The Fucking Crazer

Independence Day Fan of Fiction

2010-09-15T22:12:00.003+01:00

No fucking way, an alien invasion. Here I am on my way to my first day at Jez's new business venture, a comic shop he decided to call Dr Wirtham's. I got that, I got it and it cost me a sit down with some girl I actually sort of liked but whatever it cost me SIX HUNDRED POUNDS to get to Pittsburgh for my copy and I value my cash and my comics more than sex except when it's dark and I didn't pay the internet bill.

Anyway I got an old Zap Comix on my knee on the bus when I hear on my walkman radio the Eiffel Tower has a giant, disc-shaped aircraft hovering on top of it. You remember that lyric from Blonde on Blonde, 'like a mattress balancing on a bottle of wine'? Yeah, that was me and France's national monument. I could see it and suddenly I was sat on the sharpest edge of the world, I couldn't sit down. I immediately stood up and yelled 'STOP THE BUS THE ALIENS ARE HERE' and only one other guy looked at me like I wasn't having a comedown like no other (I've never done drugs, I only want the performance enhancing ones the CIA used in the 60s).

Know how I knew it was an alien invasion? Me and my buddies were talking shit through last week when I got home late from my dishwashing job and maybe it was the fact I'd de-greased the dishwash and inhaled loads of fumes, I felt totally fucked up until I'd had a few pints of Pepsi, or maybe it was the fact that it's 1995, the internet is OPEN FOR BUSINESS and suddenly we're discovering computers are pretty much the greatest creation in humanity, limitless untapped potential that we can do pretty much anything with. And these fuckers knew that we knew, and decided we had definitely got far enough in our journey of self discovery and that it was time to go back to Egypt, back to Anubis who was an alien god himself, and the rest of the suits from Langley Virginia would go live in 16 Cygni (close enough to hit us at warp-speed but far enough that human supplies will never last long enough for us to bring the fight to them) and rule us from afar, as they had been done ever since J Edgar Hoover first made contact after taking a day trip to Roswell in 1953 and seeing for the first time what the rest of the world will now be forced to see.

I pity these people. They don't know a thing about aliens, they all go to work every day and watch soap operas and sit with their kids at home and go and rent Aliens from the video shop at the weekend and scare themselves shitless but you know what's scariest about that? THOSE ALIENS COULDN'T FLY. Didn't even have a spaceship, they just burst out like 'Surprise! Here's my head shaped like your cock and I'm MADE OF BONE AND ACID!' These aliens have a ship, probably a hierachy of command and undoubtedly the co-operation of the US government. We learnt at the weekend that if you type 'bombing' or 'terrorism' or some other shit like that into the internet the CIA AUTOMATICALLY HACKS YOUR LINE and watches your conversation. Jez tried it and his computer flickered a bit. He said 'That happens a lot, it's a shit old monitor and my dad won't get me a new one' but you know what? No such thing as a coincidence. None.

I turn on the driver before I leave the bus. 'Have you heard? France is being invaded by aliens.' The bus driver checks his watch and says 'They'll probably have surrendered by midday then eh?' and a load of people hear and start laughing. Tossers. We're all off to get fucking nuked by a superior race and all they can do is sit on a bus and laugh at the French. Jez isn't stupid. He'll have a shop with a basement and we can sit down there. I get my tape recorder out. 'Memo: Make sure Jez has a bog that works. We'll be living down there for months.' I click and save. The little red light flashes and it already feels like we're up against it. I've come prepared this morning though. Did my daily shit before I left for work for a change and didn't rush my toast and tea. I almost feel like I knew.

Walking down the high street just round the corner from Jez's place, a news bulletin on Radio 4: a massive round aircraft has been positioned above the White House. Aides are rushing to evacuate the President and First Lady.
That's it then. What are you supposed to do when they land a spaceship on the President's house? It's so devastatingly simple I'm surprised it's never been tried before. Of course there are literally hundreds of Stealth bombers patrolling Washington DC but they've probably just cloaked their way in there, that's the first thing you'd invent if you were to mount an airborne attack on a planet. They do it with land vehicles in C&C, I can't believe we don't have any weaponry like that lying around somewhere. I don't wish harm on anyone but really shit would just be better if people actually paid attention to real-time strategy games. We should be up to like Tesla-capable weaponry and Philadelphia Experiment teleportation by now, that's not even the good weaponry either. As it is we still love the M16 and C4, stuff we were basically using on Communists in the Seventies. The Army have just got lazy. I pretty much run down the remainder of the high street and turn the corner, where I knock over this old man by accident. He's so grey, he has this grey jacker past his waist with a sheepskin collar and grey trousers and his hair is thin and grey too. 'He's soylent green, leave him' I think to myself, but I stop anyway and grab him by the elbows. He yells in pain and shouts at me in this husk of a voice 'You stupid boy, I have arthritis! Can't you be a bit more bloody careful?!' He taps at my shins with his walking stick and I think he's testing out the fortitude of my legs sp he can come and nick them when we're all malnourished and living in bomb shelters ('Shit', I realise, 'he's got the edge on me here, he's probably already lived through one war') when I realise he's actually just trying to hit me in frustration. 'I'm trying to help you, do you know there's a spaceship on top of the White House right now?' I say, exasperated. 'Shut up you fat little boy, you'd probably find it easier to slow down if you lost a bit of weight,' he wheezes. 'Oh fuck off,' I say. You're going to be puree for the hybrid homo-alien baby factories!' I grab his walking stick off him and chuck it into the road, where it hits a cyclist in the face. He nearly crashes into a bin and screams 'TWAT!' at me. I scream 'DEADMAN!' back and run to Jez's on the corner. I check my watch and barrel inside.

A lot of customers are in there. The place is genuinely pretty busy, and Jez has a big smile on his face chatting away with these two pretty girls with pink and red hair respectively about Harvey Pekar. Won't be any customers in about four hours Jez, time to man the fucking barricades. I rush round the counter and grab the collar of his Amazing X-Men t-shirt. His girlfriend Ellie bought him that when they went to Los Angeles with her mum and dad. Jez said he'd never been happier, so I killed Ellie's guinea pig and said Jez overfed it. To be honest, they weren't getting married so what was the problem? Plus she did get a lot of looks from other guys, she would've dumped him eventually. Jez never found out it was me.

'Jez, turn the radio on. It's happening.'
Jez looks a bit unnerved and smiles uncomfortably. 'What are you talking about?'
'Get the radio on. What have you got? Transistor? Anything will do.' I look on the shelves for his base for music.
'It's a CD player Will, I haven't got a radio in the shop. What's going on?'
I look at the customers. A few of them have stopped looking at the shelves and are now looking at us.
'Alien invasion Jez. Aliens in France. Aliens in D.C. They'll get the Prez, it's a matter of time.'
'D.C? The Prez?' Jez chuckles at me. 'You're not American Will, your dad's from Mansfield. Are you ready to start work?' He looks at me hopefully. Oh God Jez. I'm sorry, this is one of those 'corrective measures' that we all joke about whilst talking about US international policy in the 1960s. I brush my hair out of my face and breathe deeply.
'Jez. Close the fucking shop. We're going to be nuked.' I turn to the customers. They're all looking at me now. Some of them look geninely alarmed. A heavy shadow falls across my heart as I realise that almost all of these people will be dead in hours.
'All right! All of you fuck off! We're closed! Get out!' I start herding people towards the door. There's a few loud mutters of discontent and someone shouts 'Go and have a shower you fat sweaty bastard'. You'll be having a shower mate, of the nuclear variety I think as I haul people out of the door one by one.
'STOP!' I turn around and so do a few customers and we all look at Jez, who looks pretty pissed off actually.
'Will, what the HELL do you think you're doing?'
I tap my Walkman. 'Alien invasion. France and America have already fallen. It's only a matter of time before they come for Britain. We have to get inside! Have you got a basement?'
Jez shakes his head. 'No, Only a storage room upstairs.'
I don't believe this. I've played through so many FPSs with Jez that I would've PRESUMED that he knew when the shit hits the fan, the basement is the best and easiest place to defend precisely because of its underground position. I throw my hands up in exasperation and catch a whiff of myself. Maybe that guy was right.
'Jez, we need to turn this place into a fucking fortress. Have you got supplies? A kitchen? A toilet? Pulldown bed or sofa or something? Because you will need ALL OF THIS in about three hours time and I'm giving you the heads-up now.' This guy would be dead without me, I think as I wrestle someone away from the door. They've left their purse apparently.
Jez comes round the counter and I can see by the look in his eye that we're finally on the same wavelength. Best friends since we met in high school. Since I met him. Didn't see his friends much after that really. 'Will,' he begins. I raise an eyebrow. The plan is on.
'You're a fucking twat. This is Milton Keynes. Why would an alien invasion come here? I don't have a toilet, I go to the Crown round the corner where I get my lunch and use theirs. They're fine with it. Let these customers back in and fuck off.'
I'm stunned. I'm honestly lost for words, and a haze sort of descends over me. As I stand in silence in the early morning heat, treetops swaying and a helicopter buzzing overhead, I think about my next move. Is there a basement at the library? Bad idea I realise; it's round the corner from a petrol station. Massive explosions. I can see Jez's lips moving but it's almost as if the nukes have already gone off. My hearing is drowned out by a tinny whistling sound. Then it all comes back in a flood.
'-seeing Ellie tonight so don't bother calling round. And don't bother coming back for work tomorrow. You're sacked.'

Independence Day Fan Fiction

2010-09-15T16:44:00.001+01:00

So we’ve travelled for fucking ever to this planet, and if we’re going to live here there can be no peace and we have to wipe out all the crazy shits that live here already. This, actually, is fine, because I mean their technology is ok, I guess I couldn’t build any of it, but they couldn’t build any of the shit we have, and as such they just can’t fucking touch us and it’s amazing.

Their fighters don’t have shields, they don’t shoot green lasers, they’re not as fast or manoeuvrable as ours. Everyone I know has signed up for this shit. How often do you get to feel like a character in a computer game, in real life, really?

But then the Humans do some weird fucking magic thing, and I hear how all our forces on Earth have been wiped out in seconds, the last of my life because we, on this mother ship, are next to go.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

2009-10-29T03:03:00.001Z

There’s only the headpiece to go now, so he takes a minute to look at it, inspecting the form he’s about to assume. He snarls and tries to imagine that the sound is coming from inside it, that he’s a helpless victim--his sister, maybe--faced with this awful thing that actually is him. Then he’s really inside it, and he’s ready. His room is different from a wolf’s-eye-view; everything looks suddenly flimsy and breakable. He has claws now and powerful lupine muscles. He howls and it’s a good howl.

Down the stairs he runs, and when he sees his sister at the bottom he stops for a moment, growling a threat, then leaps up and knocks her to the floor. “Get off me you brat!” she starts to say, but he tears her throat right out, and the words with it. He’s eating her words, he thinks. Funny.

The next thing is his mum’s new coat, the blue one with the brass buttons. He heard her talking about how much it cost, and now he has to take it apart to see for himself. He swipes at it with his claws and it disintegrates like wet tissue paper. “Max!” comes a cry from the next room; his mum must have found his sister’s body. He rushes down the hall and into the kitchen, where he leaps on to the table and sends the crockery flying in all directions. Smash, smash, smash it all goes, except that he’s howling so loudly that he can’t hear it.

“Max!” his mum is in the doorway now, her face a luxurious purple. “What are you doing?! Stop doing that!” He rolls along the table and falls on to the floor; he scrabbles among the fragments of broken crockery, but his mum is too fast. She grabs him by the scruff of his wolf’s neck and hoists him up into a painful two-legged standing position. “You’re going straight to your room you monster!” Then she carries him there. He passes his sister on the way up; she’s clutching her throat, but it seems like she’ll survive after all.

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

2009-10-18T15:14:00.000+01:00

Where once was Max there is now wolf and MAX!!!
BE STILL I say to YOU!!!
My rooms’ walls fall and grow; the jungles of the Amazon are nothing.
Deep within there’s a boat. I sail, almost forever, leaving behind suppers and mothers.
When I get where I’m going I will be KING.

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

2009-10-12T15:17:00.002+01:00

‘I think you dropped something fella.’
White coats are thronged around a long table and a man with enormous glasses is stood at one end periodically observing some movement unseen to my eyes, before writing something on a clipboard. In the corner are soiled rags, they are a used grey; the smell is a sharp rusted something I can’t quite place. A woman has been tossed aside and now lays whispering obscenities just out of earshot. She is grinning. Her bloodied genitals are a point of interest for a passing spider; it begins to make his home between her lips… Outside the door, a tiny pair of eyes lurk as much description takes place on the ‘birth of the new age.’ I creep between two doctors and peer at the filthy table; I have seen this child before, dropped out of a plane, sailing between mountains towards an ancient city. You are the destroyer of worlds, say the doctors, tickling its chin (if it had one)…

Here we are downtown, in the Manhattan Project, and in front of me, in the immaculately manicured garden outside Walt Disney’s white picketed home, I can see Snow White silently watching a rocket lacerating the sky… in the gutter, a junky I saw once buying ice cream for some kid, rubbing up on that kid, getting his stink all over the kid’s face and hands, picks at the pockets of a man who has pushed a beautiful woman against a brick wall and is making violent thrusting motions at her ass… He turns to the junky for a moment and hands him his wallet, stuffed with green; I can see a hammer and sickle burnt into his fleshy hand. ‘Kennedy’s the name,’ I overhear him say, ‘and if you need any more of that, I’m the man to see. I just need a favour from you… Let me finish up here and we can talk.’ The man named Kennedy turns back to the ecstatic woman and resumes thrusting.

A country with a model number. A brain like a car engine. The country is a factory, and I don’t have a member’s card. Those eyes are back.

I turn to my left; some rotten smell seeps through a white wooden door and thin tendrils of wet grey fog ooze through and around the cracks; the scene is an American kitchen, and a guy with slimy black hair and a huge bulbous nose stands here, my God is he ugly, so ugly he could only be a dick or a junky, or a junky operating as a dick, or vice versa (interested readers should note the use of dick here to connote police; and furthermore be aware the level of junkie police is reaching frankly absurd proportions; I confidently predict we’ll be buying from the police in five years) and the guy stands here talking about furniture with another man who treats Ugly Dick and his guided kitchen tour with the kind of good manners that best reveal sneering contempt for that person. Both of them ignore the incinerated child stood in the centre of the black and white panelled tile floor (and now the eyes have a face, but not much of one), and Ugly Dick seems to be checking the other guy’s sidesteps to and from black to white. Dick never moves from white, I note with interest. A large camera tries to worm its way up my ass and I kick the operator full in the face; MCCARTHY says the man’s ticket…did I ever fucking drop something…

Ugly Dick points to something called a dishwasher and gurns at the other guy (note: Dick is speaking slowly and clearly, and the other guy does a lot of nodding and not much else, and now Dick addresses him as Mr Khrushchev) and who’s this guy in the corner, wearing a thick grey suit with his face all red. SAFIRE says the ticket, I don’t know what’s he got to do with all this. Maybe he sells home appliances.

I back out of the kitchen as Dick points at a gigantic refrigerator. The two of them open the door together, and a lot of cameras go off at the point two frozen corpses dressed in army fatigues land on Dick’s shoulder; he stumbles back and Mr Khrushchev masks a laugh with a cough into his red handkerchief. Dick handles the situation with aplomb; ‘Gentlemen,’ he says turning to the press, ‘this is Charles and Dale. They’ve just dropped by to pay their respects.’ A roar goes up amongst the clicking crowd. Back over to the subway and that spoon is still there, years old now, and a squad of coppers has surrounded the spoon; the spoon is under duress and is begging for a break. I vault the turnstile and skimbleskamble down stairs that become darker with each tearing breath I take. My brain has clocked out and it’s not even dawn; but who’s this, a square chunk of flesh made to order; this is the new factory, this is what we build now. He’s got the door and the sports; THE YANKEES WIN AGAIN. I wheel through ninety degrees and that was too much; something like vomit leaves my stomach and launches into orbit. I don’t stick around for a safe landing, but by the caterwauling around my ears I can tell that it’s Mission Accomplished. I make one small step to the left, one giant leap over the tracks and catch a train downtown just as the lab coat and his squad of live corpses arrive hollering and yowling. The subway is moving.

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

2009-09-23T17:48:00.001+01:00

Birds don’t know they sing. They don’t know anything. They don’t have a word for what they do or words at all. Humans write, talk and sing words. The singing stands out against talking which, I think uniquely in the animal kingdom, becomes a loud buzzing when a lot of humans talk simultaneously.

“Like snowflakes,” my parents said, “no two human faces are the same.”

When you first hear this you ask what about identical twins?

Now I ask who cares.

You see so many they all merge into one, an every-face; a buzzing mash of grease, sinew, eyeball and fat. You give up on voices, then faces. This is how they get you.

There’s a reason they’re called the heat. I feel them, can’t spot the faces.

They’ve got the spoon and dropper I dropped, but I get away on the subway.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

2009-09-20T17:51:00.004+01:00

Life is a game of chess being prosecuted in a room-sized industrial oven by a pair of glowering maniacs with sweating teeth and dirty fingernails. And don‘t imagine that they know all the rules. The chessboard—just look at it there, with its cheap veneer peeling and adhering to the undersides of passing shoes—is Washington DC, fair and flaky capital of this Proud Republic. As for me, I’m the red queen, she of the telescopic neck and unpredictable moves. I’m like a kung-fu monkey with short-term memory loss. Oh, and did I mention that there’s been a revolution? That’s right: even the communists are on my tail; this town ain’t big enough for the half of me.

This is going to require a concession on my part. More than one, even. I begin by divesting myself of the incriminating materials: the not-so-silver-anymore spoon goes southwards at the station entrance, which I leave behind like I was never there, sailing over the turnstile with movie-star panache. One problem: my sheer inherent gravitas makes lying low an all-but-impossible proposition. Wherever I go, there I am, usually making some kind of God-awful scene and working the clear-eyed, clean-limbed onlookers of Americaville into a toxic lather. Speaking of which, this fellow here, the one propping the door open, fits the bill like he was the original model: aerodynamic, government-approved haircut; a suit that looks like it was fashioned by human hands, rather than shitted out by a cloth-eating monster from the sewers; and a smile as wide and white as the jawbone of a killer whale. I spit something not quite blood-coloured on his Italian loafers and his teeth swell up like concrete water wings.

Some lab-coated narc is on my tail, shouting unintelligible threats and brandishing what appears to be a bloody corkscrew, at least from the back of my head, where my vision isn’t as keen. I tell him to go lose himself somewhere; I have an appointment in the desert in one hour and if I’m late they’ll flood the place with radiation—the kind that makes your extremities shrivel up and die, leaving only a torso and a deflated football for a head. He doesn’t even try to get the picture. Sensing an impending altercation, I leap across the tracks, just in time to catch onto the back end of a passing train, which tears me away down darkened tunnels at a speed that defies scientific explanation. The narc calls after me, but the only noise I hear is the frenzied rending of stale subway air. The next stop is home; it has to be.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

2009-09-16T14:51:00.000+01:00

On the corner of Black and Kinross, beneath a sky the colour of hard clay, a tree stood with skeletal limbs outstretched. Its trunk bent, leaning away from the shambling homeless and turned up factory owners in polished boots, well cut slate suits. A terminal sun silhouetted their creeping black bodies against a broken brick wall. A tattered man sat in the gutter, snivelling on a sleeve the colour of dried mucus, stray hand feeling the jutted spine of a yellow cat. The cat smelt inside the man’s pocket and yowled; the man muttered something profane. A half-gutted fish flopped out onto the street. The man began to pull at the fish, but the cat dug its paw into the man’s hand and hissed. Slowly, the man pulled his hand back, and then quickly balled it into a fist. He punched the cat squarely on the side of its pinched, starved face, and the cat tumbled into the dust, narrowly avoiding a car that did not stop or even slow down.

Amidst this grotesquery, Clyde looked out from the dirty glass, lip jutting, hands clenching and unclenching in time with the feeble beating of his heart. His eyes fell on the flailing tree; it had already lost all its leaves and it was barely September. It was a sapling; his nights spent beneath the great ash trees stood at the bottom of the shabby brick lean-to that his father called home, curled into his snoring older sister, had informed his view of this. Clyde wondered how long this tree had lived on the corner of Black and Kinross; whether it was still alive, whether it still felt alive. Cars honked angrily as a commotion blew up outside of a butcher’s.

He felt a warm, sweaty clap on his shoulder and turned to face his father, who was busy brushing at his moustache. His nose twitched a little and he sniffed before meticulously running his hands slowly through his thinning hair, forming a skewed side parting. He smoothed it down, but this only had the effect of combing more hair over the less bald part of his scalp, so that it looked as though all of his hair grew on one side of his head. Patting at it with satisfaction, he nodded and looked expectantly at Clyde. Clyde’s lip twitched into half a smile, so that it resembled that leer he caught himself practicing more and more often when he thought of the city women his mother so denounced.

‘You look like a gentleman, Father.’
‘I am well aware of how and to what ends I present myself, my son.’
There was a pause. Clyde’s father’s hair flapped a little in the hot air streaming through from the kitchen. Clyde suppressed his furious sense of shame. Deluded self-righteous prig, he thought to himself as his father set Clyde’s sister on her feet and thrust a digit into her still-dreaming face. Clyde’s mother emerged from the bathroom, and again Clyde fought his urges with his seemingly bottomless reserve of self-disgust and hatred. His father returned to him, and again caught that strange mix of embarrassment and delight flickering on his son’s face. He stood stock still and looked at his father.
‘Asa. Asa,’ called Clyde’s mother. His father turned and raised an eyebrow.
‘Come here dear, the men are leaving their factories. We can reach them now.’ She frowned and, reaching up, patted at her husband’s hair, readdressing the prominent bald spot Asa had so conspicuously missed. ‘Let’s go the sapling. Esta likes to stand beneath it, and it will provide a little shade should the rain fall.’

Asa nodded in decision. ‘A good idea. Clyde! Clyde,’ he repeated as his son stood watching a man shine a timepiece with a laced neckerchief. He walked over quickly and spoke into his ear. ‘My boy, that man trades in gold and secrets. He is neither worth your time nor the inquisitive nature we thank Him for bestowing upon you.’
Clyde had grown up with two fathers; he had come to the conclusion quickly that an ever-present Father who nonetheless showed no apparent interest in him or his family’s struggles was a paradox only an idiot would indulge in. He turned back to his father and smiled quickly. ‘What shall we sing, Father?’ His father smiled broadly and patted Clyde on the back. ‘I thought we would begin with Just as I am. What do you think? Would you like to sing something else?’
Clyde shook his head. ‘No Father. Just as I am is a song men of all persuasions can listen to. I shall be happy to sing it.’
Asa beamed and looked to his wife, fussing over Esta who clutched her organ to her breast. Clyde saw the piercing look of sadness flicker over his sister’s face, and felt wrenching sadness in his heart. ‘Just as I am, Elvira my dear,’ he called out. His wife looked up, startled. ‘Of course I do Asa. I’m troubled you would even ask.’ Asa’s face stopped moving as his train of thought derailed itself, and he stood motionless for a moment with his mouth hanging open. Clyde watched the man with the timepiece resume his walk up the high street. Asa recollected his thoughts and led the family out of the dirty food hall, empty except for a pocked and smoking waiter and a fat yellowish man tending two black pieces of meat on a hissing grill.

As the family crossed the street, Clyde began to envision them in his mind’s eye from atop the factory across from the pitiful sapling, watching his fool of a father march the four children into position before taking up his place alongside his mother. The street was now quickly filling up with browbeaten men who dabbed incessantly at their greased foreheads and wiped filthy hands on filthier pants. Clyde’s mother quickly handed round the battered hymn books to the children, and directed them to the correct pages. Although Clyde could feel the book in his hands, he had the strangest sensation that he was touching the thing through another boy’s body; he was merely a presence inside a hunk of sullied flesh.
With a slow, agonising start, he began to realise he could not see from his own eyes, and he became more and more uncomfortable as he watched himself from atop the factory turn the pages of the book, feeling the book but not seeing it. He scrabbled frantically and then felt his mother touch his shoulder. He saw her repeat the action from his bird’s eye view, and he felt his body relax. He began to worry frantically and desperately tried to see the scene in front of his body as he thought it would look. Yet the more he tried, the more effort he expelled, the further away he felt from returning to himself, and the more alone he felt on top of the factory. The split was agonising; almost physically painful. He could feel something inside his body, something he did not ever want to let go of, but something that seemed to want to inexorably pull away from his desperate grasp. He was terrified his family would not notice.
And they did not.
His sister began to play; the children began to sing, his parents, both bolt upright and his father’s chin raised slightly, so that it almost looked like he was watching Clyde, writhing with fear, on top of his factory.
The family opened their mouths as the organ rang out.

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed on me,
And that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

A few people stood and watched the wretched crew now, and Clyde felt an inkling of something like gratitude as the men congregated in front of the family with their backs turned to him. But gratitude to whom? For what? He watched his singing body; his mother’s hands draped lovingly over his shoulders down onto his chest, and felt that awful shame drop into his gut. But now his heart raced, and his fingers trembled.

Just as I am, and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot,
To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

His father stood, the words booming out long and guttural, in his deep Bostonian drawl. His hands were folded in front of him, and Clyde saw how he tried to make eye contact with some of the members of his audience. All of them turned away.

Just as I am, tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Some of the men below began to form small groups, evidently recognizing one another, and eventually turned away from Clyde’s family to engage in conversation. He watched two men quickly nod and point at his mother and sister Esta, and then they fell about cackling, like birds fighting over a carcass. Clyde’s lips and cheeks burned with fury, but not all of it was directed at the men.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind--
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find--
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Clyde suddenly caught sight of the man with timepiece again. He had just left a baker’s shop and was now clutching a small brown waxed bag. His route to his waiting vehicle took him straight past Clyde and his bedraggled family. He did not stop. He paused as two swarthy workmen parted to let the man through, and he walked to his car where his chauffeur waited. He got in, and the engine started, a powerful rumbling noise that belched a thick cloud of bluish smoke into the darkening sky. The audience began to take their leave.

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe,
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

One man remained in the falling darkness as his father led them to the finale. The organ stopped dead. Esta got up off her knees. The two young girls huddled against the sapling; Clyde knew now that it was dead. He realised he could no longer feel his mother’s hands on his heart. He looked away as his father began his call to the evening sky and empty streets.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

2009-09-15T16:45:00.001+01:00

Lakewood, Colorado. 1924

The Ironfists are nearing the climax of their journey. The Ironfists are a classic family unit - two parents and double that in children - and solidly American. Judging by their appearances, they are a poor family. I think I even saw one of those shoes with the toe seperated from the sole, flapping up and down as the owner (one of the boy-children) walks. Disgustingly, the eldest child is pulling a portable organ behind her as they walk, even though it has no wheels. Eventually they stop on the corner of Kipling and Colfax and arrange themselves in formation around the organ, with the pulling-girl also the instrumentalist. She plays, and they all sing. Religious music. But not the exciting sort that black people play, for these poor people are white.
The corner of Kipling and Colfax is moderately busy, but the passers-by pay them no mind until a group of three cockneys (one of whom is Ray Winstone) and a Venetian stop a few metres from the group. One of the three cockneys - but not the one who is Ray Winstone - is talking on one of those very large, to our eyes embarrassing, mobile phones typical of the era, and plays no further part in the scene. The Venetian carries a very large Gladstone bag. He and the other two cockneys install themselves on the large front steps of a property, from where they can observe the family, but also indulge themselves. The cockneys produce two large marijuana cigarettes, one apiece, and light them with cheap bic lighters. The Venetian prefers cocaine, some of which he produces from the Gladstone bag. One of the cockneys - but I shan't say whether or not it was Ray Winstone - remarks on the terrible state of the family, even ruminating on their smell, even though they are sat too far away and he is just hypothesising. His speech is wry and cutting for the purpose of amusing his companions, and his voice is slow, more so given the long pauses he often creates as he takes enormous puffs of his drug and blows the smoke in to the hot air. The Venetian interjects, emboldened and aggressive from his own drug, states that while he agrees with the general state of the family, his personal opinion of the mother is much higher. He uses several dirty words to describe his feelings for her, and both the cockneys relent and agree with him.
Ray Winstone opens the Gladstone bag again and pulls from it a small leather pouch of crisps, which he opens in the standard 1924 manner; with a pair of secateurs. The crisps are somewhat smaller than crisps of today, and very inconsistent in form and texture. I cannot remember the flavour, but I am fairly sure it was either Smoke or Oriental, both of which were among the most popular crisp flavours in the hot summer of 1924.
The boy - not the one who I believe had the broken shoe, but the other, older one - looks on at the cockneys and Venetian enviously. The focus he puts in to his thoughts of the four travellers would distract him from his singing if it was not already the most perfunctory performance I could remember hearing. Other members of his family cast sidelong glances at him, and his mother of which the Venetian was so fond even tugged at his grubby and ripped shirt to try and make him sing at a level more commensurate with the efforts of the rest of his family. But in reality, his singing has been this bad for weeks. His mind has been full of daydreams of better lives, his current life disgusting him. Right now, he dreams of Venice and mobile phones, of wandering through the streets and stopping only to partake in good drugs and crisp-eating, instead of subsistence busking and portable organ maintenance.
The cockney who is not Ray Winstone and is not on the phone notices the boy's attitude and countenance, and sees through to the boy's innermost desires immediately, for they are ones he himself once had. He sees in the boy an opportunity to fill a vacancy he has been charged with filling. He pulls out a Motorola RAZR - at the time this was still a very cool phone - and writes a text message. "Found a guy for the job," it says. He selects send and scrolls through his phone book, stopping on the contact Local Mafia Boss. He looks at the boy one more time before nodding to himself and sending the message.
The boy watches this happen as he continues to pretend to sing whilst daydreaming. He notices the man looking at him, and the text message being sent, but he does not understand the significance this event will have on his life in the next months, and that many of his dreams will soon come true.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

2009-09-14T15:00:00.002+01:00

All day the city baked, and by evening its bricks and roads and metal fixtures had amassed such a surplus of heat and light that they were able to sustain the afternoon long past its natural span. Tall buildings seemed to rise like stone fingers from beneath the desert’s radiant surface, enclosing those souls unlucky enough to find themselves still in town after the hours of business, and pressing them into an involuntary embrace of body heat and blinding, stinking sweat. It felt as though the air had been flooded with hot blood, pulsating to the beat of some great, unseen organ, hidden deep underfoot.

The main street was busy with people trying in vain to keep each other at a distance, but it was still possible to identify the real strangers: a group of six—a middle-aged couple and their four children—dressed cheaply and carrying a collection of hymn books and a portable organ. They made their way slowly through the throng, the adults leading with obvious purpose but held back by their less eager offspring, until they reached a large intersection; here they halted, and the mother, whose status as chief authority was obvious at the most cursory inspection, began to coordinate. She took the portable organ from her husband and handed it to the eldest child, a girl of about fifteen. Then she lined up the others and distributed the battered hymn books; there were three between the five of them: one for the father, one for the mother and her youngest—a boy of seven—and one for the remaining two children. “Shall we begin with ‘Were You There?’” she enquired, addressing her husband meekly. He smiled and nodded his assent.

The sound of the small choir was frail and rough, but it captured the attention of many a passer-by. This was partially due to the inherent qualities of massed human voices, and partially to the sheer pathos of the spectacle: the poor, malnourished-looking family, arranged like some public exhibit, provoked all manner of reactions, from sympathy to disgust. For those inclined to stop and observe for a while, it also presented an engrossing psychological study: the father, tired and battered in appearance, his singing hoarse and tuneless; the mother, equally ragged in dress but tidier somehow, more composed, her voice shrill but strong. The children seemed mostly vacant, their minds idling while their bodies worked over-familiar routines, with the exception of the second eldest, a boy of twelve; he alone seemed acutely uncomfortable, hunched over, his eyes always on the music in front of him, and his free arm wrapped around his waist. Most of the voices were weak, but his was the only one that was completely inaudible. “Were you there when He rose up from the dead?” intoned the chorus, and though the boy's lips moved in correspondence with the words, there could be no doubt that his thoughts and feelings observed some different rhythm, at once private and universal. The watchers recognised it at once, it was the rhythm of a silent, desperate prayer.

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

2009-09-13T21:47:00.003+01:00

The size of the city means how refreshing the evening is can go either way. Tonight you should have water available, air providing none of the coolness.

What is refreshing, and I’m not the only one who thinks so, is the family singing hymns. I watch them longer than anyone else, most people trying hard to not stop moving near them. Even I’m thinking of excuses why I can’t stay with them for dinner. Something in their house, maybe one of the kids, would bite me.

Mostly I’m watching the mother. She’s a mother who’d take care of you. But the father doesn’t look above kidnap.

The eldest two kids are definite kidnap victims. It’s too late for the girl; she’s playing the organ for fuck’s sake, but I could save the boy, raise him like a brother, exist almost in secret, taking it easy. He would love that, I can tell by the way he doesn't look at me or his parents.

But, because I think serial killers probably also think like this, I walk away.

second swindle one

2009-05-26T22:25:00.001+01:00

I have recognised a bad situation. This particular one involves me, a wall and three twice as big as me boys. Charles Bronson tells me to say well I can’t spend all of your lunch money, you can keep half. This is a kick in the nuts. Down but not out. The big number 2 boy spits on his hand, real back of the throat shit, wipes it on my face.
I’m a monster lightning bolt, green muscles, web shot, phasers to kill, back on my feet. I’m the youngest black belt in the country and I’m Bruce Lee on crack. I centre myself, my sensei would be proud, and shoot my fist of steel into the prick’s chest, which does not move. His feet and friends’ feet move. Their fists move. I turn egg, sonic, armadillo.
This is how revenge movies start, sensei.

2009-05-26T22:17:00.002+01:00

Theme: The Swindle
It’s always there after dinner. Right after any time I eat, in fact, and I don’t clear up after myself. I’ve been known to lose it. I mean lose it; pull the tablecloth off the table, over my head and start leaping waving my arms and knocking chairs, plates, glasses over. I’ve been barred from every cafe and restaurant in the city for it.

We tried everything. Hypnosis. Role-reversal (whereby I play the one clearing the plates and he/ she (I) sit there passively accepting the situation. Nothing works. I’ll stop, give them the eye. Then I’ll start yelling. Plates out windows. We once lived in a sixth floor apartment overlooking a high street. You can figure it out. Ketamine for God’s sake. All I got was a headache and involuntary drooling.

I can still see myself in that mirror, right eyelid twitching (left in the mirror) as I struggle to rinse the soap from my hands. I’ve already sent two messages. The phone is in shards on the tile floor. Behind me in the stall, a man grunts and emits a huge fart. I am more furious than at any other time in my life.

theme of "the swindle"

2009-05-26T22:15:00.001+01:00

I’m not a whore, but I love a lot of women. Three months ago I met the most beautiful I’d ever seen. I never spoke to her.

Before that this little snowball of a girl, all freckles and prickles. I twisted that rubix cube from all solid colours to a shit mix.

But each one was practice for this one girl. All others could slip through, as long as I gripped just right on this one. I knew her online for a decade before we met.

Having known her a month I told her I loved her. For a decade it’s been like that. She was all the missing pieces of these different girls. This was going to be good.

I told her I loved her. We kissed immediately. For the first two weeks my eyes were closed. End of week three I was looking around. I couldn’t make my self grip.

I told myself I’d not gone for sex. Now I’m sitting at home alone, thinking about all the girls I want to sleep with because I am a whore.

Maury's Graveyard (Story in Reverse)

2008-10-01T23:49:00.003+01:00

‘Will you come today?’
He sits there, fumbling with the remote. ‘Stocks, Annie. I got to watch this.’
‘Stocks are on every day Papa. She raises the flowers in her right hand. 'I only get these three months a year.’
‘We’ll go tomorrow. You got three months right?’ Rubs his balding head gently. His hand comes to the side of his face. The open window blows his thinning hair. It is a reminder.
‘Papa.’
The television hums. Tears drip onto his cardigan.

‘Maury, stop-’
‘Come on. You’ve seen that film.’
‘What? This is a graveyard Maury, we’re not doing that here.’
‘Alright. What about next to that tree?’
She looks over and in the movement catches Maury’s grin. He shifts his leg slightly and that hardness fumbles against her leg. She hates dicks for their lack of personality. A dick would make a great marketing executive. A giant cock raps at spreadsheets and sales graphs as she pulls Maury to the tree and undoes his belt.

trying to write a story in reverse (I kind of miss the mark)

2008-10-01T23:44:00.003+01:00

Each beat, each bam bam bam, leaves his hands tingling. Soon they will blister, maybe bleed, but each beat gets him further away and happier still.
His hands are already bloody. So too his face and shoes.
Catching up to the boy whose drumkit it was, grabbing his neck and throwing punch after punch and putting kicks in wanting to be sure he would get a long time on the kit by himself, as himself.
The boy whose kit it is walking further ahead, sprinting at times, unable not to, a mess of beats and cola and John Bonham, to this place out back of nowhere where a few old water barrels and tins and bits of wood make his kit.
It is a thing he is proud of and a thing he loves and a thing he is bragging about in school as every other kid listens jealously.

Snoring (Performance)

2008-10-01T23:27:00.002+01:00

‘Consistency. That’s what I was telling her Mart. You don’t need to have everything, you don’t even need to know all that much-’
‘Why are you telling our daughter this Ray?’
‘I’ve never been honest with that kid Mart. All through school, telling her she was never as good as she was. She must have taken me for an idiot. I know that teacher did. Hearing me talk like that.’

He lies on his side, facing the wall now. He used to sleep on his back, but he snored. Nothing worked. Pills, less beer, water before bed, even a small ball of cotton wool on his tongue. Ray was a snorer.

‘Paul wants to meet you, Dad. I know you don’t have time this weekend but…’
She pulled that old check cardigan around her, pushing her fingers on the steel table. The sun had gone in and the waiter stood beneath the awning, hands laced behind him.
‘We can meet. I’d like to see the boy.’ He dips his head a bit, flashes that grin Mart loved on the bleachers with those other boys in roll-up t-shirts. ‘See if he’s up to Jessica’s standard.’
‘I’m right here. We don’t need a third person in this.’ She leaned back and dug her hands in her pockets. Stalemate, all for a 1970s hotel and dog-eared magazines in racks next to your knees.

‘Did you meet Paul?’
He rolled onto his back. ‘No,’ he said finally. It came out like the last apple in a wet sack found at the bottom of the shed. ‘She said we’d meet next time I was in town.’
‘She said that last time too Ray.’
‘I know Mart.’ Crooked his hands behind his head, looked at the ceiling.
Why couldn’t he stop snoring?

Theme of Performance

2008-10-01T23:20:00.001+01:00

On the same stage I would watch when it held my fucking heroes I sweat and fucking wail at these wide eyed and beautiful people I grew up here with but just before.
Last night of tour and fuck all the agent bullshit and roadies I want to fucking swing into my old school bar and drink like a fucking knight.
I sing the big songs tonight and I sing them fucking big. But deep in maybe my heart I know someone out there is waiting for me to sing my real biggest song, a song I’ve been trying to write since I first strummed a chord or however I started now.
I know because I was waiting for that song, thinking I would never be the one to write it.
And here my people are waiting for this big, big song of my life. I’m waiting for it.
And tonight there will be no big drinks, even if I can get away from the obligations.
It will just be me, writing to myself, trying to remember exactly how close I was to singing one of my other big songs just right on this stage for these people who want me to do it.

No Ice (Night In The City and A Letter)

2008-07-21T21:38:00.001+01:00

I sat in the mountain town with the ice on the windows until my nose froze up and my snot looked like emerald crystals. It took eighteen years, but that letter came like I knew it would. It took eighteen years for me to get over the mountain for one night in the city, but I got there like I knew I would.

There was ice in the city as well. A little. It was on the conifers planted at eighteen foot intervals along Central, and I used them as a speedometer in my rusted Plymouth. Not as much ice though. When I got into the centre, the ice was nowhere to be seen.

I waited on the street he told me about. I could see his reason for rapture; I could see that just going out for cigarettes held no sway over this street. A hundred tiny shreds of yesterday’s newspaper blustered like confetti as long white buses streaked around the streets, dripping oil and picking up huddled groups of passengers, battened down with fur and galoshes.

I sat outside the graveyard, and looked at the café where my mother used to work when he met her. He used to leave a chessboard on the pink linen tabletop with a game in play. When he came back the next morning, he’d carry on. When he lost, after six weeks of one move a day, he asked who had beaten him. Cappucinos and chess were what he loved her for.

The letter said to catch the last bus. He lived on every bus route. There was no ice on any of them. I found the wooden door in the red brick tenement house, and walked into the grey hallway as dawn began to peer through the eastern windowframe. I sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited for him to come back with cigarettes.

A letter and a city

2008-07-21T21:33:00.002+01:00

“If I go any further I’m to shit myself,” I say very loud to my friends and strangers.
Behind a supermarket on a main street anyone could have seen me doing it. I forget to wipe when I start reading what I was going to wipe with.
“You need never fear your eyes are cold, they are full of a million things. You look like you have a hundred stories to…”
I’m scanning and I stumble to the next bar.
“I think about you and I dribble bits of pre-cum,” is my opening line to my gathered friends (and strangers). The enquiries are made and I read on.
“Even your nose has it’s own perfect details, a slight curve, little freckles,”
“Wow.”
“Pathetic."
We’re laughing. The nose thing reminds me of Sal, the ex-girlfriend.
“Your breasts are firm and beautiful, your fingers are slender and strong,”
One of Sal’s things was about my hands.
“Christ, this is fucking shit,” I spit everywhere. Applause arrives after some lines.
I remember a vision of Sal when the line “after you kissed me the first time with your mum in the other room,” and with laughter I skip to the end.
Obviously it’s my fucking name right there.
I didn’t wipe my arse in the end. What happened to this letter?
And someone snatches it off me and everyone laughs again, so fucking hard.
“Fuck you, cunts,” I stand up, “you’re the shit of the earth,” and then I fuck off.

Light and Ash (Classical Monster)

2008-07-21T20:47:00.001+01:00

All the houses are full of light and ash; it is there in equal abundance. Dust roils in the corners of the low-beamed dining room, and as I walk through it, I hear heartbeats. I smell vitality, and I fear knowledge. I was born out of wedlock, and my father deceived my mother. I know what it is to deceive innocence.

It is agony. I hear the rushes, I smell the sweat, and I feel the light on their forehead. I was born in darkness, and I was born again in darkness. My father deceived me.

I fall beneath the oaken table and clasp my ears. It is not a matter of hearing; more a matter of knowing, and that is an irreversible process. Outside the moonlight still whispers through conifers; the dark’s pets crawl and scrabble over stone and oak. Men drink in houses; they sit around tables as though I have never happened. In the light, I have not. By darkness, they know I will.

Innocence is easily devoured by the dark. Fear is harder to see when you see nothing at all. They see me, and they know fear. I know innocence; I was born in darkness.

Minotaur (classical monster point of view story)

2008-07-21T20:45:00.002+01:00

Scientists are what wizards used to be. Shamans still have all the answers for some people. There are people who worship Gods they’ve invented. Magic is real, but only inside someone’s head.
My point is no one knows what I am, why I would exist. No one really knows why anyone exists I guess.
I mean, more immediately, I don’t want to tear men apart, storm villages and rape cows. But I could do that and no one would think less of me.
They think me low enough.
A lot of people tried to kill me all at once. Soldiers with cracking sticks, machine guns they say. Massive metal cannons that scream and chase.
They want it to be, but it’s not for me that stuff. Fuck it.
I just want some hills, sun and fields with cows.

Crab Meat (Greek Girl)

2008-07-21T01:24:00.003+01:00

When I was living on rice and soy milk, I saw something in the mirror. When you live alone, and you see something in the mirror, you’re liable to worry.

My parents were in Hawaii when they heard the story. I couldn’t go; too much schoolwork to catch up on, they said. Elissa, the Greek girl from up on Winchester, came and took care of me. She liked aubergine, crab fishing and Monopoly. My parents asked her not to look at any personal information that might be posted, but to answer any social calls. Elissa taught me a lot of things. How to date a girl, how to drive a car. When my parents got back though, money was no object to her. Neither was free use of my parents’ car. She’d taught herself that. Her friends didn’t see her much afterwards.

I’d never heard the term, but I knew how to tell a good ghost story. I used to tell girls that I liked ghost stories, because I could always scare them. They used to bunch their knees to their chests and shiver.

Bob Krauss reported the story in the Honolulu Advertiser. I always started with this line. She was in the drive-in restroom, combing her hair. When the girl went over to her, she turned. What she saw caused the girl to have a nervous breakdown.

My parents told me the story when they found a copy of The Turn of the Screw in my bookshelf. I stole it from my school but kept finding it lying around my house. It usually happened after we’d eaten crab meat.

She called the station and they all took notice. She’d had a nervous breakdown after all. She supplied more details. Height, clothing. Her hair was red. They had to get her off the air after she repeated that the fourth time.

I’ve never finished that story. I’ve never needed to. They always want to get out of the car before they hear the ending. Noppera-bō. It sounds nothing like crab meat, but that’s all I can ever think of when I think of that word.

In August 1981, I heard that interview. My parents had just come back from the funeral. Most of Winchester Street turned out.

When she turned, she had no face. Noppera-bō. Whenever I smell crab meat, I know why I took that book back.

Greek Babysitter

2008-07-21T01:10:00.001+01:00

"You're so full of shit Mike. Greener travel? You didn't even give a shit about the environment a year ago."
She doesn't break eye contact with him even as she pours her fifth glass of wine.
"I'm just saying, I don't think I can vote for a man, no, I don't think a man can viably stand today, without having a policy geared towards the environment."
"Topic of the year, I'll give him that."
"You'll give anyone anything. Do you even have an opinion?"
When she acts like this every time they talk, it's no wonder a man of Brian's character keeps his thoughts largely to himself.
Marcia is finally out of the kitchen, rolling her eyes for everyone's benefit.
"Babysitter?"
Mike takes the bullet and humours her. Someone had to.
"She's complaining that Roy's awake. God forbid she actually has to do any babysitting whilst I pay her to babysit. Feta-munching freeloader."
"Thank God you don't vote, Marcia."
Brian's still smarting. Lucky for him she missed the last two glasses.

trying to work in the detail of "Greek Babysitter". I went hugely overboard.

2008-07-21T01:07:00.005+01:00

I open the first door to my house and everything is fine. The second door opens and I meet with the smell of hummus.
Empty tubs crush against the wall being pushed by the door.
All kitchen appliances are on. My toaster has burnt out. The oven door is open child killingly wide.
It is the first level of hell.
Pots and pans with hummus smeared around the sides cover the work surfaces. Outside my three year old is surrounded by perhaps every neighbourhood cat. The child in my arms I open every window and every appliance I turn off. In three rooms there are televisions on. Underfoot on the stairs there is the crushing of olives. My bath is about to overflow.
Half full hummus tubs float on the water. Hummus is smeared on the walls in arches. At least sixty packets are in my house and more olives.
In my bedroom passed out wearing every item of clothing in the house is my babysitter, smeared with hummus.

Viewers (Horizons)

2008-07-20T23:49:00.002+01:00

I sit with the coffee. This is my first meeting with it; my first glimpse of a ghost I see every day. The white iron mesh table has spots of rust on it. Some of them have been picked at, and now possess form and dimension. They look like other things, which is what we all wanted all along.

‘Morning Paulie.’
‘Morning Gianni.’
What’s you plan today then?’ He busies himself in the corner, wiping espresso cups with a damp blue cloth.
‘I don’t know, Gianni. I think’ – I pause, and look over my shoulder at it – ‘I think I might have to give it a rest.’ I finger the little round cup with yellow nails.
Gianni walks over with the cup. Flaring nostrils set the tone. I pull the cup towards me.
‘Cats. Restaurants. Your girlfriend’s parents. You have to give this a rest, Paulie. No boat can make it.’
What is so hard about knowing the truth?

Later on, I sit in the boat. I just bob there, with men in rolled shirts and deck shoes sat on the fence made of logs. As sailing boats whisper by, I watch its hills. In any light, it’s only a hill. At dark it disappears, like all the other islands. When I get there, I’ll disappear too.

horizon

2008-07-20T23:42:00.001+01:00

She sits next to me and puts down this old school camera.
“You just need to broaden your horizons,” she says.
This is a sentence I come back to often. I sit a floor and some rooms away from the place she said it to me every day. When I looked out the windows in that room I saw a different horizon to the one I see out of my current room.
I wonder if it’s a thing, but it probably isn’t.

By Moonlight (Deterioration)

2008-07-20T23:19:00.000+01:00

My orphanage lay at the end of the coast, with only tufts of grass and shale skittering off onto the secret beach below. Gulls swooped around the eaves, sat on the red tile roof, sailed on brisk wind that rushed into the house with unfettered gaiety.

The beach was only visible in moonlight. During the day, the sea swallowed it whole, and crabs marched onto the bank with imperious duty, only to be left naked and furtive themselves as the sea withdrew by darkness. When I was a child, I would walk the winding rock steps down to that beach in periods of intense quiet. Starlight flittered over the wet sand with sensuous touch, lighting my way as I felt the rough edge and clawed at weeds and deserted birds’ nests.

When I can’t sleep, I look at the moon. Of course I do. The moon has seen that beach more than I, and I could never see that beach enough. Its power was unnatural, like a ghost walking through a television. Can you see that?

Only in moonlight.

Deterioration

2008-07-20T23:17:00.000+01:00

I’m pulling my cheeks back to see as many teeth as possible and they’re all yellow as fuck.
One has a massive fucking crack in. I lean away from the mirror to cough.
Maybe you think I’m a smoker but I swear I never smoked in my life.
I cut out little paper squares I stick them on my teeth.
When they fall out in public people are like “man one of your teeth fell out.” Then they realize it’s just paper and they’re like “why did you have paper in your mouth.”

Darkroom (Secrets)

2008-07-16T23:06:00.003+01:00

‘Four seventy.’
‘Here you go.’
The racks are crammed with the work of street artists, rife with angles and close-ups. Cellulite sags over the plastic rows. She scrunches her nose and picks a cigarette.

He sits with a card in his hand. Five or seven is what he wants, but he’s had queens all week. A man with a gold wristwatch glances at him sharply as he walks past the badly parked car. His car is a Cadillac. A pink Cadillac, loud and unique. He cruises through the city, and he pulls up next to the yellow army, next to tired skin, next to rusted round tables with yesterday’s coffee stains. A horn strains above the city’s crashing breakbeat. He watches her get back into the car with his skin’s grease all over the creased card. She checks behind her. Awkward smiles. She fumbles with something below seat level. He doesn’t duck. He never does.

She pulls away from the kerb. Square white shopping bags race past attached to long jeweled limbs and smart dark coats. A whispery rain starts to fall. She is at the lights. Red.

He flips the card. Red. He looks up. Amber. He looks back down. Seven.

Green. He pulls out.

Secrets

2008-07-16T23:06:00.002+01:00

At first, his secrets were just like everyone elses. He thought of them occasionally, and maybe felt embarrassed or wary, or perhaps they just brought back some old memories. But as he grew older, they started to accumulate, and he found it hard to avoid them. Like everyone, he felt the need to tell them. But he didn't want to cause the damage that telling them would create. So he bought a small plain notebook, and wrote them out, one a day, for catharsis. He enjoyed it. Just writing it out the way he wanted to tell it was enough for him, and he thought about each secret no longer, his clandestine mental stockpile dwindling with each day.

But whenever he had guests over, he couldn't relax. Every time one of them left the room, all he could think of was them stumbling across his book. He kept it in a locked drawer of his desk at first, then in a concealed safe. But that was not enough. Anyone going through his house would still definitely find it, and he couldn't bear to think of anyone reading his book. But he couldn't go without writing in it. He'd tried burning the pages, but it didn't work. He wanted to bury it far away, but then that would rob him of his release.

He keeps the book on his person at all times now. It's the only way to be sure no one else is reading it. But now he thinks of little else.

secrets

2008-07-16T23:06:00.001+01:00

There is a gun I have which is the best thing I found with my metal detector.
Mostly I kept it close at all times, a secret extra part to me.
A wife found it. I thought it was my wife, but would my wife really do something such as that? Could my wife secretly be a finder?
So I kept it in the ground instead of what she asked. At night I would visit my gun and dig him up and clean him before putting him back.
But the earth smell would stay on me all night and the garden had these inverted patches. When she realised she just looked at me about it.
I realised that I wasn’t supposed to bring it back. It’s too much of a thing to have near my house. If you found a griffin you wouldn’t bring it back and put it in your shed.
I drove him up to the mountains and under the earth and a pile of rocks I buried him. It became a shrine I could go back to. Every week or month. Every whenever I needed it. I went back and he wasn’t there.
I think he was found by a secret finder and I don’t know what to do about it.

African Coast (Superstition)

2008-07-16T23:04:00.000+01:00

The oily tagine slid sluggishly into the couscous like some slick. He roiled it around with his fork as his coffee cooled by the open porthole window. Next to him, a woman in a pink summer dress read an English newspaper, shaking her head. Her husband’s head lolled on his slumbering shoulders.

The boat sailed into Marrakech in red night, with silent sharks cruising through purple waves. White sides floated in the bay as the remaining passengers drifted to the surface in a dream. The captain looked at the huddled men with their balsa plates waiting fervently at the water’s edge with heads bowed and children leaning in laps.

He walked over to the bow with a cigarette. The thick air flooded with Turkish fug as he stood puffing in the early morning light. He heard steady footsteps approaching, and emphasis on the exhale. In Cairo, in Limassol, and in Istanbul, he heard footsteps and exhaling. He waited for a swarthy hand, for those deep ash eyes, with his bag in his bunk and clothes hanging out to sea. He waited, and the answer came out of the air.

Superstition

2008-07-16T22:53:00.001+01:00

Joe removes himself from the group, muttered excuse. He flicks five 10 pence pieces into the vending machine with equal force and listens to them make equal clinks. His left arm raises the flap as his right hand grabs the Skittles without touching the sides.

The packet's corner is torn off, five triangles from the edge. They spill onto the desk. Fast fingers and heavy breathing and soon all the green ones are in a line across the end of the desk. Joe lowers his head so that his chin is barely above the desk, and flicks the rightmost Skittle at the brown basket. Then the next one.

"What are you doing?"

It's his immediate superior, Bryan. Joe raises his left hand, one finger up, and Bryan just watched. Joe doesn't know what he is doing. But he's done it before every presentation he's done at the hospital. A Skittle bounces off the rim. Joe crunches his eyes shut. He opens them again after biting hard on his lip. It was the sixth one. He walks over to the bin and picks it up, and slides the rest of the Skittles in to it with his palm, leaving just the green miss on the floor as he places the bin back.

Bryan raises an eyebrow at him as he walks out the room.

"I've never even eaten a Skittle," Joe shrugs, as if it's a good explanation.

superstition

2008-07-16T22:47:00.000+01:00

I am almost hit by a car and the driver in the future will watch his child die on television. A kind truck driver can win the lottery, a rude old woman gets her legs severed.
You cast a spell on someone and it will work if you want it. Science doesn’t have to be your thing. Magic exists all in the head, you might as well move in full time.
I am in a house and I see how a person sleeps. They have the kind of sprawl of a person who will go mad in five years time.
At home I find a door and go through it and I will never come out again.

Ugly Things

2008-07-16T22:40:00.002+01:00

Carol was angry and righteous after a 9-hour shift.
'I don't want it in the house. It is disgusting on so many levels.'
Ramon taps his cigarette ash onto his own floor.
'It's my house too, and it's mine. So it's staying.'
'But what the fuck even is it?'
I move out of the kitchen now, whisk in hand and bare feet, joining in.
'My friend made it.'
This makes Carol even more incensed.
'Fucking Jimmy? Was he just trying to clear up his apartment? Don't tell me you paid for this.'
'Sixty pounds. I like it.
Ramon gets up and moves it, rotating it to face them even more obscenely.'
'Better.'
I head back for the kitchen. I don't know why I even came out. I keep watching over the counter anyway. Carol is wide-eyed and her body is rigid. She finds it impossible to argue with Ramon and this is part of why she hates him so much.
'At least put it in your room Ramon, I really fucking hate it.'
'The light in my room is all wrong. It wouldn't look any good.'

The light in my room is no good either. Carol pointedly looks at my golf clubs and Ramon stares at her, jaw clenched, as he stubs his cigarette out on the arm of the disgusting chair that was here before any of us moved in. I think I will move out soon.

Run, Cockroach (Ugliness)

2008-07-16T22:37:00.002+01:00

He sat up straight in his striped pyjamas. The phone rang. It scuttled across the rug like some ravenous beast. Now he had no idea what to do.

The telephone rang again. It had stopped moving and seemed to be facing the telephone. Jack put his hand on the receiver and pulled his feet up to his chest. Across from him, three men in thick square suits high-fived as a guy in costume got nailed on a green plastic park. Everybody stood around watching the referee.

Halfway through the third ring, he picks up. The cockroach raced across the rug to the coffee table and began ascending at a ferocious speed. This fucker was out to kill, Jack realised. He had no idea why, but he saw stories on the news all the time. Men were shot for no reason. Why couldn’t a cockroach think the same way? The high-fiving had gone. A huge car raced out of the screen towards his empty orange plate.

‘Hello?’
‘Jack?’
‘Baby hold on. I…’
It’s running. Straight over the ashtray, but now… Relief washes through his racked body. It’s stuck in the ashtray. Gum has stuck its back leg together and it’s crawling feebly.
‘Louanne?’
‘Jack?’
‘Sorry baby, the roach is in the ashtray.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. How did it all go? I meant to call. I got sidetracked at work. A guy fell out of his chair.’
‘It was okay.’
‘Okay? Did you get his name?’
‘He’s called Mario Hardwood.’
‘Mario Hardwood? That’s his real name?’
‘That’s not his real name. Nobody uses their real names Jack. He…’
That roach is wrenching his spindly body over the side, and now the square suits are back.
‘Where are you? Is that a tannoy?’
‘I’m at the hospital Jack. It didn’t work out.’

theme: ugly things

2008-07-16T22:35:00.001+01:00

Someone hands me a vodka, lemonade and lime and I blow a kiss. Everyone here has a kind of sub H&M look. I am strictly Top Shop. Maybe above Top Shop, but I don’t really think about it.
At first this was fine, H&M or no. Now by myself I’m just sitting. Soon this little thing comes up to me her face is like a fucking clown.
“You’re that gorgeous guy!” she says
I don’t know what I’m doing when I say “You’re incredibly ugly” and then I throw my drink at her and wipe her face.
The bouncers are on me but I send them reeling back clutching throats and balls. I still don’t know what I’m doing when I’m outside and after a ten-minute sprint. How did I do this? Back there what I did was beautiful. I should be the fucking king.

The Escape

2008-07-16T22:16:00.000+01:00

The day has come. Marko wakes early and sits in the kitchen. Today he will make his move and if, by the time the roundpiece has made three equal slices of pie, he has not been fed, he will get up and go.

Marko waits. He sits and watches the city from the rusted rail, brushing up the acacias and begonias, and watches other owners hug and shake hands. In the shop, the man with the flannel and moustache said he would be going to eat salmon forever. No man is an ocean, and Marko didn’t want salmon forever.

Cats like Hemingway. Marko discovered this on another shut-in day when he found the story with the matador lying under the aquamarine sofa. He wondered what Hemingway was doing in a place like this. Then he saw Maria.

Maria was a Hemingway reader. She hated James, Fitzgerald; all that East Coast savant crowd. She lived across the corridor, and her door had a rosary outside of it. Her owner owned the café downstairs, so she was never too far away. His owner sat in the city and ate chowder and played with American Express. He came back late smelling of late blossoming red and Dunhills. No packets in the trash though.

She invited him to dinner. They’d set a date on a fence overlooking a man hunting through restaurant bins. Marko knew how that felt. He’d been looking at trash all his life.

Cats going to dinner happens way more than you think. They hate the city too.

escaping

2008-07-16T03:31:00.001+01:00

“ I am really going to miss the chocolate when that goes,” Jack says.
All of both of our pockets are full of chocolate bars. We are wearing jackets with about ten zip pockets. We have a lot of chocolate.
Jack is covered in the blood of the third guy who should still be with us.

Our car is full of the smell of blood. Behind us those assholes are already on the body.
It doesn’t take a lot to spook those guys, and it doesn’t take a lot to make them berserk.
One of them bit our friend’s face and knocked him down. When Jack had stabbed it in the back of the neck he cut the throat of our friend. I was sick.
I am going for the friend’s dropped bag but Jack grabs me. This is when I start smelling blood and even half a mile and three chocolate bars later I can still smell it.

Astronauts

2008-07-16T03:17:00.001+01:00

Everyone wants to be an astronaut when they are a child. Not literally everybody of course, but a lot of people, and it is the quintessential reply. Not me, though. I didn't know what I wanted to be. What I most wanted to be was an ant or a bee, but I didn't want to say that out loud. A lot of people in my school class did say astronaut though. And none of them are astronauts now. I only keep in touch with a few of them, but I'm pretty sure I'd know if one of them became an astronaut. None of them are even close. As a related note, I never became a bee or an ant either.

I am an astronaut. I don't know if I'm a good one or not, but compared to my fellow astronauts, I definitely fit in. None of them wanted to be astronauts when they were younger either. Now obviously, not everyone said they wanted to be an astronaut as a child, but presumably, a few times it would have matched up. But I've never seen it. Maybe the recruitment policy for astronauts is really off.

Ezekiel and the Astronaut

2008-07-15T21:36:00.000+01:00

‘Name?’
‘Ezekiel.’
‘Easy, this is the set. I’m Casting, this here is Cherie, wardrobe, and that’s Jock. He does lighting. There are more of us, but we’ll be your eyes and ears for now. So why should you play Bambekbatov?’
‘I like his character. I’ve done a bit of research on the guy, and… his father was an obsessive gambler wasn’t he? That doesn’t get mentioned in the book.’
Glances all round. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well.’ Ezekiel looks at the floor and sees a cockroach ambling past wardrobe’s boot.
‘I admire that in a man. That disregard for weakness. I mean, he pretended the guy didn’t exist until he got help for his problem. That takes some nerve. To ignore your own father, I mean. What if he takes it personally?’
‘Easy,’
‘My name is Ezekiel.’
‘Ezekiel.’ Casting clears his throat. ‘We’ve made some developments to Bembekbatov.’
Raised eyebrows and a shifting right foot. ‘Such as?’
‘Well…’ Casting looks desolate.
‘He’s blind.’
‘He’s what?’
‘And a nymphomaniac.’
‘What?! This is the first man in space!’
‘Wait. There’s an angle for this.’
Lighting kills the cockroach.

astronauts

2008-07-15T21:34:00.001+01:00

Stars are very beautiful.
Even a few years ago I would have been an astronaut. I didn’t know how a star worked. I would have collected them and brought them home. They would have been worth a fortune and I would give them away.
Where we are, this girl and me, there aren’t enough stars. Instead there’s lamposts.
You never get to know a star because each one is a dead thing already.
And a star is a fire. I don’t tell her this but as I’m searching for a good spot I’m giving her a star. I pour this fluid in a corner of the room and climb out. A few seconds later she has a star. The biggest star ever, right here instead of a cricket club.
Then later I’ll get to know her better.

Jars (Routine)

2008-07-15T21:31:00.001+01:00

I am cool at the bottom, and my hands make patterns as my mind skims stones.
Slate hums and smiles silently. Outside the sky spreads its silent slate. At the end of my vision my shed frames midnight watering cans and wet flowers and bare feet.

Thick warmth roams the air and slowly rubs alongside gently cooking bread. I swivel and spoon granules of coffee, watching the bottom disappear and filling up inside.

My hand grips the jar comfortably and I inhale sweetness, a light red smell that sees summer all year round through chilled artificial light.

Watch the knife do the work. I cover the areas and slice the middle, all the time breathing of earth and licking strawberry from my fingers. I lean into a corner and watch my jar of elements with hot fingers.

theme: about some routine that gives you comfort

2008-07-15T21:28:00.001+01:00

My legs are hollow and broken.
Each one burnt wood, smoke and glowing embers. My stomach is a sheet on a line. It is lined with ash. I haven’t eaten for 12 hours.
From the hob there are three clicks and then blue flame. It is the first sign of the end of this problem.
A frying pan into which goes chicken, black pepper, vinegar, maybe five spices.
There is heat on my tongue, around my teeth into my belly.
The smoke is cleared, the embers explode. My stomach is at full roar.
It is now 5am. The sun is almost risen; it’s fire reflecting my own.
I don’t need to be awake to feel filled.

Orange Dusk (Redemption)

2008-07-15T21:20:00.000+01:00

As he sits, birds begin to flock over. First in ones, as they hop over to the spilt ground they peck and caw in the orange dusk. More small black shapes flit through the skyscape as he reclines with his head in his calloused hands. Finally a flock, arrowing and angling through the defeated light sink to the darkened ground with uncommon certainty; a oneness that is sleek and beautiful.

He sits, and they sing. They sing to the darkness, and the gasping trees; to the long swaying grass and the supple breeze which seems to flow over their number like a quiet hymn to their chattering inconsistencies.

The sun hangs. The trees see blackness once more, and the wind howls and vanishes. Darkness is here again. Now no one will see him until the morning.

theme was redemption

2008-07-15T21:15:00.002+01:00

I am by all cats hated. The motivation comes from an incident in my early youth, before right and wrong really. When the word thing is always preceded by the word play.
A fluffy white cat was a cat that I loved. A kitten. And one day it scratched me and I threw it across a room.
The four support planks between the legs of my dining table that I rest my feet on when I eat are the same ones I crawled onto to hide from the neighbours whose cat it was.
A week later it died. Maybe from some disease, maybe from some throwing I did.
And the cats know I did this. I am shunned, hissed at and ran from.
This is how myths are constructed. One time something happens. Spells are real, and they work, so long as you accept it works only in people’s heads.
And now I stroke my friend’s cat and she purrs and purrs and rolls over on her stomach for more stroking. As much as a cat can love this cat loves me. I have more or less stolen her ownership from my friend.
I fall asleep on the sofa and wake up with the black shape on my stomach. She stretches, purrs. I stroke her and think about white kittens. This cat must know too. Maybe I’m forgiven.
I push her off and roll over.

Spaghetti at the Beach (Joy)

2008-07-15T21:07:00.004+01:00

‘How’s Jack?’
‘He’s well.’ I get a curious glance here. The orange juice does a jig around the plastic table.
‘How are things with you? How’s your work going?’
‘I quit. I’m just on vacation now.’
Yeah, that’s a definite jig.
‘Are you going back?’
‘I’m not really sure. When I have to, I guess. When the money runs out. When I get sick of surfing and spaghetti.’
‘I remember you liked surfing at school. You and… what was his name?’
‘Yukio.’ I shovel more spaghetti in. The sun beams as it passes a solitary racy cloud.
‘Yeah, Yukio. Do you see much of him?’
What is it with strangers and their fingers?
‘No, not these days.’ I swallow and look at my plate. Nearly empty. Better order some more. ‘He’s married now I think. He works as a furniture designer.’
She nods, completely uninterested. I have a sudden image of clingfilm covering a cat, and I shudder.
‘When do you think you’ll be made editor then?’

I’m not really sure how it works. I never saw spaghetti as that interesting. Turns out I can see fingers and eyes a lot more clearly when I eat it. Clouds are suddenly apples. Do you know what I mean?

Of course not. I mean, how much spaghetti do you eat?

Theme: Joy

2008-07-15T21:02:00.001+01:00

Once a girl painted my nails black. But now, at the sort of time even a milkman would be ashamed to be awake at, I’m painting my face completely white.
On facebook there is a message that reads “meh. I’m in London that day. Sorry Pete.”
I read the message over and over. It’s from a girl I used to know. I click her picture. It spreads from 2cm square to maybe 4. Her face is a mask of paint and it is a big sad clown face.
I do 50 pushups and she tells me I did a good job. I do a drawing and she tells me it a good likeness.
Then, stuck for things to do, I head out. I come back and I kneel in front of the mirror. A once black t-shirt now has a white collar. I draw the biggest red smile I am capable of drawing but the make up is rolling off in streaks.

Ouest du Nord (Punishment)

2008-07-15T20:59:00.003+01:00

‘Chips, sir?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’m sorry. Chips?’
‘Oh. No thankyou.’

Pascal,

I don’t know why I never said this earlier. There was a fruitfulness I could not place my trust in.

French chicks. What can you say? Poetry is in the cracks of the arrondissements.

Emilie is angry with me and worried for you. She has an aunt who is psychic and thinks I have made a terrible decision.

‘Can I get you anything else?’
‘No, thankyou. If I could have a bottle of still water, that would be fine.’
‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’
What’s that?’
‘This range. I have often wondered if I would not be better employed in another job, earning more money and supporting my children in a more concrete way. But I can’t get away from this range.’

I don’t have the money to come and see you, so all I can say is I hope you see the error of my ways, and have a change of heart. I know you have an anchor. But now you have seen the ocean.

I am not Pascal. I don’t believe in psychic aunts. But I want to see the ocean one more time.

Theme: Self inflicted punishment

2008-07-15T20:56:00.001+01:00

Snow folds over the back of my hand. It is something electrical down the side of my fingers, a reverse glove making my hand colder. With my teeth I pull my other glove off and scrape more snow onto my buried hand.
I figure the other boy’s tears were warmer than the ice and snow on his face. The mix of tears and ice and a little blood had rolled into his shirt. I’d hit him right in the eye with this rock packed in ice. I told him not to tell but he didn’t even listen. The wrinkles in his face it was like they blocked up his ears.
So I’ll sit here with my throwing bad hand buried. I’ll make like I was going to snap it off and leave it. I guess I know that won’t really happen. But will they know when they come find me?

yes

2008-07-15T01:13:00.001+01:00

OK

2008-07-15T01:01:00.000+01:00

Right