Smithereens

by Steve Aylett

  ‘What’s fantastic about you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m learning to fend for myself.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘My legs are - wait, the money’s running out!’

  Calling back, he said ‘My legs are long and tender, and I control them.’

  But he’d dialled a local construction firm, and the reply he received was heartbreaking in its casual brutality.

  He wrote in his journal that evening:

  I lost a licence in a field

  I picked a weed and gave it in

  The notion of successful stuff

  Left me

  Terrapin rolled around and turned on the charm, but Jake was not in a social mood.

  ‘I’ve got stigmata, baby,’ he claimed.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Right here.’

  ‘That’s your belly button.’

  ‘I’ll decide what it is. Did you hear me? I’ll decide where and what it is. Now make some tea or something. This proves everything. Don’t walk away.’

  ‘You said you wanted some tea.’

  ‘Alright you go and make your tea, that’s right. But when I’m on the cover of National Geographic with this little beauty, don’t crawl back saying you were with me all along.’

  He looked at the newspaper. UNPLEASANT JELLY CLIMBS THE NATIONAL SUNLIGHT, went the headline.

  And there was a sub-heading: IT SAPS MY SPIRIT ESPECIALLY, ROARS PM. Below the heading was a photograph of a wildly convulsing clown in an irrigation ditch.

  ‘You cannot “lurch” masterfully,’ Jake shouted through to the next room. ‘That’s what it says here. And acorns create dependable rooms. Small blazes jump and we feel dynamic. That’s the spirit.’ Jake gave it some thought. ‘A pity that the truth is the exact opposite. Still, my neck is neutral.’ He began sniggering.

  Terrapin appeared in the doorway. ‘So what do I get out of this relationship?’

  ‘Shave a bee and find out,’ Jake snorted, and cupped his face behind a chrome hand he had had smelted for the very purpose seven years previously.

  ‘I need a thick metal hand to snigger behind when in the company of formidable women,’ he had told a farmer.

  ‘Why are you telling me?’ asked the farmer, closing a gate on some cows.

  ‘No-one else is interested,’ Jake told him, and stamped his feet in the bitter cold. ‘It’s a bit nippy isn’t it?’

  The farmer pointed to a thin trough in the ground. ‘The lobster march did that.’

  ‘If you want me to believe you, I will.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said the farmer, and opened a seam down the centre of his face - inside was a tangle of meat and veins, plus a brain the size of a marble. No wonder people walked the country to forget their worries.

  The farmer was taking the situation very seriously. ‘What a pity you won’t feel responsibility for your actions. We’ll have two long conversations, and one big fight during which I’ll die of a fractured skull. Blame will fall on me. So you’ll forgive me if I say goodbye now and avoid you forever. Goodbye.’ And the farmer began to stride blindly away, falling almost instantly into a trough.

  Parking outside the slaughterhouse, Jake erupted with laughter at thinking about the demonly-spiteful joke he would play on his friends and colleagues when he decided what that joke would be, and how everyone would scream at his wilfulness and then subside into laughter and relief when they realised all was in fun, all was not final or deadly and he only meant to break a few bones which could be re-set under favourable conditions. But he accidentally walked past the entrance and entered an alley full of dogs, which looked up in surprise.

  Bruised afternoon, blood stars the basin - next time just nod, Jake wrote in his diary that evening.

  So here he was in a serious relationship and nothing better than a metal hand for protection. The wonders of his newspaper were brutally rejected. Well, he thought, they didn’t like the truth, I’ll give them truth. A small brown banjo is flourished at my head and I’m on the rug, at local expense. Let’s see what they make of The Burnished Adventures of Injury Mouse.

  Feeling at the peak of his powers, Jake wrote the following:

  ‘Painting the heads which rolled from the guillotine, Ted chose the colour blue. Because, he told the mayor, it’s the colour of justice. The mayor believed him ofcourse, but really it was because blue was the colour of Elizabeth’s eyes. Later, queries bowled down the bar like liquor. “I’ll have a sliced eye,” I say to the barking sarge behind the bar, “and a pair of callipers to hold it with.” The barker looks at me as though from the belly of a wicker man. “Energy?” he ululates mournfully. “I’ve no energy.” Nelson would turn in his grave.’

  ‘Where’s the mouse?’ asked Bob, scrutinising the manuscript.

  ‘That’s right,’ Jake nodded, and snapped the piece from Bob’s hand. ‘Oh you consider a missing mouse condemns a tale of this quality.’

  ‘You did call it The Burnished Adventures of Injury Mouse. Don’t you care about anything?’

  ‘I care,’ Jake rumbled. ‘And that’s just the start. I’ll change everything you’ve grown accustomed to. Fins on houses. Twitching elders. Slimline monkeys for narrow abutments. Because inside every packet o’ bird vertebrae there’s a ... chhhhrrrrist!’

  The rage in this whoop scared Bob to the cells - could it be Jake was truly mental at last? No - he had found something in the packet. ‘Free gift?’

  ‘It’s rather more complicated than that,’ Jake whispered, and held up a tiny x-ray of his own legs. It was the size of a trading card. ‘And there’s writing.’

  ‘What does it say.’

  Jake held the scan up to the light, squinting. ‘It says, “With Nat Adderley on cornet.”’

  Bob remained expressionless. ‘Are we about through here?’

  DOWNLOAD SYNDROME

  (also known as: Upload Syndrome, Notehead, Powerpoint Paralysis, Appiness, It’s In My Machine, Text Me, I’m On a Train, You’ve Lost Me, What, Void, Delegation)

  Country of Origin: United States

  First Known Case: Arthur H. McCollum, a meticulous note-taker and archivist who in 1939 was sectioned after flipping out alone in a funhouse. It transpired that he felt the need to instantly record or verbally relate everything that occurred to him physically or mentally. Dropping his notebook when surprised by a ghoul and thus unable to record or pass on his experiences, McCollum had subsequently undergone mental overload through the remainder of the ride, emerging with foam spurting from his gob like a bath toy. Dr. Wilhelm Reich concluded that McCollum had been involved in ‘preventative archiving’, the passing off of thoughts and experiences the moment they have occurred. McCollum thereby sought to maintain an almost totally empty mind. ‘He regards the long-term harboring of thoughts,’ wrote Reich, ‘as a nuisance at best and at worst a violation.’ The bulk of Reich’s papers on the condition were lost in the Food & Drug Administration’s burning of his literature in 1959. Since then advances in technology have facilitated an epidemic of the syndrome.

  Symptoms: 1. Constant talking with aid of cell phones and email; 2. near-zero memory retention; 3. dead stare; 4. blithely confident attitude.

  Development, Cures, and Comments: The habit of thinking and recalling in their appliances rather than their own heads has left the greater proportion of the populace as empty, predictable and available as an arcade duck. Even when mismanaged into a moment alone the sufferer will state where he is and what, if anything, he is thinking. For millions the reluctance to introspect has led to the actual inability to do so. For others the world has always been so. The archaic practice of contemplation is not missed by those who, having never had an original idea, have never gotten a taste for them. They will speak of celebrity or, when pressed, mini-veggie preparation. Conversation is a brush of tumbleweeds, lacking all anecdotal detail, as in: ‘This guy was, like, “Hello?” and I was like, “Excuse me?”’ It becomes entirely reasonable to say in surprised exasperation, ‘How
do you expect me to remember something we talked about half an hour ago?’ As Ken Stinnett bellowed from the upper ledge of a burning cathedral last year, ‘Since the procedure which has become known as “giving it the wave-through” or simply “voiding” has become common behaviour, churches and multinationals have never looked back. The masses trample themselves in their rush to forget. Yes, my beauties, dispute my fury and I’ll really commence. A man lives dilute, his death is a watercolour, we look upon it and pretend to learn. Pieces of law as medals, that’s as fertile as it gets. Tomorrow-dollars met our eyes for years before we realized they weren’t getting any closer didn’t they? So I’m naked, so what? Oh, here come the cops, what a surprise. Peering at my expertise eh madam? I don’t blame you. These are dry times and getting drier. The wrong solution closes the curtains, a slumber less natural than death. Eh, what? Cease and desist? What kind of yammer is that?’ Stinnett’s words were confirmed by his subsequent slaying by police and the blank stare that greets the mention of his name today. Research into nerve interfacing continues apace. Technologically, the ideal is to record all thoughts before they can surface to inflict texture and mayhem on the conscious mind. The pursuit of a cure is becoming hourly less a matter for urgency. A cure for what? Something forgotten. We are faced with the ‘I am Legend’ paradigm. When the majority of the world population suffers the same condition, does it become the ‘new normal’?

  STINGRAY VALENTINE

  (intro to DH Wilson’s Scikungfi Trilogy)

  Certain memories become sacred. In DH Wilson’s case it was the time he tripped and fell into an ancient liturgical drama, swearing point-blank into the face of a bishop long dead. He then wounded nineteen people while running amok in that antique realm, as the metal-clawed creature later known to history as ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’. Thus he knew paradise and lost it. Wilson is now as helpless before the dictates of his moods and whims as he was before the violent wormhole calamities of childhood. But that is unimportant. What matters is that he exists and that he was made aware of the fact before we were. Everyone has experienced the dismal waste of time that can be inflicted by those who wish us to know them before they know themselves. This is a crime for which Kermit the Frog has yet to be punished, unless you count the fact that he can’t stop moving his arms.

  It is not unusual for the memory to condense into a single mythical moment the contingencies and practicalities of artistic inspiration. Wilson claims he decided to write his barbaric and erudite Scikungfi Trilogy while trying to inflate some sort of pool toy, an exercise at which he repeatedly failed until collapsing into tears, a pathetic sight for one and all. That crude vinyl icon of a camel, dented and lopsided, hung from his lap like every failure in his life. Wilson’s life can indeed be divided into two parts: before and after this sacramental defeat. It was a bankruptcy localized enough to be effective – effortlessly checkmated by a novelty plaything, what could he do but overcompensate, creating a mental yakuza in which he could demand massive respect? The accident riveted him to a public downfall like a voodoo chicken to the door of a Catholic priest, who gratefully cooks the mascot for his happy family. The scornful gaze of Wilson’s friends as he let the flaccid toy slip from his slack hands transformed him into a constituted nature. He dreamed of a world in which his powers – those of the mind – are respected. Such a world does not as yet exist, but he can imagine one in the very mind that desires respect – thus creating a vortical involution resembling his inefficiently pursed lips during that initial washout of an afternoon.

  We can surmise that this decision will be of capital importance – to say, in defiance of all, I Will Not Merely Be a Beaky Buffoon For You Bastards. Rather than a journey to the end of his misfortune, he invents a way out via a character who can make a blow to the face last a week. An altar of asphalt and sugar bulges from Wilson’s fireplace, embedded with femurs and vintage Vickers ammunition belts. He can immerse his books in concrete detail – coincidentally a fate the mob have had in mind for him since he crashed one of their meetings in a monster truck and leaned out to explain that the universe is ‘not motivated by obligation – where’s your Omerta now?’ Such mad confidence within despair will bear grim fruit. It spies on its own inner life and discovers electric mischief elves pounding up eternal-repetition exit ramps aglow. To the right-thinking man these denote only psychosis, yet these are what Wilson offers to others in the guise of ‘supporting players’. Sure of possessing the ground spice created from exploding truth at supercompressed angles (actually the corner of someone else’s barn) and concerned only with being seen in this undertaking, he expects to be tolerated. If he looks at himself in this mirror, he sees the accelerated colours of his magically-clad transparencies, at vertices to each other and tagged with self-triggering name-clues that should be obvious to you, reader. We have seen that as a result of his multidimensional misfortunes as a child and his public inadequacy as an adult he has dreamed of raising himself above men. Despite the daily battering of a thousand bitter truths, this dream has never left him. Society, too, defends itself against the barrage of facts present and latent in the universe, against the numinous and the precise, by means of custom - that is, by a body of consensual observances. Inversely, infraction of the customary rules invests the offender with a sacred aura because it confers upon him the power to unloose truthful

  powers – though whether he chooses to use his oblique position for this purpose is another matter. In Tarka the Otter we find that Henry Williamson has used the outcast position merely to talk about an otter and ‘his joyful water life’, deftly skirting the explosive issues of scorching sedition and profanely exotic rebellion almost any other writer would have explored.

  Not all prose springs from the intention to communicate - whether it be meaning, disease, magnified truculence, secrets manufactured specifically to be revealed, a market mysticism of betrayal, centuries interrupted doom plots at last resumed, the innocent back of a monster, sham delights, appliable death-blows or the custom joinery of Trojan-viral prayer. Those who have drugged furniture, diabolified dialogue and sacrificed storyline in a desperate attempt to stray from current literature’s cheap, worn paradox and pre-explained heroes deliver a merciless cure, a dimly-lit liberation that leaves the reader with the final responsibility to walk away from this trash-catharsis and start using his or her brain, if only in miniature. Beyond this the frenzied and exacting works of quantum pointillists such as Jeff Lint, Violaine and Eddie Gamete leave their stains at the high-tide mark of psychodimensional exploration where no one thinks to look.

  Wilson’s propulsion from hydraulic misfortune to a rambunctious form of expression, his spirited attempts to wear the reader’s face for a hat and the final, very public siege and arrest which exposed both him and his doll-filled basement to the American media, are now well-known. There is a thriving market – from which he does not profit – in t-shirts bearing the notorious mug-shot in which he is seen to have twelve eyes, all of them closed. The trial itself is better known for the sudden exhibition of Wilson’s ‘energy snake’ than any meaningful discourse on literature. My hopes for an awakened interest in hypervortexal fiction came to an end with that childish display and the subsequent descent into flailing drop-kicks and hollering ushers. Since the debacle Wilson has been publicly defined as a snorting disaster-pig and his technical and creative gifts have been relegated to the realm of myth (or what Marshall Hurk has called ‘the secret place of honour’). It is hard to gauge how it has affected his personality, just as it is difficult to measure to the millimetre the distance travelled by a swarm. Certainly he could never sustain the half-mad state of nervous excitement he displayed in the courtroom. In recent photographs he stares as if stunned by a blowfish.

  Although Wilson will no doubt remain an enigma to some, as one who has made a tremendous contribution to the immense story of human violence his work is sure to generate frantic evasion and nervous disdain amid the follower-filled timidity of modern scholarship, and a w
ide readership among the groundlessly triumphant, the conspicuously fanged and the seeking.

  The public image of The Author - ramrod straight, unsurprised and studded with snails that make a popping sound when removed – has given way to the general impression of a force intent on using as many words as possible to say nothing we don’t already know. It’s a choice between those who were once alive or those who are now dead. Faced with an industry impermeable to talent, real creators will turn in another direction and aim at a heightened target, a unique emblem all bedecked with resinous blossoms and chained fruit. It may feel like a mixture of a stingray, a valentine and a nasty bump on the noggin. An abyss of treasure, detail-rich and explorable at every scale. For myself, I would ask a favour of everyone reading this introduction. If you’re going to write, write something interesting and original, or get the fuck out of the way.

  SKY

  It was the most boring flying saucer I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t even a flying saucer, it was an aeroplane. But I saw it, and that’s me. Every time I look up, there’s something. Clouds, some sky, the edge of a tree. Sometimes a bird. Why all the alternation? I was pretty sure it wasn’t being done for my benefit. And something taking that much effort and organisation couldn’t be a chance affair. I decided to record what I saw in a notebook I called MY SKY PROBLEMS and lucky I did. Pretty soon a pattern developed - for a start if I counted white sky and blue sky as two different objects. A dash dot morse code jamboree was playing out over my head and I wanted to know why. After three years of this business I was all full of beans about my results and tried to tell everyone, who mostly punched me or at least looked away. I spent a long time decoding it and after getting rid of a lot of nonsense it came down to one thing, a message from maybe god or the nature above us loud and clear: ‘Look out below for everything you mothers because I hate you all and am determined to first fry you and then freeze you and soak you all in a short period of days and I remind you you’re not just meant to get used to it. I been planning this for years and now I will unleash upon you everything I just said. Pay me attention down there. Hey down there, hey.’ But even science article magazines did not care for my decoding of what I see every day. Clouds, some sky, the edge of a tree. Sometimes a bird.