Experimental
Issue #2
‘The Secret Lives of the Spammers’ is ‘a patchwork story based on the names that turn up in my spam folder’.
The Secret Lives of the Spammers
Phemie Lamont looked out of the window of her fifth floor apartment as she fed her white cat.
Raul Gonzales saw her out of the corner of his eye as he rushed to a meeting in the office on the other side of the street.
Lynette Forck, his boss, smiled and tapped her watch face as he ran into the room two minutes later.
Chloris Pitman wrote her aunt Lynette a postcard from the bunk of her hostel in Barcelona.
Iona McKenna lay awake and wished the girl in the bunk above would turn the light out.
Ber Demarco thought about the girl with the freckles and the strange accent who had smiled at him when she asked directions earlier that day.
Vasquez Burns cooked dinner for his flatmate and himself while the other man stared smiling into his water glass.
Marvin Moses walked out of the glass factory and opened his umbrella. He thought about rubber boots.
Evdokia Halliday pushed her wet yellow boots under the chair on which she had folded her clothes.
Dr Byron B. Lamont tried to reassure her with a calm, even tone that there was probably nothing seriously wrong.
Rosalinda Cummins greeted her weeping family at the reception of the funeral home a few months later.
Marfa Sanner assembled the small, tight arrangements of carnations and lilies that she recommended for the grave.
Petros Barahona took the flowers round to her studio and a big white van.
Riley Day dragged his grimy finger across the grimy van to make suggestions about Petros’ wife.
Mary Miner shook her head at this event and returned to filling out her tax return.
Lorene Bellamy closed her window at the counter as soon as the time ran out to return the forms.
Leos Vuong broke into her car on a whim on his way home from school and drove it to the river where he sat and stared.
Meghan Lincoln tried to work out with their names and numbers what percentage they loved each other.
Benson Bunt gave her a caramel on their way out of chemistry where they watched magnesium ignite in water.
Lennart Radovich emptied the water tank, replaced the materials in the cupboard and walked to the wall by the staff room for a cigarette.
Mohinder Yun, substitute teacher pretending knowledge of religious studies, asked him for a light.
Baker Balderas helped him to the hospital when he collapsed in the street from an asthma attack.
Mariabella Alger had her faith in humanity temporarily restored in witnessing this.
Elisavet Coale removed it again when she removed the notes from the other woman’s lost wallet before handing it to the police.
Horus Marquart filled in the forms for its receipt.
Margo Garrett held the bus for him when she saw him run for it at the end of the day.
Mabel Shearer was Margo’s cousin who had just won an award for her fifth popular novel, even though she knew it wasn’t really any good.
Cibra Groce was the hero of that story, a disenfranchised youth journeying alone through Asia, having many adventures with drugs, but could not kill his loneliness.
Tonya McCabe totally identified with the character and told herself that she would keep her stupid summer job until she had enough money to do the same thing.
Inanna Carrasquillo worked the same tree-planting job and felt really happy to be outdoors all day, listening to the birds while she worked. She looked up and saw a blue jay.
Marla Phillips saw the same bird while eating in the park on her lunch break and smoking the cigarette she promised her husband she would not smoke.
Nataly Morozova picked up the butt and the end of the day and ripped it open, along with fifteen others she found, to scrape enough tobacco together for a rollie.
Ericka Christiansen was the girlfriend she shared it with. They could never go home, but they were in love, so what did it matter?
Troy Clemons watched them kiss in the streetlight from the warmth of his car.
Jerold Ramsey wrinkled his nose when he valetted the interior the next day and thought about how strange people are.
Alex Raines was the next person he thought of. He had the largest collection of Coca Cola memorabilia in the whole entire world.
Mandy Villanueva met him at the Guinness party. She held the record for the largest number of clothes pegs attached to her face.
Nelda Unsworth was the journalist who reported on their wedding for a tabloid newspaper.
Summer Hoppes read the paper in the bathroom, waiting and trying not to panic.
Patrick Elias was the name she gave the baby.
Vasya Howerton cooed over the infant when she saw him out in his pram and thought about when her own children were young.
Jaynie Defelice nearly walked into the vacant-looking woman in the baking aisle of the supermarket.
Lukacz Cluck was annoyed by the woman’s brusque manner, but refused to let it spoil his day.
Jaana Olivarez joined him on the sofa to watch the entire Star Wars DVD collection and get high till 4am.
Oni Eisenhart smiled at the scent wafting in from the apartment next door and remembered what it was like to be young.
Dax Mansfield asked him to keep his mind on the damn chess game.
Candice Rosenberger picked him up at the apartment in a shiny red convertible when it got too late for him to be up. While she drove, he told her stories about his life.
Lakeisha Gallup bugged her about why she hung out with that weird old guy all the time.
Buddy McCarthy was chastised for picking a costume as boring as James Dean for the party when she had made the effort and turned herself into a Disney princess for the occasion.
Steen Clarkson was dissuaded by him from the Karl Marx costume because no-one would get it.
Alf Soles nodded acknowledgement to the portrait of the serious man with the beard before putting on his hat and riding his bike to the factory, fifty years before.
Helen Rivers winked and flashed the top of her stocking at him and laughed with her friends at his sour face.
Sylvana Shine was the name she used when she had her picture taken for the magazines. She gave her profession as “artist’s model”.
Chrissie Cade thumbed through page after page of these photos for a book she was writing about pornography and feminism. The made her feel strange in a way she couldn’t explain.
Zena Cobbins was drawn to the book’s excitingly coloured jacket, but put it down and bought a novel instead because she was going on holiday.
Sheryl Sprague excitedly greeted her at the airport and held up a digital camera to capture both their faces.
Jozo Lane, an overweight Jack Russell terrier, was perplexed and annoyed to find himself in boarding kennels for two weeks. He promised himself that he would shit on the rag rug when he got home.
Alexis Burke was charged with cleaning the offending article.
Georg Dave decided that today was the day he would ask the laundry girl out for a beer. Instead he simply left three shirts and, blushing, left.
Terrance Perkins had put his name on those shirts, even though he hadn’t designed them. A shirt’s a shirt.
Maria O. was a young woman from Russia who was interested in marrying him, if the email was to be believed.