Imbroglio

Ramch surveyed those strewn before him. They lay on a field of grass beneath a cloudless sky…an even green, a placid blue. Torsos slunk away. Fingers and toes burrowed into the soft turf, those with legs and arms still attached upending like penises filled with blood, vibrant tumescent occurrences that to the pink man were curious, even amusing, as the arms and legs could never follow the fingers and toes into the burrows…

  Reminded him of a girl he once knew.

  A name he couldn’t remember…

  Like he failed to recall his own, stood there with a puzzled expression, the weight of the sword in his hand, finely balanced.

  Michael planted it in the earth, feeling terribly naked.

  Her look was calculating, manipulative; she had him exactly where she wanted, gripping him with her thighs, bending his ears forward with her thumbs. She could control him and did, his sometime wife; she had him mesmerized.

  ‘Columbine?’

  ‘Yes, my sweet, what is it?’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  He should have known, but was intoxicated. How could she, Queen of the Faeries, love him, a mere mortal?

  Of course she didn’t answer, just widened her smile, its cruelty interpreted as kindness by the man in her embrace, his fate already sealed, and him without an obvious parachute.

  (Herschel Byrd was fascinated. He hovered invisibly.)

  Hell, the love apple realized; a place where nobody could be trusted. Trusting was why he was here. Purgatory, if he remembered correctly, where he’d found himself previously – what difference? No wall divided them. At least no wall with two sides. A defining joke, with those dumb enough to suspect otherwise spending their quietus in self-inflicted despair, never able to find a way through, always coming back to the same side, chasing the impossible, either the hope of redemption, of absolution, or the finality of total, ubiquitous pain.

  (Herschel nodded. A most interesting manifestation.)

  And she was responsible for this. She’d driven him crazy. Okay, maybe only given him a nudge, but it was enough. She’d peeled off his lid and stuck her spoon in his brain. Not killing him; Michael had attended to that. In name at least, sacrificing what little grip he had on reality in exchange for…what? A berserk alter ego, an invisible bear coat. A pair of mental running shoes. How to define a void? A big empty black space full of light. Depression and mania, two sides of the same door, or wall, the room you find yourself in never the room you feel you need. Not a cell because there is no lock. Not necessary. But how do you wake up when you keep dreaming you’re asleep?

  Not a mathematical problem, he realized. An emotional one.

  He needed help. He needed to be saved.

  By whom?

  Himself of course, wherever he was, the love apple, Michael Tomatoes as he was properly called, christened such by parents who’d died, retiring early to their graves on account of lung cancer (father) and (mother) a falling safe. He needed himself to find himself, by accident or gruelling detective work. He needed to carve himself, and make himself tactile. He needed the paint on his hands to match the paint behind his eyes.

  He needed. Not Columbine. Vanessa? Vanessa was nice (he loved her) but there was no future in it. Funnykins put paid to that.

  Who then? And by what name? He didn’t want to find himself only to find himself alone.

  He didn’t wish pain.

  Best not to think about it.

  He’d try that.

  ‘So, what do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Isn’t it a good idea?’ He could see Redbear wasn’t impressed. Then again, Redbear wasn’t impressed by much. A laconic dipsomaniac; he took everything with alcohol, including his medicine.

  ‘Come on, the pub’s open. Let’s go.’

  That was bowling out the window. Michael enthused instead about his contribution to a sculpture park on the site of an old steelworks, which the local authority had named Steel Works, the themes being steel and work.

  ‘I see it as a cage, a kind of life in metaphor: you’re not sure if the figure is lying down or getting up. He’s indecisive, or his memory’s gone…or maybe his back. It hurts to move so he just leans on one elbow, on his side, one leg straight, the other bent, knee level with his chin…’ Built in sections in his garage, welded from scrap barrel hoops and motorbike frames before being bolted together on site. ‘The face is deliberately vague; empty, like the rest of him. You can see straight through. He’s empty inside. His head’s empty. His body’s empty. There’s only the rusty skeleton, stiff through idleness or age.’

  ‘How much did you get for it?’ Red demanded.

  ‘That’s not the issue.’

  ‘How much?’ His glass empty, he slid it across the table.

  Michael didn’t want to tell him. It would start an argument.

  Redbear rolled a cigarette.

  The love apple visited the bar.

  ‘Did you see that film last night, the one with Elizabeth Taylor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fancy a game of pool?’

  The bearded man wiped the floor with him.

  He bought more drinks.

  ‘I had an idea for my exhibition.’

  ‘Is that all you can talk about?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your work, Tom. It’s boring.’

  He was devastated.

  ‘I mean, that triptych you did on the history of steam locomotion…’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘…I loathed it.’

  ‘I sold it.’

  ‘It had no…

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘…meaning; there weren’t even any steam locomotives.’

  ‘Yeah – but.’

  ‘It was just old postcards and theatre tickets.’

  ‘Travelling! You took the train wherever, off on holiday, out to see a show. It was part of the adventure!’

  ‘Hey, calm down. I just saying…’

  ‘That I’ve no talent!’

  ‘…you know.’

  ‘No! I don’t!’

  ‘They weren’t even representative of the time period.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The postcards and tickets. It was all stuff your mother collected.’

  ‘How do you know? What’s that got to do with it?’ He stood up in order to look down on his critic. His knees shook the table, causing oscillations in froth and furthering the agitation of bubbles.

  ‘Oh, come on; I know everything.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Sure. I’ve been watching you for ages.’

  ‘Since when?’ He sat once more, rocked in his chair, feeling the cold hand of apprehension.

  Redbear tamped his rollie out.

  He would, he supposed, have to kill him.

  But first another round.

  Recumbent…

  Stylized, infected, the work of a delinquent imagination; the lying man, he called him, slumped in repose, choked and blue-faced by a lack of oxygen.

  The elves applauded, thinking him finished, this work complete. But it was far from over, as they should have suspected, agents of a darker force here gathered for a terrible purpose.

  Some he plucked the heads off. Others he squashed into an old cake tin. And one, entire with bicycle, he framed for murder.

  Then he returned to Vanessa’s, pulled the stuffing from her favourite teddy and used the non-flame-retardant ursine innards – via the magic of a gas oven – to ignite her flat and contents.

  ‘Assuredly,’ said Sylvester Orange, itching terribly and smelling of curry. ‘I saw it with me own eyes.’

  ‘But that’s impossible.’

  ‘Not so, my friend. Takes but a twist of the imagination…’ He made a hand gesture reminiscent of Fagin.

  The person to whom he related his story, discovered on a park bench waxed and flaking, was, she claimed, an undercover detective. Sylvester had no proof other than the bulge
of her suspenders. What had drawn him to her in the first place, a subtle undulation.

  ‘’T was a cold and wintry night…’

  ‘In July?’

  ‘January. And all the city was sleeping, dreaming dreams of Easter Bunnies and cotton candy. When, just past two, there roared a mighty tabernacle.’

  ‘What’s a tabernacle?’

  He scratched his chin. ‘A kind of covered meeting place, on wheels.’

  ‘Like a vehicle?’

  ‘Aye…only roaring, venting a great rage.’

  ‘A lorry with a bust exhaust, you mean.’

  ‘Scattering ghosts and crushing strays, as it carried a secret cargo.’

  Paused for effect. Her eyebrows rose. She crossed her legs the other way. He swallowed.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The tabernacle slew; icy was the road. From between its curtains spilled…’

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ she interrupted. ‘A baby elephant with big ears.’

  ‘No – four suitcases.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Three of which were quickly recovered by the attending penguins. But one of which,’ he winked, ‘went undiscovered.’

  Inclusive…

  Laughing out loud at passers-by and shaking the hands of shop assistants. Making hoax bomb calls while eating a celery and prawn sandwich on a mobile stolen from a pregnant reflexologist. Punching tourists. Tearing the final pages from international best-sellers. Introducing vermin to supermarket deli counters and infiltrating the smuggling rings of redundant factory workers with the goal of selling at a loss to rival consortiums. Burgling the offices of public servants and stealing nothing but carpet tiles. All in a day’s work for the urban terrorist. Posting pornography to husbands with reference to Readers’ Wives. Bending car aerials into animals. Hiding paper money in electrical cabinets with just a corner showing and shitting in elevators. Copulating on traffic islands, wired for sound. Filling road excavations with expired chickens and lamenting publicly the declining standards of western civilization dressed as a kangaroo with a canister of helium there for the inhaling, backing singers drunk on methylated spirit and an organ accompaniment organized along the lines of a public flogging. Dressed as a Rabbi, mugging schoolgirls for their knickers. Each was a treasured ambition. Getting a pan stuck on your head and wandering aimlessly about a departmental store china department. Throwing up in the fryer of the local chippy. Pretending to go into labour during a performance of William Tell you then fail to produce a ticket for, blaming that bastard Rossini and making your escape through the orchestra pit. Feigning loss of memory. Chaining your entire back catalogue of girlfriends to a barrier in the central reservation. Sawing in half those ugly dogs that tow around old ladies.

  Life was too short, he realized. There was only ever time for excuses.

 

  And what’s more…

  ‘The ninety percent rule,’ she stated, yawning theatrically. ‘Ninety percent of everything is garbage.’

  He couldn’t argue. She was adamant. The majority of anything - life, art, sausages – was rubbish. There was just no escaping the fact. Music: ninety percent garbage. TV: ninety percent garbage. His own work?

  ‘Sorry…’

  Ninety percent garbage.

  Food for thought, thought Michael Tomatoes. Impossible to improve on it; it being mathematical, a statistic.

  ‘But you have to wade through the garbage to get to the good stuff.’

  You have to chance your arm.

  Twenty: The Man The Future Built