The House of Writers

by M. J. Nicholls

  BERTIE: Nonsense. Ours is the art of suggestion.

  JAULOPIE: Teasing and tickling the reader into a state of erotic flurry.

  OH: Making them think there’s a big fuck scene round the corner when there’s only more description of the curtains.

  TINA: Yes, thank you, darling. No one asked for your contribution.

  OH: I thought I’d give it anyway, since we’re all saying words.

  BERTIE: No, you are as usual standing there like an unwanted lamp with a very dim bulb making sneaky comments and hovering over our shoulders, drooling disparaging remarks all over our masterworks.

  OH: Untrue. See, potential romance writers, these old maids bash out the stories and plots in prehensile form, while I spend my evenings trying to chisel what they’ve written into readable prose we can actually sell.

  CASSIE: Pure fabricatory poopycook, my lumptious.

  OH: Not even a word. That’s the kind of drivel they put on the page. Can you imagine anyone getting hot at the word lumptious?

  TINA: My darff, you’d need the relevant sack-happy sexperience before you can talk about getting hot!

  OH: Oh’s mum, shut your yap.

  BERTIE: We’re all perfectly acquainted with the ins-and-outs-and-ins-again of intercourse. We’ve had our flair share of erotic tussles.

  JAULOPIE: As romance writers, it’s important our work is authentic.

  BERTIE: Ha, you can talk about authentic, when was the last time you felt the white-hot thrust of a prodigiously proportioned cock-or-two in your lady’s area?

  JAULOPIE: I’ll have you know I’ve bedded up to seven hundred men in my time.

  BERTIE: She used to work in an old folks’ home putting duffers to sleep.

  JAULOPIE: Slanderous machinations from the lips of a vulgar virgin!

  BERTIE: Not true. I was once arrested for having full intercourse on the road with a fantastic man.

  JAULOPIE: By fantastic you mean plastic?

  BERTIE: Gob—close it!

  TINA: Well, we all know I have had sexual relations, I have a daughter to prove it.

  OH: Mum, everyone knows you inseminated yourself with Sperm Sample #462.

  CASSIE: What kind of lover was Sperm Sample #462? Was he passionate and tender, or just a little drip?

  TINA: You frigid fancy!

  AD FROM SPONSORS

  UNSURE whether ScotCall is right for you? Here’s an aptitude test so see if you’re the person we’re looking for! Which of the following responses would you make to a caller’s problem?

  Operative I :

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand. You put the cucumber into your rucksack and it was missing along with your wallet and house keys? And you were wearing the rucksack the entire time you passed through the cornfield and only encountered two people on your trip, the farmer and a hobo? Yes, he probably was an experimental writer, you know what they’re like. Maybe at some point along the way your backpack fell open and the items slipped out? You know that sheaves of corn in dry fields can be quite gnarly like fingers, they might have unzipped your bag and plucked out the items like pickpockets, or backpackpockets! Yes, I know it’s unlikely, but you know a similar thing happened to my friend with heather and a cheese sandwich?”

  Operative 2 :

  “Hello, sir. Now have you considered the possibility that your cucumber was stolen by this farmer? I know you only saw him in the distance, but if he spotted you, there is the chance he crept up on you in the cornfield and stole the vegetable due to a deficit in his own production. He might have taken the vegetable and cloned it to sell cheaply on the black market, you know that’s pretty common these days. Sorry? You’re more worried about the house keys and wallet? I really have no idea what you mean.”

  Operative 3 :

  “Hello, sir. I’m a senior advisor at this office. Now, can you tell me, was your cucumber insured at all? You are completely sure that it wasn’t? All right, well, there are two things you should do before we can help you process a claim. You should retrace your steps on the walk to check the items aren’t lying around somewhere, and if you can’t find them, you should send us a photograph of the missing items and fill in claim form 4.29. If your claim is successfully processed, we will send a replacement cucumber out to you at no extra charge. Sorry? No, I’m afraid we can’t at the moment. You will have to call us separately about each missing item, we can’t process multiple items at once. Do you want to proceed with your cucumber claim?”

  Which would you choose? Let us know and you could be in fulltime life-long employment within two weeks!

  SCOTCALL.

  YOUR FUTURE.

  Recruitment Line:

  0800 717 717

  Your idea of literature

  An avalanche of atomised axioms,

  a bouillabaisse of banal babble,

  a cartload of crimson clichés,

  a dacha of derogative doodles,

  an earful of earnest etchings,

  a fanfare of farted fripperies,

  a googleplex of grated gaffes,

  a hatstand of halfhearted ho-hums,

  an ideogram of imported idiocies,

  a jugful of jeering jokes,

  a karaoke of krazed klutziness,

  a lapwing of laughable litotes,

  a mash-up of mangled metaphors,

  a nunnery of nonsensical nothings,

  an opera of onanistic ogles,

  a pangloss of pathetic parodies,

  a quiz of questionable quackeries,

  a runnel of rancid repetitions,

  a sluicegate of seriocomic satires,

  a tattyscone of terrible teasers,

  a ululation of useless urine,

  a vulva of vicious vagaries,

  a waste of worthless wrappings,

  a xerox of xeroxed xeroxes,

  a yurt of yesterday’s yawns,

  a zoo of zany zingers.

  This

  6

  IT is the writer’s responsibility to loaf. The writer, if active and energetic, will deaden his sensitivity to the world and spoil his creativity by being overly occupied. Complete disinterest in one’s surroundings. Complete disinterest in anything outside one’s own navel. These are the hallmarks of a driven writer. Beware the writer who hops on his bike and makes copious notes of his surroundings or careful observations of other humans in order to contrive an accurate depiction of what makes them tick. This is wrong. The most successful form of creativity is derived from lounging on an armchair deep in the clutches of self-loathing or kicking back on a divan pondering the purpose of rising from that divan at some time in the future. I wrote my first novel, Not Getting Up (2007), sitting upright in my bed, often slouching down the pillows to a supine position, where I would hold the notepad above my head, writing until sleep called (as it often did), returning to the one state of pure bliss, when nothing matters except dreaming. The novel was the first in a trilogy, followed by Still Not Getting Up (2008), and Never Getting Up (2009), each consisting of lists of things I might choose to do upon getting up, if I ever get up (which in the novels I never do), and things I have lied about having done (I have done nothing in the realm of these novels, since I have never moved from my bed). The trilogy was panned by a snide hack at The Cumbernauld Gazette, who commented on the “laziness” of the prose, thus missing the point in an hilarious but irritating way, and praised by The List for suggesting a way forward for “the future of the novel [...] by positioning it flat on its back.” The novels coincided with a period in my life when I refused to engage with the outside world, minus a few snarling emails to debtors or enemies, and apart from necessary trips out to seal my dole money, I rarely left my flat. This way is the true path to creating honest, enduring art about what really matters in life: getting out of it in any way you can.

  The Trauma Rooms

  6

  NEXT one.”

  “Skip to the whys and wherefores.”

  “I prefer letting the patients speak for th
emselves.”

  “You realise I came to find a stapler, not take a thorough tour?”

  “Yes! We will locate that stapler, I am sure. Now, come meet Max. You will find him hunched in the corner like a druggie 24 hours into a no-heroin scenario. Dangle this plastic rainbow in front of him,” the doctor said, producing a plastic rainbow from his pocket.

  “Has that been in your pocket the whole time?”

  “Yes. Hi Max. This is Erin.”

  Erin took the plastic rainbow, walked over to the huddled ball-man, and dangled. He unballmanned himself and stared at the plastic rainbow, emerging from his traumatised funk to uncrease his features into a desperate smile, muttering words like “light” and “colours,” as Erin turned to the doctor for confirmation this scenario was acceptable.

  “Max, Erin would like to hear your story, could you tell her?”

  “Story? Yes ... I could.”

  “Great. Come on Max, snap into life. Look at the rainbow.”

  “And be snappy.”

  “The rainbow. Yes. All right. I was working as a reader at Polonius Books at the time. The first MS I received had an epigraph from Franz Kafka, his famous line ‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ I thought this was an all-too-famous line to use at the beginning of what was a mediocre thriller set in Dorset. I passed on the book and moved on. The next MS had the Kafka line: ‘It is often safer in chains than to be free.’ Again: a momentous line for a ho-hum production. Then followed a spate of novels cribbing passages from The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika. Characters recalled lines from Kafka during the novels to increase their kudos as characters. One novel set in a Butlins camp was prefaced with a four-page passage from Letter to His Father. The Kafka cribs kept coming. Soon I was wading in a sea of Kafka-saturated novels, until I arrived at the insane Fiona Dreams Horses, where the protagonist’s equine dreams were prefaced with a page of Kafka, each horse named after a character from Kafka, each horse speaking in Kafka lines. I cracked under the Kafkan onslaught. I began to adopt the depressive paranoiac persona associated with Kafka’s novels, changed my name by deed poll to Citizen #3727272, and adopted a herd mentality, listening to popular bands, aping the actions and interests of the population at large until I became a faceless clone. I sought out large crowds so I could vanish into them. I came alive on crowded train platforms, in packed trains, in places where people stood herded in misery, and couldn’t face returning home to be alone with my thoughts. I was forced into contemplating my actions, and had to face the reality that I was different, I was not part of the herd I so coveted. This drove me insane, and here we are.”

  “Interesting,” Erin said, yawning.

  “Yes. Amazing that so many young writers turned to Kafka as an inspiration.”

  “Quoting Kafka is a surefire way of appearing literary, well-read and clued-in about the world. You are a writer who has read and understood Kafka, so yes, you have tussled with the darker side of life, and have emerged stronger, a more sensitive and knowing individual, and yes, readers should respect your integrity, because you wouldn’t possibly have the chutzpah to quote Franz without having earned the right to,” Erin said.

  “Indeed.”

  “That by quoting Kafka in your epigraph, you are not saying you are an artist on a par with the Master, that you are merely doffing your literary cap to his legacy, you are a humble acolyte kneeling at the Master’s feet, and that by titling your novel Kafka’s Coat, you are not attempting to draw attention your novel by putting his name in the title, you are merely showing your reverence, you are not cynically mining the late-20s alienated males market with a novel that says ‘if you love Kafka, you will love me!’ and you are not saying your prose sometimes reaches the same heights of profundity as the Master, although if some critic made that remark, you would accept the flattering comparison, of course, and you are not saying having read Kafka’s short oeuvre twice, and published a book with Kafka in the title, you are setting yourself up as some sort of expert, but if broadsheets wanted to commission an essay from you on Kafka, re-examining his importance in 21st century lit, or that sort of thing, you would hardly say no, and if a university wanted to offer you a teaching position on the basis of your knowing stuff about Kafka, that you would refuse, but of course these are all happy coincidences, nothing to do with cynically mining Kafka’s legacy because he’s popular with readers and scholars alike, more lucky that you fell in love with a Legend who also happened to promise you lucrative publication and academic opportunities, when you could have easily have fallen in love with William Sansom or some other obscure Kafkan writer, but hey, if you can profit from what you love most in this life, why not simply reap the rewards and be happy?”

  “OK. You can stop now.”

  “Do you understand my point?”

  “Oceanically clear.”

  “My stapler isn’t here, can we move on please.”

  “Thanks Max.”

  “Terror. Everywhere. Screaming balls of pain,” Max said, re-ballmanning himself.

  “It’s all about balls with you, isn’t it?”

  “Ha ha. Chin up, Max! See you in a while,” the doctor said, closing the door before the terrible moaning commenced. “Fortunately the rooms have been soundproofed.”

  Puff: The Unloved Son

  4

  PUFF, the unloved son of fantasy writer C.J. Jackson, whose twelve-book-and-increasing Firehole was in endless progress, had been released to kick around the stock-dump fields chasing feral digipets with a makeshift bat made from the melted left-half of a monitor, trapping the creatures and smashing their digi-guts out with superhuman force for an unfit eight-year-old. He became sullen and resented his mother for her unfair slap-and-spank—a discipline she never repeated—and refused to speak to her as he ate his portions and slept indoors, fleeing back into the fields to commit violence on unreal animals and take long rambles into the trimmed-and-tucked lawns of the nearest ScotCall centre, where by the sort of coincidence that would only appear in one of his mother’s novels when she was unable to weave two plot threads together convincingly, his father spotted him from his window while hitting his 500+ call targets. His father, Crumbs, recognised his likeness via CCTV close-up. There was no mistaking that nose (crinkled in the septum) and those lips (fat and curled-out) as Crumbs traits. He requested a ten-minute leave, losing a “star player” sticker for that afternoon, and went to confront his mini-Crumbs on the lawn.

  “You’re the son I was denied,” he said. The son said nothing. “Where’d you come from?” The son said nothing. An accidental roll of the eyes towards The House betrayed him. “Claire Watson?” he asked. The son nodded.

  Crumbs requested leave for the rest of the working day. This immediately wiped his six-year track record as “exceptional” worker back down to “novice,” requiring a six-year reparation process (and promotion pass-over). He drove to The House and located Claire by bribing the receptionist to search the database. Crumbs tapped the rapt Claire on the shoulder—she was deep into a fight scene between Bryn the Merciless and Griffin the Great— until she acknowledged the two unwanted sights.

  “How come you dropped our son in a field?” he asked.

  “Do you want him?”

  “I take it that means you don’t?”

  “Correct.”

  “Right. Let’s go.”

  Claire, naturally, failed to look back with a regretful frown when her son was released forever into his father’s more willing clutches. She relished in the freedom she had—not having to check Puff had eaten or washed (not that she remembered to do this anyway)—or pretend to care when he was bleeding out his orifices. She really was delighted she’d freed herself from the barnacle of her stupid and messy little accident. Finally, she had some peace and quiet to work on her thirteen-book-and-counting fantasy book series, Fireswine.

  A Better Life

  6

  I whittled a dozen tooth sharpeners from Mrs. Horritt’s cabinets and set abo
ut sharpening the sheeps’ molars. The creatures didn’t discriminate against wires or a human hand and tried to snack on my fingers. I used two tooth sharpeners to clamp open their mouths and set about increasing the pointedness of their teeth using a frictious hand movement akin to frenzied masturbation. Satisfied, I fed one sheep a length of flex. He munched as usual and explored his new capabilities, nibbling to the nub and swallowing the electricity. He exploded soon after as I took refuge behind a plastic tree. We had a problem. If every sheep exploded after chewing a wire, its partners’ overcoats would ignite before they had the chance to fuck up the wires at each ScotCall trough. I had to herd the sheep for the first few troughs: one sheep at a time was sent to a trough to work on the cables and detonate in a controlled manner, then another was released once the smoke cleared. I had to nudge aside the flaming carcasses so the sheep could step in. The explosions and fires rarely did much damage to the wires. For this plan to work I would need to recruit a large amount of sheepherders to prod these ovines in the right direction. Given that the concrete fields spanned over fifty miles in each direction there was no way I could police such a business. Another option was to force breeding between the sheep to create an overspill.

  I studied their “anatomies.” Rogue electrical equipment from the stock-dump fields had impregnated flesh-and-blood sheep and caused this species mutation. I observed two sheep copulating and noted that the male sperm had an oily consistency, a natural mixture of oil and ovine semen. I upended a sheep and saw that I could extrude this liquid from the sheep quite simply. I commenced a “milking” procedure, collecting the sperm in buckets and inseminating the females manually. I spent the next two weeks camping on the concrete fields, eating cold oven chips and inseminating as many sheep as possible before returning to the cottages. I reeked of the oily semen and when I returned to Pete and Rob after two weeks of repetitive and unpleasant work (if someone had told me when I left The House that I would end up inseminating sheep, I wouldn’t have been surprised) the slothful gits were as usual ungenerous, making unflattering remarks about the horrid stench.