As 2014 has been careening through its homestretch, our Flappers have been even more prolific than usual, getting their work published across the internet like there won’t be a 2015.
When you’re a god, or a goddess, or any other kind of immortal being, death’s cold embrace can be the ultimate– and most elusive– high. Read all about it in Natalia Theodoridou‘s “We Call Her Mama,” one of the many flappy lits contained in our Fall 2014 issue.
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“IF I TAKE ENOUGH, WILL I BE ABLE TO DIE?” I asked.
She looked at me, with her boundless eyelashes sparkling under the club lights.
“I don’t know, baby,” she said. “No one has tried that before. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Here.” She held out her iridescent hand. I buried my face in her open palm and snorted the golden dust. My heart imploded right then, I swear. And then we danced, danced, danced like the gods that we were, until there was no club, no dust, no Father (Who art in heaven), just her and me, her unworthy, unfashionable, forever moribund Son.
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We called her Mama. She was no-one’s mother, but she was Mama to us all.
“Come on, boys and girls,” she would say. “Gather round.” And we did. We rushed to her feet to taste the golden dust that fell from her heels. Who was she? She was the joy of life when dying was but a party trick, and she was the face of death when we were sick and tired of living. And who were we? We liked to say we were fallen legends, desperado gods and renegade dreams, but really we were just a bunch of lost children, trying to forget we were immortal, looking for love. And she gave it to us; I don’t know what was in it for her, but she loved us all, and loved us plenty.
Before love, though, there was the drug. We thought it was the fairy dust that would make us into real boys. It almost did, too; the golden drug makes you laugh hard, and fear hard, and hurt as if you were human. But that’s it. Can’t make you mortal.
We all took it for different reasons, of course, but Mama accommodated each of her children without judgment. We were equals in her eyes. She danced with us, lay with us, dressed our wounds and licked the blood hot off our skin. And then, when we were done, when we had gotten what we needed, she let us go.
Our Fall 2014 issue is so wonderfully bizarre & freakishly beautiful it’ll make your cheeks quiver & explode. It begins with an Alternate Reality Game, ends with a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, and in between there’s pink slime, raving gods, naked alligator rides, regurgitated Raymond Carver, a bunch more fiction that’s too bizarre to summarize here, and some phenomenal poetry.
FLAPPERHOUSE #3 is no longer available for sale in digital (PDF) format because it’s NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE right here!
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