by Peter Marks
Fertile mind my arse. Bring on the irrigation he grumbled, shifting lazily in the chair. Like a spent cartridge, his brain was blank.
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Wright currently resided, one could argue ‘lived’, in a large two storey house which was close to the city but far from cheap. Years ago, sometime prehistory, the house had actually been a mansion. But with the coming of Wright, with the delivery of his furniture, grand became ghastly. The Savoy - Salvation Army.
Recently renovated by Wright and the other inferior decorators in early cheap, the place was situated on a large plot of tree deep land. An imposing structure, it was Gothic in style, old in years, green in colour. And getting too old to look after itself.
It was two storey’s of wealthy extravagance with eleven rooms downstairs, five upstairs and possums in the roof. Circa 1923, so a mere babe by European standards but ancient by Australian, it was two levels with two toilets in two bathrooms. And way too extensive to vacuum according to Wright.
So he didn’t. He didn’t clean or even stop to consider it for Wright was feral, not domestic. He wasn’t worried by the dust and the dirt so he wasn’t interested, or locatable, when such duties needed doing.
Christ, this place covers an area larger than Texas Wright would say every time the subject of housework arose. Strenuously, when pushed to clean the territory, he’d plead his case for a contingent of domestic servants to do what he wouldn’t.
Wouldn’t clean. Or be found usually.
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Sipping quietly from a mug decorated with rabbits bonking each other, stray thoughts meandered wearily through the mad-lands in his head. The mug was still half full of last night’s whisky and he drank slowly.
One thought, at home in a never empty bed in Nathan’s head, yawned. Said it was bored, while another fell out the Wright ear to gently abseil down a slalom cheek. Some dozed, some were comatose while others, having nothing better to do, decided to renovate. Turn head to caravan and go touring, sure that Wright would be none the wiser (or none the dumber) for the departure. So they decided to turn gipsy. And flee.
One, and the only responsible neuron, tried to stop them saying they should behave. That they were needed here. That this was no time for them to take a holiday, arguing that they should be working, not wandering. The other thoughts weren’t impressed by the idea of remaining. They wanted to be rid of Wright so they immediately formed a hit squad.
And soon killed that idea.
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The door flew open. Nathan leapt from the desk in fright. He was already under the table before he noticed that it was Martin and not Jenny.
‘What the hell are you doing under there?’
‘I dropped my pen,’ Wright lied unfazed, fumbling along the floor, thinking he was doing a good job of making like he really was looking for his pen. Martin wasn’t fooled. Martin knew Wright knew Jenny was after him. So the chicken shit was hiding.
‘Yeah, sure you are. Anyway Captain Courageous, there’s a phone call for you.’
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There was a set of brass bells in the kitchen downstairs. They were evidence that the original owners had, unlike the current incumbents, been wealthy enough to afford the servants Nathan so wanted.
Attached solid to the blue wall just inside the door leading to the connecting hall, they were housed in a teak wooden box. Originally installed to notify the servants of any summons from the master, mistress or any other pompous arsehole who felt they deserved to be waited on (some arsehole like Wright for instance), they were no longer functional.
These days, this primitive communications device refused to toll and was just a curiosity. A mere reminder of the house’s more halcyon days - an era of servants and silver. Wright, however, didn’t care that the gizmo didn’t work any more when he wanted something from the kitchen. He merely compensated, screaming instead of tolling.
And was tolled to get stuffed.
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‘What?’ Nathan said to the phone. Martin, standing a few feet away, a curious grin on his face, watched on. No-one answered Wright’s enquiry. Instead, an unmistakable dirge came wafting down the phone line. Nathan had been to enough weddings to recognise this particular tune.
It was the Death March
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While normal people called home ‘Greensleaves’. Or ‘Casa Blanca’ or ‘The Grange’, Wright, being deranged, called his ‘The Asylum’. The title was etched on a rectangular brass plaque which was screwed tight to the front fence right by the mail box in proud confirmation.
Of the one inmate inside.
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‘Ha bloody ha ha Jenny. Get off the damn phone. I’ve got better things to do than listen to your national anthem,’ Nathan squealed, slamming the phone down, Martin now collapsed on the bed laughing hysterically.
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The only inmate inside was Wright. It was his sign and his idea. The wierdling thought “The Asylum” was humorous. The others on the inside thought it horrendous and routinely, forcibly, removed his title from their fence.
But Wright was persistent. Persistently peculiar. When his house-mates removed it, Wright simply replaced it and the bloke at the hardware shop on the High Street was managing to send his kid through law school purely on the profits from Wright’s whack-off humour.
Such was the regularity of replacement that in gratitude, at the end of each semester, the plaque man sent Wright his son’s results. Mr. Hardware also included an order form which indicated to a philanthropic Nathan the number of name plates required to be brought this term for the man’s son’s continued education. Bloody cheek.
Anyway, adamant the name-plate should stay, Wright always told the others to use fluoride if they wanted the plaque gone. But neither toothpaste; nor screams; nor scorn; nor screwdriver would keep Wright’s sign from Wright’s fence.
Wright was seriously ill.
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Half an hour later, convinced that Jenny wasn’t in the vicinity, Wright was back at the desk. He’d finally managed to stop Martin from laughing at him by telling him Yaska, his dog, had been run over by some Kamikaze Japanese tourist. As Martin left to scrape up the bits Nathan, fed up with being patient, turned heretic megaphone and began wailing. Loudly.
Again hovering over the enemy keys, he began praying for something to tap out. A line or a sentence. A chorus of thought. He pleaded. Then argued passionately about the injustice of it all and demanded God assist his writing. When God didn’t answer his abuse, he changed tactics. He began grovelling. Pathetically. Then God answered.
‘Banzai!’ God said. Or rather yelled for it was no divinity who replied. Just the devil in a frock as a very annoyed Jenny swept through the door, responding to Wright’s pleas for inspiration by inspiring terror.
Face awash in gleeful vengeance, she hurled a shoe at a target head. Wright ducked athletically, easily managing to dodge the incoming footwear. But he couldn’t stop it flying out the window where it lodged in the shrubbery. In the shoe tree.
The shoe tree was a vast oak net of greenery called this because it held more of Wright’s footwear than the wardrobe into which he now escaped.
Jenny, from the doorway, grabbed the other half of the pair and tried to lodge it smack between Wright’s bloodshot eyes. But she was too slow, he was already gone.
Nathan had disappeared with the urgent ease of a whore’s underwear.
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This throwing of foot grenades was an ancient ritual perpetually performed by this mad Amazon. It was one of Jenny’s less curious customs. She’d turn human catapult whenever she was mad at Nathan and according to Nathan she was certifiable. And therefore mad most of the time, so he seemed to spend much of his life dodging incoming objects and hiding in wardrobes.
Defiant, wedged in the darkness of a clothes filled closet,
Wright was safe but uncomfortable. Whack. Jericho shook.
‘You damn cringing fairy, its time you came out of the closet,’ she yelled, kicking his shield. The door of the bunker shook on its hinges with each rhythmic footfall as a queer, but inescapably heterosexual Nathan, sat confidently isolated from the crazy woman’s attack.
Although he’d done nothing to earn the queer title, Jenny was always calling him a fairy. So Wright in turn called her a dyke, or a troll. Or a fuckin’ deranged goblin. Consequently, Wright was always fleeing the goblin.
‘Go away, you maniac!’ He ordered, offering her fifty bucks to do so. His voice was remarkably clear, even though he was speaking through the thick wooden doors with a thick accent. (The Australian drawl had evolved directly from the flu virus. It was a no nose, no nonsense dialect which made all those who spoke it sound rather less well educated than they actually were. Were just out of primary school mostly).
‘Listen Nathan, face facts. You’re going to die. You’re only delaying the inevitable so stop cringing. Accept your fate with some dignity, you spineless, mindless moron!’
‘So I’ll get a brace....and buy some brains. Maybe I can get them cheap. Or second hand. Where did you get yours?’
‘Mine came at birth Nathan. Your pea sized mass resides in Lost Property still waiting to be claimed.’
‘Get fucked.’
‘Get plague.’
‘Don’t you have anything better to do than attack an unharmed man.’
‘Sure. Your autopsy.’
‘Very droll. Listen. The phone’s ringing. You’d better answer it.’
‘Liar.’
‘The kitchen’s on fire.’
‘Liar.’
‘Your boyfriend’s downstairs lying naked on the bed all excited and panting and erect just waiting to spear you. Right between the thighs’
‘Pervert’
‘Honest’
‘Liar.’
‘He’s oiled himself specially.’
‘Liar.’
‘Your beauty is legend.’
‘Li.....bastard’
‘Ha.... now piss of and leave me alone. I’ve got things to do.’
‘What.. in the cupboard?’
‘Of course in the cupboard.’
‘Like what? Play with yourself......Turn bat......Process film.... Nathan?’
‘What..?’
‘What’s thrives on shit and grows in the dark?’
‘A mushroom.’
‘Wrong. A Nathan does...’ She cackled hysterically, giving the door a further hefty kick for good measure before putting her feet to better use. By departing on them.
‘Chicken!’ She sneered leaving.
‘So go find me a white feather and post it to me,’ the mushroom retorted.
‘Go eat yourself. Then you could hallucinate that you’re human,’ the nearly departed laughed, stooping to collect further ammunition. Exiting, hurled a white turned brown Reebok at the bunker door, screaming. ‘You’ve been warned!’ She warned, leaving him (and his footwear) in no doubt that she meant what she threw.
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Jennifer Wilde was not to be trusted. (Nor were the others who shared this huge house. But only Martin was about so they weren’t much of a threat. For the moment anyway).
Far too often after an attack like this one, one of them, Jenny in particular, would lurk silent. Fake departure only to hide in the corner some-where as quiet as a peeping tom. So Wright, wary of this, refused to take chances. He didn’t budge.
He allowed a full half an hour to elapse before he felt confident enough to risk leaving the dark safety of the cramped bunker.
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Having lived with Nathan for a few years now, in various locations, Jenny was, by shared time, an old friend. She was the sister of an even older friend, Sue.
Sue, the calmer of the Wilde sisters, had worked with Nathan for a while and she’d suggested him to Jenny as a potential house-mate. (Sue’s suggestion made in vengeful retribution for all the awful things Nathan had done to Sue when they worked together Nathan said. Sue’s suggestion made in vengeful retribution for all the awful things Jenny had done to Sue when they were kids Jenny said).
At the time, Jenny had just finished University so she was impatient to flee the coup, for a coup with fleas it transpired. So Nathan gained her parents loss. And an avenging Anglo.
Her family was British. Her dad was from Blackpool. Her mother from the Black Lagoon, Wright said and while older sister Sue had been born in London, Jenny had been dropped on her head by a passing spaceship from the Galaxy Aggro (Wright again).
The family were seventies immigrants who’d escaped a union ill economy to come Down Under in search of a better life (and an orphanage willing to accept brain damaged aliens Wright claimed).
So, settling here, Jenny’s parents had worked hard, raised the kids, brought a house and become successful. Then this! Tragedy. Disaster of unspeakable proportions!
Ma and Pa were mortified at the prospect of their youngest, supposedly most innocent daughter, living with the deviant Wright. Who wasn’t married, was old, so was obviously seriously defective. They begged, they pleaded, they advised. Unsuccessfully, they tried everything to dissuade Jenny. But she wouldn’t be swayed. She wanted freedom and independence at any price and the rent Wright wanted was uncommonly cheap.
Because he was living alone at the time in a small flat in Brighton, he was willing to subsidise any-one who’d help banish the loneliness. And do the cleaning.
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Yaska came bounding through the door and took a leak (actually Martin with a water pistol. But Wright wasn’t to know) on the door of the wardrobe Wright was still cringing in.
‘Good dog Yas! That’ll teach the bastard to kill you,’ Martin patted him, Yaska’s tail wagging like a loose spring.
Hell, now even ghosts were after him!
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The Wilde’s grew desperate as the date for their daughter’s departure to the House of Wright in Brighton neared ever closer and, grasping at straws, two concerned (and far too frantic) parents tried one desperate last ploy. They tried reverse psychology.
They encouraged her to leave in the mistaken belief that two days with the Weird Wright would be more than enough to get their daughter back. Home. They were wrong for the plan backfired when, typical of Jenny, much to her mother’s horror and despite her father’s repeated attempts at bribery to win her back, Jenny remained. Away.
She enjoyed the new found freedom so stayed put, having a great time haranguing and harassing, and generally making Nathan’s life as uncomfortable as possible.
In truth, there was nothing vindictive, or malicious, or even real about her vendettas. Then or now.
It was a game. A mock antagonism that had evolved naturally over the years she’d lived under the same roof with a not quite sane Nathan. But had definitely not (she’d emphasise definitely, adding never ever when her parents accused) slept with him. OR bonked him.
Why, the very prospect was enough to make her giggle uncontrollably for days on end when the accusation that she’d been had horizontal by him was levelled at her. By her parents usually when she went home for Sunday lunch.
In their day, no woman lived with a man unless they were doing IT and no matter how much Jenny protested they still believed the worst. And as far as Jenny was concerned, bonking Nathan was as bad as it could get.
Nathan, needless to say, wasn’t the least amused when she told him this. He was wounded by her laughing dismissal of his vain glorious virility. Not that he wanted to bonk her either. But the thought that she’d not bonk him to save herself hurt his pride and he’d demand to know what was so ridiculous about the concept of sex with him, claiming that most women found him positively irresistible.
Positively life threatening, Jenny said.
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; There were friends Nathan fucked, friends he didn’t. It was strange how few could grasp the concept that men and women could be friends without sharing bodily fluids. How two people of the opposite form could even share a bed without engaging organs. Honestly, it never ceased to amaze him how dubious people were when he’d try to explain. How grubby minds could twist and pervert what was purely friendship. So he gave up and told them he fucked anything that moved.
Friend OR Foe.
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Always smiling (unless pursuing) Jenny had shortish brown hair that stuck wire straight from her head when she’d just awoken. Because of this Wright used her as a filing system, impaling small yellow reminder notes on her nail hair when she sat down to eat breakfast.
Not overweight, but not slim, she seemed to spend her life dieting, chasing men, exercising at the Gym, and, when she wasn’t busy doing any of these, pursuing an ever erring Nathan about the house.
She was rarely really mad at him for she’d lived with Nathan for too long to get seriously angry. Nathan was too predictable, too childish, and had an all too short an attention span to even bother really getting angry with him.
As Jenny huffed occasionally, would you bother getting mad at a three year old?
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Quietly, cautiously, Nathan inched open the wardrobe door. Whack, with an Armageddon thud another flying leather slammed into the woodwork as another misguided missile almost amputated the left out lobe. Nathan, cursing his misfortune, immediately retreated back into the black of the coffin closet, momentarily vanquished by the army of a thousand helicopter heels.
