I have this mate called Tim. We call him Crazy Tim if there's ever another Tim around to confuse him with. So, he must've spent his childhood suckling on pure capitalism and bullshit about how if you don't make a million dollars, you're a piece of shit. I conjecture, but the one persistent message that lives its own life in his head is that if you give stuff to people, they'll remember you. He actually has a heart of gold, this Tim; terrible capitalist. Anyway, somewhere along the line I've ended up one of the blokes he gives stuff to. "Your girlfriend told me to look after you," he says. So one day he gives me some bread. A few days later, some cheese straws. Every couple of months or so, everyone gets ice creams. It's nice. Anyway, last week I was chatting to him. "Where's my fuckin' ice cream, Tim?" That kind of thing, when he rammed a ten dollar note in my shirt pocket an' legged it. I thought, I can't spend this. I mean, I could actually buy a decent steak in Quito for ten bucks, but it would be like buying into his mad ideas on a far higher level than the whole nonsense with the ice creams. So, I thought, I'm going to give this ten bucks to a beggar. Then I forgot about it and put that shirt in the wash. About ten days later, I got the shirt back again (I'm spoiled. My girlfriend's mum does my washing... and this goes back to before we had a washing machine...) and I was like holy shit, the ten dollars is still in here. So I was on the bus when the Shaky Head Woman comes on. She does this whole routine where she can't stop shaking her head. She actually can, at least for a bit, but an act's an act, and I'd not take someone's livelihood away from them. Anyway, when she gets within arm's length, I bung her the ten buck note and - schlorrrpp - it's gone, right? Sucked into the folds of the universe, but the kid in front of me pure picks up on it. His face swivels round to look at the ten-buck-note dispensing gringo, and then I finally notice that there's this kind of sick-lookin' family in front of me; the boy, a youngish mum, a wee girl wrapped up in a blanket, lookin' half out of it. I dunno how sick she is or if they can afford her meds, but I don't have another ten buck note and they're not actually begging, and anyway sticking money in random people's pockets is Crazy Tim's schtick. So I just think FUCK. You do something you think is clever to make a point and by god does it all just go so fucking wrong. But I don't like to let a lesson go by me in this life and what I've learned from all this is that if Crazy Tim ever sticks another ten bucks in my pocket, I'm going to buy fucking steak with it.
Epilogue: a few days later, I told Tim I'd given his ten bucks to a beggar and he was fine with it.
Ego Trumpet
Saturday 26 August 2017
Fishy Steve
So you're swimming about with your best mate Steve in the river at the bottom of the field, when he says to you, hey, let's swim inside that fish through its gills, and you're like, alright Steve, last one in has to turn into a female, and he's like, yeah, alright, you're on, and then he zooms off and you're thinking, god I never noticed he had that forward stroke on him but you don't want to have to invert your penis into a vag, so you go after him and overtake him and neatly slide between the gills of a giant fish, Steve coming in pretty much on your tail. So you're like, ha ha, Steve, you have to be the girl now and he's like, alright, fair's fair, and he makes his willy slide into his body and a couple of boobs pop out and a few other changes too and you're, like, phwoar Steve, and she's like, it's Stevette now, I'm not Steve anymore and fuck me, I'm hungry, do you know where I can get some tongue blood vessles to eat, and you're trying to supress your horn, so you say, I bet this fish has got a big old tongue, and Stevette's like, yeah, you're right, so she swims up into the old fish's mouth, and blow me if she doesn't gobble up the tongue's blood vessels in a minute or two; of course, that makes the tongue go black and fall out, and all this time, her legs are stretching longer and her eyes are shrinking and you're looking at this long-legged blind woman and thinking, she's bloody fantastic, I want this to be the mother of my spunkmonkeys, and you can see her there nestling in the base of the mouth and you're like, come on, darling, I want to take you somewhere special, and she's like, I'm not going anywhere, I'm a tongue now, and you're thinking, am I gagging it enough to shag a lady-tongue wot used to be my best mate Steve this morning, and you realise, yer, actually, I am and so you make it with the tongue, and the whole time the fish is like, ha ha, that tickles, stop tickling my mouth, and Stevette's laughing and everyone's laughing except you, 'cos you've just shagged a tongue.
Sunday 19 March 2017
If You Were God...
-- If You were God, You might cut off Your little finger and breathe life into it.
-- And the finger would grab hold of that life as though it were the only thing it truly owned.
-- And You, the giver of life and taker of lives, would be amused, bemused, offended, hurt. For now that life had flown from Your fingertips and been gifted, You would be irrelevant, even though You would be mother and father of all the determined twitching that lay before You.
-- In the end, You would be disgusted and turn away.
-- And there, in the darkness of Your shadow, in the unholy absence of Your unloving, all of the stories of all of life would unfold.
-- And every single one would be an Abomination.
Monday 6 March 2017
An Image
On the bus today, I caught someone's glance just as I closed my eyes. In the black static of my imagination, I found those eyes still there; a pair of pale crescents, moist with curiosity.
Thursday 2 March 2017
100 word stories, 5
Bar Banter on Shekel Prime
Leopoldo leaned across the grog-stinking table.
"Who you thing best trader? In all this sector."
"The best?"
"Aldrek, gol' trader? Sexy Samira, an' her silky panties?"
"D'you really want to know? Cos I've thought about this..."
"Ratman and him ammo-unition?"
"Technically not a trader. Pirate."
"Well?"
"Lucia."
"Who she?"
"She's the old one-eyed beggar woman."
Leopold bent backward, guttering laughter.
"This your answer?"
"I'm serious! Even Ratman gives you somethin' for your clink. Lucia... excoriates your soul, makes you feel like your own spondoolies don't belong to you."
"Not bad, Earthling."
Then, jerking one finger skyward, "Another Caipirinha for he!"
Leopoldo leaned across the grog-stinking table.
"Who you thing best trader? In all this sector."
"The best?"
"Aldrek, gol' trader? Sexy Samira, an' her silky panties?"
"D'you really want to know? Cos I've thought about this..."
"Ratman and him ammo-unition?"
"Technically not a trader. Pirate."
"Well?"
"Lucia."
"Who she?"
"She's the old one-eyed beggar woman."
Leopold bent backward, guttering laughter.
"This your answer?"
"I'm serious! Even Ratman gives you somethin' for your clink. Lucia... excoriates your soul, makes you feel like your own spondoolies don't belong to you."
"Not bad, Earthling."
Then, jerking one finger skyward, "Another Caipirinha for he!"
100 word stories, 4
I exited the bus, which had arrived at precisely the right moment to deliver me to my place of work not quite embarrassingly late.
“Luckyunluckyunluckyluckyluckyunluckylucky - that’s what I am.”
“You’re more lucky than unlucky, then.”
“Were you counting?”
“No, I have natural number sense. I don’t need to count.”
“Natural number sense?”
“Yeah, it’s a subconscious impression of quantity.”
“Sounds pretentious.”
“So do all truly intelligent comments to persons of lesser intellect.”
“Are you saying you’re smarter than me?”
“Pretty much.”
“There’s just one little problem with that.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re talking to yourself.”
The cold air stung with effrontery.
“Luckyunluckyunluckyluckyluckyunluckylucky - that’s what I am.”
“You’re more lucky than unlucky, then.”
“Were you counting?”
“No, I have natural number sense. I don’t need to count.”
“Natural number sense?”
“Yeah, it’s a subconscious impression of quantity.”
“Sounds pretentious.”
“So do all truly intelligent comments to persons of lesser intellect.”
“Are you saying you’re smarter than me?”
“Pretty much.”
“There’s just one little problem with that.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re talking to yourself.”
The cold air stung with effrontery.
Wednesday 22 February 2017
Writing Task
The dry,
grainy heat of the previous month has passed and now the air is semi-saturated
and the faces of the people on the street are angled downward. He senses the traffic
lining up at the junction, crosses to the traffic island, and turns into the
subway station. The moisture seems to round off the smell of burnt fuel, making
it blunter, making it hang. He walks up the ramp, picking up his speed somewhat
in order to overtake a woman who’s head is turned to face a small child, who is
distracted by a rose lying on the ground. It’s a real rose.
Sliding
assorted metal shrapnel through the low gap in the brown Perspex window, he
receives the impression of a broad shouldered, simple-faced man studying many
piles of coins. A quarter is pushed back through the gap like the opening move
in a game of chess. He takes the coin, feeds it into the machine, pushes
through the turnstile and joins what he presumes to be the end of the queue,
becoming the eighth person leaning on the scratched plastic wall.
Today is a
good day. The bus station is relatively empty. He performs a quick study of his
fellow travelers, but there is nobody especially attractive, so turns to look
outside at the street from which he has just come. He sees people passing on
the far side of the road, flowing between the shop-kiosks and signposts, before
being smothered by the bright geometry of cars.
Hunger shifts
in his stomach as though a small marble were lying in his intestines but it is
tolerable thanks to the knowledge that last night’s cooking experiment still
languishes in the fridge, pasta shapes soaking up the deep red of the tomato
sauce.
He thinks
of home, of the small groove he has carved out in the world with its cold floor
tiles now adorned by warm and fluffy rugs. He recalls the former shining space
and how it has gradually filled with sofas and chairs, bookcases and
sideboards. To him, it has the dense style of a gypsy wagon expanded across the
space of a small bus station. It has become a place to sink into.
There is
yet work to do on reaching home; finding things out, making phone calls,
building up his file but, for now, he can only hang his gaze out the window, or
maybe read a book.
He becomes
aware of a change in the behavior of the people around him, the crowd has silently
swollen in the past few minutes, and necks are craning out the window and up
the street. Then, satisfaction and excitement; red sweeps across his vision
from left to right.
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