The MZD: A novella of undead horror, is now available for purchase on Amazon . That's the cover, over there, on the right. I made it myself, and it's an okay cover, though I'm open to fan art for future editions. I had a surprise release party at Moe's bar, in Mokpo, South Korea, and I'm still a bit under the hangover. Thanks for coming, everybody!
So it's out now, ready for you, gentle reader. Please read and enjoy the book. If there are problems, like typos, or names that seem weird, or crazy breaks, please let me know. I proofed it, but these things slip through. I'll save up all the corrections and send everyone who sent them in a corrected edition when I make that happen, or a free copy of my next book, or a beer at Moe's, if you're in town. Plus, if this is well accepted, I promise to pay a copy editor for my next work, which will either be a saga of alternate realities, or a sensitive coming of age tale set in the golden glow of the early sixties, or maybe something with teenage dragon tamers who fall in love with mermaids and fight space commies. Yeee-hah!
Here's a sample of what you're getting in the MZD:
Joe's story:
Joe worked in one of the after-school academies called Hogwans. Koreans sent their kids to Hogwans after school for extra study. Some sent their kids to get ahead of the other kids, the rest sent them only so they could keep up. It was a vicious circle of achievement and keeping-up-withs that no one seemed interested in breaking, and it had earned for Korea one of the largest, richest economies in the world. To hear Joe tell it, he worked for one of the best Hogwans in Mokpo; one where the students were uniformly excellent and the owner was a vicious perfectionist; luckily Joe was one of the best teachers he knew, and the best compensated. Whether it was true or not no one knew - no one had seen Joe teach. What it meant for Joe was he went to work at three in the afternoon, and got out at ten at night, when he went straight to the bar, usually Capp’s, for a few drinks, maybe poker on Wednesdays, before heading home to bed. It was a cycle he was happy to repeat as often as necessary until he’d built up a nice nest egg for whatever came next.
When he’d showed up at work today, everything had seemed normal. His boss’s car, a black Samsung, was parked squarely in his reserved spot, and kids were milling about on the sidewalk. But his boss wasn’t in the office, nor was he in the classroom. This was strange, because the boss was a workaholic who’d lived in Boston for eight years, which not only left him with a strange accent when he spoke English (How’s da weada? for instance), but an undying love for the Red Sox. He still took five shifts of teaching a day himself, hadn’t missed a day of work in the entire eighteen months Joe had been there. He was a machine for teaching, and a prickly stickler for details: he’d had a running argument with the janitor over where to store cleaning material, and how often the bathroom should be cleaned. Joe had more than once seen them standing toe-to-toe, red-faced and spitting, gesturing wildly at bottles of cleanser stacked on the shelves next to the supply closet tucked under the stairs behind the lobby.
Lots of foreigners came and went, they couldn’t stand the boss. But Joe was an Army man, and his time there had been vast, and merciless; the Army wanted you attuned to detail, and unquestioning in your execution. He’d done a tour in Iraq - an even more vast and merciless place than basic training. There in the sun, sitting and waiting for combat that never arrived, the will to serve in the Army was sapped right out of him, and when it came time to get out, he got out. Compared to the Army, Korea and the Principal’s whims were like a kiss on the cheek from your dotty old aunt. Condescending, but a degradation nowhere near real hardship.
But even with the boss gone, the kids were there. So Joe settled in to teach. The kids, mostly cut from the sheep-mold of middle school kids caught in the grind of the Korean achievement machine, showed up and sat down, and Joe ran them through the basics: the rules of how to make the present progressive, a game of pass the ball for amusement, then a few more drills. The second class had two missing students, the next was half full, and for the seven o’clock class he waited ten minutes past the starting time, but no students arrived.
Joe, without a Principal, didn’t quite know what to do. He supposed he should just wait, but after four straight hours, he also had to pee, so with the thinking that his pissing would give the kids a few more minutes to show, he went downstairs to the lavatory. He walked into the bathroom and pulled at a door handle for one of the squat toilets. All of the bathrooms here were squatting toilets, small porcelain troughs set flush with the ceramic tiles. He pulled at the door, but it didn’t open, which was strange, as the latches only worked from the inside, and it seemed dark and empty in there. He didn’t know how it would be locked from the inside and still be empty. Curious, he gave it another pull. He went down to one knee and peered underneath, but it was dark, he could see nothing. Not that he wanted, or needed, the squatter. So whatever. He turned to use the urinal, had a hand on his fly, when he heard a shuffling sound from behind the closed door. A definite rustling sound. The sound of air escaping lungs. Joe stopped, but he didn’t hear it again. Then, the door rattled. It rattled, and he heard a grunt like air escaping, and the door shook again.
He didn’t ask who it was - he didn’t know the Korean, wouldn’t have understood the response, and the idea of language seemed completely absent anyway; he was suddenly terrified. He looked at the gap below the door and saw the toes of one slippered foot and another in a single stocking, and then he looked up to the top of the door and saw a hand curling over its edge, its fingers stained purple and bleeding from the cuticles and grasping to giving the door a great horrific shake, and then he left.
He ran down the hall to the stairs and around to the main hall where he saw the janitor moving away from him and dragging something that looked very heavy. It looked to be something largish, something trailing liquid, something wearing shoes.
“Hey,” said Joe, but the janitor didn’t turn around. He went into the supply closet, pulling the thing in with him. Surprisingly, it was dark: Joe hadn’t even noticed the sun going down. It was dark and the floor was wet, but Joe needed to let the janitor know someone was trapped in the bathroom. He needed to find out what he could, because Joe, the good teacher, the former Army communications expert, didn’t like loose ends. He was Army: he wanted to pass the buck up the ranks and go home. So he walked down the hall, being careful not to slip on the water. Then he looked into the supply closet and turned on the light.
***
He didn’t want to say any more, there in Capp’s. “I think now I must be remembering it wrong,” he said. “You know how memories play tricks on you. But no. I’m pretty sure it really was... But I don’t really know what it was. All I known is what I saw. And I didn’t like it.”
Finally Felix said, “What did it look like, Joe?”
He paused, a sick smile that wasn’t of amusement on his face, then he said, “It wasn’t even water on the floor. It was red; it was blood everywhere. And it looked like the janitor was eating the Principal.”
________
The MZD: enjoy it today!
