THE CONTRARY MAN

I have tirelessly trained and run in the most competitive of races with the greatest of athletes and, on the cusp of victory, I have slowed my pace to ensure I finish last. I have prepared the sweetest tasting meals in all of culinary history and put them straight in the bin. I composed the most stirring musical composition that ever would've been heard had I not performed it on only one occasion, in a remote and unpopulated vicinity, with my ears plugged so even I would not hear it. Every single time someone wins a lottery and does not claim the winnings, it is me. I painted the greatest painting ever painted and then I painted over it. I wrote the greatest work of literature anyone would've ever read had I not rewritten it so that every word was 'shiteballs'. I then retitled the piece 'Shiteballs'. I have invented things that would have changed humanity's course for the better had I not placed them in a locked safe and hurled that safe into the core of a nuclear reactor. I have also learned the ultimate truth and when people ask me to share it with them I tell them a lie.

I have done all these things because I am The Contrary Man. I have devoted my life to mastering the art of living and then denied myself and the rest of you the fruits of my talents and knowledge. This is my ultimate revenge on the existence that has been foisted upon me and upon us all. An existence that, for many, consists largely of suffering without explanation. This compulsory existence is the ultimate injustice and my greatest achievement is to deny the challenges set before us by learning to overcome them and then not overcoming them. I have even discovered the secret of immortality only to cremate it and when I breathe my last I want to go to the afterlife and I want God to look at me and I want God to ask me 'why?' and I want to relish the look of incomprehension on God's face.

This will be my victory but the effort has not been an easy one. In the struggle there is a small amount of satisfaction. I have learned to love the meaninglessness of it all and I have learned that the most tragic failure, when executed correctly, is the greatest triumph. I have come to understand that the only finishing line that matters is death and even that doesn't matter very much in the dribbling staccato overwhelming context of this, ...whatever this is.

MORE ABOUT HOTEL FUGGER

If there is one thing we at Hotel Fugger take pride in it is nothing at all. We at Hotel Fugger know we have nothing to be proud of but that's OK because we're not proud people.

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You will love the food at Hotel Fugger because there isn't much of it so if you get your hands on it you will really value it. That is why we say that you will love the food at Hotel Fugger.

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Do not drink the water at Hotel Fugger. It tastes bad. It all comes from the tank on the roof. There are dead bodies in the tank. We don't know how the bodies got in there as the tank's only aperture has a  diameter of nine inches. However, a suicidal troupe of contortionists from the Chinese State Circus were reported missing five years ago and it was around about that time that Hotel Fugger's water started to taste bad.

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Many famous personalities stayed at Hotel Fugger but all of these famous personalities are dead and all of them died in Hotel Fugger. The circumstances of their deaths are considered so grim that no one talks about these famous personalities anymore. Hence, they are no longer famous.

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When you book into Hotel Fugger we give you the directions to your room. 'It's at the end of the corridor', we say and you walk down the corridor toward the end but there is no end. The corridor just goes on and on and on and on and on. Eventually you give up and turn back. Then you realise that the corridor has no start either. There is just corridor, stretching out in both directions, forever. Doorless corridor. Endless corridor. The last corridor you will ever see. The corridor you will die in. This corridor is our little joke. We have to keep ourselves amused somehow. It's just something to lighten the mood here at Hotel Fugger. 

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At Hotel Fugger we have face painting for the children but the children are all dead and the people painting their faces are the people who killed them. If it's any consolation, the face being painted on the children's faces is your face.

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Hotel Fugger is heated by the collective unease of its guests.

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The Devil came to stay at Hotel Fugger but was told there was only one bed left and that he'd have to share a room. The Devil agreed and we put him in a room with God. We locked the door from the outside and the two of them are trapped there to this day. If you put your ear to the door and listen you can hear the two of them arguing. Things can get pretty bitchy. Listening at their door is one of the chief attractions at Hotel Fugger.

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A guest recently found a finger in his bed at Hotel Fugger. It turned out that it was his own finger and there was nothing to worry about because it was still attached to his hand. The guest thought he'd report it anyway because, as the guest said himself, 'you never know' and that is very true, you never do know. In fact, that is our motto here at Hotel Fugger. 'YOU NEVER KNOW.' You find those words on the heading of our stationary, embroidered into our towels and on the plaque that hangs over our entrance. These words are also written in the minds of our staff and guests alike, in letters standing one mile high and made from the bones of the hundreds of millions of men, women and children who died with the words 'you never know' on their lips.

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Hotel Fugger has been completely refurbished. To be precise, Hotel Fugger has been utterly unfurbished. There are no longer walls at Hotel Fugger. Hotel Fugger no longer has doors or furnishings of any sort or even a roof. Hotel Fugger is just an idea. Hotel Fugger is not a good idea but it is an idea and you are stuck with the idea because I've just placed the idea of Hotel Fugger in your head.

Hotel Fugger – you're there right now.

Enjoy your stay.

You Never Know.

ALWAYS HOME

The world is a great big beautiful organic ball. It breathes with its trees and has seas that teem with plants and creatures, spawning and flowing and darting about. Birds glide above in great wispy rain makers. The whole thing as an indefatigable system of indestructible life. Pure life. Even when something ceases to be it breaks down and feeds the future and gets born again in a new form. There's no end to the élan vital. It is unstoppable. Get over yourself and show me death. Where is there death? Point me to a single place where death resides outside of human perception. There is even radiotrophic fungi growing inside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Life is everywhere. Death is nowhere to be found. Death does not exist. There is no death. There is only change. Change is sometimes scary and change is sometimes sad but it is never the end and you are always home.

...and those were the words I used to comfort my terrified Uncle Stan just before I pushed him down the elevator shaft and set about gaining possession of his estate.

EDWARD BURRA

A landscape, like one from a dream. Sparse with pylons and clumps of trees. Beautiful but asleep. A silent road cuts through it but where does it lead? Far, far off to somewhere that can't be seen. And you've no choice but to travel it, to follow its twilight track. You'll cross over the horizon and you won't be coming back.

MONKEYS DON'T HAVE WORDS

In a former life I was a monkey. I didn't have a name, just a scent. I used to drink water from leafs and pee anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on other monkeys who didn't mind at all. I jumped from tree to tree and threw berries at predators, taunting them from the safety of high branches, just for the laugh.

Past life regression therapy has brought these memories back to me. The main thing I remember is an overriding sense of urgent delight and an overwhelming immersion in what they call Oceanic Feeling. I wasn't just in the jungle, I was the jungle and I was everything else in the jungle.

I eventually got old and fell out of a tree and into the jaws of a big cat, which was a nasty end but up to that point I'd had tremendous craic. Anyway, even though I was eaten by a big cat, I was the big cat. It's hard to explain. It was a feeling beyond words. Monkeys don't have words. They don't need them. They'd find them inadequate.

In another former life I was a cartographer of either geographic land or the human mind, I'm not sure which. All I really remember is a sense of discomfort. There was a kind of fear there: of boundless spaces, of uncharted realms, of unlabelled and uncategorised things. I didn't have this fear as a child but as I grew older, and read stories of wild places, wild animals and wild people, I came to understand that categorisation was necessary. I too was categorised and this gave me a robust sense of what they call Ontological Security and this Ontological Security provided me with a buffer which I used to protect myself from the sheer randomness of what they call 'outrageous fortune'.

I eventually got old and developed dementia. I started drinking water from leafs and peeing anywhere I liked. I spent a great deal of time screeching and hopping up on people who took offence and contacted the authorities. I jumped from building to building and threw bottles at the police, taunting them from the safety of high rooftops, just for the laugh.

I eventually fell from the top of a multi-storey car park and dashed my brains on the pavement below and was taken to a morgue where a little label was attached to my toe, with a little number on it, and I was put into a drawer that had another number on it and then I was put into box that had my name on it and then I was buried under the ground in a plot in a cemetery that had a saint's name on it and then I could have sworn that I felt a nameless monkey walk right over my grave and I think it took a pee.

TiTs!

My funeral will be held at the titty bar. That's where I want people to remember me. I want my ashes poured on Wendy's boobs as she gyrates and flashes her nonjudgemental grin. Wendy is my favourite of the dancers. Bendy Wendy they call her. The trace of scorn that is faintly detectable in the eyes of the other girls is absent from Wendy. She enjoys her work. She takes pride in it. Have you seen the way she transforms herself into a spinning human pretzel? It's incredible. It's beautiful. It's so much better than the lethargic swaying of those who would rather be glamour modelling or assisting a magician or working as an usher in an adult cinema. Bendy Wendy gives me reason to rise from my bed each day and this is why I ask that her cleavage be my final resting place. This is why I request that her mammaries be my memorial. I can see her now, slowly moving to the Funeral March as I am laid to rest on her generous breasts.

Some complain that Wendy's whoppers are 'fake'. That her charm would count for nothing if she was sans silicone but I see it a different way. I prefer the term 'enhanced' and aren't the best things in life enhanced? Nature gives us the raw material and we work with it, enhancing its qualities. Master chefs enhance flavours, all Wendy has done is enhance her knockers. She has knockout knockers. I told her as much. Just the other day, I shouted at her, 'Wendy, you've got knockout knockers'. She seemed complimented. Her grin broadened a little. Some of the others said she didn't understand me. They say she doesn't even speak English. They say that she is from a cold and bitter country and that her name isn't even Wendy. They say that she goes backstage after every performance and gazes at a creased photograph of a child that she keeps amongst her personal effects. They say that she sobs. What they say just makes me appreciate Wendy all the more. What a trouper. Despite all her troubles she comes out dancing and gives everyone a good time. 'You're a real trouper Wendy!' That's what I'll shout at her tomorrow. Even if she doesn't understand me, she'll get the sentiment. I'm a sentimental man. My send off will be similarly sentimental. It will be the saddest day ever at the titty bar but Wendy will be grinning because she knows that you've got to keep smiling no matter what knocks you take. Yeah, Wendy may have taken a few knocks but like her knockout knockers, she always comes bouncing back.

And, in a way, aren't we all heartbroken topless dancers at the titty bar of life? And rather than lethargically swaying and visibly wishing we were elsewhere, shouldn't we all just grin and gyrate and make the best of it? Gyrating and hoping that someone will slip a few bucks into our garter to send home to little Fedor so he can save up and one day, maybe, have enough to slip into the garter of some other heartbroken topless dancer that reminds him of his mother and causes a tear to come to his eye as he recalls the day she left him in the care of his grandparents and hugged him and kissed him a final time before walking out the door and leaving Slavingrad forever. Isn't that the way things are?

I think that is the way things are and that's the kind of thing I want everyone at my funeral to be thinking as Wendy wobbles and mourners weep and the whole world spins around again.

HOTEL FUGGER

Did I ever tell you that Hotel Fugger was once called The Hotel View Hotel? Yeah, it was. The old name came from the fact that every window in the hotel looked out onto another part of the hotel. The architecture was inspired by Bentham's Panopticon - no matter where you are you can be seen so you better watch what you're doing because someone might be looking. This was originally intended to prevent the theft of towels but the approach soon grew into a philosophy of sorts or, to be more precise, a way of 'being'. The Hotel View Hotel was considered a true escape from the world outside. Once booked in, the guests were encouraged to forget about everything beyond the lobby's revolving doors. House rules requested that conversation solely concern matters pertaining to the hotel: the evening's menu, gossip about other guests, the beige furnishings, the stale aroma, the mangy cat, the lack of toilet rolls and so on. To discuss the world outside the hotel risked inviting disapproving glances, mockery or even being sent to Coventry.

All books and periodicals were confiscated so as to prevent the residents being distracted from the residence. There was only the hotel - the stars and sun and birds and trees, the clouds and continents and constructs of the outside world vanished from the consciousness of the guests. The guests stopped contacting the friends and family they had known before their stay at The Hotel View Hotel. They quit their professions. They earned their keep by working in the hotel.

Soon all the exits to the building were sealed up. The only doors remaining were ones that led back in, which didn't bother anyone because no one ever left. And so things continued for a time and everyone was perfectly happy. Well, not 'happy' maybe but content or at least contentish. Well, they were prepared to pretend they were contentish, let's just put it that way. So, you know, it was as good a life as anyone might expect to live and that was about as good a life as anyone expected. That is until the food shortage. That's right, the kitchen ran out of food. Well, it was bound to happen wasn't it? The guests/staff had even discussed it. A concerned receptionist actually gave a presentation about it in the function room. Our Incommodious Future, that's what she called her lecture. Everyone listened and worried but no one did anything. I mean, what could they do? Well, one guy suggested they leave the hotel and go to the shops but he was dismissed as a crank. 'We'll eat the potted plants instead', they said and they did until there were no plants and then someone proposed that they eat the stationary and they did until that was all gobbled up and finally they decided to eat toothpaste and soap and stuff like that and that's how they were found - curled up, emaciated and blue, gobs afroth with mixed toiletries.

So anyway, I got the place for cheap. No one wanted to buy a sealed off multi-chambered mausoleum so I bought it for next to nothing, renamed it and reopened its doors. There's a weird vibe here I admit. A lot of dead prayers got buried in these walls. Things are heard at night. The mangy cat is sometimes seen. Some of the people that come to stay are purely here in the hopes of experiencing something grim or even spectral – expecting the dead to provide a new perspective on life. Most of my guests are just here for the cheap rooms though. They aren't fussy. They don't notice the heavy atmosphere because similar fugs have enveloped them their entire lives. They are the lost and the wounded. Sometimes they are those that seek to wound the lost. Sometimes they are the lost who unintentionally wound others. Last night a guest jumped to her death from an upper floor window and landed on another guest, a murderer returning from a night's kill. Weird eh? Barely a morning passes when we don't find an auto-asphyxiated onanist dangling in a wardrobe or a broken necked drunk crumpled at the bottom of a stairwell. I'm fair about it. I warn people before they book in. They book in anyway. I think it's the irresistible draw of defeat. A fatalistic surrender to a self-destined doom. Or maybe it's the ultimate protest against the sheer effort required to imagine things turning out some other way. Either way, the guests of Hotel Fugger consider that there's no other way.

You'll find a skull in the minibar and see a corpse in the mirror. The shower curtain is a sheet of human epidermis. The flowers are plastic but they're all dead anyway. A single room is only twelve fifty. Leave a tip near your cold stiff body.

Right so, now that that's done, I think we'll have a bit of a tune will we? We will, we'll have a song...

COURT OF THE HEREAFTER

A toothless man at the banquet, I didn't even try. I could have sucked on a cob of corn but the spectacle would be so grim that I thought it more dignified to feign disinterest. How hungry I was though at all those banquets but retaining what small amount of dignity I had superseded my howling appetite. Dignity is important to a man who has little of it. I was a figure of fun you see. Not just toothless but of diminished proportions, with crooked spine and vacant sac. The court freak, eunuch and fool. Designed specially to be a debased thing. Something so stigmatised as to have nothing to lose. A man debarred from full participation in life so as to better reveal, through mocking revelry, some unspoken truths. A safe outlet for unsafe notions, it was my role to play the jester and I was both happy and sad to do it.

I didn't much enjoy the ways of the court. The puffed up arrogance of the king and those who sat at his table was anathema to me. I made them laugh but found their guffaws unrewarding. I made my jokes for the friends I had, the dancers, the odd guard, the handmaidens – some of the latter I futilely held feelings for but all of whom glad eyed the handsome young prince and his trusty knave.

I would sit each night and await my turn. Unimpressed by the proceedings but finding solace in the glimpses of cloud moving across the beautiful moon in the high window above me. That was enough. Well almost enough. There was that and there was the thought of my final joke. A joke that was of such searing satiric wit and cruel honesty that it would upset the state of the court and make the king look a bigger fool than even I. A joke that would reduce this swaggering, self-entitled tyrant to a status lower than my own. My words would reveal him for what he truly was, nothing. Nothing at all but a big, fat, ignorant, vicious fool.

The night came when I was to make my joke. I had skirted dangerously close to this kind of thing before and earned myself a night in the stocks but tonight, this night, I was going to risk the noose. If my joke worked, and I was sure it would, I would be safe as the king would be the one deposed and dragged to the chopping block. I had seen and heard a lot because my eyes and ears were considered to be of no matter but that was an unwise assumption. Tonight I would reveal all.

My turn came and I took my position in the centre of the court. I rattled my bells and bowed and my audience both applauded and jeered. I inhaled deeply. I opened my mouth and my words, the words of my joke, came out. My words came out, one after another, and combined into a form of syntactical sedition the likes of which had heretofore never been heard. My joke flowed from my head and hung manifest before all. There was a silence. It was obvious that it was sinking in. And then came the laughter I had expected but not of the flavour I desired. A jester is so expert at soliciting laughter that he can tell the flavour of that laughter and this was the wrong kind. The laughter that ensued was not a laughter derisive of authority but a barely comprehending laughter of disbelief. How could this fool make such fanciful claims about one so honourable? They found the very notion absurd and that is why they laughed. Everyone laughed but no one got the joke. They didn't see the truth in it. I took my bow, went back to my corner and nothing changed at all.

Later that night, as the performing bear demeaned itself, I snuck from the court. I went out into the night and left the grounds. A guard who was a friend lowered the drawbridge for me and I exited the castle. On the other side I told the guard to pull the drawbridge up again. He asked if I was sure and I insisted that I was. He did so and then I was alone. The cold stone structure stood behind me, silently, and before me was the forest. A row of trees and between them only darkness. Thick black darkness. I did not know what awaited me amongst the branches and the trunks but I had heard that a place lay beyond. I had heard there was a light and that it led somewhere. I wasn't sure I believed it but I had to see if it was true. I had grown so tired of being the wrong shape. I had grown so weary of communicating through cryptic jest. Some loved me for it but that was no longer compensation enough. I thought how I would miss my friends and how I might never again see the moon. I walked ahead nonetheless. Whether this dark forest lead me to somewhere or lead me to nowhere, it would lead me to freedom.

And lead me to freedom the forest did for the moment I stepped through its foliage I was set upon and beheaded by a large black bear – the furious mother of the one performing inside the castle. I knew this bear was the other's mother because, as I entered the world of spirits, I knew all. I rose up and looked down. I saw through the stone castle walls and saw the court without me. I saw through the flesh and into the souls of the men and women within and I saw that I was sorely missed, even by the king. Yes, the king was the one who missed me most. I was his only release from the pomposity he was forced to observe by lineage. The swagger and arrogance was all an act. Within the rolls of royal fat there resided a man who longed to be loved and not feared. He had to put a face on it because inside his heart wept and no one wants a weeping king. He so enjoyed my mockery of him as he considered it mockery of the false him, an outward self that he too despised. He even had disdain for the way he was forced to put me in the stocks the odd time lest I topple his crown. A king without a crown is a dead man. He was so fearful and lonely. He needed me as did all the others. The handmaidens whose heartbreaking unrequited glad eyeing of the prince and his knave would at best be rewarded by perfunctory and mechanistic copulation because the prince and his knave had, in fact, a great loneliness of their own to endure for they were glad eyeing each other. A forbidden desire that would bring disgrace and was punishable by death. The guards who were to stand all day and appear fierce had sorrow in their hearts too for all they wanted was to rest and drink and sing a while like those they protected. The dignitaries of the court who bit into the meat and drank heartily from the goblets were also miserable for they were something that would one day come to be called bulimic and they would end each evening discretely vomiting into the moat. Not only that but they were only pretending to revel for fear that to be seen to do otherwise would cause them to be suspected malcontents. 

Oh, such a palace of melancholy.

And I perceived, as I faded from the physical plane, that I was regarded by those in the court not as something debased but as themselves distilled. They loved me because I was a manifestation of the honest parts of themselves. I could say what they truly thought for them and they could laugh at the world and at themselves. I was not some diminutive, hunched, emasculated figure of fun that served as a safe outlet for unsafe thoughts. Nay, I was a tonic. I was something to help see them through their days. Days that comprised of so much pity, fear and despair concealed so as to preserve some semblance of dignity. Oh dignity, it had meant so much to me once and how I realise now that it was chief contributor to my discontent. I should have rejoiced in my lack of dignity and encouraged others to do the same. They deserved as much, the wretches, but I had abandoned them. I had taken light from what small amount there was in that stone construction in the centre of the dark forest that goes on and on and on, all around, for as far as the eye can see. I had forsaken my calling and I was imbued with bitter regret as I ascended toward my beautiful friend the moon.

I took one last look down and I saw that there was some happiness in the court at least but just a sliver. This small happiness was found in the performing bear for the bear knew that soon his persecutors would collapse from inebriation and that, even though tethered by a chain, he could reach out with his claws and gut every last one of them before the guards got to him. This was the last thing I saw as I followed the light away from the world and it gladdened me some because I knew that soon I would be entertaining my friends again when we gathered together in the happier court of the hereafter.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS – PART ONE: THE LONG WORD

(pictured: an extract from The Long Word)

I've invented a new word. It is an unsayable word. It is actually impossible for a human to say the word. This is because the word is very long. So long that I can't type it here, it would hog up loads of the blog. While saying this word you need to inhale but you can't because you are saying the word. You die from lack of oxygen before you get to the end of the word. Even if you somehow devised a means by which you could take in breath whilst saying the word it wouldn't help because it takes longer than the average lifetime to say the word. This is ironic. The irony being that this long word I've invented is a synonym for 'why'. You never get the answer. You never even get to finish asking the question. You may as well not bother and that's probably the point.

THE CADAVERS OF THE FUTURE

The cadavers of the future rise from their beds, not yet dead, to face the day ahead. They wash their bodies and slide into their pants and skirts and blouses and shirts and slip on their shoes and eat something. They leave their homes and go out onto the streets of Ambivalence.

Ambivalence is an average sized town that resides on the borderline between the boroughs of Abominable and Abundant. There are a lot of things to like about Ambivalence but there is more than enough to hate. It is a town of contradictions and restrictions and no restrictions. In Ambivalence every good day is a bad day for someone and every bad day is a good day for someone else. It is a rare occasion when everyone is happy at once. So rare an occasion as to be non-existent and you don’t get much rarer than that. What Ambivalence has, it’s one constant, is a status quo. Ambivalence is as good and as bad at it gets and that is about the best the cadavers of the future can expect. 

Those that run Ambivalence are as crooked as crooked can be and those who complain about them are as crooked as they can manage to be without getting caught and going to prison. Not much makes sense and people rarely mean what they say. The cadavers of the future don’t worry too much about the future in which they’ll be cadavers. They leave a lot of messes for future generations to clean up, just as they have been left a lot of messes to clean up by their predecessors. Leaving messes and the required infrastructure to maintain these messes without turning the whole thing into a total mess is the Ambivalent way. That is the status quo. What more can you expect? It’s pretty good when you think about it, unless it seems really bad. It’s up to you really. An optimistic outlook is generally considered preferable but it isn’t compulsory. There is no rulebook here. Well, there is but those that adhere to it won’t be winning the game of Ambivalence. The rules of the game are to work around the rules whilst claiming to be sticking to them. To actually stick to the rules is naïve and naivety is the cardinal weakness in this town. The more naïve a cadaver of the future is the sooner in the future they are likely to become a cadaver.

When the cadavers of the future eventually become cadavers they are buried in a big cemetery on a hill overlooking Ambivalence. Tributes are paid to them and nice things are written on the stones that stand at the heads of their graves. The best of the worst is emphasised. A man who evaded paying his taxes his entire life is remembered as a good father and a man who was a bad father but paid his taxes all his life is remembered as someone who always paid his dues. This is the way it is in Ambivalence; most of the cadavers of the future prefer to look on the bright side and rarely acknowledge the dark. It is considered impolite to consider the dark so the dark goes unconsidered but everyone knows it is there. The cadavers of the future are both the bright and the dark and that is what makes Ambivalence tick. But you aren’t to go mentioning it. You aren’t to go saying as much. To point out that Ambivalence is a town that could only exist with good and bad in equal measure would be to point out that, although things will never get worse, things will never get better. Such an acknowledgement would lead the cadavers of the future to despair. Not many could handle the fact that they may as well change the name of Ambivalence to Limbo and that the only guaranteed progress is the progression toward a place up on the hill. Under a stone with a nice tribute to you written on it.

AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

I doubt you're wondering how I'm managing to leave blog posts from beyond the grave but I'll tell you anyway. . .

I was buried alive and died and then it went something like this:
My body blew like a gasket and my spirit split like steam and slipped between a crevice near the lid of the casket. I plumed up through tiny worm tunnels and came to the surface, scaring a gravedigger and causing his mange encrusted blind in one eye terrier to bark. 
'Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!' went the dog. 
'Hey, I'm floating away', went me.
I went upward past the clouds and joined a million soaring souls as they stretched throughout the cosmos like some moaning astral motorway passing by the space junk and the planets and the stars and headed toward the light. The light, the light, the cliched light. And then I saw a meadow and the smiling departed stood with their arms outstretched and greeted their relatives but there was no one there for me, not even my old dog Jake or my cat Rupert (the latter was a mercenary little bollix so what would you expect) and I was aggrieved but then someone called to me. Was that my Aunty Dolly? It was, it was, it was Aunty Dolly. Dear old Aunty Dolly! Darling Aunty Dolly! Only problem was I never had an Aunty Dolly. 'It's not your time', said whoever's Aunty Dolly it was and I found myself falling back to the Earth and seeping back down through its pours and plopping back into my body like a shite plops into a toilet bowl and then I came back to life and screamed and screamed and then I remember being unearthed by the gravedigger and his terrier savaged my arm and fucked my leg and that familiar sense of vague degradation informed me that I was alive . . .again. AAAAAAALLLLIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

STUPID WORMS

I'm in a coffin and the coffin is in the ground and it is dry and warm and I have wifi access and I really can't complain. I was issued with a compulsory demise order by the government and I didn't mind complying. These are difficult times and I wasn't bringing much to the fiscal table. Being the anomic type, I was merely a drain on exchequer funds. Put simply, I was surplus to requirements. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't mad on the demise idea initially but as Lucinda Creighton recently said on a current affairs programme, 'if the freeloaders amongst us don't agree to die today they'll wish they were dead tomorrow'. I know that sounds like a threat, so much does these days, but really it isn't. Lucinda's indisputably keen mind was just cutting through to the truth of the matter. The state can no longer give so it is time for those who take to go. So I went.

It's not a bad deal overall. The state pays for some of the casket and a third of the funeral so your nearest and dearest are spared much of the cost. I think that's fairly generous. All you have to do is show up in a nice suit, get into the box, get yourself loaded into the hearse and be put into the ground. I could hear the soil hitting the lid and a bit of sobbing above. Not too much sobbing mind you. I would've expected a bit more sobbing than that. No one lingered at the graveside for too long either. I heard my Uncle Mick say 'so that's him then, anyone for a pint?' and then I could make out the sound of everyone trudging away. I considered haunting the fuckers but then I remembered that I wasn't even dead. I'm not dead at all really, just decommissioned. I mightn't be around long though. I'm keeping my breathing shallow because of the lack of oxygen and I can hear my belly growling with hunger. I have the computer I was buried with to keep me company but the battery icon is flashing and it's not looking good. I'm not going to complain though. I mean, we all partied and this is what comes of it. I feel I'm doing my bit for the nation. It's like the new advertising campaign says: 'Don't be a numpty, die for your country'. It's a great ad they have on the telly with all these enthusiastic people giving the undertaker a thumbs up as they lay down in a coffin and have the lid slid over them. It's kind of a cool thing to do. It's like dying in a war.

As with dying in a war, no one is really that sure why they have to die on this occasion. All they know is that they must do the responsible thing. I mean, it may not seem fair but since when has life been fair? Life is not about fairness, it's about balance. It's about balancing the books. I'm doing my bit. I'm doing my bit for Ireland.

*******************************************

I can hear it raining above me now as I type. At least I think it's rain. It's like a dim patter on the surface of the mud above my coffin. It might not be rain though. It might be birds. They land on the earth and hammer away on it with their beaks. They don't just do this to upturn the soil, they do it to emulate the sound of raindrops landing. That way the worms get tricked into thinking it's raining and make their way to the surface. When the worms get to the top they are eaten by the birds. I hear it happening every morning. Every morning the birds play the same trick and every morning the stupid pathetic worms fall for it. I can't help but relish the misfortune of the worms slightly. Maybe I resent the wriggling shits because I know it's only a matter of time before they're feasting on my eyeballs. They will feast upon my skull as I lie here doing my patriotic duty. Bastards.

Anyway, I'll have to leave it there. The laptop is running out of juice and I better click the icon labelled 'post' and get this online. Not sure what I'll do then. I suppose I'll just lie here for Ireland and listen to the patter of the raindrops or bird beaks or whatever the fuck is going on up there.

. . .stupid worms, the lot of us.

A FRAGRANT DEATH

I remember when I was a magician. I took a volunteer from the audience and asked him to lie in a box. Then I sawed him in two. I divided the box into two halves with his feet poking out one end and his head sticking out the other. The audience gasped. Then I realised that I had forgotten how to do the rest of the trick. I had forgotten how to put him back together.

Medical science was at a loss. Nothing could be done. I tried to return the man to his wife. She said he wasn’t half the man he used to be. She decided she only wanted the lower portion so I had to take the top half home to live with me. He is still here, his head peeking out of the box as he lies in my sitting room. Sometimes he weeps. He lies there gently sobbing. It can be quite depressing so I push him out the front door into the corridor. ‘It’s cold out here’, he complains but I say nothing. I just close the door and go off to watch television. He’ll be OK for a while. I did return once to find a cat sitting on his face. He almost suffocated. I shooed the cat away. I doubt it will happen again.

Sometimes I take him to the pub. I get him a drink with a little straw and put it on a table by his head. We might even meet up with some of his friends. Well, they are more my friends now. He complains so much his friends have started to ignore him. They talk to me instead. We laugh and sing. We rest our pints on his box.

It’s hard to know what to do with him. It’s hard to know what to do with dependents in general. Even when you mean the best, things can so easily go wrong. I remember a friend of mine, a beautiful woman with a fantastic laugh. She was very popular. Very, very popular. So much so that when she was temporarily immobilised and taken to hospital everyone sent her flowers. The flowers just kept arriving from all those who wished her well. Her hospital room filled up with flowers and soon it got to the stage where we could no longer find her. When you opened the door, all you could see was a wall of flowers. We called out for her but our voices must have been smothered by the compact thicket of stems and petals. We never saw her alive again. She starved. At least she passed on knowing that she was well loved.

Maybe I should get my half man flowers. A lot of flowers. An awful lot of flowers. It would be for the best. I would be free of him. He would no longer suffer. He would be released and, at the very least, it would be a fragrant death.

Death in The Afternoon Show

I was a bit surprised to see a feature about death on The Afternoon Show yesterday. Bit of a grim topic I thought but the two presenters took to it with gusto. They started by interviewing some expert type, a deathologist or something. They asked the expert what death felt like and if there was an afterlife. The expert couldn’t answer either of those questions but he seemed a serious sort and wore well pressed slacks so I’m sure he was a reliable source of information.

Later on in the show, they wheeled out this coffin and one of the presenters, (I think her name is Una, lovely girl) got into it to see what it is like to be dead. So, in she popped and they closed the lid on her. The other presenter (is her name Breeda? Probably, we’ll just call her Breeda) started asking Una what it was like inside the box. Una was answering from underneath the lid so it was all a bit muffled. She said the coffin was a little snugger than she expected and was actually quite constricting. ‘It’s hot in here and I’m a bit bored’, she said. When asked how death compared to life, Una thought about it for a moment before replying that it was preferable but ‘only marginally’.

‘So, there you have it’, said Breeda addressing the camera, ‘nothing to fear at all’. Then they went and baked some cakes and at the end of the show they ate them off the top of the coffin.

In a recent survey, a sizeable portion of contributors said they spent more time wishing they were dead than being glad to be alive. The largest percentage of those surveyed chose a third option: ‘It depends what’s on the telly’.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Check out a happy moment from the Rabid Dog Christ's tenure on The Afternoon Show in a time consuming and beautifully rendered screen capture over on the: RDC BLOG!

Mummy . . .is . . .HERE!

Tonight, more so than every other night, a great cloak will be thrown over the heavens and darkness will fall. It will be the time of Nyx, the Goddess of night, and she will slide up from the depths of our sleeping minds and crawl like a colossal spider across the land, casting a shadow blacker than a starless night.

Animal headed children will twirl and shriek in the air amongst spinning dead leaves and the psychic transmissions of disturbed rests. 'Mummy is here! Mummy is here!' the children will scream with malign delight and then unmask to reveal themselves to be the offspring of Nyx. The goat faced girl is Lyssa, the Goddess of Madness, the ravager of reason and comprehension. She takes the mind, every individual's only true haven from her expanding realm of unreason. She will slip into your head and stomp and whirl until nothing is where it should be. She will ensure you never again escape the grip of Phobetor, the pig faced boy, her nephew and the God of Nightmares, who bangs remorselessly and senselessly upon the shrill keyboard of rational cognitive processes.

Some of us will perish this night when the rabbit faced Thanatos unmasks, a monstrously deformed child, the God of death, who will drag us forever into a great unknown where science and empirical determination mean less than nothing. Where you are but a frequency in a hissing static discord of paranormal incomprehensibility.

And this night will howl and rage forever and we will all be its victims for the Sun is dead (kicked to death in a shop doorway as it slept a drunken vagrant's sleep). Screaming cats and birds will join every car alarm in the land, singing a panicked song of despair, an eternal cacophonous nocturne, a permanent soundtrack to this Hell on Earth. The agencies of the state will weep. Holy men will plead to a God long since murdered and then, worst of all, Nyx will crack open the Universe like a rotten egg and her summoned army will come oozing out.

Maybe you've seen the foot soldiers of Nyx, creeping from the dark recesses of your room and looming over your frozen bed bound body. The Old Hag, the Shadow People or maybe the Hat Man. Now they are here to stay, released forever from the nocturnal parole of sleep paralysis, defying the left hemisphere of the brain. These Archetypes of Twilight, these members of the Jungian Collective Unconsciousness, will become the new cops, the new teachers, the new doctors, nurses and priests. Un-Civil servants in a new state of infinite chaos.

It is happening in my town and will happen in yours. I warned you all. I wrote letters to both the Irish Times and The Herald, but it did no good. People scoffed, some mocked, Madame editor saw fit not to publish my missive . . . and now it has happened. The Twilight that ruled our pagan past has re-emerged. The shadow of the spider is spreading and soon it will swallow reality whole. We are all to be dead deranged dreamers and Nyx will rule this dominion for eternity.

. . . Eddie Hobbs can't save you now!

You were warned.