The House of Writers

by M. J. Nicholls

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?” he said in an unbothered manner.

  “Do you care about ScotCall?”

  “Is this a trick question?” His voice was more refined than I was expecting from whatever pomparse perception I had of the average bus driver.

  “No. I want to kill the operative in the WC. Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You won’t report me?”

  “Nah. Couldn’t care less.”

  “You know there’s rumours of some kind of commune near the sea? We could take the bus there.”

  “Sounds good. Although.”

  “Although?”

  “We couldn’t take the bus. We’d have to walk. Microchips.”

  “Ah.”

  “And chances are if we walked along the road another bus would pick us up.”

  “What if I drove the bus to the edge of its route and walked along the road where there are no ScotCall buses?”

  “I like it. Let me stop here and I’ll kill that chump in the loo.”

  “You will? Oh ... all right.”

  Rob (driver) parked the bus once we heard the toilet flush. He dispatched with the operative in a manner I won’t describe since to do so might stir up inadvertent sympathy for the corpse—this would be irrelevant and insulting to me and all those like me who strive for “freedom.” (In scare quotes since I doubt the concept exists outside the realm of myth). Rob drove the bus for two miles and parked approximately two hours’ walking distance from the hamlet of Arxle where outcast pensioners had set up ScotCall at-home kits to enable their promising futures as operatives from the comfort of their own granite bungalows, free from the persecution of Kirstys, with only the sound of a loud klaxon to discipline them whenever post-lunch sleep beckoned or their hearts stopped. Those unfortunate enough to speak to one of these promising operatives ended up trapped in exchanges such as:

  “Hello?”

  “What?”

  “Is this ScotCall?”

  “What?”

  “I need help sexing an asparagus.”

  “I need what?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Who is this?”

  “I need help sexing an asparagus.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “Sorry?”

  “What’s there? Is that there?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Swallow what?”

  “No, I—”

  “I’m 101 years old,you cunt.”

  “Oh, um . . .”

  “What?!”

  “Can we start again?”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “My asparagus.”

  “Your ass is what?”

  “No, my asparagus.”

  “What is your point?”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “Then why?”

  “Um . . .”

  “D’you know I’m 101,you mook?”

  “Yes, you said.”

  “Good.”

  “So, can you help?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Sorry. Should I call back later?”

  “Date her? Date who?”

  “No, I—”

  “I can’t date you, I’m 101 years old.”

  “I didn’t want a date.”

  “Then why’d you call?”

  “Because . . .”

  “Exactly. If you don’t want a date, don’t waste my time.”

  “Hello? Hello?”

  We approached the dour slagheap of Arxle. The surrounding fields had been paved over long ago and still-present sheep competed for nibbles on the troughs of grass-substitute made from starch and wet paper. After their lunchtime snacks, the bored sheep tried grazing on the grass troughs or lay sprawled on the ever-warm concrete, blinking into the distance. Artificial bushes dotted the landscape and the sheep champed their bits on the leaves to exercise their champing muscles, despite the impossibility of digestion. I buddied up to Rob as we walked. He had worked as an IT repairman before the meltdown and went into hiding during the witch-hunts of ’39, when bankrupt businessmen went on Revenge Rampages, shooting web designers, content writers, repairmen— all those in the IT industry, including people who sold monitor sprays and mouse-buffing shiners. I had the slight inclination to tweak his nipples myself, having lost thousands in the meltdown, but his sprightliness and enthusiasm for our “freedom” kept me in check. So I decided not to beat the ever-living shit out of him in the end.

  Arxle was a post-nuclear pit for pensioners with no sons, daughters, or tender-souled relatives willing to adopt them into the Scot-Call compound with its “perks.” We skulked past their granite shacks as the incoherent sods poured senile slaverings into their phones and their co-incoherent customers begged for the correct reference number for poultry, or the fastest method of annexing a pineapple, or how to buff a never-buffed surfboard, or tips on how to memorise smells. We smiled at their wrinkly sneers of provincial contempt and waved to their windows, making big-kisses-and-hugs gestures. These were people who craved the barrenness of isolation and exacted their revenge via their phones, communing only with their neighbours to borrow a cup or acid or a pint of plutonium. I was well beyond feeling sorry for anyone.

  The Farewell, Author! Conference

  3

  IAN Rankin entered. “Between you and me, I’m secretly pleased about the end of those publishers. I have been creating vital work in the crime field for decades, work on a par with Dickens, Zola, and Dostoevsky for its brutal exposé of the urban underworld, and people have panned me as a hack. Because I sold. Because I packed used bookshops to bursting with old Rebuses and kept charity shops alive. I should have been fucking worshipped. I was the Scottish economy, and those highbrow bastards refused me their Bookers, Oranges, James Taits, Lannans, all because I wrote about hard-drinking mavericks who solved murders. Because I had a mansion. Let me tell you, if people think rich men can’t pen book after book of classic fiction, they are living in a loony soap opera. I set my ninety-fourth Rebus, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, in the seedy enclave of Cramond where twelve bodies had been found along the beach. Rebus was working through the twelve steps for the twelfth time (see that symmetry, motherfuckers?) and had one last chance to prove himself to the Lothian PD. The reviews were excrement. ‘Rankin continues to ring the last desperate drop from his neverending cash sponge with this tiresome crime procedural where the body count is high and the entertainment value is low.’ Cash sponge?! Call that book reviewing? Hacks are failed novelists. My ninety-fifth Rebus, Got Live If You Want It!, I set in the murky cluster of Blackford, where an opera singer had been found cut open outside a newsagents, and Rebus had to overcome his instinctive working-class loathing of opera to solve the case. More predictable reviews. ‘Rankin continues writing his novels via an algorithm used in Windows 98 with expected hilarious results.’ Hilarious results?! I have a comedic touch sometimes, I can make sides split if I want to. I prefer the fucking truth to making tourists snigger in airports. Pardon me for having loftier ambitions. My ninety-sixth Rebus, Jamming with Edward!, I set in the slimy borough of Holyrood, where a politician had been accused of killing a teenage backpacker. The twist of that fucking masterpiece was there was no murder: the first Rebus without a murder. The fans went nuts. I wrote another nine murderless Rebi after that, including one where no one is accused of anything and the book is long descriptions of Rebus rolling around in bed with one of his lovers, failing to make a cup of tea because he’d never done that before, walking to the newsagent to pick up The Sun and teasing his lover with the tits on page three, shouting abuse at the misfit dolts on ITV talk shows, ordering a Chinese takeout at four in the afternoon, refusing to pick up for the Detective Inspector despite hints of an impending case, and hitting the pubs for a cheeky half-pint or twelve (that number again, mofos). Hacks hated these, except one who wrote: ‘Rankin revitalises his franchise with this superb subversion of the novel that owes more
to Oblomov than The Big Sleep.’ I have no idea what that means, but at least one hack spoke sense for a change,” Ian said while on the pavement, walking in the door, and storming around the supermarket. “Hi Ian,” I said. In the same vein, an enraged Jodi Picoult arrived. “I wrote #1 New York Times bestsellers, in case you weren’t aware (sometimes the font displaying this fact was only in 14pt on the covers). I wrote about families. People were envious of me because I dared to tackle emotions head-on. I wrote about families in the midst of tragedies. Lost or dead twins, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, there was no familial tragedy that remained unexplored by me, in one of my many very emotionally charged (readers say my books are better than therapy, they teach people how to love again) and long novels. Snobs and unfeeling dweebs were envious that I had the brass neck to tackle families using the sentiment at the root of human experience, as opposed to their obfuscating literary nonsense, hiding emotions in thickets of unreadable verbiage. If a person feels their fucking heart breaking then you fucking write, ‘Jane’s heart was fucking breaking,’ except you don’t use the swears, they reduce the readership! Be universal. Write about ruptured families all the time, that’s what I say, there’s no other topic that will place you on the New York Times bestseller list, except maybe child abuse, but I already have that covered in my ten-book Leave Her Alone series, so bad luck, suckers!” Jodi said as she drank all the cola and ate the three remaining chocolates. “I wrote a novel once, The Heartsplitters—left the entire University of Pennsylvania in tears. There was this scene with the two sisters, Jane and Julie. Julie had shagged Jane’s boyfriend and accidentally set his house on fire, killing him and his entire family. Julie was pissed at Jane for three decades until a chance encounter at a skiing lodge in Aviemore, Scotland when Julie had the chance to save her sister and her entire family from a ski-related death (do you notice my clever callback there, you literary lords and ladies?), and afterwards the sisters reconciled. ‘I cannot believe we remained silent for so long,’ Julie said with actual tears in her eyes (you hear that, obfuscators?), and the two hugged with tears streaming down their faces, tears that melted the entire ski lodge. The university was soaked after that reading! Flooded like the ski lodge. How’s that for creative mirroring!” Jodi had addressed this last section to the rustle in a bag of sweetcorn.

  I opened the wrong door

  IOPENED the wrong door. I was seeking a mop to absorb a spillage made on the beige shag in our office (steampunk dept.), assuming the mop to be located in a cupboard in the stairwell. This proved incorrect. I stepped into a corridor where a sequence of doors stretched long into the horizon, each named after a literary technique or particular quirk of language. I tapped on a door marked “Parataxis” and a hurried man answered.

  “There! ... Enter please ... so much to do ... bees aren’t as busy as me ... have you seen Nancy’s necklace ... around here somewhere ... how can I help you? ... I suppose you’d like tea and a nibble ... never like her to refuse a nibble ... must locate that ... take a seat please ... sturdy base those seats ... I—”

  “Have you a mop?”

  “Have a mop? ... the sort for mopping up? ... how about a chocolate digestive ... or we have crackers ... no tea in the cupboards ... where’s that damn necklace ... I used to mop up in here ... when she was ... well never mind ... I can wax nostalgic later ... better crack on with this tax return ... oh where are those manners, Aidan? ... I apologise, I never have visitors ... take a seat please ... sturdy—”

  “Never mind. I’ll ask elsewhere. Thanks.”

  I suspected that a mop was not in wait behind a single of these doors. I continued regardless, as the steampunk novel I was writing was losing momentum and would need a complete rewrite, and returning to the desk was to snack on a bitter panini of personal failure. I tapped on “Semantic Syllepsis”:

  “Hello! Let me have your coat and your ear, if I may. Enter.”

  “I’m looking for a mop.”

  “Ah! A wise man once told me never take a man’s mop or his wife. This is a maxim I enforce!”

  “So no mop?”

  “No wives either! Gillian long ago made her bed and her exit— and now I must lie in it! Her bed, I mean, not her exit.”

  “You talk weird.”

  “It’s a burden I must shoulder and carry ... that one doesn’t work. It’s a cross I must bear and wear ... around my neck . . as in Jesus ... I need some coffee here! Otherwise I will be taking my hat and my leave!”

  “Don’t pinch from Dickens.”

  “I offer my apologies and my biscuits. Care for a triple-choc cookie? You will find them in that drawer and in my mouth.”

  “Enough!”

  I took my leave (and nothing else). I popped into various cupboards after, including “Anaphora”—“You are seeking the mop of our time. You are seeking an idea not a cleaning implement. You are seeking a peg on which to hang the future. You are seeking a mop inside an idea inside the future that is ours.”—and to “Tautophrase”—“To find that mop, you have to find that mop. A mop is a mop is a mop.”—and to “Bdelygmia”—“You mop-loving bleach-sniffing dirt-licking bacteria-seeking filth-coveting cleanliness-obsessed sparkle-skinned shine-suited backstair-scrubber!”—and to “Hypophora”—“Is your mop in this room? No, your mop is not in this room.”—and to “Solecism”—“You is looking for a mop? There aren’t no mops in this room.”—to “Epistrophe”—“The mop you are seeking no longer exists, the same as hope no longer exists, empathy no longer exists, and love itself simply no longer exists.”—to “Dysphemistic Euphemism”—“Hello mophead, s’up?” to “Antimetabole”—“The mop is love, love is the mop.”—and then I left.

  This

  4

  PROWLING around The House scouting for material has forced me into making difficult decisions as to which observations to include in narrative form in this novel and which to omit. The House is an infinite repository for stories, mostly horror ones involving writers being tortured in manifold creative ways, and up until this point, I am the only person to attempt to document some of the rottennesses that take place in this building. Some writers have tried bribing me into mentioning them and their works and want to be written into the pantheon of Future Greats if succeeding generations take up literacy; however, I decided not to take backhanders and kept to a flat rate for placing promotional ads in this novel’s interstices. One technique I find successful for removing the otherwise time-consuming and page-hogging business of setting up scenes, working and reworking descriptions, is the précis, the capsule summary of a story that in another’s hands might take several pages to spin. Words are extravagantly wasted in this place, thoughtlessly shat onto the page, innocent nouns and verbs are used and reused blithely, pounded into misshapen sentences until they emerge bloody and incomprehensible. As I walk down the corridors, I hear paragraphs moaning and pages in states of extreme distress. I encounter sentences cowering in corners, bleeding clichés, their syntax broken and irreparable. Before I sat down to write this section, I saw a wounded description crawling towards the incinerator, terminally disgusted by its hackneyed properties and desperate to snuff itself, and I attempted to ail its ache by dropping in some stylish words, but the thing was beyond repair. I deleted the hopeless line, venturing onward into my scouting journey, where I made note of the following observations, précised below in the equally useful list form: a daisy-chain of moths stretched along three overhead lights; a sabre-toothed tiger in platforms dancing to Saturday Night Fever; a pattern of carpet beetles spelling out “Mathematics is the one true artform”; C.B. Hickson perched on the edge of a pancake in deep contemplation; a shaft of moonlight peering into a woman’s underwear drawer; a Morrissey impersonator too miserable to sing a note; a plate of chips served with concrete and mortar; C.A. Drayson writing a novel while asleep; the entire alphabet flagellating itself; a tap dripping into a basin with the volume of an airplane crashing into a canyon; an infant prodigy recreating, line for line, Borges�
�� “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”; the sixteenth floor temporarily developing wings and travelling to Mars; Red the Fiend biting the shins of Harlequin Romance novelists; a mutation of thrushes driving a Ford Sierra and parking in reception; Russell Hoban resurrected for several minutes to say, “Here’s the wine!”; the longest farewell ever recorded at over two years and nine months; a plate of goulash sprouting horns and cursing the Creator; a wax model of Christina Rossetti winking at me; an opaline rendering of Paul Gauguin exposing himself to nuns; the smoking entrails of Arthur Rimbaud cursing his navel; and a donkey meditatively urinating on a picture of my stepfather. These may sound surreal and improbable, but remember, earlier I made the promise that nothing whatsoever in this novel reflects the absolute or approximate truth.

  The Trauma Rooms

  4

  OUR next case: Hattie. She is a former photographer. Brace yourself for her expression.”

  “Expression?”

  The doctor introduced a woman with a fixed rictus—the look of a clown whose children were to be shot if no one in the audience tittered—who bounded up to Erin with a frightening: “Pleased to meet you!” Sensing Erin’s terror, she added: “Don’t be scared! The trauma I suffered left me looking this way!” Her rictus forced an exclamation point and upward inflection on each utterance. Erin nodded.

  “Now, Hattie. If you’d care to tell Erin what happened to you?”

  “Why, who is she!?”

  “A curious visitor. Do you mind telling her?”

  “No! Here’s my story, Erin! I began volunteering part-time for the Bretton Agency upon leaving college, and after a successful trial run, I was hired to take author photos to appear on book covers! First in the door, from Birmingham, Alabama, Anthony Vacca! Vacca’s debut novel, Waves of Putridity, had been praised from pillow to postbox, and Vacca had been hailed the heir to Will Self and Harry Crews! At that time, Vacca sported a side-parting and semi-quiff and spent hours practising the perfect ‘menacing’ expression to appear bad-ass and dark on his inside flap! We settled on the image of him unshaven scowling into the camera, exploiting the mystique around his intense eyes, and the handsome cheekbones! A week later, Vacca had changed his mind and wanted to use the image with his chin perched on his knuckle, half-smiling in an impish way, with the same intense mystique in the eyes! When the hardcover was released, Vacca was furious that the picture had been compressed for the back flap, claiming that his face could not flourish at such a measly ratio, demanding the novel be pulled from the shelves so the publisher could print a larger image to cover the back page! The publisher refused and Vacca threw a public tantrum, increasing his media profile! For his next novel, I took over three hundred shots, several topless and holding strange objects (an apple, a ukulele, an iguana), and Vacca was not pleased with a single one! He brought in a ‘monitor’ to comment on the manner in which I took the photographs—this ‘monitor’ made insulting remarks about my inadequate lighting and low-grade lens, sniggering with Vacca at the ‘low calibre’ of my work—before firing me, hiring expensive lawyers to ensure I was paid not a penny (the lawyer cost outstripped my wage)! My next client, Fiona Rix, was worse! She made me take individual photos of each facial constituent, commencing with her left eye, ending with her collarbones! She then chose the preferred shot and sent me away to photoshop the selected elements to present the ‘best’ of her face! I returned with a dire photofit and she exploded, accusing me of incompetence! I explained that even the most skilled photoshopper in the land couldn’t transfer these individual shots into a coherent face! She wanted to appear ‘coy yet cocksure, steely yet loveable, dynamic yet vulnerable, husky yet svelte, intellectual yet approachable, worldly yet naïve,’ among other contradictions! I was then made to pap several hundred facial expressions, and suffer her comments as I touched up the face on photoshop!”