JUSTIN COURTER

Justin Courter’s books include the novel Cadenza. His work has appeared in The Literary Review, American Book Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Poetry East, and numerous other publications. More about it can be found at www.justincourter.com.  

DOMESTIC TERRORIST

After dinner, she plunged her steak knife into his heart. He had the temerity to point this out. You’re too sensitive, she said, disgusted, as blood blossomed on his shirtfront. You look pale, she said. You should go to a doctor; why won’t you ever go to the doctor? Blood burbled in his throat as he tried to reply. What? she demanded. Stop mumbling. You always mumble. He staggered, almost fell, caught himself on the edge of the table. Are you drunk? she said. You drink too much. He managed to gasp that he thought he might die. You’re so dramatic, she said, stepping out of the way so he could fall. You’re making a mess, she said, as his blood pooled on the floor. You’re gross. He protested, almost inaudibly, that he loved her. Why are you like this? she asked, sounding almost interested. He tried to say more, but she interrupted. You just won’t stop, will you? she said. Sighing, she knelt beside him and began sawing off his tongue, hissing into his ear, Do I have to do everything?

PAINTING THE WORLD RED

One day, he walked outside with a can of paint, which he applied to the trunk of a tree. He used small brushes for branches, smaller ones to paint twigs, and hummingbird-beak-sized brushes for tiny leaves. The smaller pieces required deeper concentration, which he found more appealing. What drove him looked like anger but was in fact a desperate need to dam the flow of his own thoughts. He lost track of the days, painting each leaf with precision. He even used a loupe, which looked like a tiny telescope squinched in his eye socket. He was high up in the treetops on the edge of town one afternoon when the drone spotted him. Soon, a cloud of drones gathered around in the air above him. Their sound was soothing, the monotone matching the monochrome of his endeavor. When he climbed down to eat something before continuing, people crowded around him. They said he’d gone viral. Yes, he agreed, as he chewed a sandwich, he had. He was like a very slow disease. He wanted to paint the whole world red. A woman holding a cell phone in his face wanted to know why. This was too much. They were asking him to do the very thing he was trying so ardently to extinguish. He raised his paintbrush and, with delicate strokes, began to paint the phone, up and down, doing the detail work, sticking the tip of the brush directly into the staring eye of the camera. It was important to get every bit covered, to stop the eyes behind this one, swarming him like thoughts. Let them, too, see red. He was the channel it would flow through. 

A REVIEW OF THE MOVIE OF YOUR LIFE

Some of the opening scenes were quite touching. The acting was a bit spastic in the beginning and the dialogue seemingly unrelated to the action, such as it was—the usual coming-of–age catastrophes. Unfortunately, it was more than a bit cliché, including the quasi-bucolic backdrop and the interior scenes of psychotic family life. Does anyone really want to watch all this screaming and the crashing of crockery against walls and floors, followed by long tracking shots through the wilderness? Due mainly to the lack of continuity, the whole project seemed almost to be a dadaist experiment, an adventure in absurdism that failed to evince adequate humor to leaven the recurring nightmarishness. Thematically barren, the proceedings gradually revealed that there was absolutely no plot (talk about a narrative sagging in the middle, matching the protagonist’s middle when he reached middle age). Plus, a pacing problem: long sequences of our hero simply pacing. Back and forth, mirroring the gyrations of his circular reasoning, his repetitive daily life. And the office scenes, those panoramic as well as intimate illustrations of quiet desperation, had the texture of an excruciating documentary. Being condemned to this character’s POV, even for just a couple of hours, was to be subjected to an unrelenting monotony. As he aged, the closeups became little standalone horror films. The set pieces were too heavily set, so slow that the viewer began to muse on the generic artificiality of the movie set, the poor lighting in the office, the lurid living room, through which passed members of a cast of characters—some recurring, but all ultimately sharing the inconsequentiality of cameos—that had been written into the script and then allowed to slip out of the so-called story altogether. One hoped for a redeeming denouement, or at least some clue as to the intention behind the production, a deux ex machina—something, anything, to tie it all together. Unfortunately, what we got was an abrupt ending (death in a bathtub) and a fade to black that leaves the viewer forever in the dark.

THE NEW MANAGER

The new manager lay in his manger, asleep. 

The wise guys huddled around him. 

What do we do? asked wise guy number one. 

Shut up, said number two. 

Just stand there looking historical. 

Did you bring the frankincesemilla? asked number three. 

Why should I look hysterical? asked one. 

In his sleep, the new manager sucked on an invisible breast. 

It looks like he’s blowing smoke rings, said three. 

He’s the new manager, said two. 

He can do whatever he damn well pleases. 

Then why don’t he please bust out of his swaddling 

and tell us what to do? asked one. 

This would be way better if we were stoned, said three. 

Don’t make me take the new manager’s name in vain, said two. 

How do we even know he’s the new manager? 

asked one. We’re only wise guys. 

I told you, said two, we’ve become astronomers, 

and that’s how we know this little fella’s our lucky savior. 

The new manager woke up and began to cry and scream. 

We’ve got it under control, sir! yelled two. 

Everything’s under control!

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