MR PARLETT DOT COM

The majority of the people who have read my earlier books regarded them as little more than poorly structured character assassinations, each a pathetic cry for help and a waste of ink and time.

But then again if someone painted me in a less than favourable light, twisting my fondest memories and strongest triumphs into an obscene and dreadful version of events that bore little relation to my own recollection, then I guess I’d be a wee bit narky too.

Well, earlier today I found a rough beginning of a story from a year or so ago; I’ve been busy and not worked on it but I guess this is as good a place as any to get feedback/advice/cruel rejection.

I can’t write academically worth a shit and my journalistic skills reject objectivity like an astronaut with a scorpion in his helmet. Perhaps fiction is where I should stay. It’s safe here.

So, should I continue this story?

Someone’s been abducting children. Cutting the chips out of their arms and doing God only knows what to them before the end. No ransom notes or anything else the parents never even expected – tearful pleas broadcast nationwide fall on death ears.

People keep finding pieces here and there; messages written in pre-pubescent remains whose content the Police refuses to release to the public.

A growing epidemic some say, give it time and you’ll see how it unfolds – try taking a step back. It might not be too late for you they tell you with relish – it warms them to feel the world around them is damned.

They invite hell in – this dark audience that lives out the corner of your eye.

- 1 -

‘Is that your sea men?’ she asks, arms folded and mother frown. She’d be tapping her foot if she had any timing.

The floor in the bathroom is wet so you don’t go in, just poking your head round the door for a quick survey.

I don’t masturbate in the shower you think and the words spiral out of your mouth like dumb little choke clouds. You tell her that you need visual stimulation, that your own pointless excitement reflected through the steam is not the measure of any man you’d care to imagine.

You suggest that this Chin-Faced Spinster interrogates the last closing-time nincompoop who tried to sew his wild oats between those bursting bales.

Dusty Mister Spoons is an unrelenting eunuch, you offer, but this explanation is no defence you realise; loathing the acts of the third resident slightly more than yours causes a sewn-up little grimace, like her defensive vomiting tickles her taste-buds just that wee bit too much.

It could be shampoo. It’s not your wasted seed.

‘That,’ – heavy emphasis – ‘would wash away.’

Keys in the door mean Spoons. Enter Spoons, panting from cannabis and shopping. One of the bags has broken and he cradles it like a stolen baby, ‘Spuds,’ he explains and you look at the floor and your eye goes.

‘Ask him,’ you say, ‘Perhaps it was involuntary,’ these things happen. Like when you cross a busy road and try to stop but can’t, like you’re rooted to your footsteps.

The phone rings, Spoons is closest, ‘I’m not in,’ says the Spinster. You repeat back, a shadow, an echo, audible at least.

Spoon’s voice, cheerful but a pair of testicles short of infectious, dancing white noise babbling those words of his, just another broken record.

‘So you’re telling me it’s not your sea men,’ a shake of your head and you tell her you’re not cleaning it. Too much chalk everywhere; chalky area here; hair stuck to the sides; clogging the drains; their hairy areas moulting for summer.

What came first, the fruit-flies or the mould?

It’s almost November now – that came around quick. Chill in the air, bit of frost when you took the rubbish out this morning, that new bin’s broke just like the old one – must be them binmen, too small they are for work like that.

You were on your way to the kitchen, that narrow corridor rubbed in offal grease and beer fat. Don’t go barefoot, hangovers and ignorance pervade this territory. You may not masturbate in the shower but you do in your milk, settles mainly to the bottom but the essence is there. They must think those little floaty bits are signs of milk going off; signs of weakness. Tastes the same to you; talking never works; community never works.

Spoons is there, his t-shirt shiny from new sweat on old; a whiff about him, like wet dog and flatus only lacking the charm. Grinning, he wants to talk, you open your box, ‘Guess what,’ and you walk in, ‘Honey’s going to come over – can you help clean up here?’

He masturbated in the shower before going out to purchase ingredients. He wants to date without a hard-on; without embarrassing leaks of pre-come that lead to premature ejaculation, leading to disappointment and regret.

You imagine his penis, half at attention, half distracted by the plight of the whales, poking out of midnight frazzles of ugly pubes. It’s an unsightly member, thin veins and an oversized foreskin. It would explain the piss around the toilet, some of those black hairs stuck in; the fallout of the Spinster’s period towels wrapped up, poking out the little bin, rarely emptied. How could anyone achieve lonely orgasm in there?

She does, albeit cloistered in her halo of Betamax and fabric-softened linen. Makes no sound but a low grunted curse; conjuring her father, no doubt. The bed moves against your thin walls with her stabbing that plastic thing at her bleeding cervix.

But it’s not your hair, couldn’t be. You decline to help – it’s her mess. You take an apple and an orange and a small bowel. Spoons holds out his copy of the free paper, begins to tell you about it with his fervent frustrated eyeball dance, like an infant standing on the shoulders of its parent just to reach the top shelf.

Deadpan you tell him your opinion. You remind him how you have enough of your own thoughts and ideas – why read someone else’s?

You tell him that he’s going to die like one of those people on the television; you add that you don’t want to die like one of those people on the television.

A pregnant pause, like butter wouldn’t melt it his mouth – so Honey’s coming over?

‘Mmmn hmmn.’

No rest for the wicked eh, Spoons?

Creeping up like an artillery shell, that Chin-Faced Spinster, that holocaust sympathiser; pierced septum and ragged acne scars. A face only the back end of a bus could love.

‘You hear me then?’ every fresh spit an italic verb with her.

Twenty something became thirty nothing; wrap her in stalk magazines and start a war for her to wave a flag for. You cursed before you quit, back in the snooker hall with your henchmen. You back then would have some words for her now.

But blessed art she among women and blessed is the fruit of that barren womb. You both turn to her for the thrashing, brazen and nonchalant – perhaps even Spoons in his own mind adamant of his innocence, his old-fashioned ego convinced he’s too good for guilt.

This is old news given fresh perspective and we’re all so tired yet trapped; like yellowed tabloids wrapping up broken Christmas decorations, hauled out of the loft for another years begrudged ritual.

Another tired refrain, anxious and bitter – ‘Don’t leave your sea men just laying there for me to get between my toes.’

Spoons has Honey and you are loath to pervert the course of his indiscretion – the circus all the more thrilling for your assumed absence. His thin scar of self assurance thatched in crumbs and lazy middle-aged down; he shakes his head and turns on his heel.

You imagine his penis, half at attention, half distracted by the plight of the whales, poking out of black frazzles of ugly pubic hair.

It’s an unsightly member, thin veins and an oversized foreskin.

Good Lord, you pray; give me strength.

And you have places to be – the juice bar for one. There’s nothing on the box til later either but the streets don’t lend themselves to reflective strolling; Coconuts aren’t shy on the shipwreck beaches of broken prophylactics and nicotine ends. Vomit and whores; Union Army fast-food Ottoman manned – generations dry from the wave in at the station and city-limit annexing but required they are by drunkards with blades for tongues and slugs for genitals.

A slow walk then perhaps but no meandering; careless talk costs lives. Dust away the queer fray and onward out – no time for vaudeville here, Trixie.

Do you:

Walk pointedly to the Juice bar without apology?

Turn to page –,

Spend a few moments of idle time to thwart the Honey meet?

Turn to page –.

Tags: Books, End-times, Fiction, Nudity, Writing