Kafka's Uncle and Other Strange Tales Read online

  KAFKA'S UNCLE

  by

  BRUCE TAYLOR

  Produced by ReAnimus Press

  Other books by Bruce Taylor:

  The Infinite Tears of Pablo Azul

  Kafka's Uncle: The Unfortunate Sequel

  Kafka's Uncle: The Ghastly Prequel

  Tales from the Good Ship Kafkabury

  Edward: Dancing on the Edge of Infinity

  Alleymanderous and Other Magical Realities

  Magic of Wild Places

  Mountains of the Night

  © 2016, 2005 by Bruce Taylor. All rights reserved.

  http://ReAnimus.com/authors/brucetaylor

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ~~~

  To Ben Bova, friend and former agent whose advice, support and interest in my writing is most deeply and sincerely appreciated. Thank you.

  ~~~

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Kafka's Uncle

  The Humphrey Bogart Blues

  ...and Other Strange Tales

  All The Stars In The Sky

  Nightscape II

  The Eyes of Little Juan

  In Thy Name, Revenge

  No Matter Where, Perhaps the Same

  Jack of the Lantern

  Sledder

  Blue Dinosaur

  The Loving Deed

  Nightmare 32.6

  Fishin' Off The Starry Stream

  Stardance

  Dreamscape I

  Horrorscape IV

  The Christmas of Eddie McGrew

  The Proverb Man

  Darkscape V

  The Master Goes Whacko!

  Fidine Knows

  A Little Spider Shop Talk

  The Ring

  Photogenic

  The Hat

  Charles and the Protostar

  New Patient Interview

  One Day at Glasnost

  Movies

  Friend

  Dawnscape III

  By Ring Bound and Unbounded

  Kafka's Uncle Publication History of Excerpts

  ...Other Strange Tales Publication Credits

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  To the memories of Marie Landis, founder of the writing group now known as The Landis Review, and her husband, Si. You taught me that the object of life isn’t wealth. The object of life is the wealth of life.

  To the former members of the Landis Review: Phyllis Hiefield, Brian and Jan Herbert, Joel Davis, Faith Szafranski, (the late) Cal Clawson and to the present members—Roberta Gregory, Linda Shepherd, Sarah Blum, Art Gomez and Jim Bartlett: to success! To love, laughter, connection, and a wonderful sense of a full and vibrant life well lived. What better definition of success do you need than that?

  Also, many thanks to John Dalmas, great friend and enthusiastic supporter of my writing who was so gracious as to write a fine introduction to my first book, The Final Trick of Funnyman & Other Stories. Thanks also to Jeff VanderMeer (and family) who, through profound generosity, kindness and just plain hard work read many of my stories and selected some of them for publication in the aforementioned book (Ministry of Whimsy Press, 1997) but had plenty of good things to say about many other stories that, much to my delight, now appear in Kafka’s Uncle. I am and will always be grateful to you. Also thanks to Patrick and Honna Swenson who reprinted Final Trick (available through www.fairwoodpress.com) and who have published some of the stories reprinted here in their wonderful magazine, Talebones. Thanks to Scott Eagle for the cover art for the first edition of Final Trick and Carl and Lida Sloan for the cover art for the second edition. (And Thank You!! William F. Nolan for a recent and stunning review of the book who likened several stories to “—Bradbury at his finest.”)

  Thanks for the work of Adrian Majkrzak for the cover of Kafka’s Uncle, who produced such a fine cover that is so true to the story. Thank you, Brian Herbert for so many years of fine friendship and for allowing me the honor of using your words to grace this book. I hope that I have been as good a friend to you as you have been to me.

  Last, but certainly not least, to Roberta Gregory, my partner, my friend, who, with infinite compassion and forbearance, offered great solace and a superb eye for detail, and suggestions in the difficulties around my being challenged by computers and the proofreading of this manuscript. And to Karen Townsend former publisher and editor of Afterbirth Books who published the first edition of Kafka’s Uncle—thank you for being an outstanding editor and wonderful to work with, and thanks to Mike Toot who, through his fine understanding of computers, steered me through, at times, incomprehensible electronic waters and prevented crashes on the ever-lurking computer reefs. And with deep appreciation and a thank you to Andrew Burt and ReAnimus Press for publishing the second edition of Kafka's Uncle. Such are these people, upon entering one’s life, you know that no matter how many times you say, “Thank you,” it never seems enough. But that being said, “Thank you. Thank you all, thank you so much.”

  —Bruce Taylor

  Seattle, Washington

  Introduction

  The first thing to understand about Bruce Taylor is that he’s an esoteric original. He doesn’t copy other writers and doesn’t care a whit about commercialism, though if you look deeply enough you might think you see sprinklings of Ray Bradbury and Franz Kafka, set in a Taylorian universe of magic realism. Bruce cares most of all about his art, which places him far above the petty and mundane concerns of other purveyors of the written word. He’s not plastic or phoney. He’s real.

  Trained as a psychiatric counselor, he is a stream-of-consciousness writer, a person who lets it flow in high-energy bursts. This is especially remarkable when you realize that he has, for many years, suffered from diabetes, a strength-sapping illness that has required much of his attention. Through sheer willpower he has controlled this debility and has created a remarkable life for himself, and a remarkable life’s work. He is a prolific writer of short stories, and has garnered considerable acclaim for them. I am one of his admirers, and I am not alone. More and more, this man’s talent is being recognized.

  One day critics will say that so-and-so writes like Bruce Taylor, because by that time Bruce will be so incredibly well known and (horror of horrors!) commercially successful that people will begin to copy him. At least they will be trying, but I don’t know to what extent such an effort can be successful. Bruce isn’t a formula-type person who is easily subject to analysis, and is undoubtedly resistant to any sort of replication effort, whether computer aided or otherwise. He writes what is on his mind, in whatever manner suits his fancy.

  He’s also my backpacking buddy, on many a trip into the untrammeled wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. On a regular basis—whenever he feels overwhelmed by the burdens and B.S. of civilization—Bruce needs to go out and commune with nature, where he recharges his batteries. I remember one evening in particular when we watched the incredible gathering of dusk over the Enchantment Lakes. The sky changed as the purple swept over us, and moments later—far to the west beyond trees and mountains—we noticed an eerie, sickly yellow glow, reminding us that we had not escaped after all. It was the lights of Seattle against the sky, from seventy-five miles away.

  Bruce and
I are in an eclectic writing group that comprises quite a range of personalities and talents, including: Linda Shepherd (a feminist writer who is also a Ph.D. biochemist); Cal Clawson (a writer of math books and western novels); Marie Landis1 (a science fiction/fantasy writer who is an accomplished painter); and Phyllis Lambert (a scientist who writes about human aging and about monkeys in car washes). Somewhere in all of this Bruce and I seem to fit in, or at least we haven’t been asked to leave yet. At our Friday evening sessions the conversations are catholic (with a small “c”), ranging from Plato, Einstein and vampires to debates over whether the fisherman in one of our stories should haul up a human toe or an eyeball. To categorize the members of our group (and Bruce to a large extent), it might be said that we’re interested in everything, and we’re a support group for the fragile creative psyches of writers. Bruce is an integral part of this, and for years I have appreciated his intellectual input and emotional support.

  v~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~v

  1 Since this introduction was written, Cal Clawson, Marie Landis and her husband, Si, sadly have passed away.

  ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^

  In his writing and in his life, Bruce is on a journey of the soul and of the imagination, stretching the limits of consciousness and perception. To a large degree this has to do with his attempt to understand his parents and in particular his father, and in this regard I am a kindred spirit with him.

  Joseph Campbell once said that the quest for one’s father is a hero’s journey, and I know from personal experience that it can be an arduous, painful pursuit, but one that can lead to incredible enlightenment. Much of Bruce Taylor’s prose is written from the perspective of a bright child, one who is in some pain but overcomes it by seeing the world of adults as truly bizarre, whimsical and weird. It’s important to realize that Bruce’s stories are not strange; the world is, and he’s separated himself from it in order to show us new realities, with remarkable clarity and insight.

  —Brian Herbert

  Bainbridge Island, Washington

  Kafka’s Uncle

  What the red haired girl in this novel might say if she were to read this manuscript:

  “This really should be dedicated in loving memory of certain Republican presidents of the last quarter of the twentieth century and their fellow fascist followers who, by thinking they invoked God in justifying their cause, actually believed they were totally different than the worst Communist followers who invoked Marx to justify their cause. Sorry. Totalitarianism is totalitarianism, no matter if it’s right or left.”

  What the author might say about this manuscript if he were so inclined:

  “To the generation of the seventies and eighties and—alas—the nineties. There are no words for the ache and the despair. It is so sad. May this give laughter to the tears”

  She sees nothing and hears nothing; but all the same she loosens her apron-strings and waves her apron to waft me away. She succeeds, unluckily. My bucket has all the virtues of a good steed except powers of resistance, which it has not; it is too light; a woman’s apron can make it fly through the air.

  “You bad woman!” I shout back, while she, turning into the shop, half-contemptuous, half-reassured, flourishes her fist in the air. “You bad woman! I begged you for a shovelful of the worst coal and you would not give me it.” And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.

  The Bucket Rider

  Franz Kafka

  Chapter 1

  Kafka Dreams

  Anslenot walks down the street with the flames gushing from the fire hydrant and the sky turning purple. Planes screech overhead and confused pilots fire upon their comrades. Anslenot realizes that he can never remember a time in his life with the world at peace. Always a war raging somewhere. He sits on a bench and watches the chaos; a big tarantula, wearing four pairs of cowboy boots, comes wandering up to him. “Howdy pardner,” it hisses.

  “Hello, yourself,” replies Anslenot.

  “Bitch of a day, ain’t it,” says the spider. Anslenot isn’t exactly sure how the spider does it, but it spits what looks like tobacco juice. Anslenot doesn’t know if spiders can spit or not. Maybe this tarantula has a special Tobacco Spit Gland. He is not sure.

  “Yeah,” says Anslenot. “Sure is. No different than any other day.”

  “Yup,” says the Tarantula. “Understand you like Kafka.”

  Anslenot stares ahead. He watches the Bucket Rider sail across the sky, leaving a contrail of ice.

  “What business is that of yours?” says Anslenot. “How do you know?”

  “Lucky guess, pardner.”

  “Quite a guess,” says Anslenot.

  “You related to him?”

  “Not really,” says Anslenot, “though I might as well be.”

  “Why?” asks the spider.

  “Insane,” says Anslenot, “utterly insane.”

  “You? Me? Him? Everything?”

  “Yes,” says Anslenot.

  “Which?”

  “Yes,” replies Anslenot. He looks straight ahead. The contrail from the Bucket Rider has frozen; it falls around them like chunks of white coal. Anslenot looks at the spider. “Were you a man once?”

  “Nope,” the spider says. “Never was.”

  “Were you an insect, metamorphosized into a spider?”

  “Nope,” says the spider. “No, siree, I is what I is. Arachnid with a Western Spin. Weaver of tall tales, at least for now. No guarantees how long this will last, pardner. What about you?” asks the spider. “What were you?”

  “Hopeful.”

  “Huh,” says the spider.

  Anslenot gestures to the chaos. “Once everything seemed hopeful.”

  “General harshness of this society gettin’ you down?”

  Anslenot sighs, looks at a burning building in the distance caving in on itself while the firemen watch, for whatever reason, not putting it out. The spider turns to look in the direction Anslenot is staring. “Instant urban renewal interest you, pardner?”

  Anslenot shrugs.

  At that point, a beautiful white stallion with orange saddle comes galloping up the street. “Well,” says the tarantula, “gotta get on my trusty steed.”

  Anslenot watches as the tarantula tries to climb upon the horse but just keeps falling off. Finally, the spider simply attacks the great, white horse; the spider bites; the horse falls. While the horse is still alive, the spider wraps it in silk and begins to drag it away; it turns to Anslenot. “Gonna eat tonight,” it says. And long after the tarantula and the horse disappear into a nearby gutted building, long after the weak whinney-ings of the horse give way to noisy sucking sounds, Anslenot looks around and then gazes at the sky, only to see the stars—exploding.

  Chapter 2

  Kafka Dreams 2

  Anslenot sits on a bench and dreams that he wakes up. In front of him, the sun shines down from blue sky, a fresh wind blows and it’s a pleasant day. Startled, Anslenot looks around. He smiles, My God, he thinks, it is truly a beautiful day. What has happened? Where have I been? It’s all normal again. Abruptly he turns and sitting on the bench, squatting rather, is a large tarantula, white, with sequins and rubies all over its body.

  Just then, a Mercedes Benz pulls up. In the front seat, a young man, hair combed back. He stops in front of Anslenot, rolls down the window, and says, “Howdy, stranger, how are you?”

  “Do I know you?” asks Anslenot.

  “Oh,” says the figure, glancing away, “I’m famous. You’ve probably read some of my stuff.” He grins. “Kafka. Kafka’s the name.”

  Anslenot looks at the famous author. “You’ve done rather well.”

  “Yes, I have, haven’t I? Time has been kind to my strangeness,” he says. “So I decided to cash in on it all. I mean, why not? Don’t I deserve the best? Oh, sure, I was a little screwed up way back then, but it happens. Say, I’m looking for James and Boren Avenue. Know where that is? I’m supposed to meet my wif
e there on the corner.”

  “Uh—” says Anslenot.

  “Gotta meet ‘er,” says Kafka. “Real jewel. Sexy babe, too. Wow. Got a couple of kids; well, hell, with money taken care of, I’m rich. I can afford it.” He pointed at Anslenot. “Fame. That’s what you need, fame and fortune. Now, that’s great security. Just write a bunch of weird shit and everyone will buy it because they’re fascinated by their own pathology and weirdness, you know? Oh, I tell you it was a real market gamble, you know, but it paid off. Now, you, you gotta get a suit, and get all fixed up, and get yourself a pretty little lady and you’ll be set for life. I mean, nothing wrong with a little money now and then. You know? I mean, look at me. I’d never thought I’d own a Mercedes or really be truly happy, I mean, really happy—boy, you gotta see this mansion I got over in Kirkland. Right on the lake—8000 square feet and maids, would you believe it? And I got masseuses who give me these great massages. And hey, I get to go golfing with Bill Gates in the morning and I’m gonna get together with Ross Perot later for a little strategizing. You know, gotta get in some local politics here—”

  Then Kafka stops and looks at Anslenot for a minute. “You know, kid, there’s something about you that reminds me a bit of me, even as I was sailing across the sky there not long ago. When I crashed into the ice mountains, I kinda came out of it, you know? Got my act together, you know?” Kafka gets out of the car and comes up to Anslenot and puts his arm around him. “Kid, I like you, you know. I think you’re gonna go places—now, it’s true I don’t know you but, you know, I kinda do, if you know what I mean. So, I’m gonna make you my uncle and you can carry on my tradition—see where it took me? Here I am, made it big—you can be my honorary uncle. What say—?”

  Stunned, Anslenot stands transfixed and finally says, “Uh—”