One Hundred Apocalypses

Picked up Lucy Corin's 'One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses' (2013). There were three longer-form stories- 'Eyes of Dogs', 'Madmen', and 'Godzilla Versus The Smog Monster', and the titular work is a series of short stories, with some only comprising one line. (Reviews here, here, here and here.)

It promises to be a depressing or darkly funny read. But as with all titles like that, I was expecting to be disappointed. Hmmm... the stories were rather awful, as is the writing. It's not about apocalypses presented B-grade style as I envisioned. The very odd stories ran like songs, bad draggy post-rock pieces- experimental and post-modern. I enjoyed two, but the rest was so out there that they mostly flew over my head. Here are two random stories that I didn't mind:

'Taken' 

My father got really into UFOs. He'd talk about it at dinner, about how he wanted to be taken. I'd be freaked out that mArtians were going to take my dad, and he'd sit there with the chicken and pout because when would he get taken already. He'd had a vasectomy and they have to do those experiments. There was always a sense that something was going to happen in the house. There was real fear of poverty. Always bomb-shelter mode, the stocking of the shelves with cans of food, because my father had grown up super poor, so he'd be really afraid if there weren't enough peas on the shelf in the garage. Like we had two refrigerators and he had to see a certain height of food. I have a lot more fear as I get older. My parents were half-assed about both their religions, so that trickled down to about a quarter, but it did its job. I was freaked out about the scapula and the Lord's prayer. The string for around your neck is piece-of-shit pleather and one night it broke and I remember just lying in bed putting the string on top of me. Evidence I was trying. A ticket stub. Airplanes when they crash, they just go down and down. Like because you bought that ticket. It's the way they keep going down that gets me. Maybe they made that phone call to their loved one.  

I never want the apocalypse to happen. 

Polar bears clinging on to ice, all that shit, my worst nightmare. Being separated. I am so afraid of not being together. 

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'Dream Girl' 

She was so excited about the present she had decided to get me that she told me what it was going to be. I loved it. It was such a great idea for a present and just right for me. It was what I had been dreaming of without even knowing it. But time rolled on and I didn't get the present itself. Of course, this is all in the past. Now she's gone. Big surprise. I don't even get pleasure from the idea of the present anymore, because I was so mad about her not actually getting the present that I forgot what it was going to be. I can joke about the eternal present of the thought that counts, but what I'm actually trying to give you is an understanding of the stasis of certain forms of pain. It's a matter of eradication.