Experimented upon, his body flayed, pulled apart, pinned open, bones sawed, sinews severed, his spine drained of its fluid — Seamus HP somehow — miraculously, it seemed — survived. And it changed not only his appearance, but his mind, too: he became a supervillain, he became an anti-hero, he became a heartless killing machine: he became SpinalFluid.
Enraged, his body flooded with vengeance, he ripped out the thick cords that held him down, the ones that penetrated him with illicit abandon. He was not just a body. He was not just another miserable soul. At another’s servitude. Forced into submission. Until death. No. That would not happen to SpinalFluid.
They say you can’t take anything with you when you die. But that’s not quite right. There were people he’d love to take with him: The ones responsible for his appearance, the Utopians, the ones who took his spinal fluid and replaced it with… well, whatever they replaced it with.
SpinalFluid wrapped himself in bandages to staunch the bleeding. He strangled a nurse from behind. He took their keys. He escaped through a backdoor. The guards — DHS guards — fired shots at him as he fled. A bullet pierced his shoulder, and SpinalFluid smiled and laughed because there was no pain. He found himself in a kitchen and grabbed a large knife. He used that knife to slice the throat of the cook. What kind of cook has a loaded handgun? SpinalFluid took that, too.
They’d created him — the DHS, the Utopians, the Cosmonauts — and soon they’ll wished they hadn’t.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
