A Novel Appetite — the podcast
Ep 4 - Chapter Three - The Indie Rocker
Written by Jesse Bray. Read by Aspen.
Welcome back to A Novel Appetite... the podcast.
A Novel Appetite, by Jesse Bray. Read by me... Aspen. The vampire. Against my will.
Episode four.
Chapter Three... The Indie Rocker Children’s Author.
The knock at the door was bright and bold,
A confidence Aspen found too cold.
He sniffed the air, a rancid spice,
A mix of arrogance, cedar, and vice.
Through the threshold, gangly and tall,
A man in flannel, destined to appall.
A guitar case strapped to his back,
A manifesto held tight in his sack.
A singer! A writer! A tortured soul!
The very bane of Aspen’s control.
With a twinkle of pretension in his eye,
He believed himself a literary guy.
“Good evening, friend,” he crooned, too smooth,
A voice fit for vinyl, dripping with soothe.
Aspen remained still, his patience waning,
Sensing a monologue, words cascading.
“I bring you a book — nay, a tome,
A children’s novel — a literary home.
It sings with wonder, it bends the rules,
A world for the bright, the wise, the fools.”
Aspen blinked, already perturbed,
The stench of delusion, thickly disturbed.
He reached for the book, the weight immense,
500 pages — nonsensical, dense.
Five. Hundred. Pages.
The title was scrawled in cursive grand,
Thornwood, a mythic, woodland land.
He flipped a page, then two, then three,
His gut clenched hard in agony.
The prose was thick, as dense as clay,
Words upon words without a say.
Characters hollow, vague and trite,
None with purpose, none with light.
A fox that talked! A boy so brave!
Yet not a single soul worth a grave.
The air grew thick, Aspen’s dread rose,
A crime against fiction, poorly composed.
He clenched his jaw, his fangs near bare,
This book sought children! This was unfair!
Literary crimes he could withstand,
But to warp young minds with ink-stained sand?
No rhythm, no heart, no guiding hand,
A pretentious maze of lifeless land.
The author grinned, strummed his guitar,
Humming softly, a tune bizarre.
“Oh, little one, sit and read,
Lose yourself, let your mind be freed.”
Aspen saw it — a trap, a plague,
A poison dressed in bookshop vague.
“You write, you sing, but do you bleed?
Does art require such endless screed?”
The author scoffed, tossed his head,
“The reader is wrong, my vision is fed.
You see, they must work, they must strive,
Only then can the story be alive.”
Aspen had heard enough at last,
A wasted life, a shadow cast.
A voice so smug, a mind so dull,
A crime so deep, he could taste his skull.
The vampire leapt, no time to stall,
His fangs sank deep — the final call.
But something stirred, a fight arose,
A burning deep, a taste morose.
Not sweet, not rich, nor dark delight,
But pretension’s bile, a venomous bite.
Aspen gagged, reeled, and swayed,
A meal unfit, a soul decayed.
Pretension... does not agree with me.
For arrogance corrupts the vein,
A poison worse than holy pain.
He dropped the man, his blood turned foul,
Yet not before one final howl.
His limbs contorted, his stomach churned,
His vision blurred, his throat was burned.
This was no meal, no scholar bright,
This was indulgence turned to blight.
A writer who saw none but self,
A singer who warped the mind itself.
Aspen fell, collapsed in pain,
The singer laughing, soaked in vain.
“Oh, vampire, you foolish thing,
To drink from me? What suffering!”
But Aspen, despite the curse, the ache,
Would not let such hubris take the stake.
He gritted his teeth, he hissed, he fought,
For this blight upon literature could not be forgot.
A moment of horror, then Aspen’s grin,
One last effort, a strike to win.
With a snap so swift, so cruel, so tight,
The singer’s neck bent left, then right.
His song cut short, his book fell too,
The final note: a choked-out “Ooh…”
Aspen sighed, his stomach a wreck,
Yet satisfied to snap that neck.
He spat the taste, he wiped his lips,
And threw the book in the apocalypse.
For some things should not live nor thrive,
A mercy to ensure books survive.
And in the shadows, left unread,
Lay 500 pages of nothing said.
...I did not finish it. Nobody has.
That was episode four of A Novel Appetite.
If you would rather do this yourself... the stare, the sigh, the sign... the bite...
Play the interactive game, A Novel Appetite, at aspen.mrbray.com.
That's aspen.mrbray.com.
Next time... a man in a cardigan, with a book that is not really a book. It's more of a... philosophy.
Tune in for the next episode of A Novel Appetite.
Or don't. I'll be here. I'm always here.
