by Luke Kondor
“Yes, I do,” Aidan nodded.
“Because I do. I’ve never even met you, but the simple fact that you were willing to buy this information product, and you found the confidence to play it, means you’re the kind of person who succeeds. You’re a winner. And I’m proud to teach you what I know.”
Aidan knew the CD so well he mouthed the words along to it. He pulled onto a main road and began to pick up speed. The tin box of teeth slid and hit the dashboard. He grabbed it and placed it on the passenger seat.
“We’re going to go over a few different topics today. Interior versus exterior success. Building your mastermind group. Focusing on execution. And developing your wealth mindset.”
He was now on the motorway. A road sign that read ‘Midlands’ passed over his head.
Aidan sat back into the seat and settled into the long drive back to the farm. He just hoped that Sammy would have the pigs ready.
Another one.
Aidan tried to ignore the voice at first.
There’s another one.
The more Aidan ignored it, the louder it clanged. He was tired, he wanted to go back, feed the pigs and go to bed. His head panged.
There’s another one for you.
The words hit his head like a pipe to the jaw. He winced with every word.
“Let’s talk about listening to your inner heart’s desire,” Terry Rowlings said.
His name is Moomamu.
“It’s important to listen to that little voice in your heart. It knows you more than you know yourself.”
His name is Moomamu and I want you to feed him to me.
Aidan rubbed the back of his head.
“Okay,” he said. “Where is he?”
I’ll show you.
The whispering voice became a din of screeching white noise. He tried to keep his eyes on the road but it was impossible. He kept the wheel straight as the invisible tendrils of consciousness reached into his skull, peeled back layers of his mind, and forced it to see things that it had no recollection of. The tendrils implanted memories — sights, smells, noises — that he’d never had. He saw the building, the row of doors, the number 154. The door opened. A man. Bearded. Moomamu.
Kill him. Burn him. Tear his skin. Feed me.
“Okay!” Aidan shouted through gritted teeth as the voice quietened, relaxed. “Okay,” he said again as he opened his eyes and caught his breath. “I’ll find him.” His head felt different, wrong even, heavier, like the uninvited surgeon who’d been operating on him had left something inside, something that had no right being there.
Open-Air Theatre Review
March 11th, 2015, Untitled, written and performed by Anonymous.
Article written by Leslie Jessup, senior reviewer at Ohmywhatalondondayitis.co.uk.
Without advertisement of any kind. Without a script of any kind. Literally with nothing but his pants, the actor took the stage area of the East Bank Park in Shoreditch last Saturday afternoon. There were no props to hide behind. No excessive atmospheric music to conceal the mistakes. Not even an understudy. Just a man with a beard.
He launched into a rendition of a play I’ve never even heard of. I can only assume that it was written by the man himself. Here’s my interpretation:
A lonely pitiful extra-terrestrial has been dropped on the planet Earth to study humankind and has decided that their nature is one of cruelty with war, famine, and corrupt government systems being allowed to run riot. As such, the lonely alien is pleading with his peers to let him leave the planet.
It was a beautiful social satire exploring that nature of humanity and what it means to be an outsider looking in.
Yes, the plot was little ludicrous, but that wasn’t the point. For this play, you needed to read between the lines, listen between the words, and smell between the spaces.
And it did tread the line between hackneyed and experimental brilliance, but with a winning performance by the anonymous actor it was all tied together in a wonderful package.
There will be critics who will say that the production was lacklustre, empty, and void of all preparation, but screw them I say, we’ve just witnessed the birth of a new form of realism in theatre, one that I think will sweep the capital and will sprout copycats all over.
I for one can’t wait to see what’s in store for this promising character.
5/5,
Leslie Jessup,
Oh My What A London Day It Is.
Hannah Birkin
HANNAH AWOKE IN A SWEATY mess. Naked. Her entire body under the covers. Even her face was cloaked in the blue and white striped bed covers.
She sat up, dropping the covers down to her shoulders and looked around the bedroom. Still no sign of Simon.
It felt like he was forever an inch out of view, like if she could just swing her head around, or her arm fast enough, she might graze his skin with her fingers or catch a glimpse of his shoulder, but he was trapped behind her. His breath was on her neck and the warmth of his naked skin against hers. But he wasn’t there. Just the empty hole where he should’ve been.
Even his stuff was gone — his clothes, cologne, books, everything. Like he’d never existed. His smell, or the lack thereof, cut a Simon-shaped hole in her existence.
She smelled the takeaway curry from the night before: chicken tikka masala. Garlic naan. Spicy poppadoms. A can of Coke. A guilty pleasure. Her taste buds still sizzled.
That was a meal she was going to have to run off at some point. Along with all the others. She’d been having a lot of cheat meals recently and hadn’t exercised at all. Not since Simon left.
The calendar hanging from the wall said it was Thursday.
She lifted her grey dressing gown from the bedroom floor and wrapped herself in it. The wooden floor felt freezing against her bare feet. She used her sleeve to mop the sweat from her brow and made her way to the bathroom.
Hannah looked at herself in the mirror. At her sweaty blonde hair. At her reddened complexion. She wasn’t going to find a new Simon today, she thought.
On the bathroom sink there was a single empty glass — just the one toothbrush inside.
When she turned the shower on she had to turn it all the way to cold. Any warmer and the water made her dizzy.
This was how most days started for Hannah since she’d gone freelance. Writing copy for websites. Which meant she worked her own hours. And since Simon had vanished into thin air and she’d started what she was calling ‘The Recovery’, she’d worked as little as possible. Starting at noon. Finishing at three.
‘The Recovery’ was her intended healing time. Imagine, after a year and a half of living with your partner. A steady relationship. Easy-going. The odd argument about cleaning and whatnot, but nothing major.
And then imagine waking up one morning to find him, his clothes and all his stuff gone. Like he’d disappeared from the planet. Like he’d been erased. Imagine trying to explain to your parents that your boyfriend had escaped you like you were some sort of maximum security prison. Imagine suddenly having twice the rent to pay. Imagine him taking the Lord Of The Rings extended box set. Those were the only DVDs Hannah even cared about.
The strange thing was that even her parents didn’t remember Simon.
Weird.
Anyway.
Fuck Simon.
Fuck that guy for leaving a perfectly good thing.
Fuck that guy for breaking her heart.
Fuck that guy for disappearing.
So …
‘The Recovery’ was all about healing. It was a time for Hannah to get her shit together. Time to take it easy at work. Eat some takeaway. Maybe play some Xbox, drink some beers. Rebuild herself before starting that juice diet she’d been on about trying for forever.
Once out of the shower she was already sweating again. Her hair and her skin felt clammy.
She went downstairs and made herself some tea and buttered herself some toast. She noticed a small pile of unopened bills piling up below the letterbox.
“Not today,” she said to herself as she blocked them from her mind.
No bills allowed during ‘The Recovery’.
She pulled her laptop towards her and started checking the usuals — Facebook, Twitter, emails.
Suddenly her phone rang. It was her mum.
“Hannah, listen, the bank have been in touch. Some sort of issue with your council tax,” her mum said.
“Sure thing. Will get to it.” Hannah shook her head as she said it. Not during ‘The Recovery’. Real life was going to have to wait. A drop of blood landed on the table. “Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll handle it.”
“Hannah, I really think you should …”
“Gotta go,” she interrupted. “Got a client waiting for some copy.”
She put the phone down and looked at the blood on the wooden desk. She stopped and looked closer because for a second it looked the blood was steaming. Inspecting the little red dot on the desk, she definitely saw fine plumes of white rising up from the globule.
“What the—?” she said as she touched her nose. She looked at her hand. She didn’t usually get nosebleeds. Maybe one or two in her life. That was it.
But she grabbed a kitchen towel and held it against her nose.
She lifted her head back because that’s what she’d heard was the best thing to do, and the blood seemed to stop quickly enough.
It was done and she was back online.
Emails — some dating website sign-up confirmation. Delete. An email from Amazon. Delete. An email from the City Council. It read — Urgent: Court Summons.
She sighed, opened it up and read it. She felt hotter. A rising up of heat from within. Apparently the council had never received her council tax. She clicked over to her online banking and felt weak.
There was nothing.
No money in her savings account. No money in her current account. Nothing.
The last time she’d checked she had … more … well, at least she’d had something. There must’ve been some kind of mistake.
“Simon,” she said as he pulled the toast from the toaster. “Just butter please.”
She looked back to the computer before realising that something wasn’t quite right. She looked back to the toaster and Simon wasn’t there.
“Oh right,” she said. “That’s right.”
She stood and made the decision that she was going to have to take a break from ‘The Recovery’. She was going to have to go into town to the bank. She was going to have to sort everything out.
***
The taxi driver hadn’t stopped talking since he’d picked her up. Not to her. He was talking to some friend through the little white headphones in his ears in a language that Hannah didn’t know. She didn’t even know if it was a friend, to be fair. It could just as easily be a family member or an enemy. How could she tell? She guessed that the language was Punjabi, but wouldn’t bet money on being right.
“The City Bank?” he said as he turned to look at her. “On Old Street?”
The driver’s chin was a forest of uneven thick black hairs with the odd wiry grey hair reaching out a little further than the others. And his front teeth were caked in black. She felt sick.
“No … that one’s always too busy,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you take me to the small one on Brewer Street. You know where I mean?”
He nodded and said “Sure, sure,” and went back to talking in his own language.
Outside the window and Hannah noticed how many shops had changed since she’d last been in town. A hairdresser’s that she’d been to as a kid was now an estate agency. The old video shop was now a bakery. It was crazy to think how quickly things could change. Almost overnight.
The driver sped around a roundabout which sent Hannah’s already distressed stomach into a bilious frenzy. She felt like telling him to slow down, but didn’t want to be rude and interrupt his phone call, so instead she made a “yeuuurgh” sound.
It didn’t matter. The driver pulled up on Brewer Street and let her out. She handed the driver a twenty-pound note and he gave her some change.
“Bye,” she said and he said “Sure, sure,” and nodded as he pulled away, already back to the urgent matter of talking to his friend.
Hannah looked at the little bank. Which wasn’t actually little at all. It was a giant old building that the bank had occupied for years. It just happened to be smaller than the other one in town.
She checked her pockets. She had her bank card, some letters to prove her address, and her passport. Check. She then walked through the big glass doors and into the bank.
“Fuck,” she said as she joined the back of the queue of twenty or more people.
She wished she’d gone to the bigger one now because the air conditioning in this one felt non-existent. All they seemed to have was a motorised fan in the corner of the room. One that looked left to right and right to left. Blowing cool air on you for a brief second before turning its back on you.
The man in front of her was a trifle of a man in a three-piece suit. She saw the sweat dripping out of the rolls of fat on his neck and felt the heat radiating off his body.
“CASHIER ONE PLEASE.”
The automated voice was that of a calm female. It didn’t match the tone of the place. All around her she saw hot fidgety customers and, hidden behind a glass window, were a small handful of overwhelmed and overworked bank tellers.
“CASHIER THREE PLEASE.”
Hannah held her t-shirt collar out, trying to let some cool air find its way inside. She noticed a drop of blood fall and land on her collar, staining the white fabric.
“Oh crap,” she said, as he grabbed her nose.
She turned around to see the person behind her — an Asian man, also sweaty — drinking a bottle of water.
“Pardon me,” she said through her hand. “Have you got a tissue I might be able to use?”
The Asian man looked concerned. His brow furrowed. He pointed to her nose.
Hannah held her hand out and saw that it wasn’t so much the amount of blood on her hand that was worrying him, but the fact that plumes of steamed billowed upwards from it. The steam was pouring upwards and into her eyes. She could barely see.
“CASHIER FOUR PLEASE.”
“Are you okay, miss?” The fat man in front of her had turned around, and at the sight of Hannah, turned a pale shade of blue.
Suddenly everyone appeared to be looking at her. The whole queue had dispersed and were looking onwards, concerned.
“Help,” she said. “Help me. Will somebody please help me?”
The front of her white shirt was now covered in the dark blood. And now her skin was reddening, steaming, along with the blood.
She held her hands in front of her face and saw the steam pouring out of her fingertips. Inside she felt like fire. Her skin started to flake and then went from red to black before a single spark of fire lit up from her fingertips.
She was now screaming. But at the sight of the fire the crowd took a step back.
The Asian man emptied his bottle of water on her, but it did nothing. The flames fanned out, covering her arms and finding their way to her hair.
“CASHIER TWO PLEASE.”
All she heard were the flames in her ears. She may have heard something about an extinguisher, but the fire exploded out of her. Erupting out of every orifice.
Strangely, she was still alive.
Yes, she was in indescribable agony, but she was alive nonetheless.
She was well awake when the cooling foam of the extinguisher hit her skin.
She was well awake when the crowd looked down at her burning remains on the floor.
She couldn’t say anything so she lay there in her charcoaled state and the only noise coming from her was the quiet sizzling of overcooked meat.
***
Hannah woke up. She was naked. Her face under the covers. She sat up and the duvet dropped to her shoulders. The spice of the curry was still on her tongue. Still sizzl
ing. In fact, her entire body was sizzling. She looked at the calendar. It was Friday.
Still no sign of Simon.
Moomamu The Thinker
“Wake up now, Thinker. Gary is hungry.”
Moomamu woke for a second to see Gary sitting next to his head, staring at him. He fell back to sleep but was awoken again by a sharp pain on his nose. Opening his eyes, he saw Gary biting down on his face.
“Aaah, you little …” He brushed him off and sat up.
“Finally,” Gary said. He flicked his tail up at Moomamu and jumped down from the mattress. “Gary is hungry.”
“So,” Moomamu said, rubbing his eyes. “Why does that concern me?”
Gary turned around and looked at Moomamu like he wanted to pummel him for dominance.
“You’re a Tall One. A hairless giant. That’s how it works.” Gary tilted his head. “You give Gary food.”
Moomamu felt worse than he did the day before. His human body wasn’t fully functional. Perhaps it was the lack of nourishment or maybe he hadn’t slept for long enough, or maybe his all-too-powerful consciousness was too much for a puny human vessel. His belly wobbled. He was definitely hungry.
“And what do I get out of this arrangement?” he asked.
Gary’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling. Moomamu followed his eyes but couldn’t see anything.
“Thinker gets Gary’s company. Thinker gets Gary’s knowledge. And Thinker gets this.”
Gary jumped back on the mattress, walked over to Moomamu and pushed his body against Moomamu’s hand and started to vibrate. His whole body shook. Loose tufts of fur stuck to Moomamu’s arm. The vibrating sound was actually comforting. He saw why humans liked feline companions.
“I don’t care for that nonsense,” he said. “But I do want to go home. You said last night that you could help me?”
“Did Gary say that? Gary doesn’t remember.”