Poppy Z. Brite - Selected Stories E-Book

Poppy Z. Brite

• Herausgeber: Independent Legions Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A new retrospective collection by Poppy Z. Brite, author of "Exquisite Corpse", containing some of his best known horror stories: 'Calcutta, Lord of Nerves', 'Lantern Marsh', 'Mussolini and the Axeman’s Jazz', 'Self-Made Man', 'The Heart of New Orleans', 'The Sixth Sentinel' and 'His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood'. Cover Art by Alan M. Clark.

Leseprobe

Poppy Z. Brite – Selected Stories

ISBN: 978-88-99569-03-7

Copyright (Edition) ©2016 Independent Legions Publishing

Copyright (Text) ©Poppy Z. Brite

1° edition epub/mobipocket: 1.0 February 2016

Digital Layout: Lukha B. Kremo - [email protected]

Cover Art by Alan M. Clark

Proofreading: Jodi Renée Lester

Poppy Z. Brite

Selected Stories

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Calcutta, Lord of Nerves

(©1992 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in Still Dead)

Lantern Marsh

(©2000 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in October Dreams)

Mussolini and the Axeman’s Jazz

(©1995 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in Dark Destiny: Proprietors of Fate)

Self-Made Man

(©1997 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in Dark Terrors)

The Heart of New Orleans

(©2002 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in City Slab)

The Sixth Sentinel

(©1993 Poppy Z. Brite, originally published in Borderlands 3)

His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood

CALCUTTA, LORD OF NERVES

I was born in a north Calcutta hospital in the heart of an Indian midnight just before the beginning of the monsoon season. The air hung heavy as wet velvet over the Hooghly River, offshoot of the holy Ganga, and the stumps of banyan trees on the Upper Chitpur Road were flecked with dots of phosphorous like the ghosts of flames. I was as dark as the new moon in the sky, and I cried very little. I feel as if I remember this, because this is the way it must have been.

My mother died in labor, and later that night the hospital burned to the ground. (I have no reason to connect the two incidents; then again, I have no reason not to. Perhaps a desire to live burned on in my mother’s heart. Perhaps the flames were fanned by her hatred for me, the insignificant mewling infant that had killed her.) A nurse carried me out of the roaring husk of the building and laid me in my father’s arms. He cradled me, numb with grief.

My father was American. He had come to Calcutta five years earlier, on business. There he had fallen in love with my mother and, like a man who will not pluck a flower from its garden, he could not bear to see her removed from the hot, lush, squalid city that had spawned her. It was part of her exotica. So my father stayed in Calcutta. Now his flower was gone. He pressed his thin chapped lips to the satin of my hair. I remember opening my eyes—they felt tight and shiny, parched by the flames—and looking up at the column of smoke that roiled into the sky full of blood and milk.