Cages by Ed Gorman, 1994

‘Cages’ just happened. I’m not sure why or how. I’m not even exactly sure what it’s about. But I do know that it’s a metaphor for how I've felt most of my life.
— Ed Gorman, Author's Note

© Cemetery Dance
Publications

Sunday morning, I woke up to a pitiful sight. A shabbily dressed man beat his dishevelled wife in front of their half-naked kid and a few roadside spectators. The man was consumed by rage and was probably high on booze or drugs as he abused, slapped, punched, and kicked his wife. He wanted her to go back and when she refused he dragged her by the hair and slapped her again. She clung to his legs. He punched her some more and tried to chase her away. The kid sucked on his little dirty fingers and quietly watched his father beat his mother who was silent and submissive throughout her ordeal. It didn’t last long. They disappeared somewhere.

I thought of this disturbing scene in context of the opening scene in Cages, a short story by well-known American author Ed Gorman. A small freakish boy with only one arm suffers the mental agony of listening to his parents fight over money, to his “dreamdusted” father slamming his mother into the wall and hitting her, to his mother shrieking and screaming and abusing as his father forces himself on her, till all is quiet again.

The boy is seething with anger. He wants to kill the man who created dreamdust which has destroyed his family, even his dream of a happy family. He knows that money, or the lack of it, is the reason why his father and mother fight every night. He decides to do something about it. He sets out with a sack filled with something unimaginable, along the way braving abuse and harassment by street bullies who call him “faggot” and “mutant.”

Cages is a dark, disturbing, and depressing tale. Some might read it as a horror story. It is set in a futuristic society addicted to a strange drug and distorted by mutants and androids. The mere idea that a society such as the one drawn by Gorman could exist someday is terrifying. Yet, in a way it already does. Shades of it are visible, for instance, in Indian society, especially in the lower echelons, where wife beating, sexual molestation, and rapes are common; where female foeticide and infanticide, though long outlawed, are still prevalent; where female foetuses and newborn girls are found dumped in garbage bins. ‘Cages’ would be an apt title to describe the sad plight of many a woman and girl child in India.

Well, this is just my take on the story which could be interpreted in so many dystopian ways.

Ed Gorman brings a unique style to Cages, one that I don’t read often. His writing is bare, he fires from the hip, there is almost no punctuation, and profanities are galore, none of which diminishes the value of this 21-page narrative. Cages makes for a chilling bedtime story. Or you could read it during the day and still shudder.

I believe Cages was part of a collection of stories published in 1995, the year it was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. In 2009, Cemetery Dance Publications came out with an electronic edition of this gritty tale. You can pick up your copy at Amazon.

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