A Sick Gray Laugh Read online

  Contents

  Praise for Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh

  A Sick Gray Laugh

  Frontmatter

  Dedication

  Part One: The Disease

  1

  2

  3

  Part Two: The Case Study

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Part Three: The Cure

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for Nicole Cushing’s A Sick Gray Laugh

  “Noelle Cashman—I mean Nicole Cushing—has delivered a shocking and satirical survey of the failed American experiment and its many horrifying discontents. A Sick Gray Laugh’s warts-and-all metanarrative is reminiscent of such recent genre touchstones as Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Red Tree and Gemma Files’s Experimental Film, but told in a brutal and uncompromising style that is all Cushing’s own.”

  —Robert Levy, author of The Glittering World

  Praise for Nicole Cushing’s Mr. Suicide

  “…a work of brutal and extreme horror… disturbingly graphic content…”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This tale of a damaged and murderous child is the most original horror novel I’ve read in years. Cushing’s prose is rapid-fire, grisly, and passionate.”

  —Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse and Lost Souls

  “Novels don’t come much more transgressive than this one, folks. Got a taboo? Watch Nicole Cushing grin while she dances all over it. In other hands that might be reason enough for the witty Mr. Suicide to exist. But this is more and better than that—a truly nightmare world, richly imagined, told to us in a canny, subversive second-person voice that makes you, the reader, the hero of this tale, like it or not. That it also manages to be ultimately life-affirming is yet another wonder.”

  —Jack Ketchum, award-winning author of

  Off Season and The Girl Next Door

  “Nicole Cushing uses her sharp and confident prose like a surgical instrument to dissect both her characters and our emotions. Mr. Suicide is horrifying and harrowing, but just as much for the emotional devastation it causes in the reader as for the violence and depravity—as well as the twisted humor—it portrays. This is horror fiction that leaves marks.”

  —Ray Garton, author of

  Live Girls and Sex and Violence in Hollywood

  “The confidence and expertise so blatantly evident in Nicole Cushing’s writing is astonishing.”

  —Thomas Ligotti

  A

  Sick

  Gray

  Laugh

  Nicole Cushing

  Word Horde

  Petaluma, CA

  A Sick Gray Laugh © 2019 by Nicole Cushing

  This edition of A Sick Gray Laugh

  © 2019 by Word Horde

  Cover art and design © 2019 Matthew Revert

  Edited by Ross E. Lockhart

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  ISBN 978-1-939905-52-9

  A Word Horde Book

  To the memories of Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) and Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)

  Part One: The Disease

  1

  When I started writing this book, I vowed to keep my madness out of it.

  What, exactly, do I mean by that? Simply that all the books I wrote before this one were works of fiction inspired by my personal struggles with severe depression and anxiety, and that this approach was beginning to feel a little old. How many times can I write about characters on the brink of self-slaughter? How many times can I depict characters paralyzed by obsessive-compulsive disorder? How many times are you, constant reader, capable of indulging me in my habit of obnoxious repetition?

  Maybe if I were still plagued by such ailments, I’d grit my teeth, suck it up, and find a way to be satisfied with the tried and true approach that has led my work to enjoy critical acclaim. After all, while madness has not been good for me, it’s been awfully good for my fiction. Reviewers, academics, and awards juries have come to expect that I’ll publish a steady flow of books with titles like The Girl with the Gun in Her Mouth and Leather Noose. Unrelenting nihilism, spiked with sadism, is the trademark of my work.

  But therein lies the problem. You see, shortly before the publication of my last book (The Breath Curse) my madness became so severe that I was forced to seek the treatment of a psychiatrist. My OCD had morphed into something more akin to paranoid psychosis. After decades of fending it off on my own, I reached the breaking point and asked for help. I saw an old, wizened, mummy-like doctor of mixed German and Indian descent named Sherman Himmerahd-D’janni, M.D. He prescribed an oblong yellow pill. I take two each day. Since starting this medication, my ailments have gone into remission.

  So even if I wasn’t bored with the subject of madness, I no longer suffer from it. And because I no longer suffer from it, I no longer feel the urgency to vent my suffering onto the page. Make no mistake, I still wield the knife of pessimism. But instead of carrying it with me day in and day out, I often put it on the shelf for weeks on end. I no longer take the time to sharpen it against the whetstone of rumination.

  This is good news to my friends and loved ones. Everyone close to me seems to appreciate the change. I’ve begun jogging and have lost seventy-five pounds. I am tan, healthy, and more mindful of cobbling together an attractive appearance (washed hair, brushed hair, brushed teeth, shaved legs). I play softball. I am able to become fully immersed in the drama of competition. I have joined with others to form a team. I am unashamed of having cast my lot with theirs. Unashamed of marching shoulder to shoulder with them, week after week.

  This may astonish you, but it could even be said that—of all our players—I’m the least pessimistic. Even during our last at bat in the last game of our 0-18 season, even as we were losing twenty to eight, I believed that we’d be the recipients of a miracle and come away with a victory. And when our final batter grounded out, I spent five minutes in a daze wondering why the underdogs hadn’t prevailed (the way they always do in the movies).

  What’s the point of this seemingly pointless anecdote about my athletic endeavors? Simply that, for the first time in many years, I’m capable of succumbing to Moronic Hope.

  This, in and of itself, implies that I’ve been reabsorbed into humanity (the species that, to this day, remains the only known practitioner of Moronic Hope). But there were other signs of my reabsorption as well. I enjoy the company of my fellow man. Or, at the very least, the sea of humanity no longer makes me seasick. Or perhaps it still does, but the oblong yellow pills have an effect similar to Dramamine. In any event, to impress upon you just how far I’ve come in reacquainting myself with the human herd, I’ll say this: I’ve even begun to listen to two (not one, but two!) local sports radio stations. This is, arguably, the most normal activity I’ve undertaken in many years.

  In some ways, though, I regret all these changes. There’s the real possibility that, already, they’ve disrupted my writing mojo. Yes, I have vowed to keep my madness out of this book. But my brain has always worked best when it’s obsessively contemplating death. My spirit of creation is the spirit of decay. Corpse breath has always been the wind billowing my sails. Now I have to change? Find a way to maneuver my boat through a fresh coastal gale? This will surely have a negative impact on the artistic success of my writin
g endeavors.

  Even worse, the positive changes in my life threaten to fuck up my commercial success. What I mean is, these changes could destroy my author brand.

  You do understand what an “author brand” is, don’t you? It’s a concept that, in recent years, has become all the rage in conversations between writers. Just Google it and you’ll find ten thousand and ninety-one blog posts emphasizing the necessity of having one. But let’s assume, just for a moment, that you haven’t heard of the concept and you’re too lazy to Google it. How can I best describe it?

  Well, as I understand it, an author brand is an author’s unique identity, as perceived by bookstores, readers, and reviewers. An author’s unique commercial identity, you might say. (And please note that by “unique commercial identity,” I mean a unique identity as summed up in a single phrase that helps consumers and tastemakers get a sense of the flavor of a writer’s products.)

  So you can see my dilemma: if your author brand reeks of madness and squalor, as mine does, getting well creates problems. You can’t proceed as you always have before: dipping a ladle into your own mental effluvium and distilling it into effective fiction. Pharmaceuticals have re-invented Noelle Cashman, the person. Therefore, it was inevitable that they’d also reinvent Noelle Cashman, the author.

  This is why I’ve been forced to take a decidedly different tack with this book. In the past my work has been fueled by the aforementioned distilled introspection. It typically unfolded in the following fashion:

  1. I experienced a fresh, jellyfish-like sting of mental torment (or the intrusion of wormy, mildewy, half-rotten memories of past torments).

  2. The mental torment (or half-rotten memories) caused several strange disjointed images to flash before my mind’s eye.

  3. I took the most potent of the strange images and used it as the definitive image of a story; the image that held within it all the essential characters and plot points.

  (Un?)fortunately, it has been too long since I’ve experienced mental torment. Therefore, my old tricks no longer work. So I am forced to change my writing habits. Since I can no longer depend on the strange disjointed images in my mind’s eye, I’ve decided to switch to writing nonfiction. That way, I can write a book focused exclusively on the world outside my head.

  But which world outside my head? There are so many to choose from these days. For example, there are the worlds of Twitter and Facebook. Sometimes I think of these as the worlds of moral exhibitionism (in which social networking accounts open their virtual raincoats and flash their social, political, religious, or anti-religious virtues in front of you, unbidden). Other times I think of these as the worlds of moral pornography (in which we voluntarily stare at the penetration of vice by virtue, and caress our own private parts—whatever they may be—in sync with the rhythm of the rutting).

  Will I be writing about these worlds and their attendant moralizing?

  No. I find social networking to be a dull obligation at best. (An obligation to push my author brand, that is.) At worst, it may be a tool of corporate and/or government surveillance. Furthermore, I will not get on a soapbox to endorse any social, political, religious, or anti-religious causes, even those that I privately champion. You see, I don’t read a lot of polemical nonfiction, so why would I choose to write it?

  But surely, you’re thinking, there are other worlds out there to explore in a work of nonfiction such as this. Worlds that afford a less stridently moralistic tone than that of Facebook and Twitter.

  Yes, of course. I know that. For example, there’s the world of glossy sports magazines. The world of publishers dedicated to translating works of Russian, Czech, and Icelandic literary fiction into English. The world of lower-middlebrow American bestsellerdom. When I say I’ll be writing about “the world outside my head,” do I mean I’ll be writing about any of these worlds?

  Alas, no. While I’ve brushed against all these worlds, I don’t feel very connected to any of them. I’m not a citizen of any of those worlds. I’m a tourist who has infrequently visited them.

  I don’t think I should write about worlds I know only from tourism (especially in this, my first work of nonfiction). Natives of such realms would rightly point out my superficial treatment of the subject. Better to write about something closer to home.

  What about the world of twenty-first-century movies? Is that the “world outside my head” on which I’ll be focusing?

  No.

  At the risk of sounding like an old fart who is out of touch with pop culture, I must confess that even now, during my upswell of mental health and tolerance of humanity, I seldom go to the movies. Even looking at the trailers makes me groan. There’s too much CGI. Everything is a boilerplate kaleidoscope of pseudo-outrageous action in the manner of a video game. I say “pseudo-outrageous” because every 3D twist and stretch and explosion is there to serve reliably stale, melodramatic storytelling. (This, by the way, is an aesthetic judgment—not a moral one.)

  What, then, about the world of twenty-first-century television? Surely that’s the “world outside my head” that I’ll be focusing on, right? Unlike the movies, broadcast television offers various news and sports programs presented in high-definition digital clarity. I consider myself to be a citizen of that world, don’t I?

  While I’ve watched several minutes of high-definition NFL broadcasts, I must hasten to add that I’ve never been able to finish an entire game. Something about high-definition digital video seems exaggerated. The world shown in such broadcasts doesn’t look like the real world at all. It looks like the real world after it has been polished three days straight with Turtle Wax. How could I possibly write about such a world? It would be impossible. For starters, I don’t have the necessary tools. To depict such a waxy world I’d have to rig my printer to use cartridges full of Turtle Wax instead of ink. Anyone who knows me well can tell you I’m not that mechanically inclined.

  No, I decided to write about a world unmediated by any camera and/or display screen. It is simply the world as it appears outside the window of my home office.

  At this point you may be thinking something like the following: What do you see outside that window, Noelle? How can it possibly be worth writing about? If you limit yourself to a subject so prosaic, you’ll sell yourself short. Don’t go for the low-hanging fruit! Why do you even look out there anymore? What can you find in the world outside your window that can’t be found a thousand times in a Google image search? How can you possibly claim that it’s more deserving of my attention than MSNBC’s coverage of the latest school shooting, or The New York Times’ coverage of the National Book Awards? How can a nonfiction elaboration on this prosaic view possibly be worth our time?

  These are entirely reasonable questions. Be patient. All shall be revealed.

  Allow me to set the stage.

  I live in a small town in southern Indiana. Our population is just a little under fifty thousand.

  My subdivision was built over fifty years ago. My neighbors work for factories, trucking companies, nursing homes, and the like. The houses here are smaller than those in most subdivisions, and show their age.

  So when I look outside the window of my home office, I see modest lawns (maybe, on average, fifteen yards wide). I see red brick façades. Window shutters. Aluminum siding. I see a variety of landscaping styles (some minimalist and elegant, others a cluttered embarrassment of chipped-paint yard gnomes and one-winged angels). I see pickup trucks, jeeps, and Camaros, too. Many bear bumper stickers vowing allegiance to one or another of the local college basketball powerhouses. I see bumper stickers expressing pride in a child who’s an honor student (or a football player, or a gymnast, or a marine). I see flags. Stars. Stripes.

  But none of these are what I notice first, and it’s this as-yet-unspecified first thing I see that makes the world outside my window worth writing about. Because the first thing I see captures the texture of life here in a way nothing else can.

  The first thing I see outside my w
indow each morning is—

  Dare I even tell you about this? If I do, you may think I’m nuts (and not in a sexy, self-destructive, sophisticated Sylvia Plath sort of way, but in a foul, fetid, fiendish bag lady sort of way). And what about my vow to keep my madness out of this book? Here I am, only a few pages later, paralyzed by nervousness!

  The thing is, there will be no book if I don’t force myself to push past the inertia that wants me to leave well enough alone. Any book worth reading is born from a writer’s courage to finally confess that she’s seen something she doesn’t want to admit she’s seen. So there’s no getting around the revelation I’m about to make.

  That first thing I see when I look outside my office window is…well…how do I even begin to tell you this?

  It’s…

  …an overwhelming Grayness that’s slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot.

  Does that make any sense?

  It doesn’t, does it?

  You don’t think this revelation lives up to all the hype I set up for it, do you?

  This is too abrupt a transition, isn’t it? I’ve just introduced a speed bump—this ambiguous concept of Grayness. Now the natural flow of this book will be interrupted while I take time to explain what I mean by “an overwhelming Grayness that’s slathered over everything like a thick coat of snot.”

  *ahem*

  What I mean is: when I look out my window, the green of the grass and leaves is a muted green. It’s a green that’s been contaminated (by the Grayness of faded, cracked asphalt; by the Grayness of the cloud-stained sky). The Gray dominates the green; seeps into it and snottily saturates it until the Spirit of Grayness replaces the spirit of the green. Nature is no match for it.