In the Beggarly Style of Imitation

by Jean Marc Ah-Sen

  Agatha, who had been newly acquainted with the unknown pleasures of horse-riding, and at the time of his calling engaged in a hearty jaunt, fell to darker moods yet again, and unleashed lusty rejoinder after another during their abrupt packing, hasty farewells (though none that included little Aldegonde, who could not be found at the time) and finally their arrival at Garrison Creek. She was not made to understand the need for diligence, though she made numerous expatiations to her lover’s need to apprise her of the reasons of the many travelling expenditures they were forced to suddenly make, all apparently in the service of some great caprice.

  The Four Stages of Cruelty

  All through the thunder of her tireless pleas, Claude was silent, until he disembarked with his luggage from his rented brougham and put his key into the lock of his apartment. Crossing the threshold, a mischief of mice flew out between his legs, and dispelling all the suspicions that turned in her mind, Agatha saw the signs of starvation firmly impressed upon the Manks’ enfeebled frame, the swollen head rendering it the quality of a rag doll, and its prickly coat reminiscent of flotsam drying on the surf while covered in tangles of ocean weeds. She recoiled from horror and began to wretch into the garden bed while Claude marvelled at the stupidity of his handiwork.

  With unprecedented haste, Claude made for a trowel that had been embedded deep within the dead soil with the intention of implementing the removal of the body to a far less conspicuous situation where it would not likely attract the attention of unwanted, but more importantly, retaliatory witnesses who could make a report to the landowner who held the Four Stages of Cruelty to such an exemplary regard, that only a confirmed lover of animals could hold the position of groundskeeper. But as man, woman and Devil are the only three degrees of comparison, Ste. Croix’s mind very naturally turned to thoughts of his deliverance, and what his mistress with whom he shared custody of the animal would say. His mind was so labyrinthine with doubt that he cleft the body with as many accidental incisions as to form a passageway for the decomposing organs to pour out. Never let it be said that Claude did not possess some strange intrepidity that, though it would never serve his desires in the way of fortune, providence or happiness, could make bold affronts against impending dangers that threatened.

  Vil Cur

  Emptying a Hessian sack that contained his clothes, he laid out the carcass delicately on the fulcrum of his trowel and let the animal fall to the bottom, realizing at the last moment that some of Agatha’s linens had accumulated at the base, wedged down by moisture and compression. Sensing her approach, he fastened the sack and ran past her, wedging her in the threshold in the process, before finally wrestling free and delivering one final trepan against her.

  “Do not concern your head my dearest, for I will dispose of this nuisance with expediency to rival that of the Devil himself!” he called out feverishly before disappearing through a gathering fog. Hitting upon a plan to satisfy himself of an escape, he bound together the loose articles of refuse that had accumulated in his absence, and combined it with the carcass so that he could make away betimes and return before any of his neighbours could impute the stercoraceous bouquet of putrefaction that presided athwart the air to any other cause.

  Upon his return, Ste. Croix was resolved to compose a letter that would tie off his last loose end in this disaster, viz. a cessation of relations with the mistress with whom he shared ownership of the Manks he had just condemned to the depths of Garrison Creek, and who on occasion, when she desired to savour in the pleasures of a coital embrace by a furtive assignation, made pretence to enquire as to the health of her cherished and much-beloved animal. He was prevented from actuating this plan, however, when on returning, he found a letter already addressed to him from Agatha the Large, who had taken what remained of her things and left for sunnier prospects. The letter read as follows: Yor faylures as a luver ar owtdon ownly by yor faylures as a man. You ar not fit to crowl the surfase of this urth you wiked, vil cur.

  Superannuations of Hope

  Expecting the best outcome, and to that effect denoting the foolishness of not putting stock in superannuations of hope, the inhabitants of Ste. Croix’s abode rejoiced to see their back lanes finally cleared, and briefly entertained the expectation that Claude had been animadverted on his oversights by the landowner. They were rewarded instead for this impractical optimism with a mystery concerning the one and only instance wherefore this feckless groundskeeper was inspired both by the urgency of precipitous movements and tight-lipped secrecy to execute an honourless charge.

  The Lost Norman: A Preview

  Parallel Style of Provocation

  “Often consideration of a poor example, by virtue of its imperfection, tells one more than consideration of a prime example, in its perfection.” –Patrick Hughes and George Brecht

  Modwind is tilling the field with several other space-labourers. The artificial sun is blisteringly hot. Effulgent waves warp and glaze over a desolate, rayless, alien reality. Modwind vainly attempts to wipe his brow from under an oversized desert campaign cap with a sun flap curiously placed over a bubble helmet. An antenna protrudes slightly through the cap, though it does not puncture it. Modwind has somehow snuck off a piece of fruit from one of the shrubs he is tending; he is enjoying the refreshment it provides from inside his helmet, unable to manoeuvre the food except with his chin, teeth and lip against the inside of the fishbowl.

  He is staring off into the distance when domesticated mutant thrumwort plants cross his line of sight; his eyes soon come alive with stupefaction—the sight stands revealed. One of the thrumworts has swelled to colossal proportions, has perambulated deep into the penned-in enclosure where the labourers work. It kicks aside a now empty bag labelled Growth feed—use in moderation. The plant has mutated into a monstrosity: twelve feet high, more ungainly than usual and towering over everything in its path. Its encumbered movements sway toward the workers, its leaf-feet weighted down with iridium. Modwind is stabbing the air with his garden hoe, screaming muted whelps through a radio-fuzzed walkie. He makes scalping movements at the vegetative predator. Shwank, shwank in stereo.

  His colleagues have wisely evacuated the pen and stand huddled inside a cockpitless hovercraft, quaking with fear and motioning their friend over. Modwind is the only one left to save the yield. The thrumwort picks up Modwind by the legs and turns him upside down. Modwind is shaking wildly, but somehow still manages to grip the hoe; he slashes at the amaranth’s bosom of fruit bulbs. It lets loose a waterphone keening into the zero-grav heavens. One must take precautions against isolation-bred space-cafard any way they can, even in thankless risk-taking (most of the yield does not make it to Earth intact anyway). Modwind falls to the soil in slow motion, the background behind him exploding into fractals of light. Title in relief, spinning out from Modwind’s heart, and growing larger and larger: The Fat of the Land.

  Modwind’s flailing torso blurs into a water rippling effect, giving way to the very picture of domestic placidity—a tiny, non-futuristic kitchen where Modwind, free of his tubular-ringed gyro-suit, sat leisurely at his dinner table, is scooping leaves of lettuce reminiscent of the caudatus leaf into an outsized autolyzed yeast spread jar in the same fashion as Space-Gardener’s hoe-parrying. Modwind happily sheens his teeth with the lettuce strips as one would masticate leaves of tobacco, the sounds of his contented smacking occasionally interrupted by intense, guttural inarticulations from the recesses of his throat. The wireless by the kitchen counter, which had moments ago been playing a song in the same key as the waterphone wails from the opening scene, suddenly rasps to life.

  “We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast for a special bulletin. Breaking news from the Cuthbertson estate in North Warwickshire: A.D. Cuthbertson, president and founder of Cuthbertson Industries, has died of natural causes. He passed away in his private residence surrounded by a small circle of business confidants and legal representatives. An announcement from a Cuthbertson Industries r
epresentative is forthcoming. It is believed that Mr. Cuthbertson had no heirs to his sizeable, property-based fortune. More on this story as it develops.”

  Modwind had slowly risen in increments upon hearing each sense-shattering particular of the bulletin, his cranking teeth stalling and then drawing to a close mid-mouthful. The camera tracks in tightly on his face where the whites of his eyes register aspiration and disbelief. No sooner do the dulcet melodies of a swing number erupt from the wireless than Modwind is out the door of his apartment, racing down a flight of seemingly endless stairs. He emerges from the cramped interior of his apartment into a bustling market square. Modwind crosses frenetically through the bevy of extras but he is being swallowed whole by the tide of people, his bobbing head the only indication that he still exists within this crush of swirling bodies. His trademark bandit cap with its flared visor is occasionally almost knocked over, but by some sort of filmic resolve, it remains anchored to its topgallant. Modwind vainly pipes up with a few “Well, I nevers,” and “My words.” Reaching the other side of the street—after shaking his fists and kicking the air near the assembly line of marching feet—Modwind knocks at the first door he has come to.

  “Wake up, Mr. Smidlarge, wake up!” he howls. “It’s happened, Mr. Smidlarge, the day we’ve been waiting for!”

  A Brilliantined head covered in shaving cream pops out of the second-storey window and the uncharacteristically unspectacled visage of Mr. Smidlarge squints incision-sized suspicion at Modwind.

  “What is it now, Oscar? You’re liable to wake the dead with all that hollering.”

  “Mr. Smidlarge, Old Man Cuthbertson has died! I’ve just heard it on the morning news!”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Come on up, then, but don’t wake Clara or I’ll be up to my ears in trouble. Not the foyer. Go through the back, Oscar, the back!”

  With atomically-propulsed glee, Modwind runs around the Smidlarge residence and shimmies up a downpipe, wherefrom he leaps onto a garden trellis. The trellis, however, is unbalanced, and begins to sway side-to-side with the weight of Modwind’s body. The scene cuts to Clara in her nightie powdering her face in the bathroom. At the sight of Modwind’s mooning face in her mirror, Clara disregards the impression as a figment of her imagination. With each passing interval of Modwind’s head, a slide whistle dips up and down. By the third or fourth pass, Clara has turned around. The scene shifts to Mr. Smidlarge shaving in his washroom. A feminine scream shatters the peace and an ear-splitting crash sends the frame of the film rocking, nudging Smidlarge’s arm so that he cuts himself shaving.

  A fade slowly brings into view the stationary bodies of Modwind, a chin-bandaged Mr. Smidlarge and his wife Clara seated around the breakfast table. Modwind is a bustle of energy trying to contain itself.

  “Well, go on and tell her, Mr. Smidlarge! That you stand to inherit it all!”

  “Inherit what, darling?” Clara chimes.

  Mr. Smidlarge gives a strained look of disapproval to Oscar, his eyes looking out from over his glasses.

  “It’s like this, love. A.D. Cuthbertson, the richest man in our fair town, has died, but his estate and assets are subject to escheat. However, me own mother brought me up with the notion that I was the sole by-product of their, er, unwearying romance. She had evidence to support this, of which I am in possession.”

  “Oh my! Well, isn’t that exciting!”

  “Today I shall put my case forward with the managers of my estranged father’s estate, and we shall have restitution for my life in the repellant shadows.”

  Clara’s eyes momentarily look away from her cup of tea as the word “repellant” is uttered.

  “Do you think you shall be well received?”

  “Of course he’ll be well received, Clara. Mr. Smidlarge is, after all, Mr. Cuthbertson’s own flesh and blood.”

  “Me own father denied every communication I sent him. Just because we have the truth on our side does not mean we’ve won the day. It’s only natural that there will be some infighting regarding my, some will say, all-too-timely arrival.”

  “But there’s nothing timely about it, Mr. Smidlarge. If anything, you were too late to save him!”

  The scene shifts to the closest thing to a sky-scraping, matte-enhanced corporate building the small town has on offer. It is noticeably out of place among the scrabble of modest, worn-down buildings of Merseylinton—its roof is not even visible. The Cuthbertson logo is engraved on a two-ton stone megalith that welcomes visitors by the porte-cochère looming over the entrance doors. The camera pans upward rapidly until the windows blur into a shiver of lights before stopping and craning in on the executive suite at the top of the building. Four executives in boxy, bespoke suits are debating the future of Cuthbertson Industries.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Tunleyh,” a dyspeptic, starched-shirt type named Mr. Emedonds cautions. “The Cuthbertson future is in danger. Just you wait and see what we shall have crawling out the woodwork.”

  “No need for hysterics,” Mr. Tunleyh rejoins. “Measures have been put in place to maintain a sense of stability. Bring in Ailsa, please. Gentlemen of the board, allow me to introduce to you the rightful successor of the great Cuthbertson name.”

  Through a panelled door, a charmless woman enters the boardroom in a chequered-print dress with her eyes held firmly on the tips of her shoes. She stops at the foot of the hardwood conference table.

  “Ailsa Cuthbertson.”

  A commotion erupts from the three other executives.

  “Piffle!”

  “Oh botheration! He’s actually done it!”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Allow me a moment to explain. Allan indeed produced no biological heirs. Ailsa is a young woman he took on as his ward in secrecy. He has been financing her studies and vocational training in an arrayed field of economics and business for years now, has shaped her mind in the mould of his own.”

  “How do we know this isn’t some ploy to undermine the rest of us?”

  A montage of young Ailsa playing in the street commences while a sound bridge of Tunleyh’s exposition plays over.

  “You have before you now Ailsa’s adoption papers. Allan saw this gamine on the streets wherever he went. Property development sites, the country club…”

  A ball rolls into the street and a shoeless child shown from the knees down darts after it. A black car comes into frame before screeching to a stop. The sound of a car door opening is followed by a close-up of an adult hand holding out the ball. The boardroom comes into view again. An executive’s hand is holding a wad of scrunched tobacco in a graphic match of the preceding scene. The tobacco is adroitly stuffed into a pipe.

  “Moved by her depths of hardship, he took her to breakfast one morning,” Tunleyh continues. “She demonstrated an inborn facility with numbers.”

  “Shame we couldn’t say the same about Allan,” the pipe-smoking executive mutters to Edemonds.

  “Regarding Allan’s relative secrecy in the matter, I think your attitudes speak for themselves.”

  “Tunleyh, you can’t expect us to go along with this. To reserve a seat on the board for a woman we know nothing about?”

  “We must honour Allan’s final wishes. He asked that we allow her a period of time to prove herself. Time alone will tell whether she will earn a place beside us in the administration of this board.”

  A crossfade soon reveals Mr. Smidlarge and Oscar tramping their way up to Cuthbertson HQ accompanied by a tuba sonatine. They approach the reception desk and are ignored by the carefree, prim-looking receptionist.

  “Ahem.”

  The receptionist makes no gesture of recognition.

  “Hello, dear. A Mr. Smidlarge and Mr. Modwind to see a Cuthbertson representative.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the receptionist drawls with characteristically anodyne low feeling.

  “No, as a matter of fact, we don’t,” Oscar chirrups.

  “I really can’t let you—”

 
“Now wait a minute, ma’am, wait a minute. Please understand. My name is Mr. Smidlarge. It’s regarding a sensitive personal matter of some grave importance.”

  “Oh, let me guess. This is about the Cuthbertson estate? Heredity and Filiation.”

  “I beg your pardon, madam?”

  “You’ll be wanting to join the queue. Up the stairs and to the right.”

  “But I’ve—”

  “Heredity and Filiation. Up the stairs and to the right.”

  Mr. Smidlarge and Oscar scale the stairs. They emerge on the second floor and collectively wince at the sight of hundreds of people lining up under an ad hoc sign scrawled in fresh paint that reads Heredity and Filiation. Ailsa Cuthbertson is standing conspicuously behind the administrative nodes at the end of the hallway processing the army of heir apparents born practically overnight.

  “I think we’re out of luck, Mr. Smidlarge.”

  “Except that we have the truth on our side, lad. Never forget that. Move along then, Oscar. We’ll lose our precedence.”