The first collection of short stories by RD Armstrong. Written in the style of pulp fiction (genre), these stories feature characters from the seamy side of life.
A collection of short stories and flash fiction. Titles include: Art Fag, Hand Jive, Hey Elmo Get a Load of This, El Pagano, The Manx Tales and Magic Fingers.
Excerpt
From one of the Manx Tales (THE DANCE OF THE IDIOT FLESH):
"So I was working my way through the stations of the cross this morning and I found myself in front of Our Lady of Macarena and I couldn’t remember what to do. Is it right hand to left shoulder, first, or left hand to right shoulder, first?”
“I think it’s right over left, first, but I’m not sure.”
Manx stood quietly in the shadows of the scaffolding. Somehow he had wound up at the Bradbury Building, that ornate, wrought iron monster near downtown. Above his head the iron intertwined into thick knots of blackened steel, glazed with a thin patina of rust, reddish-brown like the adobe over on Olvera Street. It was as quiet as a tomb.
It was like that part of the woods that grand-ma always warned you not to go into, full of brambles and goblins and other nastiness. He struck a match and was startled by the biting rasp and gush of burning sulfur as it echoed through the hallways. He lit the cigarette and inhaled. He could feel the smoke as it assumed the shape of his lungs. It felt good. Exhaling, he watched the smoke envelope his torso, as if it was trying to get back into his lungs. Unable to penetrate the layers of clothing and skin, it hung around him like a rejected suitor, petulant and sulking.
The two women had passed beneath him on the first floor on their way out the front door. Their conversation was vaguely religious, but, then it was the season for that. He watched them go as he French inhaled the smoke (for that second nostalgic tour of duty). It made him feel cool and mysterious and a bit light-headed. The whole place made him feel kind of edgy. Manx liked this. He needed to hang out in a place like this to keep his paranoid ‘chops’ up to par. There used to be others, like the Pike down in Long Beach, but urban re-development had picked them off, one by one.
Over the years, this life he lived had gotten bland and he had grown to accept it. He lived in that part of town where the excitement was provided by high-speed chases on their way to another part of the county, to an ignoble, six o’clock, “this just in..,” breaking news flash...
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