cemetery junction

In the center of town where two, thick, arterial streams of traffic bleed into a bloated heart of dirty negligent indifference and clot at unkempt roundabouts and lights that burn blood-red; where worn, split rail-tracks fork and wrap around dull, abandoned industry, there lies a disused graveyard, the seat of cemetery junction.

It is here that we meet Pete Dennis, the troubled narrator of cemetery junction who takes us on a tour of his dying city and, at the same time, his unreliable mind. Lurking in the shadows of the “middle-lands” – neither living nor entirely dead – Pete believes himself safe from the moldering decay he witnesses all around. Yet when a mysterious serial killer starts picking off victims that all seem to have a connection to Pete in common, his life, tenuous though it may have been, starts to unravel further, threatening to consume what’s left of his confused mind.

Originally written in 2009, cemetery junction takes pace in an imagined city in an imagined world not entirely unlike our own but disconnected from the realities of both future and past. Liam Aidan’s debut novella is a roller coaster of densely packed prose and stream of consciousness imagery that paints a picture of social psychosis alarming in its familiarity. For, ultimately, what more can any of us say than: “I have been here. I have seen.”