| The Dress |
[10 Dec 2008|09:40pm] |
Whenever we finished dinner, and crossed our forks over our knives in the prescribed manner, and there was still food on our plates, it was traditional for those at the table to turn to Mother with eyebrows raised.
She said: "Throw it out for the ghosts."
|
|
| Daboll Ruffians Strike Again |
[13 Sep 2008|09:32pm] |
The Pall Mall Gazette (London)
Thursday, 2 August, 1888
The recent introduction to the public of an American invention, the portable Daboll trumpet, by such specialist retailers as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, has directly resulted in, Scotland Yard officials speculate, the present spate of prostitute deafenings in Bethnal-green, Houndsditch and Pentonville.
Contrived by a Connecticutian, one C.L. Daboll, his trumpet is designed to frighten vessels away from dangerous waterways and stretches of ocean, by means of condensed air forcibly ejaculated with the assistance a simple caloric engine. The portable version secrets more complex machinery beneath a gentleman's waistcoat, leaving only the sounding horn protruding from the sleeve, connected by sturdy rubber tubing. When activated, the trumpet produces a persistent alarum of great breadth and intensity, sufficient to be clearly detected over a distance of six leagues through thick Channel fog.
Researchers at the prestigious University of London revealed that a mere half-second burst of energy from a Daboll trumpet is sufficient to permanently incapacitate a beagle, and economical rural sportsmen have sworn by the device as an excellent substitute for bloodhound packs and, indeed, ammunition.
Armed with this expert scientific evidence, as well as witness testimony, Whitehall Senior Inspector Clarence Tomlinson believes that the Daboll trumpet was employed in a number of recent instances of grievous assault on London's many streetwalkers. "Eminent physicians have determined that many of the victims have shewed clear signs of catastrophic neurological stupefaction, in all probability the direct result of prolonged exposure to the termagant produce of these cacophonous implements," Inspector Tomlinson said.
"Our investigators believe that harlots, of standing both respected and mean, whilst engaged in oral stimulation of their gentleman clients, generally in an alleyway, are often startled by a protracted emission, directly into the aural cavity, from the apparatus in question, which we conjecture is commonly simultaneous with the male patron's own emission," he continued.
"Unsurprisingly, this violently sonant discharge results in severe intracranial disturbance, as well as a chemical overload which transiently suspends the victim's gag reflex," the Inspector concluded.
A Piccadilly clerk, who did not wish to be identified, demonstrates correct usage of the Daboll instrument
One brothel madame, from Greenwich, with some dozen girls in her employ, revealed to this investigator that she had been audience to a similar scenario several nights ago.
"A gentleman caller, a well-dressed chappie, took one o' my girls to the Royal Room, and I watched 'em through the peep'ole as I sometimes do, and she were sat on the bed like so, and 'e were stood before 'er, straight-backed, a real dapper gent, saying things to 'er like 'accept the entirety of the length of my manhood, you verminous harlot', things o' that nature, and then when 'is eyes rolled back in 'is 'ead, like they do just when 'e's about to touch off, well, 'e takes out this funnel-looking thing, 'olds it right up to 'er 'ead, and it makes the most blessed awful noise it does, frightened the life out of me it did, and she just goes limp, poor girl, like 'er soul 'ad just fallen out 'er fanny," she said.
Prostitutes interviewed were unable to answer this reporter's questions, instead merely staring vacantly at their own knees and wringing their hands. However one such dollymop, Beatrice Dorothy Augusta, of Blackfriars, tacitly agreed to pose for portraiture, which we present here for the edification of readers.
Beatrice Augusta, whore of Blackfriars, must change her ear dressings every two hours
"This is certainly a worriesome state of affairs. Deafening a simple streetwalker merely to enhance the volatility of one's la petit morte is almost certainly a form of abuse, and we shall prosecute any apprehended offenders to the full extent of the King's law," said Inspector Tomlinson.
"On the other hand, I can't imagine such opprobrious conduct against sex workers spreading much further in the coming weeks and months, to areas such as Whitechapel, for instance," he finished.
|
|
| Theme Of Laura |
[07 Aug 2008|08:39pm] |
|
The five of us materialise before the venue and straighten our jackets, dusting quantum dust from our shoulders. The guy to my left asks, Are my glasses on crooked? and I nod and he seems satisfied. I take the hand of the girl to my right and once inside I whisper in her ear, When I was younger I was savagely afraid of walking in front of a surveyor with an autolevel, my fear being that I would corrupt their mathematics and wind up with an overpass built through my skull. She looks at me for a moment and then pats my knee and orders a rum something. We sit for an hour or so exchanging cigarettes and, once those are exhausted, anecdotes. Crooked glasses guy tells us about his time as a sailor, his ship torpedoed, and how his skin slid away from him like that of a snake while he held on to headless pilot in a Mae West, and the salt water felt like the way you feel in the morning after a night of too much cheap lukewarm wine. We nod our heads in appreciation. I am watching a girl across the room, through the blurred muck of the dance floor, and I think, Well, so I excuse myself and push through the bodies, and she's no longer there.
|
|
| Only The Wealthy Had Something Other Than Dirt |
[22 Jun 2008|01:15pm] |
|
Despite his rabid belief in fairy tales, he displayed an alarming poverty of imagination. A feather falling through the air caused him to reflect, if he reflected at all, on nothing more than diseased pigeons with deformed toes. He fumbles in his pocket for a fresh packet of cigarettes, tears off the cellophane, opens the lid, rips out the little silvery paper insert, then wraps the cellophane in the paper and turns it into a tight little ball. Serenity is a myth, he is fond of telling people. He considers strangers a personal affront, so charmed by himself that he becomes infuriated when they do not satellite around him. And like a maggot inhabiting a corpse, he spends Sunday on his knees.
|
|
| God's Love Seemed Lost Upon Him |
[27 Mar 2008|06:10pm] |
|
It was on my twelfth birthday that I made an entirely remarkable discovery. What I had fervently believed would be a highly anticipated toy (some kind of robot?) turned out to be a liquorice allsorts of knee-high socks designed for use at a range of school sports. The discovery I made, upon peeling back the first sliver of wrapping paper, was this: disappointment travels faster than light. Before my brain even registered what the bulky package contained I was on the verge of tears. I had no further interest in science after that and when my second present turned out to be a pair of shin guards, for installation beneath one of the flavours of sock, well, I battled to affect no surprise but was unable to suppress a heavy blink, and it was at this point in my life, I suppose, that I forgot how to read. “You see how it is?” said my father around a mouthful of Power’s, and though I didn’t, that was it. Dad always used to call the violin “about as useful as a dick stapled to a windmill”, read no further than the back five pages (and as the years progressed, ten, then thirty) of the newspaper, and when one of my brothers used to do something foolish or unnecessary or cruel he would pat them on the back and tell them “no worries”. It always used to irritate me, this habit he had of making other people feel comfortable with their stupidity. One winter morning we were stuck at Central, waiting for the train, and I expressed a need to urinate, which reminded dad - known to his friends as a "larrikin" - of his own desire, so we went down to the toilets and shared the big shiny trough and as we were “slashing” my father said to me, half a smile on his face, “Feel my piss heat”, and forced me to hold my hand about a foot or so above his stream and sure enough a strong heat was flowing upwards off it. He seemed very pleased, his virility augmented through the knowledge that his son now had tangible evidence of how hot his waste water was. Anyway, my academic scores suffered greatly but within weeks I was able to lift a man up, smash all the air out of his lungs by placing him violently on the ground, and then take a sweat-slicked football away from him, which counted for so much more. On the surrounding streets, great ancient shady trees were chainsawed into ether, and tiny starved saplings replaced them. These saplings, we discovered, could be pulled from the ground using your weakest hand. They were never replaced.
|
|
| With Apologies To Morris And Iannucci |
[20 Mar 2008|06:24pm] |
She gazes out at the audience with a smile as unsettling as a sun collapsing in on itself. As she begins to make mouth-words, the slick hybrid techno-metal-punk-rap musical score – generated on-the-fly by a bank of chrome Macintosh Airbooks (when a single blade server would more than suffice) supervised by a single useless intern, who from time to time checks that the USB connections are good and tight and uses his hand to measure the ambient heat, alternating between satisfied nods and cautious frowns, as though his fistmeat alone was a precise enough instrument to detect minute fluctuations in temperature – dives just beneath the surface and there it crawls, snakelike, carefully kneading the anticipation and vague sense of dread concomitant with all televisual news broadcasts. In the control room, several people yawn, and the producer folds a single sheet of paper four, five, six times, and then gives in. A woman walks into the soundproofed chamber, throws her glance about the room, sneers, and leaves. Two of the operators look at each another as though to ask “What was that about?”, which one of them does, and the other shrugs.
The anchor is still riveted to her seat, that prolix beam smashed across her face, before the theme tune cuts out completely, terminated by the stylized effect of a FN-FAL round being chambered by a sneery guerrilla, who got it off a dead priest after machete-ing his vestibulum to ribbons because of excessive maundering during the sermon (a viewer survey suggests, with 52.3% likelihood). “Hello,” glows the anchor, adjusting her sweater so that her right breast pops out, before the soundtrack plays the emptying of the magazine, “And welcome to the news!” (the holo-display behind her flashes a monolithic ‘NEWS’, which spins wildly and disintegrates with a shriek.)
In the control room, a real-time worm sequesters the lower quarter of the main screen, tracking viewer interest in the live broadcast. At the exposure of the breast the worm rises slightly and remains more or less steady. The producer nods and whispers something to his aide, who takes two steps across the room and whispers something, in turn, to the controller, who whispers something into the microphone before him. A small tube pops up from the news desk, lightly spritzing the anchor’s nipple with a fine cold mist. The lipstick-coated blueberry hardens instantly and the worm rises a little more.
“More trouble in the Middle East today as…” the anchor begins, only to pause for a moment as instructions are beamed into her earpiece – with the mention of a foreign country the worm has fallen back to its starting level. She continues: “…sand-maddened fundies…”, then another pause, “…fucked underage girls in the ass…” – the holo-display resolves into a hastily rendered loop of a black-teethed man wearing a turban doing precisely that – “…as part of a traditional heathen religious ceremony. Allied forces firebombed the living shit out of them, and Supreme Commander General Machismo was happy to report that there were absolutely no civilian casualties whatsoever, anywhere.” The display segues into a shot of a melting Ferris wheel, then crash zooms in on the bloodied face of a young Arab boy, obviously screaming in patent agony (though his voice has been dubbed to make it seem that he is shouting “Wheee!” in a thick Texan accent) and then a shot of a Marine handing out MREs to goats, superimposed over fireworks exploding into a representation of the American flag. With this the anchor removes her sweater completely, licks an index finger to assist her in turning the (blank) pages before her on the desk, and licks the other index finger and adjacent thumb, using them to twist her backup nipple to attention. The worm jumps sharply.
“In other news, interactive video games: a form of debilitating childhood cancer, solely responsible for the decline of modern United Statesian society? Experts say probably. Sadie Sixguns has this report.” With this, the anchor puts her head back, throws one fishnetted foot up on the table, closes her eyes, and begins massaging her breasts and moaning “Pfizer”. The camera hovers on this for a full minute before cutting to:
An extremely attractive raven-haired woman dressed in comprehensively revealing dominatrix gear, complete with crotchless leather panties. She looms over a red-eyed boy of around thirteen years of age, hunched in front of a video game console and studiously attempting not to look at her, hiccupping gently.
“Look at this boy,” says Sadie Sixguns, staring unwaveringly into the camera and pouting full, pulsating lips, “Vigorously and repeatedly tapping away at buttons as though attempting to bring the device to orgasm. Futile. Not the methodical, poetic ballet of gridiron football for this fat shit, no. He’d rather spend his days sitting before a highly realistic deathkill simulator before crying himself to sleep, hand cupped over his testicles. Little wonder that only moments ago, he brutally and remorselessly butchered his entire family, as well as a small dog. We caught it all on film.”
Shaky, blurred, off-colour close-ups of a middle-aged man, middle-aged woman, twin baby girls and, yes, a small dog, being fleshsmashed by the chunky end of a sledgehammer. The camera wavers slightly to the right and we see that the implement is being wielded by Sadie herself, who snaps at the cameraman: “Get that fucking thing out of my face!”
Cut back to Sadie Sixguns, who pinions the boy to the ground, squats over his head, peels open her labia and begins urinating into his nose. “Back to you in the studio.” Fade out on Sadie’s lusty rebukes: “Bad boy, you’ve been such a bad boy.”
The anchor is still smiling inanely, completely naked now and with a dwarf sucking on her toes. “Thanks for that, Sadie. Important things to consider there. And in language news: stir-frys, or stirs-fry? Our polls are now open. For the rest of the evening, nude poop sports.”
|
|
| Mitosis |
[16 Mar 2008|06:11pm] |
As the alarm subsides, you (bolt upright and panicked like a spring-loaded corpse) spend the first few moments of your day examining the pillow to see how your male pattern baldness has progressed overnight. While your eyes do this, you manipulate your tongue so that accumulated nocturnal scum is scraped from its surface by your front teeth. After a while you stagger to your feet and curve down the hallway to the kitchen, only making one cup of coffee but filling the kettle enough for six, and while the thing boils you take a cigarette from the packet on the counter and tap it stupidly on the counter in cadence with your headache. The kettle clicks off so you put the cigarette down and it rolls into a puddle and you take the coffee mug from the dish drainer and try to open the coffee jar but it's too much for your weak morning wrists so you pry it open with a teaspoon and then use the teaspoon to move the granules from the jar to the mug but you misjudge the elevation of the second heaping and it bounces against the outer rim of the mug and the little deconstituted pellets fall everywhere (you'll be picking them up with your feet for the next week so don't bother sweeping), so you reload. This done, there's no milk, so you pour yoghurt in instead, not really knowing what is happening, then tip the lot down the sink, light a new cigarette, shed your shorts and move into the shower.
Twisting the ancient cold tap, it explodes off the wall like a mortar shell, the little screw thing with the C on it completely threadbare and now you're left with three, four pieces of tap, so you throw away the coily bit and balance the hot water as well as you can, tiny little sliver of soap that you can barely pick up and hold on to, then the thumping in the walls begins, the pressure not equalised, or perhaps overequalised, in the water pipes, the whole house shakes while you shower and you stand there smoking the cigarette and metal-smelling water sluicing over your back, you suck in the steam to help clear your lungs, the water turns lukewarm, then cold, then hot, and so forth, with no input. Examine your testicles, slightly amazed at the varied extremes to which they may be manipulated. Leave the shower running while you go and fetch the pliers (a garlic crusher) and twist the cold knob closed. Towel yourself almost-dry and stare at yourself in the mirror, stare into the mirror at the blu-tac residue on the peeling wall behind you from that one time you thought it would be nice to have a poster - that French booze one everybody has - in an unventilated Melbourne bathroom. Avoid looking at the ceiling where mould grows like constellations.
Leave wet footprints on the carpet as you walk back to the bedroom and drop the towel and sit down on the edge of the bed, staring for a long time at the area just to the right of your feet, then get up, underwear, pants, shirt (thanks to your still-moist body the shirt doesn't slip on as it should, the neck is too far forward and it's tight around your armpits, so you take it by the shoulders and flap it until it settles properly), then sit back down on the bed and pull on one sock, stare for a long moment at that same patch of floor, then the next sock, by now you are exhausted and how easy it would be to just take the phone off the hook and slump back in bed like there's a load of smack up your arm, but no, so you put on the boots, lace them, and a few minutes later, just as the lacing is finished, you get an itch on your right ankle, so that boot comes off, scratch scratch scratch, and back on it goes. Jesus. You realise the cat has been licking itself in the same place ever since you woke up so you sigh at it and go back to the kitchen, spill some dry food into the bowl.
While you are doing this it strikes you cruelly that it is Saturday. You straighten up and stare accusingly at the fridge, because that's all there is at eye level. You go into the bedroom and tear everything off, furious but not furious enough to pop any buttons, and get back into bed, but it's no use, sleep is forgotten like junk mail that you transplant directly from the letter box to the bin. There's nothing for it but to do the fucking dishes so you go into the kitchen and soon enough you are plunging your hands into a sinkful of boiling water, gritting your teeth long enough to clean half a spatula, before withdrawing the hands in agony and waiting for the pain to subside, back in to do the second half and flicking it out of the sink in the direction of the drainer, and it never occurs to you to just let it all cool down a bit.
|
|
| Ghosts I |
[04 Feb 2008|08:19pm] |
|
He struck me as the sort of man who would go outside on a summer’s evening and stomp the ground in order to stop the crickets from chirping. On Thursdays he would go into the chemist’s and handle all the diaphragms, one by one, muttering to himself “throbbing hairy spodge parcels, ahh”, and then start to cry. Eventually the police would be called.
|
|
| Jade |
[30 Dec 2007|01:49pm] |
|
“I still remember the sound of that engine pulling up in the driveway,” she’s saying between sips of water. "Whenever I hear that same engine now, my hands start to shake. My gut turns.” “I know,” I say. “Do you suppose it will ever be different?” she asks, pleads. I place my hand over hers on the tabletop in what I hope is a gesture of reassurance but then, stupidly, I say: “I couldn’t tell you.” “Whenever I get out of a hot shower,” she says, “there they are in the mirror, bright pink.” “Let’s please not talk about this any more,” I sigh. “Let’s order.” “But I want to talk about it,” she says, then, remembering, “I’m not hungry.” “Did you know,” I start, in an attempt to lighten the mood, “That thermobaric devices – you probably know them as fuel-air bombs – are designed to cause damage not with the initial explosion, but with the resultant implosion? I read somewhere that the implosion has the power to actually suck your lungs out of your mouth.” “Jesus,” she says. “I know,” I smile, I think I smile. “Look behind you.” My hand stops partway to my mouth. I put the glass back on the table. Her face has gone very pale. Her eyes have become very wide. She says again: “Look behind you.” I don’t.
|
|
| These Creatures Look Crooked |
[19 Dec 2007|06:38pm] |
|
I sit on the porch in the half-darkness smoking a cigarette and chewing off the skin around my fingernails and feeding it to the ants that scurry across the steps, and their mandibles clamp down and they carry my flesh aloft like an emperor. I finish the cigarette and reach into my pocket for my phone and take out the phone and call her number. She answers on the third ring and her voice is thick, muted. “It’s unlocked,” she says. “Just come in.” “Okay,” I say, and I hang up and go inside. In the kitchen I take the bottle of vodka out of the freezer and open it and take a drink and the syrupy stuff goes down neat and squats there in my hollow belly, snarling, like panic. The smell hits me in the hallway and I take a moment to adjust to it. People don’t smell their own smells, and hers is a mixture of halitosis, armpit, and dope. I walk into the bedroom and she won’t let me smoke in the house but there she is in bed with a joint, taking big clumsy drags at it. She looks terrible. “You look terrible,” I say, taking off my jacket and throwing it on the floor. She looks at me for a full minute, expressionless, then shrugs and takes another pull of the joint. “I haven’t been feeling very well,” she says finally. I sit down on the bed next to her and take off my shoes. “Give me some of that,” I say, putting my feet up. “No,” she says. Then she says: “I had a dream this afternoon, a daydream I guess, about a child, hollowed out and blackened by fire.” I exhale roughly through my nose and lean my head back against the wall. “Did you take your lithium?” I ask her. “Yes.” “I was walking along today,” I say after a while, “And two girls passed me, and I heard their conversation, and one of them said ‘I had a dream last night that somebody put half an aspirin in my ear’ and the other one goes ‘Oh my god I had the same dream!’” “Why are you telling me this?” “What’s that smell?” “I told you I was sick. Do you want anything to eat? I think there’s some stuff in the kitchen.” “I’m okay,” I tell her. A lie. I take another drink of the vodka and pass it to her. She shakes her head slightly but takes it anyway, has a drink, hands the bottle back to me, and rubs her nose roughly with the back of her wrist. “I can’t feel my nose,” she says. “What?” “I said, I can’t feel my nose.” “Jesus Christ, what’s that fucking smell?” The cat jumps up on the foot of the bed, turns in circles three times, then jumps down again. “Are we gonna fuck tonight?” she asks me. I consider the question for a few moments. She hasn’t wanted to have sex for about a week, saying over and over again “It’s a surprise, it’s a surprise,” and I was frustrated but now I simply don’t feel like it, and I wonder if I should just break up with her and get it over and done with. “Maybe,” I say. “Can you rub my back?” “No. Why don’t you take a shower?” “Go to hell.” I take out a cigarette and light it and am surprised when she doesn’t say anything. It is estimated that the act of body modification began as many as 40,000 years ago, with historical and archaeological evidence suggesting that Australian Aboriginals, for example, were adept in the arcane arts of subincision and labial elongation. The Similaun man was discovered with an ear piercing. In Paris in the nineteenth century, nipple piercing in young females was a socially acceptable vogue and discussed, and displayed, openly. I get up and go over and turn on the CD player. “What do you want to listen to?” I ask. “I don’t care. Nothing. I don’t care.” I straighten up and scratch my stomach and take another drink of vodka. “Have you fed the cat?” “Yeah, I fed him before.” “I don’t believe you. It doesn’t look as though you’ve moved from that bed in days.” “I’m cold,” she says. “Mmm,” I say, and I leave the room and go into the toilet and urinate and don’t wash my hands and I come back. “Do you want me to get another blanket?” “Please,” she says. I fetch an extra blanket from the linen cupboard and throw it across the bed, then lay down on top of it. It isn’t cold at all. “Why is it,” she asks, slowly, “That humans think themselves so superior to all the other animals? Is it because we found God?” I snort and look down at my fingers. “Which one?” I ask. “I wish you would come to mass with me.” I wish you would take a fucking shower, I don’t say. “Maybe I will, one day.” “I don’t feel very good.” “You said.” Cutaneous mechanoreceptors – the legendary Krause corpuscles – are present in massive amounts in both the penis and the clitoris, and are wholly responsible for the release of endorphins into the brain, a signal to approach and initiate orgasm. Horizontal piercing of the preputium clitoridis, certainly a delicate and painful procedure, is said to immeasurably enhance sexual pleasure. She frowns, and reaches under the blanket for something, then frowns again and withdraws her hand. “What’s wrong?” I ask, putting the cigarette out in a coffee cup. “Nothing. I can’t…I can’t really feel my legs. I think I’m going to go to sleep.” “Whatever,” I say. I drink some more vodka and light another cigarette and turn off the lamp while she slides down the bed and puts her head on the pillow. “Do you love me?” she asks. I don’t say anything. She is quickly asleep, her breathing ragged, high. I finish the bottle and the cigarette and get up and take my clothes off in the dark and lay back down. Everything seems blue, and the smell is stronger. I gag slightly and then put my arm across my forehead and smell the cologne on my wrist. Sepsis, generally referred to as blood poisoning, is a whole-body infection responsible for an upsurge in white blood cells, tachycardia, consumptive coagulopathy, meningococcemia, acute renal failure, and organ death. It is generally treatable with antibiotics, dialysis, fluid replacement, but must be detected early. I wake up I don’t know how much later, on my stomach beneath the covers, something hard pressing against my thigh. I can hear the cat licking itself at the foot of the bed. I roll over onto my back, kicking it away inadvertently, and reach across the bed, half-dazed, and begin rubbing her breast. I move a little closer and say “mmm” and I move my hand down her stomach, sneaking my fingers into her panties, and am pleased to discover that she is wet and, as they say, ready. I yank the panties down to her knees and then, curious, move my hand back to the top, I suppose you would call it the top, of her vagina. I feel something cold there, metal, a little ring. I realise she isn’t breathing.
|
|
| Reckoner |
[17 Nov 2007|10:35am] |
|
For some reason we are on a deserted airplane, and the girl is stood before me only in her underwear. We have had a disagreement of some sort and she challenges me to a knife fight. I shake my head and say I don’t want to hurt her. She tells me she doesn’t care any more. I pick up a knife from one of the seats and she does the same and we advance slowly on one another. I don’t even notice as she slides her blade into my stomach and I reach behind her and push my own into her lower back. A single tear dances down her face and I don’t recognise it and she smells softly of talcum powder, long dirty blonde hair, but I recognise the warmth as she presses in to me, straddling my leg, and she takes her knife out of my belly and slides it in again. I keep forcing her closer to me, clamping down with both hands around the hilt of my blade, and she staggers and we fall against the door of the cockpit. I look down at her mouth, lips parted slightly, tongue pulsing and pink and perfect, saliva bridging her teeth. She feels so soft and beautiful against me, so safe, that I pull her in harder, crushing her, enveloping her. Then it’s just me.
|
|
| Bittersweet Distractor |
[15 Nov 2007|06:35pm] |
|
A man sits down opposite my fire and though he seems pleasant enough, haunted, I have no patience for him and I draw my pistol and fire it through his left eye, it ricochets inside his head and comes out the right eye, whizzing past me. I almost laugh but don’t and lie down and fall asleep and when I wake again the sun sits pregnant in the middle of the sky and something has been at the man’s body during the night, eating his lips and the flesh of his cheeks. I go through his pockets while he smiles up at me and find some money and a little hip flask of – I sniff the contents – whiskey. I put the stuff down my throat and regurgitate it all immediately in a single graceful movement like a demented shadow. Out of curiosity I roll the man over and see that there is a steel plate screwed into the back of his head. I touch my own, its surface already baking and driving fire into my brain. That was my last bullet.
|
|
| Supple Hope |
[12 Nov 2007|08:34pm] |
|
The storm rolls in quickly and we batten down the hatches, clustering in the draughty cellar around an old oil lantern. It isn’t long before we turn to incest and cannibalism, alternately fucking and eating one another as the atmosphere rages above us. But we tire of this soon enough and somebody suggests a game of Monopoly. I volunteer to return to the farmhouse and gather up the box, but the moment the hatch is unbattened I am lifted up into the vortex and twisted about like mere debris. Once I am able to properly orient myself I decide that the incest and cannibalism wasn’t so bad and I wish I was still down there huddled around that old oil lantern, because my lips are getting really chapped.
|
|
| Woman King |
[19 Oct 2007|08:47am] |
|
Using the power of my mind I set fire to the children in the playground, and then erect mirrors like monoliths, so they might see themselves ablaze and be thrown into further panic. Unsurprisingly, this works very well, for I had had premonitions. Later, at the bar, I try to convince the woman sitting next to me that our cardiovascular, or circulatory, system, is intricately linked within our bodies, like an enormous self-contained network, or the roots of a tree, moving blood and oxygen to our organs and limbs. She laughs and shakes her head and demands that I prove it, so as a simple demonstration I open up both my wrists and tease out the cephalic veins, slowly, like purple worms, until they hang there in little loops. When I pull on the artery from my left wrist, the one on my right wrist shortens, and vice versa – I make them do a little dance. She is naturally enamoured and orders another round of Paris Green. I smile at her, and then hiccup, once. Each fiber of her jacket has a different smell.
|
|
| Nothing Inside You Is Real |
[09 Oct 2007|03:03pm] |
The small room is already heavy with the scents of sour alcohol, old blood and cigarette ash, urine, phlegm, ejaculate and stale sweat. A miasm? The word trickles down the edges of my brain and pools around my cerebellum and I stand still for a moment to allow this to happen, the door already locked behind me. I take out my notebook and write down my impressions so far, to this point, but it’s useless trying to predict what will happen next. I will set the notebook down.
Anhedonia is the next word that strikes me and so I write this down now, for I have lost all sensation of pleasure in these activities. More accurately the strongest smell is probably the one produced by the haemoglobin molecules sprayed about along the walls and ceiling, that decaying iron smell you encounter on the footpath outside emergency wards at hospitals.
I spent these past minutes opening and then quickly closing the red velvet curtains, and then I went into the small bathroom and turned on the shower and watched it for a while, thin slivers of meat flickering against the drainpipe, surging. I pulled up a congealed clump of pubic hair flecked with skin and held it there in my fingers like a dead thing, let it fall into the wastebasket. We drew maps on one another last night and their outlines still remain upon the bedsheets, indecipherable accusations.
Swigged just now from a near-empty bottle of liquor, found my mouth filled with nicotine, spat it out on the floor. My tongue keeps moving in and out of my mouth, like a lizard’s, airing itself, detecting fragrances, saliva building up around it. Now another word: exsanguination. I imagine crawling up inside her womb, up into her belly, finding it all pristine, odourless, plastic-covered, like a surgeon's model. I sit down on the edge of the bed and wait, staring at a finger in the corner.
|
|
| The Body Burned Away |
[07 Oct 2007|09:11pm] |
My sister and I find a woman’s body by the side of the train track, either pushed out or struck, it’s difficult to tell. From this distance I see that one of her arms is missing and the side of her head is caved in, shattered. My sister, fearless, gets closer.
“She’s whistling,” she says, crouching down in the mud and staring at her face.
I move a little closer. I can smell it.
“See if you can roll her onto her back,” I say.
“I’m not touching her, you do it!”
“Just roll her onto her fucking back.”
She frowns at me but does as I tell her, maneuvering the woman from her side onto her back. I take a few more steps forward.
“There’s where the noise is coming from,” I say, pointing at a piece of rib protruding from beneath the woman’s exposed, lacerated breast. “It’s gone through her lung.”
“Her eyes are moving, she keeps looking at me. Should we find a doctor? Her mouth is full of gravel.”
“Those are her teeth.”
“No, it’s gravel I tell you!”
“Let’s drag her down here a little ways. There’s a creek, maybe we can get her some water.”
“What good is water going to do her? Oh gross, there’s something hanging out of her belly.”
“What is it?”
“I think it’s a little hand. It’s a little baby’s hand. What if it’s still alive?” My sister touches a stick to the palm of the exposed child. The fingers move, wrapping around it.
“Come on, we’ll drag her down here to the creek. It’s too hot out here in the sun, it’s shadier down there.”
“We have to find a doctor!”
“Will I do it on my own then?” I challenge.
My sister starts to cry as we drag the woman by her ankles down to the creek bed, and prop her up against a boulder there. The baby’s hand is still clamped down around the stick, but the flesh has gone blue. I touch the woman’s nipple, and it responds instantly, stiffening.
“Umm,” I say.
“Look at this,” my sister says, wiping her nose. “Beneath her hair, something glistening.”
I look where she indicates and see that a part of the woman’s skull has been cleaved neatly away, and that her wet hair has plastered itself across a portion of her brain. Gingerly I peel the hair back until the grey pink thing is sitting there, moving slightly, like sleep. The woman makes a noise. I can’t explain it.
“What did you think it was?” I say to my sister, suddenly angry. “A jewel? What did you expect?”
“You don’t have to be so horrid!” she hollers, stamping her foot in the dust.
“Show me,” I tell her.
“I don’t want to.”
“Show me,” I say again, taking a step towards her, my fists clenching.
She sighs exaggeratedly and pulls down the front of her pants, then her underwear, and peels it open slightly. I notice for the first time that sparse hair is developing there and that the inside seems pinker than usual, as though she is aroused.
“Umm,” I say again. I turn back to the woman, and suddenly get the idea that if we can save the baby, we will be heroes. “Find me a sharp rock,” I tell my sister.
“For what? What are you going to do?”
“We have to get the baby out.”
“And do what with it?”
“We might be able to rescue it. Will you just find me a fucking sharp rock?”
The woman’s eyes are flickering back and forth between our two faces and she continues to whistle, her chest heaving. One of her eyes protrudes slightly from its socket. I reach in and pull it out further, and it dangles there, like a fat grub on the end of a fishing line. Something turns inside my stomach and I try to push the eye back in. The woman moves as if to bite me and teeth dribble from her mouth. My sister comes back with a rock in her hand, still wet from the creek bed. I point.
“I told you they were her teeth.”
“What did you do to her eye?”
“Nothing, it just slipped out.”
“It did not! You’re a liar!”
I slap her once, hard, across the cheek. Her lower lip trembles.
“Stay out of my light while I try and do this,” I say, and crouch down between the woman’s legs. I try cutting her open but the rock isn’t sharp enough, so in the end I just take the baby’s arm and begin tugging on it. That doesn’t work either and, furious, I stand up and begin kicking the woman in the stomach. Hot blood squirts out at least three feet from the penetration beneath her breast. She makes another of those unexplainable sounds, but it doesn’t come from her mouth or throat. I turn and look at my sister, see her hand has found its way into the front of her pants and is moving around in there.
“I dare you to kiss her brain,” she says softly.
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then um, I’m telling dad.”
“Telling him what?”
“Fuck do you think?”
“I told you not to use that word.”
“You use it all the time.”
“It’s different. I’m a man”
“Are you going to do it or not?”
“Don’t hurry me!” I say, licking my lips and considering various matters. I touch the woman’s nipple again: it doesn’t respond this time. Her eyes have stopped moving. No noise comes from her. Finally I say “I’ll do it if you rub yourself against her arm.”
“That’s revolting, I’m not doing that.”
“Then I don’t see why I should have to kiss her brain.”
“Just do it,” she says, her eyes half closing, her hand moving faster.
I move around to the damaged side of the dead woman with her dead useless baby and look at the gaping hole in her head. Sandflies have settled upon it, and I blow on them until they disperse. The brain quivers very slightly. It smells like some sort of strange herb. I lean in and touch it gently with my lips, and sense that it is still warm. I allow my mouth to part and press my tongue against the warm organ and it slides down into a crevice, but has no real taste, just a sensation of moisture.
|
|
| Real Person |
[05 Oct 2007|09:18am] |
|
After that embryonic rapture miscarried I could peer into the empty void and found the same sick monster still curled up within me, the monster that had been raping me since I was fifteen years old. His time spent submerged in glowing liquid had not mellowed his appetite and he peered back up at me, hungry, but how could I feed him, with her so close? It would be like an accusation, or worse, an admission of my own inability to survive without simultaneously striving for destruction. They battled for a time, sadness and the maiden, within my head, but I had no experience in her deployment, and he was so strong, he had every advantage, such a cunning tactician, and in the end she was obliterated, and what was I to do with this poor broken bloodied thing? Attempt half-heartedly to repair it by butting bandage atop bandage while at the same time seeking less obvious means of self-punishment: isolation, disgust, virtual violence, hatred for everything and anything, finally alcohol. I grew heavy so that I could no longer be happy with what I saw. In my all-encompassing, my absolute ineptitude, my comprehensive immaturity, I wanted her away from me. I wanted the monster because he was so familiar. Or rather, he loved me in the only way I truly understood. And now she has learned the lesson I was trying for so long to teach her, I discover that I was working from the wrong fucking literature. He has me by the throat again. But I will best him this time around. I have to, because I'm willing to read the same chapters in my life story only a certain number of times.
|
|
| Get Out Get Out Get Out |
[04 Oct 2007|11:18am] |
|
We lay down together amongst the caltrop plants and let the sun cauterize our bodies until the skin blisters and peels away like burning pages; the hot wind carries small fragments spiralling upwards and strong crimson ants begin to investigate the raw aspects. Our exterior flesh slick with lymph fluids, many of the ants flounder and drown. Other, larger species carry their carcasses away. My eyes swell shut and I sense flies alighting upon my broken legs, injecting their young. It dawns on me that I feel very unwell and I reach out my hand for hers, but find only empty space.
|
|
| Big Strong Boss |
[03 Oct 2007|03:06pm] |
|
The remainder of us in the open ward listen to the thirtieth of our number finally succumb one night to emphysema, a process which commences at lights out and continues for three and one half hours. It moves from a heavy wheeze, something he always had, then to desperate gasps and lastly to a sort of thick wet bubbling sound and we have no choice but to hear it. Several of us hurry the transaction along by lighting cigarettes and beating the dust from our pillows and blankets. The next morning an orderly comes and drags the body away and we crowd around the bed of the man situated directly next to the deceased, a man who has spent the early morning, it seems, plunging his fingers into the infected crevasse on his right thigh, tearing it open, through the decaying muscle and eventually exposing bone. Pus and rotten blood drip from the sides of his canvas-covered mattress. The bone is astonishingly pink, like uncooked chicken, symptomatic of his condition. We tut together, knowledgeable, having seen such things before. Somebody suggests urinating in the wound, urine being renowned amongst seafarers for its healing properties, so we carry the man in a seated lift into the shower stalls, strip him of his clothing, and lean him against the filthy tiled wall. Before I have the chance to participate I am summoned to my usual duties, and pull on the heavy boots and chain gloves that are required apparel in the institution’s incineration chambers. I wonder if my beloved will be there and spend some moments looking for her, alas, then commence my work. I recognise the first body as the lunger who died last night and permit myself a grimace of sympathy before I set about dismantling him. I recognise the second as hers and, trembling, ask the supervisor to be transferred from disassembly to fuel rotation. His eyes become slits and he touches the point of his tongue to the middle of his top lip. I repeat my request and he grasps my shoulders in a friendly fashion, shakes me slightly, and turns me around.
|
|
|
[11 Sep 2007|08:53pm] |
|
I met a man in town the other day, sitting on one of the smoking benches in the mall. They aren’t really designed for smoking, but that’s where the smokers go to do it. So I went there and sat down next to a man. He began talking to me. I didn’t hear what he was saying but he talked and talked and before I knew it he had rolled back his right sleeve and showed me this deep old scar. I moved closer to him, suddenly more interested. Apparently it was from when he was an electrician, and he was working on installing a sign – Girls! Girls! Girls!, one of those – and the ladder slipped from beneath him and he was impaled through the arm on whatever, some sharp thing, and electrocuted until the power shorted and somebody got him down. Then he took off his hat and showed me where half his brain had been removed. He told me he was riddled with holes, one of his kneecaps was missing, and he shifted his top teeth – the entire top of his mouth was artificial. And then he told me the same story again. And again. And every time he told it, I gave him another cigarette. I rewarded him, wanted to hear the story. And I wondered what it would be like to be him, impaled and electrocuted, full of holes, half my brain removed, just like I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have stomach cancer, spreading up inside me towards my lungs, shifting beneath my belly, and people would stop me in the street and ask: “Why do you look that way?” And I could lift up my shirt and beneath the fresh and old wounds they could see the cancer moving and I could tell them: “It’s my sunflower.” I want to know what it’s like to…my brother told me a story a little while ago, about when he was with the military police, and for some reason he was at a hospital, and two nuns were talking to one another, and one nun asked the other what she thought of a certain thing that had transpired some time in the past, and the other nun said: “I don’t remember. I was in so much pain.” I want to know what it’s like to be in so much pain that I can’t remember anything.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
writingstatic's journal