He began an unrelenting assault on the non-blogging community. He wrote one hundred posts per day, among them: ‘This nothing is better than their non-nothing.’ ‘This redundant sentence is better than their non-sentences.’ ‘This series of words is better than their non-series of non-words.’ And so on. His intention was to crush the community with a verbal torrent and unleash an online revolution of crazy, inventive, spectacular language Pollocking across the page in a passionate pirouette, a never-ending universal tag-team of tremendous writing leading to a new, endlessly updated canon of timeless literature. He completed his millionth post.
THE_______CHARACTER
Chester ambushed the label-seller one evening. He leapt onto his second back and wrapped his fingers round his ninth neck. The label-seller punched him off with the third arm in his second back and pinned Chester to the cobbles with his fourth foot. “A problem?” the label-seller asked. “This character isn’t a character,” Chester forced from his stressed throat. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t tolerate such an unprovoked attack. However, I can see the confusion you experience,” the label-seller said in a furious ebullient impartial tone. “Your label is ‘unlabelled’, so effectively, you have landed a rare sort of freedom. You can be anything for a brief period: a happy evangelist, a wry sous chef, a sexually voracious newsreader, a maniacal ballet instructor, a boisterous snow plough operator, whatever. But since you’re unlabelled, you must never stick to a label for too long. Understand?” Chester was allowed to rise. “Isn’t someone who shifts from personality to personality considered insane? I’ll be perceived as the insane character.” The label-seller sighed and whooped with delight and cried. “Look, I’m a dispenser, not a God. You interpret your label whatever way you want. Be here in four weeks with the £250, OK?” Chester watched the label-seller vanish under the bridge singing a showtune and cursing the moon and petting a pug. He sat on a stone and considered his new unlabelled role. Having no role made him depressed so he chose to be depressed for a while. He returned to Echt and ordered a rum at a bar called The Extracted Bicuspid. “You’re looking woe-faced,” the barman said. Chester panicked as the nearby bar-sitters heard the remark. “No! No!” he said with a faked smirk. “I am cheerful. I was in thought about something. Not woe-faced. Cheerful.” He paid for the rum and skulked in a booth.
THE POLITICAL CHARACTER
The politics of Echt: once, a proud right-leaning place (in part because the village sank towards the right-leaning cape), then a less-proud left-leaning place (a cash sum was spent to ‘correct’ the village towards the left to prevent subsidence), then a place of political pandemonium. Since the costly corrective procedure, the villagers had been consistently inconsistent politically, wavering between left- and right-wing views, from the abolition of tuition fees, to the reduction of the minimum wage, to the slicing of corporate taxes, to the enormous increase in employment benefits. George Hauser MP represented Echt in parliament. After nine weeks of these contradictory, unpartisan opinions, George lost control over his political party’s views, the left- and right-wings took flight into the political ether.
Before taking the late-night train to his Echtminster hotel, he chaired a constituency surgery, arriving at the office unshaven and sweaty-palmed. He smirked at the hostile constituents, narked that their incoherent views were not being represented. The fuming villagers began their tirade. First to enter was the bowl-cut bruiser Patricia Rice, who was never far with her scowling face and unapplauding hands.
“I am fed up with these immigrants working here. My Bradley had to travel to Dunecht to find work. That’s an hour commute each way. I am also sick of these innocent immigrants living in fear of deportation.”
“So you want to kick the immigrants out and let them stay in the country?”
“Is that so hard to understand? Now, Mr. Hauser, will you raise this issue in parliament, or will I have to write to the Prime Minister?”
“I promise to raise the issue. Thank you.”
“Listen here,” said Allan Tibor. “I am sick of that bridge toll. It costs £2 to come in and out of Echt. That is £10 a week, £40 a month, and £480 a year. That is a fortune for the likes of me. And another thing. How can we recoup the expense of building the bridge, and pay the toll operators, without having that toll in place?”
“So you want the toll scrapped and the toll to remain in place?”
“He listens at last!”
“I will mention this.”
“You politicians are useless,” said Meredith Oik. “I have told you, if you increase benefits, the lazy scroungers will sit there in their pants for even longer. And if you decrease them, these poor people won’t have enough money for basic necessities.”
“So they should stay the same?”
“Not what I am saying! God, you people never listen. I am saying cut the damn benefits and increase the damn benefits!”
“Noted. Thanks for coming.”
“You’re all the same,” said Mark Tremors, “only interested in yourselves. I want you self-interested rodents to have no expenses. I’m not paying for your night at the Ritz. And I’ll tell you what. You do such a difficult job. You deserve a very generous wage, and any expenses that might ease the stress of representing us.”
“So a wage increase and decrease?”
“You understand!”
“Cheers, Mark Tremors.”
“Dog shit everywhere!” said Rick Pimms, “I can’t stand these foul mutts and their foul owners! A fine of two hundred pounds per poo! And I hate how there’s nowhere to deposit the poobags for us dog-lovers. Those fines are unfair! More poo bins!”
“Thanks for coming.”
THE LACONIC CHARACTER
B. swat a bee.
Further stories forthcoming, featuring: THE SEXUALLY EXHAUSTIVE CHARACTER; THE CHARACTER INCLUDED FOR THE SAKE OF HAVING A 50TH CHARACTER; THE UNREMARKABLE IN EVERY WAY CHARACTER; THE PRIMLY NAIVE CHARACTER; THE FRIGHTENINGLY OFF-KEY NEIL DIAMOND IMPERSONATOR CHARACTER; THE BELIEVABLY REAL FICTIONAL CHARACTER; THE CHARACTER WITH TWO OTHER CHARACTERS INSIDE HER; THE UNFUNNY AND RATHER CRABBY FORMER ASTRONAUT CHARACTER; THE CHARACTER WHO ONLY HAS BAD THINGS TO SAY ABOUT BRIX SMITH; THE CHARACTER WHOSE LEFT EYEBROW LOOKS SHAVEN, ARMY-STYLE, BUT UPON CLOSER INSPECTION THIS PROVES BOGUS; THE CHARACTER WHO SCOFFS AT NATURE DOCUMENTARIES BUT WHO METICULOUSLY RECYCLES; THE CHARACTER WHO IS MALE BUT WHO CLAIMS TO BE POST-MALE; THE DENNIS HOPPER FANATIC CHARACTER; THE CHARACTER WHO WRITES GLOWING REVIEWS OF JONATHAN COE NOVELS BUT SHARES THEM WITH NO ONE; THE CHARACTER WHO ONLY EATS SALMON; THE OVERRATED OR UNDERRATED CHARACTER; THE POST-MALE SHE-MALE CHARACTER WHO HATES E-MAIL; THE CHARACTER WHO INSISTS YOU TRY HER HOLOGRAMMIC CASSEROLES, THEN ACTS OUTRAGED WHEN YOU MIME AN EATING AND APPRECIAITING MOTION, AS THOUGH IN PLAYING ALONG WITH HER HOLOGRAMMIC CASSEROLE CHARADE, YOU HAVE SOMEHOW BETRAYED HER; THE CHARACTER BASED ON THE WRITINGS OF THE LITERARY CHARACTER; THE CHARACTER WHO BARES NO COINCIDENTAL RESEMBLANCE TO OTHER CHARACTERS IN HIS VICINITY; THE CHARACTER WHO COULDN’T CARE LESS IF YOU FIND HER ANTICS LOVEABLE, ACCESSIBLE, REALISTIC, OR WHATEVER, AND WHO SIMPLY DRINKS, FUCKS, AND CURSES WHENEVER SHE PLEASES, NOT REALISING THAT PEOPLE LOVE THOSE TRAITS, AND SHE IS REALLY EVERYTHING SHE PURPORTS NOT TO BE; THE CHARACTER WITH A TRENDY GOATEE WHO IS WORKING ON A CLAYMATION ADAPTATION OF HAROLD PINTER’S MOST OBSCURE PLAY; THE CHARACTER WHO STAYS UP TO 1AM WRITING SILLY CHARACTER NAMES; THE IMMATURE CHARACTER WHO HILARIOUSLY MISINTERPRETS HIS NAME AND SPENDS ALL DAY STANDING IN MANURE; THE CHARACTER WHO NEVER MAKES REFERENCES TO WELSH-LANGUAGE SOAP OPERAS; THE CHARACTER IN LOVE WITH CADNO FROM POBOL Y CWM; THE CHARACTER WHO BURSTS INTO CRAZY SPONTANEOUS DANCING AT THE SOUND OF CUPBOARDS OPENING; THE CHARACTER WHO SPENDS AN HOUR CHOOSING AN ICE CREAM AT THE ICE CREAM TRUCK, THEN UPON RECEIPT OF THE ICE CREAM OF THEIR CHOICE, LAUNCHES INTO A LOUD, VIOLENT TANTRUM, CLAIMING THAT WAS NOT THE ICE CREAM THEY WANTED, AND THREATENS TO SUE ANYONE WHO SAYS ANY DIFFERENT, UNTIL SOMEONE ARRIVES WITH A BROWN PAPER BAG CONTAINING EVERY ICE CREAM FLAVOUR EVER MADE, WHEREUPON THEIR MAD OUTBURS
T IS REPLACED BY GUSHING APOLOGIES AND TEARS, AND THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THEY HAVE LOST THEIR APPETITE FOR ICE CREAM; THE CHARACTER WHO WASN’T THERE; THE CHARACTER WHOSE TIME AT DUNKIRK WAS CUT SHORT BY THE ARRIVAL OF A CREOSOTE PARCEL; THE CHARACTER WHO STOOD ON THE TRAIN PLATFORM ALL WEEKEND, AND SHE NEVER CAME; THE CHARACTER WHO ALWAYS CONTRADICTS THE PREVAILING ORTHODOXY, BUT WOULDN’T DREAM OF CONTRADICTING THE PREVAILING WIND.
[From Tales from the Fictional Village of Echt, THE LITERARY CHARACTER, Unbound. Foreword, THE CHARACTER WHO WRITES ONE FOREWORD.]
“Vestibule Chairs”
[ANGUS]
Dear Albert,
I am the editor of a work-in-progress volume, Scotland Before the Bomb. As you know, the nation formerly known as Scotland was completely destroyed in a merciless nuclear strike in 2060. I am working hard to assemble a collection of documents that attempt to present a piecemeal picture of what the nation was like before its inhabitants were removed from the map by a Luxembourgian lunatic. We have it on authority that you used to live in the country of Angus and might be able to supply us with some information about that nation. I have been searching intensely for up to nine months, so I would strongly appreciate any response.
Yours respectfully,
Mark Nicholls
Dear Mark
Thank you for your email. I would like to furnish you with some information about Angus, however, I will have to request a fee, since my time is precious. This fee should be at least in triple figures.
Yours,
Albert Spatch
Dear Albert,
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I am unable to offer a fee in triple figures. If there is any information you could supply pro bono, I would be appreciative.
Yours,
Mark
Hi Mark
Nothing for free, however, for £20 at a time, I will reveal a piece of information. My Paypal email is this one.
Best
Albert
Hi Albert
I have transferred £20 to your account. Please supply some information.
Best
Mark
Hi Mark
Thank you for the money. Here is a piece of info: the chair in my vestibule was cherry red.
Best,
Albert
Dear Albert
Thank you for this information. This isn’t the sort of thing I had in mind. I was more interested in facts about the political landscape, the nature of governance, the social mores of the country, that sort of thing, not personal details about your home furnishings. Since I transferred the money on a trust basis, I would appreciate some more significant facts on the nation of Angus, if possible.
Best
Mark
Mark
I told you, my vestibule chair was cherry red. This was when I lived in Angus. If you want any other facts, please transfer another £20.
Al
Albert
If I transfer another £20, I would need assurance from you that the fact you supplied me with was not one about your own furnishings, and something of historical import. If you can make that promise, I will transfer.
Mark
Mark
Yes, I can promise. Please transfer.
Al
Al
Money transferred.
M
Mark
Thank you for the £20. Here is a historical fact for you. In the Prime Minister’s wife’s vestibule, the winged chair was auburn.
Best of luck with your project,
Al
Al
Clearly, you are not taking this seriously, or know nothing about Angus. Or you are simply seeking to milk me for easy money, because you are the only person I was able to find who lived there. Although I transferred the money voluntarily, if you are any sort of gentleman, I would appreciate you returning the funds to me.
Best
Mark
Mark
No can do on returning the funds. I have to say, I find your attitude towards my information on vestibule furnishings rather bizarre. As an editor, these facts should be of enormous import to your book. If you transfer another £20, I will supply you with some more substantial facts about our political situation.
Al
Can I trust you?
Yes.
Transferred. Don’t know why.
Mark—
The Prime Minister’s name was Waldorf Emit. The chair in his vestibule was a nut-brown chesterfield. The Secretary of State was Dennis Grenshaw. The chair in his vestibule was a mauve caquetoire. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Alice Tryol. The chair in her vestibule was a fuschia hassock. The Secretary of State for Business was Earl Horton. The chair in his vestibule was a five-back ladderback in old heliotrope. The Secretary of State for International Trade was Claudia Kermode. The chair in her vestibule was a pewter blue papasan. The Secretary of State for the Home Department was Charles Ashram. The chair in his vestibule was an electric chair in icterine. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was Graeme Volt. The chair in his vestibule was a reproduction curule in kombu green. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was Iain Boom. The chair in his vestibule was a meat-brown pouffe. The Secretary of State for Culture & Sport was Felicity Bromwitch. The chair in her vestibule was a director’s chair in medium taupe. The Secretary of State for Angus Cows was Gwyn Daffid. The chair in her vestibule was a mystic red platform rocker. The Secretary of State for Transport was Neil Grimm. The chair in his vestibule was a dingy dungeon beanbag. The Secretary of State for Education was Angus McCallum. The chair in his vestibule was a dodger blue restraint chair. The Secretary of State for Defence was Sajid Khan. The chair in his vestibule was an anti-flash white zaisu. The Secretary of State for Justice was Finn Capone. The chair in his vestibule was an aquamarine spinning chair. The Secretary of State for International Trade was Shang Phillips. The chair in her vestibule was a bistre potty. I think this is sufficient information.
Al
Al
If there’s anyone else you know who lived in Angus, please put us in touch.
Best,
Mark
[Emails from Albert Spatch to the Editor, March–April 2109.]
“The Sound of No”
[PERTH]
IN THE SOVEREIGN NATION of Perth, King Colin and Queen Lara Macrae announced their plans to launch a nuclear warhead within one week if their crumbling marriage could not be repaired. “We exist as a lodestar of perfection in this beautiful land. If we cannot maintain perfect unity, there is no reason for Perth to remain,” the King said in a televised statement. An hysterical upcry followed. “No!” said the populace. “Do not drop atomic matter on our heads!” The couple, former morning TV presenters, were elected the official aristocracy in 2030, narrowly beating pop-combo Jim & Jem Jenners to the post. Their purpose was to smile and appear flawless in public, and this facade had been maintained for nine years, until they reached that moment in their marriage where the mere awareness of their partner’s physical presence on the planet made them want to slit their wrists. Having become so miserable at their failure to retain a successful marriage, and afraid of losing the untold privilege to which they had become accustomed, the couple made their weapon threat before the omnibus of Perth Way.
Frantic solutions were posed to help raise the couple’s morale. Among them: attempting to recreate their spectacular wedding ceremony word for word, then “re-enacting” the first successful seven years of their married life (refused as the original cathedral had been turned into flats); projecting 24-hr reels of movies showing untroubled married life into the palace’s walls (refused as no such films exist); hiring outside agents to ruin all marriages in Perth by coercing wives or husbands into infidelity or asphyxiation, so the royal marriage might appear successful in comparison (refused as the plan was leaked to Mumsnet); hiring a fleet of comedians to perform uplifting anti-marriage routines showing how normal their failure was and to chuckle at their failings (refused as the couple h
ad no sense of humour); kidnapping the couple and locking them in a windowless room with a councillor (refused as no councillor volunteered for fear of execution); having the royal couple executed before either could order the launch (retained as the final recourse).
Having exhausted these possibilities, the Committee for the Prevention of Nuclear Annihiliation contacted record shop owner Trev Gorge, who was recruited to try and reunite the couple through the sweet nectar of sound. Trev, an unimposing boychik sporting a series of unironed cardigans, arrived at the palace with two underarmfuls of vinyl LPs, and a convoy of mixed fruits cider and Pringles. The committee thought that Trev might play some Al Green or Barry White, or Bowie’s cover of ‘Wild is the Wind’, however, he arrived following his controversial decision only to watch films soundtracked by John Cale or Scott Walker, and had long ended his period of laid-back “ironic” tolerance of mainstream balladry. The royal couple were receiving Trev at his unapologetic muso pinnacle. He chose to open the Aural Reconciliation Sessions with his favourite Swans track, the 15-minute ‘Helpless Child’, a haunting maudlin assault on the senses featuring the lines: “The muddy water runs beneath your folds/ You won’t let me breathe, you won’t let me go”.
“The apocalyptic clamour of doom-laden organ and droning guitar is the perfect soundtrack to the post-nuclear scorched earth of Perth. Prophetic, I hope not,” Trev remarked in his trademark flat tone. This opening choice left the couple blinking in incomprehension and slumped in their regal bathrobes in despair.
He decided to take things to a new plane with The Mothers of Invention’s ‘The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet’, a 12-minute musique concrète composition inspired by Edgard Varèse, a cacophonic mess of percussion and freakish vocalisations. Trev insisted on silence throughout the recordings, so the royal couple sat wordless as the psychedelic rave-up with frequent simian and squawking noises clamoured on. Next up was Lou Reed’s 18-minute ‘Like a Possum’, a piece of loud electric feedback over near inaudible improvised lyrics, taking its cue from the composer’s instrumental LP of distortion Metal Machine Music. Trev praised the raw splendour of the sound and the devastating beauty of the improvised self-expression when captured at the artists’ peak. The King mustered up the energy to say: “Are you planning on playing only long and horrifying songs to us?”
Scotland Before the Bomb Page 7