Meeting of Minds

Meeting of Minds

The huge digital clock clacked loudly like an old-fashioned cricket scoreboard where a run was scored every second. The double clack each ten seconds relieved to some extent the otherwise hypnotic rhythm. He was waiting for a late night train. Nobody else was on the platform, but he did spot a foetus-like rodent scampering along one of the rails. For one moment, he thought it was the live rail, but following the creature’s disappearance behind a wooden plank, he assumed he must have been mistaken. The clouds had disappeared too, leaving the stars untangled, the moon uncluttered - except for two dark shapes approaching each other which were none of these things. Not aeroplanes with silent flashing lights, more like ill-defined ink-blots each about the size of an age-grimed pre-decimal penny upon the scale of his eye to the sky. Then the two shapes merged like cells under a microscope and suddenly shone as a silver half-crown. He wondered if he was the only one to notice these happenings in the sky, just before he felt the fatal electric shock in the ground as the Earth shorted at approximately 23:57:33.

Published 'Crossings' 1993

od13

od 13

DFL’S COMMENTS ON ‘ODALISQUE’ BY PF JEFFERY

 

Chapter 13 – Sale

 

Here I learn about ‘vambraces’ and ‘synonyms’. Tuerqui writes about these but still evidently not a semi-colon girl:

A lash across my buttocks told me that our business in the tent was done, I hurried toward the exit – beyond Henrietta’s table – closely followed by Giggli.

Much talk of Tuerqui being sold as a slave (to Madame Scurf of the Laughin’ Phallus in Dorkin’ as it turns out), stitched by poignant memories of her daughter Tuerquelle and interaction with the revolving plot.

Snippets I particularly enjoyed (although I enjoy it all):

her name was Camellia[1][1] or something of the sort – sucking the blood from a young lady’s neck.  Thinking about it now, I realised with a touch of shock that it contained strong hints of Surrenity.

[1][1] The name should, presumably, be Carmilla – the eponymous lead character in a bogey tale surviving from the Old Time.

Above presumably a reference to Coleridge’s vampire poem.

..........................

For the first time in perhaps a dozen years, I felt the urge to pray.  Reaching under the groundsheet, I took a handful of sticky mud.  Carefully, I started to mould it into an image of the Great Mother. 

............................

Each of us made her own prayer of dedication.  Then we fell silent, feeling that another was joining our huddle under the tarpaulin – a silence broken only by the renewed drumming of the rain.  We breathed deep, sucking divinity within ourselves.  Then, as though upon a signal, each of us murmured a simultaneous prayer.

“Oh Great Mother,” I prayed, “although I was a wicked and irreligious person – and a better but still irreligious slave – I know that you always listen to a mother’s prayer.  Please look after Tuerquelle, and be to her the mother I am not allowed to be.  Protect her and guide her.  If it may be, let us meet in the world to come.”

 

.................................

 

Typo:

Unable follow this conversation very well

 

Queries (passages that didn’t seem quite right to me):

The goddess was not, of course, as well made as she in even the humblest shrine – but she was the best we could do.

 

but the bulk of their attention was directed toward we slaves.

=====================

Word docs of the actual chapters are freely available to readers of this blog.

 

 

 

The links to all Chapter comments by me are here: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.com/2008/06/odalisque.html

 5 comments

Submitted by Pet at 7/24/2008 1:59:26 PM

Typo corrected -- thanks!

No -- the reference to the Old Time bogey tale is not to a poem by Coleridge, but to Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu. (A fine bogey tale, in my opinion.)

Of your queries, I don't see what is wrong with:"The goddess was not, of course, as well made as she in even the humblest shrine – but she was the best we could do.

"Perhaps you find jarring Tuerqui's reference to the image as "the goddess". This is a reflection of the strong association expressed repeatedly later in the book, between divinity and image. I suppose that, strictly speaking, images are the bodies of divinities. But we do not usually speak of people's bodies as being separate from people. Tuerqui, similarly, does not write of deities' bodies (= images) as being separate from the deities. A theologian might be more inclined to make the distinction -- but Tuerqui is no theologian.

If your query is other than this, perhaps you could elucidate.

The other query:"but the bulk of their attention was directed toward we slaves."is, I assume, a reprise of the "we slaves" debate.

Submitted by des at 7/24/2008 2:13:53 PM

Sorry, that was what I meant - Sheridan Le Fanu.And 'Christabel' by Coleridge: see above link if you click on 'des'.Agree with your 'reprise' point.

As to the other query, I was wondering whether it should be 'as well made as her' or 'as well made as the one'?

Submitted by des at 7/24/2008 2:25:08 PM

Further to the 'Christabel' point, there seems to be a very interesting article about it (by clicking on 'des' in this comment).

Submitted by Pet at 7/24/2008 2:44:49 PM

I read "Christabel" in the 1970s. Alison, my ex-, gave me a rather handsome copy of the poem (which I rather wish I still had -- I'm not sure what became of it). I hesitated to quote the title of the poem in my previous comment as I couldn't recall how "Christabel" was spelt.

My feeling in the 70s, and now, was and is that "Christabel" influenced Le Fanu. (And hence indirectly influenced the lesbian vampire film genre.)

I don't think that the name of Christabel has anything to do with the slave names in ending in -belle that are fairly common in "Odalisque". (But it's just occurred to me to make that link.)

I think that in saying "as well made as she" rather than "as well made as the one" Tuerqui is asserting a belief that the goddess is fully and truly present in the images in even the humblest shrines.

Submitted by Pet at 7/24/2008 2:53:36 PM

Thanks for the link to the article, Des. Curiously, the phrase "goes into his psychological makeup" has a link from the final word. Clicking on that link takes the reader into a page about make up in the sense of cosmetics.

I think that "Odalisque" deals in both psychological make up and cosmetic make up. The unexpected link seemed to hint at something oddly apt.

 

My Own Step-Father

       MY OWN STEP-FATHER   

(published 'Peeping Tom 1992) 

      

 

       But let me tell you, the backyard was a real eyesore. There were rusty tin baths stacked up against the disused outside jacksy, a moulderlng ladder with most crossbars completely stepped through, a long corroded apparently purposeless iron girder sticking through the lopsided gate into the public ginnel behind and, finally, the washing wringer, its heavy-duty roller-barrels grimed up with green fungus, its brown crank-handle pathetically poking out for use, its iron gridstand previously used on a treadle sewing-machine, by the look of it…

 

       It all brought back memories of my mother. I don’t know why exactly, except perhaps because she often used to be found in the steamy kitchen, a large apron hiding the huge shapelessness of her body, as she stirred a copper and wrung soggy clothes through a similar beast to that mangle which now stood in this particular backyard. It was all she ever seemed to do! But a child, as I was then, frequently sees reality differently from grown-ups. Though thinking about it, if only in that respect, I am still very much the child of dreams.

 

       The house I had recently bought was a run down terraced house in the rump end of town — you know the area, down by the Sludgy River, not very far from the Farmers’ Arms. I had decided, in view of my then financial state, it would be a good investment (as long as I did it up myself) but above all, a roof over my head, albeit as leaky as my mother’s favourite colander.

 

       If I had known what I know now, I would have steered right round the whole M25 ringway as a short cut to avoid that dammed house.

 

       But first, I better say a little more about my mother. As well as wringing clothes, she had a similar treatment for her various husbands. My real father ended up a squeezed out wreck in a madhouse, thus easing the divorce proceedings. The trail of other men who had shared her bed, well, I cannot think of an exception, they all committed suicide “by putting their blackened fingernails down their throats and sicking their hearts out,” as my mother always put it in her customary telling way. It is true, she often confided in me and some of her stories would “make all your hair fall out,” another strange expression of hers which was only to make sense in later life.

 

       That new house of mine was to be haunted by my mother. She had been dead ten years, since when no sign of hide nor hair of her. I can recall her telling me once of ghosts, how she believed in them and, if I should see wispy forms of my various stepfathers trooping down the steep-as-a-ladder stairs, I was to turn away. They would soon scram, if ignored. So with a reasonable amount of equanimity, I accepted the appearance (albeit belated) of my dead mother in the new house, wandering up and down the dark landing, down the staircase past the dinner gong, mumbling inanities to herself. Well, I guessed they were inanities as I could not make them out from where I had stationed my truckle bed in the furthest back room.

 

       One night, and it is not long ago when this happened, maybe even last week, I thought I actually heard the groaning of the ancient wringer outside in the yard like an animal in grievous bodily pain. I tried to suffocate my ears with the pillow but the noise ground on relentlessly.

 

       Of course, I knew it was my mother enjoying herself, having just discovered the clapped-out mangle outside. I wondered how long it would be before a stepghost…

 

       I did not even bother to question how she as a ghost could muster the embodied strength to turn the grinding rollers of a disused wringer. After all, I knew my mother…

 

       It’s all happening again tonight.

 

      

 

       Since hearing the groaning and squealing of the mangle in the backyard, I had never been out there to investigate. But, for whatever reason, today at first light I did. Curiosity got the better of me.

 

       The decrepit ladder was leaning against the side of my house — or was it vice versa?

 

       The apparently purposeless iron girder had gone through the wringer rollers and stretched out down the public ginnel, moving along the council gutter like rusty slime.

 

       My real father, whom I had not seen for donkey’s years, lolled in the open jacksy, drooling down the lavatory pan from the waist like so much melting human flesh. He mouthed something or other and pointed. I looked to the top of the ladder where my dead mother was attempting to mend the leaky roof with red glue ... to keep her dear son dry.

 

      

 

       I sold the house, of course, and sought lodgings to get rid of the dreams. But wherever one goes, they can but follow.

 

      

 

       Ms Ample Clavinty’s hallway was gloomy, even when the lamp was lit. The seeping light from the dingy street hardly managed to struggle through the highly-coloured roundel window in the front door.

 

       As I gingerly negotiated the stairs to avoid tripping over the loose rods, I always took the opportunity to admire my visage in the hall mirror which leant at an angle from the blistering wallpaper. Unlike the rest of the household trappings, it was a superior artefact; with equally spaced wooden human arms waving from around the circular frame, it looked like a Medusa’s head but, close up, the inner silver surface glowed so brightly, the intricate frame dissolved into the colour of darkness by comparison. I thought I looked more handsome in that mirror than in any other.

 

       I once asked Ms Clavinty where she had obtained it. She had stared back at me coldly — a severe woman at the best of times, with sculptured hair-bun, sharp-edged skirts and starched bottle-green stockings. She seemed even more formidable than when she sounded the gong at the foot of the stair-well, come evenings. The only hint of humour I had ever discerned in her demeanour came once when she was lugubriously dishing out from the vast chipped tureen, her speciality stew made from the melts, grits and lights of a goat’s innards. She unbuttoned the top of her high-collared cardigan twin-set and said that the room was becoming as hot and sweaty as a Cardinal’s blessing hand.

 

      

 

       One day the unusual happened. The dinner gong failed. So I was late coming down the stairs, my belly having finally told me that I was hungry. Ms Clavinty was more like a fixture in the hall than a moveable feast, her slight bosom and curvy behind being faintly silhouetted against the roundel window. She held the gong hammer over the mirror, the surface of which I could see even at this distance was covered with tiny continous cracks like scribbling hairs,

 

       Unaccountably, this reminded me of another recurring dream. In it, I felt my beard in-growing back into my cheeks and jowls, and swabbing like dirty pubes down my throat, then feeding piecemeal into my belly, finally poking out the anus like an animal’s tail.

 

       Ms Ample Clavinty suddenly turned towards me ... and sweetly smiled, her hand fiddling with her top button. I pinched myself to see if it was the same dream. For better or worse, it wasn’t.

 

       Heaving bouts of nausea fought for exits. I realised I could not escape her grinding buttock rollers.

 

 

Drinking

WRITE A SHORT ARTICLE ABOUT THE PLEASURE OF DRINKING

By DF Lewis

 

When I was commissioned to write a popular article – and I’ll leave revealing the identity of the patron who thus commissioned me until the end – I wondered how I could sufficiently overcome my predisposition to wield long words and convoluted phrasing so that, in the end, the article would indeed be a snappy treatment upon the simple pleasures of drinking.

 

Let me say, then, that drinking actually gives me no pleasure at all.  The process indeed leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.  OK, I recognise the physical necessity for people to drink.  I hope you drink to live, though.  Not to live to drink.

 

Caffeinated, decaffeinated, fizzy, intoxicating, creamy, malty, icy cool, piping hot, even with a spiky umbrella stuck in it and all manner of colourful toppings of fruit and flower … whatever the types of drink and methods of imbibing them, I remain sternly oblivious to their charms.  On a hot, steamy day and I’d run a marathon beneath the red staring eye of the sky … even a frothing tankard of cold ale I cannot imagine scouring the froth and spume from the back of my throat nor penetrating my palate to the bone … yes, none of this can cut the mustard with me.

 

Well, then, to simply write of drinking’s pleasure is more difficult than just hitting the right tone.  I need to empathise with those of you who do enjoy drinking.  That wonderful nose, that bouquet, that aftertaste, that veritable explosion of flavours.  Not to speak of the light-headed dreaminess of long summer afternoons with church bells ringing and the clonk of leather on willow.  Hey, none of this touches my hot spot.  None of it does it for me.

 

I’ll have to come clean, then.  I’m writing this short article on a papyrus of dried leaves and the ink is now running out.  Not much time to reach the promised conclusion before the nib scratches as dry as my heart.  I must have written far too many long words.  Soon, all I’ll have left is my blood.

 

Quickly … Dracula is my patron and my commission is death.  Leaves a bad mouth in my taste…

The 3 Long Piggies of Trunk City

THE 3 LONG PIGGIES OF TRUNK CITY

(published 'Purple Patch' 1990) 

 

The place stank of rotten weeds: still growing in flourishing clumps but, nevertheless, rotting right down to their roots.  The whiplash throughway wound between variable wastelands, some proudly decorated with scrubby tussocks of rust-coloured plant life, others merely adventure playgrounds with the games removed.  In the distance, Matthew could see the blind groping fingers of an earthbound Satan – whose toes came out in the Antipodes, no doubt, within the tolerances of near-collapse, as the relentless winds continued to be panted across the weathered landscape.  The City’s other buildings had long since disappeared, by piecemeal dismantlement or simply heavy breathing … leaving only the substructures visible.  The skeleton of an ancient motorway system was barely discernible, now nothing but convoluted metal reinforcings.  Matthew feared the snorting beasts that were said to hunt for the likes of him hereabouts.  Wolves, too, named after a football team that once played in the vicinity, he did not exactly trust them as merely a legend from better days.  Werewolves were only one variation, which he could not fathom beyond the nature of their fangs.

 

Abruptly, the swaddlings of cloud drew apart like sackcloth curtains to reveal the streaming red and gold of a forgotten sun.  Matthew bent his forelegs, not in prayer, but so that his proboscis could reach the sparkling sweat-gland under a clump of brown nettles, picked out in the unseasonable light.

 

The were people perched on the tangled motorway struts started to clamber down on spotting Matthew there.

A Love Trove

A Love Trove  

I loved him with all my heart's heart, but he promised only liking in return or, at the most, fondness.

I tried to turn off my love and divert its unused energy into exploring the city streets where nobody had ever been before. The prying terraced curtains tweaked of their own volition; loneliness gave me the courage to be myself. A comfort, too, were the shaggy shadows of distant high-rises where people had congregated for fear of these low-downs I roamed.

Indeed, I found myself seeking someone who was already with me, this causing my heart to play leap-frog: a found fondness deeper than love.

Brown Stoker

BROWN STOKER 

 

You must build a wall.  The voice was so quiet, I wasn't sure I had heard it properly.  Build a wall?  Why a wall?  And why me?  And you must build it now.  I had evidently mistaken voices for thoughts.  That's what happens when a mind goes awol.  Either that or I was hearing voices, I supposed. 

            Susie soon pulled me together.  I had begun to depend on her more and more ever since the onset of the troubles.  Russian money wasn't legal tender any more.  And Chinese Walls no longer effective.  If Money was my car, Susie was my brakes.  Everything was cutting fast and loose.  Everybody knew everybody else.  And even cellars were not dark enough for cleaving meat.  Vegetarian hells.

            "Thinking can be dangerous," I thought she said.

            I nodded as she looked quizzically through my desk diary.  I had several appointments today, most of which must have appeared dubious, bearing in mind the various financial scandals currently involving most of those due to be met.

            "You can't see him," she scorned, without even the hint of a scowl.

            "Why not?"

            "He's been shipping T-bones from Samarkand."

            "Such lily-livered laws were meant to be broken, Susie.  Come off it, if everybody went around paying such lip service...." 

            She went back to touring my schedules—as if she were making personal appearances by virtual proxy.  I could see her eyes rolling back into her head.

            I put my hand under the desk and lifted a brick from the floor.  Once a gold ingot now simply a worthless foundation stone that landed on my desk with a vicious clunk, having slipped through my weakening fingers.  It even had a wedge-free zone in its top for the cement.  I stooped to fetch another.  The security authorities would once have had kittens, given the defaults of their erstwhile jobsworthness.  Now they merely connived with any form of laundering, even to be found regularly credit-card sharpening in the cellar.  Amid smoke and heady booze smells and shovelled shit.  One or two even honed bones.

            By the time Susie had polished off my laptop, I was hidden behind a veritable high-rise of low finance.  A virtual house of cards.

            Now you've built it, time for love.

            Susie was sprawled over showing her shameless stocking-tops.  The scowl had by now resumed its own natural territory, wrinkling up her cosmetics like crumbly aspirin.

            "Another day, another dollar."

            Her hen-bones stuck out through various orifices, crumbling too.  A particularly vicious T-junction was where the money mites swarmed from her bowels.  A dissheveled security guard eventually found her light enough to drag down to the cellar.

            I winked at him.  Give him his dues, he saluted back.  He'd once been my official chauffeur.  Now a brown stoker.

 

 

 

The Irreducibles of Nygremaunce

THE IRREDUCIBLES OF NYGREMAUNCE 

 

published 'Black Moon' 1997

 

 

"Your dreams are disowned memories, connected only by the singular first and third persons within us all."

Rachel Mildeyes (UPON THE WORKS OF HP LOVECRAFT)

 

 

"I'll skin yer face for yer, if yer don' look out!" snarled the gringo who was laid back against the City bar. 

            I decided I didn't like him, mainly because he was someone so entirely different from anything I could possibly be.  But, not one to be unsociable, I trumped back at him:

            "Pardon me!  Pardon me!  Sorry I spoke!"

            "Yer didn't - I did.  And less of yer lip!" 

            His stubbled chin was a sight to behold, more desperate than I was dandy.  His nose hung on like grim death above the splitting snakehide around his mouth - but, his foot surprised me more than anything when, zippier-than-light, it kicked my fishing tackle.

            "Ooh!" 

            I'd never felt such pain, almost ecstatic, the exquisitest thing this side of godliness.  It sure did make me seethe and simmer.  I'd teach this bonzo a lesson he would never forget.

            "Nobody messes with Padgett Weggs and lives!" I forced out between my clenched teeth.

            "Oh yeh!" 

            Suddenly the joint was full of faces.  They had previously been just bar-flies upon the wall, flocking in for the kill and eager for the shit which was about to be laid across the carpet.  A split second can hold a whole range of possibilities, and I scanned the past as well as the future for a clue...

            Distant indeed were the days when I lived alone with my mother.  Dreaming childish fears.  Dredging monsters from the sewers of the world's collective unconscious, some of which monsters actually slept with me between the sheets.  Listening to other Irreducibles that came in from the roosting on our roof.  Bothering not a tittle about the ablutions of my body, since my creature comforts were in the hands of Elementals which crept beneath my bed, their jaws hanging open for any ripe bits of bodily produce that I could spare.  And, above all, moulding a mind-shape above our teetering house in mock of an Irreducible which my mother called God. 

            Even further away were the days I had yet to live, full of masquerades, mounting excitement and unwrapping myself like a parcel being passed at a children's party.  Yet this future became a full-blooded demon raising its snout above the ant-heaps which our civilisation was to become. 

            As I feared the trip-wire of repercussions my slightest free action would now spring, I was hidebound by the spluttering fuses inside my head.  There were all my old pals now gathered in the bar, faces that were little better than loud wallpaper.  The juke-box broke wind.  Other gossipping locals were spreadeagled across the ceiling, grinning like monkeys between the quickening fan-blades.  The split second eventually elapsed, as I turned my back on the grizzled lush at the bar and created the failure of Fate just with my own bare thoughts.

            The door burst asunder.  What was all this - a scene from some (God)forsaken Western movie?  The juke-box exploded into a thousand shards.  The ceiling fan choked on its own blades.  And my head felt fit to burst with the thoughts which became events sooner than blinks.  There were nails torn from their beds of flesh, splinters of bone, bifurcated teeth in a wild stinging snowstorm of gnashing, all seeking out the softest pin-cushion. 

            Yet I leaned back against the bar, a cool customer.  I turned a surly glance to the gap-toothed geezer whom Fate had seen fit to cross with my path and stroked my own by now spiky chin in deference to the next move that was as inevitable now as it ever was. 

            "I'll skin yer, as soon as look at yer!" I snorted.

            "Dosser!  Dosser!" taunted the little kids when they saw me licking my wounds in the gutter. 

            I looked up, a pain welling from behind my eyes, a pain that turned the street into a strew of lights.  I could hear their voices, but their bodies remained a mystery.

            "Please go away!" I piped. 

            Once upon a time, my imagination would have been able to fit out such entities as these kids with the garb of high legend and cosmic wonder, as was my youthful wont; but, now, with brain deadened by the mind that fed it and a skull quickly filling with increasingly malign tumour tissue, the world had become, to me, what it always should have been: a straight place with no strange angles and very few unexplored corners, a reality that housed only standard people, animals, concrete, sky, metal monsters, fizzy pills snorted at every turn and, above all, gap-toothed geezers who took sudden dislikes.  And this real world in which I now took my wrongful place was particularly incommodious.  Nobody gave a toss.  Nor did they give me money, because I had nothing to exchange for it.  I could no longer while away the hours in the pub, earning a crust by telling tales of the universe within my head.  That universe had ceased to exist. 

            The edges of the pavement were sharper whilst my back into which they poked was softer.  And time travel was now off the agenda, quite beyond the capabilities that I once believed I possessed.  I cursed the age which had forced me to live in it.  But it was a sign of the times.  Only a few were not dossers now - and those kids who had taunted me were indeed dossers' kids, only to become dossers themselves.  And they screamed blue murder at the TV camera which was documenting their way of life.  But, it didn't really seem to matter, as nobody watched television any more.

            Dawn came but once a day, with time now more or less in forward gear.  And, then, I, Padgett Weggs, would dream of the past - and it's the past that for most people comes but once in a lifetime. 

            My mother had believed in a God that, at the best of times, was difficult for anyone to believe in.  And she had tried to impose this belief on myself, but Mystery being now in short supply, I could not even countenance the means, let alone the ends.  In fact, once dead, all people cease to have ever existed. 

            That's the way of the world Padgett Weggs ended up knowing when he ceased to be eligible for calling himself "I".  Memories always were hopes past their sell-by date and sex came from Kate Hood-of-Bed like the stench off a bad corpse.  She was often in the company of Padgett Weggs before that occasion, of which she still speaks, when he died in her arms, in the backroom of a bar.  To tell her side of the story, she always denied the rumour that Padgett Weggs had died a dosser, for that would have branded her a heartless hussy.  Loved him when he was a hit, but lost him to the clawback of the streets when his mind became not all it was...  Never that!  She insisted to the point of boredom, as a new customer lay like a babe against her bald breasts, that Padgett Weggs was undeniably dignified towards the end - that end of his when night donned the garb of death and sucked the dreamlight dry. 

            With a busy career to maintain as the first ever woman breeder of werewolves, Kate Hood-of-Bed really had no option, she said, but to leave him alone to sleep it off beneath the blanket.  At the very end of his human life, she had been the last to hold his yet unstiff tool between her slender nail-painted fingers, and then she took it into her mouth as if she were some backstreet dosser's kid sucking at a playground water-fountain.  And she blew and blew - the only way to help make his spiky innards sprout out through the pores like fur hair.  With the last blast of her lungs into his spinning balls, Padgett's mouth would pump open with the direst roars of beast hunger.

            His life became a forgotten subtitle to an otherwise famous book.  And on this new night beyond even memory's belated trawl, the glowing dome of St Paul's Cathedral, the hub of all dossers' haunts, suddenly reared from behind another building,  It was strange how such nights as this one created new perspectives as well as new turnings into olden City squares that office workers could never even hope to find.

            Padgett Weggs, having reached an age by which most dossers had given up their ghosts,  wondered if he were as mad as he felt.  Why had even his likes fallen into the trap called Love?  Hate had always been so liberating. 

            That crone Kate Hood-of-Bed was the soulfullest mate and nicest sleeping bag he'd ever possessed during countless nights under the dripping stars.  Her tongue, the sharpest this side of Shoreditch, but the warmest eyes.  Her teeth were missing, but some had returned, in their wisdom, as wolffangs.  Her clothes were more like strips torn from her own flesh that had previously hardened from sleeping rough with Padgett.

            Now, she'd gone.  Melted away into the last night's unseasonable fog.  And as Padgett Weggs staggered into yet another misremembered square, any perceptive fellow dosser would have spotted diamonds in his eyes.  Sadness was a fine emotion, mainly because it indicated wealth of soul: the actual capability of happiness, by comparison.  Unbelievably, he found a free bench beside a broken water-fountain.  The square's lamp posts were shorn at the top but still filtered a dim light as if from their cores. 

            The statue of a nymph (the daughter he never had, he wondered) was just another shadow, if more substantial than a ghost.  A bench of cradled bones was a luxury compared to common or garden pavements.  He wrapped himself in his own arms and legs (a feat of physical prestidgitation invented and jealously guarded by the brothership of freedossers) and dreamed of Kate - and of the anniversaries they would never now celebrate.

            In the morning, a Confessional Priest wandered, apparently in an aimless frame of mind, with a large gold-clasped book in blackskin boards.  He had it under his arm.  He began to look from side to side like a one-eyed bird. 

            Padgett Weggs, who had been dreaming, yawned.  Somebody must have moved him in the night to the Cathedral's steps, he surmised - at a time when even storytellers are fast asleep.  The Priest handed him the imposing book in one surreptitious curtsy of his cassock.  And darted off, no doubt, to clear away his own night's doings before the toffee-nosed tourists arrived.

            Padgett was too bleary-eyed to appreciate the gift, if gift it were.  But, eventually, turning to the first page, he managed to make out, through his chronic dyslexia, the title:  COCOON MENNIR.  But he could not quite make out the smaller print of the subtitle, even if there were one at all.  But he decided it must say KATE HOOD-OF-BED, and he put a anagrammatic smile upon the newly risen sun.

            Once dead, one ceases to have ever existed.  That's the way of the world Padgett ended up knowing.  And suddenly I know instinctively that I never ever existed, except perhaps as a fevered fiction of another - someone who, with tears in the eyes, has also now disappeared from all realities past present and future.

           

 

"If 'Necronomicon' is simply a conundrum of mixed-up letters and 'Book-of-the-Dead' another, 'Padgett Weggs' is yet another to fathom till we are all Great Old Ones."

Rachel Mildeyes (UPON THE WORKS OF DF LEWIS)

 

 

Dear Maude
 

 

Dear Maude

By DF Lewis

 

Afternoon. 

Anyway, you know what it’s like.  As soon as the family gets home, I’ve got not time even for the natural bodily processes, or almost!  Des always arrives first (he comes on the overnight coach), clutching a potted plant - sometimes I think he must be shy, hiding behind the biggest bloom he can buy.  I soon packed him up to his old room to get ready for dinner while, with nose duly pegged, I drop a whole term of his dirty washing into the twin tub.  I don’t resent doing it really - I know how hard students have to study.

 

Evening.  

Harry and Peter are late.  Christina’s come, of course, bringing me a bumper box of Black magic.  I can’t tell her, can I, that I’ve been off chocolates these last two years, because I suspected a link-up between them and migraines.  You can understand, can’t you, Maude, you of all people, embodying such allergies, vulnerabilities, sensitivities and weak constitutions with which God saw fit to curse us all in the autumn of our days.  Sorry, I’m getting so wordy, but these letters of mine to you are almost like serial confessions!  Must break off now, as I can hear the sound of Harry’s jalopy coming up the drive.  I expect Peter’s with him.

 

Morning. 

Des’s potted plant looks so pretty in the middle of the dining-table, I’ve cooked a hearty breakfast - I know how Harry likes mounds of fried bread when he’s here at home.  Des will be a bit annoyed when he discovers I’ve no mushrooms.  Went clean out of my head yesterday.  Christina still avoids cooked stuff for breakfast, but there’s plenty of fruit juice and cereal for her.  It’s a pity, though, her feeling a bit off colour this morning.  I’m a bit worried that Peter’s a day late because of some trouble he’s in.  Harry says he wasn’t waiting outside Clapham South tube at the appointed time to be picked up in the jalopy.  I must say Harry could have waited around a bit - something about the parking being bad round there.  Des came down late for breakfast, of course.  If you’d had a son of your own, Maude, you’d understand.  Despite the lack of mushrooms, he managed a bit of something.

 

Afternoon. 

Christina’s in the garden, sun-bathing.  I told her she’ll only catch a chill.  I must say, though, I simply love her wide-brimmed hat.  Her Godfrey bought it for her in Florence.  But Godfrey’s persona non grata these days.  Pity, I liked him - ever a good card at whist.  He was fond of me, too, always untwirling my apron strings when I’m in the middle of something dangerous in the kitchen.  Laugh?  I nearly died!  Harry and Des (who, I may have told you, never got on together as little boys) have gone off in the jalopy.  Peter’s still not arrived!  He could have tried to give me a ring.  All the boxes must have been vandalised by those lager louts, I shouldn’t wonder.  I don’t like using phones.

 

Evening. 

Raining pretty hard now.  Christina stayed out in the garden till the very last moment.  She hasn’t told me yet how her little florist business is going these days.  I expect she’ll get round to it.  The jalopy’s not back yet - they said they might be a bit late for dinner.  Something about finishing up visiting you, Maude, of all people.  They’re probably with you now.  I hope they’re not too much of a nuisance.  They always called you Auntie, I know, but they shouldn’t have visited you unannounced like that.

 

Bedtime. 

I’m not tired at all.  Though it is time I made the Horlicks.  Nice of you to ring, Maude, with the news that Harry and Des are staying over with you.  I know you said it’s no trouble, but I can’t help thinking that they’re imposing on you.  Christina’s here, sat by the television watching something or other called Buzzcocks.  They keep pulling faces on it.  I hope Christina won’t be left on the shelf.  Good Friday often seems the right time to take stock.  I wish my Dick was still alive.  My bed’s been more lonely the last two years.  I know you had a soft spot for him too, being a real gentleman as he surely was.  Peter’s not rung.  It is strange that I worry more about him than the others, him being adopted.

 

Morning.

It’s taking me a long time to finish this letter.  Peter’s absence is now really beginning to worry me.  Christina’s gone off to meet the next train, she says.  How she knows he’ll be on it, I don’t know.  Perhaps she has some other errand in town while she’s there.  *You* rung up again, told me the boys are OK.  The potted plant looks a bit worse for wear.  I think it was dying on its legs when Des first bought it.  He’s got no common sense between his ears. A bit like his father.  But there’s no good in trying to change people.  It’s a nice blow day - I think I’ll hang out the washing.  It’s hard to make plans for meals, when everybody’s out and about doing their own thing.  Must go now, phone’s been ringing again.  I’m a bit slow on the uptake these days.  Oooh, I hope it’s Peter.

 

Two days later. 

Sorry - I’ve been very busy cooking.  But I promise I’ll get this letter off in the post today.  Christina’s in the garden - it is certainly warm for Easter.  But I do wish she wouldn’t go topless - I don’t know what the neighbours must think.  Peter rang at last.  Apparently not coming.  Something cropped up.  Youngsters these days have a lot of commitments.  I’m glad you kept me informed about the jalopy.  Broken down in your drive, you say.  They’ll go back to college straight from yours.  Well, it’s on the way, any rate.  When I next see you, I’ll give you the Black Magic for looking after them.  But what about Des’s washing?  He’s probably forgotten.  He’ll live in those jeansful of holes for the whole of next term.  You say I shouldn’t carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I wish Dick had never smoked.  I think I’ve got a migraine coming on.  In my back, this time.  I shouldn’t have got so much food in.  Christina eats like a bird.  Well, Maude, I hope the boys weren’t pests and that your rash is under control again.  I’ll write you a proper letter tomorrow when I’m no so racked with pain.  All my love, Edna. 

 

The Da I Did

THE DAY I DID

 

“The day I did, I did it properly.”

 

“I didn’t exactly ask you that, Giles.”

 

“You asked me how many times I had done it, didn’t you?” responded Giles. “And my answer is simply once, because before that I hadn’t done it properly, and then having done it once, it was unnecessary to then have done it more than once.  Once is enough.”

 

“Once is enough, you say?  But was it \i{possible} to do it more than once if you had wished to do so?”

 

The questioner stared at the one she had addressed as Giles: a middle-aged man with a face over-coloured by embarrassment; a T-shirt bearing on its chest a transferred photograph of himself not dissimilar to how he looked today; cheap grey slacks ironed into knife-creases; and a posture that indicated he was about to depart the ribs of a park bench that had created an uncomfortable impression upon his spine.  The voice of the woman was strident, creating its own unwelcome impression upon him.  Her face, body and dress were far better suited towards a more general impression of beauty completely out of keeping with her ugly voice. Giles certainly felt under-dressed and under-toned by comparison.  Nobody had warned him of any necessary formalities.

 

Replaced exactly where he had tried to leave – upon the bench – Giles stared up at the imposing woman, wondering if she really knew what she was asking.  He found it difficult to talk to women at the best of times, and today was not the best of times.  He was being accused of something, but as yet he had failed to understand that the accusation was of not understanding anything.  To misunderstand something several times became irrelevant once it was understood and once it was understood it could never be understood again; there were no levels of understanding, simply an understanding via various levels of misunderstanding until it was understood for the first and only time; understanding something was merely that and once done, never to be done again, unless the thing that was understood itself changed in some way and, then, the process of misunderstanding and understanding would start again from scratch until the new thing was understood via a whole new set of misunderstandings leading to understanding.

 

An alchemy of understanding. You wander on leaving Giles and the woman still talking. Today was not the day for you to understand this, I suspect.  Perhaps you should try again another day.

 

=========

 

"You've failed several times, and as far as I can see you have always failed.  Including that day."

 

"The day I did, I did it properly," you answered.

 

"Are there degrees of failure, then?"

 

Today, you've brought someone else to help you understand.  The question hung in the air as you both watched Giles and the woman talking on the park bench, unable to hear your conversation, while, paradoxically, you could hear theirs.

 

Identical conversations.

 

“No, if you fail, you fail.  You can never partly succeed.  It’s a bit like understanding.  You either understand or fail completely to understand.  There are no near misses.”

 

The woman laughed, having apparently understood Giles’ unintended joke.  She eyed back at his T-shirt.

 

“Why do you wear such a ridiculous T-shirt?”

 

“Ridiculous?”  He looked down at himself.  “Why so ridiculous?”

 

“There are no degrees of ridiculousness.  It is ridiculous plain and simple: not partly ridiculous, nor very ridiculous, just ridiculous.”

 

Having echoed their words word for word, you both shrug and decide to leave them to their ridiculous conversation.  You are thankful that you had not been heard in the same way as they had been heard.  Understanding would need to be left for another day.  Empathy was never possible.  A bit like alchemy.  Do come back.  I’m sure we shall defeat our lack of understanding together.

==========

 

She returned to the park bench expecting to see Giles sitting there. The man with the self-styled T-shirt.  She was not disappointed.  If this were fiction, there would have been some development, or organic change, so as to maintain interest in events or character development. All in fact on offer, however, was description and olique wordplay. 

 

She knew in her heart the key to the whole situtaion: not 'The Day I Did' but 'The Day I Died'.  So obvious.  So expected.  Again not to be disappointed in her expectations.

 

Although Giles was sitting on the park bench, it would have been truer to say that it was his body sitting there.  Giles' corpse, if a corpse could be 'owned' in that way, was waiting to incriminate her in murder.  A corpse being able to wait in such intimate intimidation of a victim-culprit was pehaps the organic change that we all needed.  An alchemy of dross to gold.  Reality to fiction. An empathy between anthropomorphisations of Plot and Truth.

 

We watched them from as far away as it was possible to watch them and be completely unseen. It is impossible to be partly unseen. We are either one or the other.  Not well-read, but unread.  Completely.

 

 She was taken away in a black car. The ambulance took Giles away separately, later identification of whose body was only possible by examination of his only distinguishing mark: just the clothes he stood up in.  You are what you wear. 

 

"The day I did..."

 

"...I did it properly."

 

A conversation imitating conversation. Wearing away into narrative silence.