The Avalanche Effect by Howie Good
“It was very strange to find only the claws.”
Fiction by Howie Good
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I’m in the middle of history now. They call us animals, say we’re going to die there. The place definitely resembles the kind of graffiti you would see in a bathroom stall. Different people come in and take turns beating us. Sometimes they’re trying to get information from me; other times they’re just amusing themselves.
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I don’t know what has happened to the others. It was very strange to find only the claws. I haven’t the slightest doubt that my own relatives planned to kill me. I see your brother. Why you beating him like that? He’s lucky he’s got any teeth left.
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Everyone’s phones are monitored. Amnesia is a constant sea. We swim in it all the time. People choose to simply contemplate the water itself as an activity.
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They woke us up at 5 a.m. It was an invitation to an execution. We didn’t know if something more would happen. Children have been killed, blinded, crippled. Those were gunshots. The tailor was dead, but business would be carried on as usual by the son.
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Header image courtesy of Phlegm. To view his Artist Feature, go here.
Author's Note: "The Avalanche Effect" remixes direct quotations collected from a wide variety of journalistic sources. It is part of a series of assemblages explore the possibility of liberating through the technique of collage the received meanings of conventional story forms.
Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from ThoughtCrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.