Short Fiction
Issue #1
Two Stories
A slug-induced version of life
I was walking home at 7.42a.m. in a justifiably, self-indulgently (narcissistically) miserable sort of mindset, following a painful encounter with an incompatible love, my lower right cheek damp with the remnants of a hesitating, yet desired, yet hideously unhealthy stolen kiss and my hair tangled with the tortuous scent of his poison, drugging me, making me comfortably numb when I saw that most repugnant of monstrosities which grace this planets crust, a fat, long, orange slug. You know the type; oozing, gelatinous, slowly consuming through some disgusting process the miscellany of some student’s/scutter’s leftover scran on the way home from a heavy night on the piss(1), well, I, feeling so twitter and bisted about the world and it’s emotional cruelties actually contemplated putting this creature out of it’s oozing, miserable existence when the sun broke through the clouds on that grey September morning and shone upon his glistening surface, upon his trail of mucous waste which took on an other-worldly and iridescent quality and in short, I had an epiphany. The realisation dawned on me, like the sun dawned upon this ugly little creature(2),(3), that he wasn’t so ugly after all, and it had only been my biased perception of him(4), my judgement on his greyish and orange colour (not the best combo, these slugs must have been invented in accordance with the design ideas of the seventies) and actually, unlike me, he was fulfilling his debt to the collective society of earth by making a difference. His life’s work was to consume the crap we and other creatures left in his way and through the power of his digestive system, convert it into his own work of art…the trail of slimy shit which is terribly difficult to remove from carpets in your second, third and fourth years, when there is a strangely large and disconcerting amount of slugs to be found breaking into your home in search of…I’m not sure, but it is thought possibly food/warmth/an insane all night slug only rave fuelled by some kind of pills. I have always perceived slugs and snails and possibly puppy dogs tails as a pestilence on my delicate sensibility of nature, and yet, they do some good, not leaving the world as they find it but changing, making a difference, comparable to some political party perhaps in its own small way. Are we not ourselves a pestilence on our own planet? Do we not ourselves pollute and destroy things that we happen to chance upon in the great pavement of existence? Is there not beauty to be found in everything? I recall a tale of similar proportions of a Grandmother who was wonderfully and eccentrically fond of snails after sitting in her garden one afternoon, I believe, and seeing the sun beat down on their shells, creating a certain artistic play of the neutral tones of brown and honey, burnt umber and grey with the light(5). Made her think twice about that embarrassing crunch we sometimes stumble upon whilst walking home in the dark or putting out the milk bottles barefoot. I remember the unfulfilled beauty of a dirty puddle in Wellingtons; contemplate that cold and filthy collection of rain and its entire world of bacterium instantly destroyed with the effervescent impulse of a five year old. I should like to advise those with dictatorial longings to lower their goals a little, and settle on destroying the ‘world’ of a puddle…surely the head count in there is enough to satisfy anyone’s blood lust? However, it also occurred to me, in some men-in-black rip-off stylee that perhaps, after all, as the scourge of out planet, we may be somebody else’s cold and dirty puddle, ready to be splashed upon some unsuspecting pedestrian by a particularly sadistic motorist. I arrived home, my final destination, at 8.00a.m., just as the alarm which was supposed to wake me up went off.
(1) Miscellany may include : cold, now reformed – cheese pizza, possibly with extract of some other bottom feeding creature gracing it’s surface – damn cannibalistic slugs –; chips with aforementioned re-shaped plastic cheese; the leftovers of that Balti King meal you thought would be firstly a good idea to eat and secondly a great idea to take home, which you promptly dropped and regurgitated all over the street; filthy kebab – may also contain rat/small dog/pigeon/a small goat-like creature not actually of the genus ‘goat’ etc., etc;
(2) or should I say invertebrate?
(3) And may I point out, did you see that almost embarrassing parallel metaphwoar there?
(4) Apologies to feminists, though wommon myself I am in fact the victim of patriarchal conditioning.
(5) Cited on a skiing trip Easter 2005, sourced by Pete Dodd.
Bath
When I am come to my natural place, the world changes. I change, I must, needs enforce me to adapt, if temporarily. I must remove my tools of the Outside before I can come Home. That which helps others to See me and those which help me to see must be removed, they must be absent, or I cannot function so well. I am not well received if I am cloaked in that which the Outside Needs. I cannot be cloaked in the correct way for that habitat. When I am prepared I may lay back, surrounded by mountains made from clouds and cloaked in warm honey. I lift my arms up into the air and I revel that the sky can change to letters and pages. So descriptive. I am true to myself here. There are no lies in this utopia. I become the ultimate, I become the goddess. The temperature here is always warm and safe, like the amniotic sac I cannot remember, I assume so. With my eyes closed and my ears surrounded it is how I can imagine…I see red, I hear distant mumbling, I am warm, I cannot breathe. I hear my heart beat. For momentarily I am consciously unconscious. My body becomes the earth, my surroundings the universe. I am pink, I am red, I am purple, I am white, I am peach, I am Ivory. I am soft and supple, I am covered in hair. I fill my space and I am unashamed, I gaze down at myself as I spread out, softening in the warmth. My smile spreads like the areola. My bones glisten in the light of the room. I roll over again and I am the leviathan, I am the mermaid, my hair like weed drifting gently in a submarine breeze. My breasts float. My skin becomes slick until it is out of the water too long, above the mountains. A sweet breeze tickles me and inspires me to become the mountain, the tallest mountain in the world; I can do this. I stand tall and shower the Noah’s world beneath, scattering raindrops and teardrops at the beauty of my own recreation. Now my hair cascades and drowns my face, until I force it to fly backwards and My Eyes, They Can See Again! My bones glisten in the light of the room. I am the dominant species, I decide to begin logging in the hot and damp rainforests of mother earth, and soon she is as smooth as the sky. I imagine the bacterium present here fleeing from my merciless destruction of their habitat and I am unremorseful. I need elephants to help with the clearance it is so overgrown. I am so overgrown. I pollute the sea with my secretions. I must tidy this world up. My nails are clean and I am becoming dormant. I am wrinkling up like the old woman I will one day become. I cannot see far outside of this universe. My seeing implements are useless here, overcome with trivialities of the atmosphere. I am become tired with this place. I must pull the plug.