This week at 3:AM, there’s new short fiction by Martin Piñol. It’s called ‘Fever Dream Wedding Procession’ and it’s a piece of prose that is exactly what the title says.
Like several other writers published at 3:AM this year and last, Piñol is working in one of my favourite forms: the single-sentence story, the breathless unspooling of a run-on construction that races towards a full stop. There are a lot of commas and a lot of conjunctions and there’s also a steady ramping-up of surrealism as the story rambles on: the wedding procession is in a hurry, but it’s unclear that there’s a deadline to meet; the train has to follow a single track, but who can say whether it’s actually going anywhere; the decorum of the ceremony must be observed at all costs, but suddenly there are lobster costumes that need to be attended to. I’m inclined to read the train in the story as a representation of the story itself: ostensibly bound for a terminal point, but in fact proceeding circuitously, albeit at ever-increasing speed, so that the sensation the story creates—sensation, perhaps, in lieu of strict sense—is one of runaway momentum to a destination unknown. But what a ride it gives its readers! Does it come off the rails partway, helter-skelter? Or does it set out with no rails at all?