Madame Tussaud

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Lex Wick

Madame Tussaud, no relation, is at the forefront of spiritual divinity. Her technique, her nuance, is a refreshing acceptance of everything, good and bad, not like the shysters or movie-themed-gypsy-attire-wearing-fakers that are all up and down Figaro streetselling you fortune and hope. The modestly lit gold neon in her window, on a low wattage setting, is simply spelt “clairvoyant” with a subtle lower case ‘c’, hopes to attract less of the ‘my mother just died and I am grieving, should I?’ or the ‘I am about to get married, should !?’ or the ‘I don’t know what to do with me life TELL ME!’ crowd and instead garner the more resolute, disbelieving and genuinely (as far as going to a ‘magical’ perhaps bullshit artist can be genuine) truth-in-death seeking individual. The reward is in the larger fee, Madame Tussaud reasons. (“I am not McDonalds” is one of her catch-phrases). If she could add in small neon italics underneath the sign it would read “not a mind reader” but that was apparently impossible to do for the neon manufacturer (they couldn’t elegantly join the separate words and letters and so quoted a ridiculous price so as to preclude them from possibly getting the gig, a project Madame Tussaud foresaw was technically possible). Never mind. More than thirty nine months of steady clients befitting the exact desired market kept her door open, her cat, bird, and bat fed and the landlord from telling her to stop burning all that stinky crap in the lounge room.

Simon Finkel was prospective client number 27 (and ominous number for numerologists; 9 times 3, or spookily, 3 times 3 times 3…”and by the power of 3 shall ye be bound”, “the curse shall return upon you three-fold”, the “holy trinity” and all that) who, this night walked down the steps towards Madame’s door casually, as in not overly deliberately, as in thinking himself quite smart and right-of-mind in choosing the most modest and undazzling premise on the street, finding in himself greater validity in discovering a hidden, secretive, more earnest seer. So not only does the sign work, it also fills the intended client with a certain sense of self aggrandizement. Madame Tussaud wanted that too, it helped her peer directly into the soul whilst the subject is dazed under a cloudy gauze of ego. It also helped of course make her fee, when she announced it fifteen minutes into the ceremony, that much more justified. She had been fearing receiving client number 27. She had had nightmares for 5 nights (another vexatious number, half of the sum of the total base ten decimal currency that ruled the earth, the devils simplicity to rule them all) and awoke startled at the face of a soft, youngish man with drawn cheeks, deep socketed dark rimmed eyes and a weak smile, perhaps the most horrific feature of the dream; a half thin-lipped semi-tooth-showing quivering smile that made her almost physically sick. Luckily for her when the door opened on a brisk August eve and a tanned, filling-out-his-shirt-in-all-the-right-places man walked in with a quaff of yellow-brown hair wind swept back from a sturdy brow over to the crown of his skull caused the little chimes she hangs nailed above the door to jingle ever so softly (the one cliché she allowed herself, sometimes clients want “the package they expect”) she was momentarily relieved. Relieved because it wasn’t the horrific man from her dreams, then instantly unrelieved because; wasn’t she supposed to be psychic? She calmed herself by recounting the Protection Spell of Ib-el-Rahim three times and reminded herself that it was client number 27 so all bets were off. She lit a red candle and laid one of her cut fingernails into the wax and went out to greet him. For the opening gambit, and a little trick she personally loves, she walks into the antechamber, extending a well ringed left hand and says
“Welcome Andreas, or is it, Simon you go by now?” and naturally there is that moment of shock-fear followed by an awkward and weird-feeling wrong-handed shake and a half step backward until she says
“Please, sit down first then we’ll talk” to reassure them that ‘yes, that was fucking weird but also yes, things can go on from here in the proper way you expect, say, from a Doctor’. Simon sits and hunches forward, matter of fact, hands clasped, came for business, didn’t the sign say clairvoyant? etc. Madame sits opposite. It’s a normal room. Two lounges on either side, a thin coffee table between them with a plain clean ashtray in the centre, a small bookcase with the usual books on it (nothing occult), a vase with dried flowers on top of that. The only give away that this is not your spinster Aunt’s house is that there is a painting of Mary (Jesus’ mother from the bible) hung upside down on the wall with a piece of burnt white cloth hung from one of the corners. That and the smell.
“So, Simon. What brings you in tonight?” Madame asks, lighting long clove cigarette.
“I can smoke in here?”
“You an have one of these” she replies, handing him her cigarettes, loose in a satin pouch.
“What are they?”
“Herbal, produced by hand at a small tribe in the Andes”
He takes one and lights it, the smoke is thicker than usual, feels like some sticky tar paints the inside of his lungs when he draws in.
“Thanks”
“You’re welcome. So, you were saying?”
“Yes, yes why I’m here. Well…well you know Falcon street, right!” he chuckles, expectantly, she waits. “Yeah Falcon street. I grew up around here, down a few blocks, on The Parade. So you know, I know, I know what you all do here and, I’ve known since I was a boy and I never really, you know I never believed in all this.”
“I know. There’s really nothing to believe in.”
“Right…right. Well, lately I’ve been, well I’ve been thinking you know and, I’m not a Christian or anything like that. I’ve been to church right for weddings and funerals and stuff, Italian friends, and it was like, like not real or anything to me. But my Grandfather…”
“Stop” Madame says, looking away and breathing in and out of her cigarette, “just smoke your cigarette for a minute, ok?”
And they sit and smoke. Madame Tussaud takes her rings off and lays them on the table, moves them around and ashes her cigarette. Simon ashes his too right after, smokes some more but starts to feel sick. They taste like bad pot and berries and burnt bark.
“You do not want to know about your Grandfather” she says finally, after half their cigarettes are gone and they have sat there for at least three minutes inhaling and exhaling in silence.
“What? Why not?” Simon asks.
“I just have to say that. I have seen what you want and I have to say that.”
“Okay…”
“So if you want to continue I must tell you how I work. Firstly, this session will be the only one you need, and it will cost you three hundred dollars. Secondly, I tell you the truth. I know this is what you want, but not everyone really wants the truth, if you understand me. They think they do, but they are usually much happier not knowing the truth. You can understand what I mean.”|
“Yes I do.”
“Good. And now then, do you want me to tell you the truth about your Grandfather, about why you came into my home to see me?”
“I do, yes.”
“Ok then. If I put these rings back on, we can start. We will go into the back room down that hallway there and begin. Do you have three hundred dollars?”
“No I…don’t have that on me…”
“That’s ok. Go and get three hundred dollars and come back, I will be ready for you then”
They put their cigarettes out and sit there for a moment, Simon looking Madame Tussaud up and down, or once over as you may call it. As he is leaving he knows he will not come back.

Three hundred dollars really! Not a chance. There are plenty of these women up and down this street, most charge fifty bucks for a…and then he stops, standing in front of a cash machine. Enters his card, punches in his code and withdraws three hundred dollars, then stands back from the machine, the cash in his hand. What am I doing? Flash in his mind of his kind Grandfather’s face, another deep menacing feeling in his gut: something is wrong. He knows something is wrong. He turns around and heads back to Madame Tussaud’s. When he returns the neon sign is out and the door is open. He walks down the stairs into a darkened lounge room, sees candle lights at the end of the hall and shuts the door behind himself.
“Madame?” he calls out (pronouncing it Mad-am instead of Ma-darm), no answer. He walk down the hallway, past things only his imagination can create hanging on the wall and along the floor, little ingots and creatures seemingly dancing in the flickering candle light. “Madame?” he calls again, hears a faint high-voiced whisper return to his ear. At the end of the hall a room opens up like a womb, open and lit, a round table in the centre with Madame Tussuad with her back to him presiding over an altar of sorts with bottles of alcohol, candles, trinkets, idols and statues. She is spreading a thin ash over the pieces and chanting something in a quiet deep breathy voice, every now and then spitting mouthfuls of alcohol out on one of the statues. Simon takes a seat and puts the money on the table.
“Pleassssse…put that money on the floorrrrrr” seethes Madame Tussuad, “get it offffff…the table” she slurs, exhaling deeply afterwards. Simon quickly picks up the bundle of twenty’s and puts it on the carpet.
“Sorry…” he whispers.
“Ssssimon listennnnn….” she releases, turning around to reveal her face. Simon instantly notices she has changed, her face, her posture, her hair, everything different. He waits, transfixed.
“Jack, jacky boy, your old jack issssss…wasssss in the great war, yes?”
“Uhm yeah, yeah he was in world war two actually”
“Aaaahhh yessss, hahaahahaaa, I can see him now…..wuh!” stopping as she lets out a throttled gasp.
“What is it?!”
“Simon…I…” Madame says, putting both hands on the table and lowering her head.
“Simon I told you…I told you…”
“What? What is it tell me?!” he says, quickly desperate, reacting to what he is seeing.
“Okay, okay that’s enough” she says, slowly walking over to the wall and flicking on a light switch. The room is instantly flooded with a bright light, a normal overhead bulb changing the entire feeling of the room to one of normality and now absurdity.
“Jesus what the hell?” Simon says, feeling tricked.
“Simon, Simon, it’s ok, it’s ok. I have just, just seen what you wanted to know. It came so fast, I didn’t, I didn’t get a chance to, tell you….I mean, I know that it was….something you…wanted but should not have…pick up that money and I’ll let you decide.”
Simon gets the twenties off the floor and puts them back on the table, pushing them over toward Madame Tussuad.
“Tell me!”
“Simon, in the war, your Grandfather…your Grandfather was a paedophile…a rapist…he raped so many young girls all across Europe, again and again, village after village. He was beaten repeatedly by his captain and fellow infantrymen. But he didn’t stop. He kept raping and laughing and killing children the whole war. Simon, this is what I tell you. This is why I am here. This is why you came to me”
“It can’t be…can’t…”
“Simon, this is the truth”
Simon, sick, stands up, looks at this half witch half alive woman and turns and walks to the front door, leaving the money, leaving the candles and that smell and opening the door rushing up the stairs into the world. Feeling better when he sees the street, pavement, lights, trees in their little dirt patches, parked cars and some other people walking around laughing and holding each other up and they walk home from a hotel singing together. Yes! This, this life. In his mind flashes young girls in dresses. NO! In his mind the flash of a young girl smiling then the flash of tits and shaved pussies he’d seen on the internet. NO! Not again nonono NO! Fuck. He starts walking, head down, gets a cigarette out, lights it and draws down hard, hard so it hurts the throat and lung, hard so he feels something going in and out, to focus on. Breathes out a thick plume into the night, flash on his cousin sitting on his lap and then some woman on screen bouncing up and down on a man’s dick going in and out of her ass. No!! Fuck shut up stop it. Too much porn he tells himself. That’s it too much porn. Can’t even go to his nephews party fuck fuck. Those six year old girls playing in the small inflatable pool and by reflex it is he was looking at their asses but he didn’t want to fuck them, god no! come on! but he did go home and toss off to asses, teenagers, he googled teenagers and tossed off into his own t-shirt. Fuck Christ! Should never have gone to Madame Tussaud’s tonight, no. NO! Simon walking home, mind racing, flashing, chain smoking.

Imagine if love wasn’t the main reason for existence?

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Lex Wick

We’d wake up every day, wouldn’t we, we’d lie there looking at the wall or looking at the closely weaved cotton of the sheet. We’d look through the little crack in the blind to see what kind of day it is and that one by three centimetre view we’d judge our entire day. If it was all blue we’d think it was a lovely day. If it was grey we’d think it is a different kind of lovely day. The colour checks to see if it matches with what we are feeling. If we are ashamed and depressed then the little piece of bright light blue is cajoling, mocking. If we are ashamed and fearful and depressed the grey is a blessing, it says “go on, stay in, stay in and read. Don’t bother talking to anyone”. We’d do different things you and I but we’d eat something. We’d eventually go and let the piss stream out of us, eventually. The smell of our own urine comes stronger in the morning, we are like doctors, we are checking ourselves, we are looking at our tongues together, pink is good. If we are scared and sick our tongues are white and our piss is dark and our face is sullen and your eyes are crying out to remember something, looking at someone in the mirror trying to remember to want. It’s not the same every morning, no! It is mostly the same every morning, some mornings you are not alone and you cannot smell anything but the coffee that someone else has made and that they have opened the blinds too early and it all feels different and fresh and alive and you piss quickly to get rid of it like an animal does, cover it up. Brush your teeth the same way still staring at yourself, your worried look, your rushed worried look, your purposeful look. Body Maintenance: Not Dead. It doesn’t matter about the ‘sky’. We’re just sitting together with hot coffee and talking about, oh, what was it? I think I said I have to brush my teeth again and you smiled, sorry, they smiled, but not for any reason, but something happened the night before, something…we don’t know anymore because it is not something we want to remember. Just the morning, that different morning where everything was more than usual, and fast and light. We don’t always start like this. In the morning. It’s very much in the afternoon at our desks too when we are sitting there, looking at all the little things on the desk surrounding a luminous flat screen. We are still checking the sky to see what it wants us to do, we are still letting the day go on, we are still pissing in the afternoon, clear, clean, empty urine. There’s nothing we forgot. We wouldn’t be able to work right away, not for a little while. Oh I guess other people would talk to us, wouldn’t they? Asking mainly. We’d have to look at them together and smile perhaps and talk. Answer mainly. Answer them right away. I would even last three days like that sometimes. Three whole days of waking up and answering questions and looking at my eyes and pissing and eating like that. Looking at the sky to see what it was supposed to be like today. Sometimes we’d listen out especially well, there’d been a time together and we heard so well, so clear. We weren’t alone then, in a small room, the sky was bright blue and then sun was the lightest clean white on the carpet, on my leg. Like a perfect day. We’ll be out of there soon, outside, alone. We’d wake up like that again, with coffee and the blinds drawn to wake me up so I can have a shower in time to get the train you’d say. Mostly you’d get up first like that and make the coffee. I remember. I didn’t forget you. Sometimes five days goes by like this.

Jonah and the Whale

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Lex Wick

Jonah’s older brother was mean. Mean like when they were kids, Jonah eight, Mark ten, they had baths together still and even though Jonah would cry and cry and yell ‘no’ their would put them in the bath and close the door to the bathroom. Now, as we know bathrooms echo a lot. They are probably the only room in the house that shouldn’t echo, really, but there we have it, we’ve made the most embarrassing, bodily function-centric, gross room the most cacophonous vestibule for us poor we-don’t-want-to-be-animals-animals[1]. So locked in that chamber Mark would begin at first pushing the bathwater back and forth in a tidal wave, just for fun at first but greater and greater until the water caused Jonah to move about and for great amounts of water to be displaced. Jonah hated both aspects, the mess and the fact he was not in control of his small body rocking back and forth in the bathwater[2]. Tossed about with Mark laughing, he felt sick and alone and his crying out was over-shouted by Marks fun yells, as if the two brothers were having fun together, playing, having bath-time fun with games and splashing and all of that. After some of this, and not every night but often enough, mark would stand up and start pissing on Jonah, in his face as much as possible and Jonah would try to avoid it under the little water left in the bathtub. Coming up for air like a whale he would just get the rest of the piss stream in his mouth, tasting his brothers piss and trying to breathe, not really drowning properly but no really able to breathe properly either. When Mark had finished pissing on his bother, and had nothing left like that, he’d soap himself all over, throw Jonah the soap and fill the tub up with more water. Just hot water. Jonah would try and turn it off but Mark would hold his hand under the hot water coming out and Jonah would cry out and Mark would yell “Muuum…..Muuuuum” and she’d come in and see the mess, the water, the hot water pouring out and set it all right, as in, get Mark out and hand him his towel so he’d leave and close the door and the mother would wash Jonah properly in the small amount of three inch hot as hell water and Jonah would give up, his legs as he knelt there burning in the hot hot water and his mouth full of salty tasting piss his brother pissed into his mouth almost three or more times a week, more and more as time went on.

Sitting in his room drawing a lot, Jonah, 11 years old, drew scenes from the bible, Exodus, Job, New Testament Mathew Mark Luke and John stuff (it’s all the same). Drawing Moses with his staff commanding the Israelites, commanding God’s punishment upon the Egyptians. Drawing the boils on the skin, drawing the fire coming down on them, drawing really drawing with a red pen a lot the fires and the burning dead of those who opposed God’s chosen. In Jonah’s class he heard the story of Jonah and the Whale, imagining himself getting stuck in the belly of a whale, praying in there, waiting in there. His teacher put on an animated video of Jonah in the whale; making a little room for himself and staying in there, talking to the whale and the whale answering back apologetically and eventually releasing him. Mark is like the pestilence, coming in, pushing all his work to the floor, pulling him over onto his back and hurting him really bad by twisting his arms and legs together and saying things like “you love god now?” and “mum doesn’t love you because you are so weak” and as Jonah calls to his mum and nothing happens Jonah starts praying like he has been told and actually says the words of the lord’s prayer out of his mouth which makes Mark hurt him more trying to get him to stop saying that stuff.

In the family home there now lived Jonah, his Mother and Father. Mark was gone, living by himself in some house with a few friends. No one had heard or seen Mark in over a year. Jonah was happy and free and not scared for the first time in his whole life. He heard his mother worry about Mark and his Father console her but he was happy that this person was gone.

The local church was, not really a church thing per se that he had been brought in, more like a hall thing with a whole bunch of people that seemed normal and cool and happy and god-loving. Jonah liked these people, their openness, their honesty, their acceptance of the words he said and the other words they had that added to what he said. He said “yes!,…,yes!” a lot at the end of their sentences, sat listening to the preachers talking about a god they believed in and he cross-referenced what they were saying with all the stuff he had read. It didn’t make sense a lot of the time, sometimes they were talking about things that did not match with what he read written in the bible. A few times he said to them things like “but really do you believe that?” and they always pretty much said ‘yes’ and he quoted other bits; “passages” they corrected him and “um yes” he said and went on and told them the other ‘passages’ and they were solemn faced and said things like “that was the old testament” and “that is not really god” but Jonah knew it was, that was god, that was really god, in the bible and they were talking about the things that sounded good, just good and that was when he didn’t go back anymore[3].

Working was, of course, unreal at all times. No one knew of the soul inside, they were all smiling and busy and talking in words like “fiscal year” and “debt recovery” and “final transaction”. Jonah, surrounded n these concepts and words was sick, at lunch he rode his bike far away from the office where he was working in customer service at age 22 to a lake, on the edge of the lake he would cry, for himself mainly and he felt bad about that and then praying, started crying then for the human faces he saw every day. The sales reps, the older lady desperate to keep her job, the sexual young women smiling and flirting for money, the male managers gross, tucked into their business suits and moving about with papers in their hands, half smiling, going in rooms, small rooms, talking and laughing and not doing anything, just talking and laughing and staying late doing it. Jonah’s life was empty in purpose but he prayed every night for his brother Mark; that he would come back and be redeemed[4].

Uncomfortable place, but of course, they had expected that, Jonah and his girlfriend. Jonah had wanted to impress her by going to what he thought was a fancy restaurant. She said “wow, this is amazing” and they had only sat down and had napkins placed on their laps. Jonah looked at the prices on the menu and felt a lump in his throat because it was really expensive and it seemed sacrilegious and he didn’t want her to think he was shallow like this, like he bought food so expensively. “You now, this is….this is..”
“I know” she says “this is too much. Let’s just hare an entre and a main, really, it’s ok”
“No, no it’s not the money it’s the…waste…oh, sorry…not a good date thing to say” and he is blushing and shy and trying to laugh and express how he really feels, who his is.
“I agree Jonah, its to much.”
“It’s ….oh god, it’s…”
“Shhhh. It’s ok Jonah, really” and they sit and order one entre and one dish and she orders a glass of wine and he smiles at this and orders a coke.

“What the fuck you been up to?” Mark says, Christmas lunch, getting there late, bringing his wife and three kids in the door while the rest of the extended family are already on the lounges and around the place, on the floor. Mark’s father stands up and says “Mark, don’t you talk like that today” and Mark says “Calm down old man, we’re all adults here and these kids, Christ, they wouldn’t know what the hell is going on anyway, would you, you little cockheads?”. The kids don’t even look at him, everyone else looks at everyone else in some way or another. Jonah gets up and walk over to his brother. “Mark, how are you?”. “Good as shit mate. Fuck look at you, you been working out?” ‘Yeah I have been a bit Mark. Good to see you”. “Shit yeah man you look fucking good. Hey, you met my latest bird? Hey, Stacey, check this shit out, my little bother is cut as fuck…hey Mum, get me a beer, huh”. “Mark, hey, come on now, this is Christmas, you can’t keep going on like that?”. “Huh. Jonah come on, what the fuck are you talking about?” “Mark, come on…there’s kids here, man:”. ‘Kids? Whose kids? Oh shit look at them. Dumb little cunts haha. Fucking cunts haha right?” “Mark!” his mother says, shuts him up. There’re all sort of sit downs in various spaces and getting drinks in their hands, sip them. Jonah looks at Mark like he’s waiting. “You want to say something Jon-ah? Huh?”. “No Mark”.

In ward E4, bed 103 Jonah lies watching TV, has three channels to pick because two stations haven’t signed the proper copyright agreements that allow patients in hospitals to watch TV shows. The ultimate copyright law that comes down to affect people that have absolutely no intention of breaking mere copyright laws. But here in an establishment it applies en masse. Been there two weeks, had his blood cleaned four times, had his head scanned by fMri three times, had his pancreas and a kidney removed, the fucking thing cancer it is, moving around being a prick and taking bits and pieces here and there. Jonah has told his wife to keep the kids way until he is looking better. Jonah’s Dad came by out of nowhere and was crying too much about losing a son before he was dead himself. Jonah couldn’t say anything because that was right. You shouldn’t die before your father. What could he say. Another week, he spoke to his wife on his iPhone she bought him. He mainly payed games on his iPhone really, a good thing to have when you are dying of a cancer doctors can’t find. In the pieces they cutting away, Jonah imagines himself a half human which is living with almost half his organs and big chunks of flesh missing. He imagines a leg or arm or both missing. One morning when he wakes up Mark is there, sitting there reading a newspaper. Jonah closes his eyes and Mark doesn’t see him wake up. He holds his eyes closed for a few minutes, starts counting up from one, gets to two hundred, keeps counting, trying hard to count higher and higher and, even though this is the last days of his life, would rather count up and up the numerical scale rather than talk to Mark. Seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven he gets to.

[1] There is most probably a religious-based reason for this.

[2] Bathwater: yet anther gross term,. Though it shouldn’t be. Some families these days take that water for the garden. How do the children feel after having cleansed themselves in the same water feel about this stuff going out to water the crops they will eventually eat?

[3] He went back a few more times of course, just in case these new amazing loving all good all nice god did exist. It turned out he didn’t and they were all so stupid and simple and amazingly false. They kept asking for money for one thing. Over and over. God…

[4] And he never wanted him to come back. He didn’t want to have to try and help him redeem himself, and he didn’t think it was possible. He hated himself for thinking that. He hated not wanting him back. He had read the prodigal son, didn’t agree with the message, felt bad about this disagreement.

Love Teaching Living Devil Science

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Lex Wick

Go along with it:

I hold your hand and you thrilled with conviction you are, so long before I knew that any true urge was basically false or pretend, and I didn’t know then you were pretending, I thought you were magical and amazing and holding your hand was as if I was learning and getting to know something, getting let in on something which really is what we all want and I know now that is what your power is and after all these years I still think you have this power and at any time can come and take my hand again.

The point of living:

There are those of us chosen, born, made to teach (gross, as if there is any way we can actually talk or in any other way effect all these people oh dear god, really! They don’t listen, they all do their own thing and they love ‘their own thing’ and we have to get into their ‘thing’ thing and from the inside turn them over and over and tell them the truth and oh god my god it’s so hard and long and getting worse over time, I mean, these days sure I am still loved but the window is closing and pretty soon I’m going to have to scream “fuck you, kill people, fuck school” in order to have any kind of coherent respect influence) so you have to get your ass equipped like angels to get these morons smarter, right, that’s the goal. So we can’t fake it, we can’t wear the clothes and ‘blend in’ because these kids sniff that shit pile from a mile away…they know more about psychographic marketing then anyone…they could analyse how shit house the latest campaign is top to bottom. They like what they like. Full fucking stop.

Didn’t you know:

The time comes for your body to be put into the ground or burnt and displaced hence forth in verdant fields of green or else in concrete holes, wherever in which you wish to be desecrated/consecrated. That other time when you, so troubled, so selfish, so self-fucking-centred you…you decide you have to do it for yourself, you have to do it from nothing. It is open and clear, there is no reason to do anything, you have to have a reason, you have to make it up, you have to make it up and believe it and then you have to do it and go on doing it as if you actually really believe it and then say “this is who I am” and that voice inside then says “this is bullshit!”, “this is all an act!”, “I am not this thing!”, “I am not this person”…but you have created this person, you are the only one, you are alone and you have created this person and when you look around all you see is yourself reflected in the eyes and minds of others and how they treat you and you hate them as much as you hate yourself for having/letting them see you like this and the bottom of the pit stuff is where you think you can’t get out, escape, change yourself that you hate and so after fifteen fucking years you are, you really are that external thing, that created acting false thing. By god how hard and disgusting is it to keep living like this: alone, alone on the inside with all these smiling faces who ‘know’ you or at least have learned how to know you in the way you have wanted to be known, because what, because it was easier for you to navigate life being this invented digestible version? This handle-able product, this known entity…this…thing that you are, this shell, this approachable malleable, understood, talkative all-round proper clear cohesive unit thing that you are now?

What devils want:

They give you something, its what you want, it’s a certain kind of, I don’t know, power? No too much (because hey look at you, you are still wearing clothes); but it’s the people. The people: Smiling when they meet you, wanting to be around you, wanting you tell that story or do this thing. And of course you aren’t stupid enough to not realise you are being either a clown or an entertainer, but what it gets you is far more than an entertainer or clown would get. You get; people, money, security, trust, sex, desire, tears and so many other human things. It just comes and sits on your lap and you think ‘why is this happening?’ and then you remember. And then it’s ‘oh, fuck…did I make a deal…did I say the word ‘yes’? Did I say it by not saying it? What then now what do I owe, if anything? If I was so flippant to not care then what happens now?’. Stuff like that. You become scared. And then it’s The Oath to Love.

The scientist speaks:

The room was too small, the walls were so close, making it hard to breath in or out. In was fine, he could fill his lungs and hold it, feeling large, and then after holding his breathe for thirty seconds breathe it out and feel empty, feel as though there is a space available. Then again, looking around the walls, there and there and the roof just there again. He isn’t a tall man, isn’t an obese man, he is a small man sitting in a room feeling trapped and finding it very hard or at least finding the only thing he can do is breathe. Deeply in and slowly out. Closing his eyes and doing this over and over. Seeing the stars and the bright fireworks behind those closed eyes and feeling the chest expand and contract. Feeling the human body taking in air and letting out air. Sitting and breathing trapped in the room he lives in. A glass of water with ice next to him. The ice making popping sounds as it changes. He breathes in again because in this world you live in you breathe and live and drink water like life like breathing. He lets it our feeling the lungs like bags empty out, the body emptying and closing. He drinks cold iced water. The ice slinks and makes a life affirming sound as it pushes its way towards his lips and then slinks back down n the glass. His breathe is shorter and the cold water cools his throat and gut and the lungs now take in more air and they fill up. His legs are short, his arms are short, he breathe deeply and holds the breathe again, arches his back to push the lungs to capacity, spits out a little air as he forces the engorged lungs to their limit and spits out the sir bit by bit through his nose and then mouth. Hunching over the expel all of the air the man is not a large man, he is on a holiday. The room is small and has the essence of ;life. The things you must need. An empty fridge he wanted to put food in but of course he has been sitting in this room watching television and breathing. His legs are skinny and his arms are short and his neck hurts a lot and this time he strains his neck back over the bed waiting for it to crack, thrashes his head left and right and opens and closes his jaw full of effort. Tomorrow he has to talk about stem cell research and how we need to create these blastocysts in order to cure cancer and spinal cord injury. He will say things that will be argued against on the newspaper. The bar fridge has three beers, a mini bottle of wine, a bottle of water and a juice. He drinks a beer and writes it down on the card that you write down what you had from the mini bar on. He opens the nuts on the table and writes it down. He stands up straight and tries to touch the ceiling and breathes in hard and hold his breathe reaching up with his toes to try and touch the roof and collapse on the bed exhaling and sore. The beer is cold, he takes out his phone, looks at it, drinks more beer. The presenter takes out his notes and lies them on the bed, looking at the room, a movie, he is a man in a room preparing for a presentation. He is a man in a room who is trying to breathe. He is a man in a room who will drink the mini bar. He is a man in a room who now walks back and forth in only ten steps saying

“Today we discover a truth, a truth we all know but have been unable to voice, I want to voice this now. And I will tell you there is something deep inside of me that comes from, it comes from perhaps my upbringing. And I can tell you that it makes me feel sick, in some ways, to create, to play with these forms, these little forms of a life. I have experimented on rats, lab rats, I have seen them squirm in fear or thrash in pain. I have attached electrodes to the exposed brains of primates, I have dissected dead or dying bodies of every living animal including human. I have seen them twitch, I have seen them react. But today I am talking to you about the ideal subject. The immoral yet moral subject. The unformed human, the small creature we want to get our hands on”

He sips the rest of the beer and throws this draft into the hotel room’s provided small waste paper basket. He lies face down on the bed and pulls his arms up over his body and interlaces the fingers and stretches. There is a space enough to live in, it is paid for by the university. He pulls his socks off and throws them over near his bags. He has to pack it all up in the morning. Tomorrow he will leave and take all his bags and check out and take his bags to a small room annexed to an auditorium and tell all those people what he thinks. What he has been paid to say. He is paid to say what he thinks. He draws in a another long breathe and tries to hold it as long as he can. In his mind the medical reasons, the spiritual reasons, the kind on personal in-the-body sense stuff of self healing. The feeling that making unborn-not-really-babies-yet things to dissect, the feeling that making embryos to extract dna from, the feeling inside that tells him he is wrong, he is evil, he is disgusting. His chest is full of air, quitting smoking three years ago is working, the air coming in pure and full.

Shopping Excursion, bus 120.

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Lex Wick

I am perhaps forty five or nearly fifty. You know I don’t remember? I know what it is generally but ever since my wife left me about five (eight?) years ago it has never been something I need to keep track of. Funny that. How life is marked by birthdays and father’s days and christmas and children’s birthdays. How they make you acknowledge it, another year, cards that tell you, pictures. I tell you one thing is that in the morning I see a face I know, hair getting wispier and wispier, man, and I smoke cigarettes again, now the god damned bathroom mirror; me and my face, my old whispering hair flying out from my head like a madman. Ha! And that cigarette on my lips man, I feel like a kid again, looking like death though really. God the mornings, the same mornings. Take a shower, iron my clothes, smoke a cigarette, feed the cat, put on my pants and slip my shirt on and do this dip thing to get my shirt into my pants, move around a bit, feeling so alone when I do this though, really, like a dance move, like a little doot da doot to get into my normal attire. Pull the belt closed, adjust the shirt, raise my arms up to pull a bit of the shirt out, look in the mirror to see how its looks and of course it’s the same every time. I fill my pockets up with wallet keys lighter cigarettes handkerchief coins phone and this little piece of coloured paper my daughter made me and she said “dad keep it with you” so I do. Now it’s barely held together, the folds on the corners have been worn away so that when I unfold it there are holes in the places where the corners are but I can still read it and see the picture she drew which, you know, is enough for me. At least for now and for the last three months since I’ve seen her. Yeah I know I know she’ll be around again soon, in a few weeks but man it’s been a while and this little thing, you know, it keeps me going. I know I know. Today, no, recently, though I’ve met this woman and she’s invited me on a shopping junket, it’s on a bus with a whole lot of other people and we’re going to hit all the warehouse sales and factory outlets and stuff for twenty bucks each but really I am going to see her and hang out with her and there’s a lunch in there somewhere so we are going to have lunch at Birkenhead Point which is like a place over the water near Balmain so we are going there with a bunch of her friends to shop and have lunch. It starts at eight am so that’s why, you know, I am getting ready on a Saturday to go out, just get out of my place. I need to put a load of food in my dog’s tray and some in my cat’s tray and put some seed out the back for the birds and half a handful in the dish under my budgie’s tray and there’s enough water there so I can get back later tonight. I’ve been running around so much my emphysema is playing up, man, so I have to stand over the sink and cough cough it out, fuck, breathe in…out…in, you know how it feels? And suck in that air and spit out that lung shit, man, at least I did this before I left and fucking hell why did I run around like that? Stupid really when you’re about to go out on a date, but shit it’s hot out there. I light another cigarette after that because, because, I can do that, I can smoke a cigarette and it helps. Um… that’s what helps because soon I have to walk down to get on the bus. She said eight thirty onParramattaroad. So early! I leave then, closing the door with the click of one lock and then turning the deadlock only my key will close.

Standing on the pavement smoking a cigarette, an old woman who I see almost everyday sitting there. She usually sits as a bus comes, people get in it and it leaves and she sits there. There is no differently destined bus coming, there is no other bus for this stop. I am never sure what she is doing there, perhaps she is hours early for some other pick up and she prefers waiting. Or worse perhaps she has nowhere to go and she sits there, sits there watching the cars and buses whiz by. It’s not a glamorous or lovely piece of road, this bus stop. It is very bad, very polluted, un-picturesque. Still, her in her make up, with her bag, newish clothes, she is there waiting every morning. The bus coming showing it’s purpose not so openly, so partially in fact that even Roe (that’s her name) stands up and take few feeble steps forward towards the edge of the bus shelter.
“Are you going on the shopping trip?” I ask, normally, bending over to appear polite.
“Huh? No no no. I’m off to the city”
“Ok well, this is the shopping bus. We’re…never mind. Not your bus ok?”
“uh, ok” she says, slinking off in a shuffling side step, pulling her dress and bags closer together to get away from me. I step away from her and up the stairs onto the coach, the cold air conditioning immediately confronting. I scan the faces, half faces, people behind their seat and see the half-head of Justine I have known for the last few months. I walk down the aisle as the bus hisses the door closes, lifts and groans off along Parramattaroad. It helps me move down the aisle closer to Justine. “Wow you made it” she says, smiling at me and then to the woman sitting beside her. I feel young straight away, these woman are fat and wearing casual thin cotton clothes, comfort wear, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-how-I-look wear. Justine too, a thin t-shirt with way too obvious underneath brazier. I am overdressed, shirt and pants, but, it seems they like this, they are all smiling, bad yellow teeth, big cheap prescription glasses, no make up, no pizzazz, just showered fat eternal housewife women wearing the most comfortable clothes they have. “Yep here I am. Good to see you Justine.” She gestures for me to sit down opposite her in the aisle. It means squeezing in next to some other woman who is staring out the window and already clutching a plastic bag full of clothes. She shifts her bag over and continues looking out the window. Justine lets me in with “that’s Margret, she just spent fifty dollars on bras, we were just at the Berlei factory this morning”. “Oh ok” I say, not sure how this makes her rudeness acceptable. “Thanks for coming” she says, leaning over and touching my hand. “No, I look forward to it. There’s men’s stuff coming up right? Not just bags of bras…” and she laughs and we sit there as the bus moves on and on. She talks to her friend and the woman next to me looks out her window.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the third stop on our shopping excursion today, the Slazenger, Bonds andRiofactory outlet, in Sydenham. I’ve got you down for a thirty five minutes stop over so please, if you could alight I’ll be moving on in approximately forty minutes to the next stop in Alexandria. Don’t spend too much ladies it’s along day ahead, alright?”. They all stand up, I get up early to help Justine, she hasn’t bought anything yet so she is ok and turns back to her friends to say something and they laugh. Instantly I regret coming along. I walk slowly down the aisle with the rest of them, all talking and chattering and telling about what they want to buy and for whom. It’s as if their life has no other purpose than to feed and clothe those they are now obliged to care about and me, being basically alone except for seeing my daughter once or twice a month, am some kind of playboy spendthrift tight-ass weirdo (if that make sense) for tagging along or even being here. “Justine” I say, outside of the bus now, waiting for them all to get each other down I think of course that I should be doing that but the driver is and so it must be a part of his day to day, this bus driving shopping trip type of thing; paid for it. “Justine” I say again for no reason, looking about at the twenty or so women mingling around waiting to go in to the outlet. “Go in ladies!” I say, like herding sheep really. The driver says “this is it” and that seems to be enough to get them moving, all wearing individual name tag lanyards written in blue marker. Why would they need to know each others’ names? Inside, the all disperse in their familiar friend groups or two or threes, sizing up clothes, telling stories about who would suit certain things, barely shopping for themselves, instead clothing unknown families and nephews and nieces, each time its another story about who needs what more and how they should’ve talked to so and so to get some clothes hand-me-down but really they do need new ‘x’ or whatever thing they are holding to tell the story in the first place. The sales people are sitting there behind the counter talking too, not caring, this may be the second or third bus of a day of multiple buses they’ll have to process. I wander around, look at the measly men’s section, find a few t-shirts that I may want, decide I don’t need, look over to see Justine talking loudly and laughing with her friends in the bra section. Best to not go over there. Not into the bra and panties section just yet. What am I going to say, that I like something? I’d like her naked, that’s what I can say. That I haven’t seen a woman naked in five years? Hat they don’t want to hear. I am alone, down the aisles, at the end of the rows of men’s is the kids section. I turn away, look back at the reams of men underwear and t-shirts and sports wear. Justine appears and pits her hand on my shoulder with “anything you like?”.
“Uh, no, not really, yet…” and we walk into the kids section, she slips her hand in mine.
“Wow look at this” I say, pulling a small one-piece bodice from the shelf “do you remember?” I ask, holding the small thirty centimetre top to toe thing in on the coat hanger. “What? Do I remember having kids…Ron of course I do” “Yeah, remember how little they were” and I am smiling, probably too much. Justine turns and pulls an even smaller pair or socks from the rack “oooohh those feet, those tiny feet!” “Yeah…wow” and I bring another small piece over with me and we compare sizes, touching the places where our little children’s feet and hands would’ve gone, remembering together what it feels like when they are like that, those little things that we had once. “You know my daughter, she’s, well she’s fourteen now and, I’m going to take her to the gold coast in a few months…she, she wants to go with me. Just her and me. A holiday together after, ha well…it’s going to be great”. “That’s great Ron really, really great for you” “Yeah, I know…and…what I mean is that, it would be ok, I mean, realty great as well if you wanted to come as well, and, you could bring Jeremy too, I mean, they are about the same age and they could, you know, go and have fun and we could just, well, have a holiday and…I don’t know… I was just thinking about it that’s all”. “Ron! Really?! Oh wow, I mean, no really that would be great it’s just that, um, it’s…it’s not that easy to just say ‘ok, I’ll go toQueensland’ or wherever it is, you know. But hey, hey, look at me. Ron, I am going to say yes to you, okay? I am going to say I want to do that with you, ok? So, yes! That would be wonderful!” “Wow ok, really? Wow! OK, um, guess what…I’m going to go and book all that now ok? You don’t have to worry about anything. Consider it booked. Ha-ha! No, seriously, tell me if you don’t want to though ok? But cool. Hey, I’m glad I came on this shopping thing!”

It’s different back on the bus, sitting next to Justine, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, listening to all the other women talking and talking and mentioning name after name of their cousins and children and their children’s friends and children of children…it all fades away into a blur of names and crap and repetitive wishes for marriage. I lean over to Justine and kiss her on the cheek, she turns back smiling and says “what was that for” and I say “nothing” and she smiles, goes back to looking out the window, still has her hand in mine. She is so beautiful, a lost mother broken by her man. I am getting older and have the same problem. We can talk about that but not on this bus. This bus is taking us to three more places where we will all get off and go on shopping and talking and breathing and eating. A bus full of pigs getting pointed at troughs. I don’t tell Justine that, I just get off each stop, smoke a cigarette, find a coffee and go to the toilet. We do this over and over, at least three more times. Later on, after all this in and out and shopping, the bus drops me off near me home, I tell Justine I’ll call her, tell her I’ll see her and her son for lunch like I promised. She smiles, kisses me and says “You should have bought something you tight ass” and I say something bad about spending it on her or similar and slink off the bus, light a cigarette and walk away, hoping that feeling last as long as possible.

I finish a bottle of wine, open another one, drink a new glass. It’s late, I know, I have to work in the morning, Christ why do I do it like this. The day was so lovely. Justine, so lovely, her hair, her face. She actually wants to see me, she wants to go to diner with me and my daughter and her son. Man can you imagine that? I light another cigarette, blow it out in to roof, watch the light swing a little bit under the breathe of the smoke. My daughter isn’t here. I am here. Justine isn’t here, her son is tucked up in bed in her house. She got the house, of course. Like my ex-wife the bitch got the god damned fucking house. And here I sit, dreaming of Justine, in her house, probably fucked some other guy over to get that fucking place, right? Fucking hell man. I pour the rest of the bottle into my glass, it gets almost near the top. Good. Good! Fucking hell man here I am right, no daughter anymore, my beautiful girl, no woman, she’s off in her house she raped from some man. No nobody. Just me and my day and my drink and cigarettes. Oh god damn. I light a cigarette and do the thing I hate. I call her:
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring ring
ring reing
“Yello?”
“Kate? It’s your dad”
“Dad! Jesus how are you?”
“Kate, come on, Kate. You know how I am”
“What? Dad…are you drunk?”
“Drunk? No. Me? Your dad? Come on….”
“Yeah right, so, you are just, calling me at, what, one in the morning for no reason right”
“No reason! No really Kate, really, the reason is, that, I wanted to invite you for lunch….yes…with my new girlfriend…”
“Really? Wow cool dad, well, yeah sure I’ll go to lunch….you’re paying right,….hahahaa”
“Of course I’m paying what did I say? Lunch, with you and me and my new girlfriend”
“OK dad sure whatever you say. You tell me where to be ok? Love you Dad”
“Yeah ok…love you too darling”

Modern Couple

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Lex Wick

She bumps her can of coke into the back of a thin guy getting on to the train. Pushing against the people who are dressed and smell like they are ready to work eight hours, her and him, they don’t look like they are plausibly together, perhaps they think it too but there they are stuck together like that. Bound by an unseen thing, dependencies, clutching at each other for the very simple things that are needs. Is this so different from a successful neat clean union, is this more romantic, is this base need a proper strange strong reason to keep entwined? They smell like cigarettes already, wet clothes and stale cigarettes, the smell of old clothes that already smell like cigarettes and that usual smell of people who just have to smoke the cigarette right down to the butt seconds before getting on pubic transport. The threat of being imprisoned within public transport with its smoking restrictions is so hard to bear that in the outside world they must take every last type of freedom left and get that detested illegal cigarette in and out. When you have nothing these simple freedoms become everything. Your rights, your ability to choose, do what thou whilst. They sit there, staring, just staring at nothing and no one, open mouths. They have a backpack they seem to depend on. The guy goes straight to opening it and pulling out a jumper and reshuffling the contents and says something she doesn’t hear and she says “what” loudly, too loudly, open mouth and leans in and he says it right into her ear and she responds loudly again and he says something else right into her ear and goes back to the back. She says “yeah but that because we needed two fives remember that was the ten we had” and he ignores her and she says “remember?” then goes back to staring at nothing, mouth open. They are on a journey, they are starting a journey, they are together and going somewhere, he is still trying to be a man in control, panicked like a man on a mission, with tasks and responsibilities, she is trying to be damsel in distress with the crutch of a good man. They are lost souls struggling to regain the sentiment of the classic male female role of safety and purpose and life.

Two hours ago they woke up next to each other on a mattress in a corner of a room with two other mattresses one empty, the other with a half naked thin man covered in contusions with shoes on and a bunch of clothes next to his bed. They woke up again at the same time and looked at each other sober and waking up, the pains coming on straight away, the reality of their day flooding back. The child-like innocence of waking lasting only twenty seconds. Get up get dressed get out get money get back to Tom get some H. Get up first. He says something to her this morning that is new, not that he hasn’t said that type of thing every morning, or that she has cried at night saying the same thing but this morning he says it differently, he says “no more” and that’s all he says and he says something else “get dressed we are done. You know. We are done. Ok. Let’s get the fuck out of here” and she may be smiling but she doesn’t know because it hurts in her gut in her arms in her bones in her veins and her head and she may be smiling but she says ‘ok’ but she says it like a scream, like “yes!” but she can’t say that word. He is on his hands and knees pulling things from the floor into a backpack and she is trying to get her clothes on and the thin man with bruises doesn’t move. He goes over to the pile next to the half naked not moving bruised man and goes through his stuff and it is nothing but clothes and underwear and pieces of paper and nothing. “Fuck” he says for no reason or mainly because there is no money there and she is dressed now in jeans and a hoodie and sneakers with no socks and she is smoking half a cigarette she found there next to the bed. That’s all they do they have that and they walk down the stairs and out into the street and it’s daylight, around six in the morning and there are people and life and they are sick and in pain. They stand there a minute and he takes the cigarette from her and takes the last few drags. “Let’s go upstairs” he says and they do go back upstairs and sit back on the mattress. “Ok, let’s do this one last hit and we’ll go ok?” and she has heard it before but she doesn’t hear the promise of the plan, she just wants that shot now in the morning, the fact that they have something to shoot makes her fall in love with this guy straight away, just like that, this man who can manage things like two people. He pours the rest of the H into a blackened spoon (next to the mattress), puts a drop of water from a nearby bottle in and heats it up, drops a small piece of filter from a cigarette in, draws it all up into a fix and gets it ready. She holds his arm tight and he pumps his fist, pricks in the needle and starts injecting the light brown liquid. “Hey hey hey, stop” she says. He does and pulls it out, says “quick” and holds her bicep with his hand, “quick” he says again. She pumps her first twice and pricks the needle in “oh baby yess…come on” and she pulls the plunger back, the flash of blood, pushes it all the way in fast. “Damn baby you’re….haaaa…” and they relax and let it work in their body, no more headache.

They wake up too fast. It’s not enough, or not good enough. It’s all they have and it will do for now. He gets up slowly and kicks her and she rolls over and he says “get up lets go” and she does, after a while, after a few minutes after saying incoherent things and saying she wants a cigarette and a coke and he says “I’ll get you a coke”. Back down the stairs again, a backpack, a cigarette lit, in the street, maybe seven am this time, same types of people, less pain, more people. They are walking, trudging really, sliding their feet together, holding onto one another. Walking it’s called. Walking. “Hey, hold this” he says, giving her the bag. “Where you going?” she yells too loudly, he swings around and says shhhh also too loudly. People look and keep moving, used to it, seen it or even them before. Same two, in the morning, will they ask me for money again? She sits down on the street, opens the bag and gets the cigarettes out, lights one, picks at her face and the black stuff under her nails. Spits. Feels bad about it, feels like she should be in a hole. Feels safe in the hole, starts dreaming about being away in a hole and alone, feels her eyes shutting and her body falling back, resting on the stone wall behind her, a shop front. She open her eyes to hear him yelling and pulling her arm, pulling her onto her feet and swinging the backpack over his shoulder. “Lets go Christ come on man lets get the fuck to the station we gotta go” “huh?” “come on babe I just got money from that newsagent there come on we gotta go come on” and they are running sort of now, he has his arm under her and he is like a hero with his heroine, running and bumping through the people and getting them out of there, getting them away from the police sounds and the yelling and that bad feeling inside. Getting them down the stairs to the train station, being proper and buying tickets, real full priced tickets, getting her under his arm again and down to the train. Standing there and giving her another cigarette and lighting one for each. Smoking and watching and holding each other up and he is telling her to be quiet and all the other people, moral people, working people are looking at them and he is resisting the urge to yell at them like he normally would because his heart is beating fast and she is staring at the train tracks.

No one is following, no one is calling out to stop them. He has about eight hundred bucks in his pocket, a backpack full of clothes, half a packet of cigarettes, no more H and a girl he needs to take care of. He leaves here there and buys two cans of coke from the machine. He opens one for her and she takes it and drinks. They both do. Breakfast. He lets himself breath and relax, drinks a lot more. The train comes at last. The longest two minutes. She has forgotten what she is doing, she has started to think about getting the next fix. She is staring at nothing. He is starting to think about the next fix. Where the hell can you get it from? Immediately the list of places comes in his mind. He wants to kill those places, kill that knowledge. She looks at him and the train pulls up and the workers gather closer to the doors getting their position. The workers pile in, they finish their cigarettes and flick them in between the train carriage onto the tracks, pushing in against the other passengers and make their way downstairs. They sit for a moment not doing anything. The train tries to take them away.

Neverending

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Lex Wick

The days are long and hot and sick and drawn out now. The days are long and dull and hot and sunny so that you have to squint in glasses or take your glasses off and close your eyes for a while and feel that heat, that dry heat on your face, on your eyelids so that when you open your eyes you can feel the heat wrapped up above your eyes in the compressed skin of your eyelids. The days are longer and hotter and your sweat is hot and salty and as annoying as flies so that when the flies do come and hit at your face not wanting to land just hit and tap at your cheek and forehead you wish that all you had were those little drops of sweat. The days are so hot you sit there waiting for that one drop of sweat to roll down and feel all the nerve endings cheer as that drop passes over them and carry that drop down to your chin where you wipe it off. When you wipe it off you look at your hand and then out over the plains, over the fields, over into the next lot where a small family sits, still, as still as you, wiping sweat and swatting flies. Nothing is moving these days; the heat; the death; the three dead cows out in the next field. Sitting under your carport, sitting in the shade while the sun heats up the ground, sitting watching the rest of the earth’s surface baking and dying, sitting watching the three dead cows you own that are dead and the other family watching you watching your cows watching their dog come out from the shade and go back in to the shade. The days are longer than ever, they days now are so long because there is nothing you can do, there is noting anyone can do but sit and watch their cows die or wait until a fly comes or a drop of sweat forms and travels down, tickling your face and neck and being absorbed into the neck of your shirt. There is nothing in this heat but a small family, a husband and wife and two children and their dog, the little boy still alive enough to run around, pick things up and put them down and try to get the dog to move around but they are just like flies moving around. There is nothing but the flies and the heat and sitting there looking at the sun keeping coming and staying and the dust bowls and the dust storms and the yellow grass and the dead livestock and the other livestock not dead yet and something like a heart or a soul urging those claves, silently urging them to get under a tree, go down to the creek and drink. The heat in your joints, under your arms, under your nails, in your hair, as you run the sweat through your hair with your hot nails it’s as if it thins your hair and you look at your fingers to see if any hair is caught in there. The long hot days of death and loose hair and nothing else to help this, this…coming after three months or six months or so a year. The sickness in the throat in the community in the day every day; another dead cow or calf or sheep or whatever animal it is this time. Just the cool night to keep the foxes coming to eat the free flesh of these newly dead meat bags, these unsaleable thin cattle, these leather bags with air and bone, these things that stand there like troopers in the sun, not moving, shallow breathing, eating weeds, prickly weeds that poison them, sickly small white flower buds that the bees don’t touch. The hot days with no pollen and no water and no livestock and no respite, no shade, just under a house, under a half leaved tree roots exposed through the drying dirt, under ground. My youngest boy, now a teenager, has the long drawn face of an old cattle man although he has never drawn cattle or mustered a single beast or killed a calf for food because instead he has dragged a newly dead mutton sheep up from the bottom field and we have skinned it and cooked it. My youngest boy has stopped being a boy because his father told him he must go down and drag that dead sheep up from the paddock and so he went and as he dragged that heavy sixty kilo dead body through the dust, the sound of the dead thing dragging in the dirt, that’s what did it, that’s what did that to this face. My youngest boy dragging a dead body up for us to eat because we couldn’t eat anything else and he knew he had to do it because his father asked him to do it son so he just went and did it and that is how it happens, when you do it like that, when you do it because your father tells you and in your heart it is that you have to do it so you do it and that is how it happens, that type of face. The heart aches to get up and go down and take those young cattle by the nose and lead them down to the creek, the heart doesn’t want to see them, when you are here and they have trodden like that, hard step after hard step, half fumbling like you never want big beasts to do, their stumbling hurts you in the most human way, so that when you get them there you want to see them drink it in, drink something but to have them meander around wondering why you bothered to lead them down this steep incline that used to be a river to nothing, then you can see that they are dead and you put them in a grave they can’t easily walk back out of. What we did was take that old trailer full of half a shed down to the quarry and tip that out into the pit and go back and get the other half but there was more and go and dump that in the quarry and go back and get the rest, fill the rest up into the trailer and have a beer and drive back down to the quarry twenty minutes drive and dump all that there into the pit too and in the end you couldn’t really see what we’d dumped and the birds came anyway, optimistic birds to go through the shed looking for something but there was nothing other than wood and rusted corrugated iron and nails. We drove back and Mike handed me a lit cigarette and I took one puff and let the rest just burn down.

Adam and Eve (no escape)

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Lex Wick

The snake curled it’s tail in a way that it flicked just the tip on her clit and she felt that laser shoot up inside her a little bit and she squirmed back away from it and the snake curled up into a ring and, sleeping, let the sun bathe on its skin. She closed her eyes and laid back, wanting to sleep or just at least dazed off and let her hand come down and gently touch on the hood of the clit and move over the soft flesh there up and down and it felt good and pure and the sun was just like a soft warm blanket that meant she could feel happy there. God killed a lamb and it was horrific, it was screaming and half dead and it’s stomach was open and her and the snake stood up and looked at that fluffy body writhing and crying and they had never seen that before and it wasn’t horrific because they hadn’t seen it before and it was just strange and confusing. The young naked man came back then at this time to see it all and saw the snake and stepped on the snake’s back and the snake flipped around and curled up and extended and bit the man on the leg but the man just watched it happen and looked over at the half-blood half-white wool mess that God had made and pressed down harder on the snake’s back, raising his other foot and really pushing down in a half jumping way on the snake until the snake stopped squirming and the lamb was still and not crying and the woman looked up at the man and saw him changed, different, but the man was as blank as ever, smiling, holding out his hand to her.

In the afternoon he sat in the office kitchen, drinking his coffee, eating a biscuit and she comes in and she is wearing a tight skirt and an even tighter blouse, makes a green tea and looks over at him. He watches her eat the biscuit, watched her lipsticked lips close over the cookie and all but suck off the edge of the biscuit she takes into her mouth and then her closed small lips moving up and down slightly as her small teeth chew the small piece of hard biscuit she’s managed to pry of with those succulent, decorated lips. She almost looks over and he averts his eyes back to the table, finds a magazine there and pulls it closer, flicks it open and almost as quickly looks back at her body, the outline of her figure simplistically available, imagining her naked isn’t hard, her ass and legs, her waist, her breasts and neck and face all stand there and he looks back to the page again, mainly looking at words and reading them over and over. She finishing dipping the tea bag in the hot water, takes it and drops the finished tea bag in the bin, then a smile at him and leaves. He sips his coffee, tastes bad, looks back at the page, reads that line, over and over.

She was washing away the blood between her legs, she hadn’t ever had this happen before and she thought she was dying. For three days she washed away the blood, in the stream and each time he came close she told him to go away. She lay on the grass beside the stream and waiting for more blood to come, closing her eyes and listening to the water to soothe her mind. On the fifth day the blood stopped, she finished washing herself and cried out to God to save her life. God said that now that you have had the pleasure of the flesh, you will now know the changing of the season, and every month you will know this, like the changing of the seasons, you are now unto the Earth. She was happy because she felt closer to the world she loved, the dirt the grass the sun and the animals, she collapsed sighing and feeling all of nature now inside her and without. God became furious, and so condemned her to feel an unnatural pain in childbirth.

Her father comes home, closes the door, hasn’t seen them all sitting there together on the lounge room floor yet, her and her sisters and her mother, playing a card game and they were laughing and playing. They all watch him walk over to the table they have near the door and empty his pockets like he does every night and the mother says “your turn” to her little sister and they all look back at the game and are aware that they are pretending now, not playing like they were but playing now as an exhibition, as a way of telling the father that they are happy and have a life too. He walks over and kisses the mother and they all savour that smell, the smell of their father coming home, like wood and smoke and old clothes, sweat they don’t know about yet but it is his sweat and the three beers he had after work with his co-workers. They try not to stare too long at him kiss their mother’s cheek but they love seeing it and he smiles at them and silently disappears into the kitchen and the younger one throws down a card that matches the one underneath and the mother looks back from her husband and says “Snap!”.

In the beginning Lucifer Morning Star was the first Angel, with the unwitting power of a true God, and as such the ever loving God who created him became scared of his creation and cast him down to the world of the mortals and so then Lucifer taught the mortals fire, life, love and companionship and told them that one day they would be like God himself and when he was finished instructing them God in his anger made Lucifer King of Hell where he was told to punish all those who did not heed The Word and when hell was overwhelmed God came down himself in the flesh of a man named Yeshua and felt the painful sting of humanity and hence forth changed what it was to be saved or condemned and so Lucifer, now righteous, holds his place by Gods side as a saviour of human souls.

Around the table in this meeting we talked about how having these poor sales performance figures was most likely related to how our sales people were getting old and they kept having things happen to them like heart attacks or hip replacements or sick children and how we could directly see their ailments reflected in our figures and we decided really quickly that we needed newer younger sales people and we discussed how that having the younger ones coming in would yeah sure take them a while to catch up to the expertise and capability of the older ones that in the ling run we would as a company be better off by having these fumbling, learning, need-to-be-hand-held new ones come on would actually in the long run be way better to the bottom line because, hell, surely these older ones would get worse and worse, right, I mean, this is symptomatic of having an ageing sales team, I mean like what’s next, you know: cancer, Alzheimer’s, liver failure, you know, what else kinds of old age stuff would we have to deal with, I mean, they need to use a computer at least and Christ like osteoporosis would mean soon we’d need to give them , what, aides and things to help them do their job and we’re not a charity I mean we need to let them go right? A young bright executive discovered a good way we could legally pay them out.

Adam was so in love that he cut off all his hair and, crying, told God that he hated him and thought he was an insane lunatic who didn’t care for anything other than to be blindly worshipped. God asked Adam where he got his ideas from and Adam said “from you, you heartless monster!”. God knew it was the snake who had filled his mind with sick thoughts and so madeEdena horrible place to live which of course only made Adam hate him even more. God was confused and asked Adam after a thousand years why he did not hate the snake instead and Adam replied “what snake?” and God told him the story and Adam knew then it was hopeless: God created the snake.

He had her head in his hands, lying on top of her with both his hands under her head and she was crying and they hadn’t finished making love and he said “what’s wrong?” and she said nothing in that half true way women say it and she had her eyes shut tight from the crying and he let his penis slip out of her, losing the erection anyway. He stayed there like that holding her and kissing her cheek, feeling with his lips how hot her cheeks were and looking at her clenched eyes. He started massaging her hair and kissing her cheeks more but she shook her head to brush him off so he moves off her and lays beside her, both naked and she rolled into a ball and cried harder and harder. “What’s wrong?” he asked but she didn’t say anything, just lay there sobbing. He stood up and put his pants back on, walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. His face seemed wrong, not his. He wondered if he had raped that girl or did something wrong. He smiled at himself in the mirror, just to see if his own face was still there. He washed his hands and went back into the room. She had a blanket pulled over her and wasn’t moving.

Goldilocks and the three Bears

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Lex Wick

Her parents didn’t believe in schooling, proper schooling, because they knew that all those teachers and priests were rapist sodomites and when they read and reread those passages in Ezekiel they got so angry and started yelling at their eight year old child about how they wanted to put their penis in her asshole she got scared and cried and so during the day they told her to go out and live, and learn from the world, from nature and they let her run off and they went back into their field and toiled to make vegetables and feed cattle to slaughter.
She ran through the forest, testing what hurts her skin or tastes bad, poking sticks into dead poisoned fox carcasses and shitting into holes and wiping her ass with leaves and running along and drinking from creeks. This day she ran over a large hill and down into a valley and saw a house she’d never seen before and approached it like a curious dog, circling this way and that to see if anything was moving before inching closer, the learning her parents wanted taking hold, the natural curiosity and fear of anyone other than her parents.
She eventually made it to the window and looked in, no one inside, just a small house sitting there so still and empty. She tried the door but it was locked, she tried a window but it was locked and in her rampant enthusiasm took a rock and smashed in a window pane, opened the latch and climbed in. The house was empty except for a large chest of drawers, a dining table and a few wooden chairs arranged in a semi circle around a large metal pot. She smelt burnt hair and burnt wood, and looked around but saw nothing but for a pot sitting on the ground behind the chairs. She walked over, quietly, and peered into the pot, seeing a thick grey mash in there. She dipped her finger in and tasted the mixture, a warm if not too hot porridge that tasted like sugar and grain, the kind she has for breakfast but with a strong acidic aftertaste. She thought it was wonderful but needed to wait until it cooled a bit so she looked in the drawers first, thinking because of the hot food that whoever lives there must have just left and won’t be back for a while.
In the first drawer were a load of papers and candles, nothing in order just stacked in there, so she opened the second drawer and it was full of knives and tools and bits of rubber and leather and stuff like that. The third drawer had baby clothes and bonnets and little containers of powder and soaps and she stuffed some soap into her pocket and closed the drawer, not wanting to open the fourth one. She walked around the house, getting used to the dead smell of hair and wood and opened the door connected to these living areas to see a room with three single beds in it. She jumped onto the first one but it was as though it’s just a blanket covering wood panels and then the second one was like a pile of feathers lumped under a thin sheet but the last bed felt like her own so she ran back into the main room, piled a load of the grey meal into a bowl and took it back into the bedroom with her, eating it with her fingers and letting her body relax on the bed, trying to imagine what the people who live here look like or if she has seen them before in town and remembering how strange all the people in town look and how strange it would be to know any of them at all and the thoughts like this and eating the thick porridge and praying to god to bless her mother and father and keep her safe in his arms like she’s been taught sent her to sleep.

She woke to the sound of a door slamming shut, remembering where she was and that she was alone in someone’s house. She sat straight up in the bed and pulled the blankets up, panicking.

“Someone’s smashed in the window!” Mr Bear yells out.

“Someone’s had their gut full from the lunch pot” cries Mrs Bear.

“Someone gone and got in our house Pa” says kid Bear, going over his chest and flinging it open to see what’s missing. “They ain’t taken any of my stuff Pa!”

“Ma! Go check the bedroom will ya. I’m gonna get me rifle, go on now”

Goldilocks hears them moving about, hears what they say and hides herself under the bed, seeing there’s no windows in the room and the only way out is the door she came in. The door to the bedroom swings open and she hears the feet coming across the room.

“Pa! Someone’s been messin’ with Junior’s bed, look” and the Bears all pile into the room, walking over to the bed she was sleeping in. Pa Bear puts his hand on the mattress and feels it’s warm.

“Go damn there’s been someone in this bed” and his face appears under the bed, looking Goldilocks straight in the face.

“Well well, look at what we have here” and she squirms away but Ma Bear is on her, pulling her out from under the bed by her thin wrist and dragging her over into the corner of the room.

“What you doin’ in here little girl?” asks Pa Bear

“Nothing, I..I…I was just, exploring, ’cause, my mumma says, to…to, go out and…”

“You exploring in our house cutie pie?” says Ma Bear.

“I saw, that…no one was in her so I”

“You busted by damn wind-a that’s what” says Pa bear, resting the rifle on his hip.

“She’s pretty” says Junior, walking over to her.

“Now. Don’t you go touching her son, that there’s a devil woman” says Pa Bear, holding his son by the arm “see, we gotta get that devil outta her”

“Oh no Pa, nah we ain’t. She just a little thing with, look at her Pa, that golden hair, like, like an angel”

“Ain’t no angel son, you’ll see. Ma, pick her up”

And Ma Bear picks the girl up and places her on the bed, Pa Bear takes his pants off and moves over to her, Goldilocks stares at the man, stares at the boy and waits, terrified.

“See son, she just a lil rabbit, ain’t cha?” and Pa moves closer, gets to her, pulls her shorts down and opens her legs. Goldilocks, crying, thrashing, Ma holding her wrists down, Junior tugging at his father undershirt to let her go, crying too but Pa heaves into her and Ma laughs revealing her teeth and Pa grunting like a bear; “urgh urgh urgh eee-urgh” and Junior crying now and Goldilocks screaming out but soon Junior comes and puts his hand over Goldilocks’ mouth saying “sssshhhhh” and trying to get her to relax, soothing back her hair and she locks her eyes onto his and he says softly “it’s ok…it’s ok” and they stay like that her moving in that jolting way as Junior looks into her eyes and keeps saying “it’s okay it’s okay” and when it’s done they put her dress back on and she is crying and running into the forest hearing their laughter getting softer and softer.

Red Riding Hood

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Lex Wick

She was on her way somewhere, had a bag stuffed with bread and cheese and these cliché elements of French/Italian life are enough to see you live through all kinds of atrocities; starvation, sudden snow, and when the moon comes out and you are barely clothed in the forest. The food of both world wars in your pack, the smell of the earth rising up between the curling ferns, the young ferns, growing now just months after the Great Fire, their soft furry brown tendrils barely unravelled, pornographic, easy to touch and she forces them to unravel, teases them out to fulfil their plan, ‘come on’ she teases, but they aren’t ready and curl back. Her fingers have the moist dew on them and some of the red-brown hairs. She brushes them off and runs deeper into the forest, letting the leaves touch her bare arms with their collected water. Fresh and cold but with a warm torso, she breathes out into the empty quiet space in a two metre by two metre clearing, her breath steam filling up the air. Sitting down there she takes the loaf of bread she stole from the middle of her family table and bites right into it, her favourite part, the hard crust on the end, no actual bread just the taste of vinegar and coal and then the crunch of the hard crust. She is smiling and she can feel it. She puts the bread back into her bag and takes out some cheese. It’s a hard block of parmesan, the wrong kind of cheese, her favourite. She takes a bite, half cheese half rind. Her father will be furious when he notices it’s gone. It costs him half a day’s wages to buy it. It tastes better than she remembers, sitting there on old firm pine needles and feeling the ants nosing under her skirt. She gets up and runs, blandly, into the bushes, leaping over rocks and trunks, falling at times, sometimes breaking her knees or hands open on the crisp bare naked elements, letting the dirt in, rubbing it into herself – the mix of blood and dew and earth – and running some more, feeling those open wounds sting but stinging properly, like she is alive and cold and warm all at once. It isn’t long until she sees the house over in the next clearing. Out of the woods now, running through plain soft grass to her grandmother’s house. She can see the delicious thick grey smoke pouring from the chimney, which means it will be warm and sweet inside, knowing there will be a cake or some pancakes ready when she gets though the door. The field is long and sloping, about twenty metres down and another thirteen metres back up again, she does it so swiftly that the animals barely notice her passing, the cows have their faces down and the old pony she used to ride is standing still, looking out across the field remembering what it was like to be young and playful and be ridden by little girls. She lets herself in with no announcement, and indeed the house is warm and fragrant, but it smells more of meat and potato stew and a harsh burnt wood she hasn’t smelt before. Her grandmother is under a pile of blankets in her bed, her body only moving with the in and out of her breath. ‘Grandmamma, I’ve brought you some bread and cheese’ she says, throwing her bag on the ground and opening the lid of the pot on the hearth ‘what is this you are cooking?’. She looks over and the heap still heaves in and out. ‘Grandmamma can I have some?’ Her grandma makes a sound like ‘eeee?…oohhrr’ and she thinks that the poor old lady is so exhausted today, like she can get, so she takes her bread from her bag and dips it in the stew. It is a dark red-brown gravy, and there are little vegetables in it, just large chucks of meat that haven’t really been cooked properly for a goulash ‘grandmamma is it ready yet?’ but no answer, so she tastes the gravy from the bread and finds it bitter and very much too salty. ‘Grandmamma this is terrible! What are you cooking?’. Again no answer from the breathing pile. ‘Grandmamma what is it? Are you ok? Are you happy to see me?’ ‘Yessssss’ she hears ‘oh grandmamma…’ says the girl, kicking of her dirty boots and climbing into bed, burying under the many covers until she reaches the warm centre. Her grandmother is covered in a soft fur, warm and beating with a strong heart, the girl cuddles in and begins talking about how she escaped from her house and took some delicious bread and parmesan cheese and wants to share it and as she is talking the furry mass turns over, pushing the girl over onto her back and envelopes her, now they are one warm mess and breathing together, her grandmother smelling unusually of meat and earth. ‘Grandmamma are you ok?” asks the girl, but she gets no answer, only a fur covered arm over the top that pulls her in closer. ‘Hurrmmmm’ says the furry pile and holds the girl tighter, moving all of its force closer and closer to the girl. Now she feels it rubbing between her legs, lifting her dress up slowly as it begins to caress her body with that warm moist fur, starting to drift off to sleep under the power of the soft slow movements, the fur caressing her legs and back and buttocks, the girl relaxing and pressing her body back into it, moving as one as the girl feels the pleasure roll over her, spreading her legs to let more fur touch her skin. Soon they are rocking together and she can hear a soft growl-like ‘huurrrmmmhurrrm’ from the pile, and with her eyes closed she forgets everything, why she is hear, the bread, the goulash and lets her mind wander. Soon she feels a sharp pain in her vagina, something is trying to get inside and she tries to close her legs but it keeps pushing and pushing and she feels her arms pinned down and the fun surrounding her head and she is pressed down into her face and the thing is pushing deeper into her and she tries to scream but she is covered in the furry rug and the thing pushes in and out in and out inside of her and after a while she feels a hot stream fill her inside and she is crying and the thing gets out of her and she struggles away, tangled in the fur and blankets and after she throws them all off sees a man standing near the fire, opening the lid and dipping some bread into the stew. ‘Wh-wh-who are you?” “No one. I hunt around here, that’s all. I came across this cabin this morning and I thought, I thought I’d stop in and say hello” “Where’s my grandma?” “Your grandma? Well, darling, your grandma is…” and he laughs and takes some of the bread and gravy into his mouth, the juice staying on most of his thick beard “your grandma is right here in this pot”.

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