The face of death stares through the glass at the woman asleep by the fire.
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Sitting. At the desk. The computer tries to block my vision but its easy to see over the top; a middle distance stare that would put me in good stead for a job as a model in the freeman’s catalogue.
The park stretches ahead from the office window. To be a squirrel. In summer time. With some peanuts. Close to the path.
No good.
Summer has gone, taking with it the park dwellers and their bags of pre packaged vermin food. But the squirrels here have forgotten that they’re vermin. Too used to being fed.
There’s a crash, as another small furry body falls out of the tree nearest the office. This time, instead of landing in the mouldering heap of grey fur from other failed squirrels, who move only to play with the rats, the branches of the tree catapault the starving creature through my window. It lands in a small sea of glass and blood, in the centre of a report that details the newest business paradigms that will allow us to square the circle of perfection and avoid being sent up river when we’re trying to go downstream.
It is not surprising that the paper pulls the life blood from the animal, although the speed means that it is not so much a blotter, but a suction pump. The squirrel is left, still and silent, its pale face screaming the same silent “why?” that I was expecting from anyone else who encountered the document.
I dreamt that I was a murderer. Waking was horror itself, as I cast my mind back to the night before, focussed on the need to discover who was dead and dismembered before remembering that this was just the internal, the mind’s presentation of things past, imagined, or trying to comprehend, and that really there was no evidence to hide.
In the dream it was one of my friends. A fight. A victory. But such loss, and the realisation that I had to hide what I had done. And how?
This had been the dream. This was why I hadn’t slept well, the turbulence of my disturbed sleep waking her on so many occasions that, by the irony of morning, she was ready to kill me.
She always did this, tried to find new routes or short cuts, and claimed that she was making time when I could see the seconds fall away in waste.
—
We don’t need a short cut. We’ve got to get to the airport. The plane leaves in.. fuck.. come on.
In the back, the woman whose car Maggie had stolen was beginning to come out of her shock, and seemed to be trying to call the police on her mobile phone.
“This is a short cut. Its the only way we’ll make it.”
She turned back to the road, and looked straight into the eyes of an old man.
“Stop!”
The impact came in with the sound of the tires. We stopped. The man was in the middle of the road. Maggie and I got out of the car and rushed over to see him. His breathing was difficult. What to do? We looked at each other. Looked around. And saw the owner of the car driving away.
“Shit.”
We’d missed the plane, and now we were lost in a side street in Prague, surrounded by derelict buildings, and with our luggage and money rapidly driving out of sight in a car we’d hijacked. With a old man dying in front of us.
“Shit.”
That was when we first met Satana.
Olympic commentary.
And the judges are very happy with that. Look. He looked like he’d clip his feet on the way down, but the drop was clear and… yes, his neck is broken. Oh, I think that the judges are going to award top marks for that. A perfect execution.
Invariably, Jimmy Saville’s Play it Safe would feature a child who had accidentally drunk a bottle of bleach.
“Don’t drink the bleach, kids!” Sir Jim’ll would say, before wheeling on a child that contained no known germs.
“I put it in the lemonade bottle,” the hapless mother would say. “It seemed the perfect place for bleach – it was so handy, in the pantry.”
But this doesn’t really explain why it might seem necessary to decant bleach, especially into a lemonade bottle. Its not like bleach is terribly expensive. Value bleach is really cheap. Admittedly it probably only maims the germs for a bit, or makes them feel a bit poorly, but even so. Whatever you buy, its not expensive.
Perhaps they were ashamed by their bleach. “Oh, Colin”, the wifelet would say to her trophy husband as he leant on the mantlepiece and looked into the middle distance. “Colin, I’ve noticed that our bleach looks so last season compared to the chemicals that they have next door at the Farquarsons.
“Decant it, my lovely”, Colin would decry, aware from his days posing for the Freeman’s catalogue – albeit only in his imagination – that a decanted liquid was a smart liquid. But, tragically, the only empty bottle was from the Panda lemonade, and even though it didn’t have that much class it would be brought into service.
Perhaps that was what happened.
It could also have been that all of the events took place in the houses of cleaning persons, who were syphoning the bleach to take home, either to pour over their own ironically germ encrusted homes in a last ditch effort to save themselves from botchelism, or perhaps to sell down the market or the car boot sale. I really can’t recall.
The fear comes in the morning, even before the sun’s rays have had chance to warm the room. The cold feeling in his stomach as he wakes, a full three hours before the alarm is due, and unable to rest again as his mind is taken over by the threat of the day.
He knew he should just leave, move on, but it was never that easy. Never easy to get out of a situation when the next one might be worse. And besides, if he stayed as he was, and continued to complain, he knew his place in life as a martyr, a complainant, and the voice from the sidelines.
The one who sighs.
As usual, it was the sigh that woke Maggie. She turned to stare at him, bleary eyed and no longer sympathetic from the daily alarm call.
“Just.. go back to sleep.”
He didn’t reply. There was no point – how could he explain, other than it was the weight of the world that pressured his breathing.
The day ahead was still to come. Friday. The challenge of work, then, was nearly over for the week. But the weekend wasn’t long enough, and besides, that brought its own feeling. He considered everything, and ran to the bathroom to be sick.
The sky was still grey, but he could see without putting on the light. In some ways a relief. In others… admission that sleep had escaped. Early morning seemed odd, the half light between the full darkness of the night and the sun rising. Not that he’s see it through the bathroom window – it faced the wrong direction. IT always seemed like the entire house faced in the wrong direction, there was no sunrise, no sunset, and just the coldness of the wind on the wall of the bedroom. But the house had seemed a good idea at the time. And it was too difficult to change.
A cough brought nothing up, to start with. More emptyness. A pain all across his chest. It had been getting worse this last week. Should see the doctor, he supposed, but he’d started on the fags again, and the whisky was noticibly down, and somehow it didn’t seem the right time to get an appointment. Besides, he’d have to wait a week and he could be feeling fine by then. Or be dead. Either way, it wouldn’t matter any more, so why waste their time?
Another cough. This one seemed more contageous, shaking his entire body. Bloody fags.
Gwen Penguin And The Fear
One upon a time there was a little Penguin called Gwen, who lived in an icy lair next to the other penguins.
Gwen Penguin liked nothing more than to lock herself inside, away from all of the outside world. It was scary being a penguin!
One day, Gwen Penguin was cowering in the corner when she heard a knock at her door.
“What’s that?!” thought Gwen Penguin. “There must be something wrong.”
Gwen Penguin hunched herself up, and tried to hide under an old copy of Escalope, the Penguin’s Periodical. It was no good, and her beak cut through the cheap pages.
“Its only me” said Gwen Penguin’s mother, coming in to look at Gwen Penguin.
“And me!” said her father.
“I might have known,” said Gwen Penguin, with a heavy sigh. “Please try to be quiet. The noise frightens me,” she said, with a particularly beaky quack.
“We’re just off to get some seaweed for tea. We wondered if you’d like to come” said Gwen Penguin’s parents.
“No thank you. I’m going to stay here. I prefer a simple life.”
“Suit yourself” said Gwen Penguin’s parents, who left the lair, shutting the door behind them. And with that, Gwen Penguin put a blanket over her head and pretended that the world didn’t exist.
For a little while, all was well, and the world played along with the game. Until suddenly, Gwen Penguin was startled again, as she heard a knock on the window.
“Gwen. Gwen! Are you there?”
“Come out and play.”
It was Henry and Susan Penguins.
“No. I’m hiding from the world.”
“Please.”
But Gwen Penguin said no, and then sat under the bed, so that no-one would be able to see her.
As she sat under the bed, Gwen Penguin noticed a spider crawling across the floor.
“Help” she squeaked. “I don’t like spiders.”
The spider looked at her, and stopped.
“Why are you afriad, little Penguin?” asked the spider. “I won’t do you any harm. I just want to spin a beautiful web.” And with that, the spider made the most beautiful web that ever a spider had created.
“That’s a lovely web”, thought Gwen Penguin. But she didn’t like to tell the spider, in case it came near her.
A little while later, Gwen Penguin heard singing outside.
“Come outside and play,
in the ice and snow
its fun out here
no need to fear
and so many places to go”
Looking out of the window, Gwen Penguin saw that Henry and Susan had returned, with Colin Penguin, whose idea of leading the bass had been to bring a fish on a string.
“Come on Gwen Penguin. We’d like you to play in the ice with us” said Colin Penguin, skidding about as he released his new fishy friend back into a hole in the ice.
“Don’t be scared. We’re your friends.”
“And look. You’ve got a new friend.”
Gwen Penguin looked, and saw that there was the spider, standing next to her Penguin friends. And, behind them, the spider had made an enormous web trampoline.
“Come on, Gwen Penguin. You spider friend wanted to make you a tramopline, so that you would come and play, and not be scared.”
“Yes!” said Gwen Penguin. The other Penguins were her friends – and so was the spider. She would have a nice time playing with them, and maybe they’d even be able to do a little more singing.
When Gwen Penguin’s parents arrived home, they saw Gwen Penguin and her friends laughing and jumping up and down on the trampoline. The smiled at her, and she waved back. “I’m not scared now” shouted Gwen Penguin. “Hurray for my friends!”
I was in the back as the car sped down side streets away from the hotel, down main streets until we were given one final look at the Fred and Ginger building, and once again I marvelled at how the modernity of its entinwing concrete and glass had somehow retained sympathy with the surroundings.
Up the hill. The glorious facade of the station – or was it the museum? – was on the left. Something else for next time. And she jumped on the brakes as the car careered right, into a cobbled street.
“A short cut!”
She always did this, tried to find new routes or short cuts, and claimed that she was making time when I could see the seconds fall away in waste.
Gwen Penguin And The Sticks Of Death
Once upon a time there was a little penguin, called Gwen, who lived with her family in an icy lair next to the other penguins.
Recently, they had been visited by Walter Penguin, on one of his adventures around the globe. And he’d brought them gifts.
[image of GP’s house, GP looking out of the window at the other penguins, all of whom are smoking, mother and father penguin behind her. ]
Gwen Penguin liked nothing more than to play with her friends and enjoy the spontaneity of youth. After all, there was precious little of it, and eventually she would have to take on responsibilities like growing enough broccoli for her family.
One day, Gwen Penguin went outside to play with her friends, Colin, Basil, and Anthea penguins. They waddled slowly up to her, coughing.
“Hello, cough, Gwen Penguin,” said Colin.
“Hello Colin,” said Gwen. “Oh, Anthea Penguin, you’re looking so cool today. And slim.”
Anthea penguin was leaning up against the side of one of the igloos, wearing a pair of dark glasses. She was holding something in her hand.
Basil Penguin leaned forward, and showed Gwen Penguin a pack of strange white sticks.
“What are those?” asked Gwen Penguin, ever curious.
“Colin got them from Walter Penguin, when he visited last week. They’re called cigarettes. They make you look cool and stay slim.”
“Yes, and you need them to be popular!” said Anthea Penguin, turning her head away so that she didn’t appear too interested.
Gwen Penguin was very excitied at this. She was always interested in finding more ways of looking cool, and as a young penguin the pressures on her to look slim were paramount.
“Can I have one?” asked Gwen Penguin, excitedly.
And so Gwen Penguin smoked her first cigarette, and felt very grown up as she had managed to light it without melting the iceberg.
The next day, when Gwen Penguin woke up, she noticed that it was very quiet outside.
Colin Penguin was at the door. He was very pale.
“Gwen Penguin, come quickly! Something terrible has happened.”
Gwen and Colin waddled as fast as they could across the ice, and found that Anthea and Basil were lying on their backs, quite still.
“They’ve been like this since this morning” said Colin.
Gwen Penguin hurried back to her icy lair, to see her parents.
“Mother, Father!” she shouted. “What’s happened? Anthea and Basil are mouldering on the ice, and their feet are being nibbled by rats!”
“That’s because they were smoking cigarettes” said Gwen Penguin’s mother.
“So that’s how they keep you slim” thought Gwen Penguin. “By making your feathers rot and your bits be eaten by rats. I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I don’t like it either,”” said Colin, who had an eery ability to read Gwen Penguin’s mind. “For me, cigarettes were just one stage before hard drugs. Do you have twenty pence for a train fare? Or a cup of tea?”
“I think you’d better go off to rehab,” said Gwen Penguin.
And after that, whenever Gwen Penguin wanted tobacco products, she had snuff. Although she later learned that this gave an increased risk that her beak might fall off.