by Rhys Hughes
This way we can trick Grillchin and satisfy all his requirements. He will have a set of bones to use as an artwork and I am confident that my bones won’t lie under the sea. In fact that’s where I keep my truth, mingled with the marrow inside those white human sticks. It’s a good place to keep truth safe. Why not try keeping your own truth there sometime?
Hayley Jude will be inside me until the end of our lives and few couples, no matter how romantic they try to be, can claim this. The fact her skeleton is a bit shorter than my own doesn’t matter. My flesh sags on my frame now, but so what? I love Hayley Jude. She’s a Corker.
Next time I get a vacation I will take her somewhere nice. I won’t use my mishmash ship, nor the submarine, but construct a vessel from slices of charred bread. With luck it will be tempest toast on vast waves and go soggy, casting us upon a desert island where we will be safe from detection. Grillchin will be able to fume as much as he likes, to no avail, for he will never find us and, even if he does, we can protest innocence convincingly.
I am sure all will be well or, if not well, then adequate; or, if not adequate, then bearable; or, if not bearable, then vicious.
And, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
Nonetheless it is true. Isn’t it?
Train of Thought
My Train of Thought is leaving from Platform 666 in a few minutes and I haven’t even bought a ticket yet.
True, I can purchase one on the train from an inspector but they scowl and hiss when asked, and I am feeling fragile. It has been a hard day and I don’t require the hassle. I’m fraught.
Or am I freight? I always get those two mixed up.
It’s frightful, friends, believe me!
I recall the good old days, when citizens were allowed to have thoughts at any time they liked, and those thoughts were permitted to go anywhere. It wasn’t always wise to voice your thoughts, but the actual thoughts were free. Nobody at all had to pay for them.
And as for timetables, stations, and all that rigmarole…
Perish the thought! Which reminds me:
A Train of Thought did perish yesterday evening. It was in a collision with another Train of Thought coming the other way. The result was bad, a mangled tangle of abstract wreckage.
And, in the middle of all the debris, the bodies of a deep-sea diver and a mountaineer in a close embrace, but whether an embrace of love or hate is tricky to ascertain at this exact instant.
Jack Custard was a diver who loved exploring sunken ships, and he even lived in one for a month, his air being continually replenished by a pump at the surface. The truth is that he hated coming back up. He belonged in the deeps. Downwards was his true home.
He was a very good man and always did kind deeds whenever he had the chance; but he couldn’t wait to return to the watery abyss. Diving was his one passion. He was on familiar terms with octopuses, squid, dolphins, and many other kinds of subaquatic beast.
If he could have grown gills, he would have done so…
One day, he was reluctantly riding his bicycle through his hometown in the direction of the market. He was planning to buy some fruit for supper, but not his own supper: he intended to donate it to some poor people with scurvy who lived next door to him. Students.
As he turned the corner, he was shocked to see another bicycle coming straight at him. There was a collision and—
Witnesses described it in very lurid terms indeed.
But I can’t reveal details unless you have a valid ticket. Fatal accidents are a spectator sport these days, that’s why.
Hickory Dickory was a mountaineer who loved conquering the highest and hardest peaks, and he even lived on a ledge no wider than a thumb for a month, his food being constantly replenished by a helpful yeti. Upwards was where he belonged. His home was the sky.
He was a nasty man, and always did awful deeds whenever he had the chance, but he couldn’t wait to return to the mountaintops. Climbing was his one passion. He was on familiar terms with birds, clouds, balloons, and many other kinds of high altitude inhabitant.
If he could have grown wings, he would have done so…
One day, he was reluctantly riding his bicycle through his hometown in the direction of the market. He was planning to buy a large bottle of olive oil, but not to cook with: he wanted to make his driveway slippery so that any visitors would fall and injure themselves.
As he turned the corner, he was shocked to see another bicycle coming straight at him. There was a collision and—
Witnesses described it in very lurid terms indeed.
But I can’t reveal details unless you have a valid ticket. Fatal accidents are a spectator sport these days, that’s why.
You already know that, of course. May I see your ticket?
Jack and Hickory blinked at each other.
“You’re a ghost!” “So are you!” “The collision killed us!”
“I won’t forget this!” “I forgive you!”
Both spirits looked down at their own cadavers, at the ruined bicycles, at the gathering crowd of shocked people.
Then they felt an insistent tugging at their forms.
“I seem to be rising!” cried Jack.
“I seem to be sinking!” Hickory bellowed.
“But I’m a diver. I’m scared of heights. I don’t want to go up!”
“I’m a climber. I’m terrified of depths.”
“What shall we do then?”
“I don’t know. The force is getting stronger…”
The truth is that they were responding to the pull of the afterlife. Jack was being drawn up into Heaven, and Hickory pushed down into Hell. It is ironic that these directions weren’t the ones that could ever make them happy. Both Heaven and Hell are fully automated systems and don’t care about the phobias we may happen to have.
“If I grab hold of you, and you grab hold of me, and if we cling tight enough to each other then…” ventured Jack.
“…the equal and opposite forces should cancel out,” finished Hickory, his eyes burning like soft spherical arsonists.
And so they embraced strongly, arms and legs entwined.
And yes, the forces did balance.
They remained on Earth, which perhaps is how ghosts are born. Mind you, respectable ghosts don’t tend to go around in pairs, so forget I said that. I’ll delete it before this story is published, unless I’m distracted from doing so by the next unexpected event—
“Jack Custard, you are preventing the soul of a bad man from going to Hell, where it belongs!” boomed the voice of a celestial tannoy. “And that means you are also a bad man. Get down!”
This wasn’t an incitement to dance, by the way.
The tannoy voice was automated too, just in case you’re wondering. It almost never incited dead people to dance.
“Hickory Dickory, you are stopping a good man’s soul from going to Heaven, where it belongs, which is a bad act… and yet that good man is no longer good but bad, so you are preventing a bad man from going to Heaven, which is a good act, which means…”
The logical consequences were simply too confusing.
And that, in fact, was my Train of Thought.
So it has left the station without me. Bloody typical!
I’ll tell you something: the new way of doing things isn’t practical and it can’t continue like this for much longer.
Bring back the old days. Unrestricted travel for all thoughts!
I’m standing on Platform 666 like a—
Lemon? But that’s a cliché. Or is it a cure for scurvy?
The smell of olive oil is in my nostrils.
I can hear the hooves of the students as they clatter along the rails. The teeth in their gums are loose but can still do plenty of damage. I’ll use the oil to slow them up. Drizzled on the tracks.
Now that’s the ticket!
The Haggis Eater
He loved haggis so much, Donald, that he regarded himself as a professional haggis eater, though he receiv
ed no payment for the act of preparing, consuming and digesting this very peculiar pudding.
And even he, despite his enthusiasm for the product, had to recognise that a haggis really is an odd thing to cook and devour, no argument about it. For, as I’m sure you are aware, it consists of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep cut up fine with onions, oatmeal, suet and spices.
These ingredients are stuffed into the stomach of the same sheep and then the stomach is simmered in a large pan for three hours or so. In the old days, the hide of the animal would be folded into the shape of a crude cooking vessel and filled with water, then hot stones taken from the camp fire could be lowered into the liquid to bring it to the boil without having to apply a flame directly beneath the hide, which would have damaged it.
But Donald didn’t live in the old days now.
Nor had he ever done so.
So he used a pan, a pan as large and deep as a cauldron.
And his cooker was electric.
He was a modern gentlemen but he adored haggis. He worshipped haggis, and his waking and dreaming mind was filled with thoughts of the organic sack of innards that he so ardently wished to transport into his own insides. For most of his life he had been a lover of this food.
Yes, even as a child he had craved haggis, while his friends were far more enamoured with sweet things, and he had often begged his parents for seconds. To his relatives, he became something of a joke but not the kind of joke that mocks, rather, one that is more than half admiration.
“He’s a throwback, no doubt,” said his father kindly enough to his mother as they watched him attack a third helping.
“Aye, to the days of the clans,” his mother said.
“Further back than that,” replied his father thoughtfully, “to the era of the wild men who painted their faces blue.”
“The Picts,” spluttered Donald
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” they told him.
“He is asking for a toothpick, is he?” said the grandfather, who always sat in a chair in the corner of the room.
“No, no, he’s naming the blue men,” said the mother.
“Ah,” conceded the grandfather.
But Donald felt no real connection with such distant ancestors. His desire for haggis was unique and had nothing to do with any genetic predisposition he might have been given from long-lost centuries. This could clearly be proved by the fact that his sister loathed the idea of the thing, let along the thing itself, and was sick even when the smell wafted to her nose.
Donald dreamed of becoming a brave haggis hunter when he grew up, for his childish assumption was that a haggis was a creature, something like a living set of bagpipes, with tartan fur. His parents did nothing to correct this idea and it wasn’t until he left home that he learned the truth, or rather that the truth learned him, and it happened one night in a restaurant.
“This haggis doesn’t taste fresh. When was it caught?” he demanded of a waiter who had served him supper on a plate.
“Caught?” came the baffled reply.
“Aye, that’s what I said. Where did it live before it was killed? What hills did it roam and what foods did it eat? I don’t think it’s a free range one. Could it be the case that this is a battery haggis?”
The waiter responded to the best of his ability but Donald stood in fury to grab the fellow by his shirt and shake him violently, after which he was cast into the street by several other waiters and a chef.
Back in his lodgings, Donald consulted a dictionary.
He felt embarrassed but he also saw the amusing side of his error and his enthusiasm for haggis wasn’t diminished at all. If anything it was enhanced, and he decided to learn how to prepare it from scratch, a procedure that required the collusion of a sympathetic butcher; for modern health and safety laws generally prevent experiments with offal by novices.
Yet he found more than one butcher willing to help him for the sake both of tradition, and as a small act of rebellion against interfering authorities. It took many attempts with the raw ingredients before Donald finally produced a haggis as acceptable as those sold in supermarkets.
His skills rapidly improved and soon he was blending spices to add to the bloody mix of organs to amplify or attenuate, depending on circumstances, the nuttiness and pungency of the end result.
In short: he became an accomplished haggis master.
With a large glass of whisky, two separate small bowls of neeps and tatties, both mashed, he would attack the haggis like a hungry bear disembowels a beehive: with ravenous fury but also care.
In time, he began omitting the turnip and potato.
They were superfluous, he found.
And so was pity for the sheep: he had none. Nor was any expected of him by anyone who knew about his obsession.
He imagined that his present life, culinary and general, would continue in this way forever, or until old age, which to a youth is the same thing. The eating and digesting of haggis would always be his main pastime, his ultimate passion, his reason to be. The years would roll, or unable to roll, for they are not in shape spherical, fold themselves behind the present, and yet he would persist, securing the necessary guts and boiling them correctly.
How could anything change?
But Donald won himself a girlfriend, almost accidentally, and something happened – not the kind of something that is just anything, but a highly specific something that only resembles itself.
Her name was Irene and he met her in a part of the story that hasn’t been included here, so you will have to imagine it for yourself. They got to like each other more and more and the day soon came when Donald invited her back for a meal at his place. She gladly accepted.
When lovers dine together the bonds of love pull tighter. That’s how it is supposed to work, and usually does, but in this instance the outcome wasn’t as positive as it might have been. In fact, the evening failed spectacularly, but it can also be said that Donald had no complaints – none at all – and nor does Irene now, for what happened wasn’t her fault.
Or perhaps it was her fault but the elements of the reaction were already present, and she was merely the catalyst.
Donald opened his front door with his key and led her into the big kitchen and sat her down at a table, and opened a bottle of wine, and lit candles, and other romantic things along similar lines. I’m sure you know what. Then he turned to the cooker and twisted one of the knobs.
“It’s been simmering and bubbling all afternoon and now just needs to be warmed up for a wee spell,” he announced.
“But what is it?” squinted Irene.
“You’ll see,” answered Donald with a patrician smile.
“I suppose so,” she said.
“There’s no ‘suppose’ about it, young lady.”
“Maybe and maybe not.”
He supervised the pot and, when it was ready, he drained and emptied it onto a large dish and conveyed the dish to the table. What stood in the centre of that dish almost seemed to throb and Donald beamed, his smugness as perfectly swollen as the revealed haggis itself.
“Presto!” he declared and he parted the veils of steam that rose from the pulsing object and leered across the table at Irene, his head like a speech bubble without any writing inside, just features.
“What is that?” shrieked Irene, and the knife and fork she was holding in anticipation dropped out of her limp fingers.
“It’s a haggis, my dear!”
“And what exactly does it consist of?”
“Well, it’s all the parts of a sheep that would otherwise go to waste, the viscera and the clotted blood, all minced with oats and a few other things like that; also with a particular blend of spices I invented myself, and the mixture then stuffed into the sheep’s stomach.”
Irene pointed. “You mean to say that this is—”
Donald rubbed his own belly. “A stomach, indeed so. It looks like a full moon that has been distorted by a cosmic disaster of unimaginable magnitu
de, perhaps a collision with an asteroid. It glows an unhealthy yellow and yet I say it’s the finest culinary delight ever!”
“I have no stomach for it,” said Irene.
Donald giggled at what he assumed was a joke. “Tuck in, my dear, don’t be shy. I prepared it especially for you.”
“I wish you hadn’t,” said Irene.
“Then it’s your lucky day, for the truth is that I prepared it especially for me, but with you in mind also, which proves that wishes can come true at least sometimes. But let’s start eating it!”
“I am going to decline that pleasure, if it’s all the same to you. I think I’ll limit myself to drinking this wine.”
“Are you mad? Are you a lunatic, my dear?”
Donald was sincerely mortified.
But Irene remained firm in her refusal and he was forced to serve the first portion to himself alone, and eat it without any feeling this was a communal act; a feast of togetherness, a bonding ritual.
Irene observed him as he worked his way through the monstrosity, and it was two thirds finished before she asked:
“How many of these things have you devoured?”
“Hundreds,” he said, mouth full.
“But they are stomachs. A stomach digests food. How can you be sure it isn’t digesting you from the inside?”
“Don’t be silly. My teeth mash it up into tiny pieces. Even if I could open my jaw wide enough to swallow a haggis whole, it would be a stomach within a stomach and the inner stomach would merely digest its own contents rather than what lay around it. After all, our own stomachs don’t digest our hearts, kidneys and livers, do they? We remain intact!”
“But you just admitted that your teeth cut it up into bits. What if these bits reassemble themselves into a stomach inside you, not the way a stomach is, but as an inside-out stomach? Then it would certainly digest you and there wouldn’t be anything much you could do about it.”