There's a year-end section where Salon Bloggers showcase their favorite piece of the year. Mark Hoback (proprietor of the V.O.) has a chapter from his novel "Green" that will make you want to read the whole thing. Maxine Dailey revisits James Dean's birthday and the "ladies in black".

Salon Bloggers, at least this selection of them, are varied and talented (yeah, I know I'm in there, and I am grateful to be included) but I especially recommend two of my favorites who have done especially well this week. Susan McNerney's "Pesky the Rat" is one of the most inventive bits of political satire since Pogo, with a well designed format and great cartoons. This week's special is a story about the Eye of Sauron getting busted for shoplifting at Walmart. Gentleman George Mahood gets a visit at the bookstore from Schlagowsky and I get some book titles that I am compelled to find.

There's more at the V.O., there's always more and Mark has fashioned a damned interesting online magazine.

Go there.
1:26:33 PM    Comments?()  

The devil spoke to Ruth last night.

Just try to shut him up. It seems every time her head sinks into the soft cotton of her pillow she catches a trace of that spice and brimstone or hears the gentle, exotic clunk of the woodchimes in her room that he's fond of playing with. The sun hits the bottom of the hill outside her window and there he is, perched like an anxious cat at the foot of her bed. He never wakes her on his own, just stares until she gets the message and snaps away from her foggy mist of drifting, peaceful dreams.

"Oh hey Ruth," he'll say as if not having realized that she'd been sleeping there (as if she ever sleeps anywhere else). "Feel like having a chat?"

"Mmph," she'll say, squashing the pillow over her face.

She doesn't know why she'd expected Satan to be from the bayou (the idea having appeared in childhood and stuck, despite the popular belief of a huge, powerful voice with no trace of an accent) but he'd surprised her with a crisp, cool Canterbury twist. It was compelling at first, if only for the listening value (she's always seen voices as giving everything away about a person) not to mention the strange excitement involved with talking to Satan, but the novelty wore off quickly.

". . . and it's not as though I was being an angel either, but he could at least have shown that he respected me as a person . . . it just feels like no one listens anymore."

"Mmsure," she'll murmur, barely awake. "Whatever, Satan."

"And my mother called again today."

She would find concept of Satan[base ']s mother compelling were it not four in the morning. "Hm. Zat so."

"She's fixed on this whole marriage thing..."

Sometimes she will be startled awake by the sounds of a crash or rattling cookware in her scrap of a kitchen. She'll grab the thick baseball bat that she keeps leaned by her bed, crouching down with her bare feet sinking into my fluffy white carpet. Stepping as quietly as she can across the plane of her tenth floor apartment, she'll poke her head into the kitchen and see him looking helplessly down at a shattered puzzle of porcelain or blue glass, having broken one of her mugs while trying to make hot chocolate.

"Sorry," he'll say as she patiently cleans up the mess. "What's with the Louisville Slugger, dear?" He'll reach above her to pull another cup from the cabinet.

"Oh nothing..." Ruth will sigh as she and Satan wage a silent battle over which of them will make the hot chocolate (it[base ']s no good trying to drink his -- it's always too hot).

Thinking about it, she supposes she prefers these nighttime visits rather than being surprised at work during the day. Her perfectly happy and boring desk job at Colin & Krupka Accounting is comforting, filled with stable numbers -- one of the few things in life that won't change behind her back. The thought of her mild job being disrupted by the spectral visit of the Supreme Demon is chilling and she can't imagine how she would explain things if her boss walked in on her having a conversation with Satan.

But why Ruth? She hadn't even believed in the existence of a devil from her teenage years on. The idea of malignant spirits, vengeful ghosts who infest themselves in human culture had made sense on some creepy, mystical level. However, any actual belief in a Hell, in a ruler of all that is hateful and unkind, seemed like nonsense, like superstition that had stuck for too long. Old habits die hard, not to mention belief structures -- she'd even read a book on the brain science and biology of belief, that these things are genetically imprinted in human psyche. Yet there he was, in full grin and goatee, usually clad in red pajamas.

The question of why the devil spends his time with her is puzzling. Though she doesn't hold the disposition of a librarian, she hasn't led a particularly wild life. There are no outstanding black spots on her record -- the only one that comes to mind happened in her junior year of college, a time when no one can be expected to do the right thing.

At a weekend party, the kind of dimly lit, crowded house event with loud music and lots of drinking, she'd tried smoking pot, lured by the easy, mellow attitude of her stoner friends and the oddly compelling smell of the herb -- nauseous sweet, like insect killer. When the joint was passed into her shaking hands and she drew in a breath, the noxious smoke filled her pores like sick Jello. Despite her instructions to hold the smoke in she coughed, expelling the brown-smelling smoke from her lungs. Her eyes and chest burned. She clambered to her feet with a choked apology and ran out of the room to her own where she immediately stripped, throwing her clothes into the wash. She spent the rest of the night in her pajamas, furiously brushing her teeth.

Since then she's been more or less a good girl. She'd expected the devil to bring it up, tease her about it if nothing more, but he seemed more interested in trivial things like sex and her parents and how much hell rocks... your basic pillow talk. In honesty, she barely listens anymore when he starts in with his nonsensical diatribes. Half the time she'll be assembling a grocery list or trying to count her heartbeats or fall asleep. Patiently, Ruth has listened to tirades on all the usual: God, sin, hate, damnation, the playoff game last night (he's a Yankee's fan... it figures), even his grandmum's banana bread recipe.

Three years she had been the unwilling companion of the ruler of Hell, and she'd sought far and wide for a way to be rid of him.

(copyright Kit Fox, 2002)
12:08:43 PM    Comments?()