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Just in time for Valentine's Day,
the Guardian in London has
reviewed and raved about
The Secret Language of Sleep.
And, for the rest of the week,
you can buy it for $5!
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- - - - - - - - We are excited to announce the winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award: Jessica Anthony of Portland, Maine, who writes about metallurgy, bullfighting, Hungary, love, monkeys, and meat. One of her stories will appear in McSwys Issue 14, and an excerpt from her novel-in-progress appears below. We are grateful to everyone who sent us their writing; we received far more applicants than expected (almost 500!), and we were very impressed with the dedication and energy throughout. Thanks for helping us honor Amanda Davis. An Excerpt from The Convalescent
At 3:42 p.m. on June 15, 1985, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake hit Puebla, Mexico, destroying two hundred and ninety churches, three hundred schools, and four thousand houses, leaving fourteen people dead and over fifteen thousand homeless. Among the living was a young girl named Adelpha Salus Santino who, after digging through rubble to find both of her parents suffocated, picked up a dusty knife, held it to her middle, and then stabbed herself in the stomach. She did not die, but was rushed to the emergency room by paramedics who, when they could find no identification, asked the girl, ¿Como te llamas? to which Adelpha Salus Santino replied, "Mariposa," which means butterfly. At the exact same moment on June 15, the Hubble Space Telescope witnessed the birth of a star ten times the size of the sun. The star was 170,000 light-years away, in the center of a nebula, and because of torrential stellar winds from hot and massive newborn stars, the shape could be seen for the first time. The NASA official excitedly wrote in his notebook that the nebula possessed two round, adjoining clouds instead of the regular single cloud, and so named the nebula "Papillon," which is French for butterfly. Back on earth, a thousand miles north of Mexico, one Mrs. Mary Pierce, a squat, middle-aged, single woman with an acute case of agoraphobia, stood at the front door of her pleasant two-bedroom ranch home on Rosemont Avenue in a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio, wringing her hands to keep them from shaking. She was trying to the get the courage to open the door and go outside, when the mail slot flew open, and the mailman shoved the new edition of Yard and Garden magazine into the hallway. At 3:42 p.m., trembling, Mrs. Pierce opened the magazine. A blue butterfly spun out from underneath the pages into her living room. Specifically, the butterfly was an Adelpha salus butterfly, known only to remote regions in Mexico and which, translated into English means "lost sister." Also on June 15, 1985, at 3:42 p.m., my parents, James and Norma Pfliegman, drove their car into a telephone pole, dying on impact. They did not own the car; the car they owned was a 1983 Ford Mustang, which had been giving them transmission trouble since they bought it off the lot the year before, and was in the shop. The car they were driving was a brand-new red 1985 Peugeot that belonged to a rental agency down the road, "Butterfly Car Rentals," which had opened its doors on the cool morning of October 8, 1971, the day that I, Seymour Akos Pfliegman, was born. I have no life. I have no known relatives, no known friends, no church, no office, no community, no formal education. Other people, who have lives, seem to live their lives pretty well. Achieving. Aspiring. Whatnot. Other people are always busy doing big and important things, like running for president, or inventing Ping-Pong. I sell meat out of a bus.
OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
Philip Colavito, Mob Accountant By Leonard Pierce Charlie Rose Interviews the Bird Flu Virus By Tom Lombardi Tantric Sex Positions By Mike Sacks The Tyrant's Tales By Brent Spencer A Critical Introduction to Breakfast By TG Gibbon |
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