Apeshit

Also by Carlton Mellick III

Satan Burger

Electric Jesus Corpse

Sunset With a Beard
(stories)

Razor Wire Pubic Hair

Teeth and Tongue Landscape

The Steel Breakfast Era

The Baby Jesus Butt Plug

Fishy-fleshed

The Menstruating Mall

Ocean of Lard
(with Kevin L. Donihe)

Punk Land

Sex and Death in Television Town

Sea of the Patchwork Cats

The Haunted Vagina

Cancer-cute
(Avant Punk Army Exclusive)

War Slut

Sausagey Santa

Ugly Heaven, Beautiful Hell
(with Jeffrey Thomas)

Adolf in Wonderland

Ultra Fuckers

Cybernetrix

The Egg Man

APESHIT

CARLTON MELLICK III

AVANT PUNK

AVANT PUNK

AN IMPRINT OF ERASERHEAD PRESS

ERASERHEAD PRESS

205 NE BRYANT

PORTLAND, OR 97211

WWW.ERASERHEADPRESS.COM

ISBN: 1-933929-76-6

Copyright © 2008 by Carlton Mellick III

Cover art copyright © 2008 by Ed Mironiuk

www.edmironiuk.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except

where permitted by law.

Printed in the USA.

Author’s Note

I was always into low budget horror movies. The

crappier they are the better. After I played an insane priest

in the low budget horror movie
The Ancient
, I really wanted

to write a screenplay for my own crappy low budget horror

movie. Why the hell not? The typical cliché involving a

group of teenagers in the woods getting killed off one at a

time for some reason or another is my personal favorite. I

wanted to do something like that, yet give it a little twist.

You know, like where it turns out that the crazy supernatural

killer in the forest won’t die because instead of internal organs

he’s filled with a bunch of corndogs, and the only way to kill

him for good is to eat all the corndogs out of him, but none

of the characters are all that hungry because they just ate

some sandwiches so they’ve got to get to town and find some

fat guy who would be able to eat all the corndogs for them.

Of course, that wouldn’t be as easy as it sounds because the

killer would have this crazy hairdo that is like a mullet

but it’s also a chainsaw. You know, a Chainsaw Mullet,

which is what the movie would be called, and what all the

characters would get killed with in horrible yet interesting

ways. Now that I think about it, that sounds like a pretty

awesome movie. I should have written that one instead.

The movie I planned to do was called
Apeshit
.

Although I never got around to writing the screenplay, I

did turn the idea into this book. I figured if any director

likes this book then I’ll just write the screenplay for them

later.

Writing this book was a guilty pleasure, like Cybernetrix

or The Haunted Vagina. It’s not “serious” literature, but I

approached a goofy idea as seriously as I could. Somebody

once told me that the goofiest ideas often make the best sto-

ries. I’m not sure if I agree with that, but I sure like writing

goofy stories like The Faggiest Vampire, Sausagey Santa,

and The Morbidly Obese Ninja (forthcoming).

The problem with starting a book with a goofy idea

is that they rarely end up as comedies. Apeshit isn’t as

goofy as I wanted it to be. In fact, it’s pretty fucked up. I

didn’t want to write something so fucked up, but I guess I

really couldn’t control the story. It wanted to go in its own

direction. Harlan Ellison claims that his characters will

often take on lives of their own. He wants them to go one

way, but they want to go another. They take over his sto-

ries and write themselves whether he likes it or not. That’s

kind of what happened to me while writing Apeshit. The

story went in directions I didn’t want it to go and I couldn’t

do anything to stop it. I asked this story, “What the fuck

is wrong with you?” and it just flipped me off and went on

with its business. This book surely is not the most fucked up

book ever written, it wasn’t supposed to be, but it’s fucked

up enough. Part of me doesn’t actually want anybody to

read it.

I’m guessing people are going to accuse me of trying

to be “shocking for the sake of being shocking” with this

book. More so than any of my previous books. But this

couldn’t be farther from the truth. A few weeks ago, I was

talking to Chuck Palahniuk about the whole “shocking for

the sake of being shocking” thing, because both of us are

regularly accused of doing this. I told him that I’m just trying

to be interesting for the sake of being interesting. Whether I

succeed or fail at being interesting, that’s up to the reader to

decide, but I’ve never tried to shock anyone with my work.

I didn’t think anyone was actually shocked by anything any-

more. Chuck said that what some people view as interesting

other people view as shocking. But shock fades with time.

Eventually, people will see what is interesting about things

that used to be shocking.

It really doesn’t matter, though. It’s best to just

write for yourself and not worry too much about what other

people think. Everybody is going to think you’re just full of

shit anyway. All writers are full of shit. I wish we were full

of corndogs instead, but we’re just not.

- Carlton Mellick III, 08/23/08 1:56 pm

Desdemona is the only girl on the cheerleading squad

with a mohawk. It is normally colored white with red tips—

because red and white are the school colors—but she wants

to try a new color for their weekend in the mountains.

“What do you think: green, blue, or purple?” Desde-

mona asks Crystal, holding up three cans of hair dye with her

colorfully tattooed fingers. She is also the only girl on the

cheerleading squad with a full body suit of tattoos.

Crystal sighs at the cans of hair dye. It has been over

five weeks, but she still hasn’t accepted her best friend’s lat-

est choice of hairstyle.

“Green, I guess,” Crystal says. She drops her eyes to

an abortion information website on her laptop. “At least it

will match your eyes.”

“You’re right!” Desdemona says. “This is going to

be sooo cute!”

She smiles wide as she finishes shaving the sides of

her head with her dad’s mustache clippers. Then she reads

the instructions on the back of the hair dye bottle, blinking

her long black eyelashes rapidly.

“Punk isn’t a cute style,” Crystal says.

“Stop calling my style punk! It doesn’t mean I’m

punk just because I’ve got a mohawk.”

“Nobody has mohawks except for the punks,” Crys-

tal says, cleaning her laptop keys with a Handi Wipe. “Peo-

ple are starting to think you’re one of them.”

“But look at my clothes. I would never wear punk

clothes.”

Crystal shakes her head. “You think that matters to them?”

“I think mohawks are pretty,” Desdemona says. She

looks at herself in her vanity mirror, caressing the smooth

bald sides of her head. “And feminine.”