by Steve Aylett
It was a nasty shock extended for years in every direction. Forgot about it till a moment ago.
Ventured back the next day. Morphine morning like a cloak. But the gamblers weren’t there. Brushstroke dollar and mechanical fountain. Desert popcans, crusted. Evidence of past fun, a skull abandoned on a trampoline.
And I thought—parts become outdated, it’s a hood with smile, it’s sleeves on cars, it’s the norm, who can keep up?
The snow landed all at once to save time.
Bleating mavericks crowded me as I tried to move down the narrow streets. I kicked through the scales which avalanched from their eyes. I didn’t need this distortion to contend with and I started to stumble, the embattled rind of my good nature crisping like bacon. Fever dreams. Towering kebabs drippling with sauce. Mystery holes in the skyroof. Bugs in combat, eyestalks clashing. Leonine roars from children. A swarming heaven of cackhanded guardians. Head splitting like a pomegranate.
Kept hearing about a whore who read fortunes on the side. Spooky rumours. Born by means of a bonesaw. Basement of abominations. No saliva. Decided to seek her out.
Held a tiny jade effigy of Lee Oswald in the pouch of each cheek. That’s how serious I was. And she didn’t disappoint. Consulted hourly a wisp-haired shrunken head on a fob chain. Dynamited fish like she invented the game. Nose made of cement. Nothing wrong with that except it never dried and people would push it into a shape of their choice as though it were putty. The room was filigreed with stress vents, prayer code, flesh phones, barter bones, fungal earlobes and acupuncture stakes.
‘First things first,’ she said. ‘Speak any languages?’
‘Darkness,’ I said.
‘One language.’
‘And depravity, a little—enough to get by.’
‘Enough depravity to get by,’ she muttered, writing. ‘Right. Now take this dagger, close your eyes, and touch your nose.’
‘With the dagger?’
‘That’s right. Good, very good. Here’s a tissue. Have you ever eaten a tapir?’
‘Tapirs no…’
‘Because they’re really good.’
‘Right.’
‘So what have you been doing with yourself? Walking heavy with alcohol and conjuring antagonists out of empty air, no doubt.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘I know all. I’ve got a blasted pyrex replica of your arse under a bell jar in the other room.’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Pride of place. Next to the shredder.’
‘Eh?’
‘Let’s get down to business, corky. How much d’you know about the world?’
‘I’m guessing the gods are big, their cups an’ tea things also.’
‘Well that’s as good a place to start as any. When I was a kid you couldn’t keep me away from gore. But people mature. Gas grows their hands and they gain confidence. Bangles bow me and dry my time—I’m like a tree knuckling defiance against the rain. Consoled by a mantel trophy of husked ambition. Do you know what I still now plan to achieve?’
I shook my head.
‘Everything here will become edible—because I’ll make it so. I’ll need nothing more expert than a trowel, a flirting badger, ten skills I don’t possess, a fable recited from memory, a kennel the size of an aircraft hangar and a bagel which speaks. Nouns will be its only problem, for reasons you will understand when that is all you’ve left to understand.’
’Why, though?’
‘Food on this planet doesn’t speak unless spoken to—by which time it’s too late. Does that seem fair to you? And I say it’s not. Guilt freezes the mistake, perfect preservation for fifty years or more. See for yourself.’ And she opened a bladder fridge to display its moth lining and closed vents. She went on a while about life being the second-by-second process of strenuously resisting annihilation, while at the same time remaining flexible. ‘The whole world’s a high wall of escape, a backdown taunt for the bottle-brave. I loved atoms just enough to inhabit them—perhaps too much. They were aspects I felt I had to deal with. But you’ll find most citizens slam their faculties and amplify alarm. Families smile in debt, calamities on account to keep things shallow, believing the siphon of understanding’ll dry by their determination. In books there’s nothing of the fish covered in the coldness of the sea, or the feeling of a star touching space. Bad for business.’
‘Is it now.’
‘Doesn’t feed the disease.’
‘Surely it can. Air’s pushed from pages as they close, shelves of suffocation die aching.’
‘Not the same thing boy. Put on a cape and tell ’em you’re here—see the reaction you get.’
‘I’ll get a reaction.’
‘I know you will.’
Expect bastards and you’ll get them, she said. Clever bird—never explained what would happen if I didn’t and I soon found out.
And there’s where I found my way. Opened morning’s curtains to see a world covered by a sheet of society.
Trouble’s the only thing which can result from posing in a doorway with your trousers on only one leg. And it’s the bare leg, not the trousered one, which will be the cause of that trouble. Arm yourself with a knife, my friend, and beware the police.
Trouble with the devil
The devil gazed into the dregs of his pint and puckered his lips thoughtfully. ‘And that’s really all you have to say in your defence.’
‘That and the fact that my manhood belongs in a whaling museum.’
‘Yes, well I’d like to say you’ve deceived no one and they’re bereft. But all are lied to and satisfied.’
‘Low expectations you mean.’
‘And crap judgement.’
‘You disapprove then?’
‘Oh no—the sword of truth’s rusted in its scabbard and I’m delighted. But today’s trespass is the first of many.’
‘I’m not sure I follow the gallopede of shite you call an argument.’
‘You’re due to abuse the flux glass again in future and for this I’m due to punish you now.’
‘And how will you apply this so-called punishment? Belt me with a hoof I suppose.’
‘No, we have core creatures here for that sort of business.’ And he gestured to something like a lobster drinking catlike from a kidney dish. Roach the size and shine of a patent leather shoe.
‘Oh I didn’t see it before. So am I really to pay for something I haven’t done yet?’
‘Past, present, future—all is one.’
‘In what sense?’
‘In the sense that at all times you are a bastard.’
‘Ah now I differ there—I recall an occasion I was a world-class hero and lovely boy. It began in the metallic reign of hypocrisy, all gaudy and bejewelled with tumbling midgets. Advantages in operation, Eddie ventured into the traffic…’ And here I told a tale so full of wonder and magic I nearly blinded myself. Whole empires were rendered in fly-leg detail, mangrove domes sweating rain, enchantments nabbed amid the closed snores of the innocent, balloon-trousered princes punching like a girl, convict voyages to temperatures unknown, expensive wounds inflicted by nutters, dogs wearing lipstick, litter temples and sacrifice. Hours had passed and I was just getting into the swing. ‘So there I was, ringside in a scuba mask, a gimmick I thought would distract the victor from punching Eddie. “Stay down Eddie, stay down! Everyone’s laughin’ at ya!” Eddie looked up with an unseeing eye. His cauterised innocence was still smoking, as you can imagine. And—’
‘Stop, stop, stop you bastard!’ shouted the devil suddenly, and glared a while indignant. ‘What the bloody hell are you playing at? Are you mad? D’you think I’ve no better way to spend m’time than listening to some stancing disaster recycle his snot for hours on end?’
‘Not by the look of it, fishface.’
‘What?’
‘Well look at you sat there like a hollow chocolate Buddha, you’re hardly busy.’
‘What do you think these are for, you moron?’ he dem
anded, twanging a lattice rope like a spider testing its web. ‘The hub and spoke of evil, this is. I run it all from here. What do you do—and your strutting arrogance. Yes, you. Whoring after your destiny with your multi-petalled psychosis all a-flutter.’
‘Oh now it all comes out. You’re just an old codger aren’t you? You’re never punching me with that flipper of yours—tell me you’re fooling.’
A force in the atmosphere swirled about him, sparking like darkness. Head muscles were breathing in the red jawpush of transformation, shoulders swelling, and his body balled up like a badger pelted with acorns, punching out steel spikes as thick as streetcones. A music-hall asteroid.
It sounds mean but I was totally bored by these eruptions. The only time this sort of thing happened to me it occurred in a way nobody ever believed when I talked about it. Of course the core creature scuttled toward me but I stamped on it same as I would a financial adviser, leaving a jagged mess with clusters of neckteeth broken, so I was all right there.
Meanwhile though the old sharps were popping off John Satan like seeds off a pinecone and he said my worse nightmares were due to become a reality. I knew myself well enough to know what this would mean—pasta, golf, toffs, opera and dizzy birds talking shite, all somehow rolled into one. The fallen thorns were spores, dragonteeth germinating like the clappers. Mutants, truelove. Hollering and a-bellowing out of the earth—and I saw the combination of horrors I just described had made them empty, like paper lanterns. Even so they swiped flaming torches off the cavern walls and ran at me. Pursuit down tunnels, shrieks, freakish shadows, the whole nine yards.
As any athlete with a flexible gob will tell you, run focused and fast enough and you leave your ego behind, wobbling in the air like a mansize soap bubble. Caught a glimpse of mine just before the torches made contact and it was a magenta gas cell in the shape of a Ford Escort. Then it ignited, killing my tormentors as I burst through the mirror in an explosion of dry cornflakes and litterleaves. Eddie was still slumped in a corner and less than a minute had passed. But was it art?
Decided to lie low a while in another country—but returned starving for lack of cooperation. At the rail of the liner I wept at the sight of my homeland, sun shining through a wound in my shoulder. Surely a balanced life could be had here.
So I found a dark place but not too dark to transform myself into a pile of muscle and swallow the air which others needed to breathe well. In a corner I looked like a deck of plate fungus merely. This was the way a real man made a living in those days. Houses surrounded by trees could be almost covered by pulsating muscle flanges and appear normal to a dog in the sidecar of a passing motorcycle. And so these mysteries went unchallenged and unknown.
The vampires though, there’s a tale. One that bothered me more than the others—a darting one with shapeless management ideas and undisclosed dreams who didn’t know a window from a hole in the ground. Severed arteries with a bottle opener and chugalug. Hadn’t the malevolence for it—took him on a haunting once and he stood singing with flowers in his hands—strange man with nothing but his ideas and consistency to keep him going. And he asked what the rest of us had. Faith, I said, in something better. I’ll stay as I am, he said, as if he knew something we didn’t.
Well anyway one afternoon we all appeared at the doorstep of Eddie’s gallery and told him there were things inside we wanted to burn and throw. He asked if it was the paintings and we said yes that was it—of course he tried slamming the door but we were barrelling in all shouts and hilarity, tossing beer glasses and belching to beat the band. So this vampire I described before started winding an old monkeybox grind-organ and weeping like a trooper. Under dim light you understand. I flew at him in a rage but of course he vanished—looked up and saw him hung from a ceiling inverted. ‘Well at least you’re acting the part at last’ I told him, and at that he went limp, dropped everything including the monkeybox which hit me a glancing blow off the face and batted open, revealing to us the fact that its internal mechanism was nothing but bone, dry muscleweb and insect dust. ‘No sense trying to make amends with this little display,’ I said, resolved now that I’d got the full measure of the bastard. ‘Eh lads? He’s not to be trusted with beer or anything—and where’s the bottle-opener you shite?’
The fiend didn’t want to reply so there was nothing more to be had from him except visual information.
‘We don’t rely on you,’ I said, and punched a portrait to show him. Of course the painting began to moan like a clubbed mime. I was so embarrassed I shouted the order to torch the place to cover the unearthly noise, and strung out the syllables like this. ‘T - o - r - c - h - t - h - e - b - l - o - o - d - y - p - l - a - c - e !’
But everyone had gone home in utter boredom by then and only Eddie remained, standing there. Of course I looked at him with the kind of contrition I kept in a vault for such purposes. ‘Look Eddie,’ I said. ‘I don’t really want to burn this place of yours. These paintings are a blessed gift to mankind. Go forth and be merry.’
‘You’ve stalked me for the last time,’ he choked, shaking, and pulled a knife.
‘Now there Eddie, go on that way and you’ll find I die and you’ll have blood everywhere in here. That’s a real danger.’
And he was lunging at me with the shiv. That’s the last time I remember Eddie doing anything really normal. After that he got to taking fish for walks and baking felt and blaming others for the shape of his heart. It’s hard to be sanguine about such sharp misery. Wouldn’t we all shoot a mayor or two for a few laugh-lines.
A week later Bob told me Eddie had folded the scam and sold everything in it to Minotaur. ‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because you and everyone else kept dragging vampires in there,’ he gasped as if it were obvious.
Here’s where Bob really started pushing the limit. Built a three-legged man out of marzipan, dubbed him ‘Mr Trojan’ and claimed to quote from the bastard: ‘On gold comes their cold jest with wine in flood upon his rage and the heaviest hillside hid his questions.’
‘You’re asking for it brother.’
‘Cicada mascot airlock honeysuckle a garden of roses each with a pulse.’
‘Cut it out brother.’
‘The iron hand held the blade and went by choice to god. And god, nothing in his fire, returned every stroke save one—the wish for others’ freedom.’
‘Mr Trojan’s looking ill,’ I said, melting its face off with a lighter.
And it emitted a tiny scream.
Sleight of hand changed Bob into a man of honour. Burnished and proud. But it was only his reflection in a slick of lager and the lights swinging to bloom his shadow on the curved wall—you could see him thinking, yes I’m a braillefaced god, knowing it was true despite the lies he used to disguise it.
Liking harm and safety in equal measure, he punched a gran and ran home, forgetting his keys wallet passport incriminating photos and bottles of DNA for subsequent whole-body replication in a police lab—all this was found on the scene, where the gran was laughing with the honour of the meeting and clutching a hunk of his hair.
The police pinned up a Wanted poster of Bob’s face and head, and every dog who saw it fell instantly in love with him. ‘See,’ I smirked, nudging him with both elbows at once, ‘you’re a pin-up, my son.’
‘For dogs,’ he clarified, enraged.
‘It’s a start.’
‘Some are probably police dogs brother. Look at that one.’ And he pointed to the face of an alsatian which had appeared at the window, panting steam.
Tried getting him used to dogs by belting him regularly with a fibreglass spaniel but he wouldn’t have it—said there were more crucial things and showed me a hexagonal hole in space. Said we were in a hive reality and didn’t know it. Ignored him till he hinted it was a fine way out of trouble.
Shortly after which he attacked a swan at this stuck-up affair and during his arrest some assistance including a full-nelson was provided. I suppose that about brings us u
p to date, darling.
Trouble with Ruby Thunderhead
The swamp receded in a crackling permafrost and we were sat indoors. I looked down to discover I was tied to a chair. Ruby was staring at me with concentration—but as she stood it was clear she’d long ceased contemplating the beauties of my yarn. Leaning down, she plucked a thick vein out of my arm and strode across the room trailing it over her shoulder like an extension lead to busy herself with its manipulation over a series of hooks and pulleys. The vein strung out like a reel but squealed like rubber, spraying a fine bloodcloud as I flinched and tried to explain.
‘Watch it babe, er…Don’t mind Bob now, I mean, he’s all right—saw him doing a puzzle the other day and he was having a bit of trouble with it like and you shoulda seen him. Pounding on the puzzle, bleeding from the ears—he’ll do us all proud one day. For instance. Town destroyed by swarm. You and I would detect mayhem and wild company. That scene is something he’d see technically, the bee the media the crowds. That’s as far as it’d go.’
A string of flesh tautened, pushing a lamp from a table.
‘That er—that reminds me of that time, ha ha. Swanned into the bar pretending I was recently spurned in love and, gaining the sympathy of one and all, you see, drank enough on their pity to drop the act in a flood of gob saliva and eleven punches upside the face from Bob, while Eddie held my arms so far out of the way they broke at the shoulders. By god though it was a night to remember, that. What man doesn’t remember his twentieth birthday? Wilder spit I never aimed, by god. Sweetheart?’
She ran the vein over a picture-hook and back again, lynching it finally over the doorhandle.