By Blogbot
Cory Doctorow reads an excerpt from his “optimistic disaster novel” Walkaway at the Buena Vista Branch Library in Burbank, CA on Thursday, August 10, 2017.
For more on Cory and Walkaway, read our interview here.
The action in Cory Doctorow’s new novel, Walkaway, takes place in — and outside of — a dystopian society where the resistance, instead of fighting to change it, have decided to walk away from it. Plagued by inequality gone wild and the ravages of climate change, the “default” society is divided into the elite “zotta” have-everything class and the proletariat for whom — in an extreme gig economy — even an honest day’s work is a luxury.
With no hope of even getting on the first rung of success’s ladder, leaving default to occupy abandoned spaces outside of the fortified cities and create a new society based on community-forward ideals is not only the ultimate act of defiance for the disaffected, it just makes plain sense for those who see through the shared fiction that currency is the preeminent measure of value. Thus the ever-morphing domain of the walkaways attracts some of the brightest young minds who, in a post-scarcity world, can 3D print almost everything they need using discarded recyclables as raw material.
The success of the walkaway encampments challenges the capitalist foundations of default, and the resulting brain-drain brings about an even greater threat to the zottas’ position as society’s self-appointed gods. As drone-delivered bombs explode above them, the geniuses of the subterranean Walkaway U unlock the key to humanity’s Holy Grail: immortality. Having always assumed their wealth would entitle them — and them alone — to eternal life, the threat to the elites’ institutionalized deification leads to a very uncivil war. But when the path to immortality is open source — allowing anyone who cares to get their brain scanned a chance of life after meat-death — bullets and bombs can’t kill a beyond-material world whose time has come.
I caught up with bestselling sci-fi author, activist, and BoingBoing co-editor, Doctorow by phone to discuss some of Walkaway’s themes and ideas, which serve both as cautionary parables and inspiration for dealing with many of the online and meat-space existential crises we face today.
“What about walkaways?” Hubert, Etc said. “Seems to me that they’re doing something that makes a difference. No money, no pretending money matters, and they’re doing it right now.”
Nicole Powers: We both walked away from London. I left because of the poll tax and I know you left more recently because of the Tories. Obviously, the concept of Walkaway very much mirrors what you’ve done in your own life. How much were you thinking about that as you were writing the book?
Cory Doctorow: I don’t remember the exact timing, but I was either mostly done or done with Walkaway when we left London. So it wasn’t exactly that the one inspired the other very much. I think that the thing that I was mostly inspired by… well, a couple of things. One was the idea that if Atlas Shrugged and the one percenters decide they can secede from the human race, the human race might shrug back. They might say, good riddance, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. The thing that I hope I got at here is that, if civilization decides that you are irrelevant, that you have nothing to contribute economically, that maybe with technology and the ability to find other people who feel the same way you do, you can just decide not to petition civilization for the right to exist, but rather to strike out on your own and stake out your own place.
Maybe I was inspired by the success of Occupy in that regard. I was, more than anything, just totally amazed that Occupy lasted as long and worked as well as it did. I know that it’s fashionable now to look back on it and say, well, wasn’t that a giant waste everyone’s time. But if there’s one thing Occupy showed us, it’s that people were able to assert their right to these spaces — literally, physically, parts of their cities. And that they could assert it and they could hold it in a way, that in our very private property-centric world, it’s hard to imagine could have happened. Like, St. Paul’s Cathedral — how was it that it lasted as long as it did? That’s an amazing thing and I think that there are people who will have been radicalized by that. People who, in retrospect, will think back on that and go, you know, if that worked, what can we do next?
The walkaway net had high-speed zones, and this had been one of them, but the major hard-line links had been destroyed in the blaze and they’d dropped back to stupid meshing wireless and there was only so much electromagnetic spectrum in the universe.
NP: Walkaway very much exists in a post-net neutrality world. They’ve worked away from the World Wide Web to an extent and created their own mesh net. You talk about the mesh net a lot, and the way it’s supported via drones and blimps. I know a lot of geeks are already working on mesh nets. Do you think, given the threats to the web that we’re seeing, it’s time for activists to invest in a mesh outside of the World Wide Web?
CD: I don’t think that it needs to be outside of the World Wide Web, or even outside of the telecom companies. I think it needs to interpret them as damage and route around them. Actually, someone asked me the other day whether or not we’re going to have multiple internets. It was a similar version to this question. Are we going to have more than one internet? Are we going to separate off? Are we going to balkanize out into multiple internets?
There’s this technical element of it that works against that, where the internet is really good at tunneling protocols through each other. People who attempt to separate one network from another using things like packet filtering but leaving them electrically connected so that there’s a way for one to talk to the other one — they tend to be very surprised by how easy it is and how thoroughly they end up being reconnected. There are lots of people who try very hard to air gap networks and to build networks that are electrically separated —sometimes for very good reasons — in order to preserve data integrity, to stop randos from hacking into the MRI machine and crashing.
Inevitably — and I got this from Genevieve Bell who is an anthropologist at Intel who did a study of this — she said that inevitably those networks are cross-connected. The value of cross-connecting two networks is so high that no matter how risky it is to connect one network to another, people always end up doing it. Whether that’s the spy network that is supposed to be totally air-gapped because it’s where all your cyber weapons are, or the finance network, or the hospital network — all of those sensitive networks inevitably get reconnected to the internet by someone. You just literally walk the perimeter and you find that someone has taken a patch cable to the two patch panels in the wiring closet and cross-connected one to the other. Or they’ve brought in a DSL modem. Or they’ve brought in a USB dongle connected to a hot spot. Or something. Those networks always end up reconnected. I think that it’s probably a fool’s errant to say, well we’re going to disconnect our web from their web. I think it’s better to say, we are going to build a web that subsumes their web.
NP: In the UK, police are getting new powers to remotely disable phones, and it seems at the point where your government can switch off your phone, or spy on it, then you need a failsafe you can flip to.
CD: Yeah. I think that this is a place where our abstractions collide with reality. Because there isn’t a way to give governments the power to switch your phone off. There’s only a way to give governments the power to reconfigure a phone to do all of the things or not do any of the things that phones can do. Once you give a government the power to reach in and run code on your phone that turns it off, that you don’t want run, you’re also giving them the power to run other arbitrary code on your phone. And not just the government, but anyone who successfully impersonates the government to your phone…
Even much more benign versions of this, like the California law that says that carriers need to be able to brick a phone if it’s reported stolen in order to reduce phone theft. That’s, I think, passed with the best of intentions, but there is no such thing as something that just allows carriers to brick phones. What that is, is it’s a way to brick phones that anyone who knows the secret can use against any phone that they want. And if we haven’t seen that exploited in the wild yet, we should expect it to be exploited in the wild soon.
“Science may be resistant to power, but it’s not immune. It’s a race: either the walkaways release immortality to the world, or the zottas install themselves as permanent god-emperors.”
NP: I watched your New York Public Library Q&A with Edward Snowden two days ago. You both spoke about immorality being used as a MacGuffin in the book. However, I read an article recently about a surgeon that successfully transplanted a head on to a rat. That same surgeon says he’s going to do that on a human within the year. Then you have Mark Zuckerberg working on his mind-reading project. We’re already heading in the direction that you describe in the book. And, if that comes to pass, there’s going to be this horrific situation where — if it’s left in the hands of the elite — the one percenters are going to get to decide who donates their body and whose brains get to live on.
CD: Ha,ha!
NP: Is this really a MacGuffin or is the idea that it’s a MacGuffin wishful thinking on your part given what’s actually going on in the real world?
CD: No, I seriously think it’s a MacGuffin. Just because Zuck thinks that he knows about neuroscience doesn’t mean that he knows about neuroscience. Dunning-Kruger is alive and well. The reason that con artists targeted successful, intelligent people is they always overestimated their ability to spot a con in domains other than the one that they knew something about. You find a stock broker and you would hook them with a horse race con because stock brokers would assume that understanding a stock market very well also made them really good at understanding horse races — and they were horribly wrong and got taken for every penny. So I wouldn’t say that Zuck’s enthusiasm is any indication of anything except his hubris.
In terms of the transplantation of a rat head, we can’t interrogate the rat to know whether or not that was a successful operation, right? We have only external factors to evaluate the quality of the experimental outcome. It may be that, if you could talk to the rat, you’d find out that the head transplant was not nearly so successful as we thought… So in my view, anyway, it’s a very metaphorical thing.
Where it does touch with reality is in what James Hughes calls ‘transhumanism.’ He wrote a very good book about this called Citizen Cyborg that’s more generally about the ways that technologies give us longer lives of higher quality, and how the uneven distribution of technology in that domain — where that inequality is a function of economic inequality — that it magnifies economic inequality very, very terribly.
Jim, in particular, is worried and interested about the way that maybe we might alter our germplasm, which does seem to me to be well within reach. I mean, we have parts of our genome that at least there’s burgeoning consensus if they’re expressed in certain ways, they probably only do bad things and not good things. And we can, in theory, eliminate those parts of our genome from fertilized zygotes, at least in vitro. So it may be that there are people who are wealthy enough to have IVF and to have CRISPR surgery on the IVF before implantation whose germplasm is permanently altered to remove things that are potentially very harmful. That to me feels like something that it is a little bit like speciation. So if there’s a thing in Walkaway that resonates with you, the place where I would say you should be taking that resonance and trying to apply it to the real-world is not in the hypothetical life extension technologies, but in very non-hypothetical and very real stuff that we’re doing right now.
NP: I see it in the vote that was taken yesterday in which the House passed the American Healthcare Act. That’s very much saying, these people have a right to live because they have money, and these people don’t because they don’t.
CD: Yeah. I think that’s absolutely right.
“Of course I’m talking about economists! I think you have to be a mathematician to appreciate how full of shit economists are, how astrological their equations are. No offense to your egalitarian soul, but you lack the training to understand how deeply bogus those neat equations are.”
NP: Continuing on with the theme of the delusions of grand people, like Zuckerberg… I loved the line in your book where you talk about how economics is the astrology of math, and how it’s often just used to justify terrible things. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
CD: This is actually a thing that mainstream economists have observed and that Thomas Piketty delves into at some length in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. That economics exists in a marketplace in which the fitness factor that gets you funded, and gets you pricey consultation gigs and makes your life very good, is not being accurate but saying things that make rich people happy — because they give politicians reasons to make rich people richer.
NP: The fallacy of trickle-down economics, etc.
CD: Right. I mean, basically, governments that do things that benefit the donor class at the expense of everyone else need to be able to explain why they shouldn’t be sent to the guillotines. And the way that they explain it is by having very articulate and respected economists describe why it’s better for you and me that our interests are not being served by the government.
NP: I just love that you even float that idea… because economics is considered a hallowed science by so many.
CD: I’ve written more than one book about heterodox economics. I wrote For The Win and it got a very good write-up in The Financial Times. I hope that this will also get thought well of in those circles. I think that the idea that laissez-faire market orthodoxy is overly simplistic, doesn’t accord with realities, is observed and so on. It is actually a pretty mainstream idea within economics — it’s just not a mainstream idea within the economists who are incredibly well paid.
One of the B&B’s game-changing tools was “lovedaresnot” … The core idea was that radical or difficult ideas were held back by the thought that no one else had them. That fear of isolation led people to stay “in the closet” about their ideas, making them the “love that dares not speak its name.” So lovedaresnot (shortened to “Dare Snot”) gave you a way to find out if anyone else felt the same, without forcing you to out yourself.
Anyone could put a question — a Snot Dare — up, like “Do you think we should turf that sexist asshole?” People who secretly agreed signed the question with a one-time key that they didn’t have to reveal unless a pre-specified number of votes were on the record. Then the system broadcast a message telling signers to come back with their signing keys and de-anonymize themselves, escrowing the results until a critical mass of signers had de-cloaked. Quick as you could say “I am Spartacus,” a consensus plopped out of the system.
NP: You have a wonderful description of a post-Occupy form of consensus, which is very appealing to me. Politics and the media can often combine to produce a society where the vocal minority rule. I think that’s very much what we saw in the last election cycle, where there was a silent majority that was scared to voice opinions. As a woman, this can be especially frustrating when making an argument in mixed company where there’s always going to be people that are able to shout louder. So I liked the concept of lovedaresnot. Can you explain a little about that idea and where it came from?
CD: It’s one of the many ways in which we use networks to break the collective action problem, which is one of the great old problems of our species — figuring out how to work together when we need a lot of people together to make something happen. And when having any less than the threshold for action means that everyone ends up wasting their time or worse. It can be very, very hard to organize those. It’s actually a thing laissez-faire economists spend a lot of time worrying about. They worry about free riders because that’s the situation in which free-riding is really dangerous; it can convince all of the people, who might otherwise pitch in and help reach the threshold, to just not bother.
In some ways, it’s an extension of what we’ve seen happen with Kickstarter and crowdfunding projects which are all about trying to figure out how to overcome these deadlocks… Bruce Schneier originally proposed something called the Street Performer Protocol, which draws its inspiration from the practices of some street performers of doing an act for free. They might play a bunch of songs or they might be a juggler and they’ll do a bunch of juggling, then, when they get to the end of the act, they say, all right, I have a finale, and you’ve seen what I have on offer, so the finale is going to be amazing. They’ll talk it up and they’ll say, I’ll do the finale once there’s $50 in my hat. I don’t care who puts the $50 in the hat, and I don’t care who watches afterwards, but until there’s $50 in the hat, the show does not go on. You sometimes get this with NPR fundraisers too, we don’t do anything until there’s X dollars.
The Street Performer Protocol, historically when people have tried to make it into a web thing for say a musician to put out a new album, the way that it’s worked is you have some escrow authority, a third-party, a platform who takes all the money for the musician and holds on to it, and when the musician delivers the album, then they get the money. That way, they don’t just do a runner with it. The thing that Kickstarter did that was amazing was they said musicians have a hard time making albums unless they have the money in the first place. They don’t have access to credit that would allow them to make the album, deliver the album, and then collect the money from all the backers and use it to pay back the creditors who loaned them the money to keep going in the studio. If they had access to that credit, they wouldn’t need the crowdfunder… So Kickstarter was like, what if we just made a thing where sometimes people get ripped off or disappointed. They give the money to the musician, the musician goes into the studio, comes out six months later and says, you know what, I tried, no, there’s no record, sorry. If you did that, you would enable all the musicians who could produce an album but for the lack of capital to produce something — and they would be the majority… They would swamp the disappointment effect that arose from the musicians who just never came out of the studio with anything viable or just spent it all on beer or whatever. And it turned out they were right.
Now you have people trying versions of Kickstarter where they are removing one thing at a time to see what the minimum viable crowdfunder is. You have Indiegogo, where you get the money even if you don’t reach the threshold… You have GoFundMe, where you don’t have to set a threshold. It’s just an open platform. People are trying to see how much you can omit before you cease to have a viable crowdfunding platform… It’s like a game of Jenga for behavioral economics, where you see how much you can remove before it all falls over.
Daresnot, this idea that you can have a cryptographically secret place where you cast votes and, until the vote reaches the threshold, the votes are never disclosed — no one knows how it’s going, but once it reaches the threshold, then all of a sudden some action is triggered — is really just a metaphorical way of talking about these other collective action beaters and where they might go.
I’ve talked for years about something I call the Magnificent Seven Business Model. In the Magnificent Seven, you have a village that every year the bandits ride into and take all their stuff. One year they decide instead of paying the bandits, they will go and hire mercenaries to kill the bandits, because they only have to pay the mercenaries once where they have to pay the bandits every year.
In the world of patent and copyright trolling, you have things like the “Happy Birthday” people who charge you a license fee that’s less than it would cost you to fight the copyright claim for the song “Happy Birthday” — even though you’re pretty sure that if you did fight the copyright claim, you would win. Collectively, all the people paying license fees to the “Happy Birthday” copyright trolls were paying much more than it would cost to litigate the copyright, but individually they weren’t. So you could imagine a thing where you said, once 1,000 other people promise not to pay any more money to the “Happy Birthday” people, then I won’t either and we will all divert our funds to pay a lawyer to defend anyone who gets sued by the “Happy Birthday” people — once we reach that critical threshold.
That actually would probably work. It could fight a lot of trolling business models. We could fight patent trolling business models and it’d be really interesting. The more people you had who were in the pool, the more desperate the trolls would be to find new people to shore up their revenues, the more aggressive their claims would be, the more people would find the pool and join it, and eventually they’d drive themselves out of business. The harder they push, the harder the pushback would be.
NP: That sounds like a business model and a platform that needs to happen.
CD: If I were a class action lawyer with a little extra money looking to create a platform, I would make that platform as a way of drumming up business. Because the other thing that it does is once you invalidate the copyright, then you get a class action to sue them for falsely asserting it.
The people who use this place decided they would rather be robbed than surveilled. Stuff is just stuff, but being recorded all the time is creepy. As for lockers, you’re free to put some in, but I don’t think they’d last. Once you’ve got lockers, you’re implicitly saying that anything that’s not in a locker is ‘unprotected’—”
“Which it was,” Etcetera pointed out.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s a perfectly valid point. But you won’t win the argument with it.”
NP: You and Snowden talked about a full-Orwell future, which we’re very much hurtling towards… What I love with your novels is that you’re actually creating a demand elasticity for crypto and privacy rights to fight that. People come to your novels because they’re great stories, but leave with a greater understanding of the need for crypto and privacy.
CD: At the very least, I hope I’m helping people think through some of the more abstract elements of why this stuff matters. A lot of public health problems involve very abstract harms that are a long time in the future. This is one of the problems of climate change, understanding climate change and really viscerally feeling the risks associated with it. It’s a difficult enterprise because climate change is a long way off and the explanation for it, and the specifics of it, are extremely technical. That’s been one of the problems we’ve had in doing something about climate change. And climate oriented science fiction, like the stuff Kim Stanley Robinson is writing, that does yeoman service because it helps us understand, in a very visceral way, what’s going on with climate change and what the problems are. It helps us live through it in advance. That is definitely one of the things fiction can do.
One of the most gratifying things in my life these years is that I frequently meet adults who read Little Brother as kids, and they have gone into computer science, information security, entrepreneurship, and public policy as a result. They are like my botnet, right? They are people whose practice in this technical trade that’s very important, and that is really dominated by money, and they bring into their practice non-financial considerations about ethics. And that’s really important.
Engineering and ethics have always had an important relationship to one another. Where engineering and ethics have become too far divorced, we’ve had really ghastly things. Engineers made every weapon of mass destruction. Engineers made all of the great killing machines. Engineers provided the data processing that allowed every modern genocidal system to run. So engineering ethics often arises as a reaction to these awful outcomes where we create situations where engineers look at themselves in the mirror and realize that their profession, which they got into for the technical challenges or to make the world a better place, has become an existential threat to the species. That it has become a way to allow people to magnify their worse impulses to the great detriment of many, many, many millions of people — sometimes with mass graves to boot. So getting people involved and inspired to think about the ethical dimension of technology, and then to do something about it, is a very gratifying thing indeed.
“What’s a ‘covered dish’ person?”
“Oh. If there’s a disaster, do you go over to your neighbor’s house with: a) a covered dish or b) a shotgun? It’s game theory. If you believe your neighbor is coming over with a shotgun, you’d be an idiot to pick a); if she believes the same thing about you, you can bet she’s not going to choose a) either. The way to get to a) is to do a) even if you think your neighbor will pick b). Sometimes she’ll point her gun at you and tell you to get off her land, but if she was only holding the gun because she thought you’d have one, then she’ll put on the safety and you can have a potluck.”
NP: A lot of the systems that governments have in place depend on a government seeing the population as an adversarial force. In Walkaway, you introduced this idea of ‘covered dish people.’ We’ve seen in real life that when disasters happen — be it 9/11 or a hurricane — that the vast majority of people are covered dish people. Yet, we’re still functioning with a government that doesn’t even believe that the covered dish mentality can exist. How do we change the way we fundamentally run things so that we’re actually running things for the benefit of the 99% covered dish people, rather than the 1% that would shoot you for a casserole?
CD: This is a collective action problem again. I think that what kind of person you are is partly temperamental. There’s some people who think more about an alliance to a wider polity, and some people who are more inclined to think about their allegiance to the people around them and to draw the border much closer to home. But, with few exceptions, I don’t think anyone is born an absolute. I think what happens is that our social system causes one or the other to emerge from us in the same way that our personal circumstances cause either our resilient, understanding self or our temper-prone, angry self to rise to the surface. You know that when you’re tired and grumpy, and maybe you had a glass of wine, you’re more likely to snap than when you are well rested and happy, then you can roll with the punches.
I think that we have built a system that encourages people to be tired and grumpy, to let their worst selves come to the fore. Building a system where your best self can come to the fore involves, in part, figuring out how to overcome the people who benefit from this worst system. This market doctrine system where the very rich have everything accrued to them and where the economists that they pay to give them intellectual cover explain that being greedy is the best way to organize a society.
Figuring out how to break that deadlock is going to involve doing things like small money fundraising and political activism of the sort that we’ve seen actually since the Trump election. You know, the collapse of the first round of the Obamacare repeal, and whatever is going to happen as a result of this one, that’s an example of exactly how people who don’t have the same amount of money but who have the support from networks and the ability to organize themselves to work collectively can outmaneuver these big top-down, very wealthy systems of power.
Walkaway is available now via Tor Publishing. For more on Cory Doctorow visit craphound.com.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and is published here under Creative Commons License 4.0. It may be reposted freely with attribution to the author, Nicole Powers, and this notice.
By Blogbot
[Above: Guns ‘N’ Roses playing live at LA’s Music Machine — a show which Vicky Hamilton booked in 1986.]
This Wednesday, May 18th on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Moxi and Bradley Suicide will be joined by legendary music mover & shaker, Vicky Hamilton, whose golden touch has been bestowed upon Guns ‘N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Faster Pussycat, to name but a few. She’ll be sharing fascinating backstage and backroom stories from her must-read new memoir, Appetite For Dysfunction.
You can listen – and watch – SuicideGirls Radio live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art, all digital, 100% Hollywood home: ZHollywood.tv
If you have questions for the SG Radio crew or our guests, you can call in during the live broadcast at: 1-855-TRV-inLA (1-855-878-4652)
**UPDATE**
Such a fun evening with legendary music manager-turned-author Vicky Hamilton, who gave us the 411 in the glory days of the Sunset Strip and the bad boys and girls that ruled it! Watch the how here, or via the player below!
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
[Photo of Vicky by Robert John]
About Vicky Hamilton
Long time Grammy Award-Winning music industry executive and personal manager, Vicky Hamilton has been featured on VH-1s Behind the Music, the BBC series Born To Be Wild, The Golden Age Of American Rock, and Biography Channel documentaries on Guns ‘N’ Roses, Brett Michaels, and Mötley Crüe.
Considered one of the most successful music executives in the industry, Vicky has discovered, developed or managed the careers of Guns ‘N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Faster Pussycat, and many others.
In 1988, David Geffen hired her as A&R executive at Geffen Records, where she stayed until 1992. She has also worked with famed manager Elliot Roberts at Lookout Management/ Vapor Records, before moving to Capitol Records as A&R consultant with longtime friend Gary Gersh.
At the House of Blues after watching Johnny Cash perform, Rick Rubin (Def Jam, American, Columbia Records) suggested she make a record with June Carter Cash. Hamilton shopped June’s demos around to all the major labels but there was a reluctance to sign this country legend. Unperturbed, Vicky started her own label Small Hairy Dog and gave June a label to call home. Her CD, Press On was released in 1999 and earned a Grammy Award in 2000. As Hamilton later stated, “I didn’t plan on starting a record company, I just knew that June’s music needed to be heard.”
Currently, Vicky owns and operates Aesthetic V Management and Productions, which represents and develops bands, artists, and special projects. Her new documentary, Until The Music Ends, is currently in production, and features Slash. Her two feature length scripts, Metal Maven and Gothic City are also complete and currently being shopped. Glitter Beach, a glam rock surf musical she co-wrote is in development, and has secured Hollywood “It” boy director, Daniel Henning.
Vicky Hamilton’s book, Appetite For Dysfunction, is out now and available on this website and on Amazon!
[Book cover by Maxine Miller]
For more information visit Vicky’s website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.
The World’s Leading BYOB Radio Show Is Sponsored By Mangria
“As a nightly consumer of red wine, I was shocked one evening to find I had just half a glass left in the bottle. So I did what any decent alcoholic, ex-con, American would do… I went to the fridge and the liquor cabinet, then poured, mixed and measured. Thus Mangria was born.” — Adam Carolla
For more info visit Carolla Drink’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
By Blogbot
This Wednesday, October 14th on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Moxi Suicide, Nicole Powers and Bradley Suicide will be joined by our fave hirsute comedian Dana Gould, and his number one Twitter stalker, author Liana Maeby.
You can listen – and watch – the world’s leading BYOB radio show live on Wednesday nights from 8 til 9 PM at our state-of-the-art all digital home: TradioV.com.
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**UPDATE**
Watch our show feat. Liana Maeby and Dana Gould here or in the player below.
About Liana Maeby
Liana Maeby’s accomplished debut novel, South On Highland, is a meditation on the addiction memoir. The book was initially intended to gently mock a genre the New York-born, but Los Angeles-raised author felt a deep affinity for. However, during the process of writing, Maeby soon found that the universal truths were more compelling, regardless of the comedy, tragedy, fact and fiction that conveyed them. Thus, the resulting book — which is helpfully subtitled “A Novel” for those who may be confused — very much reads like an autobiography, even though it isn’t, exactly, precisely, or at all really.
Like the novel’s protagonist Leila Massey, Maeby is an impossibly cool, witty young writer in Hollywood, with more than a dabble of experience with a variety of illicit substances. However, unlike her fictional character, Maeby’s life hasn’t imploded spectacularly after raiding a big shot executive producer’s bathroom cabinet during a potentially career-making Beverly Hills Passover soiree (yet?!?). But, in other respects, the novel does draw directly on Maeby’s experience in an entertainment capital that demands youth and experience — two qualities that are often considered to be mutually exclusive. As such, South On Highland offers brutal commentary on the sordid underbelly of a highly hypocritical industry that for the most part spits out saccharin entertainment for the masses. Read our exclusive interview with Liana Maeby on SuicideGirls.com.
South on Highland: A Novel by Liana Maeby is available via Amazon.com now!
For more from Liana, cyber stalk her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
About Dana Gould
Dana Gould is a comedian with a deep dislike of bios. He doesn’t have one on his website, nor does he have one on his Laugh Factory Page — which is erroneously entitled “DANA GOULD BIOGRAPHY” but only bears the insincere promise that there is a “Bio coming soon.” Don’t hold your breath. It’s not. The page has looked like that for almost as long as time has been recorded on the internet.
In lieu of a gushing, professionally-written bio that will assure you that Dana is both hilariously funny and enormously talented, you’ll just have to take our word for it, since he’s been on SuicideGirls Radio before and was funny as fuck! Then again, if you don’t want to take our word for it, take Liana’s; She was so impressed with his mad Twitter funnybone tickling skillz that she went through every tweet he ever wrote to compile her Top 10 Faves.
If you’re still not convinced of Dana’s ability to make you pee your pants, find out for yourself; He has a show coming up this Sunday (Oct 18th) with The Tinkle Twins, April Richardson, Steve Agee, Ali Wong, Dean Delray, and Chris Garcia at the NerdMelt Showroom in Los Angeles. Get your tickets here — incontinence guaranteed!
For more on Dana, check his 100% bio-free website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
by Blogbot
This Thursday, October 3rd on SuicideGirls Radio, hosts Nicole Powers and Juturna Suicide will be joined on the phone by writer, filmmaker and artist Clive Barker, and in studio by the Vice President of his Seraphim production company Mark Miller. Art historian, author, and bon vivant Thomas Negovan of the Century Guild gallery will also be joining us to talk about Barker’s forthcoming exhibition, which he is in the process of curating.
You can listen – and watch – the world’s leading naked radio show live on Thursday nights from 6 til 8 PM at our new state-of-the-art all digital home: TradioV.com/LA.
You’ll also be able to listen to our podcasts via Stitcher – download the app now!
If you have questions for the SG Radio crew or our guests, you can call in during the live broadcast at: 1-855-TRV-inLA (1-855-878-4652)
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
About Clive Barker
A visionary, fantasist, poet and painter, Clive Barker has expanded the reaches of human imagination as a novelist, director, screenwriter and dramatist. An inveterate seeker who traverses between myriad styles with ease, Barker has left his indelible artistic mark on a range of projects that reflect his creative grasp of contemporary media — from familiar literary terrain to the progressive vision of his Seraphim production company. His 1998 Gods and Monsters, which he executive produced, garnered three Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The following year, Barker joined the ranks of such illustrious authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Annie Dillard and Aldous Huxley when his collection of literary works was inducted into the Perennial line at HarperCollins, who then published The Essential Clive Barker, a 700-page anthology with an introduction by Armistead Maupin.
Barker began his odyssey in the London theatre, scripting original plays for his group The Dog Company, including The History of the Devil, Frankenstein in Love and Crazyface. Soon, Barker began publishing his The Books of Blood short fiction collections; but it was his debut novel, The Damnation Game, that widened his already growing international audience.
Barker shifted gears in 1987 when he directed Hellraiser, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, which became a veritable cult classic spawning a slew of sequels, several lines of comic books, and an array of merchandising. In 1990, he adapted and directed Nightbreed from his short story Cabal. Two years later, Barker executive produced the housing-project story Candyman, as well as the 1995 sequel, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh. Also that year, he directed Scott Bakula and Famke Janssen in the noir-esque detective tale, Lord of Illusions.
Barker’s literary works include such best-selling fantasies as Weaveworld, Imajica, and Everville, the children’s novel The Thief of Always, Sacrament, Galilee and Coldheart Canyon. The first of his quintet of children’s books, Abarat, was published in October 2002 to resounding critical acclaim, followed by Abarat II: Days of Magic, Nights of War and Arabat III: Absolute Midnight. Barker is currently completing the fourth in the series. As an artist, Barker frequently turns to the canvas to fuel his imagination with hugely successful exhibitions across America. His neo-expressionist paintings have been showcased in two large format books, Clive Barker, Illustrator, volumes I & II.
About Mark Miller
As the Vice President of Seraphim, Mark Alan Miller writes, produces, and directs original content alongside master of horror Clive Barker.
Mark has been working as a writer since 2005 when he started as a columnist for OCWeekly. It was this that landed him the position of assistant editor on Barker’s recently released Novel Abarat: Absolute Midnight, for which he also directed the promotional trailer.
Since 2009, Miller has been shepherding the release of the director’s cut of Barker’s classic film Nightbreed. During that time, Miller has acted as producer on an in-house cut of Barker’s movie, which has garnered worldwide interest, and been featured in magazines such as Fangoria, Rue Morgue, and Empire magazine, and was just named TotalFilm‘s 14th best extended cut of all time.
Currently, he is editing Barker’s much-anticipated The Scarlet Gospels. His work can also be seen in the bestselling Boom! Studios comic book, Hellraiser, as well as the newly released Next Testament.
About Thomas Negovan / Century Guild
Century Guild was established in 1999 and has curated objects and artworks now on permanent display in a number of museums including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Detroit Institute of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The gallery moved to Culver City in December, 2012 and specializes in works from the Art Nouveau era through the Weimar Republic. Century Guild is located at 6150 Washington Blvd in Culver City, five blocks West of the Helms Bakery in the heart of the Arts District. For information on current and upcoming shows visit centuryguild.net/
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: This week’s show featuring author, filmmaker and artist Clive Barker, Mark Miller (the Vice President of Barker’s Seraphim production company), and Thomas Negovan of the Century Guild (who is curating an exhibition of Barker’s work).
by Blogbot
This Thursday, August 15th on SuicideGirls Radio we invite you to join us for a rather curious Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Hosts Nicole Powers, Juturna and Moon Suicide will be joined in-studio by world-renowned artist Gail Potocki, and art historian, author and bon vivant Thomas Negovan of the Century Guild.
Potocki’s upcoming Century Guild show, entitled Fragmented Alice, offers a decidedly modern perspective on Alice in Wonderland, and uses the archetypes of Lewis Carroll’s characters to explore the way that we experience the fluid nature of time and its passing
In anticipation of the event, we’ve persuaded the Queen of Hearts to bake some tarts, and will be serving fortified tea in exceedingly clean cups. So don your top hats, Alice bands, and best tea party attire, and don’t be late for this very important date!
You can listen – and watch – the world’s leading BYOB radio show live on Thursday nights from 6 til 8 PM at our new state-of-the-art all digital home: TradioV.com/LA.
You’ll also be able to listen to our podcasts via Stitcher – download the app now!
If you have questions for the SG Radio crew or our guests, you can call in during the live broadcast at: 1-855-TRV-inLA (1-855-878-4652)
For updates on all things SG Radio-related, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Fragmented Alice opens on August 17th at 7 PM at the Century Guild in Culver City, and runs through the closing night event on September 21, 2013. For more information call 1-800-610-CENTURY or visit centuryguild.net.
**UPDATE**
ICYMI: Last night’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with artist Gail Potocki, bon vivant Thomas Negovan of Century Guild, and hosts Juturna Suicide and Nicole Powers.
A very special winter’s tale (with a frosty bite in it) written by Robert Ropars for SuicideGirls feat. Gogo, Lass, Sash, and Radeo.
On a dark and bitterly cold winter night in Scotland, snow fell and the wind howled. Several members of the SuicideGirls headed north from Dumfries to the massive Forest of Ae. As they traveled along the A701, Lass, Gogo, Sash and Radeo shared coffee while they laughed, sang and tried to stay warm.
Lass was somewhat familiar with the area, but Gogo helped navigate with both a map and her phone’s GPS. She frowned and turned the map around and back again while taking a drag on a cigarette. Lass reached out and Gogo passed it to her. Lass refocused on the road, took a drag and exhaled. Gogo meanwhile repositioned the map so it made better sense and saw they were near their next turn.
“A few more miles than turn left onto Hillview. It’s just before the river…the…Water of Ae? Seriously? The Forest of Ae? The Water of Ae? What’s next, the Village of Ae?”
Lass smiled as she took another drag and handed the cigarette back to her friend.
“Follow Hillview up from the highway.” Lass continued to smile and reached for her coffee.
Gogo traced her finger along Hillview which ran north from the A701 and parallel to the river known as the Water of Ae.
“Fuck me….Ae Village…Not too original around these parts. Where’s the Hill of Ae? Are we staying at the B&B of Ae?”
Radeo was asleep; her head resting on Sash’s left shoulder. Sash smiled at the conversation in the front and drank her own coffee. She moved slowly and carefully so as not to wake Radeo.
Lass turned briefly to Gogo as they turned onto Hillview.
“I told you were staying at a friend of the family’s cabin in the woods. Our guide is waiting to take us there and we’ll have all weekend to shoot.”
Gogo frowned at Lass and looked out her passenger window at the water. It glistened sporadically as the light of the full moon was obscured by the winter storm. She sighed, at least it was going to be a quiet weekend, but the snow seemed to fall faster now and she worried about being trapped in the cabin. A cabin deep in a huge forest in the middle nowhere.
As Gogo turned to look at the road which was less traveled than the main road they had just left, she could see the snow had started to make things messy and Lass had some trouble keeping the car steady. To relax she drank some coffee, finished the cigarette, and again looked at the map. She used a small flashlight to hunt for interesting village names and realized that the Forest of Ae was massive and the nearest cities were miles in every direction. She felt decidedly less relaxed and sighed.
Gogo looked back at the road ahead illuminated by their rental car’s headlights. With a glance at the map, she estimated that they were passing Crow Wood which lay opposite the road on the other side of the river. Unseen in the snowy darkness beyond and north of Crow Wood stood Wood Hill From the map it appeared to be a large hill and she made a mental note that they should check it out in the morning. Ahead she could just make out lights which had to be Ae Village as it finally came into view.
Sash gently woke Radeo who stretched and yawned before rubbing her eyes.
“Are we there yet?” Radeo asked with an impish grin.
The other three turned and looked at her and smiled.
“Well I guess someone had to say it at some point,” said Sash. She gave Radeo a kiss, handed her some coffee and a cigarette all of which she accepted gratefully. Radeo briefly remembered a video they had made together a few years ago for the site and felt much less cold.
“We’re coming into the village now. The guide should be waiting for us at the pub,” Lass said.
The girls stretched and started to gather their stuff together.
As they entered the tiny village of Ae, they were all happy to have reached their destination as the wind and snow had increased noticeably. Lass checked her phone and scrolled to the text message she’d received the day before.
“There should be a small pub on the left by a parking lot…there it is, the Elephant & Tower.”
She drove past the pub and parked in its nearly empty lot. As they got out, their footsteps scrunched in the wet snow that was already nearly an inch thick. They gathered themselves up and fought the cutting wind all the way to the pub. Though it wasn’t that far away, the winter weather made it seem to take much longer.
The wind caught the door as they pulled it open and it slammed against the exterior with a thud. They struggled to pull the heavy wooden door back into position and enter simultaneously. The bartender and a handful of patrons all stared in disgust at the blast of cold air and snow that accompanied the four girls into the pub.
All four scanned the room, saw a massive stone fireplace and practically fell over each other to get to it. They shivered while they stamped their feet and quickly recovered with the heat of the fire. The smell of smoke, the popping and crackling of the wood was comforting to them. The people in the pub returned to their drinks and except for the bartender paid them no further attention.
Lass approached the bartender, ordered drinks for them, and asked if Angus was there. The bartender looked at Lass and the others with a mixture of wonder and amusement. They were without a doubt the oddest group to visit their small village in his memory. Tattoos and piercings weren’t a common site in Ae, in particular on a lady. He felt sure he would remember this day for a long time. From behind him a throat cleared and reminded him that his wife as usual was unamused.
“Aye. That’s Angus in the corner. But what business could ye four have with ‘im?”
“We’re with the SuicideGirls. We’re going to shoot each other at my friend’s cabin in the woods.”
With that Lass scooped up the drinks with a wink and lead the other three to the table in the far corner.
“What did she say?” asked the bartender’s wife.
Crossing himself he turned to her and hugged her.
“They’re planning to shoot themselves in the woods. One of them suicide pacts you read about online.”
She looked in horror at the four girls who seemed happy as could be. Sash caught her eye and smiled.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?”
“Woman it’s not our business what strangers do outside our village. Say your prayers tonight that God enlightens them, but we won’t mention them again after they leave.”
“Aye.” The bartender’s wife crossed herself and muttered as she walked into the kitchen.
Meanwhile the four approached the man in the corner table. He was tall, bearded and had a face that seemed to consist of more wrinkles than anything else.
“Are you Angus?”
The man who had been eyeing them since they entered nodded.
“I’m Lass, that’s Gogo, she’s Sash and that’s Radeo.”
He looked from one to the next with no visible reaction. He might have just reviewed livestock at the county fair.
“So we’re anxious to get to the cabin before the storm picks up much worse. Is it far?”
“Yes…and no. Sit and finish your drinks while I finish mine. There’s plenty of time before it’s too late. Can tell by how my knee feels.” He patted his right knee while he spoke.
The girls looked at one another, shrugged and sat down to drink their ale. It helped warm their insides so they didn’t have much reason to argue.
“Are you four sure you want to stay at that cabin…in those woods. On a night like this of all nights.”
“The cabin belongs to a friend of my family. Well belonged. She passed a few years ago.” Lass paused to take another sip of her drink.
“Is that so?” The fire in the hearth behind them cast all manner of shadows over him. They crawled like fingers over his cragged facial features.
“Yes. It’s a small place as you know, but perfect for our needs. How far a drive is it from here?”
“Drive? Not far, few minutes from here is a place to park. Rest of the way you need to go on foot. There’s not much of a path so I’ll take you there and you call me when you’re ready to leave.”
“Can we go soon? We’re anxious to get settled before the storm gets worse.”
The man eyed them each in turn.
“You do know about the wolf.”
Gogo paused as she lit a fresh cigarette, one brow raised.
“Wolf?” Gogo’s totem was the wolf so she was all ears. Radeo and Sash each paused drinking and stared nervously at the man.
“It’s just a fairy story…” Lass smiled at the man with a look that barely hid the condescension in her voice.
“NO!” He yelled and the entire place fell quiet and turned to stare at the far table. For a few moments only the sound of the wind as it howled through various cracks and crevices in the old pub could be heard.
“It is no fairy story lass. It was the wolf that killed your lady friend. She was dragged into the forest from that very cabin never to be seen again. The only trace was a trail of blood and torn clothes and wolf tracks larger than any seen before or since.”
Lass grabbed a freshly lit cigarette from Radeo, took a drag and exhaled.
“My father told me she died in an accident while hiking.”
“Your father didn’t want to scare his wee daughter it sounds like. I’m asking you again, will you change your mind.”
Lass took another drag and through slowly blown smoke made eye contact with each of them. She suddenly smiled.
“I’m game. I still think it’s just a story and how exciting to be shooting in a scary place in the woods, with a wolf on the prowl.” Gogo laughed as she pronounced “wolf” with a “v” sound.
“I see you’re as obstinate as your family friend. I had to warn you. Get your things and let’s go at once so I can return to this warm fire as soon as possible.”
With a nod to the pub owner and his wife, he lead the girls out of the pub and into the strong wind and snow. They finished their cigarettes quickly and jumped into their car. The man started his car and they followed him south out of the village on a small road and then turned west on another.
Soon their lights panned across some buildings as the road ended and a driveway ran in front of them. He led them to the far end and stopped. They did the same and got out and gathered their backpacks and other luggage. After a few minutes they were ready and followed him along a faint path.
Despite the full moon above and their flashlights, they were barely able to see thirty or forty feet in any direction. The man moved with speed and confidence, clearly he knew the way. Within fifteen minutes, the path bent northwest and they soon approached a wall of trees. Soon they followed the dark path and the trees above hid the moon from them.
They shivered both from the cold and the trees creaked in the wind. They struggled to keep up and manage their belongings as their guide moved almost too fast. Occasionally, and with great irritation, he paused so they could catch up.
After ninety minutes, he stopped and pointed ahead. They all stood and stared into the darkness and at first saw nothing. Then one by one they realized that in the inky black ahead was a small clearing and cabin was barely visible in silhouette against the trees behind it.
“Your castle awaits ladies. The key is under the mat.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“It’s late and the snow is falling faster. I must turn back.”
The girls looked at each other nervously but what could they do? The man tipped his hat and turned without another word and soon faded from sight behind them. They started forward again as they shivered and their hearts raced. It seemed to take a long time to reach the cabin, unlock the door and get inside. But at last they were safe.
Hours later, the girls were huddled in front of a roaring fire as they drank coffee, shared cigarettes and shivered. Though the cabin was sturdy, the wind outside was still able to rattle the doors and windows. Lass had brought some marshmallows and they dipped them into the flames, let them ignite, slowly burn and blew them out when they were nice and crispy.
“I haven’t had roasted marshmallows in years,” said Radeo.
“So good,” Sash said with a smile as she consumed another one.
Gogo stood and headed towards the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine. She selected a red and as she started to turn she glanced out the window over the sink. A security light on the rear of the house did its best to illuminate the small back yard and dense pack of trees that filled the view beyond. Gogo felt a pang of fear and stared at the trees directly out from the window. She had thought she’d seen a shadowy figure move behind a tree and out of view.
She waited and saw nothing but snow whipped on the wind and the branches of trees that swayed like giant arms with long bony fingers. After a few moments, she convinced herself her imagination had gotten the best of her. Gogo looked to her left she saw a door that lead from the end of the kitchen to the back yard. She walked over, turned the deadbolt and fastened the chain lock. Now that she felt more secure she returned to the main room, bottle in hand. Outside, one of the shadows between the trees moved quickly and against the wind.
“What took you so long?” Lass saw something odd in Gogo’s face.
“It’s nothing… I spooked myself. I thought I saw someone in the woods, but it was just shadows.”
The words had barely left her full lips when the sound of the wind was drowned out by a sudden, unearthly howl that vibrated in their chests. The four girls looked at each other with wide eyes.
“What the fuck was that?” Radeo stood and started to pace nervously.
“The wind?” Sash sounded like she didn’t believe herself.
“You’re right, what else…”
Another howl erupted from somewhere in the woods but closer. It was unmistakably the howl of a wolf. Though none had ever actually heard a wolf howl in the wild it sounded like it was coming from something enormous. They huddled together by the hearth in the center of the room as every sound seemed magnified a hundred times.
“Is there a weapon in this place?” Radeo tried to think logically.
Before anyone could answer, they heard a crash and loud noises from the woods beyond the front door. As they clung to each other, Gogo’s curiosity got the better of her. She broke from the others, put down the wine bottle she still had in her grasp, and slowly approached the front door.
“Gogo get back here!” Lass was terrified and didn’t really want to know what was outside the front door.
Gogo made her way to the door and then slowly inched over to the one window on the front of the cabin. It was small and to the left of the front door. Slowly her left eye passed the edge of the window and she could see the front yard. As in the back, a single security light cut through the darkness. She could see heavy snowfall, the surrounding trees and the full moon barely visible in the distance just above the tree tops.
Nothing else seemed to move and she felt relieved when she saw something strange. The ground was covered with several inches of snow undisturbed like a blanket in front of the house. But there was something else. A set of large tracks came from the woods almost out of view to the right. Gogo felt fear rise again inside her and her heart started to race. The tracks lead to the front of the house to the right and ended out of view. She took a step back and froze when she heard what sounded like a growl and movement along the narrow porch.
She turned to her terrified friends and pointed to the front door and said quietly “There’s something out there.”
All three stared past her as their eyes grew wider and Lass screamed.
Gogo’s head whipped around to see a massive black wolf’s head in the window. Its fangs exposed, it had the look of a hungry smile. Gogo stumbled backward and the wolf’s head arced back and let out another howl. Now much closer to them, they covered their ears and screamed. Gogo made it back to them and they huddled together as the wolf finished, turned once more to them and darted past the window out of sight.
“What do we do?” Radeo shivered and Sash held her tightly.
Gogo and Lass looked at each other and shrugged.
“We stay in here where it’s warm and safe.”
A sudden bang from the rear of the house made them all jump and scream. Something had just struck the back door, but the solid wood appeared to hold. From the darkness, another howl erupted and seemed to swirl in the wind around them. For the next few minutes they heard scratches, thuds and more howls all around and above them.
They then heard sounds from the front porch that came to a stop outside the front door. They thought they could hear the massive wolf sniff around the frame and they began to back away through the room to the kitchen. They had to stop and cover their ears as another ear-shattering howl shook the room. This was followed by a heavy thud against the front door.
The wolf charged and battered the front door and they scrambled into the kitchen to find a weapon or escape out the back into the woods if needed. Before they could say or do anything, the front door crashed open. Gogo couldn’t help but peek around the corner and saw a giant black wolf in the doorway, steam coming from its nostrils. Bitterly cold wind and snow burst through the room around it.
At that moment, the back door burst open and someone entered in a rush. It was Angus with a large axe in his right hand.
“I told you girls not to come here. Just like your friend. She wouldn’t listen either and I had to make her leave.”
The girls’ brief excitement to see him quickly faded. His last words hung in the icy air and frightened them. His eyes turned completely black and as he smiled a mouth full of fangs was exposed.
“I thought I took care of her that night, but she got away. Tonight I’m going to take care of her once and for all. These are my woods not hers. But first, I’m going to deal with you four.”
As they watched, his hair grew longer and his features altered until before them stood a man that was a wolf, but still a man. His height and muscles had both increased and he towered over them. He let out a howl and lifted his axe. The girls screamed and turned to be confronted by the black wolf. It stood in the doorway with hackles raised, ears down low, and massive fangs exposed. The girls were trapped and hugged each other tightly.
The wolf ran towards them and Lass who was closest screamed. Without thinking, Gogo pushed her friend away and swung at its face with a fist. The beast was too fast for her and caught her hand in its jaws. Gogo screamed and the wolf locked eyes with her. Gogo felt a stabbing pain and then a sudden rush of heat running through her entire body. She collapsed and the wolf released her hand. The others rushed to her and looked from one attacker to the other. The wolf turned its head to one side seemingly confused and then turned to the man wolf with a growl.
He had watched all of this with apparent glee and barked at the wolf. The wolf braced itself and launched at the man wolf. They collided and fell through the open rear door and into the yard. Sash ran and watched the epic battle rage back and forth and then into the woods. For a few minutes they could all hear crashes and howls from the darkness.
Then a violent shriek filled the air. Sash watched as a figure emerged from the woods. The man wolf walked towards them, axe slung on his right shoulder and she could see he carried something in his left hand. Sash backed away and joined the girls on the floor by Gogo. A moment later he entered, covered in blood, terrible wounds and torn clothing. He put the axe down and smiled as he lifted the bloody head he carried.
Lass screamed as she saw the dead eyes of her family’s friend and gaping mouth. Angus threw the head at them and it landed just beyond and bounced across the floor. The girls cried and screamed as the man picked up his axe.
“Now where were we? I’ve worked up such an appetite.”
Gogo’s eyes snapped open and she gasped. The girls turned to her in shock as she sat up. The man paused in confusion and watched with anger as Gogo changed before all of them. Her eyes turned completely black, her body grew in height and muscle, and her teeth and nails extended. She leapt to her feet, stretched and looked at Angus as she began to growl. The sound rumbled in the other girls’ chests.
“I feel…strong…”
“You bitch… I’m going to tear all of you apart!” Angus barked and glared at her enraged.
He opened his mouth to say something more, but Gogo leapt and landed on him. Her mouth opened she dug deep into his neck tearing it open. Blood sprayed her face and the walls as she hopped down and grabbed him with long nails that dug into his chest. She spun him once and tossed him with ease into the backyard. She picked up his axe and ran out after him.
The girls watched from the doorway as she finished him off with a whirlwind of axe blows. Finished, Gogo dropped the axe, lifted her head and howled at the moon. Turning, she made her way back to them, and the girls backed away in fear. Smiling she approached and kissed each one in turn.
“I need a smoke.”
She left them and returned to the main room, sat in front of the fireplace, lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before she slowly exhaled towards the ceiling. She turned to her friends who watched from the kitchen doorway and smiled lustfully.
“So…who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?”
One by one the girls approached nervously. Gogo smiled, finished her cigarette and looked from one to the other. The winter air howled around and through the house. Their screams were barely audible over the wind. Soon Lass, Radeo and Sash would awaken and Gogo would lead her pack out and into an unsuspecting world.
“Lupus in Fabula” is Latin for “Wolf in the Fable.”
Robert Ropars (@RobertRopars) is a Chicago based horror author, liberal/progressive, Doctor Who fanatic and bullying surTHRIVEor. You can read more of his stories via Amazon, Kindle and Nook. For more, visit his WordPress Library.
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