A SPECIAL PRESENTATION: $$$

Welcome to the first special of YEAR TWO — $$$, the money special. Presented on this most accursed of American holidays, Tax Day, this special offers a variety of fiction, poetry, essays, and visual art on that which is the root of all evil, that rules everything around us. Before that, though, here are a few words from the APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL editorial team:

“Spare a penny for the guy..?”

Money is apocalyptic. It is a living revelation of everything about who a person is. Their preferences, status, requirements, and the lengths to which they’d go. Ask someone without money the terror and vengeance they would inflict upon those with it — and you’ll find the soul of the age you inhabit.

At APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, we seek to find and shape the soul of the age. The following entries will tell you exactly where the authors have been and where you are now.

Apocalypse happens every day…

— Hermes, editor at large

J Everett has kindly asked me, and all of the Apoc Con editors, to say some things about the VERY FIRST INAUGURAL Tax Day Special.

The poems, and their respective poets, could not be more different and more incongruous from each other, I am very happy to say. And the poetry in this special, as well as the special in its entirety, is a microcosm of why I am so happy to get to be a part of Apoc Con; the variety of submissions/the surprise of a beautiful submission from someone I have never read, or in some cases, no one has, read before/the joy of seeing fully formed, a voice, coming out of the ether fully fledged, fully armored, fully witted/the joy of all these masked pseudonymous talents alongside the joy of well known, respectable, commendable authors/and all of them happy to let their work speak for itself/and all happy to be a part of something big and incongruous/and all of this for the most innocuous of prompts/a prompt that smells like the glue on an unused envelope/or the back of a stamp; taxes! Only taxes!

And I hope that as you read this special you realize how simple and direct a line it is to write what you want and to publish it how you want, which is how it ought to be. And I hope you realize how badly good writing is needed at this particular moment and how starkly good writing stands out from the dreck. I hope you realize you can send us your work and be in our next special!

— Tom, poetry editor

Fuck you, pay me. Venmo: @Dawson-Wohler

— Dawson, fiction editor

Welcome to the APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL Tax Day $$$pecial.

The Money Issue.

The deaths of honor, loyalty, and filial piety led to the triumph of life—the life of money. As our sole store of value, it became the world’s most powerful occult fetish. Was the evil always here, waiting? Yes.

But so was the money.

Enjoy.

— Max, fiction editor

Tax Day in North Tempe. Christmas in Vermont it’s not. I’m getting $1,000 back. Not enough to pay off the judgment against me from the credit card company which I stopped paying (by way of a garnishment) when I quit my job. It’s almost enough for two payments on the new loan I took out to bridge the gap between the last of my savings and the first paycheck I’ll receive from the job I just started. Thinking about money troubles will give a guy an ulcer or in my case a sex addiction – something to keep my mind off it. Ah! But here’s something else. A gift of Providence. A better, more nourishing distraction: the stories and poems of APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL’s Tax Day $$$pecial, selected by the otherworldly eyes of my fellow editors. Under financial stress we forget to stretch limbs and listen to voices offering new methods for co-existing with the tyranny of currency. Please. Do not forget. Here they are. Enjoy.

— Brendan, managing editor