Author Archives: ssbb-admin

26
Mar

Sensual in Such Non-Conventional Ways

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 9, Text | Tagged ,

A few words uttered, a rush of power, a plume of smoke… A newly empty space, previously occupied by a beautiful woman.

A gasp ran through the crowd and Jo grinned, an eyebrow cocked in challenge. I dare you to challenge what you have seen. I dare you to doubt me.

She gave a few more moments to let the tension build, allowing enough time for a well-rehearsed dramatic reappearance to have the maximum effect. Another puff of smoke, a dramatic wave of her hand, and a rush of air from the audience’s collective letting out a held breath echoed through the auditorium.

Cassandra stepped forward and Jo made a broad sweep of her arm. She is whole, the gesture said. I have done the impossible.

“Jo the Magnificent, ladies and gentlemen!” The announcer bowed low, sweeping his arm toward Jo on the stage.

She bent forward in a deep bow herself, then stood and took the hand of the woman by her side, and shouted, “And, of course, who could forget the lovely Cassandra?”

The cheers of the audience were deafening as Jo bowed, Cassandra dipping in a deep curtsy. The curtains rustled as they fell closed, and the ladies stood up to meet the announcer.

26
Mar

The Second Sun

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 9, Text | Tagged ,

Isabel runs out of money in Stockholm.

She could write to Sophy, of course; she did, in Vienna, where Bettina had said, We can’t have a mind like yours wasting away in that pit of a boarding house, only to abandon Isabel five days later to the company of her brother’s friends; and later in Berlin, where Alexander had said, very quietly, I don’t believe it is safe for you here, is it?, and Isabel had lived for some time under the protective watch of him and his servants: both, by long practice, most painfully discreet. Alexander had been a friend to her: he had even invited her to Paris, but she feared to overstay her welcome, and rode instead with Cenek Pechácek and his bad reputation to the university in Prague, where she picked up enough Czech to not be taken for a German and learned to drink with the scholars without ending the night vomiting into the snow; and when the eyes that fell upon her there began to stay too long, she went by carriage to Krakow, where she was dismissed from the observatory after a week and a half and, instead, bent her head over her calculations by wavering candlelight long into the night. She’d not given those sooty addresses to Sophy, no more than she’d written of the rattling carts that smelt of hay and dung; or the reek of tar and river-fish on her hands, or the expanse of ocean that finally at the end of summer lay itself at her feet at her in Danzig: lit in lavender twilight, her own silver road.

London, she had thought with a shudder in Danzig; and then, Paris, but of course Alexander had been called back to Prussia; and then: North, towards the comet in the belly of Ursa Major, with Polaris above her shoulder. North, to Erik Gärnö, formerly of the observatory in Lund—or to Teodor Wåhlin, perhaps, known to grind his own lenses and returned from Uppsala. North, to Stockholm: where the air has snapping teeth, and one never runs out of sea.

26
Mar

Storm Chasing

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 9, Text | Tagged ,

When she’d seen the ad in the paper, Mari had thought it sounded exciting — romantic, even. And besides, it wasn’t like she’d been planning on doing anything else with her half-completed atmospheric science bachelor’s degree this summer, considering that all of the local news stations had old snow-haired meteorologists who’d been there a thousand years each and would probably still be standing in front of blue-screened weather maps when the inevitable collapse of human civilization came a thousand years on. Shitty old-boy networks like that tended to keep their own. Maybe someday she’d impress them, but for now she was more concerned with impressing her landlord with her ability to pay him.

What she hadn’t thought was that she’d wind up stuffed in a ratty, ancient baby-blue VW bus with a broken radio and doors that looked ready to fall off their hinges at any moment, holding a brand-new 1992 Rand McNally Road Atlas, its spine already permanently broken over the Texas panhandle. She was also sweating like a pig and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. “What are we–”

“Shhht!” Camille hissed at her, shooing at her with the hand that wasn’t fiddling the dial. This far out from most civilization, the best signal they could get on the tiny, battery-powered Sony radio was one where Mari could hear maybe every tenth word coming in over the AM stations, if she squinted and pretended. Camille had been doing this for years, though, and by now, she seemed to speak static as a second language. She put one well-pierced ear up to the speaker and shut her eyes, chewing on her lower lip and frowning with concentration. Mari more than half-suspected her crazy boss just did this for show most of the time, then ‘interpreted’ the hisses and infrequent signals to mean whatever she wanted to mean. At least she wasn’t looking for tornadoes on commission.

So Mari reclined the driver’s seat as far as it would go and tried not to die of heatstroke. She’d started the day with a bra, undershirt, t-shirt, and ratty old polo barong she’d stolen from her dad, but was now down to the undershirt only, and even that was soaked through with sweat. She could see her dark nipples clearly through the drenched white fabric. Well, thank fuck nobody but the jackalopes was out here to see.

26
Mar

The Frying Pan Into

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 9, Text | Tagged ,

I shook a ton of hands and smiled all sparkle-white to the boys in their suits when we got out of the restaurant, and kept smiling until every last one of them got into their black cars and drove away. “Motherfuckers,” I said, when I was alone, and stopped smiling. I’d have much better wrinkles if I didn’t have to smile so damn much. If our deals worked out, I’d send them the bill for the Botox.

I stepped out of the middle of the sidewalk, because I wasn’t a goddamn tourist, and dug through my purse looking for a cigarette. “Fuck,” I grumbled when I found nothing. I’d technically quit, but technicalities meant sometimes there were emergencies, like having just spent four hours watching a bunch of douchebags eat steak. Not even a lighter in my purse; one of the girls had probably done a sweep of my condo and thrown out all of emergency supplies the last time she’d visited. Children! Always doing annoying things like caring if you lived to be a grandmother.

I gave up on tobacco and pulled out my phone instead. I could at least try to get some other stress relief, like a stiff drink and a sympathetic ear to bitch directly into.

Working tonight? I texted to Alejandra. I need estrogen. And alcohol.

I glared at my email until I got the buzz of her response. just finishing up. stop by and I can guarantee both.

“Thank Christ,” I said as I texted back that I’d be there soon, and hailed a cab.

26
Mar

Apsara

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang Special no. 9, Text | Tagged

When Nur took the job with the Mietz Foundation they had talked a lot about the cultural importance of the pieces the organization restored, with a side helping of preserving the past for the sake of the future. That alone would have been enough, but the soupçon of appealing to her inner (and sometimes outer) raging feminist by mentioning how crucial it was that depictions of women throughout antiquity be made more public was enough to seal the deal. The benefits were good, the people were lovely, and there were even plentiful chances to work with the caliber of artifacts she’d only dreamed of seeing when she was just a baby curator.

The problem, of course, was that it was boring.

Actually traveling across the globe and dealing with people the world over wasn’t the boring part. Nur always counted down the days until her next flight and carefully scheduled her work around every possible chance to visit local museums, photograph everything, and eat whatever regional cuisine people would offer her — at least until her guts inevitably cried out for the fruits of her homeland and she spent the last few days of each assignment gorging on Chee-tos in her hotel room. She’d seen enough fascinating artwork to last a lifetime, and there was still more out there waiting to be appreciated. No, what actually enabled the globetrotting in the first place involved a lot of long, monotonous hours of staring at progress bars and making sure nothing happened to the pieces during scans.

Art restoration had advanced by leaps and bounds beyond how it was in her grandmother’s day, back when cleaning paintings required delicate touches and even more delicate chemicals and bringing sculptures back to their former glory was even less of an option, but that didn’t make running tests on whether or not statuary could survive repairs any more exciting.

26
Feb

Members Only

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged

This is Midwestern 92.53 FM! Welcome to KRCD Radio, host of all your favorite chart hits, inside scoops, interviews, and Indie Insider.

An annoyingly chirpy jingle rang out.

“Good evening, all. Welcome to the Indie Insider. I’m your host, Bryan Allison, and tonight, boy, do we have a great show for you! The lineup includes the latest rumblings from the indie underground, including new tunes from the Ramada Saints, the Walking Wounded, and Kevin Daley! Most exciting of all, Kevin is here in the studio with us, today! Stick around for our exclusive interview with this fella, who’s even going to sing for us. And, of course, we have our usual news roundup, at the end of the show. All right, let’s get started!”

Indie Insider ran through its usual program of subculture favorites, featuring plenty of indie classics from the ’90s, even throwing in occasional big names such as Nirvana and At the Drive-In here and there. The interview with the young star, Kevin Daley, was left till the end, as standard procedure when showcasing a big name. Keep the listeners hanging around for what they really want, was the idea. Put the star on too early and they lose interest in the rest of the show.

26
Feb

zero six four eight three are you listening

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged ,

seven two six five one five zero three five two zero two one four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero two one four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero two one four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero two one four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero you one four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero you are four one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero you are not one
seven two six five one five zero three five two zero you are not imagining this

26
Feb

Like All Good Stories

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged

“…Like all good stories, tonight we’ve started and ended in a warm, dark place. That was another tale from the Deep Library, and this is your host, Cal Kassab, telling you it’s about time to go to bed.”

Triumphantly, Cal switches the output over to the queued ending track. He waits for a moment, listening to the familiar music drifting from his headphones– “Chords from the Depths of SPACE,” or some similar new-age-y BS, but he liked it anyway, and, well, it fit his attempts at recreating the Twilight Zone in a college radio station – then leans back, satisfied. His too-small desk chair squeals a little in protest, unhappy with the shift of weight. From their hanger on the front of the control panel, the headphones still emit a tinny version of the music playing. Cal lets his head hang back: too tired to switch it off, too tired to admit that having a radio slot that ends at half past twelve in the morning was a bad idea, and definitely too tired to bother going home and taking the advice he’d just given his listeners.

All is still and quiet. The tinny ‘sounds of space’ switch over to a tinny Beyoncé song. Resigned to the fact he’s going to have to walk the cold, dark half-mile back to his dorm, Cal stands up and grabs his coat from its hook.

The phone rings.

26
Feb

Riverfront Blues

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged

DEEJAY ONE: Good morning, Detroit! You’re listening to WROX in the morning. I’m Johnny Danger–

DEEJAY TWO: I still think that’s a stupid pornstar name if I ever heard one.

JOHNNY: And that would be Bobby Killjoy, the wet blanket.

DEEJAY TWO: Hey, call yourself whatever you want. Whatever gets you the chicks. I’m Nate Rodriguez, and this is Rock Your Morning on WROX. Coming up: what does your choice of beer say about you? Find out in the eight o’clock hour.

—–

“Good show, man,” Nate said, clapping his hand on his co-host’s shoulder. The coffee had been better than usual this morning, and he smiled as he inhaled the deep aroma, then took a careful sip.

“You too. Hey, wanna grab some drinks later?” John smiled over his shoulder as he coiled up the wires from the headphones.

Nate turned back from John’s chair and shook his head. “Sorry, can’t.”

John bit back a laugh. “What, do you have to wash your hair or something?”

“Yeah.” Nate rolled his eyes and took another sip of his coffee. “That’s it. Not even the fact that it’s not even after three yet and you’ve just asked me to go to a bar.”

“I said, ‘later,’ but whatever. I’ll see you tomorrow, dude.”

“See you.”

26
Feb

Bedtime Stories

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged

Alan’s phone buzzed on the end table beside him. Not the short little zap of a text, but an actual phone call at actual 10PM on an actual Wednesday. This was exactly what horror movies were like. Not because it could be someone somewhere telling him of some catastrophic event involving someone or something important to him, no. But because someone was calling his phone. It was the 21st goddamn century and he was trying to watch very important television.

He picked up the phone and saw the word DAVID on top of the picture he’d taken of him at last year’s holiday party, two sheets to the wind and making a very grumpy face. He’d been touring the past few weeks, doing stand-up gigs mostly along the eastern part of the country. Alan had been subject to tweet and text alike here and there, when David got bored or found something dumb and funny to take a picture of. He hadn’t called, though. He wasn’t a caller.

“Hello?” Alan said, keeping his voice neutral. There was always the possibility this was somehow bad news, but he had an inkling it was going to be not bad news, not at all.

“Hellloooooo,” David said, and Alan could nearly smell the whiskey through the phone. “Hi. Hello. How are you? I’m good.”

Alan was free to smirk and smile all he wanted, but he kept a straight face. You could hear that sort of thing. “I’m doing just fine,” he said.

26
Feb

The Folklorist

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged ,

It’s nearly half past eleven at night. Blake fumbles to turn the alarm on his phone off as he reaches for his radio, flicking it on just in time to catch the ending of the previous program. He smiles as he hears the opening notes of The Folklorist’s theme music, abandoning his work at his desk to sit on his bed and listen.

The college radio channel is absolute shit, or it would be if not for this half-hour segment every night. Somebody had begged the radio coordinators to take half an hour off the new age music that usually plays late at night through to the early hours of the morning, and turned it into half an hour of storytelling instead.

Blake doesn’t know anything about him, nobody does, just that he sits there for half an hour each night, his voice deep and calming and familiar, and turns folktales from around the world into little radio plays for his audience. It’s the most popular segment on the college radio by far, and the Folklorist deserves his popularity. Each one feels like a performance, with relevant sound effects and fitting background music. As far as anybody can tell, he does it all on his own. Blake is in love. He’s completely head over heels for the man on the other side of the radio and it’s pathetic, he knows it, but he doesn’t care.

He’ll lie in bed hugging a pillow to his chest as he listens because sometimes, he’ll smile at what the Folklorist has to say, or he’ll shut his eyes and imagine someone else entirely and either way, he’ll need to bury his face into the pillow for a while because he’s that kind of ridiculous. At least he doesn’t share his dorm room with anyone else. His best friend gives him enough shit as it is.

“Thanks for tuning in, guys. I’m the Folklorist. Welcome to half an hour of what I hope will be good storytelling.”

26
Feb

226: Love is in the Air

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 47, Text | Tagged

PROLOGUE.

There are millions of signals passing through you right now.

They’re invisible. They have no mass and no weight, and yet they’re real, they have significance. They do not cause you any harm–probably. We’ve been using them as a form of communication for over a hundred years. I can decipher them with a very simple piece of equipment.

–you give loooove a bad naaaame–

–today’s guest is Reza Aslan, author of–

–what, who cares if, we all know that–

–and I will wait, I will wait for you–

I’m talking, of course, about radio. But the world of AM/FM radio, which most–or all, since you’re listening to me on the radio right now, unless of course you’re listening to the podcast version–which most of you are familiar with, is only a very, very tiny part of the radio spectrum. A grain of sand on an infinite beach, if you will. For the rest, you will need a shortwave radio, or a scanner, or something of the like.

16
Dec

Eve

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 46, Text | Tagged , , ,

“All right,” said Malcolm, drawing his knees up to his chest, “who’s first?”

The bottle of brandy set in the midst of them had been pilfered from the dean’s private stash, but since he wasn’t strictly supposed to have it there in the first place, Reginald had argued, there’d be little chance of his making a commotion upon finding it gone. Of course, he’d made this argument only after showing up in the dormitory’s small third-story common room with the purloined spirits, at which point old adages about begging forgiveness and asking permission suddenly seemed quite relevant. He was the most rakish of the lot, and indeed of the whole college; he was here on scholarship, on account of his brilliance at engineering, which covered steep tuition the other young men’s parents coughed up every semester. The other lads never let him forget it, but he in turn never let them forget how his name looked listed above theirs when exam results were posted. He was there because his parents couldn’t afford the train ride home from more than once a year.

Gautam tossed another log on the fire, though it didn’t stop his shivering. “I don’t understand why we are doing this again.” He was there because by the time he’d traveled all the way home to Madras, he would have had only enough time to remark on how he didn’t celebrate Christmas anyway before turning on his heel and starting the journey right back to his volumes of poetry.

“It’s tradition, yeah?” Izzy was another non-celebrant, though Hebraic where Gautam was Hindu. He was also an American, though, and thus had similar reasons for remaining over the winter holidays, his nose in his books of anatomy. “Read about it. Dickens and the Ghosts of Christmas What-Have-You. Not such a thing back home, so far as I can tell, but hey, when in Rome, right?”

Malcolm was a pedant by nature, but nevertheless refrained from pointing out that they weren’t in Rome, but in Sheffield. He himself had no family to return to. “It’s a tradition,” he confirmed, reaching for the brandy and taking a swift swig. It burned inside him, sending warmth spreading out to the farthest reaches of his extremities, even though he knew it made his cheeks flush and all the freckles dotting his fair skin that much more visible. “It’s just what you do on Christmas Eve.”

16
Dec

The Missing Pieces

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 46, Text | Tagged

He raises the missing half-inches: five incomplete fingers, an incomplete greeting.

I stare, wondering if I’ve finally cracked and shattered, if the shards carved him into the freezing air of my doorstep. I have half a mind to reach out, touch him, grab that coat by the lapels and tear him into the house, throw him to the steps like a rag doll and drag him to where he’ll never leave. The other half wants to shut the door.

So I stare.

I cannot remember the last time I saw him. His face is hard like granite, gently treated with a burin pick for his eyes, his lips. His hair is tar, the curls matted with oil and dust from days of neglected wash. His eyes are the color of a sky smeared with mud. A flash of memory: I see his face three years younger, three ashen countries divided by borders of tears. Now he is clear-faced, shadows buried deep in the eyes.

16
Dec

Seismic Gap

Posted by | Categories Bang*Bang no. 46, Text | Tagged

Riaag had a complicated relationship with the stupid horse. He hated everything about it, from the way its eyes rolled (which was horrifying) to the way it smelled (which was delicious), but the worst part was how Sarouth kept insisting he learn how to ride the damn thing. Horsemanship was not something in Riaag’s blood: he spent most of his practice sessions clinging helplessly to the saddle, and while the horse had been trained to tolerate the scent of orcs, he could still feel it fighting the urge to throw him every time he urged it around a barrel. It was going to be a long time before either of them was fit to charge into battle, assuming the beast didn’t get tired of having seven feet of fat, angry man sit on its back and just kick him to death one morning.

The worst part was how he couldn’t just sneak it into the kitchen when Sarouth wasn’t looking. For one thing, it was an entirely different breed than the horses they bought for food, and since he’d been present for the haggling he knew just how expensive a trade it’d been; cooking it would be like making a soup with a brick of pure saffron. Most importantly, however, the damned animal had been a present. Sarouth had looked so hopeful when he’d told Riaag about his plans, and as much as Riaag hated the idea of trying to ride, he hated the thought of upsetting Sarouth more. At least seeing Sarouth happy was worth the sore muscles and stiff back.

It had been an ordinary day, for the most part: he’d washed clothes, worked in the forge, and spent time amiably terrorizing some of the stronghold’s children in between teaching them songs. He’d also practiced riding the stupid horse, of course, which was why everything south of his neck ached. Riaag had decided halfway through his hour-long ordeal of getting tangled up in the reins like an asshole that the rest of his afternoon was best spent on personal time, and so the day found him soaking in one of Naar Rhoan’s many bathing lakes, happily holed up in a secluded corner where he didn’t have to talk to anyone.

While he had every intention of not leaving the water until every part of him looked like a prune, Riaag’s ears perked up when he heard the crunch of feet on pebbles behind him. Most people left him alone when he was obviously lost in thought. His visitor had been quiet, ruling out a messenger, and given the sound of rustling fabric that followed the footsteps it could only be one person. At least said person was allowed to bother him during his private time.