Eulogy

“He weren’t going to have his life stomped out by no big foot,” said the one in the black plaid Good­will suit, winging a shriveled rose down onto the coffin.

“No, sir, he weren’t going to have his life stomped out by no size 170½ shoe. He weren’t going to, he wouldn’t have it,” said the next, sprink­ling dirt clumps into the grave just as light­ning flashed across the city­scape behind him.

“No mat­ter which muthafuckin’ magazine editor’s size 170½ shoe was crushin’ the very life out of him,” said the mys­tery girl, mas­cara run­ning down her cheeks as thun­der played drums across the cor­oner gray sky, “the song of exulta­tion in his black heart could not be snuffed out by no angry big foot. Charles Mansen, we hardly knew ya …”

His­tory

Given the name Charles Mansen by his folks as a grim joke (the Mansen part was for real, the Charles part unfor­giv­able), Charles Mansen put up with some ser­i­ous ocean waves of shit in his young life.

“It’s spelled with an –en!” he’d shout as he fell, punches and kicks car­ry­ing him to the ground.

But like the ori­ginal Charles Manson’s gift for song, this Charles Mansen had a gift for press­ing down onto paper little stor­ies that meant a lot, at least to young Charles Mansen.

So he’d write them up–crazed little tales of may­hem, slaughter and ritual torture–and shoot them off across the inter­net like poison darts, hop­ing for pub­lic­a­tion, but never see­ing any. Every night a new story, a new dart, and by day­light another mock­ing (or per­haps slightly dis­trac­ted) rejec­tion. Charles Mansen found this tedious.

Sticky Dee, his girl­friend of fif­teen months and three weeks, found it more than tedi­ous. She found it repuls­ive. When she found Charlie’s stories–of maim­ing, tor­ture and rape–on his hard drive, she could only think this: what a mon­ster. She made plans to leave him, while fear­ing for her life and pack­ing her things surreptitiously.

All the while, Charlie Mansen (the unknown one) just con­tin­ued to write, churn­ing out one ghastly story after another, and piss­ing them into the gut­ter of the Web, only to find them all flushed back at him in time–usually quick time.

“So, um, Charlie,” said Sticky Dee, who had never heard of the notori­ous Charles Man­son, so that was never a prob­lem. “Like, what the fuck, you know?”

“No,” said Charlie, “I don’t know.”

“Like,” said Sticky Dee, “What’s with all of these fuckin’ stor­ies anyway?”

“Have YOU been read­ing MY STORIES?” Charlie screamed, freak­ing out, rais­ing his hand to her. She flinched, took a step back and said, “No, Charlie, don’t …” He lowered his hand. “Don’t what?” he replied.

Sticky left that even­ing, stand­ing briefly at the corner as the bus pulled up, look­ing up at Charlie Mansen’s bed­room win­dow, where she knew he had already com­posed another story and was try­ing to inject its fever into the veins of the Net.

Defeat

After Sticky Dee left, Charles Mansen went crazy. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. He cer­tainly could no longer write. And he didn’t go out to the local water­ing hole. Well, one time he did go out, but that was a dis­aster. Coin­cid­ent­ally enough, he ended up at the same bar as Sticky Dee, who was there with her new ‘love interest’.

Charles Mansen nearly lost it. He ima­gined cut­ting Sticky Dee with his knife, and writ­ing on the walls with her blood. But he didn’t own a knife, so instead he fin­ished his beer and went back home to his room above the stairs, where he com­posed his word songs. He wrote a story about Sticky Dee, then sent it out like a guided mis­sile against the internet.

The next day, a dir­ect hit: accept­ance. “We’d love to print ‘Sticky Dee Will Live Forever (In My Heart and On the Inter­net)’,” the email said. Charles Mansen read the mes­sage sixty-one times, just to be sure he wasn’t miss­ing the word “not”.

Tri­umph

‘Sticky Dee Will Live Forever (In My Heart and On the Inter­net)’ was antho­lo­gized. In Best of the Net. In The Push­cart Prize. In The Best Short Stor­ies In The His­tory of Ever. And in other col­lec­tions that meant one thing: great­ness. Or so he naively believed. Charles Mansen was impressed and wrote more, sure that people would now find him pop­u­lar and women would enjoy stand­ing next to him. But noth­ing else from that day for­ward was ever accepted.

Not a single one of his many hor­ri­fy­ing tales of glor­i­fied hor­rible­ness found life on the Net or the prin­ted page. Although he wrote 1,121 more stor­ies, prose poems, and non-prose poems, all were rejec­ted with vary­ing levels of rage, dis­gust, malice and glee.

And each rejec­tion stabbed the sens­it­ive Charles Mansen much like a rusty fork to his heart, with the tan­dem dangers of blood loss and lock­jaw (although worse for Charles would be lock­hand, if there was such a thing). And then, one day, his win­dow on the world sud­denly closed. His con­nec­tion abruptly unplugged. His social net­work unex­pec­tedly de-socialized. He ceased writing–but more, he simply ceased.

The feet

The big feet won in the end, tra­gic­ally enough. Stomp­ing like a crit­ical eye in the storm straight towards Charles Mansen’s apart­ment. Right up the stairs to his bed­room. Dir­ectly on top of his oily head. Crush­ing the life out of him in an appar­ent heart attack (the offi­cial story). But no mere heart attack could have stopped a tal­ent like Charlie’s, only Big Foot could. And that was just one strike of two, because Charles Mansen–no mere mortal–died not of one broken heart, but two. First for the love of Sticky Dee. And second, the final foot­note, for the fame he never found, but which he wanted as much as Sticky’s love.

Carl Plumer is a gradu­ate of the Mas­ters Writ­ing Pro­gram at Stony Brook Uni­ver­sity. His stor­ies have appeared or are forth­com­ing in The Fog­horn, Blink | Ink, Black Lan­tern, Static Move­ment, Pulp­smith and else­where. Carl lives with his extraordin­ary wife and chil­dren some­where in the Mid­w­est, sleep­lessly plot­ting his immin­ent return to New York City.