by Tim Vine
Ian Somnia why do you follow me so?
It’s 4 a.m. and the lights are low
Your presence is grating, and
My patience is wasting.
Go and bother someone else
There are folk that perhaps it helps -
The early shift, a postman perhaps?
Or seek out lovely Sally Somnia
But leave me alone before I collapse!
By Yatter
Yatter was stone broke but happy. His compilation of prose and poetry was coming along in leaps and bounds, and his new Bad Poet’s Society site and blog had already attracted eight followers. He had taken over the flat, even Norman’s room, as it appeared that the Electric Dwarf really had disappeared off the face of the earth and wasn’t coming back. Nothing, not even a postcard. This meant that Yatter was now paying double the rent, but he was just about managing, and for now he enjoyed the privacy and extra space without Ed, so it was worth it. Yatter had been to the police at the time to report the little man’s disappearance, only to discover that Polly had already done so after their latest chat on the phone. He hadn’t really felt that the police were particularly bothered, and anyway, he’s Polly’s brother and she’s dealing with all of that now. The flat was now in order, a different spot to when Norman had been living there: clean sink and dustbin, sofa clear of rubbish, no unidentifiable odours lingering – perhaps just that of bleach – and no drugs! The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Norman/Edward continued: it’s just known that he was probably somewhere in India, but even that’s not certain. Around a year ago, a known Polish criminal was arrested in Italy using a doctored version of Norman’s passport, but he refused under questioning to disclose how or where he had procured it, so this one and only lead was effectively a dead end. Yatter had mindlessly thrown out any post for Norman after a couple of months, it always appeared so unimportant: publicity from banks, store card offers, mobile phone upgrade leaflets, letters from a Solicitor to inform Norman that he was now an extremely wealthy man with half of his father Tony’s inheritance . . . just that kind of thing; nothing of any importance.
The Appendix: (it’s Obvious to Me)
I’ve no time for conventional twits
Who denounce any function of the appendix.
For me it hides something, buried like a mole
Could it not be the perfect sack for our Soul?
By Yatter
The Electric Dwarf had started to look like an Indian, and a poor one at that. In a year’s time he would become a strange relic of a being drifting through life, ghosting out the rest of his existence. He would become disgustingly thin, desperately ill-looking like a matchstick man in a Lowry painting, living off the generosity of others – the brave few who weren’t scared away by his appearance. The skin and bone crew. His smell too would become a serious issue, body stinking to high heaven, with his brain in an even higher dimension. Even his own sister Polly – if she ever were to manage to find him and track him down – would struggle to recognise her own flesh and blood, the scrag that Norman would soon morph into. Now, however, he had come to India for his two-week holiday, with the fantastic plan of having his ‘one last blow-out’ on drugs before straightening himself out. It hadn’t quite worked out like that. He was to become passport-less, shoeless, sanity-less.
It had started at the airport where he quickly tracked down the bar, where people from all time zones drank at all times of the day and night. Ed was perched on a bar stool with a glistening pint of Guinness and a double Jamesons backing it up. In a psychological chicken-and-egg analysis he was struggling to ascertain whether:
A:He was drinking now due to a stressful journey to the airport.
B:He had had a stressful journey to the airport in order to reward himself with a drink on arrival.
OR
C:He just likes drinking.
Rue the day that Ed met Barry a couple of days after his arrival. Barry was a slim question mark of a man with a Mancunian accent and some bad tattoos, who wore dreadlocks despite being white.
His dirty red T-shirt proclaimed:
Sex
Murder
Art
Barry had an annoying habit of speaking out of the side of his mouth, as if he had suffered a stroke (he hadn’t). This, combined with his accent, sometimes made it hard for Ed to fully understand what he was saying, but as most of it was nonsense or quite simply dull he wasn’t particularly bothered. Barry had given Ed a couple of tabs of LSD as they drank a couple of beers at lunchtime, lounging around under a palm tree. They were the same, these two innocent-looking small squares of blotting paper adorned with a rough image of Kermit the Frog. After the fourth large beer and a cocktail called The Bee Sting, well-aided by a little Dutch courage and Barry’s insistent banter, Ed gingerly placed a tab on his tongue. A few minutes later, as Barry was taking a piss somewhere around the back of the bar, Ed took the second tab. ‘Oh fuck it, why not!?’ he said out loud to himself.
Barry returned, Ed flashed him the peace sign – or did he mean number two?
‘No, you didn’t, did you, Norm?’ questioned Barry, feigning concern for his new ‘friend’.
Ed just nodded, a silly little smile forming on his sun-damaged, cracked dry lips. The odd small human, becoming odder.
‘Fuck man! You’d better put your seatbelt on my friend, even one of those bad boys is pretty strong.’ And with this, Barry stood up and briskly left the bar mumbling something out of the corner of his mouth, not turning back, and leaving his drinks bill for the soon-to-have-left-the-planet Electric Dwarf to settle. Their paths were never to cross again.
Norman had taken acid. He started to feel weird after 10 miNutes or so. He was fully weird after 25 minutes. A truleee sTroNg Wave CaMe afTer ABooT 40 mIutes. WAve, lIKe on tHE beeecH. DAvE the WAve. dAve tHe RaVe. I WavE 2 da BArMan BuT HiS arM DiScoNn eCCx. AcTuAlLy DisConnEcTS, oUt aNd AwAy fRom THe ARm soCk Ett. BuT thEn iTz Back In aGAin, ooooo mY arM is so hEAvEE. ThIs GaY IndiAn Has a NEfArioUs TeMpER. BuT itz NoT mY faUlT, I ExxPlanE. I eXplaIn foR HourS, ManeE hOurs. eX PLaNe, a PlAne fLiEZ aWay, bak 2 lOndOn toWn. I’LL shoW u gOod TyMes, Then You’Ll C, LiTZ r So BriTe no Need 2 fiTe, MOve DesE sHoez, I aIn’t gOt dA Bloooossss. I nEed a lisT tO sORt mySelF oUt:
wiFi
aLL LiEs
piGeons faLLiNg fRom tHe SKy, iTZ eNouGh 2 maKe u CrY
bUt I, I jUsT fRy, bAkinG liKe aPPle PiE.
sHe talKZ wIth pEoPle wHo’d lIsTen
wIthOut the fAinTesT aDmiSSiOn
%##3 10010000110110100100010 %
oH nO, fOOd EjEcTINg mY pErsoN, aRmy, ArmY. E mer Gen Ceeee.
Food was indeed ejecting out of Ed’s mouth, or, more precisely, warm beer was. The time was now about 9 p.m. and he was alone on a second-floor balcony somewhere, leaning on the thick bamboo of a surprisingly smooth, warm and comfortable window ledge. Deep in his muddled brain, the hot vomit spewing out of his foul oral cavity was turning into 7cm-high military figures in shiny green plastic with moulded bases. Loads of guys, all ready for action – maybe an entire platoon of men, around 50 men. Their parachutes thankfully all opened and they raced to the ground below safely. The silky parachutes made amazing 3D patterns as they fluttered downwards, light reflecting in all directions. There were no casualties, just Norman.
ShE wAs iN thE KEecHAn peeLinG hArd-bOileD eGgS. lOokIng GooD.
‘wHaT r u UpTo iN tHe kItcHen tHen?’
I aSkEd.
‘WeLL, I’M pEeliNg HaRd-BoIled eGgs’ sHe rePlieD.
‘pLeaSe uSe thE RunNy yOlk oF aN eGG tO rEmoVe a CoFfeE sTaiN, pLeaSe lOve mE do, oH mY sWedIsh VolVo IdoL, mY VolVo IdoL’
Oscar Wilde once reported that ‘It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.’ Norman had indeed disappeared, an
d it was an odd thing. In keeping with the fact that he always did get everything a bit wrong, he was not however in San Francisco, but getting on for around 10,000 miles away. Norman was back on the beach at an unknown hour on a random day, somewhere near the Equinox Café. He saw an old Indian man of middling height that he didn’t know who appeared to approach him, almost all skin and bone, cloth wrapped around his waist and head, yet with a crazed mop of Don King hair. He sat down next to our Electric Dwarf, and leant over to speak to him conspiratorially with a surprisingly reedy voice. He possessed a heavily-accented yet clear English, and didn’t hesitate before explaining,
‘I am knowing who you are, Edward. Don’t be surprised or scared, please, there is no needing for that. Edward, the thing is going like this, okay? I am thinking that you are a very wealthy individual, amazingly wealthy in fact as individual. . . but not in spirit, more in the area of material riches. I have a message to relay to you, that I am speaking of great monies here. I urge you to do the right thing, as I know that here’ – the man touches his head and his heart – ‘you have a good soul within. It is just that you are going too far, too far indeed. Don’t go too far, Edward, or else you will be beyond our reach, too far away. I fear that my visit to you falls already too late, and that I should have come to be at your side earlier on your journey, but there is no point in regretting this now, we must be moving on. You must open your mind, as I think you have misunderstood the advice of one of your own countrymen, the great W. H. Auden.
Man needs escape, as he needs food and deep sleep.
You have found your escape, at least for now, by coming all this way in a shiny metal tube, known since many years now as the jet aeroplane. Nevertheless, for you to find inner peace and tranquility you will be needing nourishment, fine feedings and deep drinkings, and the sanctuary of sleep. Take my advice, sleep, sleep, then sleep some more. When you awake, you will need to eat . . . and then eat some more. Purify your soul and mind with much water. You need to build up your strength, for you have a great mission ahead of you to fulfil.’
And at this, the semi-naked guru with long grey hair drifted off, finding his vanishing point in no time. Indeed, time itself passed at its own steady rate, and Norman/Edward/Electric Dwarf sat in the same spot on the beach, numb and confused, yet somehow serene. The visit from the kind man had calmed him, relaxed him to a point that he had never known could exist, and he was at one with the world. Ed didn’t know who he was anymore, or what day it was, where he was or even what year it was. The main benefit of all of this was that he found himself in a situation where he didn’t care. In fact, he’d reached a point in his existence where he didn’t care at all. All of these factors – date, location, identity, time – were unknown, deep mysteries, but Ed wasn’t even in a state to question these matters, he quite simply existed, and just was. If it posed no issue to him, did it matter at all?
And so it came to pass that Ed fell into a deep sleep, the best in weeks, perhaps months. The beach was nearly empty, just a stray dog exploring a fallen tree trunk, and a couple sat in the distance under the curlicue sky. It was pleasantly warm, a rare breeze from the sea drifting inland. Ed’s matted beard brushed the warm sand, and he rested his head on some dreaded hair on the side of his head, using it as a cushion. The green flash at sunset had been incredible, especially in Ed’s drug-addled brain. Unbelievable smaragdine effects washed over the ocean, astounding the funny little man. It had given him a sense of wonder, and now he let his weariness take over and he slept early, allowing the ocean’s music to lull him. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming as everything seemed so real in his state of comatose, yet he saw a cloud drifting across the open beach towards him. It stopped a few metres away.
The ex-England football star Paul Gascoigne was standing in the middle of the cloud, as if swaddled neatly in a giant bubble of cotton wool. He appeared to be cooking some meat on a barbecue. The skin on his gaunt face looked like a leather bag, taut and tanned by the Indian sun perhaps, yet his complexion was clear. It was hard to tell what he was saying, but he was muttering something happily to himself as he concentrated on the task in hand. Suddenly, he gazed over with kind eyes, giving a look which Ed took to mean compassion. He smiled before speaking softly with his kind but fragile voice.
PG: Hello Edward, it’s great to finally meet you. My name is Paul. You haven’t been eating properly recently, and I am concerned. I will cook you some Good Meat to restore your energy, and provide you with much-needed fortitude. You need to understand that rather like for a footballer in training, nutrition is important for everyone. You must eat. Forget a light dinner, let’s have a heavy dinner together . . . live a little! Rick has left us, I will look after you well so do not fear. I also need to eat in order to regain my strength, we will dine so we can get to know one another while partaking in meat.
Oh, look! These wonderful sausages are ready. Aren’t we lucky?!!
Tell me one thing. May I furnish you with curry sauce on your sausage, Edward?’
the end
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due –
Gerry Wigfield at Seddons Solicitors.
Rick Astley for being cool.
Chris & Jen at Salt for giving The Electric Dwarf legs.
All my few but firm friends, and da family.