Smithereens

by Steve Aylett

  Yet though the malignancy of the grey city was terrible - its airless aura sheened with a sweat like plastic, its roots without natural dust - far worse was the race that now emerged from the niches, all curiously low: a trickling pageant of monstrous pestilents. They seemed blindly automatic, hectic without joy. Fear had driven from me any vestiges of wonder, and now even this was supplanted by nausea, a soul dread of this acute, unconscious scourge. Worst thus far was the nightmarish impression of their spreading through weakness, withering unendingly outward. Swarming beetle-like with neither curiosity nor caution, wonder nor plan, eddying by the caprices of bureaucracy, sluggish yet unchecked, they moved by dilapidation, a decline they consciously denied. And then in a moment of indescribable emotion did I see within them a commotion which was also an emptiness. Those ant-like skulls yet held vaster abysses than those of remotest space; an uncomprehension less reverberate than unwalled infinity. They thrived without the redeeming colours and contours of fertility, for they perpetuated a void in which even the brightest of colours are bleak and the loudest of voices mute. Inarticulately spreading, a swarming negation to the cosmos, simultaneously feeble and raging, they left all they touched irrevocably tainted.

  I fled that city as the far mountains drove the moon upward. And breathing into the huge darkness, I felt thankful to be what I was.

  Since that freakish night I have studied the ancient records which tell of The Unfallen Empire, its tyranny of infinite repetition and its thin grey people. Whatever impulse compels them, there is no legend so old as to give it a name, or to recall that it was ever rational. Their menace is occulted because they hide it from themselves, twisting their motives so far aside of their sight that they are encircled with thorny evasion, a sickly black halo of barbs. Their very nature opposes the honesty of my kind, whose content is the same as our exterior and whose forms are as florid as our purposes. In their voracious toxicity, they are a lethality to all life. I dread them even as I lay dreaming.

  HOROSCOPE

  Shock and appal your so-called friends by telling them about the hell that awaits them.

  ARIES March 21 - April 21

  You appear to be worried about your plan to steal from the company, Aries. Do not be concerned. You will be fired before the opportunity arises. Collect those crumbs from your eye - they’re trying to tell you something. Despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to a hen, you are despotic and surly. The world has already lost patience with you and your so-called ‘mystery ears’. Skint in a tux, you impress nobody. Your diatribes send passersby recoiling in disinterest. Yet believing the

  patronising words of a professional, you will change your name by deed poll to ‘Babylon Tiger’ and wear some sort of wrestler’s cape. In early Spring you will slam into a bar full of mirrors, ferns, frogstands and icy women, vomit against the indoor water feature and wake up naked in a wild bird reserve. Your hoselike nose and tubular morality will not help you then.

  Reading: Lady luck means to feed.

  TAURUS April 21 - May 21

  In February your head will twist open like a flower revealing a small platform upon which a puppetlike drama will unfold, toy maidens dancing about a well which is in fact the stump of your spinal canal. One of the tiny figurines will have the face of your father and as it quivers across the platform it will whisper ‘Never to forgive.’ And this is only one of the bounties awaiting you in the New Year, Taurus. Efforts of the past few years will finally pay off, as an eye defect will superimpose the image of flamingos in surgical masks over everything you see. This will make your moods unpredictable and often dangerously explosive. You may learn that you can justify any atrocious act by connecting it with several years of a stranger’s success - no-one condemns altruism.

  Reading: Hang up the phone on a vampire - the definition of carefree.

  GEMINI May 22 - June 21

  Your crime will be discovered through carelessness. A single omission lays waste to many precautions. Not all publicity is good.

  Reading: Fractured masks, the house empty.

  CANCER June 22 - July 22

  Put aside all doubts about your sexuality - the spaniel in question is The One. Yet an entrepreneurial enterprise which is close to your heart requires further consideration. There are no such things as ‘Deluge Trousers’ and there never will be. Remember the tale of the man who, watching evenly-matched nuns in a bare-knuckle fight, bet on the one with the scariest face. Sharp bones are brittle! Consider every angle before making an announcement. You have shown taste and split-second timing before, Cancer, as when you pushed that waiter against the passing student.

  Reading: Only the English clear heaven for dignitaries.

  LEO July 23 - August 22

  Couples: when feeding a guppy, spread the work - one to sprinkle the food, one to frown. You value domesticity, Leo, but sometimes you have to kick your heels and fire a gun randomly into a crowd. A brawl in a sawmill will leave you shaken and drenched with aviation fuel. Friends find your rage unfathomable and frightening - why not make amends? Avenge all wrongs against them, arriving unannounced and fluttering, orbiting the foe in jittery trouble, punching, punching. Take no credit for the vengeance. They will hear of their enemies’ misfortunes and privately bless an angel. Love is granted before we know it, like an escaping bird. Respect is more slow, like a tired badger.

  Reading: Tinsel on a man - happiness is dead.

  VIRGO August 23 - Sep 23

  You will develop the frictionless face of a dolphin and thus enter the bar at greater speed. All present will address you as a ‘bottlenose bastard’. Incapable of human speech, you will not be able to order. The anecdote will flourish on the rubber chicken dinner circuit, bringing precious little benefit to you, Virgo. Yet in April your huge button eyes will fall upon a new love and romance will blossom. Understand that this is a time of regeneration. A man who believes in a billion things has a billion used tickets to sell. A clean slate awaits the squeak of a lie - don’t blow it, Virgo!

  Reading: Whatever it purports to be, if everyone stops to watch, it is not advisable to drink it.

  LIBRA Sep 24 - Oct 23

  Arriving at work in early Feb, you will remove your coat and calmly push it into the mouth of your employer. Congratulations! Sympathising with their arrogance might encourage them to rule over you. Evade your responsibilities in March by mounting an adroit display of wasting sickness. A tip: cotton wool soaked in red dye looks like guts! Atone for your work by hurdling gravestones wearing a tail like an arrow. But beware - sooner or later the Court of Chancery will have you by the legs. The scales of justice mirror those of your own sign, Libra. Make a freak-show of your tears and tell them a fire-breathing wren told you to do it. This is the sort of nonsense of which courts are disposed to take a tolerant view. They’ll send you away with pity and laughter. Unguarded remarks about Paul Scholes will earn you a smack in the mouth. Keep digging the tunnel.

  Reading: Never refer to a large dog as a friend - he is in custody and he knows it.

  SCORPIO Oct 24 - Nov 22

  One of your henchmen will betray you to the fuzz. Saturn in Gemini in your second house leads to the confiscation of illegal earnings, which is how you could afford the second house in the first place. Traitors, all in rare form, are straining every nerve to keep from sniggering. In the festive season eleven bullets will unexpectedly take up lodging in your back. From your wounds the ballistic route will be triangulated to the fuzzy image of your mother, caught in the background of a tourist’s snapshot. She is holding a rifle and has never looked so fulfilled. The corpse of your first victim will be dug up on a nutmeg plantation. A deposit of Iron Age snot will also be detected. In court your shouts of explanation will stray off the charted edges of the alphabet. ‘Our only option was a grisly disposal at midnight’ is no defence, Scorpio. Begging for leniency, you will come to regret that you have only two knees upon which to crawl. I see you in a turmoil of mistrust, weak amid a crowd of cheesy quavers. Wh
en you can’t find your trousers but can find the front door, a message is being sent. Abandoned by all, you will spring off a building wearing a Hawaiian wreath of donor cards. Closed coffin if you get my drift.

  Reading: Knives delight in a snug enclosure - for them it’s freedom.

  SAGITTARIUS Nov 23 - Dec 21

  Saying ‘Advantage mine’ when overtaking someone on the pavement is not a winning attitude. Your pursuit of notoriety comes of the duty to compare. Your ideas end where most people’s begin, Sagittarius. You kiss only the superior graves. You pretend to be a populist by fainting near a barricade. Serenity is painful for you. Status looks outward so unremittingly its heart may stop without concern. Pretty soon you’ll be batting at invisible serpents. A faked photo of you with a smile and yacht bevy will be the last your friends hear of you. An obscure East End chef will serve an elaborate sugar sculpture of your arse. The first incision will reveal that the real arse rests within. Yet even this display of your charms will only reach the latter pages of the tabloids. Disintegration is the constant season.

  Reading: Your contribution is condemned to the crowd.

  CAPRICORN Dec 22 - Jan 20

  In late November put it all on Deathbed Pioneer in the fifth at Haymarket - it’s a lock. The optimist sees the future as a rabbit sees the oncoming truck - getting bigger, not closer. No sense getting all steamed up about things. Remember the philosopher Pandemal who went to hell with the words, ‘Fatal place, have another bit.’ Impish devilry is the order of the day, Capricorn. Attend the theatre in a waterlogged box jacket. Flick a poison spider into the orchestra pit. Slap a musician on the back so he gets his face caught in the thin end of the trumpet. Stare through a grating and frighten the children. Then sit and watch the money roll in.

  Reading: Snack in a sniper’s nest - calm before the storm.

  AQUARIUS Jan 21 - Feb 19

  You will celebrate Christmas Day under a fallen door. ‘Freeze on day of purchase’ - there’s a grim double meaning there, Aquarius. Hesitation at the crucial instant releases mayhem, attacks by a screaming chimp, all poise lost. Feeble cries will bring eventual rescue and recovery in time for the multiple tragedies of the New Year.

  Reading: A poet can often be found in a block of tar, still expressionless.

  PISCES Feb 20 - March 20

  The grim task of wedding a loved one is endured amid prolonged silences. This absurd and demeaning farce will take its toll on you, Pisces. A flower is coloured silk in the dirt, not a symbol. Cross the threshold of pity; can’t get back across the armature. How to compensate for giving up a whole human in bits and pieces? Able to do anything, you merely answer the door. Talk of ‘suction rhythm’ will be met with a revolted silence. Escape, Pisces. Don’t even make a scene. Punching a clown makes it hard to steer.

  Reading: We bring death and those who claim to be our rivals bring death also. It’s investing everywhere.

  FULL BLOOM

  A little gold cathedral spun down out of a sky blue as an absinthe flame, settling its belly on the Whitehouse lawn and sticking out its tongue. Photos of the woman on the ramp were consecrated under headlines before the chaos was locked down and the visitor transported to a bunker under the streets of Washington. Some observers could not conceal their disappointment at her humanity, when they had innocently expected a serrated lizard with fins galore. One expert sobbed because she was nothing like a hammerhead shark. The flying disc made it unlikely she was a random nutter, but there didn’t seem anything alien about her except maybe those big eyes, and the travel armour she shucked immediately: a purple-gold acid flake hinged carapace with headlamps for breasts and a shoulder-fender which flipped out to wings of semi-transparent chrome. She stated impassively that she was from twenty-five years in the future. It seemed their belief was not required. When asked why her timeship was circled with Chinese symbols (rendered in green flake) and no Western writing, she stated that the building of the craft had required the backing of a world power.

  She was tall, blonde, strong as metal cable, aged anything between thirty and fifty, and presented as American. She bore no explosive device or other weapon. Fearing that she was the weapon, they scanned her. She was normal, skullparts zipped together with calcium in the usual way. She carried no exotic disease. The factions argued, right and left money with right and left military. She observed calmly that this was a class distinction, and they stopped only briefly to hate her.

  Her ability to casually exit locked rooms was embarrassing not because she could do so, but because to confront her on the fact would be to acknowledge they had locked the door. She always returned, and seemed to be waiting for something. Surveillance footage of her cell was marred by her sitting as still as a statue - observers watching her face for hours in close-up soon imagined they saw strange transformations in the swarming static. Sudden blank tape presumably concealed activity she didn’t wish to broadcast. In any case their security was bankrupt, and attempts to shift or examine the time craft resulted in strange blackouts and loss of memory. The woman took one scientist aboard, who emerged describing something like a honeycomb of medals.

  Attempts to gas her room or give her sedated meals resulted in her departure and days during which she was locked incommunicado within the disc. Her refusal to help them pretend they hadn’t attacked her was the last straw for the military, and when she finally mentioned her name, intelligence came up trumps - she was a young girl living in Cleveland, unremarkable, with the seed of an interest in languages and no connection with the Orient.

  Interrogation of the girl yielded nothing - she didn’t know anything about her future self, and was merely frightened and worn down, especially when interrogation resulted in the loss of a kidney. But she and the older woman carried the same DNA.

  Against scientists’ objections that a meeting between the two was inadvisable, the girl was shown into a bare cell where the woman was sat at a metal table, the meeting observed and recorded through a one-way mirror.

  She was surprised at the fragility of the young girl who uncertainly sat down across from her. Spiky, fibrous and yet to ripen, she was yellow in the head and filled to innocence with others’ opinions. Etheric armatures of anxiety angled from her like insect legs. And strangely she had always carried within her the sweet and bitter secret that this, now, was the past.

  She’d forgotten how terrible it was, the taste of youth in the mouth. The new-made jigsaw mask opposite made her relieved at her age. That she was wise enough to know she was being used, and that she could use it. With enough data to see at last the whole shape and put a cross through the centre of her life.

  ‘I’ve learned a vast amount. Every life I’ve heard of has been a meaningless oblivion. But you and I together might accomplish something.’

  She reached across the table for the girl’s hand.

  Something louder than sound was bending the window. Turning in mid-air, they were wrapped around eachother, arms and legs interwoven with the spiral of snow-white fire that coursed around and between them before exploding through the atomized glass. The blast blurred the bunker to dust and knocked an earthwave westward across the American continent. As the wave echoed back the land troughed open to a depth of four miles and, like a sandcastle moat, welcomed the filling sea.

  PLANET

  The planet was in fact a balled-up lobster the size of a planet. When it unfurled that tail, boy, to say we were surprised is an understatement. Freddy turned to me and raised his eyebrows, and had a slight smile on his face. It was a wild time for the boys. The very end of the tail looked like a red flattened fern. I remarked on it at the time because I’d flattened any number of ferns when I was a kid. Freddy challenged my interpretation and said it was like a set of russet feathers. Murphy ignored us, Fenchurch said we were both right, and Arlo was too busy screaming something about lobsters to contribute anything useful to the exchange. He was, in fact, always finding a way to avoid participation. Like the time he gasped something about a le
ak in the airlock seam and spent hours re-sealing the seam of the airlock while the rest of us were playing cards. We invited him several times to join us but he just looked blank, and even angry later on – as if he was above it. Now we had to try discussing this lobster situation above his bellowed technical suggestions concerning light-years and fanned laser bursts. ‘We might tame it,’ said Freddy, and started sniggering. No, I thought, we will not tame this. Its underside, previously hidden, was incredibly complicated with ribshapes and countless folded bony legs. I was sick and tired of it already. ‘Let’s just fly away,’ I sighed, and that’s how we decided. Arlo locked himself in his cabin, and when we knocked on his door at dinnertime, his muffled swearing assured us all he was good old Arlo, what a character.

  THE BURNISHED ADVENTURES OF INJURY MOUSE

  Bob became increasingly enraged at the other commentators and assured them vipers were utterly charming - he was married to one, in his mind. Basically, he said, yes basically, everything stemmed from that. There was utter silence after just a little of this. Bob thought it was hilarious, all of it. Why didn’t these other guys try harder?