Songs_of_the_Satyrs

Songs of the Satyrs

Edited By

Aaron J. French

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2015 by Aaron J. French

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN:  978-1-942712-24-4  (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-942712-25-1  (ebook)

JournalStone 2
nd
Edition:  February 27, 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Art & Design: Gary McCluskey

Edited by: Aaron J. French

Acknowledgements

I want to thank and dedicate this book to Jonathan Rex and Randy Reynolds for all those endless hours of inspiration. The idea for this book germinated with you two; it’s been a long road, but it has finally become real! I would also like to thank Stacey at Angelic Knight Press, Gene O’Neill, Dave Farland, Rhys Hughes, Steve Rasnic Tem, John Everson, Lisa Morton (for the prospectus), and Jessica at Wicked East Press for allowing me to get this project off the ground. And finally, I want to give a personal thank you to Jodi for all her hard work and help with the fantastic editing assistance and copyediting skills. This book wouldn’t be as good as it is without you, and I got to learn a lot, so thank you. To anyone I may have forgotten—dig in your hooves!

Aaron J. French  -  February 2014

SONNET 129

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had

Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

~Shakespeare 

SONG OF THE SATYRS

When I am debating whether to purchase an anthology, I give little weight to the theme or shared universe or cover illustration of the book. First, I scan the list of contributors. This weighs heavily in my decision to buy the book or not. Do I trust and respect the various writers who have contributed their time and effort here? Occasionally, there may be one writer in the list of contributors that I admire so much that I will purchase everything with his/her byline. That happens very rarely anymore, because I’m picky and that list of must-have writers is very short; and those writers I really like mostly write longer stuff—novellas and novels. But there is another more important factor weighing in on this buy-or-not decision. It is the name(s) of the editor or editors who have brought this anthology together. Now, I realize many readers often pay scant attention to the editors of anything, unless it is Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, or a name of that stature. But I think when buying an anthology the editor(s) should be of primary significance.

Often, the best editors are just
that
:
they are only editors (e.g. Ellen Datlow). Occasionally a writer I admire will also edit something for some reason (Gardner Dozois). But being a good writer doesn’t necessarily qualify someone to be a good editor. Because being a good editor requires a number of characteristics. Damon Knight was a good writer, but perhaps a better editor. He said that when an editor placed his name on his book he was selling
good judgment
. Good judgment being the primary characteristic of a great editor. Not automatically buying stuff from your friends or from
big
names in the field. I know T.E.D. Klein once bounced a Stephen King story for the
Twilight Zone Magazine
. Damon bounced a number of stories by well-known writers for his ORBIT series, including one by Harlan Ellison—a story that won major awards. Damon said that even had he advance knowledge regarding the reader/critical reception of a story, he wouldn’t change a thing. He didn’t bounce Robert Silverberg’s Nebula-winning short story, “Passengers,” but he required Silverberg to revise it
five
times. So included with that judgment characteristic is
integrity
. A really good editor realizes he does himself/the big-name writer no good by publishing something of inferior quality.

No question that Aaron J. French is a fine young writer. Elsewhere I’ve mentioned that one way to judge the health of a genre is to chart the number of emerging good young writers. Right now we have good young writers popping up everywhere in dark fiction. Aaron is one of these writers, on the crest of a breaking new wave.

But the question here is about Aaron J. French’s qualities as an editor. I have been in one anthology he edited, and have read another. I’ve just completed reading
Songs of the Satyrs
. I don’t know if Aaron automatically buys stuff from his friends, but I suspect he doesn’t. My sampling of Aaron J. French’s editorial efforts indicates to me that he is indeed a very fine editor. He puts together good books, including the one you hold in your hands.

So write down Aaron J. French and place his name with other reminders—on your fridge? Then read everything he writes and buy the anthologies he’s edited because the guy exercises good
judgment
.

Gene O’Neill

December 2012

Napa Valley, California

Dying—he was in sufficient pain to suppose—James Bourne lay in the back of Pascal’s ridiculous half van, his Kangaroo, being driven along the road east from Aigues-Mortes. He had not been to the local hospital often enough to be certain, but he had a strong suspicion Pascal was not headed in its direction. At a guess, they were racing for Provence, for the Camargue proper. That was all right: he could die there as well as anywhere.

***

The worst part was his teeth. As much as anyone could, Bourne had become accustomed to the pain in his shoulders, his hips, his knees. He had taught himself how to move in ways that did not add to his discomfort, and when such discomfort was inevitable, how to move quickly and calmly. He had accepted the shriveling of his desire, and of his cock. To be frank, now that the chemo was done, and his gut no longer felt as if it had been scraped raw, he could tolerate the disintegration of his bones in much better spirits.

His teeth, though: none of the doctors had been able to account for the ache that spread from them through his gums into his face. It prevented him from reading for any length of time. Such pain was not part of the general list of symptoms for metastatic osteosarcoma, so they had blamed it on the chemo—until he finished the treatment and his teeth showed no improvement. For the doctors, it was one more reason for the “atypical” with which they prefixed his diagnosis. Already, he had had the sense that he was moving from a patient to a paper, an interesting case to be presented at their next professional conference. They increased the dosage of his pain medication, and the most honest among them estimated that, at the rate the disease was progressing, his teeth wouldn’t be a concern for much longer.

For a short time, the stronger pills had helped to quiet his teeth, had allowed him to concentrate sufficiently to complete his arrangements for traveling to Provence, to finish his final re-reading of Keats’s poems. By the time the flight attendant rolled him off the plane in Marseilles, however, two of the pills were barely adequate to the task. (He had tried three, but they had plunged him into a thick blackness through which the pain had stalked him like a hungry beast.) After he had arrived at the
auberge
, Pascal had brought him pitchers of sangria, and these, combined with the medication, had allowed him to savor a plate of Pascal’s
daube
, served with the creamy rice particular to the region. “It’s a miracle,” he’d proclaimed through a mouthful of beef. Pascal had grinned broadly.

It wasn’t, of course. The time for miracles, if ever it had been at hand, was long past. A few days after his arrival, the mix of wine and medicine began to lose its efficacy. He experimented with increasing the amount of sangria he drank, but it had little effect, and anyway, it was a shame to treat the wine as a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. A brief period of grace had been his: he would try to be satisfied with that.

***

There were five of them. One grabbed his chair from behind and dumped him onto the alley’s cobblestones. The rest set to work with their feet. They were holding long sticks, which they used next. Bourne struggled to shield his head with his arms. The sticks struck his body with dull thuds. He could feel his bones not breaking, but pulping. His attackers were men, far older than the late adolescents he would have assumed would mug an old, crippled professor. One of them was wearing an expensive-looking leather jacket. He wanted to tell them to take his wallet, it was in the knapsack draped across the back of his chair, they were welcome to its meager contents. But one of the sticks had connected with his jaw, and his mouth was numb.

He imagined Pascal had run for the police. He would not have blamed him if he had run away at the sight of five men armed with sticks.

The world withdrew. He wondered if it would return. Perhaps it would be better for everything to end like this, unexpectedly, quickly.

When the world came back, it brought Pascal’s worried face hovering over his. A group of men surrounded him. He did not think they were the same men who had beaten him. At Pascal’s command, they knelt beside him, took hold of his arms and legs, and hoisted him off the ground. An avalanche of pain swept over him. By the time it had passed, he was sprawled in the back of Pascal’s Kangaroo, and they were driving east.

***

A week after Bourne checked-in to the
auberge
, while he was sitting outside his room by the pool, soaking in the heat of the midday sun, Pascal appeared with a narrow glass bottle half as long again as his forearm and a pair of plain glasses. Hissing when his fingers touched the hot metal, he grabbed one of the chairs scattered on the concrete apron surrounding the pool and dragged it next to Bourne’s wheelchair. He unstoppered the tall bottle, and poured not insignificant portions of its clear contents into the glasses. Bourne accepted the glass he was offered, and returned Pascal’s silent toast.