, Enoch, and family Affenpinscher, Crotcho. Zemmy spends a small fortune online for a luxury nativity scene that paves an elite superhighway to a grotesque holiday dimension.
Can Putnam save his loved ones from the happy horrors of Yuletide cheer teams and boosters born and raised in the deepest circles of Hell? Not even the Christ the Kingpin knows for sure.
Excerpt from MUTANT IN THE MANGER:
“Granky loved nativity scenes,” Zemmy relates in a wistful voice. “The donkey and that peaceful ox, those three wise dudes, the newborn Jesus in his feed trough, the herald angel—”
“Hark, hark, hark,” I interject in a gruff voice.
Zemmy sends me a blurry-eyed pout. “Granky lived for the birth of Christ, Putnam. She used to portray a milkmaid in her church’s reenactment, remember? She even had her own goat.”
Granky was my wife’s mother. Her given name was Opal and she died suddenly last summer while competing in her senior bowling league. A 90-something male bowler in a neighboring lane experienced a hallucinatory outburst while tackling a 5-7-10 split, or sour apple, lost his bearings, and hooked his 11-pound ball into the side of Granky’s head, applying an astonishing amount of body English in what bowling authorities call a “boomer.”
Granky was an atrocious bowler, but she did pass on an inheritance trust to Zemmy that distributes $380,000 annually, tripling what my wife makes as an art director at a holistically upscale ad agency in Minneapolis.
Christmas is for chumps, I reflect moodily from my post on the family room sectional sofa. I’m on the ball enough to avoid making such doomful statements in an audible voice. Zemmy is parked at her desk in an office nook at a far end of the room. Her attention is fused to the screen of her iMac.
I’m watching a Netflix original movie about a bonded pair of female jungle fairies living like gibbons on an uncharted island in Indonesia. The duo is methodically snatching and devouring a party of attractive American tourists who are understandably unnerved by the green supremacy of a hypernatural rainforest. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to root for the lesser apish sprites or the greater apish humans.
The time is half past eleven in the evening. Galilee, 13, our daughter, and Enoch, 11, our son, are lights out in their bedrooms. Crotcho is slumbering in my lap. A full-blood Affenpinscher, aka monkey terrier, Crotcho weighs nine pounds dipped in mudcrete. I’m not supposed to call him Crotcho. His sanctioned name is Tristan.
“You should see all the nativity scenes you can buy online,” Zemmy is telling me. “Here’s one with ‘quasi life-size’ figures made from designer resin. The website says the artistic quality is ‘next-level’ and everything, including the ‘authentic olivewood stable,’ is made in Mexico. Who knew Mexico was ground zero for dioramas from year-one Bethlehem? This Mary actually looks like she was born in the Middle East and not Copenhagen, Denmark. She’s utterly gorgeous, Putnam.”
I’ve eaten a couple or more segments of a cannabis-infused chocolate bar aptly named Bite Me. At that exact moment, I’m trying to recall the name of the Netflix movie. Gibbonoid? Sumatrauma? Naked Ape Lunch?
“I think Copenhagen is in Norway,” I reply and down a fresh shot of deep-chilled Woody Creek, a sipping vodka made in Colorado from Polish potatoes.
O Santa! My Santa! bonus gallery
GOLF BULLY
Underway • Projected Word Count: 40,000
Waldeinsamkeit is an endling, the last known survivor of his kind. Ecological purists would insist he is on his own in the loneliest sense of the concept. He lives like a hermit ascetic in a forgotten green space on the outskirts of an exurban village near Minneapolis.
Subjected to a selective-breeding experiment conducted by supernaturalized humans from the deep-time future, Waldensamkeit and dozens of other Neanderthals from assorted Eurasian tribes were abducted, transported a quarter eon into the past, and deposited on the coast of a lost continent with a paranormally violent ecosystem.
Waldensamkeit scotched the experiment, which was part of a long-range plan to defeat the phasmoids, a hunter-killer alien race invading present-day Earth, but was inadvertently dosed with amritium, an occult elixir that rendered him deathless. He is now more than 225 million years old—and purportedly equipped with ineffable mystical powers.
Enter Totem, a shapeshifting kismet goblin from the jungles of Malaysia. She works for a black-arts cartel called Zerstören and is under orders to persuade Waldensamkeit to square off against the phasmoids and thwart the advent of true hell on Earth.
Excerpt from GOLF BULLY
I’m going to tell you a campfire story about an individual we will call Waldeinsamkeit. As you can see, I’ve commandeered a unique German word typically used to indicate a “sensation of total solitude in the woods.” Awkwardly enough, that sensation flouts such conventional qualities as “spiritual” or “sublime” when awakened in Waldeinsamkeit’s world.
I must confess this shortfall is due to circumstances beyond my wits and outside your control. Perspective can still be gained, however. Imagine stumbling across an immense extraterrestrial meatpacking complex at midnight under a crimson supermoon in the abysmal depths of an uncharted wilderness. You turn to share the unspeakably macabre episode with your colleagues and discover you are all alone.
Alas, this might not be a child-friendly story unless your family enjoys hot dogs stuffed with red widow spiders and marshmallows grown in Petri dishes.
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