Multiplex Fandango

MULTIPLEX FANDAGO

by
Weston Ochse

This eBook edition published 201
1
by Dark Regions Press
as part of Dark Regions Digital
.

Dark Regions Press

300 E. Hersey St. STE 10A
 

Ashland
,
OR
97520
 

www.darkregions.com

http://www.darkregions.com

Text © 2011 by Weston Ochse

Cover art © 2011 by Vincent Chong

Editor, Norman L. Rubenstein

Editor and Publisher, Joe Morey

Cover and Interior Design By

Stephen James Price

http://www.BookLooksDesign.blogspot.com
Premium signed and limited print editions available at:
http://www.darkregions.com/books/multiplex-fandango-by-weston-ochse

Multiplex Fandango
is subtitled “A Weston Ochse Reader” for good reason. This collection contains a comprehensive representation of short fiction and novellas by the Bram Stoker award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, including his recent powerful Stoker finalist short story, “The Crossing of Aldo Rey” and his brilliant Stoker finalist novella,
Redemption Roadshow
, as well as acclaimed favorites, “Catfish Gods” and “
Big
Rock
Candy
Mountain
.” Also included in this omnibus volume of sixteen short stories and novellas are six original new works of short fiction written especially for this collection including such future classics as “Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” “Low Men Weeping,” and the stunning, “City Of Joy.”

Multiplex Fandango
is, as prominent author Joe R. Lansdale notes in his Introduction,

“…
about to burst onto the scene like a comet streaking across the sky, entering our atmosphere, leaving in its smoking wake skywriting from its tail that says: WES OCHSE, HE’S GOOD…The bottom line is this. Wes takes very odd things and finds their connections; his juxtapositions are amazing and original and just the sort of thing I like. This is a book that could almost have been written for me. I can’t give it higher compliment than that.”

Celebrated author Edward Lee has this to say of Weston Ochse:

"Make way for a new powerhouse on the block. Hard work and formidable skills have already shot-gunned Ochse to the front of the genre's exciting new pack of writers. With creative brawn, brains, and balls, the guy's locked, loaded, and switched to full-auto, blazing away with his unique and original brand of modern horror, one of the few new writers, I'd say, who will help re-define the field for the future."

MULTIPLEX FANDANGO

A Weston Ochse Reader

“
Tarzan Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
”
© 2009
, “
Fugue on the
Sea
of
Cortez
”
© 2007,
“Forever Beneath the Scorpion Tree” © 2010, “High Desert Come to Jesus” © 2009, “Low Men Weeping” © 2006 and “City of
Joy
” © 2009
are original, previously unpu
b
lished stories.

“
22 Stains in the Jesus Pool
”
© 2004 Originally published in
Feral Fiction

“
Big
Rock
Candy
Mountain
”
© 2010
Dark Discoveries

“
The Last Great Love of
Cary
Grant
”
© 2006
Insidious Reflections

“
Catfish Gods
”
© 1999 Published in
Scary Rednecks and Other Inbred Horrors
by Darktales Publications

“
The Secret Lives of Heroes
”
© 2006
Horror Garage

“
Hiroshima
Falling
”
© 2007
A Dark and Deadly Valley
Anthology, Silverthought Press

“
The Crossing of Aldo Ray
”
© 2009
(Bram Stoker Award Finalist)
,
The Dead That Walk
Anthology, Ulysses Press

“
The Smell of Leaves Burning in Winter
”
© 2003 Published in
Appalachian Galapagos
by Medium Rare LLC

“
A Day in the Life of a Dust Bunny
”
© 2002
Asylum 2
Anthology, Darktales Publications

“
Redemption Roadshow
”
©2008
(Bram Stoker Award Finalist)
, Burning Effigy Press

Also by Weston Ochse

Novels:

Scarecrow Gods

Recalled to
Life

The Golden Thread

Empire of Salt

Blaze of Glory

Novellas:

Natural Selection

Redemption Roadshow

Nancy
Goats

Vampire Outlaw of the Milky Way

Lord of the Lash and Our Lady of the Boogaloo

The Loup Garou Kid

7

The Short Story

The short story as a medium is both terrible and beautiful.
A good story is like a sharp blade.
It’s a swift thrust to the chest. It’s a slow cut to the arm. It’s a pinprick on the cheek. It stings and bites, and when the blood gets to flowing, we feel the warmth of it.

Hemingway can hurt you like that. He can slice you with a perfect sentence, or in the case of
“
Hills Like White Elephants
,
”
he can push the blade in so slowly you don’t even feel it until it’s too late.

Ray Bradbury wields a nasty blade as well. Beneath the exterior of this jovial aging Californian resides a bona
fide serial killer of the status quo. My expectations were forever skewered when I read
“
The Sound of Summer Running
”
and was introduced to Douglas Spalding,
Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes
, and the idea that summer is a time of eternal magic. I’m still searching for those shoes.

Joe Lansdale is a literary samurai. His dojo is the page. His two-fisted katana
swings completely
eviscerated my sense of what should be when I read
“
Night They Missed the Horror Show
”
and
“
On the Far Side of the
Cadillac
Desert
with Dead Folks
.
”
I didn’t know such cuts could be made. Frankly, I didn’t even see them coming.

There are so many other professional knife throwers: Flannery O’Connor with
“
Everything that Rises Must Converge
;
”
James Baldwin with
“
Sonny’s Blues
;
”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman with
“
The Yellow Wallpaper
;
”
Tim O’Brien with
“
The Things They Carried
;
”
Sherman Alexie with
“
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven;
”
and Thomas King with
“
Borders
,
”
to name but a few.

I’ve stood against the wall while each
author
hurled their blades, slicing me so many times I’ve lost count over the years. I don’t even bandage
my wounds
anymore. Instead, I stitch them with dental floss or bind the edges with staple
s
.
M
y skin
now doubles as
a
literary
road atlas
,
a Rand
McNally
version
of the Illustrated Man, able to share what I’ve read with other
s
by merely pointing at an elbow, a wrist or a rib.

Yes,
I’m lucky to have been cut so many times.

I
’ve been the
fortunate target for their hard-won enterprise.

And yet t
here are so many more short story masters
I’m waiting to be cut by
. These are but a few.
So for all of you I
’ve
named and for all of you I didn’t name, thank you for teaching me the wonders of the short story blade.

Thank you for cutting me so well.

Thank you for cutting me so deep.

Now it’s my turn to
staunch the blood and cut for
a
while.

Weston Ochse

Tarantula Grotto

Sonoran
Desert
 

June 2010

7

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my friends, readers and fans. All of you have inspired or helped me in some way especially those of you there in the early days of the cabal, like Doug Clegg, Brian Keene, Paul Legerski, Tim Lebbon, Mikey Huyck, Jamie Lachance, Kelly Laymon, F. Paul Wilson, Adam Niswander, Mike Oliveri, Wrath White, John Urbancik, James Futch, Feo Amante, Joe Nasisse, Drew Williams, Carlton Melnick, Maria Alexander, Rain Graves, Matt Schwartz, Ray Garton, Tom Piccirilli, Michelle Scalise, Jack Haringa, Simon Clark,
Chris Golden,
and
Jim Moore
. Last but not least, thanks to
Ed Lee
for his mentoring throughout the years,
who
I am certain
is
still flipping me off for that miserable
death march
across the hills of
San Francisco
.

Posthumous thanks goes
out to Dick Laymon.

Thank you Shane Staley, Larry Roberts, Roy Robbins and Jonathan Oliver for publishing my work throughout these years
; likewise to Denise Dumars and Bob Fleck for representing me
.

Thank you to Norm Rubenstein
for being a true fan, friend and editor
and
to
Joe Morey for believing in this project.

Most off all,
thanks to my wife, Yvonne Navarro, for
being that spark of desire behind every thought
, word and deed
.

7

HIGH
DESERT
COME TO JESUS

For

Joe Lansdale and Ray Bradbury