When I started releasing short fiction through Brain Jar Press, I knew I was going to end the year with a flurry of new releases. It’s inevitable, when you’re a short story writer, that you end up with a bunch of previously published work that’s either hard to find or now out of print. Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor & Other Things We Called The Band is one of the latter, despite being one of my more recent stories.
This was one of those those stories that surprised me when I first wrote it–it’s a story about bands and belonging and growing-up-in-places-that-are-not-good-for-being-an-artist. It’s also about nostalgia–one of the catalysts was hitting up old university friends of mine to grab memories of the Dog House Bar–and mysterious happenings that involve entire audiences dying off in a single moment.
It may be a horror story, depending on your taste. I largely think of it as weird-ass fantasy, but I think that about pretty much everything I write.
It first appeared in the Speculate ‘zine back in 2017, but the story went offline when Evil Girlfriend Media (who ran Speculate) went dormant to reshape what they published. Now you can pick up a copy from any good ebook store.
Here’s a little taste of what’s going on in the story:
I saw them play The Playroom exactly one week later. They didn’t seem like much, taking to the stage. Just another rock-and-roll four-piece: guitar, drums, bass, and a singer out the front. The bass guitarist was short and feral, with torn stockings and silver eye-shadow. The singer, tall and lean as hunger, had crimson nails and a dirty fringe that hung over his eyes. They were exactly the kind of group that wore their influences on their sleeve: a little bit of David Bowie, a whole lot of Kurt Cobain.
It was nineteen ninety nine, and that seemed a little naff.
Selby grabbed my arm, dragged me down to the front of the stage. I went with reluctance and a glass of bourbon, stuck beside her because…well, I was eighteen.
I was eighteen and Selby was Selby. It wasn’t just the band I was curious about.
But still, they didn’t look like much. Selby sensed that, as I stood there. “Just wait,” she said. “You’ll see.”
They didn’t speak, not really. The drummer shouted “two-three-four,” and they lurched into their first snarling chord. That was how it began, and Selby was right. I saw. Oh shit, I saw.
Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor & Other Things We Called The Band, Available Now
