Cobweb

In the corner of my room, there’s this cobweb that’s been there for years. I’ve never seen a spider there, but the web seems to grow thicker and stronger over time.

Occasionally I’ll see a fly caught by it, unable to escape. Is it worse to die pointlessly like this, in a dead, abandoned trap? Or is it just as terrible the other way too, just as pointless and upsetting and unjust to die in an active web?

Should I die alone, or somewhere the worms can find me

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Notes:

1. Written September 5th, 2018

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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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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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an accumulation of things

An infinity of ephemera

Cobweb

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Egg trick

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Elon Musk

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bulb

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Oil

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