The Big Orange Monster Fucked Up

About the Book

Gas station. Two in the morning. Three screens on at once, all the same face. The Monster was talking about strength the way he always talked about strength: the particular way a man says the name of a woman he's never met but has thought about at length. The word lesson came out of his mouth wet. The word betrayal and the light above the chip aisle blinked once. The word domination and a woman in the parking lot honked twice for no reason she could have named. Then the ticker at the bottom of the screen slowed. Stopped. Began running backward, each letter unforming itself as it went.

Something orange came through the glass, and not from behind the building. From behind the screen. Rook Mercer touched the residue it left smeared across the register face. Grease. Still warm. It smelled like the sample strip inside a cologne ad, the kind stapled so thick into the page you have to tear the magazine to get it off.

America has been watching the Monster long enough that the Monster has learned how to watch back. How to come through. The Big Orange Monster Fucked Up follows the contamination across a country where the broadcast has become physical and the rot has a body and the body is hungry and the hunger is not a metaphor. The transformation doesn't happen to bad people. It happens in churches, at county fairs, on the highway, in the megastore at noon. It happens to people who said they were paying attention. It happens anyway.

Each chapter title is an address: The Church with the Bleeding Ceiling. The Fairground Butchering. Highway of Teeth. These are not figures of speech. Cover by Ruth Anna Evans. Content warnings are not decorative.

Chapter List

The Monster Gets Bored • The Punch for Ratings • Sprouting Consequences • The Church with the Bleeding Ceiling • Highway of Teeth • The Megamart • The Rest Stop Wall • The Farmhouse • The Fairground Butchering • Crawl to the Hill • Shut His Mouth • The Smile in the Window