By Odilius Vlak

    This text is our first Fiction Review. An imaginative exploration of the book Dominican Splendours by the Dominican artist and writer, Vladimir Velázquez. Written in a Spanglish style, due to the street argot used by the author in many of the original tales. We considered useless to add a glossary explaining the Spanish words and phrases. That would take off from the reading experience its EXTREMOPHILE quality.

  What is about to start this night… «Nobody knows dónde vayas a parar.»

  Neither know about it nor want it to, Luis Eduardo and his friend Pedro. The fucking rain won’t dañará su party; even less the corpse within the car’s trunk. But to be circling the same Dantesque forest and running over their doppelgängers in in each turn, it’s taking the frozen shit out of them. The story in which they are de leading characters is already pure weird fiction. On top of it, the GPS indicates that the ill-fated Teteo won’t take place in the space time continuum of Dominican Splendours, but in Freakyland… HAY BOBO!

  Without question: the shitty vibration infesting the perreo is worse than Covid 19 en  variante WAWAWA.

  On the boardwalk the Penco can’t advance a single step. The horse collapses with the load of jucas and vapers that would make the Teteo a good vaina. The crime outrages palms and waves who phrase the chorus: «Ride up to heaven Penco, UP, UP, UP; there the bludgeons are given at least by angels.»

  But Pochum is the one taking the real vuelta. Poor guy: with the cocote he made to go to the Teteo: there he fancied himself reinando with the cuartos of his winning lottery ticket. Three hundred nineteen million! DIACHE! And how one can say it so fast? That’s a lot of perico and chapeadoras! The damned old witch who saw his fortune in a coffee cup, fell short in the bad omen. One thing is not being able to enjoy a lot of efectivo; another to be helpless before las versiones aplatanadas of Jason and Freddy Krueger: Topo Gigio and Bareta el Trípode. They’re fed up because Pochum doesn’t want to give away the spot where he hid the ticket. Better for the torturers. They won’t see again the same movie of Quentin Tarantino, or the Japanese gore Ichi the Killer. They’ll film their own versions. In VIVOLA. And he’ll be the protagonist of a splatter punk de calle anything but splendour. Except for the blood sung by a Greek tragedy chorus integrated por POPPYS.

  In Freakyland the Death Announcements are not about dead peoples, but for the ones that should die but refuse to do it. Ursula: the mother. Fatima: the daughter. A Psychic torture with the high definition of a paranormal power enhanced by hatred; the white room of a hospice placed in a given page of this book —I leave the task to the potential reader to imagine what thing would have desired those two old women, having had youth and health. With whom satisfy such a desire will be obvious.  

  The above curse is good news for Manolito the Magician. As the leading character of the story bearing his name, he should make tricks to liven the Teteo up for free. But forget it. To him money TALKS in biblical tongues. He josea lo suyo with the sweat of Satan’s brow, and the necromantic art inherited from his mother. And if they dare to venir con truco eh camara… Juhhh! He carved little figures of every character. And by the way, he doesn’t want to hear nothing about sharing stage with DJ Adonis. 

  A change of title and ON BOARD OF THE SHIP GOES el viejevo José María. He’s scheming how to dump his wife Rosa over the cruise’s gunwale at the very mid of the Caribbean; escape with the mami chula he saw in the gym con un par de viagras in his pocket, and show up, in all his glory, in the Teteo walking hand in hand with her. Doing so, he’ll teach a lesson to all those palomos fans of El Alfa and Bad Bonny about the real PAPÁ DEL MAMBO.

  A similar cocote got the character Georgilio with an Ucranian femme fatal he knew via Facebook. His purpose is not so much bucase su visa, but coger cámara with that rubia in the Teteo; post pila de selfies in his social networks and, finally, give her una pila eh… But calm down old cock! Like in the majority of these tales the master Vladimir Velázquez mixes, in an unprecedented way in our literature, the bizarre, the psychological horror, and the supernatural, with the many colorful manifestations of our Caribbean idiosyncrasy, surely the white collar Sanky Panky will be the center of the show, but from a Facebook Live broadcasted by an unexpected and dreadful fairy mother.

  Oh, how I would like to go deep down into the bitter life of Miss Peggy —A childhood nickname that frustrates our character every time it sneaks in her memory. Her blood is boiling because of the obligation to present her condolences in the funeral home, and say a long time cherished «good by maldito cuero» to the hated corpse of her sister. Because of that she won’t be able to desacatarse in the Teteo. At least she’ll see her dead —A well deserved and healthy death. Totally dead. Happily dead. NO BULTO!

  And believe me. How I would like as well to follow the wanderings of Pablo —that failed artist with his imagination turned into a palette of hallucinogens— through his recurrence dream: chasing obsessively a beautiful female ghost.  But he should never persecute her in his awakening through the streets of the Colonial Zone. At least in his dream he would be able to reach her in the Teteo, where the worst tragedy that could occur, was to find out his ideal maiden was a trans.

  But truth be told, I got a bad felling about this underground party. The star guiding three of our characters, foretells me this Teteo in Freakyland won’t have a happy ending. It turns out that Tomás decided to invite a very special friends from planet Mars. They’ll come eager de mover la chapa better than Tokisha or Cardi B. La MACÓ el nerd.  He should better improved DR’s tigueraje, and not humanity.

  But the worst is yet about to come. For a gigantic monstrosity is heading straight toward the Teteo. He’s just finished to swallow down a bite not so tasteful for the lives of Mr. Daniel and his son Johnny. In their ranch was supposed to be celebrated the after party feast. But it became a single mass of meat, neither fried nor grilled nor stewed, but cooked by the post mortem revenge of Cástulo with the best body horror recipe.

  But even that colossus collague of spicy pork sausage, chicken wings and pork chops, stayed con el moño hecho —For, all of a sudden: the WORLD’S END came about in full stage. 

  But don’t worry folks. Another Teteo is taking place this side of the speculative universe of Dominican Splendours. Right here, in the Theater House. Those beats aren’t of denbow or reggaeton, but from the synaptic processes of Vladimir Velazquez’s baroquely EXTREMOPHILE mind. Luckily his chaotic version of the world ending is confined to the pages of this literary debut.

  That said, we must be watchful reading these tales —The borderline dividing the noise of a Teteo celebrated in Dominican Splendours from another in Freakyland, is just a page that, passed to the left in the wrong way, could end being sucked by the apocalyptic black star of the first story.

    LLÉVATELO CUNDO!