Sign-In
Cart
Flesh Machine: The Story
Paperback
ISBN13: 9781703834123
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 30 2019
Pages: 258
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.58 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
A young man is murdered at the subway station in the early hours of the morning. The victim was strangled, skinned, and the perpetrator then proceeded to remove his brain from his skull. The gruesome crime was captured on security cameras, and this leads to a quick arrest of a peculiar man.
He calls himself 'the assembly' to which the latest additions were a new brain and skin from the man he had just murdered, or so he claims.
Rushing in to unravel this outlandish story is a self-loathing misanthropic lawyer Dave who begins to tell us his story of his encounter with Sam, as 'the assembly' prefers to be called. Dave sees this case as a chance he's been waiting for all his life - to get out of public office (and his own narcissistic mind) and into fame and fortune that he believes will be the solution to all of this life's problems - and he has many - so many that his whole life is one big problem. But our dear Sam has other plans: for himself and Dave.
As Dave meets Sam, after reading all the case files about him that defy both science as well as common sense, he is drawn into a conversation he did not expect, but Sam had carefully planned. Who's on the therapist's couch now? If the psychopath becomes the therapist and the common man becomes the psychopath - what is the conclusion? What is the resolution?
Dave sets out to reel in a big reward, but he ends up getting more than he bargained for.
FROM THE PREFACE
Dancing on the edge of order and chaos, logic and paradox, comedy and tragedy, meaning and absurdity - the characters of this story hang in the balance, but not for very long. As I was writing this book and initially aimed to preserve this balance - I decided to identify the end-line of almost all extremes, linger there for awhile in mischievous deliberation, and then not only cross the line but jump over it with a running start and finish it off with a somersault.
With that said, it's worth noting that nothing is off-limits in this book. It's the answer to all of those you can't joke about that remarks that I've been hearing so much of in my lifetime. This is also the story that defeats its own purpose - because it has none.
Across the many pages of this book, the protagonist named 'Dave', an obnoxious and quite miserable fellow, makes fun of everything inappropriate, including but definitely not limited to:
1. The accidental invention of the Ku Klux Klan white hoods as inspired by women's underwear.
2. The relation between cow suicide and Buddhist meditation retreats.
3. The likely relation between scarecrow theft and feminist rallies and its impact on agriculture.
4. How World War II could have been averted by a woman's intervention.
5. Why men shorter than 175 cm should not own SUVs.
6. Why women taller than 175 cm should compete in mixed martial arts sports in the men's category.
7. Why medieval blacksmiths had trouble getting married and their relationship to horses.
8. The real truth behind the reason why men play Candy Crush.
9. How women's breasts can lead to serious head injury (in men).
10. Why the second coming of Jesus Christ would put public attorneys out of business.
11. The disturbing relationship between the geometrical grouping of spherical objects in space and male peripheral vision.
12. The explanation of the redundancy of women's right to vote.
13. How male sexual fantasies can inadvertently end up in the packing department of a nachos factory.
Yet when Dave meets Sam, they delve deep into a discussion about the meaning of meaning of meaning (yes, I wrote 'meaning' three times in a row - oops! - now it's four) of life and of death and the battlefield where the fight of the blessings and the afflictions of the human condition takes place - the human mind.
Little does Dave know that the final joke will be on him.
Also in
Horror
Japanese Gothic: A Folk Horror Novel of Japanese Mythology, Murder, and Family Duty Across Two Timelines
Baker, Kylie Lee
Hardcover
Incidents Around the House: A Novel: The Inspiration for the Movie Other Mommy
Malerman, Josh
Paperback
The Amalfi Curse: A Bewitching Tale of Sunken Treasure, Forbidden Love, and Ancient Magic on the Amalfi Coast
Penner, Sarah
Paperback
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stoker, Bram
Shelley, Mary
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
From the Library of Jurgen Leitner (the Magnus Archives)
Mohamed, Premee
Sims, Jonathan
Rusty Quill
Hardcover
THE GIRLS IN THE CABIN an absolutely unputdownable psychological thriller packed with heart-stopping twists
Stephens, Caleb
Paperback