First, treat yourself to this, an excerpt from James Kennedy’s sparkle-excellent first novel, The Order of Odd-Fish. Proximity says check out www.jameskennedy.com and see if he is reading at a library near you sometime soon, because holy wow is James ever a good reader.

Afterwards, you’ll find a sharp new comic by Grant Reynolds. He is the future.

***

Imagine a room – a large room, the size of a theatre or cathedral. The room is almost empty, the walls bare, the floor nearly deserted.

In the center of the room there is a small desk.

Sitting at the desk is a small man.

He is Ken Kiang.

He is a Chinese millionaire.

And he is watching a donkey.

It is a small, wind-up brass donkey. Ken Kiang watches it trudge across his desk. The donkey is a medieval Arabic automaton
he unearthed at a recent archaeological dig in the Sudan.

He wants to be impressed by its unique workmanship. He longs to glory in its exquisite detail. He aches to be fascinated by its stunning ingenuity.

It bores him.

Ken Kiang bites his lip. He plucks the mechanical donkey off the desk and turns it around. Then he gives a long, weary sigh.

Ken Kiang was a collector. He collected objects, the most rare and beautiful; he also collected experiences, the most exhilarating and sophisticated.

But he noticed something disquieting. Every time he would complete a certain collection-whether it be medieval surgical instruments, or elephant skeletons, or mysterious black boxes-he would lose interest, and fall into depression. And there he would languish, until some new passion grabbed him.

But nothing grabbed him anymore.

Still, Ken Kiang was a dynamic man. He would not stand by and let the world go on without him.

So he threw himself into doing good deeds. He built hospitals; he funded schools; he fought for the downtrodden, for education, for feeding the hungry… for… for…

It was no use. His connoisseur’s instinct would not let him rest. There was, in the end, something trite about yet another homeless shelter; something shopworn about one more literacy program. Where was the originality? Where was the style, the verve-the showmanship? Ken Kiang lost interest in conventional charities, and became the benefactor of ever more obscure crusades.

Ken Kiang started an ambitious program to ensure that all underprivileged schoolchildren had “postmodern yet easy-to-manage” hairstyles. Never content to merely watch, Ken Kiang became a crackerjack hairstylist himself, and led his own squad of elite barbers from school to school, meticulously styling the hair of the baffled needy. The program was a resounding success, and Ken Kiang followed up quickly: instead of the soup kitchens, he established a nationwide network of “mint kitchens,” where a fellow down on his luck could freshen his breath for free, using a pioneering mouthwash Ken Kiang had chemically engineered himself. Ken Kiang graciously accepted the dozens of humanitarian awards heaped upon him, but he did not rest on his laurels-and within a month he had toddler-proofed the entire city of Baltimore. This project was more controversial, but Ken Kiang held firm. “Baltimore is nice and safe now-no hard surfaces or angles to hurt baby,” he pointed out, and everybody had to agree.

But even this became tedious. And as suddenly as he had started his charity programs, Ken Kiang stopped them all. He closed up his hospitals, shelters, and kitchens; little by little, the hair of American schoolchildren became less postmodern; the poor were no longer minty; soon it was not even safe to leave one’s baby unattended in Baltimore.

And thus Ken Kiang entered the deepest depression of his life.

At the age of thirty-nine, Ken Kiang had done it all. There was nothing worth owning that he hadn’t collected, nothing worth doing he hadn’t done. He had drank life to the full, but discovered to his dismay that no one was going to refill his cup. What could he do next? In what bold new endeavor could Ken Kiang set the standard for excellence?

Then, in the third week of his depression, it hit him. Ken Kiang had been huddled under the blankets in his darkened bedroom all day, rereading back issues of Sassy magazine and scarfing down candy corn (his secret vice), when inspiration struck.

He sat upright in bed, his heart pounding.

He would become evil.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Any idiot could be good-he had proven that. And every day, many a fool bumbled his way into being merely bad. But it would take a special kind of genius-Ken Kiang’s kind of genius-to be thoroughly, intentionally EVIL.

Evil! Who was evil anymore? The world was full of clods who were convinced they were doing the right thing. And even if they happened to sin interestingly, there was always their tiresome guilt-their ludicrous repentances-their pathetic attempts to lead a “better life”—

But pure, methodical evil-who did that anymore?

Ken Kiang got down to work, and for the first time in years found himself absorbed in a project. He devoured books about evil; he interviewed terrorists, serial murderers, and dictators; he dabbled in strange and wild diabolisms, slit the throats of shrieking beasts on stone altars in far-off lands, drank kitten blood, and sold his soul no fewer than twenty-three times to any supernatural being who cared bid on it. No price was too low: the fifteenth time he sold his soul, it was for a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips. Ken Kiang had eaten the chips with indecent glee as the demon looked away in embarrassment.

Then, one day, his studies were complete. He was evil! Theoretically, at least.

Ken Kiang hadn’t exactly done anything villainous yet, but he was certain he would have a brilliant career. He danced around his house, exulting in his damnation.

“I’m a bad man! A bad, bad, bad man! Oooh, I’m damned… damned to hell for all eternity… hmmm. What’s that like?”

He looked up “hell” in the encyclopedia.

An abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. “I expected something more imaginative than that,” he muttered, and read on: The bodies are heaped upon each other, crushed and packed tight, without even a glimpse of air. Ken Kiang put the book down, exasperated. “Why, it’s all cuddling!” He gave hell one last chance. The devils are so horrible that one witness wrote that, rather than look again on such a frightful monster, she would prefer to walk until the end of her life along a track of red hot coals. “Oh, please.” Ken Kiang rolled his eyes. “Overreacting, surely. More likely the devil was just as afraid of her as she was of it.”

No, books had nothing more to teach him. Ken Kiang itched for practical application; he was ready for his first evil project.

But what? How could he, Ken Kiang, prove to the world that he was the most stylishly evil man who ever lived?

Ken Kiang laughed diabolically! Then he stopped, disappointed: no, his laugh wasn’t quite diabolical enough. He made a mental note to practice his diabolical laughter for fifteen minutes a day. The devil, he knew, was in the details.

***

by Mairead Case