Fiction, so the story goes, is the lie that tells the truth. I could not agree more.
Here, then, are seven such truths, told as lies.
The first one—Beast—is about that beast that sleeps in the basement of all of us, the one we’d leave asleep if we had any sense at all. The one we always wake at the first whiff of desire.
The second one—Angels—is about Gabriel, the Arch one, and a boy and many ants.
The third one—Hell’s Father—is about Tertullian, the Roman who unbeknownst to many did more to fashion the hell so many of us fear today than anybody else.
Then there’s the fourth one—I Killed Hemingway. This story is told by the psychiatric nurse who helped administer the electric shocks that many consider precipitated the writer’s suicide. It is about a young man’s anguish and remorse at reading about that fatal rifle shot in the papers.
The fifth—Bristlecone Buddha—is a short page of a tree reminiscing.
The sixth—Boil a Manchild for Odin—is about trolls and their attempt to gain back Odin’s favor (he’s been siding with man, lately).
The last—Only the Albatross Remembers—is the story of Lance, who survives drowning, only to find himself an albatross; an albatross who remembers.
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