Looking down at his feet he had Seen a midnight whirl of caterpillars and flesh, dancing in the way it always was and always will be.
”Damned if I’m going to change,” said the actor from out of a ridiculous post-box costume dancing serenely as the director had wanted all along;
but there were too many words for him, and he sang them, and, released, they harried him, again swirling in a huge cloud around his head, pecking him like seagulls or mosquitoes in a net.
But then all the words were reversed and died strangling and gagging quietly
“Oh, how cruel,” said the woman standing there calling herself “Mrs.Hedgerow Upsidedowncutmynails-on-Tuesday”
“Yes Mrs.Hedgderow how may I help you please”
‘“Well I’m off to rob a bank.”
“I see, and have you had an, experience in this sort of venture before?”
“Er.. well I once burst my piggy bank open, and Mummy was very cross.”
“Well, if you’d just like to fill in a few details on this form, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh thank you so much,” she said, dynamiting my desk crying, “Down the Capitalists!”
Then another woman came in and steepled her sloping sharplettes in my face,
jiggle.
Then Eshma the cleaning droid came in bleeping up a garden hose pipe serenely while papering over my desk with a large tarpaulin, sticky paste everywhere by Jupiter.
And that turned me on so much that I threw all my filing cabinets out of the window, killing a Yugoslavian monk praying in front of a cash dispenser.
To my surprise I saw missiles rising out of the pavement, and the blast ripped through the building killing me instantly and making me, in my last moments, crave for coffee, inexplicably. I made my way to the coffee machine.
But I was…and I wasn’t…
I was lying on a cold, hard grey surface, my guts coiling like a huge worm to jump out of my mouth…
Then the sea was in me, and I felt bloated and I could feel it swilling about
How can I be? I thought, there’s no room in me for the sea, how can I be? But I was, and I wasn’t.
A dead pig, with apples in its mournful face’s mouth, regretful, staring hatefully at me, an eye on each plate (looking down I held them in my mailed fist (clank))
I saw three knights go past, and I said “Help me I’m dead but I still Am,” so they tried, but they couldn’t pull my soul out of my body
and then I perceived them as chess-peices, and asked myself, “Do I dream, here on this Light Plain, so smooth and shrank and shimberly beneath my plates?”
And as if in answer a Trevor shook my world and God came in with a leather jacket on, on a Japanese motorbike,
“’Allo tosh,” he said,” Wanna ride on motorbike? It’s free you know,”
I knew what he meant but my credit cards weren’t there anyway.
He nodded, winked, fell off his bike…
I got on and he revved up and we went screaming through the Alexandrian drawing room we had been in (it had cold overtones of mottled white marble, and a chandelier) out of the window and into a misty Scottish dale
“Cripes I can’t ‘andle this” said God, ’’We’ll ‘ave t’ walk it.”…..
So we got off and he explained all about the necessity in life for moments, moments of contemplation as we looked over the beautiful scenery.
“What’s that telephone box,” I asked.
“But can you write?” asked God.
“No,” I said, ”l can never think of anything to write”
“Ah,” said God knowingly, ”We all know the cure for that”
“What is it,” I said
“A ride in a space rocket,” he said, “Here comes one now.
And indeed, I could hear one coming along… it was oblong-shaped, rusty and yellow.
It was very cramped with three people in the telephone box, so God de-materialised. “Oy, why can’t I do that,” I said
“That’s my job,” intoned a huge voice, ”Yours is Chartered Accountancy.”
The speeding telephone box spun on its horizontal axis, and Troley, who had been leaning lazily against the door, fell out.
“Waaaa….” he cried, getting fainter.
The telephone sped off into the dark side of the planet, and I could see all of the stars around my head like a huge halo- and to my surprise I could write, like never before, I was kneeling in that phone box feeling slightly dizzy, just writing and writing… I had pulled it off.
Copyright © Christopher J. Hudson (1989)