Beat to a Pulp, October 2011

I found this one available freely on Amazon, thanks to the site ereaderiq.com. The cover has a woman in a skirt with a brown bag over her head. She's tied to a chair. Well, that got my attention quickly enough. It's one of those short story magazines that I have taken to in the last six months or so. The allure of the erotic cover as well as the promise of alternative fiction, something not quite in the norm, hides a major problem: regardless of the quality of material in the magazine itself, formatting for the Kindle is terrible. There is no formatting at all. If there is a table of contents, I haven't seen it. It certainly cannot be navigated to by selecting 'menu'. Individual stories cannot be tabbed to, as they were not formatted properly. For this reason and this reason alone, I wouldn't pay a nickle for it. The fiction inside could be really great. But great food served on a garbage can lid isn't very appealing unless you're a tom cat.

That said, having read the first story, "The Tachibana Hustle" before writing this introduction to the magazine, I can honestly say that the fiction does deliver an alternative experience to what I'm used to reading. I don't know if good fiction will rescue this magazine from the sphincter of my opinion of it as a product. But, surely it's easier to find someone who can format a magazine well than it is to find someone who can write an interesting story.

The Tachibana Hustle, Garnett Elliott

There's not much information--at least not much easily found in the top 100 search results on Google--about Garnett Elliott. At the end of the story, there's the mention that he's got stories on the verge of being published in Hitchcock Magazine as well as several other publications that I haven't heard of. Though, I'm definitely not suggesting that I'm an expert on what's available in the world today.

Essentially, we're taken into the underground world of Japan. Pachinko has suddenly been replaced by a new game, and one of the crime bosses who owns a pachinko outlet is trying to get his hands on it. He sends his thugs out to try and get his business back. Unfortunately for him, most of his thugs have left him. His remaining, loyal thugs get the tar beat out of them the first time round. The second time, they go off to try to steal a truck full of the games. However, they fail at that. In the end, the run a restaurant, the three of them together. It's a sort of comical ending to the dark tale.

I like the fact that this story is something of a deviation from what I usually read. Or is it really? I think maybe I want to like it. I want to find something different and like it. That might be making me give this story a slightly better review than it deserves.

A Small Thing at the Devil's Punchbowl, Kent Gowran

Kent Gowran has his own blog here at kentgowran.com. At the top of the Google search there are also other references to his stories online by other bloggers.

This story is written in first person. I'm not sure if this is a personal mission or a professional mission. The story is basically about a man hunt. On the trail to apprehend a murderer, the protagonist, Ray Perkins, meets some people who know his target, Jeb Romweber. The lady, Amber Karch, he meets ends up being a serious fling/love interest. She's the one who leads him to his target. When Jeb is discovered, it's at a freak show circus as a shrunken head inside of a bird cage. They decide to hit the road with the skull to deliver it to Jeb's mother.

I am not sure what I expected from this magazine. This story isn't bad. I guess it's good. But I didn't get a lot out of it.

Obstruction, Glenn Gray

The scene is set in a morgue where an autopsy is being performed. The deceased is a drug runner who had ingested heroin. Unfortunately for him, one of the capsules ruptured. As a consequence, the man overdoses. The author takes some time to describe the setting, and in particular he pays special attention to the dissection of the cadaver.

While he's doing so, they get a visitor. The visitors want the heroin. They're packing guns. The assistant tries several times to subdue the raiders, but gets knocked around a few times for his efforts. In the end, though, he manages to kill one of the intruders.

The doctor's assistant is Hispanic. As a result, his dialogue is the stereotypical example of a Mexican with a modest command of the English language. Furthermore, he sounds a bit stupid. He's thinking more about sex and salsa dancing than he is about the job at hand. I find this treatment of this character to be indicitive of a racist attitude towards Hispanic people.

For some reason, the assistant is determined to stop the guys from stealing their heroin. Why he's willing to risk his life for it is never answered. The doctor is cooler, more composed. He waits for his opportunity rather than blindly launching himself at the gun wielding heister.

The stereotypes definitely detract from the story.

The Death Fantastique, John Hornor Jacobs
 
John Hornor has a nice little webpage: www.johnhornorjacobs.com.

This story has sex and violence. Some sex and a lot of violence. It starts with sex. The main character, Efram, is having sex with a hooker when we meet him. She's got a tattoo that says 'le morte fantastique.' I guess that's where he got the title from. But why he wrote death in English but fantastic in French I cannot quite figure out. In any case, she's going to cause a lot of trouble for him. She asks him why he's there and he says that he's got some stolen goods rather than the brick of cocain which he actually has. Either way, perhaps not the brightest thing to do: confess to having stolen property.

When they go out, she sees her pimp while he's drinking. She tells the pimp everything. She beats her up a bit. When she goes back to the motel to seduce Efram. While he's asleep, she lets in her pimp, who then hits him so hard that he destroys his eye in the socket. But, the violence doesn't end there. As Jay-Jay, the pimp, is taking Efram out to kill him, Efram turns the tables and kills Jay-Jay. When he returns to his room, he finds Melissa, the hooker, overdosed on the floor from all the cocain she snorted.

So, I am beginning to piece together the type of story which this type of magazine hosts: it's always violent, and thus far, more often than not, that violence is related to drugs. "The Tachibana Hustle" is not like that, but the others all have drugs in their plotlines.


Ric with No K, Patricia Abbott


There are many Patricia Abbotts within the first ten search results on Google. Just one seems to pertain to the author. She's got a page on Crime Space.


OK, so, straight out, I have to say that this story had nothing to do with drugs. There was a mention of sex, but not really.


This story has its main character as a young girl, 15 years old, in foster care. Why is she in foster care? Her mother is in the hospital because the house (trailer?) burnt down. Why did it burn down? Presumably it was a murder: her boyfriend did it. Ric, said to be 25 when they met, hooks up with her. It's unknown her age when they ultimately met.


Jessie gets her hands on about $10k and decides to invest it in Ric's venture, which presumably falls flat and was the motive for burning down the home. He ends up getting sentenced. I'm not sure if it's for having sex with a minor or for burning down and nearly killing her mother Jessie. Leaving it up in the air is not a bad tactic, as it does make the reader wonder at the end of the text.


Black-Eyed Susan, Thomas Pluck


Thomas Pluck seems to have seeral credits to his name, including a 1st place Bullet Award, whatever that is. The writer has his own webpage, pluckyoutoo. On the splash page is some older gent holding a gun up while sitting behind the wheel of what's got to be a 30 or 40 year old car.



"What do ya tell a woman with two black eyes?...Nothin'! You done told her twice already!" That's how this story opens. The main character is a bartender. He's new to the area. He's posing as a bartender. There's one particular customer he's after, and after he gets that customer he introduces him to Katie, who sports two black eyes, given to her by the guy who told the joke. She's holding a shovel, and beats him across the head with it. Then he's presumably buried alive. So, the joke's on Jed, "What do you say to a woman with two black eyes? When she's my kin, you beg her to shoot, so you don't get buried alive."


OK, that one had nothing to do with drugs. But, this other theme does seem to raise its head often enough: the revenge theme. Yes, and it's violent. There's a bit of sex in it. Well, the unfulfilled promise of sex at least. There is a dark bit of humour to this one. I kind of like it. I did laugh... a dark and evil laugh.


The Blooming of Lester, Brad Green


Brad Green has an 'about' webpage which is just a splash, but here it is: about.me.



I'm not really sure what I got here. This is a tale of revenge. There's the one act of revenge that fails. The second doesn't. One brother tire iron's the other in the head, the other harvests organs for profit.


So, lots of blood and gore, violence, and, revenge. No sex this time except for the mention of a thigh and an odd description of a breast.


The Janitor, Ron Earl Phillips

Ron Earl has his own website at www.RonEarl.com.

This time it's not a Ric without the K, but a Nic without the K. You'd almost believe that this story was written by the same guy. Or, maybe the publisher of this magazine just doesn't like that letter. In any case, this is the story of a special type of janitor: they clean up after gruesome murders and such. One of his employees has gone missing. In an effort to find out what had happened to that employee, he discovers that he has gone missing. 


By breaking into the neighbour's house and threatening violence, he manages to discover that some kind of crime boss has taken his employee by mistake. The boss had actually meant to capture the drug addict. Hoping to exchange the one for the other, he hauls him out to the boss's headquarters, where he discovers his employee has been released. He's then given a lot of cash by way of a apology for the mistake.


Vengeance on the 18th, David Cranmer


David Cranmer is the editor of this magazine's fanzine and he has his own website, davidcranmer.com.

Truman, the name of the main charactedr in this story, believes his friend and wife are cheating on him. To avenge himself, he kills his friend brutally with a pick axe. Graphically, the murder weapon has 'dripping specks of brain.'

Unfortunately for Truman, the truth was that it was the wives who were having the affair, and not his best friend and wife. What's the moral of this story: Assumptions make asses of us all.

Again, lots of violence. A little bit of sex is there, too.

Second Round Dive, Benoit Lelievre

At the conclusion of most of these stories, there's a little blurb about the author with a website address. Even if it's an 'about me' page, it's better than nothing. Well, Benoit here doesn't have that much.

This story is about a boxer. He's not a great boxer. He's a professional and makes a living at it. He learns that he can make a living by diving when he's paid for it. But, one day, he is irritated by one of the fighters he's paid to dive for. As a consequence, he's beaten with bats until he can't walk any more. That's how the story ends.

Maybe this story is supposed to make people understand why a fighter dives in a boxing match: there are reasons, hungry mouths to feed, and that sort of thing. So, that one time he doesn't dive is what puts him in his wheel chair.

The Second Coming of Hashbrown, Kieran Shea

There's nothing much on the web directly related to Kieran Shea, and there's no mention of a personal webpage at the end of this story.

What do you get when a peace loving hippy gets 2-3 years in jail for smoking marijuana? A hardened criminal! Ok, well, that's not exactly what this story is about. Hashbrown, the name of the protagonist's friend, robs a store and gets caught. He goes to jail as a skinny kid, and comes out as a hardened criminal. In essence, it's that old story that gets recycled: prisons make hardened criminals out of men: it doesn't reform them in the right way. It doesn't turn them into responsible citizens. It turns them into desperate animals.

The story is told in first person. The main character, Rob, is a normal guy with a normal job. He's working hard to make something more of his life, he has a girlfriend. Then his buddy shows up at his door: all tattooed up as an Aryan. He says that he's moving off to Miami. But Rob knows that he's skipping out on bail. All the same, he leaves him alone in his apartment. He does have the foresight to take his gun with him so that 'Hash' won't find it. Returning home, he discovers that everything's been stolen and his apartment has been beaten up a bit.

Hash meets an end, though, as the police do find him and shoot him.

So, no drugs. Just violence. I think I can safely establish now that Beat to a Pulp's genre, noir they call it, is mostly about violence and very seedy characters. None of these characters so far are what we'd call heroes. They're not good people at all, and are often bad people who are just less bad than the people they kill. Or, maybe in one or two cases, they're just as bad. In this case, Rob is just an average guy. That's as close to a good character as I've met throughout all the stories in Beat to a Pulp.

.38 Special, Amy Grech

Amy's got a kind of weird webpage called crimsonscreams.com.

This is another one of those dark humoured stories. Two lovers, one married, the other a friend to the husband -- a scenario already visited in "Vengeance on the 18th," decide to play a little game. Actually, it's the girl who has the idea in the first place, to play a little Russian Roulette. Charlie wins, she loses. Her brains are blown to bits.

The husband discovers who the killer is. He knows all the details of the his wife's death. To get revenge, Brad captures Charlie and ties him to a chair in his sound proofed garage. There, he plays Russian Roulette. Again, Charlie wins. The story ends here, though I'm left to wonder what will happen to Charlie. A terrible way to die is from thirst.

So, the theme of a cheating spouse and revenge is revisited in this noir magazine.

Bull's-Eye View, Wayne D. Dundee

This story is told in first person from the perspective of a private investigator. In that small town is spotted a fairly famous hitman. He must be fairly famous to be recognized. One day, he and the hitman go fishing together after having been invited by the owner of the boat they used. While on the lake, a hitman tries to kill him.

As it turns out, he was made to kill a high ranking mob worker when in fact he thought he was killing some lady's husband for cheating on her. To avoid a mob war, the mob boss tells him to get out of town. However, that wasn't enough: he sent down hitmen to kill him by way of apology to the other gang. Ultimately they succeed.

Again, a bit of violence graphically described. Also, there's the theme of revenge.

Conclusion

Well, this was a free magazine with a lot of short stories which are in a genre which I've never exposed myself to. I love noir film. However, none of these stories seemed to come from the same genre as the movies I've seen. I think if I saw another selection of short fiction appear, I might pick it up. However, the formatting of the book is such a big turn off. There is virtually no shortcuts in navigating the volume and it is quite frustrating. This is especially true when I want to get around the volume to remind myself of character names, author details, or some other similar kind of information that is normally easy to get.

Just like Anais Nin's book, White Stains, which I read awhile back, the formatting is a huge detractor. For this reason and the fact that the stories were not good enough to overcome this fault, I don't recommend buying it. If, however, they updated the volume, added a navigable table of contents, broke the volume into bits which can be quickly tabbed to, then I'd say it's got some value of maybe a buck or two. If this is really your thing, then maybe you can overlook its faults.

If you love violence, revenge stories, and the like, this volume was written for you.