Rock Salt

cockle shells and silver bells
cockled shells and silver bells
cuckold shells and silver belles
cuckold shells and silver bullets

I slammed my closed fist into his face, then recoiled instinctively as I felt the skin over my knuckles split with the impact. His nose cracked. His blood on my hand. My blood on his face. I pushed him aside. Ran.
With the battered kitchen knife in hand I flailed wildly ahead of me. Swiping at my unseen assailants.


There was a knock on my door.

"Uh, dear? It's a lovely day outside... why... uhm.. why don't you go outside?"

"No mum, I don't feel like," I replied quickly.

"You should enjoy the sun, maybe meet with..."

"What friends?" I interrupted her. I knew exactly where this conversation was going.

"But, son..."

I intercepted her next sentence and said, "Look, mum, I prefer to stay here, I'm working on a... piece of music, you know. I need inspiration, I need to concentrate."
I quietly hoped that my tone didn't give my lie away.

"Yes, but you're always... you really should go out some more."

"No point, really. I have to get this done anyway, no point in wasting time outside."

A short moment of silence followed, which I lapped up like a hungry dog. My hands were already scribbling on the notepad I had open on my lap.

"Look, I'm fine here, don't worry about me. I'm not doing drugs and I'm not planning to blow the school up," I said flatly.

I allowed myself a little pause then added, "I promise. Heh."

The last sound came out as a snigger more than I wanted it to. I focused on the shotgun-like shape I had sketched.

I chuckled to myself, discretely but loudly enough for her to hear me.
She sighed, I think. I am quite certain that was a sigh I heard.

I instantly pulled out my I Pagliacci CD from the CD rack next to my bed and dropped it in my CD player. I stabbed the 'Next Track' button thirteen times, then pressed 'Play'.

"Ok," she lingered and tapped on the door with her finger, "Ok, then. Dinner will be ready soon."

"Cool," I said, trying really hard to sound cheerful, then concluded, "I'm starving."

I have a feeling she smiled. She must have convinced herself I was not lying through my teeth and head downstairs into the kitchen.

'Recitar mentre preso dal delirio'
As soon as I was sure she had left, I flicked the 'Stop' button on my CD player.
"Shut the hell up."

We had roast chicken and potatoes that night.

The next day, a home-made pipe bomb went off in the school's toilets. The east wing. Men's. It destroyed the entire row and part of the gym walls too. No one was hurt. I didn't have to hand in the essay for my Sociology class. That gave me another week to work on it.

Never

It creeps up on you, really.
Death, I mean.
It's unexpected most of the time, especially for the ones it leaves behind. They feel that death appears suddenly, pouncing on their loved ones like a mountain lion. Or like one of those huge leering clown faces popping out of a gigantic box in a horror Luna park.

Arn's death was similarly unexpected.
He was 29 years old and lead a mediocre healthy lifestyle. He smoked a hefty amount of cigarettes daily. He didn't do drugs and rarely binged on alcoholic beverages.

"Smoking x cigarettes a day will reduce your lifespan by n years."

Arn died from a 'Grade 6 ruptured cerebral aneurysm'.

His sudden cessation of 'being there' with his friends, left an unexplainable void in most of them. Some mourned sincerely for their loss, others mourned because it was the ethical thing to do in times like these.

Nonetheless, they all gathered later that year on the 23rd of December. Festivities included the following activities: Drinking, smoking, playing loud music, drinking, doing some light recreational drugs, drinking, being generally rowdy and causing as much of a mess as possible to the host's apartment. The host happened to be Arn's cousin.

"Who wantsh the Magnum!" yelled Ken, who was nicknamed Magni. He was well-toned and wearing a skinny top which accentuated his chest and arm muscles. He wasn't a big man, but he had a relatively strong punch which he enjoyed distributing only amongst his closest of friends. Magni also had a penchant of showing off his buttocks, when enough spectators could be found.
Magni was standing behind a makeshift bar with enough alcohol to make a small village go blind. He was mixing his own cocktail while bopping to the raucous sounds of speed metal. The cocktail turned a poisonous brown-green when he lifted it over his head with a victorious shriek. The highball glass looked like it was dragged over the bottom of a lake in the middle of a nuclear dump site.

Well into the latest hours of the night, the bottle party celebrations continued. The occasional jock-like and homosexual actions were performed. The one they called Tunny enjoyed peeking over someone else's shoulder while they relieved themselves, at which point he would belch loudly in their ears.

"Gathey up mothas!" yelled Baldwin, his voice reaching a broken pitch over the blaring noise. Baldwin was, appropriately bald. He was of chunky proportions, but not fat. Just large. He had a round head with small eyes and a pair of biceps of a rather wide circumference. He would play the part of 'Sacha' or 'The Russian' in any action movie where the indestructible thug wielding an unconventionally large hand-held Gatling gun would take about four or five fatal injuries before actually dying.
"Gathey up!" he screamed unnecessarily.
He was holding a quart pitcher of the ugly 'Magnum' cocktail high over his head, glaring at the rest of the people gathering around him.
Someone turned off the music suddenly. There was a faint ringing in the air which seemed to be a group of residual sound waves too staggered to leave the bedsit.
Baldwin turned his back on the group and nodded at a photo of Arn. It was framed in a simple metal frame with no glass or plastic sheet to protect it. The frame was guarded by two unmatching candles on either side. Both of them were lit.
"To Arn!" said Baldwin with a low voice. The rest of the people in the room lifted their drinks and chimed,
"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"
Then the group proceeded to chug down their drinks in one breath, lifting their glasses again when emptied of their diverse contents.

What followed that was a very brief moment of silence. There were no gods, no religions, no time. Just this transient remembrance of a deceased friend. A conglomeration of men and boys bound together in an imaginary brotherhood.


That is when I saw Arn. He walked up to me and tapped on my shoulder once. His typical austere expression was frozen on his face and his skin looked white.
"They'll remember you for a while. Some day," he told me aseptically.
I couldn't see his lips move, so I shrugged my shoulders.

The music roared back into life.

I walked towards the balcony and looked down at the street below. A group of random strangers had already gathered at the broken body lying there with its legs twisted in an awkward and impossible position. A woman was crying in bleating staccatos, but she kept her distance from me.
I looked back over my shoulder, into the apartment. Magni had just lifted a highball glass up above his head.
"Who wantsh the Magnum!"

It was the crack of dawn when the ambulance arrived. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the cold iron of the balcony railing. I could see them lift my body into the black bag. The woman was still sobbing, but now she was clutching onto a small paper cup with what looked like hot black coffee inside it.

I wonder for how long do we have to go through this again.

"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"
"To Arn!"

Autophobia

I rode through the lashing rain as fast as my steed could carry me. Wind in my hair and all that. I splashed through many a puddle, ankle deep. I'm glad I had my riding boots.

And riding crop. No human could drive a horse that fast without some form of aid. Bull tail. Amazing what it can do. Dried, treated, tanned, hardened to the toughness of a sapling branch. I could whack it across a hobo's face... again. Poor thing never saw it coming. I was told his right eye is blind and sealed nicely with a nacreous cataract. The stuff of angels.

I don't care really, it's all I do now. It's all I remember. Angels.
I yearn to sit quietly with a glass of ruby port or sherry in my terrace and reminisce about old times. The warm sunny afternoons, the balmy grey evenings.

Now, I can't stop running. I have to run.

Damn it. There. Can you see it?
Right there! Damn, damn, damn.

Rain puddles swirled with a life of their own, their surface sheen marred by the relentless hammering from the skies. A myriad of minuscule ripples forming and dying and forming and dying. Microscopic multiverses imploding into themselves.

Lives lost.
Souls devoured.

Damn it! I whip my horse faster and press my chest against its mane. I can feel its fiery breath against my face, singeing my eyebrows.

The small pools of rain darken and thicken like oil and grease, tendrils and wisps of the noisome fumes rise and reach towards the fleeing rider. He rips through them like rice paper and runs. And runs more.

Fuck.

IDD

It's a long day.

A really fucking long day.

Directly

ABSTRACT

A study conducted on twenty-three subjects of ages spanning from twenty to twenty-five years. Each test subject was conditioned by being fed copious amounts of Stilton and Roquefort cheeses, washed down with a robust Barossa Shiraz from 1984, primarily to induce the most horrific nightmares conceivable for the duration of the tests.

Several interesting conclusions were drawn to date of writing this study. The study and experimentation proceeds beyond the publishing date and any further results will be published separately as Appendices to the study herein.

Iron of two and a half inches in breadth

"That is not my tale to recount. It is my brother's.

"I can tell you of my last lover and the first time we met. He was gaunt and bruised, but I saw him hobble towards me. He headed towards me, he didn't know me at the time. His eyes were fixed on the ground, at his feet. Poor thing, he must have been so tired!

"I can only imagine what he's been through, and one can only wonder what happened to him before that night.

"I pitied him, somewhat. Like one would pity an injured stray, perhaps. It was something about him that made him stand out amongst the crowd that surrounded him. That same something that entangled my interest around him so quickly. He shone, glimmered like steel in sunlight. It was as if the rest of the world paled while he was around.

"He stumbled closer and I noticed that his wrists bled. The ferrous scent of his blood filled my nostrils as he stepped up on the podium, close to where I stood.
He brushed against my elbow! Oh, it was such a frivolous and childish excitement that rushed through me, like he was my reason for being during that brief moment of contact. I couldn't help but smile at him.

"I didn't try to be seductive, but alas, I much fear that I couldn't help myself. I gave him my best disarming smile I found the strength to muster in that instant.

"Then I thought to myself, this is my moment. The only chance I may get before I lose him to the grey, loud crowd that enveloped him. Without a flicker of hesitation, I lifted my hand to his neck to stop him in his tracks.

"He looked into my eyes, with his tired, bloodshot eyes. I maintained my smile for as long as I could.
He didn't seem to resist my attempt as I leant towards him to kiss his lips.

"His lips were chapped, but it felt as if my kiss would instantly heal them and restore them back to their full unbroken beauty.

"I visited him three days later, to that same spot. He was still there, waiting and swaying slightly like a thin branch in a breeze.

"I miss his eyes, they were so pretty. They should do something about the crows around here.

Hymnus Apollon

He loved me on the operating table.

The corax-headed apprentice pecked at my entrails as I lay on the cold stone. My flesh unfurled in an Acherontia styx imitation.

I had been washed in saline ether, a liquid of occult origin.

Liver:
It was removed carefully with a sharpened black steel scalpel, doused in vinegar and watered-down ale. The smaller of the apprentices held it between its mandibular mouth parts.

Heart:
The ventricles were punctured with a shard of ice from the glaciated peaks of Mont la Douce. This done, after the pericardium was lifted.

Stomach:
It was emptied of its meagre contents and filled with the stubborn texture of deshelled land snails, which were previously soaked in serpent blood for three days.

Brain:
Cured in a pyridinium salt.

Lungs:
Each of the organs were flattened with an ash wood mallet, to chase the living air sprites from within. The right lung was fed to the ravens in the east. The left, to the carrion beetle in the south.

Genitals:
Hermaphroditus' gift did not go unnoticed, but it left my corpse without thanks.

Bones:
My calcified buttresses were extracted, bleached in bovine urine and later ground. The fine result was halved into two clay vessels, the cooking of which had left intricate convolutions of mesmerising complexity on the surface.
One half was turned to ash, to be used as pigment.
The second half was handed out to the villagers in the west. The spirits and entities they are in commune with will finally acknowledge their incurable despondency.

In conclusion, one does not learn from one's mistakes.

The art of t(h)rust

Most worthy subjects,

It is with great pleasure and delicate titillation that I write this to you. It pleases my pineal gland and such other udders my dying body may possess in its most intimate and secret recesses, that you have accepted this task with such brisk excitement and questionable bias.

What my consorts and I consider to be worthy of our time, is the following, my beloved.

A good lashing, early in the morn, the second hour prior to sunrise.
Over the eyes and with plenty of maquillage. I advise the use of a small rotund brush, the bristles and shape, like that of a pine cone. The paint itself, dark or misty. The tremble of a night shade.

Which brings me back to that gland I spoke of much in my treatise, at the Court of the Departed. A tiring venture, which left me, for many a time, dozing on the podium, like an irate bat in a cavern with streams of light.

Nonsense, I hear you clamour, most devoted subjects.
Allow this blank space that follows to be your moment of silence. We shall meet afore the minute.





Honoured and depraved loyals alike, I urge you to act immediately. The sanity of the eyes around you eats into your being. We cannot allow this. In all our infinite and most demented wisdom, we may not acquiesce to the demands of the Crone.

You must have seen her chicken legs and crow's feet. Terrible, terrible, and more terrible, I tell you.

My beloved, you are incoherently egotistic and charming, your watchful eye for the unnoticeable details has pained me and astounded me, and I love you.
Yes, I love you, my subjects, in the way the Baron of Aufgrund loves his gold purse.

I must now end this divine prattle. The Crone is at my gates and I must feed her, oats and mill seed.

The Baba is a delightful hag, she is.

A brief farewell.

The Tower of Life

Drown him thrice!

You mean plunge him in the river three times.

Yes!

If he drowns, he's not a witch. He floats and it is most definitely sorcery.

Milord? Why are you referring to the witch as a 'him'.

It pleases me.

Yes, milord, of course.

The hammer.
Yes, milord, I hold it 'twixt my fingers.

Squire, stop talking that way. What are you, in the eighth century?
The twelfth, milord.

I cannot stand insolence. You will be burnt at the stake with the witch. He needs company.

Her name is Anne, milord, and if it pleases you, allow me to suggest beheading.

Very well then.

Verisimilitude

Salutations my lovelies.

It was a night of careful cogitation and heated deliberation with my many personas (six of Royal Albert’s Old Country Roses tea cups of Earl Grey were enjoyed, and a dash of milk with each).

The count, who kept tapping his silver-topped ebony cane against the mahogany desk all throughout the imaginary conference, was the first (and only) one to speak.

“A challenge is what I propose, esteemed friends and colleagues.” He interrupted himself by lifting the warm porcelain to his lips and with his little finger well extended skywards, he sipped the tea (plain with no milk, no lemon, no sugar).

Tap.

Tap.

“A fair challenge for all the worthy ones, for magniloquent reciprocation, my honourable associates,” as he rolled the black wood between his slender fingers. He eyed the congregated surreptitiously and proceeded,

“I thusly invite you and your own, my darlings, to provide me, hereunder, with anything your minds conceive. We will solemnly promise to ruminate and speculate on your brain births you care to share, in due time but with unbound regard. We will nourish and nurture this nascency with amorous devotedness until its begotten bears its own breed, and so on and so forth. ”

He concluded his monologue, by taking another small sip of tea and tapping his walking stick against the desk.

I am not quite sure as to what this meeting of mind(s) produced after its conclusion, I dare say.

I did, however, enjoy the Earl immensely.

Use your fist.

The Waterman walked into the office with an abnormally large water bottle over his shoulder. The five gallons of polypropylene-blue water sloshed noisily as he grinned stupidly to the room.

On the other side of this fine example of twentieth-century corporate architecture, the blonde Solenodon, squeaked and polished its whiskers hungrily.


"This is crazy, you know that, right?" he told me. I looked at him over the edge of the manuscript in my hands and shrugged.
"I don't care, really. Takes one to know one, you know," was my trite response.

"Look, we can't sell this. No one wants to read about bad..."


'A fucking trip!' yelled the Waterman at the rodent, who was by now, licking its paws clean.

I slammed the sheaf of papers hard on the desk as I stood up.
The printed letters on the manuscript moved about suddenly, invisibly, and reformed into a 253-page long transcript of an image from Lieberman's mind.

"You're the damn publisher, Lieberman. Deal with it." And with that, I walked out of his office, stomping harder than I normally would.

Mostly for added drama.

Le Paradis Noir

He lies through his teeth.

Her jaw is broken.

She has a split personality.

He's autistic.

He's a sociopath.

He's socially inept.

She lusts after her colleague.

He's promiscuous.

She's into BDSM.

He enjoyed torturing and killing stray cats when he was young.

He's a cutter.

She calls herself a biastophiliac.

He likes stalking his class mate.

She’s having an affair with her sister’s husband.

He has an incestuous relationship with his younger brother.

He just hacked his company’s secure server.

They are waiting in the van for the Ketamine to wear off.

He just killed the two underage girls.
He covers their face with the bed sheets, because he can't bear their stares. Their hands are severed at the wrist.

“To stop them from scratching me, sir” he told the police officer, later that day.

He spoke calmly, “Therese, that’s her name. She is twelve years and ten months old.”

He rubbed his nose against his shoulder, his own wrists pressing against their metal constraints, “Dana is precisely eight years and two months old, today.”

He grinned strenuously.

Over 2,000 Volts rushed through his body.

Nothing

I opened my green box and looked inside for images.

A handful of skulled moths fluttered out, carrying a smell of old dust and libraries on their legs.
On the velveteen lining with colours of black and bloody crimson lay two pencils.

One was broken and worn. The other was brand new, untouched.

Noise.

I shut the green box unceremoniously.

Gingerbread Beans and Raspberry Puzzles.

I believe that today, my exploits will not be easily forgotten.

I started my charge, bugle in hand, reins in the other.
I changed my mind.

Stopped.

I then encouraged my steed to take a few steps backwards with gentle prodding of my Hermes' Ankles.

Spurs, for those of you illiterate in mythology of the basest kind.

I handed the brass tube to my lesser. He took it without question.

Then I started my charge. Reins in hand, naught in the other.
I smiled in satisfaction as the cavalry unit, nay, my cavalry unit, ran over the cliff and speedily met their demise on the jagged rocks below.

A classical death scene, I thought.
Classical tragedy, perhaps?

Either way, the next sunrise will clear my mind.

The waves would have washed the cliff's feet clean by then.

His Gilded Clobber

The chorus sang louder.
Their angelic voices reaching the skies and merging into a beautiful medley of atmosphere, green fields and playful flute notes, hopscotching their way into his mind.

The singing subdued gently, enveloping his heart with its subtle caress, laden with melancholy.
"Look to your path, at the golden light," he thought, "Don't forget the night."

His trembling fingers wade through the treacle-like air and reached for the volume control. Grasping the rough-edged cylinder, they twist withershins.

The ethereal tenor blew tenderly across his ears, slowly fading into a vast silence.

He wiped a tear with the back of his hand, smearing its saline texture over his creased skin.

Forging @ Team

...or a headache.

Nevertheless, my mind wandered and grazed in verdant pastures of forbidden interests. So I came up with this and before the Waterman could say, "Thank you for attending," I was scribbling frantically on my mental writing pad.

Foraging for words most archaic and/or pleasant to the ear.

Dismiss the concept, esteemed reader, that this is a crumbling cork pinboard where my inconspicuous daily happenings be suspended for your perusal. It is an undertaking I cajoled myself into maintaining for as long as I can muster the cerebral power required to do so.

Pompous verbiage aside, I urge you, my willing conspirators of this cleverly-masked catastrophe, to recrudesce unto these pages ever and anon, like pustules on a leper's skin.

A brief farewell.