NECRONAUTS

This is the story of a desert town, its ill-fated denizens, and a boy from outer space.

Marrying the epitaph-based storytelling of the classic Spoon River Anthology to the more garish endings of A24 movies is a curious enough idea. Here, though, portraits of village life are shot through with a heroic dose of Mark Leyner–style deadpan chaos. It’s not entirely unexpected from Habermeyer, who’s been sprinkling his short fiction with previews of these odd obituaries. The setting is the fictional town of Calypsee, Utah, home to all manner of victims of their own making, living under the motto “In Armageddon We Trust.” The subjects run the gamut from the grocer—“found dead in an erotic game gone wrong with his mistress, a synthetic doll purchased from the Kinkalypse”—to the jumper who caused a collision with cantaloupes that decapitate a father and son. In all, Habermeyer delivers 95 obits, punctuated by old-timey photographs and loosely held together by a plot about a visitor from another world: Nobody, a boy with a bullet-riddled space helmet surgically affixed to his body, who can only speak only with his hands. He’s an eerie presence, obsessed with pulpy SF films and prone to abuse and exploitation from the townsfolk. Living with the dentist, stealing ketamine from the vet, and renting himself out to Mormon teenagers “before all the motels had Magic Fingers vibrating beds for a quarter,” he’s a tough character to root for. “Nobody was a riddle wrapped in a mystery chilled in Jell-O,” as Habermeyer explains. Thankfully, the writing here is crisp and focused, despite its darker nature. Lingo lovers and amused cynics will find plenty of reasons to keep turning pages.

A wild riff on religion, culture, and what we look like to the alien among us.