Blight -- 23 Days Without Medication

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Five Months Later, and …

23 Days Without Medication

As stress relief, Floyd Cervenka desperately wanted to masturbate, but in his oven, a severed head laughed at him. At first, Floyd didn’t know whether it was a hallucination, or if somebody had put it there. If he retreated from hysterics long enough, he could rationalize it. He had not slept in 72 hours. Over the last three days, he had done nothing but eat peanut butter on white bread, and he drank about five bags worth Shop & Drop instant coffee, black without any sugar or creamer. He had also drank about a case of Lo-Carb Creature. It was Floyd’s idea of acting responsibly – IBSL was threatening foreclosure again, and he had a lot of work to do and a lot of money to earn.

Most of it consisted of consulting Gray’s Anatomy and his own, personal copy of the DSM-IV-TR and The People’s Guide To Pills. A medical website was paying five bucks for each medically adequate definition of drugs, illnesses and body parts. The work was so profitable, Floyd was afraid to go to bed, thinking that he’d wake and it would be claimed by somebody else. Then, he would be back to writing search-engine-optimized Botox articles for $1 each.

Before hearing a high-pitched cackle from his stove, he had taken a break from the upper arm’s brachial artery. He was surfing the net for naked girls, specifically for a brunette with tattoos. He was about at settle on a link that suggested, Nerdy Girls Need Hard Loving! That’s when he heard the cackling. Other noises were hard to describe, and the closest Floyd could manage was phlegmy cough after sucking helium.

When he opened the oven door, he dropped his coffee, and then he slipped on the subsequent puddle, once he tried to back away. That’s when he came eye-to-eye with the severed head. It didn’t look normal, though. The skin had turned a twinge of blue, and the eyes were only dark cavities. Still, they blinked. Often. The head’s mouth was drawn into a wide, brown-toothed grin.

Like many times before, Floyd sought to prove it wasn’t real, that this was just another hallucination or a left-over figment from one of his all-to-vivid dreams. He got to his feet and walked over to the oven. Reaching in, he grabbed the head by its gray-streaked hair . Instead of his hand going through an immaterial head, the thing’s hair felt greasy. He tried to raise it to eye level, and the thing slipped out and smacked face-first against the floor. Still, it didn’t stop laughing. Floyd stood over it and stared down at it for a long while. He kicked it, slightly, and it rolled.

“Don’t you ever stop laughing?”

The head slightly rolled over to face Floyd. It winked an empty eye cavity. Then, it stopped laughing for a moment. “OF COURSE NOT,” it rasped. Then, it went back to its phlegm-filled cackling.

Floyd gritted his teeth, and then, he lost his temper. Bending over, he grabbed the head by its greasy hair and flung it against the wall. When it didn’t stop cackling, he grabbed a broom from next to his fridge and started beating the head with the straw end. That did nothing. Floyd really didn’t want to do what he did next, but he felt he had no choice. He reached into his pocket for his phone.

“911—what’s your emergency?”

“Somebody is pulling a prank on me.”

“Oh Christ—Floyd, you’re not supposed to call 911.”

“Fuck you. There’s somebody fucking with me.”

“Have you taken your medications?”

“No, but that’s not the point.”

The dispatcher, a woman, sighed. “Please hang up, and only call this number when you have a real emergency.”

“This is a real fucking emergency.” He stared down at the laughing head.

“No, it’s not. Take your meds, Floyd.”

“Here,” he said. He put his flip phone next to the laughing head. “Hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The laughing?”

“Floyd, I’m going to hang up, now.”

A sneer broke out across his face. Again, he stared down at the head. The empty eye sockets squinted, and elaborate crow’s feet spread out across the thing’s temples, merging with the four major brow creases. “Oh, fuck you.” Floyd opened the kitchen cabinet above his sink and started throwing glasses at the laughing head. “Fuck you, you fucking fuck!” When he ran out of glasses, he started flinging plates.

“FLOYD! You still there?”

“Where the-goddamned-else would I be? Ulan Bator?”

“Floyd…”

“You know,” he held the phone at arm’s length, “I HEAR MONGOLIA IS JUST FUCKING SNAZZY IN THE SPRING TIME!” He brought the phone back to his ear. “You hear me? Or will I need to start reading the copy I sold to snazzy-planet-dot-com last week?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do you need help?”

“Do you think I call 911 for the scintillating conversation?” He breathed deeply. “If so, I‘m so far from scintillated right now. If scintillation were a boulevard in Ulan-Fucking-Bator, it would be…”

The woman dispatcher sighed. “Alright, I’ll send somebody over.” Then, she hung up.

Floyd grabbed a forty of Jersey Reserve Malt Liquor from his fridge. He sat on the floor, crossed his legs, and uncapped the bottle. He took a sip and stared at the laughing head. However, fatigue mingled with his caffeine crash, and the alcohol just made it worse. He fell quickly asleep, resting his chin on his fist.

When he woke, somebody was nudging him with their wingtips. Floyd looked at the foot, and then upwards. He saw a black man in a Khaki trench coat staring down at him.

“Oh,” Floyd said. “Detective Johnson, it’s right,” he pointed. However, the laughing head was gone. “Oh.” Floyd clamped his eyes shut for a moment. “Oh, fuck.”

“That’s all you got to say?”

“Trell, it was here just….”

“You know what? I don’t know, and I don’t care.” He turned and strode out of the kitchen. “I have so much more important shit to do.” And he left.

Wearily, Floyd stood and returned to his computer. All the high paying medical writing jobs were gone. Floyd took a sip of malt liquor, deciding that he desperately needed to get drunk.

Needfire, and ... Um, Whatever Happened To That Pound Chapbook?

For the foreseeable near-term future, Needfire Poetry will be going on hiatus at Belfire Press. This is something that Jodi Lee and have talked about, and we both agree that it's for the the best. To put it frankly, my personal life is a mess right now. It has been for years. However, the problems have accrued like this: my mother's failing health was always a distraction, but there was something a little bit more afoot.

I have a mortgage, and my wife and I got that mortgage at the peak of the housing bubble, when everybody was telling us to "Buy, buy, buy!" Problem is, I was a full-time-for-part-time-pay college adjunct back then. The thought was: after only a few more years of adjunct hell, I could finally land a full time position at least at a community college. That never happened, and out of financial need, I went to Walmart in late 2008. The housing bubble burst ... and now my wife and I have been constantly fighting off foreclosure, especially since our mortgage was sold by our lender to a predatory group of douchebags. So, now it's 2011, and the mortgage nightmare has never gone away. Which leads to one other place: online freelancing. I spend a lot of time doing it, partly because there is just so much debt that I have amassed, and I am constant need for cash just to keep creditors from coming after my wife and I. Actually, 90% of my freetime behind a computer is spent trying to squeeze nickels and dimes from the internet.

And so, that dovetails into The Ezra Pound/Ghost Chapbook that has seemingly taken years to put together. Forget about the circumstances/drama with the original publisher. The chapbook was then going to be published through Needfire, but the bad economy necessitated cutting it from the line up. Then, I was going to create a digital ebook/print chapbook imprint for Needfire, but after the ongoing financial problems I'm having, that seemed like a very bad idea. So, that leads me to right now. The book is clossally late. I still wish to do it, and I'm still going to try very hard to, soon, once the dust settles a little at work.

But, that also brings me back to Needfire going on hiatus. Jodi and I both agree that it should and will be revived at some point. However, it will be once everything is sorted out, and I can come back to running a imprint when I can devote much more time to it without freaking out about how up the air everything regarding my home is. Until then, my personal time will likely be spent either writing my own material or finishing off prior obligations like Pound.

Also, there's this UFO poetry anthology that I promised Barry Napier I'd help him with. Just in case anybody's curious, that book is his baby. He's the lead, and I'm just sort of an assistant -- we haven't really talked at length, but I think I'm helping with the slush. There may be some skullcracking -- ahem, I mean editing -- going on there, too. So, it doesn't really conflict with the reasons why Needfire is going on hiatus. But, more on UFO book a little later.

Dead Silence -- It Doesn't Suck!

The problem with a lot of American horror films these days is this: a lot of gore, a lot of effects, but not so much emphasis on character, ambiance, or atmosphere. In this regard, I was pleasantly surprised by Dead Silence. To be honest, I only bought this film because it was in the two-dollar bin at Big Lots.

The Good:

The monster is genuinely creepy looking. It's a thin old woman puppeteer, and according to the DVD extras, she's a Broadway veteran. In short: a seasoned actor who knows how to act through facial expression, and she does it rather well.

The movie is thick on atmosphere. Sure, a lot of it is horror cliche that is old and well used: mist, woods, puppets, dark set lighting, lightning, etc. However, even well-worn imagery can be effective in the hands of a talented film maker.

Mark Wahlberg is playing out of stereotype. Wahlberg strikes me, sometimes, as the white Ice Cube -- not in hip hop and rhyming (Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch still make me want to ram an icepick through my ear), but in that Wahlberg seems at home scowling and looking mean. True, that was definately not the case in The Lovely Bones, but that's also a Peter Jackson film and an exception.

The landscape looks a lot like West Virginia, and I have a soft spot for mountains and woodlands.

The ending may be contrived for "shock," but it's one that's decently executed.

The Annoying:

Mark Wahlberg is playing out of stereotype. His character seems annoying, to an extent. It don't mind that he's softer spoken, but there's something about the character, the way its written, that's just milquetoast.

The plot is a little convoluted at points. But, then again, this is a movie about an old woman that will rip your tongue out, if you scream.

The Bottom Line.

Enjoyable. Not the greatest horror movie written, but certainly not the worst. There's enough here to keep a viewer engaged without descending into levels of MEH!

Blight Review / The Perils of Kindle

I should be upfront. As everybody knows, there are certain perils that come with self publishing. Only four years ago, obvious POD books could be a kiss of death to an author. However, with the rise of eBooks a newfound credibility has cropped up. Blight and Johhny Comes Lately were my two cracks at doing the Kindle thing by myself. Turns out, no matter how hard you work, you still need at least the services of a good proofreader.

Blight has some typos. Lesson learned. Hire a freelance editor (which I'm in the process of doing). For example, Jerrod Balzer gives the story a good review, before pointing out the blatantly obvious....

Blight -- Soundtrack

So, because Blight ended up being an unmarketable length of 15k (so what is new in my world?) I have uploaded it to Kindle and Smashwords with Nook to follow soon. Waiting for the uploads to process. For fun, here is that story's soundtrack -- music I listened to while writing it:

Chris Bowsman -- A Life On Fire

Lets just say that with Chris Bowsman's A Life On Fire, I just submitted the following five-star review as a Kindle customer:

Gerald has trouble distinguishing between reality and something far worse. His wife committed suicide, and he's struggling. Quite often, psychological horror is used synonymously with serial killer fiction, or "quiet horror." Both descriptions do not apply here. Gerald's mind is a loud and chaotic place, but he's hardly Norman Bates. Bowsman has created a truly sympathetic character and a truly engaging story.

How To Buy Leisure Books While Respecting The Dorchester Boycott

Forgive the content mill-ish title. Anyhow. Major mass market paperback house Leisure Books/Dorchester Publications has been in a death spiral for some time now, owing money to both their authors and a number of creditors. Recently, they have engaged in a number of shenanigans, like selling ebooks they no longer hold the publishing rights to.

This goes beyond horror, including also mystery and romance mmpb writers. A lot of writers haven't seen a royalty check in eons, and Dorchester as a whole has been dragging their feet on legally returning all publishing rights back to their rightful owners. In short, Leisure Books / Dorchester publishing has become as reliable as a some of the more fly-by-night print on demand small presses (like the one operated by notorious psychotic crank from just outside ofChicago, who lives in his grandmother's basement, cannot string a coherent sentence together and has a record of stalking mid-list and successful horror novelists). Yes, Leisure Dorchester has gotten THAT bad -- possibly even much more toxic, since a fall from grace is involved. For further information on why Dorchester/Leisure needs to be actively boycotted, further information can be found on Brian Keene's blog, as well as the Boycott Dorchester FaceBook page.

However, there is one major loophole to the boycott that needs pointing out. There is a way to buy Leisure Books' novels and collections while keeping your hard earned money out of their hands. First, lets go through a few caveats, first. If you really, really, really have to buy that Tim Lebbon paperback, do yourself and the author a favor. Go to their blog and website and see what is in print, what is out of print, and what is slated for reissue. Brian Keene, for example, recently signed a contract with Deadite to bring most of his back catalog back as trade paperbacks and ebooks. So, most of his books can be bought with him earning a royalty off of the purchase (if not now, then eventually).

Some Dorchester authors, however, have not been as fortunate as Keene, in terms of obtaining a rights reversion. So, there may not be any reissues in the near or immediate future, both on paper and in e-ink. Plus, there may be older titles, say from Dennis Etchinson or Rick Hautala, that have been actively out print. These books can still be bought, if you must absolutely have them.

Go visit your local used bookstore. The used book business is fundamentally different than the local Barnes and Noble. These businesses buy books off of readers for very little, mark the price up slightly, and then pocket all the profit. True, there are no royalties that go to the author, but none of the revenue goes to publisher either. On the surface, that may sound exploitative, but it actually isn't. Used bookstores are usually not thriving business at the moment, and you will not see their owners driving Bentleys anytime soon. Besides, used bookstores offer an extremely valuable cultural service.

First, it saves books from being pulped or crammed into a landfill, offering a novel a second, third, fourth or fifth reading life. For this reason, used bookstores are cultural repositories. For example, in a particularly good used book store, a shopper can leave with Sarah Pinborough titles, the collected poems of Anne Sexton and a number of titles of the decline and fall of Rome -- while spending under $20 total. Traditional bookstore frequently purge and pulp their lingering inventory to make space whatever bullshit New York City marketing geniuses think will sell!, sell!, sell! (Usually with abysmal results, too). Typically, used book stores also sell items that are long out of print -- want to find Robert Bloch novels?--here's where you go.

Besides, used book stores are a dying breed, unfortunately. Ever since the economy entered a vortex of shit in 2008, a good number of them have been going out of business. If you factor in online shopping and the rise of ebook, it's made it a lot harder many to stay afloat. I'm only going by observation in my part of New Jersey on this, as I've noticed the numbers here dwindling every few years.

So, if you absolutely must have a Dorchester/Leisure paperback, buy them at used bookstores. After all, the authors won't be getting the money either way. (Which is why you need to buy their reissues, if they have them). However, your local used bookstore also needs both your support and your patronage. This is just another reason to shop at one.

The Most Horrific Poem Ever Written

Paul Celan's "Todesfuge" as read by Galway Kinnell. Not my favored translation, but I would never tell Kinnell that ...

Jeffrey Thomas -- Rat Kings

Theodor Adorno once famously wrote, "Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." It's an idea that has long moved beyond Adorno in many ways.

Still, to shift the idea from poetry to genre horror fiction for a moment, extrapolating the thought is quite interesting. After all, how does one write horror fiction about the Holocaust? After all, the writer doesn't really have to do anything to make the subject of organized genocide any more disturbing or frightening. It's real horror without the writer putting any effort into it. Plus, the subject matter can get really tasteless rather quickly. In the hands of lesser talented writers, the Holocaust becomes cheapened--even as a flagrant, and talentless way of pulling at the reader's heartstrings. After all, it cheapens the real and historical evil and relegates it to "monster of the week" status.

So, it's always good to see a writer handle the material effectively. At least, that's what I thought when I recently read the Jeffrey Thomas' story "Rat Kings" in his collection AAAIIIEEE!!! (Granted, while I do greatly respect Thomas' work (what I've read so far, at least), I have to be the first to admit: that book title leaves a lot to be desired).

"Rat Kings" is the sort of story where the central monster is meant as a metaphor. Also, its also the sort of story that doesn't settle on mildly being deceptively ambitious. This is, essentially, a story that takes place next to massive graves, once the Germans have lost the war and the British have forced concentration camp guards to deal with the left over bodies. So, in many ways, "Rat Kings" holds nothing back. And still, it accomplishes what it sets out to do while still keeping the focus on character voice, growth and dynamics.

Nathaniel Lambert -- The Horribles

When it comes to genre fiction, writers often walk a line of explaining too much or too little about a monster's or villain's back story. Unfortunately, this usually comes at the price of the story's focal point: the lead character. Thankfully, Nathaniel Lambert skips this problem completely.

The Horribles from Grindhouse Press tells the story of Sheldon, an agoraphobic recluse. At an early age, he witnessed the brutal murders of his parents at the hands of strange bikers. As a adult, he is eventually forced to face those bikers again ... only, they're not exactly human. The story is a personal arc, of sorts, focused more on how Sheldon must change once he's forced out of his house by circumstance. Some readers may feel unsatisfied with how the mythology of the monsters is largely unexplored, but then again, this is Sheldon's story, not the bikers.

Horror Poetry: Why The Hell Would You Want to Write That Shit???

While at Walmart, I started writing many things that I just never finished, due to be tired all the time and then being distracted by my mom's ongoing health situation. At one point, I was seriously thinking of writing a book about the use of the macabre in poetry -- a how-to writing book. I'm not sure if I'll ever get back to it. However, here are the first couple of pages....

Simply because you want to—that should be a good enough reason by itself. Poetry allows a certain level of creative freedom fiction cannot afford. A poem does not have to live and die by narrative rules, and you do not need to follow the rhetorical strategies found within an essay. Of course, you can employ both, but a successful poem can create its own system and rules, so long as one iron clad commandment is met: it has to work, successfully, on the page, and claiming that it needs to be read out loud is a cop-out, just like hiding behind “but it’s how I feel” is the mark of an amatuer. This is why good poetry can run from ancient alliterative narrative, like in Beowulf to Shakespeare’s rhyming pentameter and more post-modernist work, like what one would find in Charles Olson’s body of work. No one system of prosody is superior to another, especially if you take the different shapes and forms as different types of tools to be used. No self-respecting carpenter would ever suggest that every job can be completed with only a hammer. This is why no serious student of poetry should ever dismiss fragmentation over rhyme, or language abstraction in favor of metrical lines. Sure, some poets, like Marilynn Hacker have spent a career writing formal verse, while more experimental poets like Ron Silliman have spent their time pushing the boundries of language. This is not an argument against specializing in a certain type of poetry. Just like a carpenter would never do every job with a hammer, a very skilled cabinet maker wouldn’t take issue with somebody who spends most of their time working with a lathe. Craft is craft. And a craftsman can recognize solid workmanship, even if it is outside their day-to-day relationship with their own favored set of tools. In short, the vague sense of “what is poetry” can open a whole new universe of writing possibilities.

That freedom, however, comes at a very high price. You will not make money. If you want to make a living writing, try writing novels or non-fiction books. Zombies and how-to essays sell. Poetry does not. In fact, writing poetry will likely cost you money. Pay-to-enter book contests are common, and a lot of journals still do not take email submissions. You will not be compensated very well for your work, and in many cases, you will only be paid in contributor copies. So, enter into this proposition carefully, with your eyes open. Most of all, you should know one other truth: while most of society does not take contemporary poetry seriously, poetry labeled as “horror” or “speculative” will be taken even less seriously. Pursuing a career as a poet is to actively consign yourself to obscurity. So, the question comes again: why the hell would you want to write this shit?

Simply because you want to—that should be a good enough reason by itself. Plus, there is no rule disqualifying poets from writing fiction, or essayists from dabbling in playwriting. When it comes down to it, writing is writing. Craft is craft. Yet, before wading into poetry for the first time, there are a few myths you should get out of your head.

1. Poetry is about emotion, and I have feelings!

Um. No. Journaling has positive therapeutic value. If you are writing for a personal sense of catharsis, good for you. However, keep it to yourself. Decorum changes quickly, once you seek to place that work in front of a reader. Writing a poem complaining of a broken heart may elicit a pat on the head from a loved one, but a potential editor or reader really doesn’t care how you came to terms with your mother’s cancer, or how you got over being dumped in your freshman year in college. Editors and readers don’t care about you; they care about the words on the page. If the quality of writing is not there, then they will stop reading halfway through. If you are writing because you are in need of therapy, then seek a therapist, not a poetry editor. This is not to say “confessional” poetry is all bad. Many poets have successfully written about their personal lives, but their facility and creativity with language keeps their work from being purely navel-gazing drivel.

2. Post-Modernists Have Killed Poetry.

Crock of shit. Pure and simple. People who make this claim usually do not widely read poetry. Metrical poetry is alive and well, and it is still being written and published. There is a theory that politics swings like a pendulum, back and forth, left to right. The history of poetry has done the same. The ascendency of free verse was met with profound skepticism. Then, it became the prevailing norm. During the Reagan years, the formalists pushed back, hard. Then, other poets pushed back against the formalists. Then, a journal like Fence comes along, claiming to try and straddle the line between the two. Yes, there are l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e and oilipo poets out there, doing crazy things with the English language. At the same time, formal and metrical poets are still doing their thing to. Both are not going away anytime soon.

3. Academics Have Killed Poetry

Also a crock of shit. However, there is something important to keep in mind, here. If you are going to spend most of your time writing poems, and not hammering out the zombie or vampire novel mass market paperback houses want to consider, then you will have to find a day job. Many poets are also English teachers, both in high school and in college.

Because poetry doesn’t sell as well as zombie or vampire fiction currently does, there are not a lot of major presses into publishing it. In fact, beyond some of the large New York City poetry publishers like Graywolf, Ecco, or Pengiun, a bulk of poetry is published by college and university presses. The reason is quite simply one of finances. University presses are often run by faculty and poorly paid graduate students. The university itself often helps with funding. It helps minimize the loss poetry can accrue.

Also, most importantly, see point #2. English teachers and college professors are not pointy-headed avant gardists; they are also not conservative minded formalists either. College English departments are filled with a vast array of different types of poets and teachers. Visit an English Department sometime, and you will say a vast array of political and aesthetic disagreements taking place.

4. There is No Such Thing as “Horror” or “Speculative” Poetry

“Genre” sometimes is just a word that describes content or subject matter. It doesn’t describe the over all aesthetic, shape, or form of the writing itself. Dracula, House of Leaves, and The Shining are all considered horror novels, but they are all profoundly different in how they are written. Yusef Komunyaakaa, Langston Hughes, and Reginald Shepard are/were a considered “African-American poets,” but none of those writers are alike either. Go through every genre label you will find on book flaps, from Feminist Poetry onwards, and you will find the same thing.

Horror is only a word describing subject matter. The claim that there is no such thing as “horror poetry” is asinine at best, as it turns to blind eye to literary history. Christopher Marlowe wrote “Dr. Faustus” in verse. Shakespeare wrote “Titus Andronicus,” a play full of rape, dismemberment, and cannibalism, in verse as well. I have yet to find one happy, non-tragic, non-mortified poem about the halochaust, disease, or any the darker aspects of humanity. Death is often the subject of poetry as much as love is.

Sure, you will not see a lot of good poems about zombies or vampires, but in terms of pop culture, those are relatively recent imaginative constructions. It’s largely untapped territory for metaphor. Give it time, and it will come. Many who argue against the mere thought of “horror” poetry argue also that there is a lot of really crappy poetry floating around the internet. This is nothing new.

Theodore Sturgeon once noted that “"Ninety percent of everything is crap." Science fiction, itself as an intellectual institution, should not held accountable for the countless trees slaughtered in the name of silly robots or swaggering starship captains. Shitty writing exists, and it will continue to exist as long as human beings pick up pens or furiously pound on keyboards. But, you cannot hold imaginative territory and metaphoric possibilities accountable for the sins of talentless writers. “Horror” will exist as long as human beings feel dread, fear death, have incomprehensible nightmares, and commit terrible crimes against each other. The Old Testament and other works of scripture were first set down thousands of years ago. Utopia has never come, and it likely never will. Unstanding humanity also requires understanding inhumanity.

Writing “horror” is another way of engaging in life. So what if there is a lot of crap out there? I would wager writers like Harlan Ellison or Phillip K. Dick or Kurt Vonnegut never stopped, looked at all the poorly written space opera, and said, “You know what? Not today, there’s too much garbage being published as science fiction. So, I’m going to write about sexually repressed teens at a boarding school. That will earn me respect.” So, it all comes back to one mantra.

Why horror? Why write poetry? Simply because you want to— that should be a good enough reason by itself.

Brian Keene's Fade To Null

Typically, some stories use circular structures for one of three purposes: 1) to show absolute futility, 2) to demonstrate some sort of unified, cohesive, but non-linear dream logic, or 3) a mixture of points 1 & 2.

Brian Keene's Fade To Null (in Unhappy Endings) employs point #3. It also taps into a tradition often seen in short fiction. It reads like a nightmare narrative, in that it displays a variety of surrealistic images -- for insance, a squirming eyeball-on-a-tentacle that makes noise without having an actual orifice. Yet, short stories that rely only on jarring imagery are usually not well crafted. Keene, after all, has a point. The center of the story has Alzheimer's patient and is elderly. The surreal imagery is a product of a brain that isn't functioning, and the circular nature of the story makes it horrific.

And the circular nature only works due to use of subtlety. Quiet often, it a narrator came out and said, "And every other day was the same thing," it would be heavy handed. The structure of the story is more of a cinematic loop, where the ending words are often cues that signal something very similar to the beginning.

Edit To Add: Holy shit, I was just cruising around amazon and saw Unhappy Endings listed for sale with a price tag $289.23. I still can't wrap my head and genre small press collectors.

Stuck On Covers

One Possible Design (Grayscale is on purpose)

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Another Possible design, but with the text needing centering away from the edges.