Elizabeth O'Hara

Retirement

2011-10-24T16:20:00.010+01:00

An English village on an army pension.

The Colonel found himself on the village green, at the far end by the duck pond. He had let his feet drag him where they would, but they had instinctively avoided the playground by the road - his body had an intrinsic memory of jeering he didn’t understand from tiny people with a hatred far bigger than themselves.

He sat down on Jean’s bench. He had no idea who Jean was beyond the dates of her existence and the assertion that she loved this place, as the brass plaque on the crossbeam proclaimed. In slightly younger days, he had wondered about Jean and imagined that had their lives overlapped, they might have been happy. He didn’t love this place, but he liked it and for happiness like that was willing to pretend. But Jean had made her exit in 1986. He wasn’t sure when he had come to the village (although he couldn’t remember being elsewhere) and had long since abandoned the notion of trying to remember 1986. There was far too much to do.

He was eventually flanked by his companions. The Alderman wore a tweed jacket over his robes of office, his head seeming so small as it emerged, a prematurely bald pate fronted by his youthful face. The Vicar too was bald but was shorter and ruddier, his dog collar tight around his fat neck.

“Nothing yet,” reported the Colonel. They had known each other too long to bother with greetings.

“Are you doing all you can?” asked the Alderman, his face remaining smooth yet belying his age with his seriousness.

“I think so. It‘s difficult sometimes.”

“Aye,” nodded the Vicar, thread veins burnishing. “Aye, there’s the rub all right. But what if it were easier? What then?”

The Colonel allowed his gaze to be filled with ducks, and affected catatonia. What indeed? It was an old catechismic game, one often played between them these last few years. But he had yet to find an answer to satisfy either them or himself. If he were honest, he wasn’t entirely sure what it was they wanted of him.

The Alderman offered him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’ll get there, you know. You’re closer than ever. Closer than you know.”

“But…”

“Trust us. Go to the Post Office - collect your pension. Go to the chemist - collect your prescription. This can all be discussed later.”

“Later?” But it was just him and the ducks. And their inscrutable, miniature minds were engaged with other matters.

-------

“Think of it like this,” remarked the Vicar. It was one of the rare times that he came alone - a situation that always made the Colonel a little suspicious. The Alderman was clearly the brains of the operation. “I don’t have any sort of skull to speak of. That’s why I have this dog collar.” He gestured at the band of white cutting into his fat throat. “It sustains my facio-cranial erection and allows me to get on in the world. Without it…” He fiddled with a clasp and removed the collar. His skulless scalp sagged like an octopus removed from water. Thick folds of skin enveloped his eyes, mouth and eventually his bulbous red-webbed nose. He continued to talk as his head deflated, but the words were lost in the muffling skinfolds.

“I see,” said the Colonel, a little confused. Then, with the abruptness of all such revelations, he really did see and let out an amorphous honk of a laugh. He was still laughing several hours after the Vicar had left and the night had reduced the surrounding Green to monochrome. Later still, some people had found him exhausted from laughing, and called others who had taken him to the hospital. He tried to explain that it was funny, so funny and so true, but no one had listened. They thought him ill. Is laughter a symptom then? Maybe only for people like him, people considered to be bereft of anything at which to laugh.

So he stayed at the hospital for a few weeks. They gave him bright pills in a small paper cone and he received no visitors. Eventually he was allowed to leave, prescriptions, leaflets and outpatients appointment cards clutched in his unsteady hands. The Post Office, the chemist, home and then back to the Green.

The Colonel shook on the bench, his body wracked with dyskinesia. The ducks were not so vivid now, just little physical shapes, hollow like Easter chocolates. He let his eyes rest on them anyway. How had they changed in absence, he wondered, what had they lost? He let it go. He could focus now, but not think. There was a name there - Jean, perhaps - and something frightfully important, something he had to do. But there were no details. Just the intensely silver glint of mirrors in the darkness. There had to be light somewhere, but where was it coming from? He couldn’t say. But he could stare with his mind’s eye. Stare and shake. What was it he was supposed to be doing?

“We’ve lost him.” said the Vicar, shaking his head sadly.

“I’m afraid you’re right.” replied the Alderman. “Time to move on, I think.”

“But what about…?”

“Our chances of success were always slim. We’ll have better luck elsewhere.”

“But look at him. We can’t leave him like this.”

The Alderman fixed his companion with a stern gaze. “The task is not an easy one and nor is the calling. We’ve all tried, him especially, but we must cut our losses and move on.”

The Vicar sighed, the vibration causing his scalp to ripple slightly. “You’re right, of course. It doesn’t make it any easier though. Shall we?” And they were gone.

The Colonel shook on the bench for a long time. Then he stopped shaking and was found the next morning, more still than he had ever been.

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Addendum 12 Dec 2011: Duran Gökemre has written a rather awesome and beautiful piece about this story over on Duran Reviews...
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Existence Status: Ongoing

2011-09-14T20:14:00.007+01:00

If anyone is still reading this thing after my gaping chasm of a hiatus, I salute you; it was a heady combination of busyness, illness, laziness and working on other stuff. Yes, I've pulled that old chestnut out of the fire.

I'll try to be a little less negligent in future. In the meantime, here's a cut-up poem I made from last Saturday's Guardian Review.

(click for a readable degree of bigness)

Extended Moorcock Interview

2011-02-15T12:25:00.011Z

If you dug Hari Kunzru's piece in the Guardian Review a few weeks ago about Michael Moorcock and interesting science fiction in general, you might want to have a look at the transcript of the full interview that he has rather nicely put up on his website.

The Constellation Homaridus

2011-01-31T22:24:00.005Z

An alternative interpretation of Ursa Minor, for those that are sick of bears (and sound sleep).

Night Flights of the Coir Scarabs

2011-01-19T00:31:00.002Z

As evening falls, the coconuts begin to wake up. Cracks form along their hairy carapaces. Elytra snap open and forward, revealing gossamer wings. They take flight, unfurling milk-white mouthparts which drip opaque gata and ichor over the world below. They bombinate about the night city with their unfeasible bulk hanging in the air until dawn troubles the sky. Then they return once again to their daytime roosts, to sleep suspended amid the feathery crowns of palms.

A Sketch by Raphael on Late-Night TV

2011-01-11T23:51:00.001Z

Christ, Our Lady and their Pet Cat, all in crystalline-abstract form. Jesus clings on to the struggling cat and Mary clings to Jesus, and all three categories of Renaissance flesh - holy, human and animal - merge into pure geometry smoked with obscure folds, representations of cloth.

We feel as though we could step through the linear plane; to stroke the baby and the cat, and shake the woman by the hand. But they are not real people (or cats), any more than the impossible columns of the stylised marmoreal temple surrounding them are real structures. Symbolic qualities overshadow the mundane meanings of depicted objects. And if some naturally-occurring things can be interpreted as having symbolic importance then all of them can, with sufficient prodding and conviction.

Swan Song

2011-01-06T18:36:00.001Z

Most bands would benefit from the addition of an angry swan to their line-up; they can produce riffs capable of breaking a man's arm.

Memories of a Youthful Impalement

2010-12-30T11:20:00.007Z

A curious sensation. Not pain as such. More shock, certainly at seeing an arc of serrated metal emerging from the front of one's own torso. Then a kind of giddy warmth. I think I might have laughed out loud, bringing my hands to the wound then spreading them before my eyes, watching ropes of thick blood festoon between my outstretched fingers, crimson-black and beginning to coagulate.

I looked up over my shoulder, still giggling, to see the man who had impaled me. He was still gripping the hilt tightly, still connected to his weapon and my wound. I remember the whiteness of his knuckles and the whiteness of the skin stretched taut over high cheekbones. His eyes were wider than any I have seen, before or since. Wider even than her's the first time I penetrated her. Wide with absolute surprise and the complete defiance of expectation. This, of course, made me laugh even harder.

I suppose I must have lost consciousness then, because my next memories are of a high, white ceiling, a clipped doctor's voice telling me how I was stupid and lucky in equal measure, and a dull ache in my trunk that was never to truly dissipate throughout the remainder of my life.

Soundproof Booths

2010-12-06T18:51:00.004Z

How were the working conditions in these booths?
Awful; they were full of earwigs and half of them used to break wind for fun. And they'd be laughing and you'd be dead.

Bettering the Circuit

2010-11-04T19:48:00.000Z

No more exaggerated protozoa clotting the pit lanes. No more sea of umbrellas drowning out the crowds. No more errant paper globes floating over whole affair and blocking the aerial view. Just a bevvy of young Asian women in hot-pants and crop-tops, and the Pacific Ocean glinting on the distant horizon under an impossibly blue sky.

Darkness: A Hallowe'en Trifle

2010-10-31T08:51:00.001Z

The night was thick with owlspeak. Darkness the texture of molasses dripped from bare branches. Black winds hissed through tortured thorn and toads draped themselves voluptuously over the black mudbanks like crone-scrawny concubines swaddled in greasy brown paper. The oily obsidian of the lake's surface stretched on to the rougher vertical monolith of the sheer cliff face, a straggle of coarse fringing its silhouette; a more solid slab of darkness against the darkness of the sky. A flock of egrets flashed white as lightning, migrating away and not looking back, not one. Oppressive images and archetypes of Philomel dominated her thinking. Nothing much happened and yet her barely-contained panic was total.

She was awoken by a strangulated yelp, and lay stock-still and listening but there was just the sloppy-drunk slur of a Levantine conversation below and the distant traffic growling like a lonely animal in anguish. A thrust of courage and she opened her eyes to her bedroom, it's contents bathed in sickly orange by the streetlight outside. The familiar London knot of people and the objects they made, and no such thing as darkness. Realisation dawned, abating and concentrating her terror, that the yelp must have come from the front of her own face. A nightmare then, albeit a particularly vivid one. And a stupid one too, based upon nothing more than a threatening atmosphere.

She sighed and decided she needed a glass of water. She swung her legs off the bed and planted her bare feet in the peaty mud. Unknown things - segmented, bloated and bristling with legs - crawled between her toes. The snuffling of nightanimals came from under the furniture. There was darkness here, a sodium darkness selective in what it revealed.

This time she was unable to stifle her scream for long. This time it did not wake her up.

Ape of Spares

2010-10-26T08:52:00.008+01:00

One of his contacts in South East Asia had sent back an orangutan with a deformity of the jawbone which was, by sheer coincidence, an exact replica of his own. A few fillings and a porcelain crown completed the effect. He allowed it to lodge in one of his outbuildings, just in case it ever came in handy in faking his own death – an everpresent possibility to a legitimate businessman such as himself.

However, he insisted that it be fitted with a woollen balaclava to shield its face from view at all times; the sight of his own face – hairy, ginger-fringed and topped with a sloping brow above simian eyes – gave his fragile ego a case of the willies.

Responses to a Financial Survey

2010-10-25T21:00:00.016+01:00

(i) Name:

My friends call me the Baron of Beef. You can call me Sir. I don't actually have any friends

(ii) Date of Birth:

A sunny Sunday back in the good old days, before we got bogged down in the mire of referring to dates by newfangled numbers.

(iii) Address:

You think I don't know that you shadowy bastards have it all on file? No doubt you'll send round a reply anyway, be it in the form of a letter, a phone call, a suspicious neighbourhood dog or a pudgy baby staring at me from its buggy. Any such response will be all the proof I need.

(iv) What is your income?

I have been known to ejaculate great sprawling arcs of ink, although I'll admit it has usually been infused with bile. But I do not write often; to mix my Bible stories and thus concentrate their power, it would be like spilling Onan's pearly seed upon rocky ground from which sprout the deaf ears and trampling hooves of Gaderene swine.

(v) Do you have any savings?

I saved time and money by marrying a woman who was already mostly dead inside, halving how long I would have to wait to become a widower.

(vi) What are your plans for retirement?

I want to end up as an elderly man living on my railwayman pension in the late 1950s, my half century of service granting me a generous remuneration and a right to scowl misanthropically at the world revolving around me. I want to drink self-spiked lemonade shirtless on a porch somewhere in American suburbia; a handkerchief draped over my hairless pate as I sweat, swat and flail at imaginary flying elves and impart dubious advice upon my disappointing sons and the neighbourhood at large. It is, of course, my own species of wisdom: partially comprised of wilful ignorance, partially steps in an ongoing plot to baffle and destroy, and usually made up entirely on the fly.

I make claims to be descended from Russian tsars, from Zen monks, from the Old Gods who dwell in the dark places of the Earth, from semi-sentient jackdaws and from Welshmen. That my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, they built the Mayflower, and in some inexplicable existential way, were the Mayflower. That my great-grandmother danced for Napoleon and my great-grandfather danced within a hollow pocket in his belly. That I have accepted the brine shrimp as my personal saviour and that the planet we share is comprised largely of bloodclots and dust. That the way to get ahead at work is to slip plastic army men, biscuits and other little tokens of esteem into bosses' pockets. That washing leads to infertility and that milk is comprised of the liquidised flesh of unpigmented cave-molluscs.

I want to be a belligerent scourge upon all I encounter, bellowing and vivid and clinging tight to life and the inheritance of my unfortunate children.

(vii) Can we contact you with information about financial services provided by ourselves and other related companies?

You can try, but I wouldn't recommend it. I keep guns in the house, as well as several less gentlemanly weapons about my person.

Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey.

Thank you for taking the time to reinforce my misanthropy and for leaving me white-knuckled, quivering and painfully erect in the throes of my insatiate rage.

La Muté Vague

2010-10-20T19:45:00.005+01:00

.

An example of the mutated wave movement in French cinema.

Clop

2010-09-06T17:09:00.003+01:00

Clop - my story of field anthropology gone wonky - appears in Madness of the Mind, a new horror anthology from Static Movement Press. It's available from Amazon in the UK here and in the US here.

Headfuck

2010-08-02T21:31:00.007+01:00

Miriam paced like a roof-trapped cat. Nervously downing wine, pacing, refilling the glass and pacing anew. The carpets along the route she took through her genteel flat were encrusted with garnet splatters, testament her clumsy nerves. Ms Riyal would be arriving soon, toting her holdall of wondrous, instant-access physicality. A golconda boxful of orgasms. Sensation stripped back from sex, purified and rarefied and, when not in use, tastefully stowed amid crushed velvet in a fitted morocco case.

Riyal arrived amid flourishes of theatrically quiet dignity, content to allow her charms and talismans and bright robes to convey an impression of exotic wisdom and general juju proficiency. She spoke in mystical tones of her latest acquisition, a triumph of libidinous engineering. No moving mechanical parts, no friction, no decline in sensation. Continuous orgasm for as long as you require, or for as long as you can stand it; a vaginal challenge, clitoral fighting talk. Endorphins predicted to burst like firecracker blossoms throughout the user's mental skyscape. A deep vulvic flex and Miriam's damp fingers were reaching for her purse.

Riyal was shown out and further Dutch courage imbibed before Miriam set about her new purchase. A clumsy insertion of the shiny bullet, a deep intake of breath and a flick of the binary switch yielded no immediate sensation and frustrated expectation made her impatient. She moved the control rapidly from one position to the other. Nothing. Shit. She petulantly hurled the control box at the wall, upon contact with which its metallic shell shattered and released a fine yellow dust. Sulphur yellow, but sweet smelling. The room was a field flooded with lime. Something could then be felt deep within: a sudden expansion, an audible click, and then a sherbet fizzing at her core. The casing had split like a capsule and released more yellow powder inside.

The yellow phalanxes without and within thrust to meet each other; on becoming overrun, her self became lost. The device worked.

Orgasms prickled the entire surface of her skin. Muscles contracted like vulvae and sweet musk exuded from every pore. Genital belle tyrannie had been overthrown, although that part of her too throbbed in conventional bliss; it was always to have been a kind and bloodless coup. Peristaltic motion thrust a firm bolus ever deeper into eager flesh and ripples of contraction snaked on along the entire length of her digestive tract, gripping tightly from oesophagus to colon on the ghost of a penis delivering impossible sensations.

Her nipples were distended buds threatening to effloresce at any moment. Her uterus moaned. Her bladder trembled, taut. Her kidneys strained to rub against each other like rubber-bound fetishists, enjoying their moist frustration more than any success. Every alveoli was a penis fucking the damp heat of the air in her lungs, every endometrial fold a vagina being fucked by tides of her own internal fluids. Arteries and veins flexed their thick valves in hydraulic ecstasy. Bones were caressed by connective tissue and passed on the favour to their inner marrow - an anatomical daisy chain. Her liver masturbated like a bloated couch-bound Caesar voyeuristically enjoying the enthusiastic felching of blood between atrium and ventricle. Fingers of vertebrae performed a vigorous-tender hand job on the shaft of her spinal cord, which ejaculated a thick stream of opaline semen directly into her brain, impregnating the great cerebral ovum at the centre where the two walnut halves are bridged. It was in this manner that her skull bulged and expanded with neon algal blooms, her body shrank and boiled dry on the heat of pleasure, and the light of the sun traversed the living room wall; time eventually spilled into the next night.

Ms Riyal let herself in with the key she had earlier pilfered. A moan emerged from the swollen head of the withered creature twitching on the living room floor. She retrieved a small object resembling a glittering oyster hammer from her capacious pockets; one tap and the head split in two like an overripe peach. The atrophied body, jutting out like a dead stem, shuddered its last. The crystalline ropes of mucus festooned between the two headhalves were cut through by a clumsy armthrust from within, one controlled by a mind and muscles new to motion, but of the strong and evident desire to escape from its softshell shroud. Presently freed, its clear vowels electrified the room. With careful efficiency, Riyal scooped up the infant from the remains of crumpled skullshell, rewrapped it in a few layers of her many garments, and carried it off into the night.

The mess left on the living room floor required no further consideration. Leaving the front door ajar had always proved sufficient in the past. To nightanimals, meat is meat.

Advice

2010-06-13T22:13:00.004+01:00

A homeless guy, grimy jumper pulled up to his eyebrows as he blindly tries to punch a panicking pigeon out of the air. Both flail. After the bird has made its escape, the man unsheathes his face and remarks to the no one in particular and/or the world in general, "You shouldn't look at them; you might inhale their flightpath and get a disease."

Meeting of the Night Council

2010-06-09T22:25:00.006+01:00

Committees meet in every town, city, village and hamlet in the land. A seemingly spontaneous gathering of inebriated individuals at local hostelries, but in fact the hands that hold the power, meting out orders and shaping the world.

It is a constitutional requirement that a bearded Scot should make up one of their number, a big-faced and bare-chested pallid Heracles. A photograph of a Scandinavian anthropologist in negative, reeking and shrieking in Caledonian tongues, only a fraction of which can be understood.

A taciturn slab of a man should be employed as secretary. A shorn head overlooking the parapets of neckfolds emerging from a polyester advertisement smock, his scalp scarred and battered like the nosecone of a space shuttle. He observes all through dead eyes.

There must also be a wiry Yorkshire Terrier of a man, with sparse moustache approaching the Mandarin and a over-amplified ability to interpret any remark as fighting talk.

The rest of the group is comprised of more bloated individuals. A pentacle of bulbous red noses, some already starting to bifurcate. They are essentially interchangeable men, speaking in transposable glottal stops of accent.

Warm pints and foam-marbled empties surround them. Pouches of Drum and Golden Vag emblazoned with pan-European health warnings lie about the table like fat, glossy pupae. The Blackberries of these statesmen of the night. It is amongst such scenes that the committee sit and exchange increasingly unusual noises until the last bell rings and a decision is made.

The next day, of course, they must wake up, be it on a sofa still damp with urine, a cold street corner or next to a forgiving spouse. But in every case, they are transformed back into small and ordinary men. It is only in orange-lit dimness of the waning afternoon that a meeting of the Night Council will be again called to order.

The Turtle Problem

2010-06-02T23:05:00.004+01:00

"For many decades now, vast swathes of the world have been filling up with turtles. It seems high time someone brought about their more even distribution."

The front seat of his Datsun Sunny was scattered with maps overlaid with quadrille grids of various gauges; a closer inspection would reveal that at each point of intersection was drawn a tiny circle fringed with six smaller protruberances. Resolute in his task, he loaded the last of several shuffleboard tangs onto his roof-rack and set his mouth in a grim line.

Domestication of the Mind Mammal

2010-06-01T21:11:00.001+01:00

My mental faculties have become sleek and slippery as an otter. An adorable furry face drawstring-puckered over a head crammed with teeth both capable and willing to rip through any crayfish shell they encounter. Likewise my own mammalian sinew and bone.

Thoughts are less individual events and more a complex mat of electric shimmer. Any attempts to isolate a notion are roughly thwarted by their own fractals. Branches intermingle. Snakes feast upon their tails. Mouth sutured to anus like the Human Centipede, matter exchanged until no one is sure of the traditional direction of flow, least of all me. It soon becomes impossible to pin anything down.

I seem to have lost the ability to prise open my eyelids, even with the help of my increasingly slippery digits. Perhaps this is for the best; it means I am spared the confirmation of my suspicions that they have atrophied to milky raisins. But this is just the remnants of obsolete squeamishness; I no longer have any need for those inefficient external orbs, wasting their rods and cones on peripheral nonsense. All the nonsense that is important is, can and should be internalised. And all that is vital is in there already, glossily arching through bright mental waters like an electrified Lutra.

Then I am dragged into the poverty of the world by the shrieking impertinence of an alarm and am expected to care about the cleanliness of my toilet, my hair and the dishes in the sink. About other people's money and education. Fetid nutsacks to that. It takes the imbibition of tea and, if available, sympathy to shake me from my Cartesian solipsism and remind me that my world teams with wonders internal and external. Mice in gingham smocks and ducks in velvet smoking jackets. Posh olives. Certain extraordinary people who inexplicably dig me, who illuminate my reality with pyrotechnic glorybursts and who hopefully know exactly who they are and just how much they are appreciated. Writers' words crafted into jade netsuke sentences that send me into mindshivers at their lustre. Monstrous cartoon moons and the wind through twisted trees. Bubble Bobble: "Now it is the beginning of a fantastic journey!! Lets make a journey to the cave of monsters good luck." The Inner Self playing superheroes in the park. The myriad expressions to be found on the faces of dogs. Moogles.

Every morning, the mind mammal is thus appeased.

Sibling Rivalry

2010-05-16T23:11:00.000+01:00

Hypnagogic Night Noises

2010-05-09T20:47:00.003+01:00

She lay in bed. Body loosely shrimp-curled, head wedged tight in the pillow's dint and that sound encompassing the enclosed ear. The sound was familiar, but tonight its origins had become troubling. Bed bugs? Her body jerked out of sleepiness at the prospect, even as the idea was dismissed. After all, in many years of sleeping in this bed, with these pillows and linens, she had yet to awake to skin studded with reddened bites. Despite her confidence that this was still the case, she reached for the light cord in order to make certain. And, despite her confidence, she was greatly relieved when the flickering lamp proved there were none present.

Dustmites, then? A quick inspection of the lumpy orange-streaked mass within the pillowcase gleaned nothing. A careful tug at the straining seam revealed the foam interior to be oranger still, although there were still no signs of anything crawling. Not that that proved anything, of course; for all she knew, they could be microscopic. She shuddered at memories of childhood headlice; creatures with which she had no idea she was infested until one day a translucent thing big as a woodlouse plummeted down the back of her shirt, disturbing her far more than any spider-down-the-collar situation ever had. It alarmed her that an animal could be so substantial as to be felt as it tumbled around the small of her back, trapped by the tucked-in blouse, and yet so small and flat and unpalpable as to escape notice in negotiating her forest of follicles like dead leaves in a dry autumn. There seemed to be no intermediate - they were generally tiny enough to remain undetected and occasionally enormous enough to send her into bodyshocks of revulsion, but never of a size to be calmly discovered and then dealt with.

Fleas, of course, were smaller still, yet very different beasts; smooth, glossy and almost spherical as they glint from the velvety ear of a cat or roll over the baguette-like nose of a resting dog. They are renowned for the height of their jump, but she appreciated them far more for their proportionately-tiny faces and for the fact that she was confident they did not inhabit her pillow (a fact once again proven by a lack of bites.)

But if there were dustmites too tiny to be seen, then surely their sounds would be equally imperceptible? She thought on.

Someone - a grandma or aunt, perhaps - had once told her that it was the sound of the sea, just like in a seashell. But it was like no sea she had ever heard. More like furious rain or hale or Blitz-time shrapnel clattering over what tiles clung to broken roofs. Maybe that was why Nazi scientists designed the Hermann's shrapnel to give such an effect; to remind people of that primal sound of childhood fear and strike them down with a fear still deeper. But this didn't help her with her current question; there was one thing she knew was not in her pillow and that was a German WWII bomb.

Someone else - a mother or father, perhaps - had told her it was the sound of mushrooms growing, but that was just a thinly-veiled attempt to get her grungily teenage person to wash her bedclothes and self more regularly and so could be reasonably ignored. But what could it be?

She continued to consider the problem until sleep finally enveloped her, despite the light still being on. It was then that the hissing white noise emerging from the pillow rearranged itself into a hoarse yet unctuous whisper. "Something in your pillow is sentient," it intoned directly into her sleeping brain. "Something in your pillow talks to you every night and, as long as it does so, your evenings will be plagued with questions and problems and nothing can ever be good."

And as inexplicable, disembodied and terrifying voices usually are, it was absolutely right.

Jam

2010-05-04T21:00:00.004+01:00

Offices are generally places riddled with unpleasantness and horror. You can read my cathartic little yarn on the subject here, in issue 5 of 69 Flavors of Paranoia

Heston Blumenthal’s Gothic Feast

2010-04-28T04:54:00.010+01:00

A monstrous meal is to be prepared; a meal to horrify the diners, yet one which they can still be cajoled into eating.

The first course is a blood risotto. Allow the diners to suspiciously taste it, then announce that much of the curious colour and flavour is achieved through the copious addition of beetroot juice. Then, when the course has been fully consumed and enjoyed with lipsmacking relish by all, make a second announcement in order to reveal that the other progenitor of those same colours and flavours is a smaller yet not insubstantial quantity of actual blood (semi-clotted and that of a goose, to be fully accurate, but this detail can be held in reserve in the case of a diner failing to retch.)

Also, impale a few gastropods on a crucifix and deep-fry the resulting situation. A startling garnish, I'm sure you'll agree.

The main course is a replica of Frankenstein's Monster. The first prototype is a disaster, and an affront to God and Nature. It consists of a decorticated sheep's head sporting a yellow woolly hat and set atop an unlikely arrangement of roughly-butchered bones. Even if the sheep's face were gilded with 24 carat gold leaf as per my original instructions, it seems unlikely to pique the appetites of the vast majority of the dining public. References to the novels of Dennis Wheatley seem acceptable and even appropriate in a dining room themed on the Gothic, whereas the inclusion of those to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems more divisive. Scrap it.

In fact, burn it. Such a monstrosity should never have been unleashed on the world in any case, least of all as the result of cooking, and thus it is our responsibility to destroy the thing, to do so immediately and with fire.

The second attempt involved serving a meal using the partial skeleton of a former man as a form of crockery. Most of the long bones have been split lengthways and, with the aid of toast, a rich marrow pâté can be scooped out of the trays made from humerus and femur. Slow-cooked porkmeat fills out the intercostal gaps, taking the place of the underdone human muscle formerly located there. The vertebrae have been replaced entirely with braised hearts of palm, each filled with a substitute cerebrospinal fluid made from puréed fennel.

The skull requires more consideration of circumstance. If it were that of a sworn adversary of the diners', lopped off by one of their own swords, it would be served quite differently; a rich hummus in the open brainpan, the empty eye sockets maintaining a supply of grissini, and the distances between the teeth being employed in holding crudités. But this is likely the skull of a pauper, with whom none of the diners have experienced direct mortal contact or conflict, and so is viewed with no especial animosity. Therefore the scraps of desiccated thinkmeat clinging to the skull's interior will provide ample seasoning, and there is no need to go overtop with the presentation; a simple stew can be spooned into the brainpan and then the crown replaced to create a rustic dish which never fails to unsettle.

Luckily, none of the diners have attempted to munch down on a bony portion of the once-living platter. The skeleton is laid out there to imbue flavour and not be itself consumed. It is always embarrassing when a guest bites down on a rogue bouquet garni or cardomom pod; more so when the culinary faux pas leads to their inadvertent execution of an abhorrence.

In due course, a dessert composed of a miniature cemetery was served. The faces of the diners are illuminated by eerie orbs of artificial corpse light, frozen into masks of horror as they notice that the toytown graves are engraved with their own names. With an almost primal trepidation, they take up the shovel-shaped utensils provided and begin to dig:

"The dirt is chocolate, guys! And its riddled with gummy worms."

"You've got to lick the bottom of this tombstone."

"My coffin is full of fudge, caramel and praline. And it's all sweets at the bottom, once you battle through the layers."

******

"I've got breasts!", she exclaimed. "There's a torso of breasts in my grave."

"Above your coffin?" He seemed sceptical.

"Yeah, just resting on top of it."

"Sounds like bad juju to me…" He peered tightly at his own grave, not wanting to give her the satisfaction.

"They appear well-formed and made from some sort of dyed gelatine."

He thought for a moment, then allowed himself to be convinced.

"Can I try a bit?" They each tore off a small square of gummy torso and popped it into their mouths. "Argh! It's like cranberry beef jerky. Or a fruit roll-up made from some sort of zombie fruit." He tried to spit it out, but it was already dissolved on his tongue.

"We now share a bond that can never be broken. Together we have partaken of the flesh, the most impure of all fleshes. Thus, biblically, we are now one corrupted flesh that can never be cleansed or torn asunder." She drew herself up to her full height, but that head was supported by no body. The empty gown was dragged along until it caught on the bench before her and was pulled back like a ta-da! veil, revealing the tangle of melting bone and tube emerging from the bloody plinthless base beneath her placid features.

"What…?" He started to demand an explanation, but the sound of bubbling from below captured his attention. The slow emptying of his clothes, accompanied by a deep pain arcing through his entire body, forced him to refocus it onto the act of screaming, his head being propelled backwards through the room by the force the shrieks he expelled.

"One corrupted flesh," she continued, her new entirety bobbing like a wayward helium balloon, and dripping fluids onto the linoleum.

Read my mind's bibble inspired by Heston Blumenthal's Victorian Feast

The Reckless Ovivore

2010-04-15T16:50:00.015+01:00

We have all been told of the perils of swallowing apple pips; namely, that to do so would result in a sapling growing within your digestive system and strangling your guts with its questing roots. But less well known are the inherent dangers of muching down eggs encountered in dense undergrowth or in clots of grass sprouting beneath trees.

They may look tempting, all speckled and tiny like chocolate Mini Eggs, but beware lest they tumble fertilised into an under-acidic belly and you should share this unfortunate fellow's fate.

Gods of the Norsemen

2010-03-17T23:45:00.009Z

And other convoluted metaphors, occasionally scatalogical.

A stream of consciousness, passed like morning wine and often more like morning toffee; tricksy without the little hammer, fearsome weapon of a miniature confectionery Thor. The tiny presence of that proud deity of Norse dainties is sorely missed, as nothing would set off such sugary lexicological bolus more pleasingly than his Fabioesque faerie form sat astride it, his hammer gleaming brass and imparting an undeniable truth to the world that he dresses neither to the left or right or east or west, but unswervingly to the north.

I am hampered in my endeavours by a lack of hale and hearty homunculi small as Borrowers and existing in symbol only, priapic facsimiles of the children of Odin transposed from mythic fjords and onto my own daft mixed metaphors in order to ride them like carousel ponies. Metaphors often uncomfortably solid to me; a troop of superdeformed deities seems just the thing to ease their passing.

Subaqueous Avian Speculation

2010-03-10T00:58:00.005Z

The hypothetical results of several birds taking up permanent residence in the undersea realm:

It is, after all, a complicated situation.

Black Hole Skies

2010-02-10T21:15:00.011Z

We often look up at the night sky and think, "ah, that's nice". But this is to ignore the minefield of dark vortices. Our perception is an inversion, a negative photograph of the truth. It is the tessellation of blackness which exists in vacuo, and those glittering white specks generally referred to as stars are the true voids. They are only gaps in the dome of black mouths through which chinks of light from the outside universe are visible.

And it is a dome, a hungry hemisphere covering only half the world at once - this is why it is not visible during the day, when the lipless rims pulled back over ebony teeth and the obscene grasping of wormy black tongues would be clearly discernable and drive men to shrieking madness. As it is, we do our best to ignore them and even deny their existence; clearly this is preferable to confronting their horrors. A million mouths, hanging above us and anxious to munch us down; to suck us in and subject our bodies to near-infinite stretching, our matter to horrendous spaghettification, and our conscious minds to absolute destruction. Possibly it is better not to dwell too much on the issue.

It is only when we are alone and in a suitably pensive frame of mind that the truth cannot be avoided: it is gravity alone acting upon our infinitesimal size that anchors us to the curvature of the Earth, like ants perched on a spinning globe. And this is all that keeps us from tumbling into those gaping maws. It is at such times that we are confronted with our true status: that of a tiny quivering mammal frozen under the merciless scrutiny of a celestial hawk. Our lives must be lived as though we - specifically - are being hunted, and even at dawn we can never truly forget that it is less than one sidereal day until the dome of black mouths looms above us once again, ravenous for our flesh and utterly without mind.

Piggybanks

2010-01-30T10:45:00.007Z

We have plenty of pounds at home. We keep them in a pig. Not a ceramic facsimile, but actual living mammals of the porcine subtype.

Daddy administers a local anaesthetic - no need to endanger them with a general - and the coins are gently slipped into the subcutaneous layers of fat. He does it so quickly that I doubt they even notice. They're back about their business none the wiser as soon as they're returned to their sty, so it isn't as if it's cruel.

And think of the rich crackling! Roast pork with all the fun of the Christmas pudding hunt-the-sixpence experience.

But that's a long way off. We love our piggybanks and would only dispatch them in a situation of extreme poverty, in which case we would be provided with both food and ready cash to exchange for more. And we are even insured against the event of apocalyptic currency collapse; we would still have access to bogstandard pigmeat and, if things took a severe turn for the worst, to shiny items with which to impress and placate any neighbours who have retrogressed to savagery. Thus their sonorous moneygrunts are doubly comforting.

Bushmeat Fragments

2010-01-25T23:24:00.014Z

A selection of notes on the subject of bushmeat, gleaned from old notebooks.

The older children dextrously extract and set aside the teeth, while the younger ones pluck out the wiry whiskers. The blunted, conical snouts are then boiled for hours to produce a thick stew surprising tasty and free of gristle.

An East London shopkeeper, confronted by an obstreperous investigative journalist and standing over a chest freezer crammed with what are quite obviously skinned-but-unfilleted snake carcases.

......."It is chicken, just chicken. Nothing but chicken in my shop, because I sell chickens. Chickens are what I sell and have always sold. Ask anyone what I sell and they will tell you I sell chickens. I am the man they come to when they wish to buy a chicken. Because in my shop, I sell chickens."

.......He continues in this vein until the journalist emerges blinking from a stupor induced by the intensive shockwave of cognitive dissonance levelled at him. He then gestures incredulously at a thawing specimen still attached to its wedge-shaped head, needle-lined jaws slackly agape.

.......The shopkeeper remains unflappable. "That one is lamb."

A handbag full of unpackaged chimpmeat was later discovered by officers, abandoned outside a nearby shopping mall.

And although these do not technically involve bushmeat, I feel it would be unforgivably remiss of me not to include them:

Even the combined might of all three men failed to bring down the gigantic bird. Only the intervention of their frail grandmother with a shotgun ensured meat would be in the pot that night.

However, it was later discovered that the brothers had drunk ducks' blood together.

Trojan Liar - Part II

2010-01-20T20:59:00.014Z

Marchantile Lugubria drew herself up to her full height in the chintz armchair, somehow doing so without losing any hint of her characteristic stoop.

"You see, my dear, protection is all a matter of method. Nothing would please me more than to offer my assistance and I would, were the relative configuration of feet and boots rearranged. You must understand, I am a most amenable person. A veritable Miss Amelia Sedley, some have said."

Her voice rose in pitch and tempo, and flecks of spittle cooled to icy pinpricks scattered across his downcast forehead.

"And who am I to argue with some? Such an act would not be in my character and the very fact that I refrain from doing so bears testament to the veracity of their claims. It is a form of virtuous circle, a version of Anselm's ontological proof watered-down enough to avoid blasphemy and that should be more than enough to support the rather more humble assertion that I am amenable. For you see, I am nice."

She nodded, content that her point had been made. The room seemed to buzz in its quietness. The potted aspidistra beneath the blinded window could be heard pulling water up through its pipes and causing the leathery leaves to twitch at the influx, loosing dust motes into the contained atmosphere. It took all Thomas had to muster a wall-eyed nod.

"I'm so glad we understand each other."

She smiled; shiny white pegs set into lumpy greypink matter. Crimson grease breached the levee banks of her thin lips and filled the channels snaking through the powderwhite floodplain of her desiccated face. The rebirth of Osiris bringing life to the Nile. Blood flowing through Aztec sacrificial channels. Irrigation ditches cutting through desert, canals and roads cutting through distances. Her aqueduct veins, an entire external circulatory system…

It was around this time that his stomach gave a violent lurch and tunnel vision began to set in. The gamble had clearly not paid off.

Trojan Liar - Part I

A Self-Indulgent Whinge From A Non-Existent Person

2010-01-12T20:00:00.009Z

My name is Michael and I do the best I can. The path of my life is strewn of what I have heard are called trials, although what they test is often impossible to ascertain. Thus I refute the terminology and shall reword my statement accordingly: the path of my life is strewn with a thick liquid, pinkish like Calpol and difficult to wade through despite the inherent sweetness of its aspartame, pseudo-strawberries and analgesia.

It is neither deep nor fast-moving, but like much in life it is made gruelling by its ubiquity. I am worn out by wading through it, an exhaustion of fighting against viscous liquids on a daily basis. Even in repose, I still must resist its forces in order to stay still, in order to avoid being dragged gently backwards by imperceptible currents. Insufficient care when falling asleep may lead to waking up on yesterday's ground, at a location far beyond my ever-looming breaking point.

Pitiful Michael. Psyche in welts.

Talking To Plants

2009-12-21T14:18:00.003Z

Damn bushes yowling at me again. I'll show 'em. Show those leafy motherfuckers who's boss.

"Run! Run! I'm a scary thing!"

That shut them up. They're still there; they haven't run away or anything. But they are plants and rooted into the very fabric of the Earth's surface, so I suppose you can't have everything. They can hang about wherever they like as far as I'm concerned. No skin off my nose. As long as they give me the respect to which I'm entitled.

Yes, literally entitled. My higher human rank puts me well above the likes of mere shrubs and they shall be brought into line. Mouthy little horticultural bastards, they are. Arrogant. Despite their pretensions, photosynthesis is nothing compared to sentience.

If they don't start toeing the line, I fear I shall have to resort to some form of dirty protest. I fear I shall piss on them. Pissing on them and berating them at loud length, then the screaming and the sirens and the big men with their bright needles full of sleep and blankness.

Plants are wankers.

The Quirks of Oracle Accounting

2009-12-15T23:18:00.010Z

'Tadpoles and Portable Suns'; there's a category called just that. Yes, like strangelets in a carry case. Suns, with a 'u' - as in the orbs of burny gas. I think it refers to some sort of computing equipment.

I also enjoy the fact that, if you want to buy a goat, they are officially classified as 'capra'; that gives me an inordinate amount of joy.

And, of course, attempting to source orange juice and the top result being 'pancreatic juice, human' and the second being some sort of extract of cankerous mouse.

Anything - within reason, of course - to season one's day.

Aspiration Repository

2009-12-14T09:35:00.004Z

A story of mine going by this name is featured in the October issue of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and this fact gives me quite a lot of joy. Subscription information can be found here.

Reality Birch

2009-12-07T16:13:00.004Z

Tattered fragments of reality flutter in the breeze like papery birch skin, revealing the oozing pulp within and exposing it to the atmosphere of perception.

This is what dries it out. This is what allows a new husk to form.

Reality is just the outermost layer, desiccated and paralysed by familiarity and thus taking on a far more drab and bleachparched form than the interior. It is constantly renewed from within; from that rich reservoir of weird and bubbling molasses flecked with goldflake and laced with algal tendrils and the shadows of smoke.

The interior is constant in its inconstancy and the turbulent mass will continue in its state of flux. It will not be stopped until every mutable combination of ideas has been inscribed in its dry surface and then disintegrated into flakes of nothingness on the wind. It will not be stopped until it is all surface, until it achieves an infinite surface area and zero mass. And it certainly will not be stopped until a more sensible method of delineating the exact remit and mechanism of reality can be determined.

Dissecting the Giraffe

2009-11-30T21:42:00.013Z

We have already learnt that the tissue that makes up the interior of a giraffe's neck resembles nothing so much as cheap kippers. Much work has been done on an analogue of the old African wives' tale that a single kick from such a creature can shatter a lion's skull; it was found that it takes a lion an average of 9.4 kicks to break the head of a giraffe.

Indeed, giraffoid skulls have yielded interesting fruit; we have carried out a long-running study into the antediluvian terror inspired by a giraffe's decorticated head. When such a specimen - dragonish, grinning and pared of meat - is presented then a negative reaction ranging from palpable unease to full psychotic breakdown is universally inspired (no less so in other, still-living giraffes).

However, it seems there is another pertinent piece of research to be done on the so-called cameleopard.

So we have taken the digestive system out of the giraffe and laid it out on the dissecting room floor. We will now sew the animal back up and send it about its business. We hope to garner answers to the following questions:

i) Will the animal notice its lack and refuse fodder, or will it continue to dump plant matter directly into its thoracic cavity regardless of the inevitable onset of rot, ulceration and eventual internal composting?

ii) Will it recognise its own extracted innards still steaming on the shiny blue floor? And if so, can it be persuaded to reinstate the organs by eating them, gulping down the fleshy tubes whole like bacon rinds and struggling against its own elongated gag reflex?

We have learnt much since the eighteenth century, but it will be difficult to improve upon Dr Johnson's definition of a giraffe as "an animal taller than an elephant, but not so thick."

Circular Breathing

2009-11-23T12:04:00.001Z

A story written by a fifteen-year-old me.

I found it while looking through some old diaries. Of course, most of the stories I came across were pretentious miserablism speared through with the twisted skewers of arbitrary oddness and psychedelia (and it could easily be argued that little has changed on that score) but re-reading this one impressed me. It gave me the urge to travel back in time, ruffle my younger self’s hair and give an encouraging “keep at it, slugger” sort of speech. A speech my teenage self would no doubt have dismissed out of hand as being made of plastic or something, but that is hardly the point.

Anyway, here it is - a piece of my juvenilia in all its unaltered glory:

The girl slowly inhaled the interior volume of the room. It was quiet as a tomb, in that the only sounds to be heard were the industrious ministrations of worms and a distant, joyless cackling. Old cigarette smoke jostled with itself for a place in the contained atmosphere. The girl sat, patiently avoiding the absorption of gases and thinking primarily about Trotsky’s beard. Would it look so inappropriate transplanted to lower anatomy, framing genitals like a horizontal pair of fuzzy brackets? Or maybe a set on each gluteal flank, a moustache portion cresting each buttock and pointed goatees protruding perpendicular from the hips like stunted wings? What of that? The implications made her head spin.

She sighed, the last breath of an ailing Labrador clogged with fat and too long a life, and gave up. It was time to talk to the old man. He had been perched atop the laundry basket for several days now, silently engaged in the task of polishing a marble statuette of a monkey with morose contemplation, and the girl decided that he had been ignored for long enough. The chances of his being a hallucination induced by lack of sleep had been gradually whittled by the passing of time and her recent intake of powerful hypnotics had only confirmed her suspicions, despite their apparent lack of effect. She emitted a gurgle to break the seal on her larynx, and spoke with what she hoped was an assured voice.

“I wanted to go like Jimi Hendrix,” she said, fixing the blue saucers of her eyes on the old man’s rheumy equivalents.

There was a pause as long as a priest’s memory before he replied.

“I was wondering as to the purpose of the fine Pinot Noir, along with all the barbiturates.” He swept his hand and gaze noncommittally across disorder of the room. “But that does not explain how you managed to acquire it, seeing as though you haven’t so much as left this room in many years. How long has it been?”

“Ooh, a good few. Four score and ten, to say the least. And in answer to your other question, I produced it in the micro-winery I’ve had installed in lieu of my left foot.” She lifted the frayed hem of her jeans to reveal the maze of pipes clustered around miniature carboys and demijohns.

“Don’t be flip with me, young lady,” retorted the pensioner, with the ruffled passions of a roused swan. “If you’ll remember rightly, I asked only one question. The matter of how you got hold of the sauce was merely a remark. It did not imply curiosity.”

“Oh, but it did; though not implicit, curiosity was implied. The facts still stand; cycle and epicycle, orb in orb. And there is also the matter of the soporifics…”

“Damn you, wench!” Rage filled even the pits on his skull. “You have no wine, no sleeping pills, no damned Hendrix. If so, you’d already be dead.”

“The presence of Jimi Hendrix is not a necessary requirement for death,” the girl countered, childishly contrary.

“It was for Jimi Hendrix.” The old man, calmed by this confirmation of his own wisdom, gave a wink intended to be profound and juddered out of existence.

After a time, the girl got up and nonchalantly examined the marmoreal monkey left behind in his hasty departure. She soon observed that it was not made of marble at all - the old man (or some other unknown agency, not necessary working on his behalf) had merely polished its body to such an extent that its epilated flesh had taken on a translucent, milky quality. It ooked softly at her touch. She picked it up and took it back to her armchair, cradling it and occasionally buffing it with a chamois.

Alone save for the marblesque monkey, she finally gave in to the lung-burning urge to exhale, closing her eyes as the room, the monkey and the universe at large evaporated into blank whiteness around her. Then, with agonising inevitability, the whole process began anew.

Puffin Honey

2009-11-17T19:38:00.002Z

The holy island of Lindisfarne is saturated with puffins and the rock itself is honeycombed with their burrows. Puffin honey is a great delicacy, gathered in the traditional manner by local youths, the individual vigour and number of which are diminished yearly by the activity (the solemn ceremony is conducted in a manner akin to the initiation trials of Arboria from Flash Gordon, and with similar mortality rates.) The resultant crop is then jarred and sold at vastly inflated prices to pilgrims, leaving the puffins with no other option than to raise their young on regurgitated fish.

Courtly Love Amongst the Stalk-Eyed Flies

2009-11-12T21:30:00.010Z

.
Awesome weirdness brought about by the pragmatism of selection by arbitrary criteria.

Male stalk-eyed flies emerge as translucent yet broadly conventional flies from their pupae on Malaysian forest floors. Then, before their wings have even dried sufficiently for flight, they scamper up the nearest tree and hide amongst the leaves. They then occupy themselves with sucking bubbles of air into their heads and forcing them out into their eyestalks, which darken and extend laterally like party blowers ended with the enamelled burgundy finials of their glossy compound eyes. That done, they take flight and go about their day of maladroit flyly business.

When evening comes, males and females congregate on tree trunks. The favour of females is allocated via a dispassionately scientific comparision of eyespans. The extended stalks are not used for combat but for measurement, and every fly accepts his station. It is only when two males are found to have exactly the same distance between their eyes that skirmishes break out and these duels are conducted in a highly stylised and brutal manner.

Their ways remind me of an Arthurian romance and, in my opinion, a pair of knights forcing bubbles of gas into their heads and comparing the lengths of the resultant eyestalks is the only thing missing from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

If I Had Been An Advertising Executive

2009-11-03T12:19:00.012Z

A herd of wild bay horses sweeps majestically across chocolate steppes. The camera pans across then lurches sickening onto a single mare who has stopped to drink. She bends her delicate head to lap at the pool of chocolate milk. A bulge starts to form at the apex of the neck’s bend, marring the graceful lines with obscene twitching convexity. The horse continues to drink, seemingly unaware of the furious growth of the furuncle. The pressure grows. The bay velvet of her skin splits at the tautness, unveiling a mewling figure festooned with ropes of brown mucus. It remains for a moment - semi-emerged, tiny hands aloft - like a disproportionate and gooey centaur. It then hauls its haunches free of the opening; fortunately, the extent of the wound left behind is hidden by the loose flaps of pinklined suede and the host horse remains oblivious.

The creature drops to the ground with a wet plop and shakes translucent matter from its wet fur, splattering the mare’s smoothrippled flank. At this she looks up slowly, eyes comprehending though resigned, as the apoid homunculus begins its odd dance. It moves at the disjointed yet deliberate pace of a drunkard going through well-practiced motions and the movements captivate their equine observer. She stares impassive until it performs a particularly feckless shimmy, at which point her eyes widen to white-rimmed saucers and she begins to shudder violently. The creature dances on regardless as the horse shakes the structure of her body to pieces, connective lines crumbling and leaving nothing but the smooth brown ovoids of its teach-yourself-drawing-book constitution.

Eventually the pieces notice they are hovering in midair, unsupported by the physical community of an extant horse, and fall to the ground. The creature, breath rasping through clogged lungs, breaks off his dance and approaches the pile of rounded shapes. A tentative poke yields no signs of life, so he bites into one with his tiny needleteeth, reducing the shape to dust. He selects another and this time only the outer layer crumbles. A viscous brown jelly leaks out, dribbling down the creature’s chin and forming wormy curls on the surface of the milky pools, like chocolate sauce on melted ice cream.

A drooling simian maw fills the screen, before the camera performs another vertiginous lurch and swoops upwards at incredible speed. The creature is reduced to a dot and eventually to nothing by the retracting distances. Only the brown ovoids retain their integrity, embedded as they are revealed to be in an opaque brown hemisphere set atop a vast plain of varnished pine. The grinning face of an enormous child appears over the rim, a keen spoon poised in chubby fingers.

Multi-grain Coco Rocks: what goes on in that bowl?

Geographical Slash

2009-10-21T23:13:00.002+01:00

Not some sort of special move, but an idea for a new pornographic literary genre. Possibly one involving sex acts stretching over large tracts of South West Uganda; the huge, prone bear of Lake Edward eagerly receiving a thorough yet tender rutting from the plucky Lake George using the Kazinga Channel as a watery and hippo-filled wang.

Or even a more tectonic eroticism. Eternal grinding in rocky crevices. Deep frictions. Cataclysmic sliding of plate over plate; lubricated by magma, superheated molasses easing the passage. Lithospheric frottage, leading to the orgasmic shudder of earthquake, of tsunami ejaculation. Le petite morte and land pushed up. The self-perpetuation of lust and land, glorious in its unecessary messiness.

The Cacti Set

2009-10-12T18:28:00.003+01:00

"Come on, man; you want to throw your lot in with us. We stand out in the desert with our arms outstretched, doing all we can to develop defensive spikes and a greenish waxy coating."

"Are you able?"

"It's coming along."

He looked at him, his face like a bearded baked potato squintily set with two distant milky eyes.

"Coming along, oh yes."

Lion

2009-10-05T20:00:00.004+01:00

It was feeding time for our clutch of big, broad-faced cats. With their pacing, they silently demanded a meat feast; we loaded up the truck. But one of them - a big lad called Bernard - would rather go for the tyres than the segments of sheep we proffered through the hatch. He was a feline oddball and quite vicious to boot, but I had no choice but to dislodge him; he was already little more than a furry blur, a spinning disc of yellowbrown under the wheelarches. And lions are prohibitively expensive; a fact that can be testified to equally by Roman emperors with Christians to be munched down and Chinese businessmen with mistresses to be munched on. I signalled the truck to a stop. After a cursory poke with a broom handle - an attempt I held little hope for, given Bernard’s penchant for inconvenience and tenacity - I stepped out onto the mock savannah.

I was immediately struck by the difference in atmosphere; the air was hot and wet. It enveloped me meatily, as though solid. Solid and studded with spiked pegs. It reduced my headskin to lines of sharp pain. Pressure. I popped out of my body like a champagne cork.

And thus I was silent spectator of my own death. Rather quickly, however, I saw that there was nothing at the end of it. There was no light at the end of the tunnel; just more and more tunnel, with little to recommend it over the tooth-fringed fleshtube I had recently vacated. So I thought, “Bugger that,” and tucked myself back into my mauled body.

In any case, Bernard had dropped me by now - I think he had been shot - and the sky bustled with medical shapes. I asked one of them if I was dying.

“Do you know,” it gurgled, “I think you are. Best take a look at you first, eh?”

Pasquinades

2009-09-26T13:37:00.003+01:00

You can read my somewhat knotty Kafkaesque fable on Wamack: A Journal of the Arts. Feel free to point, laugh and enjoy.

Introspection

2009-09-23T20:34:00.014+01:00

You can’t judge a banana by its skin or an orange by its peel and so they all know very little of what there is of me. And the less they know, the better for all of us. I was underdog. I need to chase these things away. I would hate anybody to think me not ugly - it would set something up in my mind. I prefer to look at myself from the other way round, with my face turned to my neck and the magnificence of all the white disorder on display.

What’s ahead? For me, I mean?
Apprehensions. I could get into a terrible mess.

Addendum: I feel I should set the record straight, to assuage the worry of individuals who have demonstrated their cockle-warming loveliness and to make clear to the world at large that I'm no member of the blackness-of-a-moorhen brigade (I would argue that their colour is the least of a moorhen's myriad charms. And indeed I have - here and again here.)

Anyway, the above is a just a dialogue fragment; a word-doodle and not an accurate depiction of my own mental landscape. Other than the showboating with disorder, obviously. I'm actually rather blithe at the moment. And why not? This morning I witnessed a whole host of ravens striding about King's Front Court lawn like beaked Regency gents taking a restorative after-dinner stroll. Life offers few visual dishes daintier.

Outrageous Joys

2009-09-13T15:35:00.005+01:00

By uncanny power a tight hug is given to you; you may not escape independently. Under the sea, all fishes are vagabonds, free to travel all over the fantastic world (or, at least, those parts of it coated in a gentle layer of peacewater.) Swarms of winter gnats are still around; hark the gentle warbling and chattering. Pleasant things - I really love them! I'm in a very fine mood. All are new. Anticipation of a wonderous encounter. Hopes are at my side. Artless children, so absorbed in the games that the time was all but forgotten. Elephants with sweet flowers - all around us, our own world of wonder. Can't you see how chic we are?

For the sake of irreplaceable persons, we'll dramatise a specially preserved extravagance. The child was thrown into ecstasies over his new toy. His pistol went off accidentally. Look! Look! Look! The ampersand is like a sitting man. Hello? Little ampersand? Do you want to join in vehement athletics? Bowling? Let's play bowling; breaking down the pins and getting hot communication. Winning, losing, all are one. It is in the act of playing that the bloody nub is located.

Rustic Anger

2009-09-08T23:53:00.007+01:00

A dim allegory on how he who holds the hammer doesn't necessarily hold the power.

The farmer represents virility and manhood as well as the fleshly realm, while the farmhand - no more than a boy - represents through his beauty spot and place within the triptych the general effeminacy of the Christ. The third figure is some sort of 'farm whore'. The hammer, of course, represnts brute power, but limply held in such impotent hands it merely looks ridiculous and dangerously vulnerable to outside influence.

Please note that there is no Devil; merely enraged flesh, ineffectively vague spirituality and irrelevent filth. And it is with grim inevitability that the latter attempts to insinuate itself into things far outside of its own sphere.

Of course, attempting to give any of them counsel would be like reasoning with plants.

Cosmopolitan Eavesdrip Skulking

2009-09-02T23:47:00.010+01:00

EXT. KING'S COLLEGE-BODLEY'S COURT-LATE AFTERNOON-RAIN

SHEAMERICAN

Just put the damn cigarette in your mouth and stop talking.

GERMANMAN

Hmph!

[lights cigarette]
.

ANGLOTOFF

You sound like his mum.

.
SHEAMERICAN

No, a mom would say, “Hush. Here, now let me put this cigarette in your mouth.”

GERMANMAN

And a dad would say, “Hey! Take that cigarette out of your mouth and let

me put one of mine in its place."

[troubled silence and pointed avoidance of eye contact to fade]

A Biologist's Mission Statement

2009-08-26T21:14:00.004+01:00

Part of being a biologist is putting your passion and your enthusiasm into an animal.

"This is my choice of vessel - a saltwater croc named Stephen. His limited range of facial expressions helps assuage my guilt."

"Don't let the name fool you - I'm equally at home in a freshwater environment. But right now, that's the least of my worries."

Anthropomorphising Canine Spirituality

2009-08-17T21:56:00.003+01:00

for Fun and Profit

When a wild animal is sedated and flown elsewhere, is this seen by them as an act of God? Is the diaspora remembered? Is it couched in mystical terms? Does it become enmeshed in any collective memory, in that fusion of culture and hivemind that is the pack? Does a Jungian echo - or more - remain?

A pack of Painted Hunting Dogs moved to a boma 400 miles away from their territory, rendered unconscious and transported via light aircraft, seemed awestruck rather than nonplussed on their awakening. Was it, for them, a religious experience?

They would have no idea why it had happened and by what mechanism. The means and motives of the human gamekeepers are as unfathomable to the dogs as those of an apparent God would be to us. But we are not God.

Of course, it could all be an elaborate trick on the part of the dogs. By allowing us to cart them about the countryside in an apparent stupor, we grant them sufficient freedom from suspicion to allow any tentacular dominion of the universe in which they are engaged to continue unheeded.

What I Did On My Holidays

2009-08-10T15:38:00.003+01:00

I’ve recently returned from a visit to the old hatch clan in Kernow howlyek. I shan’t bang on about the general awesomeness of the place, about the presence of hills making the sky the proper size (as opposed to a blank dome anchored to the nightmarishly surreal distant horizons of the Fens), about the sea (one minute silvered glass and the next a churning mass of protean rage, all opal and sapphire, as Hardy observed) and the beautiful madness of solitary trees twisted by sea winds and loneliness. I shall instead focus on things not mentioned in travel guides. Possibly for good reason...

The Journey

2009-08-10T15:36:00.009+01:00

Nine hours each way on a coach isn’t ideal, but it does provide ample opportunity to crystallise opinions on your fellow man and the world in general.

Lowlights:

· Selfish woman creating disgusting aromas with her seemingly-unending supply of tuna sandwiches.

· The enforced legal requirement to wear the seatbelts provided, which were apparently designed for a race of gigantic Nephilim. In the event of an accident, I would be secured to my seat by the throat, crushing my trachea at the very least. Thankfully, this didn’t occur and all I had to contend with was a red-rubbed welt running from jaw to clavicle.

Highlights:

· Genuinely witty Northern driver engaged in thinly-veiled innuendo and outright obscenity with a gaggle of elderly ladies via the onboard mic for the entire Reading Calcot to Bodmin stretch.

· A proper goth (none of your emo shite) losing all semblance of cool and, indeed, dignity by having a loud and protracted mobile phone argument with his nan.

The Cell

2009-08-10T15:34:00.008+01:00

NB the film was viewed and the following review written after consuming four whisky macs and the entire remainder of the bottle of ginger wine. These notes are presented in their unexpurgated form and - if you care - contain what could loosely be described as spoilers.

A godawful yet wonderfully enjoyable scrap of celluloid. This is pure nonsense, obviously, and not even a good or even average film. But it is torture porn in the purest sense: the portrayal of physical torture (they seem to have cribbed extensively from the works of Juxian Tang - though heterosexualising it exhaustively, of course) produced in the style of German generic ’fetish’ porn. In fact, the whole shebang comes across as a cross between Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell video, an extended Silent Hill cutscene stripped of both sense and subtlety, and an animated - and again heterosexualised - work by Pierre et Gilles.

So try to ignore Jennifer Lopez, other than in that one scene in which she wears a black lace body stocking, dog collar and - crucially - what can only be described as an Alana: The Girl From Tomorrow-style faux-bling gimp mask, obscuring her face and thus identity - a helpful feature, under the circumstances. Or when, dressed like a gothic Xena, she breaks into an unconscious man’s mind and beats his id to a bloody pulp.

Try also to ignore Vince Vaughn's proto- (and very much sub-) McNulty FBI agent and his tedious subplots.

And I would recommend nipping off to the loo during the clichéd yet nonetheless harrowing child abuse scene, featuring a bad-dad going for the whole Frank Booth thing but coming up short thanks to a distinct lack of creativity.

And most importantly, do not at any stage attempt to engage with the plot; this would be trauma enough to induce the onset of a latent Waylon’s Infraction in a susceptible viewer, despite the all too obvious fact that there is no such condition.

Dracunculiasis

2009-08-10T15:32:00.005+01:00

I found a copy of the Telegraph and annotated an article about tropical medicine. I don’t have the original article anymore so I can’t quote my sources any more specifically or indeed remember what was theirs and what was mine. And because I have chosen to be gratuitously insulting without any cause at all, I haven't used any names.

In a small office crammed with scientific papers, maps lining every inch of the walls, G.A., professor of environmental health, is showing me a long thin white worm in a small glass bottle of formaldehyde. I hadn’t asked him to and, quite frankly, would rather he stopped, but the somewhat wild look in his eye - not to mention the obvious outline of an erection straining against the zip of his beige slacks - dissuaded me from pressing the issue. Prof A. explains that this Guinea Worm finds its way into a human host through unsanitised drinking water, causing a parasitic infection known as dracunculiasis. “It penetrates the gut wall where it lives in the subcutaneous layer of fat,” he explains, eyes tightening and buttocks clenching at the thought, “before making its way down to the leg.” Here it grows up to 2ft long and forms a painful blister, which will eventually become so unbearable that the sufferer will be desperate to put the affected limb into water to ease the pain and inflammation. This causes the blister to burst, whereupon thousands of larvae will be released into the water - on the first day alone, 100,000 will emerge. I chose to focus on the facts and figures he imparted, in order to distract myself from the visual tableau he presented.

“The larvae are then gulped down by a Cyclops. If you drink water infested with Cyclops, they will die in your stomach, but the worm within will penetrate your gut wall, at which point the whole cycle will begin again.” His demeanour veered in accelerated bipolarity as he continued his narrative, although the angular groin thrusts were a constant presence.

Prof A. points out that the real consequences of these creatures lie not in the revulsion and lust they create in the human mind, but in their effect on human’s ability to work. “You can spot the impact of these things,” he continues, his voice breaking into a hoarse growl, “on satellite photographs. But of course, it is only through a microscope that you get the real money shot.”

I mean no insult or disrespect to Prof A., who does sterling work persuading Africans to pour water through a cloth before drinking in order to filter out Polyphemus and his mythical ilk.

Large Print Oddities

2009-08-10T15:25:00.007+01:00

My mum is in inexplicable possession of a vast collection of large print books, none of which are at all her cup of tea. I've taken it upon myself to write synopses of some of them, without taking the trouble of taking them down from the shelf and looking at them.

The Invisible Cord by Catherine Cookson
A psychological horror surrounding a woman’s inability to turn on the bathroom light, due to a Phildickian confusion over the exact mechanism.

Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark
A 400 page discussion of the central question, culminating with the staggering conclusion that the girls are staying with their nan, whilst Paul is either at Scouts or football. Hang on, is it Thursday? Football then.

The Wingless Bird by Catherine Cookson
Uplifting coming-of-age tale. An adolescent kittiwake congenitally deformed by his mother’s use of thalidomide ad ovo finds acceptance, friendship and even love amongst a colony of kiwis.

Such Sweet Sorrow by Catrin Collier
An exploration of a widow’s grief following a bereavement brought about by literal death by chocolate.

The Cobra Event by Richard Preston
One man battles against bureaucracy and the strength of public opinion in his quest to liven up the Badminton Horse Trials.

ScribblyPlath Compo Time

2009-07-17T23:27:00.021+01:00

A tangible reward for our metaphrastic correlation? Accolades for those who can cut through my overliteralisation?

Right.

This picture is based on a poem by Sylvia Plath, but can you identify which one? The first person who does will be the lucky recipient of a wholly extant and lovely prize.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Congratulations to Alex, who correctly identified the poem as Ariel.

To a Fallen Critical Pedagogist

2009-07-17T15:36:00.026+01:00

This is a picture I drew immediately upon learning of the death of Joe L. Kincheloe last year. This was approximately 27 minutes after first becoming aware of his existence, via his rather good essay, 'Fiction Formulas: Critical Constructivism and the Representation of Reality'.*

It may not represent an accurate portrayal of a single biographical incident nor is the symbolism necessarily related in any way to his life; it is only marginally related to his works. It does, however, feature a panoramascopic whale and some fun words. I hope he would have approved.

---

* Representing the Text: Reframing Narrative Voice, ed. Lincoln and Tierney, SUNY Press, 1997.

(I don't think that this is the same branch of the Tierney family to which I am joined by marriage. Kate and Tim, if by some miracle of coincidence you are reading this, then enquiring minds want to know...)

Ghosts in Mirrors

2009-07-10T00:00:00.007+01:00

A mere sheet of glass backed with a metallic amalgam, not forgetting the thin sliver of dense yet inert bad luck securely sandwiched between the two. That's what a mirror is; nothing mystical or revelatory about it. A silvery plane, that's all. A slab of shininess. Any ghost perceived in its surface can only be a manifestation of personal neurosis and/or self-attributed culpability. Only if the mercuric expanse is shattered would you have anything to worry about, and only then if you happen to be of a superstitious frame of mind. Remember, luck and ghosts are entirely disparate kettles of metaphysical fish.

Precocious Rufus

2009-07-08T19:58:00.008+01:00

is subjected to an entire summer in the charge of his grand-dame.

"We've always been lucky enough to have had incredible voyages in this room and everyone was expected to pitch in, because Grandma insisted upon being entertained. I remember when I was eight she specifically requested of me an original French aria. I was unable to speak a word of the language and was given insufficient time in which to learn, so I opted to mask vague gallic phonetics in the rich, fractal folds of my burgeoning vocals. The music I left to take care of itself. And it did, fortune-be-praised. My rewards included shrieks, milky tea, and a short period of relative peace punctuated only by whiskery kisses delivered by a tiny puckered mouth, an alarmingly mobile red-greased sphincter set deep amid white bristles flecked with spittle."

A Celebration of Aerial Conformity

2009-07-07T19:07:00.012+01:00

I would not enjoy a career flying with the Red Arrows. Here's why.

The Interview Process:

"Outside of evil, what have you done?"

"I have chucked the blue domed cheek of Lady Sky and long to do so again, this time accompanied by a tight-formation phalanx of my primary-coloured brethren."

"Welcome aboard."

The Cadets' First Morning Briefing:

"Look at that wing; you can draw out a line and run it on to near infinity. This is called the fetid shroud and if you look, you can see it has a little nut on it. You've got to look down through the wingline eye and crack that nut with your gaze."

Every year they get three new recruits, regardless of whether they want them and if they need them or not. They aren't looked upon favourably by the Old Boys, and so every sortie is scrutinised brutally. Trial by freezeframe is a fierce shibboleth, and every cadet is expected to be the first to call out his own mistakes. Detail is de rigueur with these characters and even miniscule mistakes must be eliminated. All error will be crushed, root and branch and seed.

Brrr. You can take that business to Walgreen's, mister.

Clothes Maketh the Man

2009-06-28T22:08:00.012+01:00

He wore a snakeskin belt, alligator shoes and a hat fashioned from the upturned faceplate of a Komodo dragon; the cold and primaeval eyes are now glass yet lose little of their power to engender instinctive terror in the mammalian onlooker and thus are more casual interlopers dissuaded from creeping up all stealthy. This was an important factor in his stylistic choices, particularly in matters of headgear. The tight black threads, the mirrored aviators and 'tache, the loungelizard accesories - these all combined to create a general air of sleazy menace which would deter all but the most spirited or naïve of 'potential assailants' (as he termed anyone he was not expecting.)

The hat was a final warning; dead eyes staring out from the crown of his skull above toothy jaws akimbo. Intrinsic horror reactions are inevitable. Icyspinal gravegoose shivers leave few faculties left over to devote to creeping.

And for those stalkers in possession of sufficient self-mastery to overcome such hypostatic fear? Those alehouse lamas, those pool hall sadhus, those bodhisattvas of William Hill; those that have transcended their own natures and risen above instinctive fear? Rational fear, however, of a clear and present danger, is another matter entirely and one which the hat is further able to furnish.

That danger lies, of course, in the perceived madhostility of the Komodohat's wearer. And it could only be more effective in bestowing a countenance of underbubbling psychosis had it been lined with tinfoil (although maybe this would make him less dangerous, as the foil would act as a barrier to malign influences.) Or if the lizard's facesegment was itself wearing its own tinfoil hat, one crafted after the style of an Egyptian pharoah's, with a crumplemoulded cobra at the brow. And on the head of that crude foil cobra, the face of a shrew, its long snout tilted slightly upwards by the angle at which the dragonhat was being worn. Pointing skywards like an aerial of whiskery gristle and thus entirely negating the insulation provided by the foil. Only then, if he had inadvertantly fashioned a parabolic receiver and was shown to be suffering the consequences, would the air of dangerous instability be more apparent.

But these embellishments are wholly unnecessary. Simply by dressing like a pimp with a violent personality disorder and a facial portion of terrible lizard atop his nut, the vast majority of wouldbe sneakcreepers are successfully deterred. Of course, he would have no protection against a rival attired in various segments of mandrill at unnatural sites around his body. Confrontation would in this case be encouraged. Reptile vs mammal: the ancient battle for dominion of the earth. But this is unlikely - an acceptable risk and a worthy adversary. In all but the most outlandish situations, he is defended. And this is what clothes provide us. Security.

Ghostcloaksoul

2009-06-23T10:34:00.019+01:00

You think you’re whiter than winter, but your dirty soul would sully the cloaks of ghosts as well as the arctic ice. As to what and whether you are, I would be wary of troubling empiricism for a straight answer. We do what we can, with what we can, staring out from our hoods of bone. The ability to cope with this, even strangely, is an art form in itself. Why do you ask such questions, only to run away knockknockgingerly when I deport myself willing and able to provide you with an answer? You are a rose flood porter, ludicrous and sublime in your smart uniform, and all the ladies despise you. This is probably why you love them so. Only objects of intense ridicule are themselves capable of such intensity. Those, and sailors far from home (these capabilities wax and wane, depending upon such persons’ proximity to civilised port.)

What am I supposed to do with all these thoughts, this proto-matter and these proto-actions? Ball them up, tight as a bound foot, and hope they’ll be content to expand into spatial brown-field sites, into their designated vacuum. They’ll be deformed and cause terrible pain, of course, and the end result will be crippling and at best only beautiful in a specific socio-historical context. But the fact that it is still within my power to offer up a mixed metaphor quite so glib (albeit accurate) suggests there is little to be lost.

I am typing, of course, and, of course, am on a wide variety of medications. All are grist to my mill. (Not strictly true, but grant me some small boastings, now that I no longer assert to have smoked duck’s laughter. This was untrue, as was the brothers‘ claims to have drunk duck’s blood together.) I am, however, poised to enter the divergent zopisphere of night, where peace lilies dip their leafy heads to drink like miniature Amazonian deer and every tree-sheltered sprouting of undergrowth conceals jolly Kokiri bands. If luck deigns to sidle up to me, I may even pick out the irreal veins of reality - ubiquitous, greenish and gently pulsating. When the milk starts tasting funny, I’ll know.

-------

The flat has taken on a funhouse quality. Straight lines have become curves. Curves have become diagonals. The rice-cooker is now some sort of benevolent robotic deity and only fluorescence and shadow-puppets are halfway capable of holding my attention. Nothing quite makes sense and I for one am relieved. Small madnesses may well be the key to postponing the last fall, the final downward thrust of the great tap root. Or it could just be an entertaining interlude. Natural laws are as boring as any other kind, after all. Either way, I’m a bit of a fan.

The dusty metallic tang has now started to bite, in those mouthparts one seldom considers to be equipped with tastebuds. Around the inner collar of the throat, the corrugated gristle of the roof of the mouth, the twin side-roots of the tongue. Still no movement yet. I type on and bide my time. I need only wait for the taste to reveal itself. I like to keep on top of things.

Exercising motor skills becomes pleasing for its own sake, a sure sign that we’ll be seeing little of them this night. I have been gargling with the contents of the penny-jar and getting out of this chair seems a fruitless act. No marvels have been dulled – I have merely been distracted from the more gaudy flourishes, the shimmering flux and the like. I have still made Ariadne’s silver thread from the business end of an LED torch and the basil plant has developed a patina of purplish bruises.

And movement now severely impaired. I am simultaneously made aware of both the physical weight and importance of the human skull and its contents. This is no revelation, but feelings suggest otherwise. I must be careful in any subsequent manufacturing of beverages and snacks.

Flux has come to join the party. A shy wall-flower at first, she could soon be animating everything in frame. What a gal!

Now sleepiness is on the march. I’ll apply a caffeine jolt to his indolent rump. Up the ante a little. Very small but precise movements, if you please.

All dark objects have taken on a Necker Cube effect in conjunction with their own shadows, which would only work if they were preserved in clarity cubes of aspic. I think they are not. The phrase “King Henry the Eighth, by grace of his many courtships” circles my desert mind like a vulture, pre-ordaining it for the task of self-consumption and what’s more, consumption of its own carrion. A tricky manoeuvre, but he has as much chance as anyone else of pulling it off.

Sleepiness is now a definite factor, although I resist bed. This is so much more edifying than the alternative. Screw Flaubert and his ‘violent originality’ - the observation that women’s bosoms heave for lust as well as weakness is a path too well trodden for the likes of this kitten.

Ach du. Tea and cigarettes to end an enjoyably productive evening. Productive like a cerebral cough, with an oddly euphoric outcome.

Moorhen Bulletin

2009-06-22T21:33:00.006+01:00

The chicks now seem to have entered their accelerated version of adolescence and regularly gangle about the undergrowth emitting crepitant cheeps in the most beguiling fashion imaginable.

Trojan Liar - Part I

2009-06-17T19:34:00.007+01:00

Marchantile Lugubria widened the vent of her mouth to bear tiny teeth; a grimace she used in lieu of a smile.

"What do you think?"

Her gaze was wide and flat, like the vast blank wall of a civic building, but Thomas would be aware that the question was intensely directed at him, even had they not been alone in the chintzy parlour.

"Well?"

He found he had been counting the repetitions of fleur-de-lys on the carpet.

"I think...", he began. But even in that fragment nestled a lie encapsulated.

Trojan Liar - Part II
.

Humisogyny

2009-06-16T11:01:00.008+01:00

That is to say, humorous misogyny. Not to be confused with hummusodomy, that most gourmet of Greek deviancies.

Yes. I chanced upon a Have Your Say religio-misogynist risible in his words and outlook, and sent his implausible thesis to spEak You’re bRanes

I’ll admit that I’m not liable to be winning any scripture knowledge prizes, but I’m sure I’d remember having read of pre-Eve Eden as a hotbed of bestiality. Perhaps this was the wellspring of the snake’s beef. Jealousy, the old story: along comes some chick and the once frequent homo-serpentine romps get restricted to the occasional tacit and drunken fumble, which does little more than fan the flames of desire. A snake can be driven to dangerous lengths when denied his regular dose of vigorous cock-on-cloaca action.

There’s more, however. On the basis of my gender, presumably Alain sees me as some sort of haunted bone fragment, an animated section of semi-sentient ribcage, a walking, talking and quasi-thinking golem of thoracic extraction created for the sole purpose of “serving him.” Strangeness and errors abound in his unlikely little worldview, and I suspect gynophobia likewise runs wildrife.

Boo, Alain. Roar and boo.

Blood Compliance

2009-06-09T13:38:00.004+01:00

What dreamy truth, Herr Doktor? What kinds of terrible were described by the wetness, the blood? Under love the viscous liquid, warm, is confirmed as from only the new. Blood from each Monday direction will be able to think, to flow out into futures. Still, there is yet a possibility of stating origins. The blood in compliance with the constant dewdrop initially appears immediately before and the dozen citizens who stir in the goosebump dawn are awakening with cause. Much detail is indistinct: inclusions of why, why those listening cannot be still, the situation of speech in the early hours. All only deteriorated. “Them, Jesus Christ sees.” It is where it is and demanded of him like a garage - who is there that does not know the fear which floats firmly, assuredly, and yet is not to be?

“Blood everywhere.” Is. Together with the immediate smell like the friend coping strangely, the foreign nation, the blood in compliance with a rumour started in the wall and from the ground comes a flowing, from the isolated event of a child. He came out, as a result of sands. More comes to all lights, no? A poultice, drawing it out.

It is our Fall. From the crimson swimming pool of unknown liquid struggles the hit schoolteacher and the mother’s salary. Where it can be seen, it says. “It’s where there is to be my head. Oh sweetness, it’s where there is to be my mouth. Please.” Like a flowing visible, the blood’s growth is of sole local interest and concern. Will be what? Which is who? A swelling up that will soon evolve with the placing of lower part products and thus discontinue the member.

The municipal assembly living in the night comes once, under importance in a series of little additions. Civilian families are missing, put out from extravagance or the results of power grids not operating (grids made from the cartilage of the family member you will not be able to contact, whose phone lines are human in order not to be more.) Your brain authorises this. Only yours, where it begs to be thrown away.

That and the different passer-by in compliance with the blood of vast quantity - distinctive all of a sudden, with a surprise added to the thing. The Pearl. “I can’t see it. No more than what it sees. I only can’t.” Remains are urged into constant temperature and, in order to be seen, seek the shelter - their front gate heats all rodent contact with the dog, and there are all such kinds of work. All kinds.

The passage loudspeaker describes all man and all woman together - the old, sound difficulty. We will not be able to understand before the end. The loudspeaker, also believing, comes to believe in order to instruct all residents of the firm faith to be satisfied with such a startled attempt. “When it does this, I do not think it will end with any form of reassuring point,” he says, kicking the countless wise grudge witnesses into his present hope. “Go out and from the first time there will be a rise in cases. Ones and twos. And a justice, one where the fortunes favourably lie. From new, here it comes again. Salt-stock.”

The nation rises completely - multiple legal execution agencies, urgent medical units, managers of infectious disease and waste water, zoologists, all as one. What is important is that these lines of authority can seek what some say is the dry cell battery - swollen fresh with content, past the point of all information. Or the hospital ward where a young girl bursts to take back a ceremony. From the condition where hope fades in deference to a rumour, some unnamed citizens remained like that - optimistically being, helping in the grudge method that will wear the thing out eventually with pure methodology. There’s more: a resident who yet has his head wonders at what kind of minute the point will be disclosed. All faced each other, normal and at once assertive.

“In order to re-rescue us, it must re-come. Only it is knowing,” she claims, locally nursing a reconciliation of the shock sounds in her attics and basements - a misery to her. When her neighbour revives himself, she continues: “It’s only a matter of time before there is good going again, I promise.” At the pressure-timed present, they all look to the windows. The windows, and Christ is the window? Intercourse in the severity of the window’s pane and the grudge blood is compliance, though far from compliant. For whom is justice thus derived?

Observations of Waterfowl

2009-05-25T20:01:00.007+01:00

Moorhen chicks are exemplary little characters: tiny balls of black ruffled fluff set atop improbably long legs, like gothic marshmallow peeps on stilts. The one I saw on my walk to work seemed to be staring down in incredulous wonder at its own underpinnings, cheeping in amazement at the bizarrely-splayed orange forks upon which it supports itself.

I can see its point; not only does it have to get used to being in a state of existence, but it must do so under the special conditions of having feet so eccentric they border on the insane.

It would take me quite some time to grow accustomed to striding about on a moorhen's legs, I'd wager. Doubly so if my only previous experience was of having no legs at all, and if in fact the whole concept - of legs and of life - was new to me. As was the very concept of grasping concepts.

Moorhen chicks: adorable intellectual pioneers and observers of the avian condition. See them in riverbank undergrowth near you now!

The Magic Colonel

2009-05-18T20:58:00.005+01:00

He makes bold gestures and heartily clasps the shoulders of his fellow men, yet the effect is far from one of convivial bonhomie. The wild flailings of his assertions put pay to that notion, along with the ghosts of dead thoughts to be seen dancing behind his eyes and their tremulous conduction through the ropey rigging of sinews securing his head to his neck. It puts those fellow men somewhat ill-at-ease, especially at the critical moment when he makes his approach, hand extended as if to shake, before veering off suddenly and delivering a trademark pat that would often send smaller recipients reeling into the fireplace. "Now may they be at peace," he would remark at such awkward moments, leaving a respectful pause before raising his tumbler of mid-range single malt. "And good luck to 'em!" He would usually then release a series of the hoarse barks he used in lieu of laughter.

It must be said that he was usually alone when these sorts of events took place; likewise when they did not. He didn't much care for solitude, but needs must where the devil drives. And he had his immolation of tiny persons with which to occupy his time, the supply of which seemed quite bountiful if he waited for the combination of liquor and prescription tranquilisers to take effect.

People in the village call him the Mustard Colonel, because they are stupid and don't understand that it is Colonel Mustard. Although he isn't - he is the Magic Colonel and the power of his dread arts go far beyond the creation and subsequent destruction of homunculi. It's just that, as he kept himself to himself, it wasn't common knowledge. Not even the Colonel himself knew the true extent of his abilities and he was generally the sole observer of their application. In truth, he was capable of plucking out reality's fine veins and tugging them together into a skein. He could yank on the guy ropes of being. He could produce jelly snakes from behind people's ears. His own ear, rather. He was all too often alone.

Codshit

2009-05-13T23:32:00.003+01:00

My new favourite term for nonsense.

Praise be to James from The Apprentice for coining this gold doubloon of an expression, which has now supplanted bilgewater in my vocabulary.

Miss Ambidextria Sparrowhawke's Advice

2009-05-11T21:05:00.009+01:00

to Pure and Chaste Young Ladies

A Pure and Chaste Young Lady must never allow herself to be alone in the company of a Gentleman likely to brandish or indeed proffer his Buttocks. The first matter deserving of a Young Lady's attention is that of ascertaining whether the particular Gentleman with which she is contemplating a tryst is of the character and temperament to be predisposed to such a blandishment, or if he is under the influence of any hereditary defects or temporary stimulants which might compel him to do so. There are -- alas! -- no hard and fast rules. Of course, the option exists to circumnavigate the hebrides of the decision via the solution of complete Abstinence from the company of Gentlemen all together, but this is unnecessary in cases where the Young Lady in question can be counted upon to exercise a modicum of Self Control. If her history is free of conspicuous incidents of outrageous Strumpetry, she may avail herself of her discretion; it is to such Young Ladies that I address these lines.

If she is prepared to make use of generalisations, there are two attitudes which, if held with sufficient vehemence by a Gentleman, can signify a propensity to unveil his fleshly hemispheres inappropriately. These two attitudes reside on opposite extremities of the Spectrum of Self Regard, although their resultant actions are indistinguishable from those of the other. They are the Gentlemen who think their Buttocks excellent, and those who rate them as very poor. The former expose their twin orbs of delight almost as a challenge; as if to say, "Are my Buttocks not magnificent?" The latter, on the other hand, do so in order to provoke Horror in the distressed Lady onlooker at the disquieting sight of globular hindquarters.

Make no mistake, Young Ladies; each Man well knows the reaction his disrobed derriere is apt to provoke, and none is to your benefit! For the consequences of allowing yourself to be exposed to alabaster orbs of firm enchantment are grave indeed: a pantomime whorehood leading to the agony of childbirth, set against a backcloth of ginshops, the poorhouse and -- following an inevitably early Death -- the agonies of Damnation. So take heed, Young Ladies, and do not allow smooth-rounded temptation to sway you from the one Chaste Path!

Femme Fatale

2009-05-03T22:18:00.014+01:00

She was a fox-eyed beauty, with a ferocious intelligence osmotically expressed through the twin orbs set in her exquisite face. This, along with her general propensity for violence, made her unnerving and consequently quite unpopular. Hers wasn't a passionate violence; the fiery pill remained unsugared by the charms stereotypically attributed to Italians or redheads. And besides, being a brunette of ambiguous if not nondescript North European extraction, she was neither of those things. Her vice was a mindful violence, purely cerebral in its planning and scalpel-sharp in its execution. This is not to say that there is no visceral element - blood would certainly be spilt, but in the optimum way. Given a sliver of an excuse and a fraction of a chance, she would slit your throat with Occam's razor.

Hubris

2009-04-29T16:47:00.003+01:00

Three small children pile themselves up into a staggering column and are barely concealed beneath the drapery of a averagely-lengthed trenchcoat.

Musings from the Professional Kitchen

2009-04-23T12:17:00.002+01:00

The novice and stray remains a mousey Sous. And the Chef waits in the kitchen, an insistence of personality. Restoronte!

An amateur hacking; a lack of tools leading to Spanish swearing. A misjudgement: FINGER.

A dessert devoid of external problems while a civil war rages within. Monstrous bees hassling a mango mountain. Grand miscalculation of the mass of the average human.

Let love guide you; let chef spank you. Let no blood be present on the customer’s plate. The gentleman is clearly still chewing on his starter.

Arriving diners pull no punches - the final arbiters of delicious pursestrings.

We thought no one would catch on that we were playing hide-the-chorizo amid the raw venison. No evidence of undercooked venison, anywhere in my place or mind. Undercooked venison, undercooked dreams. Hivespirit of the teammind. Undercooked is undercocked.

We revel in the denaturing of proteins for the purpose of providing sustenance to those willing to do what is necessary in order to obtain it.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-04-16T12:05:00.014+01:00

by Seth Grahame-Smith

I find Jane Austen self-satisfied, irritating and belm-inducingly facile. In fact, she (and all who sail in her) can suck my metaphorical cock. Is this book - replete as it is with ninjas as well as hordes of the walking dead - enough to turn me on to the bint? Almost certainly not, but the fact it exists gladdens my gelid heart. Kudos to you, Seth Grahame-Smith, for making that so.

Addendum 13 Dec 2009

I've just heard that this is being turned into a film; a troubling development indeed. In my opinion, this works in concept only. It barely has sufficient meat on its bones to survive the migration into novelty giftbook format, let alone trying to make the trek into film.

I predict the result will be a smear spread thin, yellowbrown and suspect over the scabrous tiled wall of postmodernity's overused and ill-tended urinal.

My Epileptiform Seizure

2009-04-06T22:37:00.005+01:00

The thing to remember about these falafelhouse harlots is that they can be depended upon to act the glamazon in the most desperate of circumstances. And you find it overpowering. Just own up to it; there is little point in denying the pontiac. Sirrah, by the plough are we judgemented all wirramlike. And despite the presence of such a great deal of blood, I still think I should finish my crisps and get on with my morning.

My morningsuit needs no introduction, nor trucks no heed. Who are the bright men, the jovial pinkandyellow people? Why do they tourniquet my arm and ask me ludicrous questions? I merely wish to be allowed about my business, regardless of blood. What is the source of this blood, I wonder? There is only a dull ache in the lower quarter of my face, the right mandible. The redladies offer me tissues and believable platitudes; the brightmen scoop me up and brush my face with saline. I am unable to persuade them to merely let me go home to recuperate. That seems of the utmost importance at that moment, despite starting to notice the brightness and the trajectory of the bloodsplatters.

Do you know, they had to replace three carpet tiles? A forestgreen memento infirme in the topography of my weekdays and something I could live comfortably without. Still, my face seems to have avoided any detrimental scarring, so I claim victory.

What It Is About Cats

2009-04-02T11:48:00.003+01:00

Smacking the cat’s furry arse and claiming this is an education? Mindbroke gentleman, it drives me to drink.

It makes me want to do a mad dance. I need to appear quite berserk.

That victuous dictionary. That misanthropic invisible and unseeable optic. Sweet burning flavours and fiery analgesic properties for the callow. I am callow. Milksop optic. Workshop guardian. Pissbot ladywoman, add a layer of packaging.

But who needs verisimilitude when there is veritas?

Desperate approaches yield scattergun results. And vice versa.

Slapdash attempts at replicating the internal noises. And by opposing thus end the mixing of metaphors. Bardic impunity. Impious treasure trove rover.

A ginger tom with the face of a haughty courtier eyes me from atop the fence, not breaking his tranquil gaze for a good half hour as I become increasingly conscious of and alarmed by the situation. He is serene and I am ruffled. But he is just a cat. That is what it is about cats.

A Death to Copies and Freudian Analogues

2009-03-30T12:30:00.004+01:00

I would not enjoy having a doppelganger whose business it was to go about personating me - aping and pirating my essence and actions. Philosopher as I am, I might become so far carried away with jealousy as to attempt the crime of murder on her carcass; and no great matter as regards her. But it would be a grand old thing for me to find myself hanged; and for what, I beseech you? For murdering a sham, that was either nobody at all or else oneself repeated once too often. If it is a crime at all, it is one to be treated more leniently than suicide; there is no victim. Show me a corpse, for I live.

Heston Blumenthal’s Victorian Feast

2009-03-23T12:08:00.008Z

This evening's programme contains strong language, adult humour and graphic scenes of pig butchery. It is, after all, his mission to present his guests with a gustatory treat they won’t see coming.

Turtles are lured into lobster-pot-like cages with a bait of carp and watermelon. Once they clamp their jaws down on flesh, the only way to make them let go is to insert a length of wire into their nostril.

Mock turtle soup is made with the heads of slaughtered cattle. Headmeat is now coming back into fashion; cheeks, nose, brains and snout are all the rage.

Mealworms have an umami quality, with more than a hint of soft wriggling twiglet.

He wants to create some edible pebbles for his food garden. Chopped black olives make the soil, with cooked new potatoes coated in kaolin as stones. There is also a gravel path made of fried eel and waffle crumbs.

Rageh Omaar: “The earth is delicious!”
Richard Bacon: “How did you know, Rageh, to eat the earth?”
Rageh Omaar: “I love to and so I always try. This time I have succeeded.”

The wine gum hard hat: not only does it provide on-site safety, but if you feel the onset of hypoglycaemia you can bite off the rim.

He utilises two of his favourite Victorian ingredients: liquid nitrogen and Earl Grey tea. Neat cognac is served with two shots of absinthe and called ‘Le Earthquake’. The Victorians defended their comfort zone with such vigour that they simultaneously perfected the art of pulling people out of it and dragging them far beyond.

Read my mind's bibble inspiried by Heston Blumenthal's Gothic Feast

Linguistic Metazombie Diplopia

2009-03-19T09:34:00.002Z

Linguistic instability can give rise to actual instability, given favourable conditions. A cry of “zombie!” can be used to disperse a crowd. Until that occurs, all participants are either aggressors or victims, biters or bitten. But these classifications break down at the cry of “zombie!” – those that have been bitten will become biters and those that are biters are so because they have been bitten.

The anarchic effect is so pronounced because the revenant exists in language only; the sign (the cry of “zombie!”) has no referent and so people are set to looking everywhere to find one. Thus they find it everywhere, rendering my futile gesture in crafting the paraffin-wax facsimile of a zombie cohort in the grounds of my home doubly obsolete.

Blithe Pail

2009-03-13T12:08:00.002Z

The world is a large metal bucket which firmly contains my head; this is very much a good thing.

Bradley Sands is a Dick

2009-02-26T13:54:00.010Z

Find a selection of reasons why this is the case - including my own explanation - by downloading the free e-anthology from Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the cover to read it.

Then go to Andersen Prunty's site to vote for which of us should be Bradley Sands' arch-nemesis. I hope it'll be me; as far as I know, I've never been someone's nemesis before.

Update: voting is now closed and I didn't win, but have a goosey-gander nonetheless.

The Rain in Spain

2009-02-26T13:50:00.003Z

One of my pieces of flash fiction is featured in the Rainy Days book, which you can buy from here.

Cockcrow of the RadiatorLizard

2009-02-26T12:21:00.007Z

Lordy, I now have some form of internet presence! This place will soon flourish into a golconda of stories and general grooviness, so I entreat patience.