by Steve Aylett
‘That explains it—get your things on brother, you’ve been had, you’re out of here. Unbelievable.’
Took the creature apart at home—hydraulics and needle-teeth in the sub-etheric meat, shell-panels like a crab, the works. And this one actually contained a telescopic sight.
Meanwhile, blind with nineteen murders, the Mayor slithered into an alley and wrung his hands, seeing red. ‘I’m unusual,’ he grieved, ‘but not unique.’ He stood beneath a lamp too modern to make a romantic shadow. ‘What must I do, finally?’
His hands were becoming hammers.
Trouble with the press
‘Any questions?’
‘What colour was the devil’s hair, what style.’
‘He had no hair—if you recall, I stated he was like a fish, on its haunches.’
‘Will Eddie try for another child.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does Minotaur have horns.’
‘Yes, two—one on his nose, one at the centre of his brow. He’s large and heavily armoured.’
‘Has anyone ever surpassed your girl Ruby for sheer raw power.’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘Are we to understand that the Mayor was a monster, swollen with evil.’
‘Yes indeed. Proper challenge for crosshairs that one.’
‘Do you consider the campaign a success.’
‘Well it ended in haranguing carnage. But on the other hand here we all are, talking about it. I should add that the Mayor called me back to the campaign for today’s conference because he himself is stricken with a flesh malady, a result of prolonged exposure to infant core creatures.’
‘Did the Mayor manufacture the implant which grew in Eddie.’
‘It’s unclear, the premise of his research. Midbrain standardisation and transformation parties were the rage. You know—victim invited unawares, core creatures erupting in his head, splintering blue eyes, gentlemen observe, a parasol shields all. The Mayor considered this entertainment. But molecularly he has begun to grow metal-metal bonds and produce a polymetal alloy with rhodium indicated on the carbon.’
‘Are you claiming the Mayor’s monatomic elements are orbitally rearranged?’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Has this been verified by thermogravimetric analysis?’
‘That’s right, and he never volatised.’
‘Was this witnessed by anyone sane?’
‘No it wasn’t.’
Unease amid the crowd.
‘In addition there was a fifty-six per cent weight base on a silica test boat.’
‘You’re claiming a Hudson fifty-six per cent variable?’
‘I am.’
At this the hacks began standing affronted, yelling abuse, throwing trash. ‘Fraud!’ was the accusation which cut the deepest brother. And I was scarpering.
Bakery was the safest place to hide—the dough would actually change shape and conform to my body shape, if I caught it early. ‘How are you?’ muttered the baker, drawing me out of the oven, though he was not really interested.
‘Passably scorched.’
‘You were not so clever when you entered the furnace,’ he sneered.
Next day the story was flagged by the headline EXPOSED—THE LEAN CHICKEN MEAT WITHIN THE NEWLY SAWN ELM.
And that was the end of my short term in the spotlight. Tradewinds blew through the library, disturbing the flaked skin of Minotaur’s forehead. ‘I can’t believe this is what I’ve come to,’ he said, leaning my way and pointing vaguely at the drifting curtains. Ship spars were propped against the wall as if someone here had the wherewithal to use them. Beercans and sealife. Also a worn carved figurehead of a woman, which would shout in a guttural foreign language just when we least expected it. Among the things we needed, this was the last.
‘These facts,’ I told him, without moving, ‘do not depend on, nor have an awareness of, your beliefs.’
‘You and whose army?’ he yelled, then looked immediately abashed at his own remark. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, his coastline mouth clumping shut.
Bob entered, thundering. ‘How did you bastards get in here?’
‘Through the mirror,’ I said, without looking up.
‘Don’t you understand there’s a time and place for that?’ he gasped. ‘Minotaur knows—don’t you?’
‘It’s true, actually. Knew someone who abused it like this—excursion to wars and his equilibrium took off, started seeing a crust of moments on the wall, phosphene and scrambling.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Millionaire.’
‘You’re not helping,’ shouted Bob to Minotaur, and stormed to the window, tossing the curtains aside—he pointed across the water to a slice of city. ‘That place doesn’t exist yet, what the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘Simmer down brother,’ said Minotaur. ‘We haven’t interfered. We’ve not moved from these chairs for three days, precisely because of the havoc we might wreak upon the continuum.’ In fact we just couldn’t be arsed to get up or do anything but it sounded mature. ‘All’s well, now sit down and get your choppers round these little beauties.’
Minotaur bit the head off a fish and threw the body aside. There were thousands of similar bodies on the library floor.
‘Hang on how many of these mothers have you been eating?’ Bob asked aghast.
‘As many as you can see brother.’
‘In three days?’
‘Each day.’
‘Oh come on,’ I piped up at Bob, ‘they’re only trout.’
‘Trout? These are bowfin you moron.’
‘Eh?’
‘Bowfin.’ Bob stared back and forth between me and Minotaur. ‘You don’t get the significance of your actions do you, not really. Look at this.’ He picked up one of the creatures and gestured at it. ‘Rounded gob, sail fin along dorsal, stumpy arse, and the young ones’—and he discarded the adult three-footer for an infant—‘have this weird clinging organ on the tip of the snout by which they attach themselves to aquatic plants. That sound like anyone you know?’
‘What’s the big deal brother?’ said Minotaur.
‘I think I understand what he’s getting at brother,’ I said, retrieving one of the uneaten bowfin and staring it in the face. I pressed the gill release and the mouth gupped open. ‘They look exactly like Eddie.’
‘Eh?’ And Minotaur spat the head out, examining the mashed remains. ‘Oh my god.’
‘Yes gentlemen,’ said Bob with irony, and sat into the deeps of an armchair. ‘Even its behaviour. Usually seen motionless and blankly staring, yards from the action. Retains primitive features, including an air bladder which enables it to live in stagnant swamps and, yes, even out of water for a while.’
‘Fish out of water,’ chuckled Minotaur grimly. ‘Makes perfect sense.’
‘I’ve always thought he resembled a sort of frog, eh,’ I muttered pensively.
‘One of evolution’s dark dead-ends perhaps,’ said Bob, ‘all stink and soggy cardboard.’
‘With gubby lips over which lies spill like rainwater from a gutter gargoyle.’
‘His sanity ritually burnt in sacrifice to blowheaded visitants only he can see.’
‘Pointed to a danger behind me,’ said Minotaur, gulping beer from a can, ‘and made off with treasures while I turned.’
‘Goes without blinking for hours then fifty at once,’ I said.
‘The almost featureless coinage of that man’s character clips this world like a skimming stone.’
‘Oh yes, he’s ferociously lethargic, wilfully unfinished, classically mad.’
‘A failure for whom we make constant and pitying allowances.’
‘Pathetically pissed-up and pretending otherwise.’
‘Sweats like a kettle when thinking of the future.’
‘Says he never dreams but shrieks before dawn.’
‘In curlers all day and eyes in a jar.’
‘No mind, beacon for academe.�
��
‘Pounded jellyfish with heavy stone.’
‘That’s when his mother knew he was a bad ‘un.’
‘Wet behind the heart.’
‘Unashamed and dull.’
‘Mock tears, permanent and crywolf.’
‘Promises shattered, debts forgotten.’
‘Doubt all, believe nothing.’
‘Wrecks the match with Kraut melodies.’
‘Click of a bone when he raises the pint.’
‘Says he knows horses and I bet he does.’
‘Plays the piano and won’t admit it.’
‘Boiling blush when you mention cattle.’
‘Falls on the ground when you punch his face.’
‘Beckons kittens into horror.’
‘Snips off the tongues of sparrow chicks.’
‘Upper storey of his courage.’
‘Whacked to climax with a bible belt.’
‘Forbidden delights of antlered skull.’
‘New cement floor in basement.’
‘Bell jar in kitchen.’
‘Magnifying glass in toilet.’
‘Murder between meals.’
‘Birds’ underwear.’
‘Eats dogfood.’
‘Eats dogs.’
‘Money and no job.’
‘Death and no body.’
‘Sex and no women.’
‘Cuttlefish and no parrot.’
‘Grew green beard.’
‘There’s horror, brothers.’
‘Cheers.’
Trouble with Eddie
‘More than I…’
‘What was that Eddie.’
‘No more. This is more than I can take you bastard. You bastard more than one or any man can take.’
‘You all right Eddie.’
‘After…this am I all right.’
‘Don’t follow you.’
‘Hours. Five hours I listen to this. This and more, coughing back at me every slander you’ve ever dealt out eh. My own words too, twisted, yes twisted to fit your attitude. Candy to a babe. By Christ I’ll tear out everything you’ve got through your smug face.’
‘Not you.’
‘You think you’ll escape the consequences forever.’
‘We had a deal here brother, eh?’
‘Like some tankard-clashing reveller.’
‘Did we or did we not have a deal? I could tell it in my own sweet way. Minotaur, Bob, Ruby, Satan, election run by pteranadon in cupboard, everything.’
‘What about a pteranadon.’
‘Pteranadon. Leatherwinged bastard. Head like a U-boat.’
‘You mean a dinosaur.’
‘Woken up at last have we? Yes sonny jim a dinosaur—thought that’d get your obscene ears flapping.’
‘What’s obscene about me ears?’
‘Come on I’ve been over this—the pteranadon was banged up for malfeasance of club moneys, right? Spent it all on death and bloody murder.’
And Eddie was overturning the table and making a few preliminary jabs with the knife. The bar was empty except for the barman, who was sat reading a tattered book about nerve endings. So I only had the old charm to protect me.
‘Where are you heading Eddie. Years pass. Radio advice aids your choice of shrub and you’re an old man. Oh, yes—breakfast exhibits brought by a nurse if you’re lucky.’
Eddie thrashed aside a load of chairs and advanced.
‘And what are your memories. Traffic forms a bitter smile, dogs ink the path, love is rejected. A cloakroom stub and grey shudder—there’s your finest hour.’
Eddie slashed wildly to left and right as I dodged backward and skirted the tables.
‘Massive devaluation Eddie. A pinball ding your death-knell. Stranger stands over you, living world with a spade. You’ll be black and blowing methane before anyone misses you.’
Eddie lunged and I ducked aside so the dagger punctured the wheezing rubber belly above the fireplace. The barman glanced up. ‘Simmer down lads—and don’t be damaging that wheezing rubber belly there now, people come from miles around to see it in action.’
‘You’re halfway there Eddie,’ I continued, gasping with exertion. ‘Oh yes I see it in your stare. Like a bowfin drying on a harbour wall.’
‘Bastard!’ he screamed, and threw himself headfirst at me.
‘And your hair’s all wrong,’ I added, though I doubt he heard me through the din of my various bones exploding.
In a while the wall-hung ornamental trilobites began fiddling their legs. Time to go. The barman unlocked and let us out to a street devoid of grave-fillers. England a birthmark on the flying world. What possible impudence suffices.
Breezes lapped me like a cat. Eddie buttoned his coat to the throat. ‘So that stuff about the world and all,’ he said, ‘is that really the way of it d’you reckon?’
‘Sure Eddie. Time your obstacles and collide well—life is suffering. Leadership the balcony, homicide the ladder. I’ll be seeing you then.’
‘Oh yes sure I’ll see you,’ he said, vague. Instantly he tripped and fell into a load of nettles. Left him there, shaking my head.
So how did Eddie end?
Loafing a failure at the table?
Feeding his eyes on climbs of fields from a dungeon window?
Riding his cloak in huge winds?
Gnashing cigars in smokelaze and stabbing cards at a table?
Riding confusion to the army, caterpillar fists curving corners on flagday?
An extravagant death on the roof of the world?
Stumbling after the lost and damned, a buccaneer to nowhere in deserts of uniform?
Alone with the skeleton of a sandwich and his deal with dread?
Drugshop eyes all pause, hours enchanted, answering one thing forever?
Asleep in the rising moon to know that strange glory?
Chairsad in soupmanners?
Onward in poison?
Divine to the gallows?
Inflammatory bullshit fuelled speculation that Eddie was off his rocker. Assailed by creditors and theological doubt, he spent two years cultivating hernias in a hydroponic glasshouse nursery, funnelling his guilt and fear into a lifestyle of dissipation and gaudy excess. The same year he was photographed body-surfing on the north shore of Oahu Island—visual enhancement showed a spooky chihuahua perched on his left shoulder.
He was arrested for attaching a squid to the face of a mime near Paris’s Pompidou Centre. He served a year, during which time he built a tin effigy of a snarling midget.
He travelled the States, financing his lusts with a series of odd jobs including those of a Mexican, a snail, a bartender and a freelance harbinger of death, finally becoming a force to be reckoned with in the white slave trade. The following year he was attacked by an enraged chimp and shot it dead with a pistol, angering the masses and setting the seal upon his reputation as a charming man. The capper to his media profile was a catchphrase philosophy: ‘Society? Sleep in it, fat and radical.’
Eddie gave a lecture to a bunch of school kids as to how his life had been wrecked by the simple inability to differentiate food from garbage. By delineating each of his mistakes he left a clear trail for them to follow if they wanted to be like him—sun-bronzed, respected and paid by the truckload to talk this crap at a public venue. Then he bit the head off a live hen and spat it at the front row, where the blank faces of the organisers received it like a sacrament.
He appeared on talk shows, laughing at nothing. He endorsed a brand of bait. During a radio slot, suggestions poured in as to how his face could be remoulded in a more realistic fashion—some said the whole snout area should be removed and replaced with a human nose. That made Eddie so angry he cursed the material world on air, storming off to questing and amazon divinity.
Myself I didn’t hear from Eddie for years, by which time I was due to be sacrificed on an immense platform powdered in snow. I won’t waste time explaining my crime or subsequent escape—suffice it to say both r
equired a certain clean-burning arrogance. (I’d been having a lot of bad luck since Eddie made good. Earpopping roofdives, exploding glass, misfiring airbags, tides of snot, panic jackets, plain vans, inexplicable things.)
Anyway the execution proceeded after some berating torture. All the usual ceremony, masks, broad cutlasses a-tasselled with silk and so on—until I stood and told them I had to go for a slash and all hell broke loose. ‘Transgressor!’ they were screaming, and I smiled. Didn’t know it was meant to be derogatory. We all have moments like this I suppose, when the run of things is re-established and the pain courses through our veins again like the love of an adored one.
The clock struck twelve, scholars urged me to look damned.
‘I can hear election arms breaking,’ I said—I thought this was the way but oh no. Once again I’d diverged from the approved and unwritten text. Nemesis crush—one at a time please.
So now I was boasting about the fact that I actually had no body contents—solid skin you understand, like an undifferentiated flesh statue—when I saw that the person beheaded in the queue before me didn’t have any detail either—the neck stump looked like a bitten-down milk lolly or something, creamy white and no detail. There’s the longterm effect of being your own man, I thought. Save the charm and outward signs for your mother.
Stop everything—urgent fax. Blade halted in the air. And some cossack rider comes up with a flap of paper.
‘The first second and third map only included the surface of the land but the next, hidden under a paving in the cellar, showed everything in detail. There was flooding in most of the cathedrals but the ones made of gold were mostly all right. Yours truly,
eddie.’
There’s the only word in five years—you can see why I was bored and tried to fry every memory I had of the bastard.
Let the floor hug my side. I’m slapping like a flounder. My kidneys have stopped beating and my head is against the grate. I reach through emerald-empty bottles. My resentment has a valve I can barely reach around. I’m nearly thirty and every bastard on earth knows where I am.
Ladies and gentlemen, there will come a time when you’ll thank me.
About the Author
Steve Aylett was born in Bromley, England. He wrote the books Slaughtermatic, The Crime Studio, Bigot Hall, The Inflatable Volunteer, Toxicology, Atom, Shamanspace, Only an Alligator, The Velocity Gospel, Dummyland, Karloff’s Circus, LINT, Fain the Sorcerer, And Your Point Is? and Rebel at the End of Time. He was a finalist for the 1998 Philip K Dick Award (for Slaughtermatic). He’s also responsible for comic projects The Caterer, Get That Thing Way From Me and Johnny Viable.