Tales of Misery and Imagination Part 1

TALES OF MISERY.

AND.

IMAGINATION.

SCOTT S. PHILLIPS.

THANKS TO:.

Scott Denning, Gail Gerstner-Miller, Shannon Hale, John Howard, Axel Howerton, Brian Jay Jones, Lloyd Kaufman, Jacob LaCivita, Victor Milan, John Jos. Miller, Anthony Trifiletti, Bob Vardeman and my Mom (who is not alphabetical and will surely thump me).

A big bonus thank you goes to Don Adams, who came up with the t.i.tle for the book you're now reading.

Special thanks to Jen Thumma, who lets me sit next to her on the couch.

My undying appreciation goes out to Nathan Long and Keith Rainville, who made this book look cool instead of like a slapped-together nightmare of incompetence.

SCOTT PHILLIPS: OUTSIDE IN.

"For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished gla.s.s."

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, "The Outsider"

One of the first stories in Scott Phillips' anthology TALES OF MISERY AND IMAGINATION is about sideshow freaks. That sets the table nicely.

The protagonists in these stories aren't just looking in at the great banquet of life from the outside with their noses pressed to the cold, cold window. It's more as if they're watching a feast in another dimension, another universe. Probably on TV. It's not that they're on the outside; it's that there's no obvious way for them to get in short of violating the laws of physics.

Some don't fit into the world around them because they don't care to. Some learn to wear their raggy specter-at-the-feast shrouds with defiant pride. But ultimately they can never really find a way to fit in. Because they're just different.

There are losers here. There are disappointments. And there are those who discover that, even after their teenage lives are warped irreparably out of shape from being taken for a ride by a carload of hot, dangerous babes that seem as if they could exist only at the intersection of Russ Meyer Lane and Tarantino Alley, even if they are themselves transformed by this experience, the next day the school bully will still punch them in the stomachs and take their Chee-tos.

And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, when confronted with a threat worthy of Stephen King in his less bombastic phases, it'll even turn out nerds can save the world. Or, y'know, not.

They slouch toward somewhere, Scott's protagonists, their pockets weighted down with snack foods, comic books, and the certainty of their own doom.

But what they don't do is whine. They may lament their fate. They surely do spend some time feeling sorry for themselves. But all the same they keep dragging themselves forward, one untied well-holed sneaker step at a time. Toward whatever fate awaits them. No matter what they say, they never altogether abandon hope. Are they closet optimists or merely deluded? You make the call.

Scott Phillips is a skinny, extended proposition who moves in a stilty kind of way. It's a trendy cliche to talk about people being "comfortable in their own skin." Scott isn't. Although he does still look d.a.m.ned at ease in the full KISS outfit, with makeup, that he made for himself years ago.

Don't worry about him. He still gets the girls. Such as his partner, the beautiful, still-waters-run-deep Jen. Maybe it's his goofy charm.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's because he displays the same kind of bone determination to keep on plugging as... well, as so many of his characters do.

Scott grew up obsessed with movies. He'll tell you so himself. At an early age he started doing his own monster makeup and effects. Things freewheeled right out of control from there.

Not content to pa.s.sively consume he began writing and even drawing his own comics, often in cohort with longtime friend John Howard. They and sundry other artists published their own magazines, including a series called Leaping Weasel Comics. Eventually they sold a series called h.o.r.n.y Biker s.l.u.ts to underground comix publisher Last Gasp Eco-Funnies, which won them a degree of notoriety.

And then one day Scott went off to Hollywood to break into the Big Time of movie-making.

He succeeded in getting a feature film made. (That's freakin' hard, people!) Released under the name Drive it starred Kadeem Hardison, second-generation martial artist and actor Mark Dacascos, and a twenty-year-old Brittany Murphy, and was directed by Steve w.a.n.g. While it went direct-to-video it made noise among hard-core movie fans. And still makes it; check it out on Amazon.com. Rumor had it that Drive was the top-selling VHS flick in Russia for a while, and that Gullermo del Toro acknowledged at San Diego Comic-Con a few years back it influenced him in making Blade II.

But in due course Scott's heart was broken and he was kicked to the curb. Or back to Albuquerque; whatever. The same old Hollywood story.

Now, it's not as if he's not good at writing scripts. It's not even as if his crazy genius wasn't widely recognized. It was. It's that Hollywood is run by deranged children with the attention span of the half-life of Ununquadium.

Scott came home with a raft of great stories about serving time in Hollywood. Well, they're great as, y'know, stories. It hurts to hear them and realize he lived through them. His interactions with Steven Seagal, whom he once described as "a fat, delusional b.a.s.t.a.r.d," would make a movie in themselves.

Here's one tale: one crazy-funny bit he wrote into Drive was a continuing gag of characters watching a popular TV show, called (if memory serves) Willie the Einstein Ape. Willie was a universal genius, always performing brain surgery or negotiating ends to thermonuclear standoffs between Great Powers. Of course, being a chimp, Willie couldn't talk; he'd just grunt and screech and wave his arms. But all the humans around him would respond as if he'd just said something profound and wonderful: You're right, Willie, it is the green wire! You've saved us again!

Well, one of the money guys involved in the production it's Hollywood; don't you just know there're always those guys involved was obsessed with chimps and the sundry plights thereof. And he totally lost his cheese. They couldn't use a real chimp! Terrible! Terrible!

After abortive subst.i.tutions such as an animatronic ape were scotched on grounds of being budget-busting and also totally r.e.t.a.r.ded (this was the mid-1990s, before the heyday of cheap CGI that didn't look completely wretched) Willie the Einstein Ape was quietly taken behind the banana shed and humanely shot in the head.

To be replaced with . . . Walter the Einstein Frog! Who was basically this huge plastic frog with a colossal exposed brain. And he performed just like the late lamented simian superstar, except of course being a frog he had an even more limited range of vocalizations, and being plastic he wasn't much for the whole body language thing. Far less performing brain surgery. So instead he'd sit there and just kinda . . . pulsate. And again, everybody would respond as if he were a mixture of Steven Hawking, Dr. Phil, and MacGyver.

And it did work: give it that. Unlike many of the changes the suits forced on Scott's highly original, not to mention entertaining, script. Not as wonderfully as Scott's original idea would've. But hey: it sure looks as if the Futurama people boosted the idea for their ever popular Hypnotoad from Walter, now, doesn't it?

That's one tale from Scott's Hollywood saga. There are many, many more . . . and they're his stories. He knows them best and tells them incomparably. What he really needs to do is put 'em together in another book. Which would really rip some hide, not like those "kiss-and-tell" books by Famous Screenwriters that actually consist of them kissing the behinds of those with the power to throw them more money in boxcar loads, Incredible Hulk-style.

And so Scott's personal story came to a sad and sorry end, right?

Not hardly.

Instead he came back more determined than ever to tell his stories his way. He made movies on his own, including indie cla.s.sics The Stink of Flesh prominently featuring the most beautiful Nekkid Zombie Captive Chick ever and Gimme Skelter. In filming the latter he displayed an amazing Tom Sawyer-like ability to talk people all over the country to come and help him make a movie for free, including the original Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen (a h.e.l.l of a nice guy, by the way.) Oh, plus he got still more d.a.m.ned good-looking women to take off their clothes for the camera. Scott's a man with a fine appreciation of production value.

Scott's also written a number of episodes for the TV series Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, currently airing on The CW.

In the dead-tree realm Scott cranked out a bunch of movie reviews for Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi, which got collected into a book called Unsafe on Any Screen, published by prolific Albuquerque writer and sometime actor in Scott's films, Robert E. Vardeman. Scott also wrote Friday The 13th: Church of the Divine Psychopath. Which is about what you think it is, except written with Scott's distinctively skewed perspective and dangerously radioactive prose.

And, uh, this one. Now he's taken the next step in telling his stories: taking control and publis.h.i.+ng the book you hold in your hands all by his lonesome. Some may sneer at that as vanity publis.h.i.+ng. I a.s.sure you, it's the future.

So here's where I should do a detailed round-up of the stories in this collection. Screw that. Told you enough already. Just read 'em.

The real reason to read these stories isn't any deep insight into the human condition (not to say you won't find that). It's because they are d.a.m.ned entertaining. Scott can write. His narrative blasts and rattles down the road, chasing rabbits and stray chickens out of its path, while his dialogue sprays the countryside like full-automatic fire.

Someday Scott Phillips'll be widely hailed as the Tasmanian Devil o' sheer creative madness that he is. What I'm asking you to do, here, is your part to see that isn't posthumously.

So: buy this book, if you're just now scoping it out. Tell everyone about Tales of Misery and Imagination. Tell everyone about Scott. Encourage your pals and your family to buy the book. Give it away on festive occasions.

You won't just be chipping away at the ossified edifice of Big Entertainment.

You'll be sharing in a.s.s-kicking entertainment.

THE END!.

Victor Milan.

4/10/2009 1:47:54 PM.

Victor Milan is the award-winning, best-selling author of almost 100 novels, plus numerous short stories. He lives on Jupiter, walks on ditches, and may be the best writer you never heard of. Follow his adventures via http://www.VictorMilan.com/.

foreword.

In 1999, I was living in Los Angeles, making my way through the Hollywood mill - "taking meetings" (as they say) at every production company in town, keeping my fingers crossed that I'd catch a break. I'd had a screenplay produced and had enjoyed a few paying gigs on other projects that never got made, but overall, seemed to be getting nowhere at a very slow rate of travel. I was paying the bills (well, some of them) by writing - ahem - "exotic" stories for a handful of girlie magazines, and slowly but surely, I began to realize that I was enjoying writing those tales of filth more than I was enjoying the desperate struggle to crank out a high-concept screenplay that some producer might bite on. It wasn't the subject matter; it was the freedom of writing pretty much whatever I felt like (although those stories had to contain certain elements of naughtiness, of course) without the constraints of the three-act structure or plot points or midpoints and all the other junk the movie biz insists upon.

And so I sat down and wrote a short story, my first minus an appearance by the Beast with Two Backs.

It sucked.

The thing was a fairly pathetic mess based on the obsessive feelings I was still harboring for the girlfriend who had recently dumped me for the Art Director on Hustler's Honey Buns magazine (and I just re-read it moments ago, so believe me when I say it still sucks).

But d.a.m.n, was it a pleasure to write.

I wrote another one, ent.i.tled Six Girls and a Dozen Donuts. That one is in this collection. I don't think it sucks at all, but then again, what do I know?

After Six Girls, I kept on writing short stories whenever I wasn't working on a script or a treatment or an "exotic" story (or a novel that's gonna be available soon). The best of 'em are also in this collection. For the record, not a one of these stories ever managed to find a home anywhere before now - every last one of 'em bounced from magazine to magazine and editor to editor, sometimes getting very close but never quite nosing their way into published life. In most cases, they weren't "genre" enough for whatever market I was trying to sell them to - too funny to be horror, too weird to be "literature," etc. They are what they are, and I kinda figure they've earned a shot at being seen.

Despite occasional periods of burn-out, I've continued to write screenplays, sometimes even getting paid for it - most recently on Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, a kids' TV series that airs on the CW Network. My career writing the "exotic" stuff ended a few years ago - my editor decided that the readers couldn't enjoy themselves properly (again, ahem ) because my girls were "too mean." I'm working on more short stories now (and another novel), and I'm glad I pulled this pile of yarns out and gave them another look. They're kind of the mutant children living in the bas.e.m.e.nt of my career (which, admittedly, is very close to being all bas.e.m.e.nt). I hope you'll give 'em a chance and maybe scritch 'em under the chin a little. I'd like to think they're good kids, even if they do look a little funny.

Scott Phillips.

Bernalillo, NM.

March, 2009.

I'm not inclined to get too deep into "explaining" any of the stories in this collection, but Stedman Eats It was partly inspired by a crummy stretch I went through after being dumped by my girlfriend in 1999, when I somehow got it into my head that my nerdiness was the cause of my failed relations.h.i.+ps and I tried to reject a lot of the stuff that I'd loved since I was a kid. Fortunately I got over that c.r.a.p and re-embraced all things dorky. Relations.h.i.+ps might come and go, but Mego STAR TREK action figures are forever.

In any case, I never submitted STEDMAN anywhere, and other than being available as a download at Bob Vardeman's CENOTAPH ROAD store (which you can check out at www.robertevardeman.com), this is the first time it's been out in the world.

STEDMAN EATS IT.

I found it when I left for work in the morning: Stedman eats it, scribbled right across the d.a.m.n street number with a black marker. An unpleasant visitor from my youth. They misspelled it, though it's Steadman. And I'd just repainted that mailbox not three weeks before.

What inspired it, I couldn't tell you. I'm a quiet guy, don't stir the fudge if I can help it. That's why I bought the house in the valley three bedrooms sitting on a good-sized chunk of land. I don't like people being too close to me. Trees are good. Squirrels are acceptable. People suck. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anti-social guy: there were friends, and plenty of them. Not so much anymore, though. Now I have a.s.sociates.

I just became... I don't know tired might be the best word. Failed romance, dreams put on hold and an endless stream of crummy apartments (shared with extended families of overly-large c.o.c.kroaches) just took some of the guts out of me. Besides, thirty-seven, that's getting up there. Time to settle down, realize you're getting older.

The down payment came from the sale of my comic book collection, if you can believe it. Spider-Man, The Justice League, Uncanny X-Men... I loved them when I was a kid, but when I flipped through a few before I sold them, I was just embarra.s.sed. What the h.e.l.l did I ever see in the stupid things? As I say, we all grow up, and now they were just beef on the hoof. The house had done wonders for my state of mind, giving me a quiet place to retreat to, escape from the plethora of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the outside world.

Lately, though, I'd been suffering what seemed like an endless series of monumental pains in the a.s.s the electrical system in my car had inexplicably gone haywire, sending every light on the thing into seizure-inducing fits of flas.h.i.+ng; the overtaxed sewer system chose my house to expel most of its contents into, flooding the insides of my bathroom walls with reeking human waste; and the entire corner of my adobe storage shed had crumbled, dropping a mountainous pile of mud and rotting straw onto the path to my front door. Any one of these disasters I could've dealt with, but all three within the same week? And now some little b.a.s.t.a.r.d was scrawling disparaging graffiti on my mailbox.

I stood at the edge of the road glowering at my vandalized property until my sort-of friend and sure-as-s.h.i.+t co-worker Ethan drove up. He'd been driving me to and from work since my car went in the shop, and his dull attempts at conversation were wearing me down. Hard enough to drag your b.u.t.t out of bed in the morning without having to face someone like that. At least I could avoid him once we were in the office.

His car rolled to a stop directly in front of the mailbox and Ethan leaned across the seat, jabbing his gla.s.ses back up on his nose in the cla.s.sic one-fingered nerd move. "What happened, kids get ya?" he said, as if the whole thing was a big joke.

That's when I realized he shouldn't have seen it, not from the direction he came from. I'd been so infuriated that I hadn't even looked at the other side of the d.a.m.n box yet. I quickly circled the post, and sure as h.e.l.l, there was more of it. Only here, it just said Stedman in huge, shaky letters, as if a r.e.t.a.r.d or an old man had written it, then realized there wasn't enough s.p.a.ce to get to the good stuff. A first draft.

As I settled into the car, Ethan made another lame joke about the mailbox, then veered off into an endless commentary on some G.o.dd.a.m.n TV show he'd watched the night before. I didn't see it, I wanted to say: I was busy shoveling someone else's s.h.i.+t off of my bathroom floor.

My workday was spent processing very important doc.u.ments no one would ever bother to look at a mindless, soul-sucking, unrewarding and incredibly high-paying monkeyjob, made worse by my inability to stop picking at the scabs in my head. Stedman eats it. Kids in school used to write it on my locker not out of meanness, but as a sort of shared joke. We all picked on each other like that. All in fun, back then. Now it just meant ha.s.sles and wasted time. Who would pull that s.h.i.+t? Why? h.e.l.l, I never spoke to my neighbors, and besides, the closest one was a half-mile away. There was no reason for it.

I wasn't even aware the hours had pa.s.sed when Ethan showed up at my desk, grinning like an ape, car keys jangling in his hand. The sight inspired me to call the garage again, on the off chance they'd figured out what was wrong with my car. Anything to be rid of this guy's company morning and night.

You can imagine the relief I felt to be behind the wheel of my own vehicle once again, waving to Ethan as he pulled out of the garage parking lot ahead of me. Adios, halfwit. I flicked the turn signal on, relis.h.i.+ng the hollow click-click as the little arrow flashed. A loose ground wire, the mechanic said it was. And it took them three days to find this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but open hood, look around, see loose wire, fix problem, yes?

Stopping at a hardware store, I picked up a few things I'd need to deal with the wreckage of my bathroom (a small port-a-potty, for one, since anything I put into my toilet would only resurface later in the wall) and a can of spray paint. Dinner was a Lotaburger with green chili, wolfed down as I drove home. The stench in my house wasn't conducive to fine dining, I can a.s.sure you.

I pulled off the road into my driveway and got out of the car, listening to the metal ball rattle in the can of spray paint as I shook it. A quick coat of gloss black eliminated the offending graffiti on the mailbox.

Satisfied, I returned to the car and drove the fifty yards or so to my house, where my jaw fell into my lap.

The screen door was hanging by one hinge, like a loose tooth begging to be torn free. Scrawled across the front door was what looked like the name Ray, written in that same shaky hand that had defaced my mailbox.

I stared at the dangling screen wavering in the evening breeze. Taunting me.

Erupting from the car, I stomped to the front door, grabbing the loose screen to examine the damage. The screws holding the screen's hinge had been torn out of the doorframe, leaving jagged splinters of wood in their wake.

Then I saw the footprints.

At least two sets of small tracks bare feet trailed through the mud left behind from the storage shed collapse.

Leading back and forth to my front door.

The screen's remaining hinge whimpered beneath its burden as I released the door. Bent over like a cartoon detective peering through a magnifying gla.s.s, I followed the footprints. They were distorted, misshapen, as if the feet that left them had slid a little to the side with every step.

I never thought I'd be the type to say it, but: G.o.dd.a.m.n kids. Stay offa my lawn.

The footprints faded away at the edge of the mud. I straightened, gazing out across my land, as if I'd spot the culprits hiding behind a tree, struggling to contain their laughter. Nothing but shadows strewn by the retreating sun.

Turning, I crouched to get a closer look at the nearest print. Whoever the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were, they sure had messed-up feet. Didn't look like enough toes. No arches, either. Flat, weird little feet. Looking back over my shoulder at the darkening yard once again, I found myself wis.h.i.+ng for closer neighbors.

Emergency or not, the plumber wasn't coming until the following day. I spent a couple hours half-heartedly making whatever repairs I could in the bathroom, accompanied by the small mammal that was gnawing a hole through my guts. The sick feeling that my house had been targeted first the mailbox, then the front door was duking it out with the even sicker feeling that it probably wasn't over yet.

And those footprints...

Wrong. They were just wrong.

As I tore out the last chunks of sewage-soaked wallboard and tossed them into a garbage bag, I stared at my reflection in the curtainless bathroom window. I saw my hand inch upward towards the light switch, wanting to stop it but unable to, like I was watching someone in a horror movie.