Conspiracy Of Birds with Hounds of Doom

By Tim Murr

'I didn't want to burn any bridges, but I doused them real good with gasoline just in case.' Conspiracy Of Birds is the new novella from Tim Murr, creator and writer for the blog Stranger With Friction and author of Lose This Skin. It is a hallucinatory skin dive into the nightmare world of a failed writer living on the broken edges of America.
Now includes the shorts collection Hounds of Doom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Murr
• Release date: Feb 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311030375

Tim Murr

Born in Tennessee, my heart's in Boston, and my ass is in North Carolina. I was inspired to become a writer in 2nd grade after reading Treasure Island. I created, write, and maintain the horror culture blog, strangerwithfriction.blogspot.com, and am a featured contributor at www.popshifter.com. My books are Lose This Skin, Conspiracy of Birds/Hounds of Doom, and City Long Suffering. My work touches on horror, Sc-Fi, crime, and the weird. I coined the term Avant Noir to describe my debut novel, Conspiracy of Birds. I'm a movie fanatic with deep love for horror films, noir, spaghetti westerns, Euro-trash, and dark sci-fi. Writers who I hold in high esteem are Don Bajema, Kathy Acker, Jim Thompson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Philip K Dick, Lydia Lunch, Hubert Selby, Flannery O'Connor, William Gibson, and Nick Tosches-to name a few. I'll be buried in my Black Flag t-shirt and Alice Cooper saved my life. "I'm a very sympathetic person, but that doesn't always come across in my work, because I'm too busy being mad at everything." -Lydia Lunch "- that’s what they want: a God damned show a lit billboard in the middle of hell. that’s what they want, that bunch of dull inarticulate safe dreary admirers of carnivals." -Charles Bukowski "Break your back to earn your pay and don't forget to grovel" -Joe Strummer "These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't." -Dylan Thomas When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness. - Emo Philips "We like the bootleg sound" -David Thomas, Pere Ubu

Book preview

CONSPIRACY OF BIRDS with HOUNDS OF DOOM

By Tim Murr

Published by Tim Murr/St Rooster Books at Smashwords

All material copyright 2011/2014/2015/2016 Tim Murr

Second Edition

Cover by Stephanie Murr

No part of this text can be reprinted without prior written permission from the author, except for the purpose of review.

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Tim-Murr.blogspot.com

Strangerwithfriction.blogspot.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

INTRODUCTION/ACKNOWLEDGMENT

It all starts with the nightmares, at least in the case of this book. It all starts with my reoccurring nightmares that have shocked me out of sleep in the middle of the night for as long as I can remember. Over the years I’ve written so many drafts. Conspiracy morphed from a non-linear collection of vignettes to a neo-noir collection of connected short stories to an urban horror novella. Boiling it down to what Conspiracy really is at its heart; my nightmares collected and pieced together like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m calling it Avant-Noir, just to give it a shorthand description.

The seed of Conspiracy of Birds was a barely readable note scrawled in the margins on a random page in a composition book. It was 1998 or’99, Boston, MA, and I’d spent the night drinking and feeling sorry for myself. I discovered the note in 2001, in Knoxville, TN, and wrote a five page short called City of God. In 2003, in Chapel Hill, NC, I wrote the first draft of what would eventually be the book you have before you.

Conspiracy doesn’t arrive just through me though. I couldn’t have finished it (or much of anything else) without the valuable input and advice of my wife, Stephanie, and my friend Jason Gollihar. Who have read so many drafts and patiently sat through my ranting and worrying and nonsense. I also want to thank all the readers of Stranger With Friction. Your readership and support keeps me fueled and excited about working.

(Also, for this revised edition I have added the mini book HOUNDS OF DOOM.)

For the mad bastards that went before me

CHURCH OF THE MIDNIGHT CHOIR

The air was all warm mist and misery. The humidity had intensified with the afternoon’s thunderstorm, which had blown in off the ocean quickly and left everything uncomfortable and damp. The rain always turned up the garbage smell. Made the neon beer signs and gas lamps look like something out of a horror movie.

I’d been popping into the usual spots trying to find Lucky. No one’d seen Lucky, but they all kept asking me about Lenny. If I’d heard what happened to him. I said no all seven times and all seven times I was told about how he’d been found down an alley with his skull bashed in.

Nobody cared that he was dead. Nobody liked him. It was just an addiction to the sensational and the dark that kept everyone talking about it. The black trucks rolled down the streets every morning picking bodies out of the gutters or out of alleys or out of their desperate little rooms. Death was as common clouds here, but Lenny was killed with passion. The killer took a minute, not to snuff out a life, but to say something. That underlined the event. That got people talking. Passion is currency. Passion gets papers printed. Passion gets radio specters pouring out of speakers and into the consciousness of the listeners. Passion is a gossip machine. Passion captures the imagination. Passion is mental cocaine for the masses.

This particular night was nothing special, just one out ten million. I strolled past the hookers and the religious freaks and the bums. Foreign sailors chased girls and cursed in various languages. Young men hassled scrap collectors. Cops cruised by in patchwork patrol cars with chicken wire welded over the windows. No one was really up to anything and in this place that meant it was just the calm before the storm.

Whatever the storm wound up being, I don’t know. I missed it, because I went to church. Not on purpose, mind you. Just wound up there. Sometimes you get caught up with a movement of people and just go where the current takes you. That’s what happened when I rounded the corner into a dark neighborhood, with shot out street lights, and on to the road that goes past the mission with the big red neon cross. Lots of people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and species shuffling along, muttering to each other.

I was lost in my own head, not paying attention to my feet until the neon cross was directly over my head and I was being gently pushed through the doors. I’d been here once before, when I’d had too much to drink and had passed out on the sidewalk. The preacher who kept the place was a nice guy. I liked him. He took care of me. The place had been a gym, but they slapped the neon on the roof and painted a sign that said ‘Mission’ and ‘Church of the Midnight Choir’.

I wanted to turn back, but I was too tired to push through the throng coming up behind me, so I grabbed a pew in the back and collapsed. There was a hymnal in the pocket in front of me and a pot-bellied drunk to my right. The place was filling up quickly while a stiff looking lady with thick glasses played an old synthesizer set to ‘organ’. She played one song continuously, I don’t know what it was called, but I felt it in my bones. Like I’ve always known it.

There was graffiti carved into the wood on the pews. Some religious, some profane;

‘There is no hell just endless darkness’

‘That is hell’

‘For a good time suck my dick’

‘Fag’

‘I want to go home’

‘Thomas D was here 1867-2102’

‘Just accept love’

‘Bullshit’

‘My name is Sid guess what I did’

‘Jesus is love’

‘No one ever loved me’

The music faded off a single note and the preacher stepped up on stage. He looked tired, with swollen lips, like he’d been punched in the face, and a slight limp. He fixed the congregation with a look of warmth, took a deep breath, and opened his fat lips.

We’ve all got blood on our hands…in one way or another. We’re all guilty of something. So we can begin tonight knowing that we are all on common ground. We’re all sinners. We all fall short of God’s expectations. In that failure we can we look to one another and say ‘brother, sister, I’m with you’.

He took a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup on the little table to his left that was piled high with a large Bible and stacks of papers. His congregation looked like they were waiting in line to be whipped. I took a deep breath and crossed my arms. Blood. Sinners. God’s expectations. It was going to be a long night.

Preacher man looked lost, like he had no idea what he was going to say next, or why he was even there.

I hear it everyday; Why are we here? What is the point? Where is God? Well, I don’t know. I preach the word. I’m not a psychic. I don’t know much more than anyone else, it’s just that my brain is tuned into a radio wave not everyone can pick up. It’s not a blessing...it’s hard! You say ‘why that tornado?’ and I say ‘Jesus loves you.’ And you say ‘so what?’ And some of you…why do you even come here? You demand answers and I tell you what I know and you punch me! One of you tried to stab me! You come here with all your filth and lies and anger…

The pot-bellied man beside me had started vigorously scratching his belly and grunting with discomfort.

Whether you like my answers or not…one truth remains…whether you like it or not…and none of your sorcerers or poets or scientists or soldiers can change the fact…that Hell is real…and Satan is real…and me and all my ‘useless’ words…are the only thing standing between you and him!

The man was clawing at his belly with both hands. Tears streaming down his face.

And you’ll never wash the blood off your hands!

The man’s lap was covered in blood and he’d bit through his bottom lip.

What’s done in the dark will come to light!

Skeletal hands ripped through the man’s belly while the preacher’s neck began to stretch and twist reaching out across the congregation, coming at me. I couldn’t move.

The Avenger of Blood knows who you are! He’s waiting outside those city limits! For YOU!

The pot-bellied man nudged me in the ribs and my face fell out of my palm. I looked at him scared shitless. He whispered, ‘you were snorin’. I thanked him and focused on the smiling preacher who was talking a wedding and virgins and their wicks.

I ducked out quickly and hit the wet streets with ghosts breathing down my neck. Just another night. Except not really. Lenny was dead and in what was left of this world he had been the best friend I had. Phantoms and nightmares ran me out of my hotel room and were going to keep me running.

I saw Juliet walking arm in arm with bullish man with scarred knuckles. She said hello with her eyes from across the street, but otherwise gave no indication that she’d noticed me. They went into a building I thought was abandoned and I shuddered hard. A police car sped past and I hit the first alley I came to, running fast back to the safety of the hotel bar.

Cheap whiskey, take me away!

AS GOOD A PLACE TO START