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Monday, 24 March 2008
Off Beat

OFF BEAT

 

 Published 'Premonitions' 1995

 

Like a suicide pilot, he had climbed to the top of a tall smokstack and wondered if he was meant to jump.

 

Robin knew he had to keep quiet, maybe tell a few old drinking chums at the Black Fen pub—because, the sooner uttered, the sooner forgotten.  The evening had been blowy since about six, but when the storm actually hit home at ten, everybody knew they were in for a rough ride.  Robin had just tucked his kids in, telling them that wind in England, even on the East coast, could not hurt anybody.  Tracy looked up with her large innocent eyes and swallowed his words, along with the dregs of the orange juice. 

 

            "Night, night, Daddy," she squeaked, snuggling under the covers, as if nothing could harm her now.

 

            "Night night, dear."

 

            Tom in the last room along the corridor made a teenage grunt as Robin knocked to say goodnight to him.  Tanya in the middle room was already asleep, so Robin only lingered a few seconds after tucking in the thick bobbly sheet around her neck.  It was no ordinary wind.  By midnight, as he lay in his own bed, he could feel the house vibrating around him.  The windows shook as if they were desperate creatures thrashing to escape their frames.  In the distance there was a crash which on an ordinary evening would have sounded like an aeroplane nose-diving into the suburban streets.  The chimney roared like a giant hoover.  There was something churning around inside the blocked off chimney breast.  It groaned like a prisoner in the condemned cell, wailed pitifully and, in evident panic, leapt up and down the inside of the disused flue, a crazed monkey-rat.

 

            "Daddy, Daddy," he heard from within his head: a plaintive call that had no direction.  He blocked his ears, but still heard the call that had no direction.  He blocked his ears, but still heard the call, sharper now, almost rabid.  It seemed to be a creature that could not escape the walls of his skull, the sound bouncing from left to right and back again in horrific stunted stereophony, like a young woman having a mastectomy at the hands of a clumsy surgeon.

 

            The storm in fact left no sign of its damage.  Robin wouldn't have believed it anyway if he'd seen trees down, with their roots shamelessly exposed.  No, there was indeed no wind in England sufficient to harm anyone or anything.  But that idea about having three children was really something.  Weird.  But like all ideas, as soon as remembered forgotten—and he went off to have a chat about chimney breasts.  He wanted one of his do-it-yourself chums to come round and remove one for him.

 

            The wet pavements ran yellow with the city night.  He idled at the corner of Bay Crescent, waiting, waiting, never ceasing to wait for an excuse to wait ... until he was moved along by a dark faced policeman. 

 

            "Move along, move along, that's all I get!  I'm waiting for ... yes, for a girl friend, and how will she find me?"

 

            "Where's she coming from?"

 

            Robin thought hard and eventually muttered: "Frinton-on-Sea."  He moved along, away from the policeman, speaking to the slanting shadows of the lamp-posts, not waiting for their replies.  He thought they were more policemen stalking him out of their precinct.  Abruptly, he reached an unlit area, indicating the outskirts of the city, but there was just sufficient residue of illumination at the back of his eyes to see a narrow slick guttering down the back wall of some factory.  He relaxed and listened to its slurps, knowing that the policemen would not venture this far after minor prey such as Robin.  Neither would the girl friend.

 

The sky lit up with a thunderflash, frightening Robin with a vision of his own face reflected in the puddles.  It was not raining, but it seemd that recently it must have torrented from the biggest darkest black cloud that some called night.  His thoughts were items he could not himself quite fathom.  He took after his mother who had also been a thinker and had taught him the correct way to cross a thought, looking both ways, then marching straight across without fear of the monsters encroaching from the wings.  Smiling, he wished he had been older and his mother younger, then they could have courted each other.  She would not have kept him waiting. She may even have borne him three lovely children of his own to cherish.  She'd always wanted grandchildren.

 

            He went towards the wall to sniff the redolence of the slurry scumming down it.  No smell, but that, Robin decided, proved nothing, for his nose was bunged up to the nostrils with its own characteristic stench.  He placed his little finger in the flow and tentatively placed its tip to his tongue.  Quite sickly sweet, with an under flavour reminiscent of seaside rock mixed with his late father's home-made wine, and a consistency of curdled milk.

 

            The storm had evidently passed over without even one gust.  The highly coloured lemon wedge of the moon was dodging between the scuttling patchwork of night's covering.  Standing on tiptoes, he stretched up his hands, ignoring the lancing pain set in motion along his arms by the jagged glass embedded in the top of the wall, and levered himself into a position whereby he could see over it.  The place looked more like an asylum than a factory, with one tall chimneystack limned coldly against the whitening and spreading of the misty moon.

 

            He was grasped by the scruff of the neck as he toppled over inside the grounds.  He heard a screech in his ear and a face of running boils peered closely into his.  "When you crossed the road near St Paul's, you didn't look both ways, did you?"  The words hissed out, as the creature proceeded to squat on Robin's open mouth.  A policeman, far off his proper beat, whistled as he passed along on the other side of the wall...

 

            The skylights blazed.  The best-boy waved.  The lens-shifter dropped the tea tray.  The assistant gaffer lurched into the wardrobe ... and Robin's Show began.  Millions of TV sets were switched on all round our green and pleasant land to watch the nightly trip into good conversation and famous faces.  Someone, looking like Robin, sat opposite, with a wide open plate of a face.  The frothing tankards of special brew seemed to breathe and pulse in time to the underground steam train rattling away beneath them ... en route between stations that had closed their entrances for fear of too many war evacuees herding along the platforms and brimming over on the tracks.  There were not enough outlets for the smoke.

 

            Robin's companion indicated he was dying to relieve himself and, whilst crossing, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs, he propounded the theory that if cows are left unmilked for too long, they explode and thus do away with the butcher's art.  Robin, his eyes pure white and sightless, announced: "Good evening, Ladies and those in the Gents..."  A light chortle took itself one by one across the studio audience.  "My guests tonight you may not be too familiar with, but, after tonight, who knows?"  And as his guests tugged and pulled each other in the guise of actually shaking hands, the audience suddenly realised that the pair of them were joined at the waist, like Siamese twins.

 

            "Now, Mr Fenn, what can you tell me about boils?  Sorry, I didn't mean to say that—can you tell me about what you actually saw?"  (Could it be that the famous TV chat show host and his guests were speaking in perfect unison?  On a live, unrehearsed show?)  "This is a historic moment, dreamfolk, when host and guests are one—tune in, blow on the screen to brighten it up and turnstile your private parts 'gainst unseasonable interruption.  The great dome of St Paul's Cathedral had bigger got, 'cause of the war.  They needed it like that to deflect the bombs on to the houses.  But I was the one who thought of putting up high-rise office blocks a-straddle it by Ludgate Circus—to stiffen it further, for not only did the alien monsters plan to float in like giant hang-gliders and use it as the basin for their further entrenchments into our green and pleasant land—but they were to lead in wider, more shadowy storm critters with long skinny legs which would eventually brood on our roofs to hatch out those that cringed within—that's you and me, folks.  We needed protection, but the high-rise blocks took on a life of their own, bred other high-rise blocks, nurtured nasty natty men who paraded themselves in mock of us, dealing in shares, stocks, trusts and junk bonds.  Those towering office monoliths sprouted arms with mighty hammers that pounded at our poor St Paul's dome until they cracked its big end like a skull..."

 

            The audience silent grew, for what they had feared would now surely happen—and their favourite host waved a fond farewell.  The pupils of Robin's eyes began to prick out as he heard thousands upon millions of clicks that indicated the switching off of millions of TV sets across the land.  Bedtime drew on apace and the nation could unravel its private parts for a while in needed exercise, prior to making tourniquet knots of them 'gainst night piss.  Getting purchase by means of the chimneys, the thin winding monster-legs tightened around houses and homes, as the last tube train hissed to a halt below the foundations of the city.  The creatures brooded long and hard, since nights doubled-up on themselves then, and days were just selling themselves short, peddling Futures in the black markets of despair.  Meanwhile amid the Essex marshes...

 

"Get thee gone to Jaywick Sands!" they'd said.  And so, Robin became the TV reporter commissioned to employ the forces of the media to stimulate action against the increasing use of seaside resorts as sewage outlets.  Swimming was like being force-fed, they'd said.  The Weirdmonger, Black Fenn, Lavatory Todger, Dosserman Weggs, Feemy Cat's-Meat and Jack O'Lantern were there to meet Robin, where creek and land merged ... to ask for TV publicity to formulate the election campaign of their new pressure group, temporarily called the Condom Party.

 

            But to whose votes did they aspire?  And was there to be an election anyway?  And, if so, on what platform would they stand?  The Weirdmonger was all in favour of hiking through South America from hustings post to hustings post.  But that, some argued, would be pretty useless in garnering support round Clacton way.  Perhaps he thought Southend was in Argentina or, more likely, Tierra Del Fuego.  Black Fenn vigorously suggested that Walton-On-The-Naze should be their jumping-off point, till someone who, if Robin reported correctly, was himself, mentioned the small problem of the Nazemen, sworn enemies of throwbacks such as human beings.  The Nazemen could indeed do more than a mischief to the campaign by spreading scandals relating to the pressure group's peccadilloes.  Black Fenn, who was at this very moment wrapped up inside a blow-up rubber doll with makeshift chimney-breasts, wondered what Robin was getting at.  Lavatory Todger, who had in fact had some dealings with conglomerate advertising agencies (i.e. when marketing his sewage toting services in the unplumbed parts of the East coast) suggested a high profile campaign.  Black Fenn grunted agreement, but the Weirdmonger said he would have nothing to do with nancy-boys nor the self-confessed wankers of the City near St Paul's.  Dosserman prepared to put in his two halfpence worth: but with odd socks on, his views were not taken too seriously.  So, the debate turned again to South America and whether there were likely to be any joy-rides from off Walton pier and, if so, would they sail into the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro (a port city currently twinned with Leigh-on-Sea)?  Jack O'Lantern, fresh from throwing light on affairs in the oldest part of Colchester, waved about a used flag.  It was soon furled however to prevent it becoming easy meat for any foe currently eye-wigging.  Robin offered his tongue instead but that was too long and stringy, no good for getting round words.  Feemy Cat's-Meat burst forth with a tour de force.  He proffered a view that the marsh folk, the Punch and Judy attendants, the side-show tattooists, the deck-chair imitators, the promenade slickers, the bent solicitors, the shanty town drifters et al, all those seed merchants, seaview purveyors, marshy back-enders and the whole gamut of Low Essex life from creek to beach, from Roman Wall to the South's bottom end, were only likely to vote for the campaign if policies could be created for which they wanted to vote.  No good setting up images, quite beyond the common men of coast and parlour, an image like one of alien monsters from outer space taking over this blind corner of the world called Essex in some half-cocked attempt to further the arch-monetarism of some devil which lurked in the pipes underground.   Why not keep it simple and teach them how to read fortunes in those new-fangled water closet bowls after its skimpy flush failed for the umpteenth time? 

 

            The others stared, each lost in his own thoughts, with no obvious way out.  Padgett Weggs had the last word, but not even Robin was sufficiently compos mentis to appreciate the true importance of what he said, which was this: "I think we should hitch to Frinton-on-Sea and lay a few chicks, before it's too late.  We'll be past it, otherwise, and everybody else'll've got their own personal bit of skirt, bar us." 

 

            And they all got up en masse and frantically sought a paddle-train to catch as it churned away from the endless dripping marshes.  But not quite en masse, for Black Fenn didn't want to come.  He preferred to meditate and gently suck the involuted teats on the inside of his costume, gently puffing smoke from out the nipples of the breasts.  The Weirdmonger said he would have preferred Buenos Aires, but Frinton, he had to agree, was, on the face of it, next best.  So off they traipsed, most of them, alongside Dosserman in his quest for love and beauty.  Jack O'Lantern lit the way with his fireflies, Feemy Cat's Meat not far behind as he masticated contemplatively upon his own chewed-off boils.  Robin felt that none of it really had the quality of a proper memory, but that didn't mean it wasn't one.  Then, they heard in the distance the lonely drone of an aeroplane...

 

            Robin found himself thankfully, if peculiarly, alone.  He saw the aeroplane crash at approximately four o'clock.  It banked steeply over the marshes, then just seemed to splutter to a halt, smoke billowing from the cockpit.  No sooner seen, it sliced into some far-off trees with a splintering roar.  He couldn't believe it.  He must be the only person around these parts to see it happen.  It was literally hours since he had viewed a Colchester with its uncharacteristic domed cathedral nesting in a distant valley.  He felt responsible somehow, as if merely looking at the aeroplane had caused the accident.  Worse than that, it would be up to him to scramble across the squishy terrain to see if there were any belated survivors.  Would it not be preferable to forge straight back to where he recalled Colchester being and raise the alarm there.  That would get the experts on the job.  Better than him making amateurish, mock-heroic attempts at rescue himself.  Caught upon the prongs of a dilemma, he decided to do neither; he merely sat on a tussocky weed, pulled out his pipe which always seemed to help and puffed away, assuming that the world and all its troubles would wait for him to catch up. 

 

            The smoke continued to spout from amid the shattered trees.  Robin was horrified when he arrived there.  The flaming trough which the nosecone of the plane had divotted was at least a highrise-block deep.  There were a number of passengers still trying to clamber out, despite the ferocity of the sporadic fire around them.  But it just couldn't be!  The whole scene was beyond comprehension.  The survivors appeared to be flickering shadows actually part and parcel of the living flames.  Not even TV pictures alongside his report would make anyone believe this news story.  He had indeed tried to reach Colchester but, by getting lost, found the crash-site instead, deceived into thinking that the smoke was emanating from the town's central factory chimney.  The plane itself seemed to have disappeared altogether.  Surely it could not have taken off again, after allowing the maimed and half-dead to disembark?  Robin squinted into the sky where he could just discern the wrecked aeroplane gliding with the large black birds. 

 

            He pulled out his pipe again and proceeded to fry a new-laid egg upon the scorching earth.  Embedded in the semi-hemisphere of the yellow yolk bulb was the translucent body-shape of a miniature human still twitching.  Thank goodness things couldn't get any stranger.  In due course, he slowly rose to his feet.  The fire-pit created by the crash had gradually relinquished its imitation of a long vertical volcano, but dark perforations and fragile black sculptures of ash still floated upwards intermittently from the erstwhile core.  Robin wondered how, why and if he had seen a plane crashing in the first place.  No doubt they would tell him at Colchester if there were any flights missing.  But would he ever reach Colchester at the leisurely pace he now assumed?  He deposited the bony carapaces of some insects into the stained bowl of his pipe.  All was silent as he teetered upon the brink of his own thoughts ... except for the gentle nuzzling voices inside his head calling "Daddy!"

 

            He felt the balance of a hand upon his shoulder and, turning, he found it was that damn policeman, off his beat again.


Posted by wordonymous at 7:26 AM EDT
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Sunday, 9 March 2008
DEAR EUNICE

 

 

Published 'Sepia' 1994 

 

Afternoon

You know what it’s like. As soon as the family gets home, I’ve got no time even for the natural bodily processes, or almost! Alan always arrives first (he comes on the overnight coach), clutching a potted plant - sometimes I think he must be shy, hiding behind the biggest bloom he can buy. I soon packed him up to his old room to get ready for dinner while, with nose duly pegged, I drop a whole term of his dirty washing into the twin tub. I don’t resent doing it really - I know how hard students have to study.

 

Evening

Harry and Peter are late. Christina’s come, of course, bringing me a bumper box of Black Magic, I can’t tell her, can I, that I’ve been off chocolates these last two years, because I suspected a link-up between them and migraines. You can understand, can’t you, Eunice, you of all people, You have to steer clear of so much with all your allergies, I must break off now, as 1 can hear the sound of Harry’s Citroen coming up the drive, I expect Peter’s with him.

 

Morning

Alan’s potted plant looks so pretty in the middle of the dining-table. I’ve cooked a hearty breakfast - I know how Harry likes mounds of fried bread when he’s here at home. Alan will be a bit annoyed when he discovers I’ve no mushrooms.  Went clean out of my head yesterday. Christina still avoids cooked stuff for breakfast, but there’s plenty of fruit juice and cereal for her, It’s a pity, though, her feeling a bit off colour this Morning. I’m a bit worried that Peter’s a day late, Harry says he wasn’t waiting outside Clapham South tube station at the appointed time to be picked up in the Citroen. I must say Harry could have waited around a bit - something about the parking being bad in that area though. Alan came down late for breakfast of course, if you’d had a son of your own, Eunice, you’d understand. Despite the lack of mushrooms, it was good to see him tuck into a plateful of eggs just done to the turn.

 

Afternoon

Christina’s in the garden, sun-bathing, she says, Easter’s a bit early this year, I told her, she’ll only catch a chill, I must say, though, I love her wide-brimmed hat, her Basil bought it for her in Toledo. But Basil’s persona non grata these days. Pity, I liked him - ever a good card at whist. He was fond of me, too, always untwirling my apron strings when I’m in the middle of something dangerous in the kitchen. Laugh? I nearly died! Harry and Alan (who, I may have told you, never got on together as little boys) have gone off in the Citroen. Peter’s still not arrived! He could have tried to give me a ring. All the boxes must have been vandalised by those lager louts, I shouldn’t wonder, I don’t like using phones.

 

Evening

Raining pretty hard now. Christina stayed out in the garden till the very last moment. She hasn’t told me yet how her little florist business is going these days, I expect she’ll get round to it. The Citroen’s not back yet - they said they might be late for dinner, Something about finishing up visiting you, of all people, They’re probably with you now, I hope they’re not too much of a nuisance, They always called you Auntie, I know, but they shouldn’t have visited you unannounced like that.

 

Bedtime

I’m not tired at all. Though it is time I made the Horlicks. Nice of you to ring, Eunice, with the news that Harry and Alan are staying over with you. I know you said it’s no trouble, but I can’t help thinking that they’re imposing on you. Christina’s here, sat by the television, I hope she won’t be left on the shelf. Good Friday often seems the right time to take stock. I wish Bob was still alive. My bed’s been more lonely the last two years. I know you had a soft spot for him too, being a real gentleman as he surely was. Peter’s not rung.

 

Morning

It’s taking me a long time to finish this letter. Peter’s absence is now really beginning to worry me. Christina’s gone off to meet the next train, she says. How she knows he’ll be on it, I don’t know. Perhaps she has some other errand in town while she’s there. You rung up again, told me the boys were OK, The potted plant looks a bit worse for wear. I think it was dying on its legs when Alan first bought it. He’s got no common sense between his ears. A bit like his father. But there’s no good trying to change people. It’s a nice blowy day - I think I’ll hang out the washing. It’s hard to make plans for meals, when everybody’s out and about and doing their own thing. Must go now, phone’s ringing. I’m a bit slow these days, Ooh, I hope it’s Peter.

 

Two days later

Sorry - I’ve been very busy cooking. But I promise I’ll get this letter off in the post today. Christina’s in the garden - it is certainly warm for the time of year. But I do wish she wouldn’t go topless - I don’t know what the neighbours must think. Peter rang at last. Apparently not coming. Something cropped up. Youngsters have a lot of commitments. I’m glad you kept me informed about the Citroen. Broken down in your drive, apparently. They’ll go back to college straight from yours. Well, it’s on the way, any rate. When I next see you, I’ll give you the Black Magic for looking after them. But what about Alan’s washing? He’s probably forgotten, He’ll live in those jeansful of holes for the whole of next term. You say I shouldn’t carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wish Bob had never smoked. I think I’ve got a migraine coming on, I shouldn’t have got so much food in, Christina eats like a bird. Well, Eunice, I hope the boys weren’t pests and that your rash is under control again. I’ll write you a proper letter tomorrow, when I’ve found your address and Christina’s gone,

All my love,

Mrs Tidy

 

xxx

 

 

 


Posted by wordonymous at 11:29 AM EST
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Sunday, 24 February 2008
The Benevolence of Fate

Published 'The Banshee' 1994

 

He was known as Mop. 

"Hiya, Mop, going to the Pictures?" asked the girl he fancied, though he didn’t admit he did, even to himself.

            He nodded; more wishful thinking about Saturday Morning Pictures than anything else.  His father expected him to clear out the drains this Saturday and expectation was tantamount to fulfilment, as far as his father was concerned.

            "Can I do it 'safternoon instead?"

            "No, you do it 'smorning, me lad, and lump it!" retorted his father who was that moment under his push-bike, changing the oil. Mop got a bucket of suds from his mother - who would have handed out such devices to any bob-a-job upstart who happened to call at the front door expressing a wish to clean out something or other.  She had a brain for such matters. 

            He stumbled outside, with the warm water slopping from one side of the bucket to the other, which almost unbalanced him if it were not for his steadying use of the long-handled hinge of a sponge thing. Attacking the drains, he pretended they were Flash Gordon's worst enemies (so frightful that the Saturday Morning Pictures manager would have banned their appearance, soon as look at them). 

            It wasn't as if the drains didn't need doing, for they most definitely did.  Even though the family was poor, there were bits of Mother's meals that were simply created for no other purpose than to be left-overs ... and these bits had ended up half-suspended down the drains, seemed put there  merely for such snagging, one of those devices God made humans create to annoy other humans. 

            Mop, who had missed Flash Gordon for real at the Pictures in favour of such unsanitary delights, wondered why they were called storm drains.  A real storm could never have squeezed through such ridiculously narrow gaps. He plummetted the sponge into the coagulating suds ... and, oh horror, there was that girl he didn’t admit he fancied – a real humiliation, even if ‘humiliation’ wasn’t in his vocabulary.

She pouted her lips, which she expected him to read. He turned back to the drains as if, by ignoring her, she'd ignore him and go on her way towards the Pictures, perhaps to hold hands with the boy he’d seen with her during the last summer holidays.  But, no, her beaming face just hovered there, like a dream teetering on the brink of becoming a nightmare.  He tried to think her away.  Childhood was a self-inflicted fiction, anyway.

            His father, wiping his greasy hands on his back apron, shouted about something or other, a complaint of sorts, but nothing could be heard beyond the eventually fading undergrunts.

            "Hiya, Mop."  He turned away to the drains, where to his delight the tail-ends of the left-overs disappeared faster than he could see them.  The hinged Sponge Thing would have been no good, anyway.

            "Didn't you hear me?  Coming to the Pictures?"

            He shrugged, shook his head.   She had probably decided that she would not ever want to hold hands with the likes of Mop, anyway, considering the state of them.  A tear, that she had not felt coming, was upon her petal cheek, proving perhaps she'd not known her own mind.  She hid this behind a gust of laughter that took her on to the Roxy.

            If she had known her own mind, she'd have married him without second thoughts and lived happily ever after and had loads of tousle-haired children looking like Mop to give odd jobs to ... come Saturday Mornings.

            Strangely unpredictable is the nature of Fate: but whatever its benevolence, it cannot possibly soak up the many mucks and messes that most humans get their lives into – even if ‘benevolence' is part of its vocabulary.

           


Posted by wordonymous at 4:18 PM EST
Updated: Sunday, 24 February 2008 4:22 PM EST
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Friday, 11 January 2008
Carving The Fish

 

 The fish had been poached perfectly and Rachel turned from her atlas to scrutinise its potential edibility.  Bill had prepared it for her - and had sprinkled several herbs and whole peppercorns over it.  Bill was currently her Ex.  But they were still fast friends. 

 

.            Bill taught geography which was Rachel’s worst subject at school -- but she enjoyed the shape of maps more for their aesthetic quality than for their representation of reality.  She hated reality.

 

              The atlas she had been browsing through was one of Fantasy Worlds, where all literary maps had been collected together.  Tolkien’s Middle Earth.  Thomas Hardy’s Wessex.  Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.  Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.  James Hilton’s Shangri-La.  Cervantes’ La Manche.  And so on.  Rachel adored poring over them with studious grins – lovingly tracing their margins, imagining herself in the various purlieus of mindscape. 

 

            “You want to read a real atlas one day, Rachel,” announced Bill as he carved the fish: thick-slivering fillet after fillet upon each of their plates. 

 

            “I’ve always wondered how anyone reads a map?”

 

“Real places on maps are like words, too. Full of meaning, nuance, history, language...”

 

“Well, this bloody place we live in is not spelt properly then!” Rachel joked with a wince of seriousness.

 

            The reason for them falling out as soul mates had been caused by their lack of sympathy regarding these very maps.  Bill was fascinated by the salt-of-the-earth disciplines of physical geography.  Political geography, too.  Brown contours that swirled around outlandishly tall peaks.  The bright primary colours dividing chance nations.  The pastel ones depicting exports, customs, geological features or striations, irrigation projects, hydroelectric dams, forestry conservation preoccupations and so on. 

 

 

          But Rachel loved nothing better than the more nebulous worlds that occupied her precincts of thought. 

 

 

            She grabbed the fish knife and, in a desultory fashion, prodded her share of the mutual meal.  

 

 

           Bill, by now, had taken a whip from his wide-mouthed briefcase.  It was a snaky, quirky terrier of a whip.  It snapped and coruscated.  It almost had a life of its own. 

 

 

            Bill positioned it on the table in the map-outline of the place whence the fish traditionally derived. 

 


Posted by wordonymous at 4:47 PM EST
Updated: Friday, 11 January 2008 4:49 PM EST
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Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Nags and Knitting

Nags and Knitting



The race was between some scurvy nags. Point-to-Point. Pointless. But there you go. Just some down-in-the-mouth, dyed-in-the-wool farmers and their workers, a loose gathering of faces in the dishevelled dusk – discussing their various nags, which to bet on, which to gainsay. Not much more than 5 shillings each way.

The day had been sodden. Going good, now good to heavy. Fences straggly – some beaten flat by unknown feet or, perhaps, a short-lived storm. Indeed, more like a flat race than a jumping one. A chase without chairs. The other course, the hurdle one, was being repaired from some unseen skirmishers of the night. Or from pub yobs hopping along in the dead of night, drunkenly kicking down any obstacle in their way.

Farmer Watts was putting his money on Blackberrypie. For him, it couldn't lose. The other nags were so out of salts, they looked as if they had been broken in quite clumsily and too often. Robbed of all their filliness or coltitude or geldinghood. With saddles covered – for whatever reason – with the knitting from the local old people's day centre.

However, Farmer Coughlan was tantamount to putting the whole of his farm itself on Sausageandmash. The property was only worth 5 shillings at the best of times, bearing in mind the never-ending saga of food scares even scaring God Himself. No exaggeration.

Farmer Watts and Farmer Coughlan stemmed from rival farming clans since time immemorial. They stared steely-eyed – as the makeshift racing steward (a man in a dungarees whom nobody seemed to recognise) lifted the tapes for the forty odd scrawny steeds to start running.

 

One immediately started munching the grass. Another unseated his jerk of a jockey. Yet more careered off in all directions - except towards that of the finishing post.

Blackberrypie and Sauasageandmash were leading a small pack who were drifting, one guessed, generally in the right direction. A few even in this contingent of mediocrity-masquerading-as-might stumbled on the flat fences. Leaving the two main contenders (Blackberrypie and Sauasageandmash) to negotiate the home strait, in vile vying brays and wicked snaps of the whip from what they saw as unseen yet weighty powers above.

Blackberrypie was leading by a head. Then Sausageandmash by a neck. Then Blackberrypie by two heads. Then Sausageandmash by a head and two necks.

 

The croaky crowd uttered their approval amid catcalls and whistles from some flatcapped locals who did not seem to have backed anything at all – merely graced the day with their presence. A disinterested crowd is better than no crowd at all, some claimed. In actual fact, it was becoming, if belatedly, rather a good race between these two nags, bearing in mind the general standard of Point-to-Points hereabouts.

Farmer Watts and Farmer Coughlan actually roared. The first time either of them had managed this throaty evidence of their lungs for years and years. The usually mumbled, these days, and grumbled under their breaths. For the first time in a tandem of eternities, fire shone in their eyes.

Yet, imagine their deflation when they spotted Blackberrypie and Sausageandmash grazing in a field, never having reached the finishing post.

 

Either illusion or wishful thinking had created the mass hysteria. The sunset (with the rain clouds in retreat) made the grass the two nags gnawed look a gooey red-black. Natural processes caused the horses to appear to ooze long black things which coiled to the ground to form a mass of wriggling moonlit maggots.

 

Two short human-like shapes eventually separated themselves from the nags in a slow-motion unknitting action, and very slowly raced off to the pub – followed (as now allowed in tradition) by the two farmers and their cronies, slapping each other's backs, guffawing, nay, laughing, gloriously laughing at the pointlessness of Point-to-Points, at the sheer animal absurdity of God's gift called life.

 

Only later did they go back to muttering.

 

(unpublished)


Posted by wordonymous at 10:14 AM EST
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Saturday, 22 December 2007
ONANISM
       

                     

                      “‘Reports are coming in that a thousand children have been captured close to Ingatestone in Essex.’ 

 

                      He switched off the TV in disgust. The latest war had made children wonder whether their species could actually be preserved.”

                     

                      I closed the book for a moment, leaving a finger in my place. I glanced at the title again—MISCRE­ANT IN MOONSTREAM—in many ways a beautiful phrase but one pregnant with foreboding. It was a fantasy story—well, at first, I thought it was. But, when it started dealing with close on a thousand names of children who had been slaughtered by just one Town Coun­cil alone—I knew this could not be entertainment, whatever the mean­ing of that word. Since when were lists something you could read for pleasure?

 

                      Come to think of it, it was a strange book, as a physical thing. The cover seemed to be made from wrinkled black skin. The title it­self was artfully picked out in gold tooling, the spine could be de­pended upon to crack each time it was opened and shut and there were weathered metal clasps. I tried to recall the whereabouts of the secondhand bookshop where I had obtained it. Having haunted such places for most of my life, I felt like a ghost through whose fingers the book would soon slip to the floor. Or it would fall, not as a result of a false grip in my fin­gers, but because of its own lack of substance.

 

                      Yes, it had been that darkly lit street, back of High Holborn—the one that always laid out its penny dreadfuls on planks, the worst of them all ranked outside beneath smeared panes. Not that the owner was any better at window dressing. It looked more like a backstreet sex shop than one intended to house such classics as George Eliot, James Tiptree, Jr., Fiona MacLeod, Rad­clyffe Hall, Branwell Brontë, Oscar Wilde, Petal Jeffery, &c. Indeed, when the runes were read, civilized fornication had as much seediness as the backstreet variety. Having known neither, I was not the one best suited to judge.

 

                      The man behind the stacked counter was smaller even than my­self. He wore a long beard and a short pinafore dress, each, no doubt, to disguise a different as­pect of his true persona. His pip­ing voice offered assistance in in­terpreting the labels on the various plank shelves.

 

                      “I’m after historical stories with a good straightforward plot.” My voice, too, echoed the high pitches of the room. It had evidently been a public drinking-place in its hey­day, one of those large affairs with a honky-tonk in every corner for random sing-songs. You could even see woodworm holes around a perfect circle on one of the walls…“I’ve got cleverly plotted histor­ical stories in here than you’d ever dream of, young man.” I didn’t relish his tone—nor his grammar, for that matter. I scowled, or I attempted to scowl—whether he saw it as a scowl, I am probably not master enough of my own narrative to tell. He showed me behind some heavy-duty shelving bearing the biggest books I had ever seen. They must have been very tall peo­ple back in History, especially in Ancient Egypt. It was too dark to read the titles. However, he pointed to a finger-torch which, if I stood on the stepladder, I could reach. It felt very precarious teetering up that ladder. If I didn’t believe in sanity, I could have suspected him of having murderous designs on his customers by enticing them into unnecessary accidents. He was right, though. Once I got stuck into browsing, I discovered a veritable treasure trove of historical litera­ture, by the likes of E. F. Benson, C. S. Lewis, A. Blackwood & Machen, R.Aickman, L. Dunsany, T. Ligotti, M.P. Shiel, D.F. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, C. A. Smith, E. A. Poe.

 

          The list was endless, except it couldn’t’ve been. There were also small volumes with grey and yellow photographs bearing the names of writers who had not yet earned the fame of those undeserving of it. Let me see, there were Sarah Poe (no relation), Samuel Rigger, Pad­gett Weggs, Blasphemy Fitzworth, Abraham Bintiff, Clovis Camber, Archibald Z________ (no relation), Felix Holt, C. M. Eddy, Sr., the Wild Man of Hurtna Pore, Fred Tyr­rel, Stripling Welham, Nial Hopper, Ervin Tourner, the Weirdmonger, Rachel Mildeyes &c, &c. And there was, of course, MISCREANT IN MOONSTREAM, tucked away in the third rank, where no literary greed had previously been sufficient to send the page-turners grubbing and pawing. It was by an anony­mous writer, if it was by a writer at all. With the flickering torch, I scanned random paragraphs.

 

          The tome cost an arm and a leg, or it should have done judging by the glint in the shopkeeper’s eye as I toted it to his front counter. He seemed to be pissing, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He would only accept a cheque, so I put my ready cash back where it came from and scrawled some out­landish number in the amount space, finishing with a crazy flourish that people often do when first invent­ing their own signature. He took it without demur. I was convinced he was glad to be shot of MISCRE­ANT IN MOONSTREAM. But why then stash it away in the most inaccessible slot imaginable, beyond the reach of even the painstaking­est bookworm? I clip-clopped along the wet pavements of the moon-strewn city, reading as I went.

         

          There was once a war that spread haphazardly across the fron­tier of twilight, between the fields we knew and the lands held to be subject to the sound of elfin horns. The light, extruding from the dawn sky like strands of melted butter, suddenly re-hardened with thud of tank on tank. He peered over the makeshift edge of the trench he had dug the night before in a marshy area, and saw that the bore-holes of two tanks’ gunbarrels were so dissimilar that one had slipped upon the other, like a tele­scope, only to explode outwards in a particularly nasty fashion, plying him with jagged curds of steel. From along the nearby waterway which began somewhere further back than the fields we knew and extended even beyond the elfin gloaming, he could make out the distant chugging of one of those Narrow Boats that the allies utilised on canals as transporters of army provender. Eventually, it rounded the bend, emerging from the shim­mering curtain of sunrise and moored clumsily quite near his en­trenchment—into which he had by now withdrawn his head to gouge out the splinters. He heard voices laughing, as if a joke had been cracked amongst the crew. He laughed, too, uncertain of his own sense of humour amidst a war. Sporadic gunfire still stitched the air from another quarter of the fields we knew and, out of the prevailing silences, an intermittent screeching of the death terrors served to remind him that there could be no joke worthy of even the slightest titter. Then, the return fire, like the Earth ripping off its waistcoat, button by button. Having reteethed to the gums, he lifted a loud “halloo!” from the bot­tom of his trench, half to put a halt to the unseemly light-headedness of those who should know bet­ter and half to release the bad air in his lungs. The “halloo!” re­turned from their direction with re­doubled force. Could he have set up, unintentionally, some communi­cation system that was intrinsic to a wider, more complex pattern of passwords, resistance movements, codes, semaphores, undercover war-work and smugglers’ tips-of-the-wink? It was with some ab­ruptness that he realised he was not exactly alone in his trench. He had indeed dug it for himself, but someone else had crept in on tip­toes . . . or someone else was already there, a four-limbed earth snake of slithery black. “Who are you?” The voice sounded hoarse with shouting. “I am a very old man.” His voice was as high-pitched as a child’s. “What are you doing here?” “What are you doing here?” “Sheltering from the war.” “Which war?” “Is there more than one?” The implication was incredulity that even one war was feasible. He saw tears weltering in his eye-holes and felt some stinging in his own without his mind being particularly doleful. He pushed his head into the soft loam of his trench, as if that would make him forget about him. He de­cided tentatively to peer out of the trench and test the score. This he did and saw the Narrow Boat with the name “Abraham Bintiff II” painted along its side. A series of faces watched him, a line of decap­itated heads along the bulwarks staring deeply into his eyes from only a few yards away. Suddenly, with a great roar of childlike laugh­ter, they got up on the feet grow­ing directly from their necks and waddled to the bank where, without preamble or possible motive, they began eating each other with the utmost relish. The fastest eaters naturally lasted the longest and the right gobblers, scolded by their better-mannered compatriots, filled their cheeks with massy balloons of face-fodder—only to sick it all out again into the grume of the inky cut. Without bellies, sicking-up was the only sure result and, be­fore long, tatterdemalion skull- bones with half-digested cheek-flaps fought for each other’s succulent neck muscles. He knew he witnessed a vision stemmed from war. If madness is born, then madness will die. The heads soon became serried clottings of living gristle and, tail in mouth, their Worm Ouroboros wound across the deck and interlaced with the poles and boat-hooks which, on better days, helped the passage of the boat through the locks and winding-holes of those fields we once knew. It was at that point he became the first self-confessed human being to spot, if fleetingly, the inscrutable faces of our elfin neighbours from just across the other side of twi­light. A whole day had passed, evidently. As a child, he had learnt that, beyond the fields back­ing on to the back of the last row of terraced houses, there lived others that could only be told about in song. And, that day of all days, there was no possible way that such a song could be mus­tered by his aging, dried-out lips. It was all gone from him, with the war. And, gradually, ineluctably, the rest of his body crept away from his head, disgusted by the foulness that brooded inside the skull. And the head of D. F. Lewis rolled into the moonstream with a glittering splash.

         

“The bookworm closed the book with a final splintering of its back­bone. He could now go to bed; he had been insufficiently awake to tell how tired he was. The plot had held him fast for literally hours since arriving home. He uncoiled his nether-turban of a nappy, ensuring piecemeal that his day’s doings were all present and correct. He scratched at the new stubble on his chin. He, too, was about to sprout a false beard upon what no longer felt to be his own face. As he collapsed into the confines of his cot, he managed to plug a dummy into his mouth to stopper the screams.”

         


Posted by wordonymous at 1:50 PM EST
Updated: Saturday, 22 December 2007 1:51 PM EST
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Tuesday, 4 December 2007
Nobody

Laziness is just another word for dying - some of us doing it more quickly than others. Ambition walks hand in hand with birth and death like a near mindless toddler being escorted by its parents. Suicide is being fostered out to oblivion. Happiness is simply grief disguised. Such sayings mean nothing. Nothing means something called death. Most of us are too lazy or too scared to care. Fear grows from a sub-conscious that even pre-dates birth itself; a sub-conscious we all share, whether we're ever alive or not. Again, at the end of the day, who cares? Nobody.

(Published 'Purple Patch' 1992)


Posted by wordonymous at 4:19 PM EST
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Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Hard-Ons
HARD-ONS

Dear Agnes, I am writing to thank you for a wonderful weekend. Even when we broke down, we had such a good laugh, didn't we, finding out that it was because we'd run out of petrol. But the torrential rain was the icing on the cake! Not that it was particularly cold, but we could have done with some tucker to stoke us up.

The AA was so understanding. What a nice man! It's not often one ends up calling such people by their first names, is it?

Anyway, the hotel was a real hoot, too, wasn't it? Fawlty Towers wasn't in it! Wouldn't have been so bad if the manager had been as funny as John Cleese. What a creepy fellah! He liked us even less than we liked him, didn't he? Said there weren't any reservations in our names. Until we tried to tell him that names didn't matter, only bodies. There was almost a ghost of a smile on his face. In any event how could we have made any reservations, this being an emergency stop-over? He had no answer to that, did he?

The box room at the top of the hotel wasn't too bad, was it? Not exactly the Royal Suite, but serviceable enough. Good job we still had the AA man to lug the bags up there for us - what with the surly bellboy trying to avoid us at all costs and his bosom pal the manager trying to make us feel as if we were in a foreign country.

Anyway, Agnes, if it weren't for you, I'd've'd a lousy weekend, listening to the relentless drumming on the roof. Pity the AA man couldn't have stayed. But his bleeper did keep going off, didn't it, and they do say three's a crowd, don't they?

Here's to the next time, Affectionately, Ample.

P.S. That midget manager looked disappointed when we didn't complain at the end of our stay, didn't he? Good job we didn't give him that pleasure. I very nearly made a scarcastic comment about his bellboy, but think I got away with it. They all spoke another language, anyway. Didn't sound like Welsh, though, did it?

#

Dear Ample,
Thanks for your letter which I received recently.
I'll come clean right at the start - I've unfortunately misplaced your letter, and answering it by means of memory is not exactly the most ideal situation for a conscientious correspondent like me. Anyway, discretion to the wind, here goes.

I was sorry to hear that your trouble flared up again. You shouldn't really keep doing it, if the pain's so bad. If I were you, I'd insist on it. It'd be worse on the inside than on the out, I'll be bound. Still, I wouldn't know, would I? Life has not been much of an experience for me like it has been for you, Ample, has it? - by a long chalk! Be sure to give your latest my love, won't you?

Glad to learn that the twins have settled their differences.

Oh, yes, before I forget, Ample, do not take any cheek from that landlord of yours. All the rights are with tenants these days. And if his harrassment persists, just stick to your guns - he'll soon get the message. By the way, is he the chap I once met? You introduced him as your own personal Rackman - so I assume it was your landlord. A man with the narrowest gap between the eyes I've ever seen in my life. No wonder he looks so shifty.

I've very little news of my own or, rather, if I have, it's so insignificant, it's gone clean out of my mind. (Leaving only dirty thoughts!? Whoops! Godd job you know me.) We'll have to go on holiday together one day. Just the two of us. Then you can teach me a thing or three about life, eh?

Much love, Agnes.

#

Dear Agnes,
What no P.S.? That's the first time you've written to me without a P.S. Did you forget?

Let me say straightaway that I was somewhat nonplussed by your letter. Sometimes I think you must be going doo-lally. I know you had misplaced my letter but... What twins? Which trouble that has flared up again? Indeed, I should ask who the devil is my "latest" but I won't! What's more, I am an owner-occupier and have no landlord - and I could ask who you are. I know we went to college together and struck up a passing acquaintanceship. But is that any excuse for us to spend the rest of eternity being bosom pen friends?

Well, having got that little lot off my chest, how are you, dear? Well, I trust. There's not much news to report. I had a bit of a set to with Clive (that man with "the narrowest eyes in the world" as you so pointedly put it). We almost resorted to fisticuffs. Something to do with rent boys, or something. I didn't really understand (nor want to!). Clive kicked away my crutch and I came tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down... Then it was all forgotten after we came to some sort of arrangement. It wasn't entirely satisfactory either of us - more of a consensus than a full-blooded agreement. I expect you can imagine it. On the other hand, my dear Agnes, perhaps you can't. You really ought to get around more - do you a power of good.

Thinking about it, Clive's children happen to be twins! But how could you possibly have known that?

Any way, must sign off. My eyes are aching. Age I suppose. Pity life's only a leasehold.

Take care, love, Ample.

PS: I nearly forgot - do put this letter in a safer place this time. It's not for just any old eyes. And haven't we just been on holiday together?

#

Dear Ample,
I thought I would write to you before you had the chance to write to me. Non-sequiturs in our correspondence seem to contagious, to say the least. Anyway, it was not me who needed thanking when your spare tyre turned out to be nearly as bad as the one it was taken out to replace.

That nice AA man had a lot still to do when he eventually arrived. I hadn't done the nuts up tight enough, he said. And he certainly got plenty of turn with his large spanner, didn't he? The tyre itself was a bit off, he said, but should get us home.

I was amazed at the way he had such healing hands.

So it's him you need to thank, not me. I was only too pleased to help jack up the car, but it was indeed awful when the ratchet broke and I had to wedge one of my high heels underneath.

The scars and welts in the tread, I agree, were the strangest thing. Why did you have such a dicey wheel in your boot, flayed like slave-lover's flesh - if I can admit to the crazy way I thought about it at the time?

It didn't seem to roll true, either - made too much play on the steering. The AA man warned you about that, but it did indeed take me by surprise when you tried to drive back down the M25 in the wrong direction. Still, you got me home and I trust you did, too, afterwards.

I'm just writing this quickly, because there's something nagging at the back of my mind to relay. Incidentally, rubber burns easily come off, thank goodness. So, please don't think anything of it,

Yours fondly, Agnes.

PS. I hope the reverse gear is now working OK.

#

Dear Agnes,
Despite your wishes, I must thank you for your efforts with the wheel change. The AA man was no more than the cherry on the cake. By the way, I had a "home start" a few days later, and it was the same AA man. Something to do with the boot, he said, but he was pleased to see I'd had a complete tyre change all round, including a new spare.

I must admit I didn't know I had such a heavy load in the boot, but it was straining the suspenders, he said, and making the wheel alignment a little dodgy. I was in fact coming to see you, but with all the turmoil, I decided not to go out at all, after he put it to rights. His name, you know, is Clive Williams and he's coming to give me another push start or something next week, which I probably will need, since the engine's not what it was. I've not been under the bonnet to check it for yonks. I think I might try to sell the thing.

You don't want a run-about, by any chance, do you? Only one affectionate owner!

Must go now, see you on the 5th, if I can make it.

Sweet regards, Ample.

PS. Clive says he'll give you a jolly old homestart, if you need one. Any time.

PPS. Off to my new home, this weekend. Can't say I'm sorry.

#

Dear Ample,
When I heard the revving noise outside this morning, I was convinced it was you. But it was extremely early for a Sunday, almost Saturday night. I hoped it was you as you left no forwarding address. It did not sound exactly like a car's engine. More a tractor or juggernaut. It had gone by the time I went to the curtains to see. There was a stain on the road by daybreak, a patch of oil, no doubt, or something. Then it started to rain heavily and I decided not to go out for a walk.

Why not write to Ample, I thought. I'm bound to discover your address, if I wait long enough. But there's not much here to say. Clive of the AA came round yesterday morning, as promised. I didn't have a membership card, so he said he couldn't by rights give me a home start like he did with you. He said I had a good friend in you, but there wasn't much that could be done about the trouble with your sump.

It's next day now. I had to halt writing yesterday, because of a sudden doubt as to why I was writing at all, not having your new address.

The AA are pretty good, aren't they? Clive had a pick-up truck with him parked outside my house the day before yesterday and a broken-down vehicle and its driver, but Clive still had time to make a detour for my home start. Now, he's here again and will be off soon to deliver this letter to you at your new home, when he's finished mending the washing-machine. It got clogged up with oil, he said.

Funny that Bill knew your new address before I did. Must rush.

Love, Agnes

#

Dear Agnes,
It was good to hear from you via Clive.

He's taking me to the seaside today (Southend, I think) in an AA van convoy. That'll be nice. Southend rings a bell. Have we been there together? I've always liked Welsh men.

It's a nice place this new home, but strangely tatty. The man in charge is on crutches. Never washes. I do miss my independence. What's more, I can't bear such black hands touching the food - specially with all those cuts. Still, I've got the trip to Southend to look forward to. He says I can go on the dodgems. Long as I don't have any head-on's.

Yours forever, Ample.

PS. Remember mum's the word about my RAC membership and our other little secret, of course. I sometimes think that secrets are secret from each other, deep down - playing spies and decoys and so forth with each other. Even our letters can't keep up with them, let alone real life. Thank God for postscripts.


(Published ‘End of the Millennium’ 1998)

Posted by wordonymous at 7:54 AM EST
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Monday, 12 November 2007
Painting With Water


First published 'Noir Stories' 1993


The pendulum of darkness swung from side to side.

My eyes could hardly take in the extremes of the cinemascopic night, as blinding rain drove itself into my face. The streaks of street lighting oscillated with the pulsing of the deep gloom. I might have found the effects mind-blowing, if it were not for the knowledge that everything stemmed from my swaying walk, the hood of my overcoat extended forwards to ease the stinging torrents. Thus blinkered, I could only follow my eyes in their near drunken rite of passage.

I felt I might be in an old Hollywood film, where some editor had splodged various shades of streaky yellow into the shuttling celluloid monochrome, making the rain appear more like blood than if he had used proper red instead.

There were indeed stock figures in those old films, mysterious threatening hoods roaming empty backstreets, but I did not feel mysterious nor threatening. I realised, however, that those peering out of ill-curtained windows would think otherwise about me. Perhaps all villains were innocent, merely wending their way between run-of-the-mill assignations (like taking their mother to hospital), never dreaming that their own dark shapes, hunched up against the encroaching storm, were viewed as evil and horrific.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

No doubt this would be the real villain of the piece: a young lady, perhaps, unsuitably dressed for the weather, with chiselled smile and cleavage. She, with her winsome walk, would tempt me to accompany her...

I turned to face out the demon sex eye to eye. It was a policeman with as friendly a smile as ever was seen in Dock Green.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He squinted closer to see my face properly. But I could clearly discern his egg-shaped face below the back helmet. Residues of my swinging gait made him seem like the policeman dummy guffawing imbecilically at the end of Southend Pier, just for the price of an old penny in the slot. His loving family no doubt waited eagerly by the banked-up fire for his shift to end. The beacons of humanity which shone out from his face were a comfort indeed, until...

“Want me to give you a good time, Mister?” he said with a wink.

No Norman Bates I.

It was not me, surely, who slid so easily the tirelessly honed firepoker between the narrowing ribs above his cringing belly, just missing the silver buttons and other more natural obstacles to his heart...by means of a prestidigitation perfected over centuries of dark memory.

It was not me. It was not me.

I waddled down back-doubles of the city, each gloomy landmark individually daubed with its own personal colour, unblending, unblurring. I had even forgotten I was taking my mother to hospital.

I was no longer me, I was convinced: rather something else masquerading as me, with frighteningly clearer, freshly angled shots of everything.

Posted by wordonymous at 9:28 AM EST
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Sunday, 4 November 2007
Joe
JOE

First published 'Agog' 1989

Joe lived someone else's life. Or so he thought.

He convinced himself that he could not really be such on individual, working in an office factory from 9 to 5: surely he was not that boring. Mind you, he religiously followed the channels of the destiny laid out before him, with glances to neither side. Well, until now...

The wife told him that she loved him but how could anyone love a zombie? It didn't stand up to reason.

One day, he decided to wake up as the real person he felt he truly was. He went to sleep, not before bashing his head seven times on the pillow (a trick that worked better than an alarm clock set for seven in the morning). However, that was the last routine he carried out as the old self.

Waking up had always been a struggle into renewed existence via the bleary regions of brainache, but that particular morning, it was somewhat different. Everything seemed fresh, effervescent, renascent ...

The wife he did not recognize, for she was someone else's. Mind you, she did not recognise him either: and they both made love, as if it were the start of an illicit affair.

Their kisses were searching, their foreplay an extended version of teenage exploration (with the backwash of prurient froth upon the roof of the mouth), ending not with premature ejaculation but in a mutually stunnirrg slowmo orgasm that lasted even beyond the fuel that fed it.

The breakfast she then cooked for both of them was a feast fit for a banquet: jacket potatoes that had been gently simmering in the oven from the evening before, generously knobbed off with butter; rare gammon steaks upon a bed of under-coddled eggs; toasted doorstops smarmed with a marmalade so thickly cut it was tantamount to a whole-orange bob game at the fair; and finally, a breakfast birthday cake where the candle flames seemed to burn upon the seeping fuel of the cake mixture itself, layered jumbo currants, molasses, long- and shortbread and oodles of rum...

He did not understand why there were so many candles on the cake. Surely this was the first day of his life. A ready-born . . . Not tarnished by emerging through the channels of a woman's body ...

But there was something very diminishing about not being able to blow out one's own birthday candles.

He got up and went to work . . . but found his desk occupied by someone called Joe, plugging away at routine tasks, the simplest of which would be beyond him, anyway. He then lost himself in the city, where he would never ever find himself again.

His wife did not even bother to look for him, either, because she did not know he was lost. And never again did she rustle up bumper reward breakfasts for Joe...

Posted by wordonymous at 8:50 AM EDT
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