I placed my teeth in the tin and gave them a rattle and then poured them out on to the table with a gummy smile as they revealed their prophecy to us all. I’d rolled five fives and got the maximum score.
Mother accused me of cheating and eventually the game had to be abandoned.
__________
Notes:
1. Written on July 14th, 2018
__________a cat sneaked into my house today
and came upstairs
and saw me in my underwear
then it ran away
all the way back downstairs
and out the back door
into the garden
one quick look back from the safety of the fence
then gone for good
no amount of plaintive cries could bring it back
__________
1. Written on 8th May, 2018
2. Live, as it occurred
__________
Notes:
1. Written on the 28th June, 2018
2. All events occurred as depicted
3. And where depicted
4. And when
I woke up in the middle of the night and there was this skeleton outside, tapping at my window, tapping and tapping incessantly with its long bony finger while the rest of its entirely improbable being just stood there motionless, its feet in mother’s fuschias, each bone held perfectly in place by whatever force it is that maintains their coherence, the whole spectre stained red as blood under the streetlights’ glare.
I tapped back and it tapped back and then it tapped some more and then some more and went on tapping for quite some time.
It was fairly annoying.
It was 3 am.
I tapped back again to see if it would stop but it didn’t stop and I wondered if it was all some Poe-esque torture designed to make me collapse to me knees and confess my sins, but in the end I decided it probably wasn’t, and that it was more likely that, considering the skeleton had no eyes or eardrums or even a brain, it simply hadn’t heard me or seen me or perceived my existence in any way at all. Or at least not in anyway I could understand.
Also I didn’t have any sins to confess, except I suppose for the sin of gluttony, but I’m not sure that’s even really considered a sin anymore, rather than the necessary duty of every citizen, for if we don’t do all we can to maintain the steady expansion of the capitalist balloon on and on for ever and ever without end until even the infinite has been consumed then where would be? In some arid post-apocalyptic tesco-less waste land, no doubt, like I’d always dreamt about, like I’d always wanted, staggering about all alone under a wan unblemished sky.
Maybe that is my sin.
Maybe this is my confession.
The skeleton tapped on and on. I went back to bed and dreamt of clocks and death.
__________
Notes:
1. This was written on the 26th June, 2018
2. It’s been hot this week and I cannot sleep
There was a growth in the kitchen, protruding bulbously from the fruit bowl, furred and quivering where the pineapple should have been.
“Where’s my pudding?” called a voice from the garden.
I looked at the growth and tried to direct my mother away from it and onto the idea of having something else for pudding.
“What do you want?” I said. “There’s some ice cream.”
“Fruit,” she said. “You know I always have fruit for pudding.”
“I’m not sure there’s any left,” I said.
“There should be a pineapple in the fruit bowl.”
“Are you sure you don’t want any ice cream?”
“No! Fruit! I want my fruit, David!”
I picked up the growth, hoping until the last it was a miniature coconut, that the quivering was a trick of the light, that
that
that
anything
except what it was
It was soft in my hand, and almost definitely alive, moist, like wet bread, and as hairy as a tarantula you’d been forced to stroke at the zoo, but warm and responsive, unlike the refrigerated docility of those poor captive beasts.
I placed it on the chopping board and cut it in half. Blood seeped out everywhere, green and sickly and thin. I skinned the thing, dumped it’s abject flesh into mother’s favourite cereal bowl and took it out to the garden where she sat grimly underneath the parasol.
On my way back inside I absentmindedly licked my fingers, and they tasted like acid. Like acid and metal and electricity being fired through the bones of my skull. I spat and spat into the sink but nothing would make it go away.
Mother loved it, wouldn’t stop saying all night how nice it was, asking me when I was going to go out and get some more.
__________
Notes:
1. This story was written on the 24th June, 2018
2. It’s not a very good story
3. I was thinking mostly of kiwi fruits, but also there’s this thing in the garden, down by the compost heap, and it’s all furry and odd and I don’t know what it is and I don’t dare find out