Our eternal thanks to everyone who helped make last night’s reading such a gruesomely grand evening: Stephen, Michael, Cooper, Jeremiah, and Deirdre for performing your flappy lits; Pacific Standard for the ever-gracious hospitality; and all you marvelous individuals who spent your All Hallows’ Eve with us…
Hope we’ll see you again for our grand finale reading, sometime in the Spring…
Our fiction editor Stephen Langlois tells his bizarre story “Man Crawls Across Parking Lot”
Michael J. Seidlinger shares an excerpt from his new book MY PET SERIAL KILLER
Cooper Wilhelm performs a gripping tale of culinary weirdness
Our Poetry Consultant Jeremiah Driver reads some of his own brutal & shadowy poems
Deirdre Coyle closes the show with a sharp tale of blood & art
A million howling thank-yous to everyone who helped make last night’s reading such a deliciously dark affair: Lisa, Joanna, Stephen, Bud, Deirdre, Keegan, and Cooper for performing your flappy lits; Alibi Jones for your spooktacular singing & photography; Pacific Standard for your always-gracious hospitality; and all you beautiful creatures who came to witness our mischief.
Let’s do this again in January…
photos by Alibi Jones
Alibi Jones prepares to sink her fangs into Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”
Lisa Marie Basile gets things brewing with a reading from Nympholepsy
We have submitted our nominations for the 2017 Best of the Net anthology, which honors literary work that originally appeared on the internet between 7/1/2016 & 6/30/2017, and they are:
A hundred thousand hymns of praise to everyone who helped make last night’s reading such a holy moment: Anthony, Francine, Leland, Leonard, Ron, and Deirdre for performing your flappy lits; Alibi for your exquisite singing & fantastic photography; Pacific Standard for once again being our favorite place to read; and all you smart & sexy people who came to catch the show. Let’s do this again on February 15…
photos by Alibi Jones
Anthony Cappo shares poems of music & memory from his chapbook My Bedside Radio.
Francine Witte warns us of “Things to Watch Out For” in one of her poems from our new issue.
Leland Cheuk performs his brilliant short story “League of Losers” from his new collection Letters From Dinosaurs.
The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Goes to Infinity – Odilon Redon, 1882
2016 was certainly a very weird, very dark section of time-space, so it’s no surprise that a lot of the weirder, darker pieces we published here this past year attracted so many eyeballs. The 10 most-viewed pieces on flapperhouse.com in 2016 were…
#10. “Doodlebug” by Emily Linstrom is a haunting tale about a family of monstrous immortals hiding out in “a part of London even London has no recollection of…” (From our Spring 2016 issue.)
#9. “How Emma Jean Crossed the River” by Shawn Frazier is a powerfully gothic short story of a woman on the run from the Klan, from our Winter 2016 issue.
#8. “artemis”isone of five sizzling poems that Monica Lewis contributed to our Fall 2016 issue.
#7. “The Invention of H.P. Lovecraft” by Shay K. Azoulay is a fictional–yet, perhaps, plausible?!– theory on the origin of the influential horror author, from our Fall 2016 issue.
#6. “Mothers and Demons and the In-Between” is Janelle Garcia’s haunting flash fiction about creepy monsters & the perils of parenthood, from our Winter 2016 issue.
We’re gonna flap our downhearted blues away on Wednesday, January 4, 2017 from 7 – 9 PM at Brooklyn’s Pacific Standard as we celebrate the flight of our 12th issue with our 12th reading!
Our Winter 2017 issue doesn’t fly until December 21, but if you’d like an early taste of all the hungry, beastly lit that lies in wait, here’s Deirdre Coyle‘s wonderfully bizarre short story “How to Vomit Living Creatures.”
AND THEN SHE VOMITED A CAT. Not so much a hairball as an entire cat. It folded out of her mouth and onto the floor, fur smoothed by mucus.
She was wearing her bumblebee sweater.
“You look like a bumblebee,” said her mother.
“I just threw up a cat,” she replied.
Her mother looked at the clock. “Isn’t it time for your therapy?”
“Well…is the cat dead?” It was not moving.
“Let me check on it. Go see your therapist.”
Veronica was a student of comparative linguistics. She walked two miles to class every morning. Sometimes she ran. Sometimes she ate Luna bars while walking. This was allowed. At lunch, sometimes she ate french fries or chicken fingers. This was not allowed. Sometimes she stuck her fingers down her throat afterwards. Other times she ran an extra five miles on her way home to make up for it. Nothing made up for it.
The therapy sessions had begun after her freshman year of college, during which she had dropped thirty pounds in a few months and maintained a perfect 4.0.
“Do you worry often?” the therapist had asked during their first session. “About grades, maybe? Or boys?”
“I worry about grades,” Veronica replied. “But mostly I just get good grades. That’s what happens. To do otherwise would be stupid.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m in college, right? My mom’s paying for it. So I’m not going to waste her tuition money partying, you know?”
Her therapist raised an eyebrow, one finger tapping the arm of her chair. “Why do you say that?”
After two years and as many pounds of weight gain, Veronica’s therapist continued to question obvious statements.
“You can’t just eat a cookie and then throw up a cat,” said her therapist.
“I could. I did.”
“Not physically,” the therapist said, scribbling on her pad. “In order to purge a cat—”
“I wasn’t purging.”
“I only meant expunge. In order to expunge a cat, you must have eaten a cat.”
“I never ate a cat. I only ate a cookie. And if I had eaten two cookies, I probably would have thrown up two cats. Or maybe one, much fatter cat.”
Our most effervescent gratitude to everyone who helped make Reading #8 such a non-stop highlight reel: Deirdre, Monica, Armando, Devin, Oscar, Bill, Jeanann, and Dolan for performing your flappy lits; Alibi for your glamorous voice & exquisite photography; special guest Joseph SW Hasan for your wonderful music; Pacific Standard for continuing to be the best place to read in NYC; and of course, everyone who came out to be part of our gorgeous & enthusiastic audience! Let’s do this again on August 3rd…
photography by Alibi Jones
Deirdre Coyle kicks off the readings with a tale of sex demons & burn scars
This WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22 from 7 – 9 PM at Brooklyn’s Pacific Standard, we’re gonna get weird like a libertine’s fever dream as we celebrate the flight of our 10th issue, FLAPPERHOUSE X, with our 8th reading.
Michael J. Seidlinger shares an excerpt from his new book MY PET SERIAL KILLER
Cooper Wilhelm performs a gripping tale of culinary weirdness
Deirdre Coyle closes the show with a sharp tale of blood & art
FLAPPERHOUSE 