You Are What You Eat

You are what you eat:
a thing with nine feet
that lives in the garden
and calls itself Pete.

You are what you eat:
a green three-piece suite
that plays you at cards
and knows when you cheat.

You are what you eat:
an oily bed sheet
that's been in the army
and smells of minced meat.

You are what you eat:
a pile of concrete
that's covered in spiders
and lives on the street.

You are what you eat.
Yes, you, Marguerite.
I've seen you at midnight.
You're not so discreet.

You are what you eat.
I shall not repeat.
Go look in the mirror
and that's your receipt.

Seven Innovative and Low-cost Ways of Marketing your Book

1. Put it in the tray when going through security at the airport. Explain to the guards that it's absolutely not a risk to national security whatsoever.
2. Turn the title into a cheerful well-wishing, e.g. 'Have a glassy day, worldians!' or 'Upwards and out of the darkness, my friends!'
3. Strap a copy to your chest when shopping, touching it occasionally and uttering a sound of religious devotion like 'whoopiteewoo'.
4. Pretend to read it at the bus stop, laughing and crying uncontrollably before telling fellow passengers that this book has changed your life.
5. Paper your bathroom with it, then invite friends to a meal at your house and slip a diuretic or laxative into their food.
6. Get a parrot from the pet shop, teach it to say the best lines from your book, then return it to the pet shop complaining that it keeps spouting nonsense.
7. Pulp it and use it to fill potholes because that's how roads read books.

Extracts from A Botanical Grimoire

i) Barking Moss can be found in the shadow of a dog rose. If you scratch it behind your ear, it is said to diminish dental pain and improve the sense of smell.

ii) The Nightcap has been located at the eleventh hour during a full moon. Drunk from a small glass with water and ice, it has a soporific effect and causes you to think well of friends.

iii) Wishing Veil grows on moist wood in cool darkness. It should be drunk from a basin of fresh water on your birthday. It is said to focus the mind on its deepest desires.

iv) Drowning David is often seen on the banks of still lakes. It can be rubbed on the eyelids to stimulate periods of reflection. However, it can cause weakness in the upper arm and thigh.

v) Droop has been collected at the bottom of steep valleys. Its potent odour can be inhaled through the nose when the head is lowered. It can induce sleep and feelings of low self-worth.

vi) Yellow Eye is found in abundance in woods and tall grass. Its small bright petals can be infused to make a mild, sour tea. It is reported to enhance night vision and provoke surliness.

vii) Bitterweed is usually observed in wetlands or shallow water. It should be eaten immediately after it is plucked. It improves caution, but excess usage may lead to troubling dreams.

viii) Creep can be found clinging to drainpipes and windowsills. It prefers the dark and takes the form of short, stubby fingers. It is often taken against procrastination but can induce psychosis.

ix) Icy Ismaril is said to grow just under a thin layer of snow. It is often recommended in cases of romantic difficulty such as unrequited affection. Strong doses may cause cynicism or emotional distance.

With thanks to the makers of the game Strange Horticulture, which inspired this piece.

Get Rich or Die Trying!

Do you see him? The bloke in the cap and overalls. No, not him. Actually, that's a woman. But don't worry. Easy mistake to make. We all look the same down 'ere. No, the one with the empty wheelbarrow, lining up to go down the tunnel. Yeah, him. Bearded, red eyed. Yep. That's how it is. He's waiting for all this lot to come out. String of, what, eight, nine folks coming out with their barrows full of that grey-brown awful-smelling sludge. That one whose sludge is a quivering heap all the way up to his neck. That, ladies and gents, is today's gold star winner. He's gonna get one of the high-up boxes. He'll have to climb up there, mind, at the end of this bloody long shift that lasts every day from infancy till death.

Anyway, there I go. Tunnel's clear now. It's even darker in there than the rest of this place, but at least there's no buttons. You see, all those grey slabs that make up the walls. Sorta four metre square, regular as regiments, all the way up. You look up and your eye can follow the dark in-between lines all the way to heaven. In fact, they actually seem to converge at some point somewhere south of heaven, but you see how high up it goes. Or - more accurately - that's how far down we are. It could even have been a huge pyramid that we're in except that then no light would get down here and some does bounce all the way down here. Get stuck it does. The light goes into your brain and sticks there, becomes part of you, never gets out. Nothin' ever gets out of here, mass or wave form.

I'm out the tunnel now, see how I'm looking at the slabs. Each one's a button. Look carefully and you'll see that pale pattern on it is not just weatherin', it's a symbol. Press the right symbols in the right order, bingo, sludge time. Fill your barrow. Earn a few more points. Me, I always go with wavy lines, hash symbol, triangle, circle, inequality sign, plus, plus, upside-down exclamation mark. Found a few variations that worked, and a few that occasionally pumped out more sludge than I usually get, but this is the one that worked for me most consistently. There I am pushing in the huge square faces of the blocks, more 'n double my height. Some of them are really tight, hard to press in. You feel like you're actually liftin' the whole thing and forcin' it back. Don't tell me we're not strong, despite the revolting stuff they call food here.

Right, but once you've got it pushed in, as I have there, I don't know if they meant it like this, but then you can just about get your fingers and toes in the gap and climb up. How? You learn by falling. You learn by failing. That's the only way. Fall from a low height's my advice. Break a leg on your first day. You won't make it. Dunno what happens to them. They just lie on the dirty sludgy concrete floor screaming and then whimpering for the rest of the day. In the morning - gone. Must come in the night and drag 'em off, I suppose. F'r all I know, they use these same barrows to do it. Imagine. The same broken-wheeled thing I drag around, day after day, could be the same damn thing that drags me off when I'm all finished and done. Who knows what creatures does it either? Dunno if it's creepier to think there's some white-faced night creature to sweep up the human debris, or if it's folk like us what does it.

I'm the first in this section. Others are going past me down other tunnels to other spaces. I'm always glad when I don't have to go down there though. The piles of skulls and bones really get to you. Especially if you know who some of them were. Memento mori's one thing, but seeing yourself in that heap of bones offers no insight nor hope. So I have the space to myself except for those who's climbing up over my head to get at buttons they want on the third or fourth level. Climb like monkeys, they do. Having said so, the shoes they give us is just like a leather bag. Like ballet slippers. Wearin' boots'd be no good. How you supposed to climb in steel toe caps? Anyways, eventually I get all my buttons pressed in, and I feel the tremor before I hear it. "Pipe!" I shout to claim it and pretty much expertly get my barrow turned around probably less than a second before the flap opens on one of the terracotta pipes that stick out the wall, and glorious filthy muck fills my wheelbarrow up, piles right up, wobbling in that obscene way that it does. Nice! You can see that's a nice barrow! You can even see a grim look of satisfaction on my face if you look through all the shadow and hair.

Then I wheelie the thing around careful of folks in a rush coming the other way. We’ve all done it. You ready your barrow full of stinking muck thinking this could be the very one that opens a nice high hatch for you, and some wild barrower comes the other way not seeing anything and clang, there’s two barrows all over the floor and your muck is glugging and bubbling away down one of the little barred drains. Scoop it up with your hands. The one that knocked into you might even help if they don’t pull up their barrow and run off in shame and fear, but by the time you’ve scraped up as much as will stay in your hands, all the pleasure, all the satisfaction has gone, and you’re empty, and your barrow might as well be. However, this is not what the next moments have for me to live, and I’m able to get my barrow back through the tunnel to the tipping place, that great dark mouth in the corner guzzling up yards and yards of slime, just as we guzzle up whatever pathetic trickle it is that life has for us. And then I turn around, and I go back.

Course, I’m looking up to see if one of the huge buttons has come unlatched from the wall. Look at him. I mean me, of course. It’s just that, while I’m outside of myself, looking back, I see another man, so it’s him, even though it’s me. Anyway, you can see from my posture that I’ve been at this a long screed of time, more than eight hours, maybe nine. And I do this every day. I’ve been doing it every day for, well, I’ve counted eight full moons, put it that way. When the door comes unlatched, you scramble up the wall, like I said, toes and fingertips clamped into the tiny grooves between the buttons. None of these cracks would ever hold your full weight, so you have to keep moving. Each one is a pivot, and you can only use the toeholds and fingerholds by moving your weight around them and past them. It’s a real upward scuttle, and after nine, sometimes ten hours of barrowing, it’s a true wonder that any human body can do such a thing, but the final reward, a bed and a meal in a dark, quiet room and time enough to sleep; these are everything after a long shift.

Nothing yet, though, so I’ve to go on barrowing. I’d joke that it could drive you mad, but let me tell you a story about a fellow barrower, no name of course, but he bore the code of X-967-T on his overall, and I suppose that he had the same characters in tattoo because I do, and god knows there’s nothing to separate me from anyone else in this pit other than how much suffering I can take before I go the same way as that poor bastard. Well, X-967-T came to me, one day, early enough in my shift, and I think the beginning of his. His eyes were gold with excitement, and he was saying “This is it. I’m going to get rich. I had a dream. I had a dream. I know the code. Come and watch.” I said to him, “967, don’t do it. I know what you’ve dreamed, and I know what’s up there. Don’t go up there. Don’t go.” But he was already too far gone. Riches and success had filled the vacuum where his ruined soul used to be, so I put down my barrow and watched him scale the wall, hugging himself tight to it, and forcing in this button and that on his way up the wall, zig-zagging upwards between them. I saw his code started square, padlock, wheel, duck’s foot, at symbol, but I lost track after that due to the foreshortening of the higher buttons and weakness of memory. He was just going up and up, yelling, “I’m going to be rich. You can be rich too, 512. Just do what I do! Watch this! I’m going to have a big car and a mansion.” When he was high enough up to look small up there, one of the buttons came unlatched, way up high where I’ve never seen anyone get a bed, so he yanked on it and pulled, and the door came swinging out with him on it. He clambers over the top of it, and looks in. “Oh, my god,” he says, “This is it. I’m rich!” Well, just as has happened before, it wasn’t a pile of money that tipped out, but a lot of white skinny legs with a great big mask of a face amidst it all, a huge skull-like face, and it grabs him and stuffs him into its mouth, and he screams, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it! I’m getting rich! Aaaarrghgh! I’m going to get a trophy wife! Aaaeeeeeeeee! And a private jet! Aaaaagghghh!” And that’s it. He can’t say anymore. The thing has eaten his head. Bits of 967 fall down and land on top of some of the other barrowers, hair and skin and blood, and they just brush it off and keep barrowing, and then someone says, “Happens at least once a moon, that does, stupid bastard,” and I’m not even sure if it’s me who spoke or someone else.

On Being Drunk

Water has a million voices.

It splashes, pours, patters, flushes,

Babbles, roars, makes other noises.

Sometimes it gurgles; sometimes it rushes.

And sometimes water's in my glass,

And when I put it to my lip,

I can smell its ocean mass,

And if I'm feeling brave, I sip.

And then the water's moving through me,

Trickling, foaming, bubbling, sloshing,

I am become a river valley,

The water passes through me, frothing.

But soon the water will be gone,

And I'll be here, my valley dry.

All because I must cling on,

With water simply passing by.

But if I could just let go,

And travel down toward the sea,

And mingle there with melted snow,

And leave the solid body-me,

I'd soon rise up, evaporate,

And then I would become a cloud,

I'd thunder, drift and cumulate.

Oh, how I wish it were allowed!

'Cos if I could, I'd next be rain.

I'd slash and torrent, precipitate,

I could make buses aquaplane,

The floods and landslides I'd create!

But all too soon, I'd be scooped up,

And channelled fast to someone's tub,

And wash some hair or get brewed up,

Make up juice in someone's pub.

And in a chair, I'd find myself,

Really not the worse for wear,

For having touched an ocean shelf,

How nice, in fact, to be bodily there.

Yes, maybe life is not so dire,

My mind and body aren't so numb.

It's not to be water that I aspire,

It's just that aqueous momentum!

The Thrill of the Case – Part Three

Read part one and part two of The Thrill of the Case.

'Any success with the upgrade?' he further enquired.

'Mmm. Tricky one that, but old Nik knocked it out the park with a juicy new data set. While she was devouring all that lovely new info, she didn't seem to mind having her brain slightly reorganised,’ said the silver mop, bouncing with enthusiasm.

'Ah, foxy old Nik!' approved Everarck.

'Foxy old Nik with the hilarious face, you mean?'

'Oh, forget that! I was just upset about dropping these stupid e-mails on the floor.'

'I'll take that as an apology. Anything else I can help you with, young man?'

'Not really.'

'Hmmm? Yes or no?'

'No, I mean yes. I mean – have you seen that ad in the paper, “Are you so sexy, it should be illegal?”’

‘Goodness me, no. What kind of newspaper is this? It sounds a bit … top shelfian.’

‘No, the free thing on the bus.’

‘Ah, the illustrious Free Gazette!’

‘That’s the one! There was an ad in it yesterday. I thought it was interesting.’

‘Mmhmm.’

‘The Court of Public Opinion. You can… you just have to ring them up and apply for a law and then they, I think they arrest you and you have to, you have to prove you’re innocent.’

Nik’s face had slowly appeared from behind the sickly coloured screens. Two green eyes scorched Everarck from within a mass of wrinkled liver pink.

‘What are you blithering about?’

Everarck’s free hand patted his shirt pocket pointlessly.

‘I haven’t got it with me,’ he complained.

‘You are referring to your sanity, I take it,’ said Nik, looking over his shoulder before swiftly disappearing behind his machinery.

‘Oh, I checked my sanity in with HR when I started this job.’

Nik coughed. Everarck turned to find the short but undeniable image of Surd Fleeting examining something on the far wall.

‘As a general point of interest, the lawyer is in the reception area and seems to be waiting to be served,’ said the director in soft but resonant tones.

‘Oh, right, okay!’ exclaimed Everarck, simultaneously trying to bustle through the door while also attempting to permit Surd passage through the narrow space at the doorway, one carefully contrived to keep visitors to a minimum.

‘A lawyer!’ thought Everarck toing and froing dancingly around Surd as the short, stout man strode through his choreography, ‘I’ll ask him about the Court of Public Opinion! He’s probably very busy, but he might be able to tell me something about it!’ and the unsummoned image of a slim, severe and infinitely patient man blossomed in his mind.

He breathed with relief as the unheard computer fans were cut off as the door shut. He looked up and saw a young woman in an unembellished black jacket and red lipstick. He saw her as a rose in a vase and, as one does not speak to roses, he was not immediately able to speak. She watched him with curiosity as he entered the reception area with as much of an air of diffidence as he could muster.

‘Would I be able to assist you, madam?’ he asked, noting with discomfort that the question was several levels more polite than the one he’d asked the woman with the curly mop of hair and the pink cardigan twenty minutes previously.

‘I hope that you would,’ she said with a smile, ‘Is Ms. Lemender present?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘This is it,’ he thought, ‘This is my moment to ask her. No lead-in required. She’s standing right there, and she’s smiling at me! All I have to do is say, “By the way” or “Incidentally” and I’m in! Committed!’

But at that moment he looked to his right and saw the monolithic form of Chariot Lemender descending the stairs with purpose.

‘She’s on her way,’ sighed Everarck and sat down at the desk.

Pushing both of the narrow double doors open, Chariot entered the reception area and the glow of her gaze fell upon the lawyer. The sound of the double doors slamming shut seemed to take place in another world.

The chief executive was indeed a towering woman in a severe grey skirt, thick framed glasses and a pearl necklace. Her look was intelligent, humorous leaning towards ironic, hungry. To Everarck, she was a lighthouse, the grey skirt the very rocks of which her beam-like gaze warned. But in this lighthouse were not merely a spiral staircase and bare brick walls, but a whole glistening library, organised in teak shelving. And so she summoned and warned off at once, stoked curiosity and dread.

‘Sobian! Thank you for coming!’ she declared as though speaking to a roomful of people, ‘How long have you been waiting?’

‘A minute,’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry. Mr., em, Fanger must have been busy. You have a lot of plates to spin, don’t you, Mr. Fanger?’

‘One or two,’ shrugged Everarck, immediately cursing himself for the implied dissent.

‘Don’t worry about signing in. Mr. Fanger will deal with that,’ said Chariot, standing to one side so that the lawyer was denied all moves but that of progressing into the field.

And then the event of the morning was walking away from him through the double doors and up the stairs, and Everarck was left wondering whether the initiative had been snatched from his fingers or whether he had allowed it to fall.

Read part 4 of The Thrill of the Case.

The Thrill of the Case – Part Two

Read part one of The Thrill of the Case.

At work the following day, Everarck sat in the horseshoe of the reception desk, doing such a marvellous impression of someone who was not the receptionist, perhaps a technician surveying the receptionist's equipment in their absence: phone, switchboard, computer, guestbook, pen, cash drawer, corporate agenda, complaint forms; that not one of the visitors found themselves able to approach him for help for eight and a half unbroken minutes.

However, even the white golf club baseball cap, incompetently Windsor-knotted tie and oblique, uncomfortable posture could not indefinitely suppress the idea that this small-framed man with squashed facial features might be able to perform the most basic tasks of a receptionist - with effort. And perhaps a little support.

To his credit, Everarck maintained the impression of not really being the receptionist but graciously prepared to stand in for them, fumbling with systems he knew intimately and lathering his instructions with mights and maybes, until the last of the visitors had disappeared into the labyrinth of the back offices or gone home.

At this point, Everarck wrote, 'Back in 5 mins. Pls wait or leave a msg' with a marker on a sheet of scrap paper, which he placed next to the guestbook, and left with a pile of emails which he had printed out according to corporate policy.

In truth, his pretence of not being the receptionist had some basis in fact. The company did not have a receptionist, and Everarck's job description specified little more than that he competently assist the director and put to rest a minimum of 40 hours per week on the premises. However, that the flexibility of Everarck's role and the official vacuum of services in the reception area provided him a permanent mooring point in the organisation had been so powerfully implied by the director, the stone-faced and permanently sleep-deprived Surd Fleeting, that Everarck had not had the will to resist. Few would have.

He took the meticulously compiled sheaf of papers towards the IT room and attempted to open the door with his two unoccupied fingers but succeeded only in opening the stiff door and spilling the papers directly from his guts in one great floe across the IT room's becabled floor.

'Well done, young man,' rumbled the only person there, a man whose thick hair in several shades of shining grey was the only part of him visible behind a variety of box-shaped machines the colour of rancid cream, 'That is by far the funniest thing to happen today.'

'Apart from looking at yourself in the mirror, Nik,' replied Everarck to Nichomachus, stooping to pick up the papers and slather them into a single jumbled pile.

'Don't be rude. You'll upset MARIA.'

Everarck knew that MARIA was how Nik identified the seemingly alert core of the interlocking databases that defined his professional sandbox.

'How is she today?'

'Temperamental,' replied Nik with a hollow laugh, 'She still hasn't forgiven me for my little holiday to Lake Solemn without her.'

Everarck was briefly caught up in the dream of a woman who would miss him when he was gone. But he was holding Zagonella to an impossible standard. He never went anywhere.

Read part 3 of The Thrill of the Case.

The Thrill of the Case – Part One

It had all begun, thought Everarck, with an advert in one of those newspapers circulated by bus seat. The advert had been entitled Court of Public Opinion and its text had read as follows.

Are you so sexy it should be illegal? Do others call you a criminal snob? Now you can take them to the Court of Public Opinion and prove them wrong – or right! Call us now on 0800-ARREST-ME to register the law you could be guilty of breaking.

It was as though someone had been following Everarck’s thoughts for the previous 24 hours and known that he would plant his eyes on that particular corner of the free paper. Only last night had Everarck been accused by Zagonella, his girlfriend of 12 years, of intellectual vanity.

‘You only read that book because you want people to think you’re clever,’ she’d said, referring to the copy of Writing and Difference at which he’d been staring, glassy eyed, for ten minutes.

‘I am clever,’ he’d snapped and turned a crisp page.

‘That’s not the point.’

And it was as she’d said the word ‘point’ that he’d felt he was falling all the way to the plosive ‘t’. He’d been silent for a moment, quietly turned the page back again and then rallied.

‘So you think I am clever?’

She’d rolled her eyes then and gone back to her book, which was pink. He detested pink and couldn’t believe she read it in public. It was even worse that she should find it more interesting than him. Nevertheless, he’d gone to sleep, and when he woke up, she was gone, and the bedroom was cold, and there was streaky condensation on the bedroom window, which was framed by nasty, cheap curtains that he hated.

If he’d had any sense, he thought, he’d have become a lawyer and be living in the Barbados for half the year by now. He imagined gazing down at the Pacific Ocean from the purple mountains of the Barbados, sighed, and went and ate some Flax Puffs with brown sugar.

And then he’d seen that advert on the bus, and it was like everything had come together. He’d thought about it all day, at least when he wasn’t wondering why Zagonella hadn’t texted him. In the evening, Zagonella still wasn’t home.

‘Double shifts at the hospital,’ he’d tutted, eaten some microwaveable macaroni cheese, carefully cut out the advert, sat on the toilet reading it several times, put his pyjamas on, sat on the bed, stared at the receiver of the phone as though it were a portal to pandemonium, read the blurb on the Derrida book and then, at thirteen minutes past six, called the number on the advert, rocking backwards and forwards with the book clamped between his knees until it clicked and the tone changed.

‘The Court of Public Opinion is waiting for your call between 8 AM and 6 PM, Monday to Saturday. Alternatively, leave a message and we’ll call you back.’

‘Hello, my name’s Everarck, Mister Everarck Fanger BSc (Hons). I’m calling because everyone says I think I’m smart, I mean my girlfriend says I want people to think I’m smart, but I’m not, I mean I don’t. I mean obviously it’s nice if someone recognises my efforts to be intelligent, but I don’t need that. I don’t know if you can help me. If not, don’t worry about it. But if you can, here’s my number.’

He'd given his number twice and hung up, put the advert in the Derrida book, watched some TV and gone to bed, waking briefly when Zagonella slipped into bed beside him at some unnameable hour of the night.

Read part 2 of The Thrill of the Case.

Three More Writing Prompts for Uneasy Fiction

Just a short post this week to give myself time to make progress with my manuscript, working title: Generic. I hope these will give you some ideas for weird or eerie fantasy fiction. Go ahead and write your response in the comments!

1. You awaken to find that your flesh has become translucent, and you can see your blood, bones and organs within yourself. Trapped in your stomach, you notice three small artefacts. What are they? What will occur as your body attempts to digest these strange artefacts?

2. Walking through a graveyard, you notice an open grave with a coffin inside, so you climb into the coffin and lie there. Passersby stop and stare silently. You find that, with a little concentration, you can hear their thoughts. What are they thinking? How long will you lie there?

3. While reading a strange book bequeathed to you by a relative you never met, you notice a peculiar smell. You get up and begin to trace the odour to its source. What will you find when you get there? Are the book and the odour connected and, if so, how?

See you again next week for more fiction or other ideas about writing!

Three Writing Prompts for Uneasy Fiction

Are you looking for inspiration for your next eerie short story? If so, I hope these odd writing prompts will get you started. By all means, share your ideas in the comments below. Alternatively, write your story in a dusty old notebook and then hide it in a deposit box in a hastily dug hole in the forest.

1. You dream of a besuited man in a desert looking away from you. No matter how you turn or call him, he is always facing away from you. What's going on? What does it mean?

2. As you leave your urban home, a pigeon shit lands on the concrete directly in front of you in a shape that reminds you of the happiest day of your life. What does it look like? What happens next?

3. As you are rummaging through the bins of your local park, looking for something to eat, you find a small metal box covered in strange runes. From within, a deafening silence emanates. What is it? What do you do with it?

Come back soon for more creepy writing prompts or one of my own short stories.