What does this mean? This means that the Jewish Marxist Werewolves of Bolivia are out in force.

I received several great entries for this contest to win a signed copy of Infoquake. It was actually quite difficult to choose the winners, since some of you appeared to have really, really gotten into this. I’d like to think you were inspired by zeal for winning a copy of Infoquake, but I’m afraid it probably had more to do with some of you missing required doses of your medications.

But a hearty thanks to all who entered and provided me with some much-needed giggling. And now, the winners:

First Prize Winner: Josh Vogt.

Mr. Vogt actually submitted two prizeworthy entries to the contest, and I’m not entirely sure which one I liked better. I gave the crown to this one, for two reasons: (1) the phony Dune-like epigraph at the beginning is priceless, and (2) the second entry didn’t really mention Bolivia.

And the rabbi was lying on a mountain of ash and stones
with a ravenous mouth and staring pupils,
and in his soul there was silence and darkness and nothing more.
—an excerpt from Der Volf, by H. Leivick

As I adjust my tallit, the wolf yowls within me and peers through my eyes at an infant in its mother’s arms, as she sits in the recesses of the synagogue. A crunchy morsel, juicy on the outside, crunchy on the inside.

I curse the demon to silence. It’s just before sundown on Yom Kippur, and I must recite the Kol Nidre and escape before I slaughter everyone gathered for the evening prayers.

The wolf snarls and paces the cage of my ribs, gnawing them one at a time. Sometimes I wonder if wolves, rather than humans, were made in God’s image. Certainly we’re no better than beasts as we have turned on each other here in La Paz — gorging on the weaker, and then submitting to the stronger as they clamp their jaws around our hairy throats.

I should mention that Josh is a budding science fiction writer with a story recently sold to Shimmer and a novel being shopped around by his agent. Josh’s website: www.jrvogt.com.

Second Prize Winner: Colin Fisk.

I’m not sure whether the Colin Fisk who has won this contest is the Colin Fisk listed on Amazon as author of The Night City Guide and other books for the game Cyberpunk 2020. I’m just hoping he’s not the Colin Fisk who pops up on Google as a “drug dealer and convicted paedophile,” or the other Colin Fisk on Google who was arrested as a double homicide suspect. But his entry is very, very amusing nonetheless:

Chiam’s world was being torn assunder. In his heart, he knew how much the proletariat masses of Santa Cruz needed to believe in his brother. On the other hand, how could he condone Mordechai’s participation as the lead striker for his country’s national team, knowing full well the opening game of the World Cup not only occured on the Sabbath, but also on the night of the full moon? And, even though he did have the rabbi’s permission to “work” on a Friday night, would such an exemption have been forthcoming if Mordechai had let slip he would need to use an electric razor to make himself presentable for this public display?

I’ll even let slide the fact that Mr. Fisk misspelled both “asunder” and “occurred.” He can enjoy his signed copy of Infoquake from his cell in San Quentin or from Chiba City or wherever he resides these days.

Honorable Mention: Edward Finch.

I almost gave this one second prize. Mr. Finch’s passage is so intense that I suspected him of actually being a Jewish Marxist Werewolf in Bolivia.

David Irving had hidden the secret long ago, but it cried him up from his bunk each morning, with growls so fierce, and with such terse quips of Hebrew, he knew if the world had known, his swastika humping readership would betray him. They would corner him after his release from prison, thump him against the brick walls of the outer gates, and then throw punches at that all so clean and delicate wrinkly skin, bled white by all his lies, by all his books claiming the revival of their close-fisted dream, hiding the truth, of his visionary hope to the coming of that new Fuhrer in polyester suit and handle mustache, bestrode a white horse into the cherished castle he had painted with a prosaic of words in his fancy books. The words of doom and betrayal they would speak, brand his forehead with bloody stamp, a cry of remembrance to that experiment gone wrong in the Bolivian mountains and the family feud so rampant, it left psychotic David Irving distraught. Yes, his father had been a Jewish Bolshevik werewolf. David’s wrinkly, plump, conniving skin, shaved each morning to hide bristly gray hairs, and the guard outside, ready to discard all evidence to stall a prison riot, clarified the truth. Behind those bars in some dank German prison, a victim of his own hatred towards his father, he began to write another book of lies, the growls still slicing into his head with regret, making him shiver and also smile at his imagined world of castles, without his father, where he was the master, clad in a tan polyester suit busting open above the belt line to show his overhanging folds of fat, bestrode that white horse, in his fortress far away from the truth.

Honorable Mention: Norman Levinson

Mr. Levinson submitted a rather involved entry that included a Pamela Anderson mask and Borat singing “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” I reproduce a portion of it here:

The meticulously wound leather straps around young Chaim Talbot’s left arm were becoming excruciatingly taut… hair, fur! growing at an exponential rate until the tefillin box exploded from boychic Talbot’s forehead and propelled along a parabolic trajectory striking Rabbi cHegel in the head with blunt-force trauma.

A prostrate and breathless Rabbi cHegel: “Oy, g-d… forgive me. Ve don’t have a minyan! VE CANNOT CONTINUE THE SERVICE SHLOMO!”

Cantor Shlomo (staring at the two Tefillin boxes on Rabbi’s forehead): “vat u mean ve don’t have a minyan Rabbi?!”

Rabbi cHegel: “A minyan is required for our service shlomo… TEN ADULT MALES!… NOT NINE AND A VEREVOLF!!”

Thanks again to all who entered. You have assured me that I will never look at lycanthropy, religion, or left-wing political movements in South America the same way again.