Savage Tales

his genius, but then the stars begin to breed out of control. They return to our universe flooding it with light, killing us all and turning the entire universe into endless light and bloody death.
    Listening to Michael Nobb answer questions about his book, I realized that he had taken a completely different angle with his book. I hated him for this. He had subverted all meaning from my system, and he would be made to pay. I made a commitment to myself: If Michael Nobb didn't release an alternate version of Fields of Star Corn by the next sci-fi convention in the tri-state area – a version more in line with my vision – then he would meet death at my hands.
    I didn't want to do this, but I needed some direction in my life and this seemed the only avenue for expressing my rage.
    Months passed and I fell into a deep funk. Initially I allowed Michael Nobb to carry on his affairs as usual, but as time rolled on I felt a moral responsibility to at least suggest a revision to Fields of Star Corn more in line with my ideas, to save him from an untimely death. I wrote him letters. Three or four hundred, if I recall correctly. I stopped counting, and the arrogant cuss never once graced me with a reply – unless the postal system failed in its duty – and I grew a bit bitter and felt that he might actually deserve to die.
    When the next convention rolled around and I had gathered a year's more wrinkles and grays, I looked over the guest list. Michael Nobb, initially slated to appear, bowed out at the last minute due to "pneumonia" (clearly a euphemism for cowardice).
    Rather than pursue him further, I decided to grant mercy and let him live. I would take my energy elsewhere. More important projects etc.

BL ACK SUN

    As they walked through the Sahara with its bleary mask smeared across the sky, their mouths sealed shut to prevent any more water from evaporating, their paces dragged out of the lingering fat attached to their bony frames, he and her, they began to unwind, descend, and crumble into an asymmetrical dune. They fell together as one, each one supporting the other so that the slightest deviation in their equilibrium led to their collapse, like a rickety old building.
    They landed side by side, holding the other's hand, and staring up into the sky. It was an ocean of blue, a bag that covered their face except for the brightest object in their universe, a force so powerful that if fed an entire planet. Its heat and light gave them life. It was killing them.
    And there it was: black.
    The sun had turned black. They stared into it. It had taken on its inverse and from it they could not turn away.
    The black sun.

    He had been born many years before, in 1942. His mother had slept with the mail carrier while her husband was away at war. She had fretted about how to tell her husband she was pregnant, since the math clearly did not align with his time with her. But then he died and it was no longer an issue.
    The boy grew up fatherless except for the many "boyfriends" who came to see his mother, new ones all the time. He heard sounds that scared him. It was only later when he began to read the macabre tales of H.P. Lovecraft that he realized his mother and her boyfriends were making arcane sacrifices to arcane Elder Gods. Lovecraft told of how these beings slid into our dimension preternaturally to feast on human souls in a manner that we would never truly comprehend. The screams of his mother and these men was clearly their sacrificial moans.
    As he grew older, he knew he had to get away from the malignant influence of these beings, and when he was twelve he did just that, hopping on a train that went to faraway New York. Along the way he met strange men who seemed different from other people. They didn’t have jobs and lived to drink and sing and be merry around campfires. They smelled bad, but so did the boy after a while.
    When he came to New York he found a restaurant that served spaghetti, which he had always loved, and he asked them for some. They told him to go away. He asked again and they told him he would have to work for it. He began to wash dishes. At the end of the day they gave him some money. Not much, but some. The woman behind the counter asked him where he lived.
    "I don’t live anywhere," he said.
    "What do you mean?" she said.
    "I just got here and don't know anyone. I don't live anywhere."
    "Well, you can stay at my house tonight."
    She was pretty, so he said yes.
    Her name was Angie. She lived