April 27, 2010
April’s Fool
By John Reyer Afamasaga
9780980348699
etfiction (2010)
Plot Twists Reveal Who is April’s Fool in Latest LMLA-ink Offering
“April’s Fool” is not a holiday prank but rather a depiction of how one man is fooled by an attractive woman—or is he?
Ish, first introduced in “The Guy,” was on a course to become LMLA-ink’s greatest creation yet. Now she makes her acting debut in the role of “April,” a normal everyday girl, in the latest REPRO in the SenFenide Dimension (Dream Dimension). Only, she has become wholly submerged in playing April. Like a Cinderella who has gone from rags to riches, her adoring fans prove April is the epitome of celebrity:
April closes her eyes as she smiles and offers up thanks to the Dimension for giving her the welcome she had dreamed she would receive.
April’s spirits soar above the clouds. And as the song comes to an end, her descent from the heavens is gradual. It ends with her standing in a line waiting to enter into the brothel. As she quickly checks herself, she finds she is still in the grand gown she was gifted, and the diamond earrings are still in her ears. Lastly, she lifts the hem of her dress to see that she still has the silver strapped high heels on her feet.
Readers of Afamasaga’s previous works will not only enjoy the plays with reality—with each new story they seem to become more and more intense as characters move between dimensions and REPROs effect one another—but they will relish the mystery element of this new story until John Reyer, first working as Investigator of REPRO crimes during the “Negligee Murders,” walks out of the role. John Reyer then induces a psychosomatic encounter by flippantly flipping in between dimensions and changing narrators while delivering a well-planned twist that goes back to “The Guy.”
Over the course of Afamasaga’s several stories, readers have watched the LMLA-ink’s members become celebrities, but now John Reyer delves back into the group’s origins trying to find the instructions they initially set out to fulfill their creative work; his intention is to alter the present so the creative team of LMLA-ink can become everyday artists rather than the WORLD WIDE WEB sensation they now are. Has it all been fate and destiny or can it all be changed?
“April’s Fool” abounds with questions about the role of creativity, its effectiveness in influencing life, and how much control people have over their roles. Science-fiction elements, including the presence of entities, add to the metaphors for the creative process as evidenced in such passages as this one:
He wonders whether any part of an entity recalls anything from its life on earth, or is it all a sequence of experiences triggered by interactions between souls which take place upon the catalyst provided by the likes of himself, John Reyer, Lazoo, Afansay, PAGE1, and one or two other creatives with the perfect chemical balance it takes to conjure up, and then suggest an idea to the Dimension, an idea then considered engrossing enough to hold the attention of audiences globally, universally, and cross-dimensionally long enough to give life to a story for whose existence the audience is just as responsible as the Conceptualizer, whom, with skill and guile unequalled, dreams up the tale that he then systematically delivers—non-stop, until he gets to THE END.
While “April’s Fool” is the latest in a series of stories about the LMLA-ink characters, it also returns to the root of those stories. References to Lazoo and events from the book “Lazoo” abound. Old scenes, characters, and stories all come together, from SIL HOUSE in New York City to MMESOL, a brothel in the SenFenide Dimension, to the Matriarch whose big white house overlooks Neon City.
Join John Reyer and the cast of LMLA-ink once again. Watch them tempt fate in a story that ties everything together, yet may leave you still hanging as you ask that eternal question, “What happens next?”
"April's Fool" is available exclusively here as a Kindle book from Amazon.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and author of “Narrow Lives”
