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Title: Watching the Wheels

Author: Simon Morris

Premise: Simon Morris was born in Blackpool, Lancashire in 1968. In his fourth book for Amphetamine Sulphate he plays a rock journalist whose sensory floodgates have been forced open wide due to grief and loss. We explore the nature of time, the differences between epiphany and apophenia, buried childhood memories, the 1980 and 1981 output of Queen and how it shadows the death of John Lennon. For fans of PKD and Pynchon. Adults Only.

Publisher: Amphetamine Sulphate

Note: Italicized excerpts are taken from Watching the Wheels, the lyrics of Nirvana’s third and final studio album In Utero (1993), Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, and Charles R. Cross’s biography of Cobain – Heavier than Heaven. The rest is fiction.

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1. “Serve the Servants” (3:36)

You write me insane letters and send me dead things in the mail: a bat you find on the way to the post office, though you don’t preserve it right and it rots, a snake submerged in salt. I think I kept the letters, although it’s possible that I burned them and scattered the ashes near to where I dumped the dead, rotted things.

Meanwhile Queen were filling Madison Square Garden for three consecutive nights. Freddie Mercury sprayed the front rows with champagne and called them all cunts.

You ask me to wake up at four in the morning and hike several miles to the Detroit River for a swim. Intense gut pain, fatigue to the point where I’m going to the grocery and have to plop onto a bench because it feels like I’m walking through quicksand, can’t catch my breath. Crying jags happen randomly between now and the abdominal surgery.

Everything’s my fault.

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2. “Scentless Apprentice” (3:48)

It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in my dreams. I don’t remember if I dreamt of you before you died, but ever since your accident in the Detroit River, you’ve shown up a lot.

When we’re back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact is, I can’t fool you, any one of you…thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach…

The ending was impeccable. Stranger and stranger desires finally lead to total disintegration. And because it’s a novel, it’s perfect, not messy like real life. Nothing left behind but a scent.

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3. “Heart-Shaped Box” (4:41)

Since the incident, we’ve talked a bit on the phone but mostly we’ve kept our distance. Some people – and I can see that in this instance it goes both ways – are better to avoid.

The handwriting at the end of the note appears sloppier and more hectic than that in the beginning. Some think that this indicates foul play.

In Utero ends with a Buddhist mantra about the connected nature of things: “All in all is all we are,” though you mishear it as, “All alone is all we are,” and sing accordingly in the car.

If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I think about it.

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4. “Rape Me” (2:50)

You said that you weren’t doing well with a smile. Coke on and off. Pints and used fireworks in the alley beneath your apartment. I see pictures of you on the internet now with your wife and kids. Looks like you cleaned up, but you never can tell.

He rose from the bed and entered the closet, where he removed a board from the wall. In this secret cubbyhole sat a beige nylon gun case, a box of shotgun shells, and a Tom Moore cigar box. He replaced the board, put the shells in his pocket, grabbed the cigar box, and cradled the heavy shotgun over his left forearm. In a hallway closet, he grabbed two towels; he didn’t need these, but someone would.

Sometimes you talked to us like you were so much better, other times your kindness was unbearable. Your cigarettes were everybody’s cigarettes. My memories of you are already beginning to fade, though you’ve been gone for less than a year.

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5. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” (4:09)

I clock her first as she enters the funeral service late, short and cute and long dark hair, black tights under dress always a plus. I’m always shy meeting new people.

To engage with this in a genuine way, I have to relax. The door is open, just don’t tense up. Already I’m chewing my lower lip. Why Nirvana? Because you’ve heard of them.

I have a strange memory of seeing you through the window of my friends’ van. You’re sitting on a bench in front of the barn and that was when I realized how ugly your need for me was. Your refusal of me.

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6. “Dumb” (2:32)

Time is not linear here. We are entering aslant, mules rushing in where angles seem to bend…Look what I’m pointing to, not the fucking finger. Cunt. People never notice anything.

I meet you by the abandoned shipping yard where I occasionally hop the fence and fuck around. You say that you’re having a party and live just up the road. It must be three in the morning, but I agree and follow, as all the liquor stores are closed and I’m still thirsty. The house is dark when we arrive. I look at you then shrug, realizing that I am the party. You feed me booze and chocolates heavily laced with psychedelics.

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7. “Very Ape” (1:56)

There’s something beautiful about the instinct to shape a book this way, as if the important thing that’s happening is always out of reach, impossible to embrace everything at once. My intuition has always been poor. In combination with a high tolerance for the inevitably horrifying, I think it’s one thing I’ve got going for me.

We are on the floor of my childhood bedroom, projecting the Kurt Cobain documentary. Halfway through you turn to me. “My God,” you say. “It’s you.”

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8. “Milk It” (3:55)

Something bigger than humanity is directing these scenes. We were all part of something big. Something phenomenal. It is all going to come out. You and I, shaped by something beyond our acknowledgement.

There’s a part of me that understands, but mostly you make me sad. It reminds me of the way your mind moved before you really went off the deep end. You need help, serious professional help, but the voices you hear in your head are much more convincing than I’ll ever be.

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9. “Pennyroyal Tea” (3:37)

I still have lucid dreams on occasion, and I’m fascinated with what I can and can’t control. Where the limits lie. Even in this consequenceless realm, some elements evade manipulation.

I’m too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasms I once had as a child.

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10. “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” (4:51)

I arrive in the dark, meet you in a diner parking lot. You ride up on your bike, no license. We hug, then you give me a box of honey flavored graham crackers.

For her life which will be so much happier without me.

On every street we walked together, men turned to watch your body sway.

I just want you to know that I don’t hate you anymore.

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11. “Tourette’s” (1:35)

Conspiracy. An enormous game of telephone. Who was there and who wasn’t. Apophenia is the tendency to perceive connections between unrelated things, an early sign of schizophrenia.

You’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know.

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12. “All Apologies” (3:51)

When I move to the city I have a vision to bike to the Detroit River. You are there, standing on the bank, smoking a cigarette. You take me under your wing at my most despondent. You give me a paperback Patrick Süskind novel. “One of Kurt’s favorites,” you say.

A boy…meets me and looks at my record collection and tells me that I have all the same ones as a friend he knew at school…and look a bit like him too and that it was eerie.

We are on the floor of your childhood bedroom when you point to the window and detail what your older brother’s friend does to you when he climbs through. You feel like I expect something from you, too. I don’t know what I expect, but this isn’t it and so I put a stop to it. I put an end to it all.

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David Kuhnlein is the author of a sci-fi/ horror book: Die Closer to Me, a poetry chapbook: Decay Never Came, and his horror film reviews are collected in the zine Six Six Six. He co-edited the horror anthology Lizard Brain, and hosts a reading series at Cafe 1923 in Hamtramck, Michigan. His website is davidkuhnlein.com

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You can find Watching the Wheels here