Recent los angeles Stories

Current los angeles Editor

Mathew Timmons

Mathew Timmons is a writer, editor, curator and critic in Los Angeles. He is General Director of General Projects, Editor of Insert Press and co-durator of Late Night Snack (w/ Harold Abramowitz). A chapbook, Lip Service (Slack Buddha Press) and CREDIT (Blanc Press), an 800 page full color, large-format, hardbound book, were published recently.

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Runaway (excerpt)

Monday, May 10th, 2010

An Incomplete Kingdom of Monsters


Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Fully and Constantly Invisible

Fully and constantly invisible monsters are the most primitive order of invisible monsters. Hunters, they crave the beefy texture of human flesh, and can devour a coed unnoticed by a slumbering roommate. They kill unceremoniously, gutting the body, though only eating the musculature. This ensures an immediate and silent death as heart, spleen, epidermis and intestine are piled into a sopping mass while limbs and abs become stringy delicacy.

Slights of imagination, overcome by matters of fact. Sustenance seekers; at one with light and dark, occupying only a sliver of space, in which anonymity is achieved through the bending and absorption of light. Mentally registered as tricks or figments, their hungry appraisals of our bodies are felt in random shivers and casual paranoia. Intuited, yet unknowable. There is no protection from these beasts.


Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Selective Invisibility

The predator aesthete selectively controls its appearance by flexing an unimaginable muscle twined through its skin. A hidden mass of gray-blue-green spreads enzymes that affect visual dissipation. This order of beast prefers partial revelation, existence as a disembodied arm or head floating stiffly against shadow. Carnivorous, sport killers, they thrive on horror, with an equal attraction to shocked paralysis or frenzied bawling. Shock, more than suffering, produces

an endorphin that delivers the strained manic sensation of orgasm to the victim and an enhanced flavor to the monster. Their interest is not in the hunt, but for the visual signs accompanying the realization of impending death.

This order divides into families based upon spacial coexistence. The strongest evidence of the demonic is that singular experience of physical and mental spasms that result from mingled corporeality – the disjuncture of human cells as metaphysical matter meshes through. Monsters without co-spacial ability, generally stay in wait, breathing softly in the corner of a room, still, waiting for the full effect of vulnerability, lingering for weeks, even months. Watching their future victim for a moment of self satisfaction or pride, the less apprehension, the better the time to strike.


Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Camouflaged Monsters

Camouflaged mammal derivations adapted within nature. Ostensibly harmless and preferring the solitude of distant caves, lands and waters. Remnants of primitive tribes, abandoned explorers from previous ages, these are human based, highly adapted herbivores, with a plodding gait, who require solitude. Their adaptation generally includes thick, leathery skin identical to the rocks or trees that surround them. These are not hunters, but have highly evolved defense systems, razor sharp, retractable claws up to 6 inches in length. They are highly suspicious and motivated defenders of their territory who will strike without provocation.

Family variants include the ability to control the precise color and texture of the thick epidermis to match immediate surroundings. Genus divisions come along the lines of natural genetic evolution and the chemically manipulated genome derived from scientific experimentation.


Phylum: Monsters That Cannot Be Seen
Class: Invisible Monsters
Order: Unseeable Monsters