Enter the world of J.G Redfern’s Hecatomb, a novel that I have been reading and re-reading over the past couple of weeks. A certain appeal about writing for me is the ability to sink into a book with any order of chapters that I choose, and this collection of 100, yes 100 chapters, provide a beautiful and demonic barrage of “buried memory” ignition for the reader. With jarring cerebral cortex vignettes of human behavior past, present, and future, suspicious actions and reactions take place in surreal slaughterhouses, mortuaries, seedy bar bantering, cheap religious devotion, and blissful character confusion. 221 pages of easily digestible eavesdropping on the corners and getaways we inhabit.
The novel conjures up a Venn diagram of my own life: checking out girls while failing Latin in Junior High, driving back roads aimlessly(with bottle in tow) as a teenager, and crashing into re-enforced glass as an adult trying to establish maintain romantic relationships while continually investing in my own seediness. In looking at the definition of Hecatomb and reading the blood soaked scripture, my own life has had a severe sacrificing of victims in order to appease the sleazy compulsions that keep me alive.
The dreaded feeling of slaving to the bar for a 6 a.m. opening to avoid the shakes and bad recollections of the night before while having profound conversations with the morning comers is captured perfectly in the atmosphere of self-deconstruction and violent flirtations with reality and the unreality.
Redfern’s writing style is gritty commentary and surrealism in a powder keg that pours easily like a box of cheap wine. This red wine is of the highest caliber and always maintains a relationship between the author and reader while allowing free thought to formulate the ideas and societal study of the novel. J.G. has been in correspondence quite regularly with me and is one of the super talented authors I have come across in the exploding world of digital publishing.
Let yourself go and pick up the book here
I will leave you with an excerpt from this modern toxic masterpiece- Kevin McG, Fear & Loathing, LB
51. Garage
She carried it into the garage along with a twelve-dollar bottle of wine and a six-dollar bag of double cheeseburgers. The dogs weren’t yapping and joyous around her feet as they usually were when she brought home meat. There were four of them: three dogs and the lady with the wine, the hose and the bag of meat. She double-locked the door behind her and stood there looking down on her best and only friends. They were all sitting up at attention and looking at her with raised canine eyebrows, heads cocked to one side, whimpering quietly. She stayed there for a lingering moment, looking down at them, her eyes heavy with the world and welling up.
“Are my babies hungry?” she asked as she always did.
Her dogs lamented a bit, trying to persuade her with quiet monosyllabic cooing and barely-audible howls, trying to convince her that everything was all right, but even they knew different.
“Yeah,” she sighed, “figures. You love me when you want something, you no good bitches.”
The dogs grew silent and stopped any vocalizations, dropping their heads downward, but continuing to look up. Then the youngest among the pack broke ranks, scampered up to her heels and began whining out a howling whimper.
“Oh, I’m sorry, my babies,” she said sincerely as she began unwrapping burgers and feeding her friends. Each got a sandwich and a rub on the top of the head and around the ears according to rank. As the three dogs worked their burgers, she set the bag on top of the dashboard and retrieved a roll of duct tape from a shelf above the washer and dryer. She slipped one end of a hose into the tailpipe and taped around the gaps. The other end, she routed into the cab. She rolled up the window, taping in crudely around the voids. She uncorked the wine and took a long drink. She sat down behind the wheel, closed her door, and opened the passenger door, saying happily, “Go for a ride? Go for a ride?”
The dogs scampered into the car, and she pulled the passenger door closed behind them. She gave them each another burger and started the engine. She drank the wine, and they ate the double cheeseburgers, and then, they all went to sleep.
