Over the course of 2020, Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs are writing a 12-chapter "serial novella" for Autre. It will be written Exquisite Corpse style — they will alternate who writes each month's chapter, and won’t have access to the previous chapter until it has been published. Brad and Gideon have not discussed plot, structure, format, themes, characters, etc, and promise not to do so even once the project is underway. The idea is to react to each other's work, and hope the final Frankensteinian product is something that deserves to exist. If the authors like what they've made when it's done, the editors might publish it as a "zine." Installments will go up on the 15th of every month. Click here to read Chapter 7: An Outline Of Chapters 1-6.

text by Brad Phillips (and Gideon Jacobs)

Hey Buddy,

So to be clear, what I write next will be chapter two? I can do that. I feel very tired. Only Cristine knows but I got picked up for stealing a Hyundai Elantra last week cause I was manic and ended up in a holding cell for three days, so I heard some bits of crimey type stuff from other assholes who were there, but all criminals lie. I’m hoping I can use bipolarity as an excuse for grand theft auto btw. But this is all going to be a lie. Art is a crime really. I always thought of visual art as - well wait. The last time I saw my dad he was in prison, and I was just beginning to get successful as an artist. I told him that. He was proud of me and said I’d found the ideal con, because art is like any other con - you create this thing which the world doesn’t need, and you tell them they need it. Then validation inflates prices, rumour inflates prices, and this thing which is inherently dumb and only clogs the world with more stuff becomes valuable. He was in prison for doing this water-filter scam, where he’d go to conventions with his friend Cecil with a pamphlet for a high tech water filter (this was twenty plus years ago) and a single prototype. They’d take tonnes of orders upfront then skip town to the next home show or whatever - there was no actual water filter. You said this,

“…citing that ubiquitous yet totally nonexistent study that claimed men think about sex every seven seconds…”

I used to be a harsh hypochondriac, and I think that was in part driven by severe physical and emotional neglect as a child. I wanted nurses to touch me and care about me, so I faked maladies, but over time I began to believe they were real, because of the trauma of neglect. It got complicated obviously. But, that line about men thinking about sex every seven seconds - I went to a walk-in clinic when I was twelve and said I had mysterious pain in my leg. They knew me there already. I took a pamphlet (I loved medical pamphlets because they helped me do research) on hemorrhoids, and it said that the hemorrhoid sufferer thinks about their hemorrhoids every six to seven seconds. At that moment I told myself it would be better to get cancer. Then in my thirties I got a hemorrhoid once and I found it was true, how often I thought of it. But, during the seconds I wasn’t thinking of the hemorrhoid, I was thinking about sex. Then I’d sometimes vomit because of the commingling of hemorrhoid preoccupation and visual imagery of tall women with small breasts. I grossed myself out.

I told someone who I respect (or who people I respect respect) that my new book was a crime novel, or literature hung on the skeleton of a crime novel, and she said that ‘genre fiction is trending’ and I got really upset. But I’m already eighty-thousand words into it. For sure I’m gonna feel like an asshole when it’s out, and even now I think if I chose a genre, I should’ve gone with Western/Cowboy, cause nobody’s gonna use that one. Literature people are the fucking worst. I don’t want to reiterate what you said, I’ll just say I agree. People love to be confused, and I do get some sadistic pleasure from the fact that if people don’t understand a painting I make or something I write, they feel that they’re wrong, or not smart enough. This is a total falsehood obviously, but being an artist or writer, you can really make people feel like shit, and that’s comforting to me, cause if I’m going to (and you as well) feel like shit just for waking up, then someone’s gotta pay for that. So this would be chapter 2? I admit to being confused slightly because I’m coming down on my Lamotrigine which is hard so I’ve upped my Clonazepam which I’m also supposed to be coming down on, so I’m sorta fogged out — but let me know if i’m getting this right. Also, I don’t want to speak for you either, but just want to make it clear I feel that I’m definitely too stupid to make any exquisite corpse type thing work. Even when I do have a broken bone, I come up with an elaborate story for my doctor that makes it sound more reasonable that I broke the bone, instead of telling the truth, which is that I woke up, stepped on the floor and the toe broke. I say I kicked a dresser. Oh and you do the sex writing, I can’t do it anymore. When I turned 46 my left ball suddenly dropped an inch and covered part of Garfield’s head on this tattoo I got too close to my nuts, and now I feel like I can’t write about sex cause of what happened to my nuts and Garfield.

CHAPTER 2?

He Married his Murderer

Chapter 7 - Just Like a Crime Novel

(I could be fucking this up because I’m doing what you asked and going true crime, but since I don’t know the story at all, I’m just making up a chapter that SOUNDS like it would come from a crime novel.)

Bobby ended up robbing the house on Granville Drive the night he last saw Gabrielle, the house with the asshole husband. The husband had turned out not to be an asshole but instead was married to one. The couple had done that thing television advises of saying their names; “Gloria” and “Brian”, to humanize themselves. They’d done it this way.

“Brian, I love you.

“I love you Gloria. We’ll be okay.”

They recommend that when dealing with rapists and murderers you say your name or your kids names, talk about them - “Our son Oscar just started walking!” They even suggest telling your attacker you’re pregnant when you aren’t, which Bobby didn’t like the dishonesty of. When he robbed people he told the truth about what he wanted and what might happen and preferred his victims be honest in return. Considering the circumstances he knew it was an unreasonable expectation. The personalization strategy made sense objectively. Criminals who aren’t set on murder could possibly change their minds in the heat of the moment if their victims could transform themselves from objects into subjects.

What he’d liked about Brian, what made him seem unlike an asshole, was that after “Gloria, I love you,” all he’d said was…

“Jesus pal, I was really looking forward to golfing tomorrow.”

That was honest. No my wife’s pregnant shtick (she was clearly too old) or any of the standards: “I’m not ready to die, I’m scared to die, You really don’t have to do this, I promise we won’t call the cops, I just finished chemotherapy, I’m a veteran.” Just some straight from the hip frustration at maybe missing out on a day of golf. 

Bobby tied Brian to a radiator and took the wife, Gloria, upstairs. While he bound her arms and legs she said something that shocked him, that almost made him want to go golfing with her husband. 

“Fucking kill him. He doesn’t know I have a huge life insurance policy on him the dipshit, cheats on me and thinks I don’t know. You kill him tonight, leave me an email address or something, and I swear once I get my money I’ll give you half. You’d be doing me a big fucking favour.”

Obviously she could’ve been lying, stupidly thinking Bobby would give her his email address which she’d then pass onto the cops, but, maybe she’d been serious. He knew it was strange that it bothered him since he was there to rob them and kill the husband since men needed to be exterminated. But he didn’t like this Lorna’s informal bluntness, plus she hadn’t helped herself by using the personalization strategy. A girl named Gloria had snubbed Bobby in college and he’d never forgotten it. 

He told her she was a shitty wife and stuck a sock in her mouth. Then he placed a stack of dishes on Gloria’s back and told her if she moved he’d hear it, and he’d come blow her brains out. She seemed appropriately scared so he went downstairs and untied Brian. He told him to go sit on the couch. Then Bobby, for the first time during his spree took off his mask. He sat opposite Brian and asked him if he wanted a drink or something. Brian said there were beers in the fridge, then apologized that they were Bud Lite, saying Gloria’d told him to get off regular Bud cause he was getting a “fucking spare tire.”

“That’s bullshit, I don’t like that,” Bobby said on hearing this, “you look good to me.”

“Thanks, and I mean yeah, she’s no Julia Roberts.’

Bobby’d never found Julia Roberts attractive, Cameron Diaz was more his type, but the point was clear.

A pack of Marlboro’s sat on the table. Bobby took out two and offered one to Brian, who accepted. Still wearing his gloves he lit both their smokes then leaned back, grateful for a cold Budweiser - the king of beers. He made a mental note to leave the butt and bottle in a pot of boiling water before he left so there’d be no DNA.

“I was sorta expecting this to happen,” Brian said. “The cops came by here a couple of days ago asking if we’d seen anything unusual. They were canvassing the neighbourhood.”

It dawned on Bobby that of course this would've happened since he’d targeted such a small area. He’d need to be increasingly careful.

“What did they say?” 

“Not much other than had we seen any strange people lurking around, that sorta stuff.”

“Did they tell you anything about me, that they had a lead or any evidence?”

“No, actually one of the detectives said they were frustrated, that you were good, a pro or whatever, knew how to get away with it. He said they thought you might be a cop or an ex-cop then his partner told him to shut up.”

“That’s good to know, thanks for that buddy.” Bobby said sincerely.

Brian asked Bobby if he could tell him something and Bobby said sure.

“In a way I admire you, you know, living outside of society the way you do. My whole life I’ve had this dream of just like stealing a car and buying a handgun and driving across the country robbing banks. I’ve wanted to fuck truck stop waitresses with meth head boyfriends and ex prom-queens with bipolar disorder working at Piggly Wiggly. That’s America to me. I’ve never got to feel truly American, cause I’ve never got to live the way you live.”

Bobby was enjoying drinking and smoking with the guy, it’d been a while since he'd had a conversation with a man that wasn’t about work. Brian seemed alright, laid back. Under different circumstances he imagined they could've been friends.

“Look buddy I gotta be honest with you here. Your wife, I don’t like her, and she sure as shit doesn’t like you. You know what she just said to me up there? She said to kill you, said she’d split the insurance money with me.”

“Are you fucking serious? I’ve been taking care of that bitch forever. Wanted to be an actress, the whole cliche - wide-eyed girl from Missoula takes the bus to Hollywood, ends up tending bar at a Hard Rock Cafe which is where I met her. In ten years she’s had one gig, sitting at a table with a cop in the background of a Law & Order episode. Zero lines, just sitting on her ass like she does here. Closest she ever got was she fucked Cliff from Cheers. Unbelievable. I guess situations like these, you find out who you’re really married to.”

“It’s really true. Buddy….”

Brian interrupted him, “You know you meet someone and you fall in love. Then one thing changes that was a crucial component of your initial attraction, of what seduced you so effectively. Once it’s changed, the remainder of your life becomes a compromise borne of not wanting to hurt your partner for having changed the one thing. Cowardice about hurting others causes so much suffering. Why I care about hurting this woman’s feelings, this I don’t know.“

Bobby agreed one hundred percent then continued,

“Buddy….”

“I think about this shit,”  Brian said, “you know here I am in this fucking disaster of a marriage. That’s me, that’s the life. I don’t have the guts to stop myself from living. But I could be living on a fucking houseboat in Arkansas with a seventeen-year-old wife allergic to bras with a thick accent and a cute lisp, fishing all day while she sells PCP at her high school. I could be a bachelor in Hawaii fucking lifeguards, and skin diving, and drinking beers with the locals, and going to dogfights. I could’ve been anyone. Why the fuck I chose to be this person I’ll never know.”

“ I hear you buddy, I do. Could you just shut up for a sec and grab two more beers from the fridge.”

“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to talk to anyone about anything real.”

Once Brian was up and walking towards the kitchen Bobby shot him in the back of the head. A disc of skull spun into a framed photo and broke the glass. He dropped like a bag of hammers and Bobby heard his arm snap from landing under his own weight. Watching the blood pool around Brians’s head, Bobby thought that people likely don’t know this happens. Typically when you fall you prepare yourself, move your limbs or protect your face. Without that awareness sometimes bones break under you. So much can happen in the brief transition from standing up alive to falling down dead.

After the shot he heard Lorna let out a squeal upstairs. Bobby dropped his cigarette butt and beer bottle into a crockpot in the kitchen and set it to boil. Ordinarily he’d be transporting the stereo and whatever else he’d stolen outside but wanted to go say goodbye to Gloria first. He put his mask back on, lazily smashing and ransacking whatever was in reach as he approached the bedroom, where he found her surrounded by broken flatware. She was trembling and moaning, it was repugnant. He knew if he pulled the sock out of her mouth she’d give him the same spiel about cutting him in on the money. He wanted to leave her with some permanent reminder of their encounter. It wasn’t anything he’d done before, which would have the positive effect of confusing the police. Her eyes were pleading the way all eyes plead when they think they’re about to lose their ability to blink. Standing over her he pointed his gun in her face. She pissed herself, which is normal. Adjusting his hand, he pulled the trigger so the gun went off directly next to her left ear, the bullet exploding a pillow on the bed creating a bloom of feathers. She’d never hear out of that ear again which satisfied him as a gesture to Brian, who she’d so shamelessly offered up to slaughter.

(I’ll use the B and G thing again but we can change this. Also, does this mean that Chapter 3 now has to follow the narrative of this Chapter 7 and become Chapter 8?  Do what you want I guess, I’m sorta lost but this is normal.)

For more from Brad Phillips, follow  @brad___phillips on Instagram. Click here to read Chapter 7