illuminated bridge

The bridge over the canal is illuminated. At night it looks impressive from the other bridges nearby, but close up, you can see that it is a decaying wreck of a bridge. The lights distract the eye from the decay. There is a block of flats beside the canal where the bridge is. The flats have no lights. The decay has set in so much in to the flats that the lights would not fool even a novice eye. The life in the flats seems luke warm and creeping. The residents know that they are kings and queens of their concrete block - and they know that it will never be taken away from them. They know that the burning cars of their neighboors will keep other locals away. They know that they are regarded as dangerous. They respond by silently droning along. All they can do is look at the lights on the bridge. If they look carefully thay can see their children smoking and spitting on the path under the bridge. Just along from the bridge is a brand new block of flats. It has turned its back on the grey concrete decay, and is not fooled by the bridge lights. The new flats look to the city - where the lights emphasise; not disguise. I live in the new flats. I take long detours to avoid seeing the old crumbling grey place full of empty lives and broken ambition. It depresses me that it is there and that I can't look at it. I will look the other way, just as my new block of flats does - forgetng the decay, and sometimes glimpsing at the illuminated bridge, so I can convince myself that it's all fine behind me.

have you noticed how no-one comes here anymore?

oh well. did you hear about the wild midgets of khao lak in thailand?

just running about.

there isn't a chief amongst them. they just run wild like wild horses, but shorter. and more aggressive. i gave one my library card and he went to the library and piled up some books just so he could reach the librarians skirt and he blow his nose on the hem and the librarian was livid. the midget didn't mind. he ran off ad found the adventure section and was upset that there wasn't a slide.

King and Morton by Dweller

This is the only part of a larger story that managed to hit terra firma and survive the impact.

It was transcribed in a spontaneous collaboration between the two Matts : King and Morton.

submitted by dweller

She unclasped her fist. A pea size time capsule. Swallowed - think time zero. Now an unshakeable tension. 'I'm rising Daddio'. Pin prick pupils to a full planet saucer engulfing black hole. 'Oh Daddio I'm coming home'.

Come to daddy he grinned , arms wide palms facing. Like a massive planet pulling in a piece of passing spacefluff, he called her in and she gave no resistance

Neon blue jukebox. All the hip cats and chicksters hangin' out. Just as he had promised. Purring like a you know how she strolls in the door. And is flinging handjives to all the old faces. This pre acid decade was the only one to come visiting.

Say there little sister. A gold toothed cool. The whiskey didny stop coming. Stories of barnyard scat parties, squeezing the sawdust under square toed leathers. Stories of over the border. stories of Frank's place and the unfortunate Casey brothers. She just looked at the kaleidoscope burning of off his teeth, and gazed across his shoulder.

Hey babe she called over to Jack. A shuffle past goldmouth and a high five to Jack. Hurried whisper in our heroine's ear. 'It aint like last time. He fixed it so now there aint no going back'. 'Quit kidding me J honey. I can swing it in this joint, but baby you just aint alive without skating over the Jupiter Flows at least once a
year.' Jack's wrinkled forehead sweat remained.

A full century after giving up he pop a stogie in his mouth and inhales and holds. His eyes burn at her . Straightening his hair he steps off his stool and turns to leave. "what's the apple stargazer? " she catches his shoulder, a wry smile
and he tells her to meet him at the dock. Her face folds in and she thinks, again.

###SOMETHING'S COOKING###
nose powdering bennies suck suck time. Then suitably fixed our able fox clip clops to the tobacco wharf. Hand on shoulder. But not Jack as her turn head response eyes see HIM . Oh the cliché of chloroform hankies. Buzzed up for a quicktime kneeball jerk. 'aaaargh you bitch' bent double and eyes stung by his own trap. Blacked out and rolled over the edge into the sluice black waters. Our heroine is wired.

'Fuck this what's going on!' She releases into the ink black night. Hold tight now sweety all senses max. Don't you wish you had a Mitsubishi ?…..
The air shimmers as the jingle fades "You alright down there?" a rhythmic shuffle reveals goldmouth with twin barrels pointing from a tool bag.

"Bring Back The Wildebeasts!" by Non-Girlfriend (http://nongirlfriend.blogspot.com)

All this talk about people getting fatter. Bunny and I were discussing it this morning. Her theory: It's because we have these (for the most part) jobs where we sit all day. We have fast food and lots of it around. We're not running about, foraging for our next meal and running away from wild animals. Etcetera.

I say, Bring back the wildebeasts!

Yes, it's true. If I were afraid that I might be gobbled up by some horrific animal with large fangs and jaws of death, I doubt I'd be sitting on my fat Chicken ass on The Roost, watching Lenny Briscoe make wisecracks on "Law & Order" while drinking shots of vodka and having lustful thoughts about a plate of pasta.

[By the way, The Roost is history. I'm kicking it to the curb and putting my Health Rider in its place. If I'm gonna watch TV so much, I may as well be exercising while I do it. The babies can have the other couch.]

I bet they didn't even have alcohol back in the days of our cavemen and women. Think about it: What caveperson in their right Cro-Magnon mind would go get wasted at the local Caveman Cocktail Party? You indulge a bit too much and you're dinner.

I wonder if there were any fat cavepeople? Or depressed cavepeople, for that matter?

I'll bet you fifty dollars cavepeople didn't smoke cigarettes, either. Nope, they would need the full capacity of their cavelungs to run like hell when the wildebeasts came to call. Plus, all those stinky cigarette butts would give off a scent and the rest of the wilderness would show up, drooling over lunch.

That's why I say to bring back the wildebeasts. Plant them in every office. Running outside for a clandestine "meeting" with Jack in Accounting? Think twice, my cavesister. There may be danger. Going out for a smoke? Not a chance, those saber-toothed tigers are pretty scary and FAST - they can run like the wind. Leisurely three-cocktail lunch? No-siree-bob! You get sleepy, you might not be able to high-tail it up a tree if necessary.

It's evolution's fault that my Food Baby is growing up faster than I can enjoy him: Fucking Mother Nature took away my incentive.

Damn.

By the way, it's been proven in clinical studies that I piss straight vodka. Maybe that would throw off my scent?

Copyright 2005 Non-Girlfriend

Short...Tale. Posted by Blog Ho

As a child I saw two pigs fighting at the fair. They were giant and trapped in a small pen. I stood outside the pen and watched them smash their giant bodies into each other, the one climbing the back of the other.

It was then that I saw the corkscrew penis of the man pig. These two pigs were not fighting. They were fucking.

Over the years I have been taken with how often a violent act looks like sex. Sex is a frenetic activity filled with vigor and with animals it looks violent.

For years I watched birds fight, feeling sorry for them when really it should have been a feeling of cheer for the lust sated.

Today, two yellow butterflies flew in front of me. They were going very fast, the one chasing the other. They flew directly into the street and were smashed by the grill of a car.

It may have been a territorial chase, but I hope that it was a last, frantic, love-flight.

Blog Ho

Moat House Hotel Murders - part two

Read Part One Here

The prisoner is in cell number three. He was signed out of Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, at 0456h. He was checked into Chelsea Police Station at 0524h. The arresting officer was PC Hanging Face. The Desk Officer was PC Short & Angry. The Prisoner was compliant but confused. He passed out in his cell and has not yet regained consciousness.

The time now is 0539h. I have left that useless fleshy part of me in the cell and I am in the mess room. PC Hanging Face is eating a sausage roll that looks like a dead hamster. He finishes the pig snack and walks into a small changing area. He approaches a cupboard and fishes out the right key from a massive key ring. He opens the cupboard and delves inside. He takes out a pink bunny outfit. It is in its fresh drycleaner- issue plastic cover. He hangs it up and begins to get undressed. He is down to his socks and white shirt. He takes the plastic cover off the pink bunny suit and puts the pink bunny trousers on, complete with fluffy pink tail. He puts the straps over his shoulder. The door opens and PC Buggered Ragged comes in.

‘Hi Ron’, he says, ‘You gonna give that fucker a going over?’
‘Too right! Fucker bled on my shirt. Here, can you help us with the zip at the back?’
‘Yeah, no problem, Ron. Give ‘im one from me.’
‘Will Do, Degsy. Cheers. See you Thursday.’

PC Hanging Face puts on the Bunny head and straightens out his ears in the mirror. He sits down on a bench and puts his steel toe-capped police shoes back on. He picks up a cricket bat, exits the room, and makes his way to my cell. PC Short & Angry lets him in.

I wake up with a start as the door slams. An armed, six-foot tall, pink bunny is standing in the cell with me. I want to say something, anything, but words fail me. The bunny approaches and without warning or ceremony and he swings the bat into my side. Searing pain flows through my body. I curl up, protecting myself as best I can. The bunny swings and hits and punches and kicks, blow after blow. He hits me over and over again, never uttering one word. All I can hear is his breathing getting heavier over the thud, thud, thud, as the bat keeps on at me, and my own muffled groans from my covered face. Soon I am gone again; my body shuts down.

I deserve it. Two people dead, and one dog. I put the heavy body of Mr. Dawkins in the wardrobe of the hotel room and covered him with blankets. There was blood on the bed from when I shot him dead with my little gun. Moving him only served to get blood on me and around the rest of the room. I found a three-quarter-length leather jacket in the wardrobe that would cover the bloodstains on my clothes. I washed my hands and put the gun in the inside pocket of the jacket. I picked up the laptop, put it under my arm and left the scene of the crime.

At 0815h a man came into the cell. He said I looked like hell. He said he’d arranged for my bail. He said to follow him. I told him what had happened, about the bunny attack. He told me to shut the hell up or I’d be slung in the nuthouse. I protested and showed him my bruises. ‘Of course you’ve got bruises’, he said. ‘You resisted arrest after running from the scene of an accident.’

Accident? He means the dog.

Once home, I took a long bath and took some strong painkillers. Everything hurt. At the station, a new shift Desk Officer had given me back my personal effects.

One wallet, contents £150.58 pence, two bank cards, one driving license.
One leather jacket.
One laptop, Toshiba.
No gun.

I fell asleep in the bath. My dreams took me everywhere. Nightmares about the bunny; nightmares about shooting the dog; nightmares about the old woman’s screaming face. I even dreamt of her old woman smell.

When I awoke, the water was cold and my skin was so wrinkled I thought it was too big. I checked the time on my diving watch. It was 1414h. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before the police would work out that I was a double killer of humans and a lesser slayer of dogs. I had to clean up my clothes and destroy the leather jacket. I had to call the number I had been given so I could pass on the laptop. I needed the rest of the money.

I bundled together the clothes that were covered in the blood of two dead men, one dead dog, and one living murderer - still at large - into a Gap shopping bag. I put the leather jacket into a separate sports bag, and I left my flat on my racing bicycle with drop handlebars and 12 gears.

I went past the hospital where I’d been that morning and dropped the leather jacket and the sports bag into the huge, black, terminal bins, marked, ‘Waste for Incineration’. I thought about what else might be in those bins and wretched. I didn’t have the stomach for this.

I cycled on to the drycleaners on Kensington Church Street. They had a sign in the window promising discretion, and discretion is what I needed. I paid in advance for the complete service, including ironing and the good plastic hangers instead of the horrid wiry ones that deform clothes. As I left I said goodbye over my shoulder. That was when I saw a pink, fluffy, bunny outfit, hanging up in its fresh plastic skin.

I cycled fast away.

Back at the office I entered my usual trancelike state. I typed in the figures as they arrived on the ‘ inward options’ screen and sent them through to Coventry with the normal advice. ‘Please Do Not Share This LanceCom’. I had been reprieved. PC Hanging Face and friends never did connect me to the Moat House Hotel Murders. I ‘m free to enter data another day.

Moat House Hotel Murders - part one

Chelsea is as strange a place as any to run into your old self.

Running down Cheynne Walk, bumping into the young mother who shouted “Nazi!”

I saw this shadow of me shouting back, “So sorry, but that kid's gene pool was drained before conception. Open the light ponds in your head!”

Is that me? What an uncouth yob. Jostling other peds and insulting their mediocre spawn.

I suddenly appear in the old bod; I am the yob. I am pelting it, the river getting closer, and I see another young mother hogging the pavement. “Move your double-sized arse to make way!” I look behind to see what this version of me is running from. I see a blue uniformed thug with a USA style stick and he is baring down on me fast. I’m looking back for too long. I am weighing up my chances when the legs are swept away from beneath me. I feel a floating sensation before a rush of pain and hatred winds me and batters my head. I have run into the young mother’s super pricey McClaren baby carriage. I am winded as I come down heavily on a low metal bollard, the kind of which belongs beside water for boats to moor, not on ordinarily reasonable pavements. The hatred comes in the form of a sharp kick to the noggin from the hysterical young mother. Red clouds my eyes as I feel a crack where once there was a good nose bridge. As pain turns to numbing pulse, I see that up have emptied the posh baby from its McClaren car, and it is still, on the floor.

The police fella is on me like a shot, but he is restraining my unlikely attacker. I hear sirens as I begin to find a new energy. I rise to my feet and pick up a pacifier from the baby carriage. The baby is on the floor looking, to me, like a dead baby. This fills me with a different pain. I approach the baby and arrange the pacifier in its tiny mouth. Like a key, the pacifier seems to bring the baby back to life. The screech stops us all. Six eyes hit on the baby. The young mother is unsure what she should feel. The bob-a-job cop is not so lacking in ideas. He throws his baton at me, bloodying further my already clareted face. I feel okay, though. I stand as I rise out of myself once more. The policeman picks me up; throws me down. He is sure I am no threat but he puts me in cuffs for good measure.

When the darkness leaves me, I find myself in myself. I find myself in a dark room with a metal door and stark smoke stained walls. I am slouched on a wooden chair with edges that grind bones and crease flesh. There is a flickering strip light being lapped by a bluebottle. The strobe effect makes the fly look like old movie.

I fade away and try to work out what got me here.

Am I a criminal? Did I hurt anyone?

Yes. I remember things slowly. There was the man in the elevator at the Hotel on Sloane Square. There was the lady with the hair like a fruit bowl and the silly dog that bared its teeth at me. There was the polish waitress. There were my instructions:

Sloane Square Moat House Hotel

Room 102

1430h

Take the laptop.

Take the bus. No. 11.

Do Not Kill Anyone.

I remember this, but I don’t know what was on the laptop. I didn’t make it onto any bus. The plan went pear shaped.

I killed the man who helped me in the elvator. He told me which way room 102 was. I thanked him. He asked me what interest was mine in Hugh Dawkins’ room? A good question. A blank in my head for 30 seconds as I left my normal conscious state. When I returned to myself my aide was dead. It didn’t look real so I imagined him to be a play puppet that might amuse children. I also knew that I had broken instruction six.

I tried to enter the room. I used my shoulder. It didn’t work. I found a fire extinguisher and whacked the door with that. I t didn’t work. Hugh Dawkins appeared and asked in a very English way, “What an earth do you think you are doing?”

That was when I shot him in the leg with my little gun, the same one that had killed the elevator man. Strangely, there was no attempt to be tertiary to this crime. I stayed well and truly in my body. He opened the door, though he seemed in some pain. I told him to sit at the writing desk. I asked him where his laptop was. He looked at me like I was a stupid man. It was on the desk in front of him. I killed him. I was there when I did it.