MICHAEL FOUNTAIN READING NEW STORIES MONDAY NIGHT AT THE RED LION PUB, CHICAGO

MONDAY NIGHT, APRIL 10 at TWILIGHT TALES, Upstairs at
THE RED LION PUB
2446 N LINCOLN AVE., CHICAGO
(773) 348-2695
Yrs. Truly (Man About Town, Student of Mystery, White Bluesman, Editor of Ormondroyd's Encyclopedia Esoterica, and Love Child of Beatrix Potter and Edgar Allen Poe) will be reading:
* A new crime/horror story, "Binky Wasn't Ever Going to Get Up"
* A non- fiction excerpt illustrated with pretty pictures, "Tarot Without Superstition"
* And a short fantasy: "Ogopogo, or the Sea-Serpent Redemption"
Also appearing will be JJ PIONKE with
"Gender Bending Gaijin Dreams with Poetry-- A fiction-writing academic, JJ brings Twilight Tales a mix of everything Monday night."

CHICAGO'S RED LION PUB:

* built in 1882 when Lincoln Park and DePaul were nothing but farmland
* haunted by a score of Chicago's finest ghosts
* just across from the Biograph Theatre, where Dillinger was fingered by the Lady in Red and shot in the alley by G-Men
* Reputedly inhabited by eight (8) count 'em eight ghosts-- including the retarded girl who smells like lavendar, Sharon who blocks the door to the upstairs ladies room, the dark bearded man killed over a gambling debt

THE TROUBLE BEGINS AT SEVEN.

WAITING FOR BAIL: essay

Reprinted from The Kalamazoo News, copyright Michael Fountain

Read the rest HERE

.... He’d said the same thing to three others that night, each of them coming into jail for the first time. I recognized the emotion behind it—he was trying to convince them that he wasn’t just part of the system, that he was a human being in a hollow place. I used to work in such a place; I used to talk the same kind of bullshit.

.... I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. I felt gratitude; I also saw it as just one more way they get you on their side, get you dependent on them.

.... When you’re in a place like this you walk, sit, eat, answer questions or silently wait according to their schedule, the schedule of the institution, and a friendly individual will get you hooked on the smallest taste of human decency so that you start to think of that particular cop—the cop who lets you keep your clothes on, the cop who flips you a book of matches—as my cop. You watch him move behind the desk with the others; you feel a small sense of panic when he drifts out of sight. His face is the face of Daddy, Uncle, God; the other guards, acolytes of the institution, are bland, unfriendly blobs. ...

Read the rest HERE

For more articles, fiction, and artwork by Michael Fountain

Visit the O.E.E.