Alex S. Johnson

Mean Girls Club

平均ガールズクラブ

by Alex S. Johnson

Number 27 was no ordinary school building. Distinct from the functional, utilitarian slabs of poured concrete that made up the rest of Mayami High, the clubhouse had a façade of sharp black stones. No-faced clowns crossed cast-iron sticks of cotton candy over the entrance.

This was a stronghold, a fortress.

The place where Mean Girls Club met, and plotted.

Inside, one wall featured an old-fashioned chalkboard. Along the board crouched three girls, their palms smudging the green surface, white cotton panties knotted around their ankles, skirts rolled into their blouses, pink ruler marks blossoming on ass cheeks. In the corner, wrapped like a mummy in 16 feet of hemp bondage rope, another girl sulked, tears welling in her eyes. On the opposite wall was a corkboard with a map of Tokyo, red pushpins forming a sinister pattern.

Sakura stood before the lectern and faced the neat rows of desks. Her authority was unquestioned. Her hair was cut in a Betty Pageboy and her tartan skirt, hiked higher than any of the others dared, showed her taut thighs and well-developed calves—complete with white knee socks—to advantage. Military-style epaulets rode her shoulders atop the sailor fuku collar. Her bolo tie was a blazing cherry color, her blouse unbuttoned enough to display her large, firm breasts. The ensemble, down to the black penny loafers, was unquestionably that of a fetishist’s wet dream—a dream Sakura controlled in every detail.

Casting a scornful glance at the Blackboard of Shame, she slapped a ruler against her palm. “Okay, you may be wondering why I’ve assembled you here today. Any questions? Yes, bitch.”

“Permission to speak?

Sakura drew her hand back, then put it down. If she slapped Yoko now, she might lose their resident science expert forever. And then they would have no

choice but to turn to the geeks. Not an acceptable option. Yoko looked at her like a deer, with small, nervous, delicate gestures. This made Sakura furious.

“Go on.”

Yoko toyed with her Coke bottle-lensed glasses, which were misting over. “Well, I was thinking. You know, since the curse originated in that girl’s suicide

twenty years ago, which, as we all know from the archives, was the result of Mean Girls Club activity, I was thinking, in the interest of school spirit…”

“Honey, we are the school. What part of Mean Girls Club says ‘appease the geeks?’ Didn’t you get the memo? Apparently not.”

“Please don’t slap me. I’m trying here. But sometimes maybe I think what we do is wrong.”

Sakura slammed her hand to her forehead. “And your point being? Of course it’s wrong. It’s wrong to restrain our superior natures due to the weakness of

others. Have you ever seen a tiger in the wild? Nature is cruel. It’s all tearing and rending and bloody jowls. Forget your Disney fantasy, Yoko.”

Yoko trembled and lowered her eyes submissively.

“Look, I didn’t make the rules, but I will enforce them. Mean Girls Club is a legacy. Everybody here has a family member who at some point was involved in the organization. Or made robots.”

Yoko perked up. “Yes, robots are cool!” She thought of the many science awards she had won for the school, a whole glass cabinet full of them at the entryway to Mayami High. Her parents had been so proud. Then the slow-motion car crash, the strewn body parts, her sobbing on the road, and the crushing, final sense of aloneness. Until the Mean Girls Club had come calling. They were her new family. A family as cruel and arbitrary as her parents had been kind and reasonable.

“Which is why you’re still here, Yoko. I was going to explain why I called this meeting, but your attitude speaks a thousand words. A thousand words of ‘Fuck You, Sakura.’”

Yoko bit her lower lip and stifled a sob.

“What kind of progress have you made with the bio-mechanical implants?”

“There was a problem.” Yoko flinched.

“Problem? I do not like where this is going. What kind of problem?”

“When you guys kidnapped those girls and sexually tortured them…ripped out their insides…it made me a little ill, actually.”

“Research. Surely, in your future career as a scientist, you’ll have to do something similar. Right? We’re just helping you progress. You must be strong, keep your emotions in control. What you were supposed to do, if you hadn’t puked your guts out and then fainted like a little bitch, was whip up some kind of prototype. Why do you think we procured the chainsaws? And the nail guns? And the other carpentry tools? We’re not looking to build a fucking recreation center. Remember, this is war. Us against them. And with the curse, we’ll need all that stuff working for us. Your thinking is outmoded and your brain is soft. I can’t fix that. Like you couldn’t fix up those girls with some kind of high-tech weaponry.”

“It’s not just that. Yeah, it made me sick to see them, all flopping around with their intestines spilling onto the floor. But the problem is the parasite.”

“Oh please.” Sakura looked around the room. The other girls were paralyzed with fear.

“What the fuck is the matter with all of you? What’s this babbling about morality and parasites? Mean Girls Forever, right? Right?”

Kaori raised her hand. Her wrist was circled with several luminous bands, her palm tattooed with the Mean Girls Club insignia. She tried so hard. Sakura nodded, and Kaori rose and stood beside her desk.

“Kaori! My right hand Mean Girl. Couldn’t do it without you. Nice belly button ring, by the way.”

Kaori giggled. “Thanks. Well, you know me. Mean Girl to the core. Down with the cruelty, the hair-pulling, the pelting with tampons, the rolling downhill in garbage cans. The sexual torture. It’s what we do, right? It’s who we are. But Yoko has a point. Morality and parasites are separate considerations, yes, indeed. But, once the parasites get into the works, they infect everything. You can’t control the weapons. The weapons control you. It’s impossible to isolate those little buggers. I once saw a girl decapitate herself with a chainsaw bio-grafted to her arm stump. Even after the head had rolled into the corner, the saw continued to flay her body. Pretty soon it was just these raw strips, you know? Su-su-sushi…” Her voice took on a keen, hysterical edge. She sat down and bowed her head.

“Can’t we just isolate the parasites and kill them, somehow?”

“We tried that,” Yoko burst out. “Oops. I’m sorry for speaking out of turn. Please don’t hurt me. But…exactly what Kaori said. There’s no way to separate the parasites from the weapons. I discovered the parasites when I was doing my first experiments. With the frogs. They come…they come from beyond. A place not of earth.”

“All right, so you’re all officially crazy.” Sakura got up, a look of disgust on her face. “You’ve lost your nerve, is what it is. All of you. Get out. Just get out and leave me alone with my thoughts. I’m going to have to restructure.”

Her glance took in the classroom, the quivering girls undergoing discipline at the blackboard, the Kinbaku’d slut in the corner, the neat rows of desks. The idiots were scared shitless. Then there was Mika. Mika huddled towards the back, a black hoody pulled down over her face.

“Mika! Girlfriend. What the fuck is wrong with you? I expected as much from the others, but even Kaori has disappointed. There will be repercussions for all of you,” she said. “This isn’t the ghetto, so why the hoody? Take it off!”

“You should probably do what she says,” Kaori said in a half-whisper. She pointed to the blackboard. “You don’t want to join them.”

“Shut up, shithead,” Sakura said. “Hai,” said Kaori. Mika fumbled with the hoody.

“Well?”

Mika slipped off the hood, revealing a headful of fluorescent orange hair. “You said…use Hair Tonic #15, it would make my hair, like, permanently blonde. But it didn’t. I’m so ugly! I will join Suicide Club.”

“Wow. Et tu, Mika? Have none of you a backbone? You heard all the warnings about the tonic, and you put it on anyway, just because I said so?”

“You get scary when you’re mad,” Mika whimpered. She rose from her desk. “I am so sorry. I do not deserve to be a member of Mean Girls Club.”

“You stupid cunt! You will do no such thing.” Sakura slammed the ruler on Mika’s desk, so hard it splintered. “Damn it, now see what you made me do!”

“Suicide Club, I will join now.” Mika fumbled in her purse and withdrew a pink-handled box cutter stamped with the Surprise Pussy logo, laying the blade against her thin wrists and slicing several deep diagonal cuts in quick sequence. She struggled to cut through the meat to the radial and ulnar arteries and, finaly, with a cry of relief, succeeded.

Sakura stepped back as the blood squirted from Mika’s wrists like a high-pressure hose. She cursed when a few drops landed on her cheeks and her attempt to remove them smeared them across her face like war paint.

“Nobody goes anywhere!” she screamed. “Got it?” As she left the classroom, Mika overturned a bookshelf next to the blackboard, sending it crashing to the floor. She locked and bolted the room from the outside, then strode across the courtyard and slumped with her back against a lone pine tree.

“Why does everybody have to be so stupid?” she cried to nobody in particular. Thick grey clouds crossed the sun. Sakura picked at scar tissue on her inner thigh, the result of a spectacular, failed attempt to sever her femoral artery. The true war had never been between the highly-organized, school-chartered Mean Girls Club and their stray, hapless victims. It was, and always had been, Mean Girls Club Versus Suicide Club. This year, Suicide Club was just more popular. Which meant that not only would the geeks win, but the curse as well.

I was lucky enough to nab Alex for a while and discuss with him a few things burroughing around in his mind. This is what transpired. Enjoy.

TTE- If you would please introduce yourself and tell the readers where you dwell.

Alex S. Johnson - Yes sir. My name is Alex S. Johnson, I am a writer, editor and sometime English professor currently residing in Central California.

TTE: when did you first get into the horror genre?

A.J. - I was born on Halloween, and in my case, it seems appropriate that I would have a lifelong interest in the dark and macabre. I credit several sources to my interest in horror, one of them being my dad, Steven M. Johnson, who used to read to me from collections of paranormal and spooky true events, such as the "Devil of Devonshire" and "The Restless Coffins of Christ Church." I loved those stories and the feeling they gave me, that delicious sense of dread at the possibility of other realms beyond this one, demonic entities, people from nowhere, coffins that shifted themselves with no apparent cause. Also, because we didn't have a TV in the house until I was around 13, I didn't have access to horror films and became fascinated with books about horror movies and actors such as Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr., and so on. The stills from those movies became almost iconic for me, such as, for example, a full-page color photo of the Hand of Glory in the original Wicker Man. I was and still am a huge reader, and my earliest love was for horror and detective stories, Poe, Stoker, and science fiction and fantasy as well. I used to devour collections like Whispers, with stories by authors like Steve Rasnic Tem. Stephen King and Peter Straub were heroes of mine, and then Ira Levin, William Goldman, William Peter Blatty. When I was around 18 or 19 I discovered Karl Edward Wagner completely by accident and adored his imagination and his use of themes and tropes from traditional horror, put into a contemporary context. I've had the bug forever, basically. Horror was the first genre that I wanted to write in and it's the genre I've stayed with.

TTE: was there any specific reason that compelled you to do so?

A.J. - I think horror is very powerful. There's an interview with Clive Barker where he says that he saw the original Psycho in a movie theater when it premiered, and then watched it again with another audience, knowing the great "reveal" scene at the end with Mrs. Bates's mummy. He said he wanted to wield that kind of power over readers. Maybe it's a form of sadism, maybe it's overcompensation when you've been bullied a lot as a kid, but I think in large measure horror is a form of realism for people who feel deeply and whose emotions mark their uptake of events and people before judgment sets in. Some of us are like that. Horror fans and authors are mostly really cool, down-to-earth folks who get the joke, as it were, about death. We're preparing ourselves to face the ultimate and maybe helping readers become more comfortable with the fact of mortality. Also, if you're a horror fan, you have a little more capacity to foresee the bad shit that happens in actual life and a lens that makes it, if not bearable, at least not overwhelming. Horror is a tool, a form of escapist entertainment and a form of engaged entertainment, if that makes any sense. I will stop babbling now.

TTE- Where do your ideas for stories stem from? specifically Dr. Flesh and Outlaw Circus?

A.J. - Doctor Flesh came from several sources; first, there's Dr. Caligari, the original German Expressionist film, then the remake which was scripted by one of our finest contemporary authors, Jerry Stahl. I think the man is brilliant. He also wrote the movie Cafe Flesh, which has to be seen to be believed. It's art porn. Stahl is probably most familiar to a wider audience for his memoir, Permanent Darkness, which was made into a film starring Ben Stiller. I liked the idea of combining two Jerry Stahl movie titles into one, hence Dr. Flesh. The book deals with our culture's obsession with body image and the various horrific things people do to themselves in the name of vanity. Have you ever seen what a nose job actually looks like, or a facelift, or liposuction? Anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder are all diseases that stem at some level from this obsession. And yet instead of looking within or inside for some kind of permanent, unchanging level which might give assurance that the body isn't the be all and end all, we're constantly bombarding ourselves and being bombarded with these insidious messages that unless we have a flat tummy, a full head of hair, a solid butt, a six-pack, whatever, we're worthless human beings and should be set in front of a firing squad. That's wrong, that's bullshit. Doctor Flesh can be an injunction or a professional title.I would prefer not to discuss Outlaw Circus, if it's all the same with you.

TTE- Not a problam man.

TTE: To date, what's your favorite project and why?

A.J. - The novel I'm currently working on, Makami, which takes place in contemporary Japan and involves werewolves, demons, spirit weaponry and a good deal of hot lesbian action. It's my favorite project to date because it's a challenge. I have to research almost everything about the story and the background to ground it in realistic detail, which is an enjoyable process; it flexes my muscles as a writer. It's also a departure for me in that it takes on an epic fantasy quality, whereas most of my published fiction has been either erotic horror, Bizarro or straight erotica. Makami has a lot of horror elements, but it's also fantastic and funny and complex. I think people who like my other stuff will appreciate the book, I certainly hope they do.

TTE: What's more gratifying for you, having a story published or editing an anthology of other's works?

A.J. - I love both. When I choose and edit a story for an anthology, it's almost like adopting a pet or something. You get really close to the story. In some respects it's more gratifying for me to discover and publish a great story somebody else has written than to publish one of my own. Ah, who am I kidding...I love to see my name in print. It's an addiction. I love both.

TTE- hahah, nice answer!

TTE: Speaking of, as an editor what author and which story sticks with you the most?

Probably "Extremophiles" by Lucy Taylor in the Axes of Evil anthology. It's a tribute to Lucy's gifts as a writer that she can summon up the world of heavy metal without being a fan herself. Everything in the story was researched from scratch, and it's a riveting tale, Morbid Angel by way of H.P. Lovecraft.

TTE: What is your favorite tale from the AXES OF EVIL anthology?

A.J. - See above.

TTE: whats the next project, be it from you or as an editor, can we expect from Alex S. Johnson?

A.J. - Right now I'm spending about seven hours a day fine-tuning Chunks: A Barfzarro Anthology, which I expect will receive mixed reviews. Seriously, this book is meant to be disturbing and disgusting and awful. The stories are well-crafted and entertaining, but they will make folks cringe. I recommend taking the book a chunk at a time, with plenty of space between meals. We're actually putting a warning label on this one.

I'm also planning to put out a collection of stories titled Bizarrely Departed, which will consist of anthologized pieces and a few stories that are original to the collection. It's a mix of fantasy, science fiction, horror and Bizarro stuff. Pretty eclectic.

TTE- what do you think of the bombarding of self published writers?

A.J. - Self-published writers should do the same diligence as writers who publish traditionally. Know grammar, punctuation, spelling, diction, style; read widely and grasp the craft before you publish. Otherwise, it's a self-indulgent practice and a waste of forests.

TTE- who would you most like to work with writing a novel ?

A.J. - Edward Lee.

TTE- What do you do in your spare time?

A.J. - What's that?

TTE - Hahaha

TTE- would you like to see some of your tales made into films, and are there any being optioned for such?

A.J. - Doctor Flesh and Bad Sunset were conceived as movies, actually. I've been told I have a "hypervisual" style and I think I have a knack for dialog, which bodes well for movie adaptation. If you know any film-makers, please spread the word. Also, I would love to create original horror screenplays.

TTE- whats next for Alex S. Johnson?

A.J. - Chunks, a Bizarro J-horror satire called Demon Sex Blade, Axes of Evil II, Makami, the Bizarrely Departed collection, Megalomania, which is another collection, and Demolitions, yet a third collection which is being published in the UK by Dog Horn Press. The others are from J. Ellington Ashton.

TTE- this is your dime bro, promote what ya want....

A.J. - If you like weird westerns, you could do worse than to check out Bad Sunset. Wicked Candy and Doctor Flesh: Director's Cut are both collections I put out through MorbidBooks which I think are well worth the cash. Floppy Shoes Apocalypse is the first in a series of clown horror anthologies I co-edited with John Ledger, which whom I also did Chunks.

Thanks very much for the interview, Tracy :-)

Mosey on over to Horror Novel Reviews for my thoughts on Alex's DR FLESH