Dadaoism (An Anthology)

by Oliver, Reggie

  Voices again. In the passage, two or three of them it sounded like. He strained to catch their words past the clashing foreground of bunk-clunk, bunk-clunk and the barking dog. Were they talking about him? Bound to be. Everyone knew about him, how he never opened his blinds and his flat was a tip. She told them.

  Were they gonna hang about there? Overhead, her feet returned. Harper’s nerve wilted. He couldn’t do anything if they were there. In a few minutes she’d come downstairs, she’d walk along the passage and go by. She’d say to them hi, how you doing; then under her breath, keep it up, let’s make his life a misery. He can’t do a thing about it. Helplessness and rage swept through him like a wave of nausea.

  Bang, bang.

  They’d gone in, slamming their doors. They knew that the noise crashed into his head as if the doors were being slammed on his skull. No one in that place ever closed a door quietly. Slam, bang at all hours, in the afternoon when they knew he was asleep, in the evening in case he tried to get his head down at a normal hour. They wouldn’t even let him be normal, one of the herd. They had to have an outsider, someone to persecute.

  But they were off the scene. And overhead, there she went, clop, thud, clop, thud. She’d put on her high-heeled pixie-style ankle boots, her regular footwear for going out.

  Harper panted for breath. Any minute now. He took a quick look over his shoulder. There, in the middle of his one room, at the core of the hell they’d squeezed him into, there was placed the Throne of Retribution.

  He’d made it himself. It was a garden chair with a tubular steel frame and a seat and back of floral-patterned canvas. It now had seven or eight belts attached to its frame: at the waist, at the arms for elbows and wrists, at the front legs for ankles and knees. A hole was cut out of the seat, eight inches or so square. As he’d worked, as he’d turned this thing from a piece of garden furniture, anodyne and senseless—why was it there? He didn’t have a fucking garden—into something else entirely, its new name had come to him with a force that could only be divine. Retribution! He’d raised his hand and clenched a fist, and stared at it; it seemed to glow with strength and purpose, like a hammer of justice ready to smite. And now its time had come.

  She was on the stairs. Pixie boot heels struck concrete, driven down by the weight of fat legs in patterned tights. Harper opened his door a fraction. She appeared at the corner of the passage.

  Do you know how fucking ugly and ridiculous you are, you fat bitch? With your hair tied back from your fat ugly face with its granny specs, and your black dress and coat like a fucking goth? Fat fucking goth with a face like Eric Pickles in drag. You’ve got it coming—now.

  He staggered out into the passage, into her path. He was reeling, gasping as if suffocated, stumbling as if on the verge of collapse. It was hardly an act; a rush of adrenalin had turned him weak at the knees. She stared at him, looking alarmed; she hurried up, saying what’s the matter, are you having an attack, can I do something? What a practised hypocrite! She came close, they were together by his door.

  GOT YOU!

  He was as strong as Hercules. Her weight was nothing in his hands. He threw her into the flat and slammed the door behind him. The noise was like thunder, but no fucker who heard it would care.

  She stared at him in terror now, with the fear of an evil-doer who saw that her game was up. He pointed past her, to the Throne. She dropped into it. He pointed to the waist straps; she stared, but understood that she had to buckle them together tight around her. He pointed to the straps on the right arm. No need for words. His raised arm and pointing finger were loaded with command, with power and righteousness; they seemed to move with a trailing light of cosmic force.

  He seized a roll of tape—or as it should henceforth be known, the Band that Suppresses All Slander. Without troubling yet to secure her left arm, he swooped on her, pulling a yard of tape off the Band; he wound it round and round her chin, burying her fat ugly mouth in adhesive and ribbed vinyl. Her eyes bulged, her skin turned crimson above the barrier of tape. She grunted and squealed. Even that much, he wouldn’t permit. It was time for the Helmet of Mufflement.

  He’d made it from an Amazon delivery box, square in shape and just a little too large to fit neatly on a human head. To pad the space and make it soundproof he’d lined it with pieces of foam rubber, cut from the cushions of his sofa and glued to the helmet’s inner walls. It was snug now, indeed it took some effort to push down. Creases appeared in its outer surface, and he tamped it finally into place with a hard slap to the crown. Then it was done: the fat bitch was helmeted to the shoulders, blinded and deafened. She struggled, the upside-down words amazon.co.uk tilted and rocked, but to no avail. She clawed the air with her free hand. He caught it and strapped it down, then dropped to his knees; he took a few kicks, but her legs were soon strapped to those of the Throne. That done, he did not rise. For there was one more restraint to apply, the most just and vengeful of all.

  He crouched low behind the Throne’s seat, and looked up at the cut-away. Its aperture was filled now with her crumpled skirt and the flesh of her buttocks protruding past its edges. In his hand was a Stanley knife. He seized the skirt and pulled it down, hacking away at the cotton polyester cloth, until he had fully exposed the tight white expanse of her voluminous knickers. In those he made a slit, neatly down the middle, using just a fraction of Stanley’s little blade. Now he had access to the part of her that had most mocked him.

  The farting. That was what had finally done it, that’s what drove him to desperation: when she started farting on purpose to torment him.

  Nobody could be doing it by accident. She controlled her guts, she listened to his movements below. She did it when he was eating, when after hours of self-neglectful fasting sheer hunger made food a pleasure briefly revived, she did it as he swallowed his first mouthful. She did it when he was quiet but not asleep, when his thoughts might be wandering in the relief of a daydream. Come back here, you! She pummelled the water pipes, she egged her sycophants on to do likewise. She told them when to murmur and snigger through his walls, she told them exactly what to say. And then, she farted. Her farts were not loud, but they were malignant. He could see her standing up, swivelling her two-foot wide hips to make a noise like the sputtering of some dirty little petrol engine as it tried to ignite. Or sitting down, shifting slightly and emitting what might have been the squeal of a mouse or a hamster crushed under her arse.

  She’d set out to torture him beyond endurance. She thought she could drive him to suicide. When he kicked the chair away from under him, she’d hear it up there, and know. She’d let fly with a stinking trump, to see him off as he fell out of this world.

  Well, that wouldn’t happen. Not now that he was crouched beneath her with his Anti-Vileness Plug.

  It had taken some thought how to create the object he needed. In the end he’d bought a small cylinder of masonry putty, sealed in plastic. One end he moulded into the shape of a bullet, through the other he pierced a hole. It had set rock hard in a couple of hours. Now he forced its business end upwards between her cheeks. Secured as she was, she reared her body and almost lifted the Throne, but she couldn’t do a thing. When the Plug was rammed firmly, dryly into place, the ends of a cord hung from her, run through the hole at its base; Harper tied them right and left to the Throne’s frame, removing any possibility that it could be expelled.

  He stood up. Once again, he could barely keep his feet. But there was no fear now, no tension, no struggle. His enemies were defeated. At his window spring morning sunshine seemed to glow, undimmed by the blind; the whole room was alight and shining. He made his way over to the sofa and fell into its cushionless embrace. He lay there with his eyes on the sunlit ceiling. The grotesque figure a few feet away was almost forgotten. The plumbing worked smoothly; no more bunk-clunk. The neighbours’ voices were gone; leaderless, their tongues were still. Even the dog had stopped barking and was at peace. He heard only a swell of singing in his ears, the circulation of his
own blood; then that faded, too, and all he knew was blessed silence.

  Romance, with Mice

  Sonia Orin Lyris

  The story goes like this: this woman named Kathryn meets this older man. He’s sensitive, insightful, and listens to her when she talks in a way that feels like intimacy of a sort she’s never known. They grow close quickly, very quickly, and within weeks she finds that she’s falling for him.

  But he keeps her at arm’s length emotionally, never really letting her in the door of his heart, despite the clear connection they have that blazes like a meteorite across both their skies.

  She learns a lot about him as they talk, getting together nearly every day, both from the things he says and the things he doesn’t, but there’s plenty about his past that he won’t reveal.

  Is he vulnerable? He is, but it’s that kind of vulnerability that never comes all the way inside, that’s close enough that you can hear it breathing, but which stands just outside the door and won’t come in.

  They’re sitting in the park here, today, side by side, but not touching. They’ve barely touched in all these days that feel like years—a stroke across the fingers, a touch on the shoulder, but nothing more. It’s only been a few weeks, after all, but that’s not it.

  She says, “Look, you must know how I feel about you, Marcus. Yes?”

  He nods slowly, not meeting her eyes, but they might as well be naked in each other’s arms, the way it feels to be together, just how it feels.

  “So—” she says, haltingly. “I love you. You know that, right?”

  He nods again.

  “I want to know—I do, and it’s okay if you don’t love me back, I mean—”

  “Stop,” he says. “Don’t do that. You know it isn’t that. Love is—it’s a word, it’s just a word, but what’s between us—” And now he does turn to face her, to meet her eyes, and the electricity is so intense while she’s looking into his big blues that the world could vanish around her and she wouldn’t notice.

  “Yes,” he goes on. “I love you and all that. And more. But.”

  “But what? Tell me.” She’s surprised at the force of her own words.

  He looks away. He reaches out and takes her hand. He puts it on his knee and strokes the fingers. Lines of fire, it feels like, that go through her arms and into her heart and stomach. And groin.

  And then, after a moment, slowly, he nods.

  Now, see, I’m the author here, and I know a bit about what’s going to happen next. Do you feel it, the tension? The draw toward the end of the story? Is it beautiful? I know, I know, you want me out of the way so you can get on with the story.

  But not so fast. Now that I have your attention, I want to explore a bit.

  See I wrote this other story once, about a guy who paints. He’s not well in the head, this guy, but he’s reasonably good at the art stuff, and so he’s sold some of his admittedly strange paintings, which, alas, encouraged him to quit his day job, to think of himself as an artist, and go through life looking at things slightly askew, in an artistic way.

  The problem with thinking of yourself as a something is that you can get stuck there. Do you think of yourself as a reader? Is this story my story, or is it really yours?

  This guy paints with mice. I know that sounds gross, but it’s not. Or, rather, I don’t think it is. The truth is, I wasn’t sure if he was using the mice to inspire his painting or somehow using their bodily fluids to make color. That was me being afraid to step into the story. I was younger then, that’s my only excuse.

  I’m older now, mature and everything, and I’m willing to go there with you. Step into the story, no holding back. You with me?

  Okay, let’s go.

  The guy didn’t use the mice to paint with, literally, as we might have feared, you and I. He didn’t take each mouse and smear it across the canvas. He didn’t cut it up and use its blood to season his paints, either. He held the mouse, gently cupped in both hands, felt it quiver with fear (that’s what mice do when they’re not eating, pooping, or fucking: they tremble with fear) and he let that fear take him over, make him feel vulnerable and open.

  It was only then, when he’d stripped away his own protection, that the world seemed immediate, vivid, alive, and he could let the art take him over. Color and shape made sense to him then. It was like seeing.

  So why did he keep running out of mice, you wonder. They escaped into the walls, is why. Passion would take him over, he’d start in with the paints and the canvas and he’d forget all about the little rodent, which would take the opportunity to flee into the walls. (That’s most of what they do, mice, when they have a chance: flee into the walls.) Gone, gone, gone. That’s why he ran out of mice.

  But for that moment when he held the little trembling life in his hands, for that moment when he opened himself up to the most intense vulnerability that he could touch, for that moment he heard the music of the universe and it came through his paintbrush.

  There. Now I’ve finished that story. Thank you for joining me.

  So the woman is sitting on that park bench alone, thinking about Marcus and what he hasn’t yet told her. The last time they sat on this bench together he said, in so many words, yes, I will tell you what the hell is going on. She’s been going nuts in the day since then, wondering what it could possibly be.

  Something in his past, maybe. PTSD? She thinks he was a war vet who saw action, something about how he talks about the world, something about the way he responds to loud noises. Maybe Vietnam, even, he’s old enough. Or maybe there’s something else, something really dark. At this point, despite only having known each other a few weeks, she’s sure he knows her better than anyone ever has.

  What if he’s right, and she can’t really handle it, whatever it is?

  Of course, he never said she couldn’t handle it. He only said he’d tell her.

  He’s always been sweet, really kind, really generous with his heart. Open in all the ways that count, except the ones that she wants most, the places she most wants to go with him. Which is, of course, not just physical. Meta-physical. This feels like the most amazing love she’s ever felt or wanted. She doesn’t care how old he is, or what he’s got that he doesn’t want to tell her about.

  Maybe it’s cancer or an STD. Does she care, though, when the connection between them is this incredible? She wants to go all the way, and if there’s a cost—well. She wants to know what it is. To have the option to pay.

  That’s what it is, she decides. It’s a transaction. There’s a cost, there’s the possibility of amazing and epic love and passion, and there’s this guy who for some reason isn’t sure he should tell her the cost.

  She looks at the clock across the street from the park where she’s sitting and shakes her head. It’s still wrong, after all these years. Her phone tells her he’ll be here in five minutes, so she takes a deep breath and rehearses what she’s going to say, that while maybe he’s right, that she might not want to pay the cost, doesn’t she have a right to know what it is and decide for herself?

  “Here’s the thing,” he says, as he sits down next to her. It’s the first thing he says, he hasn’t even said hello, and he goes on speaking, dragging her along with him. “You don’t know what I know, and, once you know it, things can’t be the same between us.” He spears her with his gaze, blue eyes freezing her with something well beyond lust.

  “Hi,” she exhales softly.

  “Once I tell you, it’ll be over between us. If I don’t tell you, then... well. We have this.” He gestures and she knows what he means. “At least for a bit, and maybe... more.” At that he smiles a bit, and it’s a young smile, vulnerable, and oh so sweet. She wants to kiss him more than she can remember ever wanting anything.

  Hey, reader. Can you smell the end of this story? Do you feel it coming, how it might end?

  How do you want it go?

  “No,” she says. “I don’t want to lose you. I love you.”

  “I know.”

/>   “You’re saying that I can’t have you.”

  He nods, but he says, “You can, but not the way you want me.”

  “That’s fucked up. I don’t know what you could tell me that would make me—” But she’s a smart woman, and she can, pretty quickly, think of a few things that he could tell her that could change things between them that quickly, that drastically.

  He’s looking at her now, with that look that she can feel.

  “Oh God,” she says. She’s trembling. He takes her hand and exhales slowly.

  “Look, Kate,” he says. “I’m really sorry. I know that’s not much. I didn’t realize it would go this way. I thought I was doing us both a favor by coming. I thought—” he looks away at the trees, the sky. “I thought I could make things better. I didn’t expect to fall for you, though I don’t know how I could have been so... incredibly stupid.”

  “I—”

  “What the hell am I doing? I can’t stay here,” he says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I kept meaning to tell you. I can’t stay. But—” he gestures again, taking in the world around them, the world between them. “I didn’t want to. I just meant to talk to you a bit and then go and—”

  She’s suddenly sure that this is the inflection point, right here, the moment after which it’s all gone, and she decides that she’s not going to let it go by without a fight. She throws all cautions to the winds, and grabs him by the shoulders and launches herself at him, kissing him.

  It’s like all the lights in the world turning on—or turning off. It’s everything a kiss should be, could be, might be, and ever was. It’s the essence of kiss. It’s fucking magic.

  The kiss goes on for a while as they both do this thing they have loudly and passionately not been saying or doing these last three weeks. When at last they come up for breath he has a stunned, scared look about him.