17 Tales of Tragedy and Triumph

Acknowledgements

Thomas Kuecks, Samuel Finlay, Joice Wolf, Ygor Lira, Samantha Jones, Ben Sixsmith, Ryan Laird, Shaun Morris, Mary Brian, Tara Brian, James Brian, Dave Brian, Sue Rea.

Foreword by Sam Finlay

In 17 Tales of Tragedy and Triumph, Paul Brian explores the moments where everything changes. From 1920's Arkansas to a galactic techno-commercial imperium, the reader follows a kaleidoscope of characters as their lives take them to a choice or revelation that alters their world.

At times poignant, and often raw and surreal in a tone reminiscent of The Twilight Zone, this collection of short stories moves effortlessness from the world-spanning to the deeply intimate.

Showing an incredible economy of words and range in his writing, Paul Brian is able to set the stage in settings familiar or strange, introduce us to characters from a host of different backgrounds, then take them through a threshold that overturns everything we've come to know; and does so within just a few pages.

He has a command of dialogue that feels authentic and never falls into anachronism, and there is often something lurking just underneath the surface of the tales that links to issues relevant to this moment in time.

– Sam Finlay

Author of Breakfast With the Dirt Cult

Introduction

I wrote these short stories over the course of 2024 in Canada, the United States, Europe and Brazil. They explore the unexpected ups and downs of life, when accounts are settled and destiny points you in a new direction (or back in the same direction you should have gone all along).

This is an unvarnished look at the dark, the light and all the places we’re told not to look.

​Each piece of short fiction in this collection explores different genres and authorial voices striking at the heart of what it means to be human and the conflicts and cooperation that define our time on this strange planet.

​The stories in this collection focus on masculinity: friendship, masculinity, fatherhood, brotherhood, betrayal, strength. Failure and triumph, derangement and sanity, blame and gratitude, the quest to carve control and meaning out of chaos and confusion.

​We’re all on the road of life without a map to rely on, but with grit, bravery and some humor the future is ours for the making.

​Enjoy the ride, and remember: sometimes, the best stories are the ones where you go did he actually write that? Yes, yes he did. (Yes I did).

Let’s get started.

​Paul Rowan Brian

July 4, 2024

Hot Springs, Arkansas

Playlist

The first time Mark Masterson tried Shazam he was standing in line for a flight at the San Diego airport. Tinny airport speakers were playing something that he couldn’t place, and it was incredibly annoying. It managed to be both infantile and sinister at the same time. What the hell was it?

So he turned to Shazam.

The app was simple: you opened it and pressed a button which then spun while identifying the title and artist of the song being played. Shazam had been suggested by Mark’s friend Ken after Mark had complained one time too many about the odd and inane songs he kept hearing.

Try Shazam. It can ID pretty much any song, Ken had advised.

In this case waiting in line at San Diego airport, the lyrics were especially vacuous. Mark caught the words shake that junk as well as girl and on fire tonight yeah yeah, no slut shaming, bruh. Other lines popped up with shootin’ fire from that coochie and wanna wrap you up ‘n take you home to eat. Standard pop fare, he supposed. But this one was especially obnoxious. It seemed almost cannibalistic or something. Mark hit the Shazam button and watched as it spun around. The results flashed on the screen in mere seconds:

Hula Hoop Bootay Grrrrl by Xtreme King Deluxe.

The next song began streaming right after, with an upbeat verse leading into a chorus that sounded like an otter having a seizure. Shazam:

Your Caboose Is My Playground by the New Queers. La di da. Brave new world indeed.

Mark’s new discoveries flowed like a torrent from there: in line for his favorite café, while on the subway, and in between classes at university where he was a professor of history. Each time the result seemed more obnoxious, almost like an intentional slap in his face.

"I’m gonna smack you good

Show you who’s boss, boo

No static on this channel foo’

Gonna ram you like I plan to."

Was this stuff for real?

Even the university reception room in his department was playing some very strange Sirius XM station that apparently was quite mainstream.

I Fuck Wit’ the Devil by Cardiac Bewbjob. Gimme Head Bitch (Now Bitch), by King Kong Baller. I Slept With My Best Friend (And He Had a Small Dick) by Wendy 3Chain. OK then. Classy stuff. Come to think of it, he’d once had a special friend called Wendy. This clearly wasn’t that Wendy though.

Mark became obsessed. What was this phenomenon? This anti-music? These compositions sounded like they were made for deranged illiterate hoodlums living in a sewer or rich kids getting ready to pull off a Menendez brothers stunt.

Was this society today?

As a professor of history, Mark was prone to seeing cycles. But this wasn’t the decadent stage before ancient Rome collapsed. This wasn’t Weimar indulgence and depravity as a society reacted to trauma and defeat, either. This was just...well, retarded.

In fact, one of the songs he found while at the gym on his Shazam was called just that, or at least close: I Want To Do R-Word Things With You by Leaky Slut Syndrome. Unbelievable filth. He’d never thought of himself as some kind of counterrevolutionary reactionary type, but this crossed some big lines. Was he just a Boomer with prudish taste? Mark certainly didn’t think so.

Indeed, Mark was far from a prude. He’d gone to strip clubs, and even had an affair with an escort in his 30s. But even on a practical level how was this nonsense supposed to pump a guy up for the gym or let students focus while they were in between classes in a waiting area? How did it brighten anyone’s day on the metro or help somebody in a dentist’s waiting room (Grab My Root, Sugar by Xavier Winkler last week – was that supposed to be some kind of sick route canal joke? If so, it hadn’t landed, especially when the drills started up before the anesthetic kicked in).

Mark’s alienation increased. He was a man of the academy, and this society was foreign to him in a fundamental way. But it wasn’t just out there: it was in here. In his head, and invading his sleep. An egregore gone mad. Everywhere he went. Even his workplace.

Walking by the women’s studies department at college his eyes widened in something approaching nausea as his Shazam identified the music coming from Professor Wilkins’ office: Pumpkin Spice and Reproductive Rights (Now!) by the band Womyn Power.

Dear Lord, this was getting grim.

Still, how was he supposed to change it? One lowly history professor who spent his days lecturing on the Westphalian system and medieval judicial reform? What say did he get in what excuse for music pumped out of the speakers and into the ears of the masses?

None. But he had Shazam.

And so Mark began using the app even more prodigiously, an ad hoc cultural anthropologist on a rampage, clicking at every available opportunity and widening his eyes so often that he began to take on the look of a bewildered weasel coming out of a culvert after many days in hiding.

It was on a fateful Tuesday that Mark Masterson sadly Shazamed his last song. He’d heard a young man playing a song aloud on his smartphone and had just identified it as Goon Cave Blues by Ivan the Yncel.

"I be goonin’

Goonin’ my shit

Blackpill life

I ain’t here for it

I be goonin’

Goonin’ my shit

Takin’ a safari

In the dopamine pit."

What in the...hell? Caught up in the nuttiness of the song, Mark wasn’t watching where he was going.

Crossing the busy intersection near his apartment he was struck at around 87 miles per hour by a white 2023 Toyota Prius that was rocketing through the yellow light. He bounced off the hood and flew about 50 feet, landing in a crumpled, lifeless mess. His Shazam was still spinning and identified that the driver of the Prius had been listening to Apocalypse Cow, a song by the radical environmentalist group F*ck Humanity.

"Apocalypse cow!

Humanity deserves to die: it’s true!

Look what it’s done to my bovine crew!

Apocalypse cow, apocalypse coooow!

We’re comin’ for you!"

As Mark’s crumpled body lay on the pavement, the driver, a blue-haired 28-year-old gender studies student, breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t been an animal she’d hit. But she still felt kind of crummy. Several onlookers groaned and languidly called 911. Goon Cave dude was already on his way home to gooning by that time. The world kept turning.

Mark was a solitary man, but he did have family, including his estranged daughter Elle and several cousins and surviving aunts and uncles. But none had known him well. This brought up the question of his funeral.

When it occurred several days later, the family got together to make arrangements. What remarks would be given by whom? And what about some auditory accompaniment. Mark hadn’t been a religious man, so hymns seemed an ill fit.

Nobody had known what to play, apart from a piece of Brahms that Mark had been well known for loving. So Elle went through his phone, scrolling his Shazam with eyes wide.

I guess dad was more hip than we thought, she murmured. Lil’ Dink and Rash X? Damn.

Are you sure that’s appropriate for a...memorial? asked elderly uncle Charles, taking off his golf cap to scratch the gray remnants of his hair.

I mean...It’s what he was into I guess. Why not send him off with a bang?

The others shrugged.

The funeral was held on a Tuesday afternoon. Mark’s cousin Albert was scrolling through social media checking updates from the UN Climate Panel. As some tears were shed and remarks given, Mark’s fellow professor Gail Nyvik stepped down after lavishing praise on her colleague’s forward thinking and love for humanity.

Then the music hit the sound system, loud and clear. The audience sat with mouths agape, wondering if it was a prank or some bizarre side of Mark’s sense of humor they’d never experienced.

"Shove it back, back, back

I’m a monstah, smoke that crack, crack, crack

Give that donk a smack, smack, smack

All my bitches put out, no cap, cap, cap."

Planetary Pariah

Date: Year of Pride (YOP) 2189

To: The Most Honorable Mr. Michael Hitaku, Chief Director and COO of MegaMix Life Bars.

From: Helen Korn, Employee ID 35292219

Your excellency sir!

I, Helen Yvonne Korn, General Field Services Human Resources Officer Level 3.8 at MegaMix Corporation hereby submit the following report regarding HR activities in the L5 Sector of the Blogon development site. All data relevant to the business operations of MegaMix Inc. (hereafter the Company) have been denoted.

Please note that stock prices are listed as of close of business yesterday and that galactic average grain (GAG) statistics have been factored into total return on investment (ROI).

Taking into account total GAG, it is my humble assessment as General Field Services Human Resources Officer Level 3.8 that MegaMix redouble efforts at Blogon and work to establish an expanded base of operations in the main city of Blogor and the neighboring smaller industrial city of Bloorp.

Yours most truly, humbly and sincerely,

Helen H. Korn.

Michael Hitaku sighed and tapped the holo-screen to exit Korn’s tiresome, pedantic message. He rubbed his eyes and took a small snort of watermelon-flavored crentix dioxide, popularly known as paradise powder. He leaned back and breathed deeply, rubbing his temples and blinking his eyes as the drug hit him with its pleasant oblivion.

You got this. You’re on track.

He was already working on expanding Blogon operations, so Korn’s ass-kissing message was just a redundant suggestion. He didn’t need her empty words and flattery. Why was MegaMix hiring all these underlings to file useless, sycophantic reports? He snorted ferociously and then tapped his earpiece.

"Find ‘Helen Korn’. Employee ID 35292219. Send her back to menial sorting. Effective today. I don’t want to hear her stupid name again."

Yes, sir! Right away. The tinny reply could be faintly heard emanating from Hitaku’s earpiece in the silent office.

Korn was actually an AI application running out of MegaMix’s massive administrative center near Phoenix and the employee snickered as he agreed to Hitaku’s order. All he had to do was switch off the application or change its personality and parameters. His team had tended to make helpbots with very sycophantic personalities such as Korn, but it turned out they had overdone it a bit. Best to make employees who were more curt and all business as Hitaku seemed to prefer.

Hitaku tapped his fingers on the desk and inhaled another small pinch of paradise powder. He gingerly took a sip of