We are gathered here at twilight’s last gleaming to commemorate the 250th birthday of the United States of America, a danse macabre for a body politic that is filled with equal parts blood and embalming fluid. None of us knew the body when it was young, though some have argued that it was never young, that it was always old, dirty, and evil, but we have heard stories, rumors, tall tales, myths. The history of America is a folk almanac of figures and incidents–some heroic, others monstrous, fables of beasts and knights. Here at APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, we have chosen to celebrate America’s big 2-5-0 by compiling our very own
AMERICAN BESTIARY
Alongside us as mortician and folklorist is Brad Kelly, author of The Earthen Dark and host of the Method and Madness podcast. Earthen Dark is a harrowing sewer slide into the bowels of the American dream, making Kelly an ideal co-eulogist for this sordid Semiquincentennial special.
A note: Our artwork, a riff on The Old Farmer’s Almanac, features portraits of two Americans who stand out as paragon entries in our bestiary: Aaron Burr and Timothy McVeigh. Burr was, if not a Founding Father, then certainly a founding son of this country, a scion of a New Jersey family whose members include Jonathan “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Edwards. After serving as Jefferson’s vice president, Burr slipped into the nachtwelt of a new nation, slaying Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and was eventually charged with treason. The “Burr conspiracy,” as it is known, was an alleged cabal of planters, Army officers, politicians, and international interests, overseen by Burr, to carve out an imperial redoubt and potentially conquer North America. Burr was acquitted, though speculation remains. Burr died aged 80 in a boarding house after two debilitating strokes, penniless after multiple land speculation losses and estranged from family and former friends.
McVeigh’s brief transit and violent eclipse through the American night-world took him from Iraq during Operation Desert Storm and through a nation suffering from a nervous breakdown after winning the Cold War. After being a spectator at the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, McVeigh reconnoitered the white nationalist militia and gun-show circuit, forged ties with residents of Elohim City in Oklahoma, and encountered numerous domestic and foreign intelligence operatives. Two weeks before he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, McVeigh called Andreas Strassmeir, a former German army officer and DEA hopeful who served as head of security of Elohim City and later fled the United States after the bombing. McVeigh was executed three months before 9/11.
Please send submissions to contact@apocalypse-confidential.com as a Word or Google doc for written submissions and .jpgs or .pngs for visual submissions, with how you’d like to be credited, a short bio in third person, and any links for promotion (blog, portfolio, etc.). Include your Twitter handle if you wish to be tagged. Please limit fiction submissions to around 4k words. This special presentation is open in all categories. Due to our submission window and review period, simultaneous submissions are strongly discouraged. Please include “AMERICAN BESTIARY” in the subject line of your email.
Deadline: June 14.
Publication date: July 4.
Artwork by Robert Voyvodic.