Far Across A Distant Sea

This was supposed to be illustrated, but it never was. This makes me sad.

Far across a distant sea
Upon the rocky shore
A tale was told of forbidden love
Between an owl and a dinosaur

They first met at a party
In the dinosaur king's house
They dined on crabs and vol-eu-vents
And the occasional passing mouse

The dinosaur, a mighty beast
Was forty three feet tall
And next to him, the tiny owl
Could barely be seen at all

And yet this strange, unlikely pair
Fell in each other's groove
From then they were inseperable
... the townsfolk disapproved

The dinosaur's friends said to him
"Love is the cruellest captor
But she's not for you, why don't you find
A nice velociraptor?"

The family of the Owl agreed
Suggesting plainly that
They wouldn't accept a dinosaur spouse
Why not find herself a pussycat?

But owl and dinosaur were not swayed
Whatever their friends said
They found a sinister minister
And demanded to be wed

The town were all invited
And the wedding was quite a sight
The left side full of dinosaurs
And owls all to the right

"Dearly beloved", the minister droned
"We're gathered here to see"
"An owl and a dinosaur joined as one"
"In unlikely matrimony"

At this the crowd could take no more
They couldn't keep it quiet
Instead of a dinosaur marrying an owl
There was going to be a riot

But the dinosaur and the owl stood tall
And before the first pew was thrown
The dinosaur reached into his pocket
And retrieved a megaphone

"NOW LISTEN", he bellowed, which hushed the crowd
"There's no need to squabble and shove
There's a reason we're here and I think it's quite clear
The owl and I are in love!"

The crowd went "aww", their anger gone
Then sat down quiet and meek
And the owl flew up to the dinosaur
And pecked him on the cheek

And so that day, the wedding done
The pair were husband and wife
They'd done their bit for previously strained interspecies relations
And got on with their life

Flickr

The Old Terra Vitae (Part 2)

The Juju Puppy cackled into his kibble, spraying chunky bits over the bar. His rheumy eyes streamed with tears of mirth, and his hind paw scraped the stool seat spastically. Ten-pin, stony faced and not impressed, ordered another gin. He'd met the Juju Puppy in the early days here, a scabby flanked half-breed pseudo-Jack Russell with a nose for a lost soul. They'd become acquainted over gin and kibble, and that soon became a weekly tradition.

“Lissen up dead man, I don know if you had the necro leanins back on ole terra vitae, but you is sure makin up for it down ere, eh? You wan be careful or it gonna fall off ahead o time” – he paused to laugh again at his friend’s discomfort, and a gobbet of saliva fell from the side of his mouth to the grimy linoleum. “’Scuse the drippins, my friend, guess someone givin a bell a ring somewhere eh? Can’t argue wi the power o Pavlov, eh!” He snorted laughter again.

“You should watch it, Juju, you’ll make a clean spot and this place will lose all its rustic charm.”

“Ha! You know as well as me, ain’t no charm down here, dead man. Don know why you still here anyways, you could got out years ago but seems you don got no work ethic. Whass keeping ya here, eh?”

“Ah the usual, unfinished business upstairs.” Ten-Pin lit a Lucky and signalled for a refill. “Hoping for a job near the old homestead, that way I can pay a visit, make sure she’s OK. Guess I just want a chance to say goodbye, you know?”

“Ehhh same old sob story, you corpses can’t stop thinking with ya growlers eh? S’done man, you gone, and she gonna be all moved on, betcha. Forget it! Catch the five-twenny, y’know, get yersel’ into yer future. Time keeps marchin’ eh, so y’know you two gonna catch catch up eventual. Meet her out there, all you hangin on to’s the misery…”

The Five Twenty. Ten-Pin sipped his bitter drink. Every day it arrived, bang on time. Every day a few more left. The doors closed, the windows darkened, and they rolled into the right hand tunnel, never to be seen again. Everyone down here says it's how the dead move on, that this city’s just a holding pattern for the restless, but nobody actually knows where the Five Twenty goes. Ten-Pin was just too much of a skeptic to take that train at face value, at least not yet, at least here he could see where he came from.

“…anyways, there ain’t been no news for five year, eh? You know what thass about, dead man? Course ya do – the veil darkens when you bein’ forgot. You bein forgot, Ten-Pin. Catch the train, ya? You getting old down here, you getting sloppy, got yerself caught again yesterday, eh? Only so often you can drag yourself outta the caca fuckin’ some rotten ole shade skank, dig?”

“I don’t think so, Juju. Not yet. I’ll check the agency tomorrow, perhaps there’ll be something in the area. I’ll get through yet. Oh, and I expect a refund on that last scan, and you owe me a freebie. Bad dog.”

Ten-Pin drained his glass, patted the Juju Puppy on his shaggy head and rolled out of the door.

Zeynep Death Haiku Collection

Zeynep's diving days
Were short-lived when she found out
She dies without air.

The end of Zeynep
She looked left instead of right
The truck mowed her down

Water on the floor
A slip, head meets porcelain
Rest in peace, Zeynep

A darkened alley
A cry, a flash of cold steel
Zeynep makes the news!

A silver apple
Pin held between gritted teeth
Zeynep's head's blown off

'Nep's final high dive
A half pike and a salko...
Paddy drained the pool

Zeynep's head's so big
But it sure caves in the same
When hit with a stick.

A darkened bedroom,
'Nep, bludgeoned, with a spanner...
perhaps a penis

Zeynep sandwiches
The meat is coarse and tasteless
But they're fun to make!

'Nep's skin, alabaster
Once removed from her body
A dreadful garment

Water slides! what fun!
'Nep whoops with joy, unaware
Of spikes at the end

The Old Terra Vitae (Part 1)

The shade adjusted her pince-nez and peered at the shambolic, scruffy spectre before her with disdain. Ten-Pin fidgeted uncomfortably under the gaze of her empty sockets. This was his sixth recall to the ministry in the last decade, and with seven stamps on his licence already he couldn’t afford to blow this debriefing. Trouble was, he always started to lose cohesion under pressure, and could feel himself sinking through the chair. The shade clacked her finger bones impatiently.

Employees of the ministry invariably favoured a sharp-cut, sober mode of dress, and the shade was no exception. Tight pinstripe in absolute monochrome, blouse buttoned high up what remained of her neck. The theme continued to her desk, a perfect masterpiece of the perpendicular and the parallel. A Perspex plate stood in front of all the order, inscribed with her name; Dorothy Femur.

What do you have to say for yourself? Hmm? The “hmm” was more of a death rattle than anything, a slow groan with a questioning tone. Ten-Pin had rehearsed his response on the train, but the pressure got to him. The pressure always got to him. He tugged his arse out of the seat, and shrugged apologetically.

- ”Look, it wasn’t my fault…”
It never is your fault, Mister Pin.
- ”Yeah but how was I to know they had video running? There was no word that there was an investigation, I checked all the usual sources! Mojo, K-Man, hell I even had the place scanned by the Juju Puppy… they all called it clear.”
Mister Pin, you could have just used your eyes.
- “I know, but I was running late, it’s been a tough month, I was under quota.”
Your file is full of these excuses, Mister Pin.
- “It’s not an excuse. It’s the truth.”
You’re a slacker, Mister Pin.
- “I didn’t have the backup!”
You allowed yourself to be captured on film, Mister Pin!

The last was roared from her gaping maw, accompanied by a blast of fetid air and the odour of tooth decay. Not for the first time, Ten-Pin wished that being dead meant no more sense of smell. Her skeletal hand beckoned him. He sighed, and handed over his licence. She tapped it thoughtfully. I could perhaps see my way to letting this pass, Mister Pin. She slowly unfastened the top button on her blouse. We could come to some kind of… mutually beneficial arrangement.

This was why Ten-Pin hated shades. Always on the make for something to help them recall what it’s like to have sensation. After the body dies, the memory remains, but the more the rot sets in the less you can feel, and the shades are on the final stretch before dissolution. He cast his eye over the grey scraps of flesh she’d revealed. Miss Femur grinned viciously and slowly scraped the edge of the licence card down her peeling neck, popping another button, which missed Ten-Pin's head by inches. You don’t want that eighth stamp, do you Mister Pin?

Ten-Pin sighed, stood, and reluctantly walked through the desk towards her.

Fashionista

There was nothing the police could do when murder became the next big thing. Face it, it’s normally a minority crime, and usually it’s brutal and quick and unplanned. Murder is an act of passion, or a moment of drunken madness. Everyday murder is the beaten down husband lashing out with a convenient screwdriver, or the beaten up wife turning the worm with weedkiller in the pasta. That’s what most murder was, before – cheap, swift, sordid dirty murder.

Of course, there have been exceptions. There have been serial killers with their hats made of stolen scrotal sacks, and grisly executions over self-dug graves in the woods at midnight. There have been cannibals and self-appointed surgeons and carefully executed acts of grotesque and poetic revenge. These murders form the great untapped resource of inspiration for the craze gripping the country – thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people competing to commit the best murder.

It all began when reports started to appear in the papers of mysterious score-cards appearing at murder scenes. The cards were all neatly typed, and rated the murder for style, aggression, originality, ingenuity and “x-factor”. Usually these scores (each out of fifty – maximum score two hundred and fifty) were accompanied by a couple of lines of commentary, like inelegant but delightfully violent or painfully unoriginal and competely lacking in finesse. After a few months, these cards were being found at every murder scene in the country.

Of further interest was the single line on the rear of each card. Bad luck, you are not a winner this time! Grand prize for the first 250 point murder!

The crime statistics started to change. Murder was going up in the charts, and the more there was, the more people wanted in on the action. It was getting to the point where you couldn’t walk down the street without finding some grisly tableau nailed to a lamppost with knives in each eye, another scorecard taped to the floor beside it. Another dashed hope, another loser.

The nation was in chaos. The government declared a state of emergency, and the troops took to the streets, where of course they committed a whole slew of slayings. Being soldiers, these attempts invariably lacked style. I haven’t heard of one killing by a soldier that even scored over thirty. Public interest continued to rise, and internet sites sprang up to try to track the ingredients of a perfect two hundred and fifty point murder.

The best recorded score was a two-thirty-six in Manchester, the corpses set up in the shop window of a major department store in the dead of night in a series of lewd and disturbing poses, as the children lay in the entrails like demented fortune tellers. Everyone agreed to the artistry of the piece, that the brutality was perfectly offset by the careful and considered arrangement of the remains. The prominent public location of the piece was thought to have contributed to the high score as well.

Anyway, this isn’t something I’ve rushed into. I’m not some fashionista, jumping on the next hipster bandwagon. But I’ve watched this thing grow, I’ve studied the form, performed in-depth analysis on all the high scoring attempts for the win. Sure, I tried some simple practice murders, testing out individual techniques, one of which got a one-fifty on its own. Tonight I’ll finish this, then this stupid craze can go the way of the Tamagotchi and the Yo-Yo. Of course, then we'll all just move on to the next big thing.

Think Pre-Emptively

Oh Charlie, you silly boy. Fact is, your household cat seems harmless, but you keep pushing it, keep teasing it and something is going to give. Did you not think about that? It seems like a soft ball of fur but what you forget is that its a soft ball of fur with teeth and claws. So you wind the thing up and you let it go and it bounces off the walls a bit. Hilarious. Until it bounces at you, claws and teeth and rage and all and this time it wont stop. This time it keeps biting, keeps scratching, keeps drawing blood; which seems to only further fuel its fury.

What are you going to do, Charlie? How much claret does that once-loved family pet have to spill before you crack its head open? How much skin does it have to open before you pin it down with your foot and kick it lifeless?

Perhaps youd be more humane, Charlie. You'd use your ingenuity, grab a handy blanket or jacket. You could bundle good ole Tiddles up and throw him into a room, shut him in. You could leave him there for an hour, let him calm down. I can picture you slamming that door shut, sliding to the floor to catch your breath as your screeching prisoner throws its insignificant mass against the barrier to try to get to you.

It could happen, Charlie.

What happens when you go back later and hes not changed his mood? What happens when you open the door and that tiny fiend is on you again, three times more ferocious than when you locked him away? You see my point eventually you have to take the necessary steps. You look doubtful. You're still thinking Tiddles is a small animal, claws or no I could control him.

Fair enough, Charlie, lets ramp it up a bit. How about the family dog? A much bigger animal who you've pushed too far. This is a beast who could really hurt you. This is a creature that could knock you down and tear out your throat. Thousands of years of breeding and training and man's best friend is still a wild animal at heart. How much will it take before you hold him down with his foaming jaws snapping at you, all crocodilian, how much does he need to hurt you before you're pushing your thumbs into his windpipe? You will, Charlie, you'll choke the life out of him as his frantic claws shred your forearms.

Then there's your sister. Your sister, Charlie. You can't shut her in a room, she has opposable thumbs, just like you. She can work the door handle, and she can use tools. She can wait until you're asleep and creep into the kitchen like a burglar. Silently she can open the drawer, and take out that big, sharp knife. She can tiptoe up the stairs. She's stealthy, Charlie - you were playing hide and seek with her just the other week, you know what a slippery customer she is.

You'll be fast asleep, dreaming your peculiar dreams and she'll be stood by your bed with her eyes all black and glittery. She won't even make a noise, just lean forward and push that blade through your neck. She'll stand silent and staring as you thrash about, bleed out and finally expire. What are you going to do about that, Charlie?

No, of course it will never happen.

Probably.

Are you sure, though? All I'm saying is that you have to remember that all of these creatures; cat, dog, sister - they're a threat. All I'm saying is that you have to be careful. All I'm saying is that a wise man would think pre-emptively. I'll leave you to think about that for a while, Charlie. Mull it over when you're lying in bed tonight and all these threats are sneaking around the house.

Night, Charlie.