Previously, on SubGrubStreet:
Nathan awoke from uneasy dreams to find top Internet marketing guru and
vampire Nigella Seedlung had been turned into an even more horrible old
crone. Nigella’s accusation that he had abducted her and robbed her of
her youth failed to register as Nathan searched the house, at last
realising that he’s not seen Jane for months.
So, here I am again, in the offices of New Bastion Books, Louis
Lovestone’s bunker on the outskirts of Norwich (*). I have been summoned
by my publisher, though I can’t say that I’ve been swept up in the
glamour of this. I no longer anticipate chats with my editor about my
genius and my next moves while Bloomsbury hurries by outside the bistro
window. I no longer fantasize about falling in love with my editor (who
in my dreams would not have Louis’s sweet potato-shaped head, military
obsessions or gender) and going on to breakfast on white wine in
midwinter with the snow laying all around and diamonds strewn on a
smoked glass tabletop.
Here, the office still smells of fly spray and gas and there’s a pot of
tea and a pile of Ginsters pasties (**) on the table. More than this,
worse than this, the newly aged Nigella is here. I suspect that she’s
pulled Louis’s strings to get me here. I don’t care. I’ve got more that
this on my mind and over the last week I’ve come no closer to locating
Jane (****). I am, to be honest, incredibly worried, more worried than
I’ve ever been, even more than I when I woke up in the snow and thought I
was dead (*****); even more than after I realized what I had done
(******).
After I finally managed to oust Nigella from the house last week I
scoured every room looking for Jane. Not only could I not find her, I
couldn’t find any trace of her. Her clothes were gone from the wardrobe.
Her make-up was absent from the bathroom. The shelves that used to
house her collection of soppy books (*******) was empty and my library
of miserable and unreadable early Modernist classics had taken advantage
and annexed the space. For a while I thought that maybe she’d left me
while I was under Nigella’s spell (********), and perhaps all I needed
to do was track her down and explain that I’d been acting weird because
I’d been bitten by vampire Internet marketing guru. We have, after all,
lived through stranger developments (*********). The thing is, I rang
around. I rang her mother, she of the hennaed hair, and not only did she
say she’d never heard of me. She’d never heard of Jane. She was quite
rude about it and called me a hippy and a stoner. I rang in turn each
and every one of the Chorus (**********), Lou-Lou, Sandra and Buns. They
all knew who I am, and Buns even asked me out to a salsa class, but
none of them had a clue who I was talking about.
Jane has disappeared. I’m trying to take this in: it’s like Jane never existed.
I should explain this to Louis. I can’t be expected to talk about
marketing and promotions when I’m trying to find my imaginary
girlfriend. My life is becoming a plot that Mike Gayle would kill for. I
cannot be expected to whore myself when all this is going on.
‘Louis,’ Nigella is saying, ‘when I took on this assignment, as you know
one that I was very, very doubtful about, I did not anticipate that the
client was going to kidnap, imprison and assault me.’
This wakes me up.
‘Hang on,’ I say.
‘Look at me,’ says Nigella, ‘he’s aged me by thirty years.’
‘That’s bollocks. I don’t know what happened to you (***********).’
‘I’m afwaid,’ says Louis, ‘I have to agwee with Nathan on this one. You
look like you usually look, my black orchid. You appear to have taken
leave of your senses.’
‘I demand you cease supporting this author this very moment. He also killed my most lucrative client (************).’
‘I didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was Bollock-On John. Anyway, I could equally say
that you have persistently mucked me about, Nigella. You’ve done nothing
but suggest I do stupid and humiliating things and you hypnotized me
and you bit me and I suspect you’ve done something to my girlfriend, so
why don’t we drop all this and start again.’
‘Start again,’ she screeches, ‘start again. How on earth can I start again when I have been cruelly stripped of my youth?’
I give Louis a Paddington Extra Hard Stare until he’s forced to do something.
‘Calm down, dear,’ he says, steepling his pudgy fingers, ‘and I can’t
believe, Mr Flack, that Ms Seedlung bit you in other spiwit than to give
you a little fillip, which I think even you will concede you wequire
nearly all of the time.’ So, it’s Mr Flack now, is it? ‘And although I
certainly have difficulty swallowing that you went so far as to abduct
Ms Seedlung and know you well enough to wealize that you are pwobably in
the wight here I am a business man first and foremost. As such, I’m
afwaid that the gwand expewiment comes to an end.’
Nigella is nodding at me with horrible smugness.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I say.
‘Mr Flack, neither of us know what to do with you or your unweadable
book, which so far, I checked the pwint-outs late last night seems to
have sold no copies at all. We took you out and you disgwaced yourself
with our biggest customer (*************), you used the unfortuate
phwase in fwont of Mr Phelan (**************) and he’s been on the sick
ever since. At gweat expense to you I employed the services of Ms
Seedlung and you spurned all those opportunities, even making a fool of
this firm on live television (***************). And I hear fwom Ms
Seedling that you’ve wejected her ideas about writing something spicy
(****************) or something that people would actually like to wead
(******************).’
I’m feeling like I might go a bit mental, so I stand up and avoid
looking at the lovely Ms Seedlung, who I did appreciate much more when
she was undead and I was hypnotized, and although I really want to tell
Louis that whatever he’s just said about me at least I don’t have a head
shaped like a sweet potato, I know it’s best to be diplomatic.
‘Fair enough,’ I say. ‘Why don’t I buy the stock from you? I’m sure I
can do better at car boot sales on my own than a slutty vampire and the
giant catacomb of massive bowels that you call a sales agent.’
‘Mr Flack. I must admit that I wather ambitiously only pwinted ten copies, and those I had incinerwated this morning.’
I am now walking away from Louis’s bunker, sort of numb, sort of
baffled, sort of not-really-surprised, sort of relieved, sort of back
where I started, at square one, the square one that’s the square before
the square I was sat on at the beginning of the Touching the Starfish story. Something hits me, though, a peculiar realization.
No one remembers the Death Metal Revelation (*******************). And
now no one remembers Jane. I have been attacked by The Old Man of Hoy
(********************), dragged around a seaside town that only exists
when Big Dump eats a particular combination of savouries
(*********************) and been under the spell of a vampire marketing
guru. Something is rotten in the state of Nathan. I’ve been here before.
The netherworld of delusion. And we all know who pulls the strings
there.
There’s something else. Something Shoutyknackers said now seems
incredibly pertinent (**********************). The way Shoutyknackers
died seems highly significant (***********************). Bollocks to
Louis and his rubbish press. The answers lie in the cache of papers
Nigella gave me: The Shoutyknackers File
To Be Continued …
* See SubGrubStreet 1: The Great Experiment.
** See SubGrubStreet 1: The Great Experiment.
*** See SubGrubStreet 31: Resurrection Lovesick Blues.
**** See SubGrubStreet 31: Resurrection Lovesick Blues.
***** See Touching the Starfish, page 351.
****** See Touching the Starfish, page 511.
******* See Touching the Starfish, page 248
******** See SubGrubStreet 21: Yes is the Only Word
********* See Touching the Starfish, pages 1-523
********** See Touching the Starfish, page 261
*********** See SubGrubStreet 30: The Murk and Meady Prod of Death.
************ See SubGrubStreet 17: Why I Hate Bob Dylan
************* See SubGrubStreet 8: Love and Bonnets
************** See SubGrubStreet 9: That Unfortunate Phrase
*************** See SubGrubStreet 25: I’m a Writer Get Me Out of Here
**************** See SubGrubStreet 21: Yes is the Only Word
***************** See SubGrubStreet 29: Autarky
****************** See Touching the Starfish
******************* See SubGrubStreet 3: The Duellists
******************** See SubGrubStreet 6: Ginster Rusting with Big Dump
********************** See SubGrubStreet 16: Between the Cauliflowers
*********************** See SubGrubStreet 17: Why I Hate Bob Dylan
WEEK THIRTY-TWO
Word Count – 1992
Sales – 0
Insults – 6
Next Week: The Shoutyknackers File
Showing posts with label The Witch’s Hat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Witch’s Hat. Show all posts
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Shoutyknackers File
Previously, on SubGrubStreet:
Rubbish publisher Louis Lovestone and top Internet marketing guru Nigella Seedlung colluded to drop Nathan’s Touching the Starfish memoir from the New Bastion list after it achieved an impressive zero sales over a six-month period. Worried sick by the disappearance of Jane, Nathan realizes that the key to all the recent weirdness may well lie in a cache of documents known as The Shoutyknackers File.
It seems strange to me now that Shoutyknacker’s journals (*) lay unread on my desk for so long. In part I can attribute my negligence to the foul spells that Nigella cast over me (**), but mainly my aversion stems from a terrible fear of what I would find in these folders (***). Now though, ever since I came back from my meeting with Louis (****) I’ve been riveted to my desk, sifting and sifting the notes, collating them into a useful format, trying to find clues in what Nigella once said were ‘especial papers that may have some bearing on matters’ (*****).
What are the ‘matters’?
1) No one remembers the events of Touching the Starfish, even though they really happened and on a world scale.
2) Top Internet marketing guru Nigella Seedlung was turned into and then mysteriously out of being a vampire.
3) Shoutyknackers couldn’t help writing about masturbation due to ‘pain between the cauliflowers’ (******).
4) Shoutyknackers was bored to death by Bollock-On John just as he was about to confess to me the nature of the pain at his temples (******).
5) Jane has disappeared. In fact, I can’t remember anything that happened between Jane and I since being in the crowd outside Dewsenburys (*******) and my first meeting with Louis (********).
6) Until I woke up from Nigella’s bite (*********) I hadn’t even realized that Jane was missing. It was as if she never existed.
I want Jane back. I want to know what’s happened to her. I want to know why this has happened.
Behind all this I sense that belletristic ponce, James O’Mailer. The pain Knackers described between his temples is the giveaway. That’s how he gets to us. And the proof is in the Shoutyknackers File.
I feel like Dan Brown going through this, decoding, interpreting signs and arcane scripts.
Most of Shoutyknacker’s journals are just scribbled-out poems about wanking, the sort that made him a fortune as a so-called performance poet (i.e., someone too ugly to be a rapper, too unfunny to be a comedian and not astute or talented enough to be an actual poet) (**********).
But there are earlier ones in the sequence in which you can sense O’Mailer’s influence pressing down on Knackers. For example;
April 10th:
Cold, crisp autumn morning, so quiet
[ouch]
So I stayed in warm, flat bed and had
A ferocious and dirty great naughty wank.
April 17th
Like recycling bins we put them out the back
[ouch]
But when I got out there the moonlight catching
On the roof of the B&Q shed reminded me of my
Sexy hole-punch so I cracked one off in the alley.
A fox stared, glistening, avid.
The pattern is obvious. Shoutyknackers is O’Mailer’s creature, another pawn to toy with and thwart (***********).
Then in the file are a lot of the notes that Nigella said were ‘genius ideas’ (************), conversations between celebrities, in rhyming couplets, all about his favourite subject. None of these are complete. They’re just jottings.
For example:
Diddy from Fen Dubz
In a pub
Florence Tawdry
In a laundry
Pattie Krice
Ten times
A night
Peter Andrex
Drops his spandex
Vajazz Ling
In a frenzied spin
The thing is, out of the loop and dismissive of all things youth and celebrity as I am, I’m pretty sure that none of these people were celebrities before I first met Louis Lovestone, before I first started to try and promote Touching the Starfish.
They are figures from a bad dream. A bad dream designed by someone else to wind me right up.
Something is going on. The question is: how do I get out of this? He isn’t in my head, like he was before. I am being urged to no action (*************). The rules of the game are even more obscure than before.
But there is something else here, something at the end, something written in block capitals and so clean and decent that it almost stands out as obscene when juxtaposed with the adolescent, smutty tone of the rest of the writings of the celebrated young poet, ‘the Thomas Chatterton of the iPhone generation’ (**************). It reads:
NATHAN, BEWARE. BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN THE SNOW.
It means that Shoutyknackers must have had some predilection of what was going to happen to him. And outside, it has just started to snow,
To Be Continued …
*See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
** See SubGrubStreet 21: Yes is the Only Word and SGS26: The Diction of Carrots
*** See SubGrubStreet 14: The Bulletin of the International Onanological Society
**** See SubGrubStreet 32: Netherworld of Delusion
*****See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
****** See SubGrubStreet 16: Between the Cauliflowers, and Touching the Starfish.
****** See SubGrubStreet 17: Why I Hate Bob Dylan
******* See Touching the Starfish, page 511.
******** See SubGrubStreet 1: The Great Experiment.
********* See SubGrubStreet 31: Resurrection Lovesick Blues
********** See SubGrubStreet 14: The Bulletin of the International Onanological Society
*********** See Touching the Starfish
************ See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
************* See Touching the Starfish
************** See SubGrubStreet 18: The Stars are not Wanted Now
WEEK THIRTY-THREE
Word Count – 2900
Sales – 0
Insults – 0
Next Week: Bad Things Always Happen in the Snow
Rubbish publisher Louis Lovestone and top Internet marketing guru Nigella Seedlung colluded to drop Nathan’s Touching the Starfish memoir from the New Bastion list after it achieved an impressive zero sales over a six-month period. Worried sick by the disappearance of Jane, Nathan realizes that the key to all the recent weirdness may well lie in a cache of documents known as The Shoutyknackers File.
It seems strange to me now that Shoutyknacker’s journals (*) lay unread on my desk for so long. In part I can attribute my negligence to the foul spells that Nigella cast over me (**), but mainly my aversion stems from a terrible fear of what I would find in these folders (***). Now though, ever since I came back from my meeting with Louis (****) I’ve been riveted to my desk, sifting and sifting the notes, collating them into a useful format, trying to find clues in what Nigella once said were ‘especial papers that may have some bearing on matters’ (*****).
What are the ‘matters’?
1) No one remembers the events of Touching the Starfish, even though they really happened and on a world scale.
2) Top Internet marketing guru Nigella Seedlung was turned into and then mysteriously out of being a vampire.
3) Shoutyknackers couldn’t help writing about masturbation due to ‘pain between the cauliflowers’ (******).
4) Shoutyknackers was bored to death by Bollock-On John just as he was about to confess to me the nature of the pain at his temples (******).
5) Jane has disappeared. In fact, I can’t remember anything that happened between Jane and I since being in the crowd outside Dewsenburys (*******) and my first meeting with Louis (********).
6) Until I woke up from Nigella’s bite (*********) I hadn’t even realized that Jane was missing. It was as if she never existed.
I want Jane back. I want to know what’s happened to her. I want to know why this has happened.
Behind all this I sense that belletristic ponce, James O’Mailer. The pain Knackers described between his temples is the giveaway. That’s how he gets to us. And the proof is in the Shoutyknackers File.
I feel like Dan Brown going through this, decoding, interpreting signs and arcane scripts.
Most of Shoutyknacker’s journals are just scribbled-out poems about wanking, the sort that made him a fortune as a so-called performance poet (i.e., someone too ugly to be a rapper, too unfunny to be a comedian and not astute or talented enough to be an actual poet) (**********).
But there are earlier ones in the sequence in which you can sense O’Mailer’s influence pressing down on Knackers. For example;
April 10th:
Cold, crisp autumn morning, so quiet
[ouch]
So I stayed in warm, flat bed and had
A ferocious and dirty great naughty wank.
April 17th
Like recycling bins we put them out the back
[ouch]
But when I got out there the moonlight catching
On the roof of the B&Q shed reminded me of my
Sexy hole-punch so I cracked one off in the alley.
A fox stared, glistening, avid.
The pattern is obvious. Shoutyknackers is O’Mailer’s creature, another pawn to toy with and thwart (***********).
Then in the file are a lot of the notes that Nigella said were ‘genius ideas’ (************), conversations between celebrities, in rhyming couplets, all about his favourite subject. None of these are complete. They’re just jottings.
For example:
Diddy from Fen Dubz
In a pub
Florence Tawdry
In a laundry
Pattie Krice
Ten times
A night
Peter Andrex
Drops his spandex
Vajazz Ling
In a frenzied spin
The thing is, out of the loop and dismissive of all things youth and celebrity as I am, I’m pretty sure that none of these people were celebrities before I first met Louis Lovestone, before I first started to try and promote Touching the Starfish.
They are figures from a bad dream. A bad dream designed by someone else to wind me right up.
Something is going on. The question is: how do I get out of this? He isn’t in my head, like he was before. I am being urged to no action (*************). The rules of the game are even more obscure than before.
But there is something else here, something at the end, something written in block capitals and so clean and decent that it almost stands out as obscene when juxtaposed with the adolescent, smutty tone of the rest of the writings of the celebrated young poet, ‘the Thomas Chatterton of the iPhone generation’ (**************). It reads:
NATHAN, BEWARE. BAD THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN IN THE SNOW.
It means that Shoutyknackers must have had some predilection of what was going to happen to him. And outside, it has just started to snow,
To Be Continued …
*See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
** See SubGrubStreet 21: Yes is the Only Word and SGS26: The Diction of Carrots
*** See SubGrubStreet 14: The Bulletin of the International Onanological Society
**** See SubGrubStreet 32: Netherworld of Delusion
*****See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
****** See SubGrubStreet 16: Between the Cauliflowers, and Touching the Starfish.
****** See SubGrubStreet 17: Why I Hate Bob Dylan
******* See Touching the Starfish, page 511.
******** See SubGrubStreet 1: The Great Experiment.
********* See SubGrubStreet 31: Resurrection Lovesick Blues
********** See SubGrubStreet 14: The Bulletin of the International Onanological Society
*********** See Touching the Starfish
************ See SubGrubStreet 19: Compromised and Dirty.
************* See Touching the Starfish
************** See SubGrubStreet 18: The Stars are not Wanted Now
WEEK THIRTY-THREE
Word Count – 2900
Sales – 0
Insults – 0
Next Week: Bad Things Always Happen in the Snow
Bad Things Always Happen in the Snow
Previously, on SubGrubStreet:
To try to make sense of Jane’s disappearance and his fresh descent into the Netherworld of Delusion, Nathan examined Shoutyknacker’s journals, discovering a cryptic message: “Nathan, Beware, Bad Things happen in the Snow.” It has started to snow.
From my attic room I can look out over the city and the city is covered in a thick coating. It’s come on quick. It wasn’t even that cold when I started to read the journal today. Now, there’s a blizzard. And who do we know who can make it snow, or at least says he can make it snow? When did bad things happen in the snow? These things are connected. All roads lead to O’Mailer (*).
Well, if I wait in here for it to stop, either I’ll never know or it will never stop snowing. If Jane were here she would want me to behave like a character in a cheap 3-for-2 table product shifter (**), tempt my fate and put myself recklessly in danger just so everyone else experiences jeopardy and suspense.
So, here you go, reader. I am in the kitchen, stuffing the Knackers File into my coat pocket. I am going out in the snow. Woohoo.
To Be Continued . . .
No, it’s not. Not yet. It would be good to have a ‘To Be Continued . . .’ here, but things are still continuing and I am now out in the snow that’s whipping around between the parked cars and drifting against walls and gates. I stand and took up at the white sky and hold out my hands so I can feel the flakes land on my palms.
‘C’mon, O’Mailer, show yourself, it’s not 2007 anymore (***).
A figure approaches. Now I get my answers. Let the spirity thing banter anon and we’ll sort this out. But the man in the street coming closer is too thin for O’Mailer, and too quick and he’s picking up speed despite the conditions and suddenly I know. I know who it is.
Oh no . . . it’s the Old Man of Hoy (****).
‘I hate you, Flack,’ he bellows, ‘I’s still gonna kill ye.’
I’ve no time for his facile ranting and start to run up the street. The snow is gusting in my face. I can hardly see where I’m going. There’s a park up there, with pathways surrounded by dense bushes and trees that by now must be smothered by snow. If I can just reach them, I can surely lose this imbecile.
For some reason, despite the fact that I am running very slowly he’s not really gaining, but I try to pick up speed anyway. I am reaching the end of the street. I can see the trees ahead, on the other side of the junction. If I was a proper hero here maybe I could do some sort of stop-and-slide move and take the Old Man out, send him crashing into the road but I’m a hack-writer of unsaleable tales, not Percival Thrower (*****). I’m not even getting out of puff, I’m sort of flying here, running like the proverbial, I could probably win the Dad’s bit in a school sports day if I could always run like this and I had some children, if I could keep it up, if I could only . . .
. . . avoid that car that’s coming at me around the corner very, very fast indeed, that I am skidding towards not away from.
Oh my giddy bollocks.
A glimmering above me. Distant snow-sky. Can’t feel my legs. Him, the Old Man and some moundlike shape in goggles.
‘Got him this time, mistress, we got him.’
Now, this is what I call a . . .
To Be Continued . . .
*Touching the Starfish, pgs 287 - 320.
** See Touching the Starfish, page 282.
*** JAMES O”MAILER: A peeky-poo clue for you. Little does Flack know that it is that year of our lord. And I am more sinned against than sinning here.
**** See SubGrubStreet 3: The Duellists.
***** See SubGrubStreet 28: The Surrogate Mother of Nar Nar Goon.
WEEK THIRTY-FOUR
Word Count – 4408
Sales – 0
Insults – 2
Next Week: Misery
To try to make sense of Jane’s disappearance and his fresh descent into the Netherworld of Delusion, Nathan examined Shoutyknacker’s journals, discovering a cryptic message: “Nathan, Beware, Bad Things happen in the Snow.” It has started to snow.
From my attic room I can look out over the city and the city is covered in a thick coating. It’s come on quick. It wasn’t even that cold when I started to read the journal today. Now, there’s a blizzard. And who do we know who can make it snow, or at least says he can make it snow? When did bad things happen in the snow? These things are connected. All roads lead to O’Mailer (*).
Well, if I wait in here for it to stop, either I’ll never know or it will never stop snowing. If Jane were here she would want me to behave like a character in a cheap 3-for-2 table product shifter (**), tempt my fate and put myself recklessly in danger just so everyone else experiences jeopardy and suspense.
So, here you go, reader. I am in the kitchen, stuffing the Knackers File into my coat pocket. I am going out in the snow. Woohoo.
To Be Continued . . .
No, it’s not. Not yet. It would be good to have a ‘To Be Continued . . .’ here, but things are still continuing and I am now out in the snow that’s whipping around between the parked cars and drifting against walls and gates. I stand and took up at the white sky and hold out my hands so I can feel the flakes land on my palms.
‘C’mon, O’Mailer, show yourself, it’s not 2007 anymore (***).
A figure approaches. Now I get my answers. Let the spirity thing banter anon and we’ll sort this out. But the man in the street coming closer is too thin for O’Mailer, and too quick and he’s picking up speed despite the conditions and suddenly I know. I know who it is.
Oh no . . . it’s the Old Man of Hoy (****).
‘I hate you, Flack,’ he bellows, ‘I’s still gonna kill ye.’
I’ve no time for his facile ranting and start to run up the street. The snow is gusting in my face. I can hardly see where I’m going. There’s a park up there, with pathways surrounded by dense bushes and trees that by now must be smothered by snow. If I can just reach them, I can surely lose this imbecile.
For some reason, despite the fact that I am running very slowly he’s not really gaining, but I try to pick up speed anyway. I am reaching the end of the street. I can see the trees ahead, on the other side of the junction. If I was a proper hero here maybe I could do some sort of stop-and-slide move and take the Old Man out, send him crashing into the road but I’m a hack-writer of unsaleable tales, not Percival Thrower (*****). I’m not even getting out of puff, I’m sort of flying here, running like the proverbial, I could probably win the Dad’s bit in a school sports day if I could always run like this and I had some children, if I could keep it up, if I could only . . .
. . . avoid that car that’s coming at me around the corner very, very fast indeed, that I am skidding towards not away from.
Oh my giddy bollocks.
A glimmering above me. Distant snow-sky. Can’t feel my legs. Him, the Old Man and some moundlike shape in goggles.
‘Got him this time, mistress, we got him.’
Now, this is what I call a . . .
To Be Continued . . .
*Touching the Starfish, pgs 287 - 320.
** See Touching the Starfish, page 282.
*** JAMES O”MAILER: A peeky-poo clue for you. Little does Flack know that it is that year of our lord. And I am more sinned against than sinning here.
**** See SubGrubStreet 3: The Duellists.
***** See SubGrubStreet 28: The Surrogate Mother of Nar Nar Goon.
WEEK THIRTY-FOUR
Word Count – 4408
Sales – 0
Insults – 2
Next Week: Misery
The Witch’s Hat
Previously, on SubGrubStreet:
Convinced that the sudden weird snowstorm predicted in The Shoutyknackers File was proof of O’Mailer’s return, Nathan rushed out into the street only to be chased by the Old Man of Hoy. Hit by a car that just happened to turn up, Nathan caught sight of some strange mound-like person before he passed out.
Oh, swirling mists before my eyes.
In and out.
Blackness.
Recurring image from childhood. The witch’s hat in the playground, that rotating climbing frame thing that was so dangerous that Health and Safety had them all melted down by 1980. We used to pretend we were training for NASA.
Going round and round and the houses on the estate getting faster and faster around us. Off I flew. Bang. Concrete. Black. Like now. Keep thinking about that moment to hide from the pain in my legs.
The white ceiling.
The pain.
Witch’s hat.
Bang.
Black.
I’m not in anything good, like Wanderer in a Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. I am stuck in a clichéd description of a coma. Excellent.
The best things happen to those who get run over in the snow.
The car seemed to come from nowhere.
I don’t know how long this has gone on. A couple of days, maybe. Perhaps more. Every now and again I sense some shape beside me. Before I can focus there’s a jab in my arm.
I’m on the witch’s hat again, perched on its shelf-like seat, the tips of my school shoes skimming the reinforced concrete beneath (and this would have been the seventies, so there was probably a pit beneath the witch’s hat with lava, anthrax, rabies and Boat People living in it). I go round and round. Mists swirl.
Down, down, deeper and down and now I’m rising up into the sky and there’s a jab.
Black.
Everything plays at the wrong speed.
I come up good and strong. Spark awake. I am lying in a big brass bed with white sheets and pillows. It is light outside. I can see snow-covered fields. Mountains in the distance, though. I can’t be in Norwich. And then I realize. I can’t move my legs. I can’t move my arms. There are restraints attached to both. I drag and strain but I can’t move.
Bang.
Black.
Riding the witch’s hat. It rises and dips as it spins and you sweep into and away from its maypole-like central pillar. It’s a retrofuturist maypole, that’s what it is. No love lost in the age of machines. O’Mailer’s on the other side to me, just sitting there, his stout frame distorting the orbit of the witch’s hat, spinning it out of control. Swirling mists.
Jab.
A big white face looms over me. She is holding up a hypodermic syringe.
‘Hello there, love puppy, I’m your number one fan.’
Oh no … It’s Sharon Plum (*)
To Be Continued . . .
* See Touching the Starfish, pg. 11 and pgs 503 – 523. Most of Touching the Starfish really. There’s an especially upsetting scene on page 278 and another one on page 360.
WEEK THIRTY-FIVE
Word Count – 3571
Sales – 0
Insults – 1
Next Week: Misery
Convinced that the sudden weird snowstorm predicted in The Shoutyknackers File was proof of O’Mailer’s return, Nathan rushed out into the street only to be chased by the Old Man of Hoy. Hit by a car that just happened to turn up, Nathan caught sight of some strange mound-like person before he passed out.
Oh, swirling mists before my eyes.
In and out.
Blackness.
Recurring image from childhood. The witch’s hat in the playground, that rotating climbing frame thing that was so dangerous that Health and Safety had them all melted down by 1980. We used to pretend we were training for NASA.
Going round and round and the houses on the estate getting faster and faster around us. Off I flew. Bang. Concrete. Black. Like now. Keep thinking about that moment to hide from the pain in my legs.
The white ceiling.
The pain.
Witch’s hat.
Bang.
Black.
I’m not in anything good, like Wanderer in a Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. I am stuck in a clichéd description of a coma. Excellent.
The best things happen to those who get run over in the snow.
The car seemed to come from nowhere.
I don’t know how long this has gone on. A couple of days, maybe. Perhaps more. Every now and again I sense some shape beside me. Before I can focus there’s a jab in my arm.
I’m on the witch’s hat again, perched on its shelf-like seat, the tips of my school shoes skimming the reinforced concrete beneath (and this would have been the seventies, so there was probably a pit beneath the witch’s hat with lava, anthrax, rabies and Boat People living in it). I go round and round. Mists swirl.
Down, down, deeper and down and now I’m rising up into the sky and there’s a jab.
Black.
Everything plays at the wrong speed.
I come up good and strong. Spark awake. I am lying in a big brass bed with white sheets and pillows. It is light outside. I can see snow-covered fields. Mountains in the distance, though. I can’t be in Norwich. And then I realize. I can’t move my legs. I can’t move my arms. There are restraints attached to both. I drag and strain but I can’t move.
Bang.
Black.
Riding the witch’s hat. It rises and dips as it spins and you sweep into and away from its maypole-like central pillar. It’s a retrofuturist maypole, that’s what it is. No love lost in the age of machines. O’Mailer’s on the other side to me, just sitting there, his stout frame distorting the orbit of the witch’s hat, spinning it out of control. Swirling mists.
Jab.
A big white face looms over me. She is holding up a hypodermic syringe.
‘Hello there, love puppy, I’m your number one fan.’
Oh no … It’s Sharon Plum (*)
To Be Continued . . .
* See Touching the Starfish, pg. 11 and pgs 503 – 523. Most of Touching the Starfish really. There’s an especially upsetting scene on page 278 and another one on page 360.
WEEK THIRTY-FIVE
Word Count – 3571
Sales – 0
Insults – 1
Next Week: Misery
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