An infinity of ephemera

Egg trick

My granddad used to do this egg trick when he came round on the weekend. He’d line three eggs up on the table, in these brown plastic egg cups we had, and then he’d say, which one of these eggs is the chicken in, and we’d point to one of the eggs, and he’d slam his hand down onto the egg, causing it to explode, and he’d say, no, it wasn’t that one, pick another, and we’d pick another, and he’d smash that one too, and there’d be yolk all over the table now, and bits of shell hanging off his hand, and egg white covering everything like slime, and then he’d point to the last egg and say, do you think it’s in this one then, and we’d say yes, it has to be, and he’d slam down his hand, and blood would spurt out everywhere, and feathers, and bones, and he’d slowly lift his hand up, and you could see a beak embedded in his palm, with blood in a circle round it, egg trick stigmata, and then he’d look down in exaggerated horror at all the blood and bones and sickening mess and say, see, no, it wasn’t in that one either, you don’t get chicks in eggs, not these eggs anyway, eggs from the shop are unfertilised, and none of us could tell if it was a trick or not but he’d do it every week and it was always the last egg and now he’s dead from un egg related causes and we’ll never find out the truth of the egg trick

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Notes:

1. Written on September 3rd, 2018

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk was on the telly, his dead face glistening under the studio lights.

“Rrrrrrrrr” he said, as the motors that powered his jaws slowly powered up. “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”

A single drop of blood welled at the edge of his final human eye, seeming to defy gravity at first until you realised it was a fake, made of resin or wax or plasticine or from carbon nanotubes or jam or something, created to evoke a sympathetic response in the viewer. “See,” your brain went, “he’s human just like you.”

You hated your brain but it was the only one you could afford.

His other eye pulsed through sixty trillion colours a second, each one newer and more expensive than the one before.

“If we’d kept the old tv, we’d never have been able to see them all,” your brain said.

“I like that one,” your mother said, freezing the image and then cycling back through the frames until his eye was teslorange (a sort of purple). “I wonder if I could get some antimaccassars that colour.”

You pressed his eye and the catalogue opened up directly into your brain and crowded out most of your other sensory inputs until it had loaded the page.

“They cost $87348732.21,” you said, glumly.

“Oh, that’s quite a bit,” your mother said, but by the end of the week you knew she’d have one over the arm of every chair in the pod.

You wondered sometimes where the old antimaccassars went, but you never quite dared ask.

The image on the tv unfroze. “Hsssssk,” Elon Musk concluded, as his hour came to an end. “Hsssssssssssssssk.”

It was Mark Zuckerberg next, the camera centred on his jumper, the top half of his head protruding out of the shell of the telly and half way up your living room wall.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaater,” he began. “Proooteeeeeeien.”

Your mother was entranced. You feigned disinterest. Later you bought four decilitres of water and several unsorted proteins.

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Notes:

1. Written on September 3rd, 2018

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Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

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bulb

There were some kids in the park, arguing about bulb.

“Bulb,” said the tall one.

“Bulb,” said the short one, shaking her head. “No bulb.”

“Bulb,” said the middle one, and then from a pocket she pulled out some tissues, a hat, two gloves, a mitten, a sock, and bulb.

“Bulb,” she repeated, and showed it to them all.

“Bulb,” said the short one, and she reached out slowly towards it. “Bulb.”

The tall one suddenly snatched it up and put it in her mouth. She started to glow, first red, then green, finally settling down to a deep, unsettling shade of purest bulb.

I shielded my eyes with my arms, only to discover that bulb transmits across all frequencies, wavelengths, sensations, magnetions, atomic crystularities, the dimensions of time.

There was bulb. There is bulb. There comes bulb.

I am bulb and you are bulb and we are bulb.

Bulb. Bulb. Bulb.

The tall bulb began to dim and when I looked up the short bulb and the middle bulb had run away and left the tall bulb fading there on her own.

I looked down at my feet and pretended I hadn’t seen bulb. But I had seen bulb, had heard bulb, tasted bulb, smelt bulb, thought bulb, dreamy bulb, become bulb.

I stood up and walked away. When I put my hands in my pockets I discovered bulb in each one.

“Bulb,” I said.

Bulb.

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1. Bulb
2. BULB

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Oil

The oil soaked into the carpet in an ever-widening circle of shame around us both as we copulated on the living room floor.

When we reached our climactic finish, our cries caused the cat to jump down in fright from the settee and run obliviously through the mess and out through the half-opened door, leaving a trail of black footprints behind him as he ran into the hall and up the stairs.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” I said, looking at the mess. “I’m getting old, these days. It’s my knees. If I don’t lubricate them they seize up. But then when I do, I leak.”

“Urgh,” said the scarecrow. “You could have warned me. I’m flammable enough as it is.”

He felt his back and grimaced in disgust at the feel of himself. He rubbed his fingers together in front of my face, my thick black fluid oozing down them towards the grubby palms of his hands.

“How the hell am I going to get all this out? It’s disgusting. Christ, I can feel it soaking through me, soaking into my heart.”

He emphasised that last word and gave me a withering look while he waited for me to respond to his cutting jibe.

The wind suddenly gusted through the open window and the curtains billowed extravagantly. The daylight cast a tawdry brightness across the room, which left both of us deflated.

On the other side of the window, I caught a glimpse of a face peering in, emotionless, wizened, more like a mask than living flesh.

“Please, carry on,” he said, when he noticed me staring. “Don’t mind me.”

But by now the scarecrow had already left, and I was too self-conscious to continue on my own.

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Notes:

1. Written on August 7th, 2018

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Crack

There were a load of cracks all over the field behind our house. They weren’t there yesterday. They were only there today.

The biggest one of them was so deep you could put your arm down it and never reach the end. This worked whether you had a short arm, like me, or a long arm, like my dad, or a leg, like my mum, who refused to lie down, like we were doing, and just sat on the side and dangled a leg down there instead.

“What are they, though?” I said.

“Mouths,” said my dad.

“Mouths?” I said, uncertainly.

“Yep, mouths,” said my dad. I could see my mother shaking her head and putting a finger to her lips but he carried on regardless. “It’s been so dry all summer that the ground needs to get water from somewhere. So it’s opened up some of its mouths in the hope of gulping down a child or two.”

“A child?” I whimpered.

“Children are full of water,” my dad said, and laughed and made to push me down the hole but he didn’t push me down the hole.

I jumped to my feet and thought of mouths and began to cry and my mother said, “Christ!” but not at me at my dad. My dad just shrugged his shoulders somehow even though he was lying on the floor and then rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky.

“He needs to grow up,” he said, bitterly.

“You need to grow up,” said my mum to my dad, while hugging me and assuring me everything was okay, everything was all right, they weren’t really mouths, they weren’t going to eat me at all. And she made it all better and I stopped crying and I really love my mum I do.

A little while later we went off to the shop to get some ice creams, and when we got back my dad was asleep on the blanket. My mum smiled at me and put a finger to her lips and then exaggeratedly sneaked over to my dad and rolled him up in the blanket and pushed him down into the crack.

You’d never believe how much water there is inside a person, how thick and dark and endless it all is.

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Notes:

1. Written on August 3rd, 2018

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Support An Accumulation Of Things

If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon or my ko-fi.

Patreon subscribers get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.

(Ko-fi contributors probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more).

Thank you!