The Eggs

When I was a child, of about eight or nine, for a few months I had this obsession painting eggs. I don’t know why. I just loved painting faces on eggshells.

You poked a pin in the bottom of the egg first, so the white and the yolk would drip out, and then you’d leave the shell to dry. And then I’d take my pens and my paint brushes, and I’d give each of them a face, and a name, and a personality. Some of them I even gave little hats. But only to my favourites.

I lined them all up on the top of my bookcase. Next to the dinosaurs and the miniature globe and the spaceships from Space 1999 and Blake’s 7 that I had, and loved, even though I’d never seen Blake’s 7, and still haven’t, 35 years later.

Anyway, one day, the eggs began to speak. And I listened.

Soon there was no going back.

___________

Notes:

1. Written on June 17th, 2020

The Future

I woke up in the future. Not even a particularly good future. One of those futures where there’s airships everywhere and TVs have been replaced by VR helmets. At least it wasn’t a hovercar and protein pill future I suppose. But still it was pretty disappointing.

Anyway, I had the afternoon to look around, as my return nap wasn’t scheduled till seven. So first off I went straight to the park and they were playing this game that was exactly like football, except some of the rules were slightly different. Then I went to another bit of the park, and they were playing this game that was exactly like cricket, except some of the rules were slightly different. Later, I went to a third bit of the park, and they were playing basketball.

I sat down on a bench, which was made out of some sort of futuristic wood alternative that was almost but not quite comfortable to sit on. It started to speak to me of times past, but these times were, to me, times yet to come. It was pretty mindblowing in a way. In most other ways it was exceedingly boring.

Suddenly, the sun went behind a zeppelin. The wind whipped up. A newspaper fluttered by. I tried to read the headlines on its wings but unfortunately my pun acuity was twenty years out of date so I had no idea what was going on.

Anyway, that’s the future. I was hoping for some better satirical content really but there was fucking nothing.

__________

Notes:

1. Written June 16th, 2020

The Morality Of A Cat

There’s this huge strange cat that lives on our street that everyone says is evil. It’s not evil, obviously. It’s a cat. How the hell can you apply human morality to a cat? Well, any morality to a cat. It’s nonsense. I find people so exasperating sometimes it makes me want to scream.

Anyway this cat is huge, like I said, and strange. Like, really strange. It’s all grey and sleek and muscular, with these bright green eyes, and it doesn’t so much move as flow. It’s startling. Mesmerising. You just can’t help but watch whenever it appears. You can’t help but be transfixed.

And it really does appear. Because not only does it transcend morality, it transcends all the known boundaries of time and space. Lock your doors all you want, close your windows, seal the vents. It’s still getting in. Throw it out the front door, it’ll be at the back for the instant you turn around. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t arrive, it’s already there.

One time I came home from school, and I saw this cat in every street, but I never saw it move. It just teleported itself round every bend, so it could get stroked and fussed on all over again. It never purred, though, no matter how much you fussed. It simply stared at you in demand, instead. But you could tell it really loved it. That’s the sort of cat it was.

I’ve got hundreds of stories like that, thousands, but that’s not what I want to tell you about. Not today, anyway. Maybe another time. But today I want to tell you about this.

There’s this girl in my class, Carla. I hate her. Sometimes she sits behind me in French and yanks my ponytail until I scream. But today I had to pretend I liked her, because they called a special assembly for our whole class, and told us she’d disappeared. Run away. Gone missing. And if we saw her or spoke to her or heard anything about where she’d gone we had to tell our parents, or the school, or the police. But not Carla’s mum. We weren’t allowed to speak to her mum.

It was very exciting.

Now everyone in our class hated Carla just as much as me, but we all wanted to find her, cause then we’d be heroes, and we might get to see her body all dead in a ditch or something, and poke it with a stick, like I did with a hedgehog once, and it was all full of maggots and it stank and it was amazing.

I still think about that sometimes. I still think about that a lot.

So we all sent our mums and dads messages telling them we were going round each other’s houses for dinner tonight, but we weren’t really going round anyone’s houses for dinner at all. We were going to the park!

And the woods, and down by the river, and over to those abandoned old factories that all closed down last summer when someone set them on fire for insurance or something. That’s what my mum said, although Lilly told me it was an explosion caused by a bomb. She said it was on the news and everything but who watches the news I mean what’s the point it’s stupid.

Anyway, we didn’t find Carla. We didn’t find anything. At one point Gail and Lilly started arguing with each other about who hated Carla the most and Gail pushed Lilly in the river and we all cheered and ran off before she could drag herself out of the mud. I ran so fast I felt like I was going to scream but I didn’t scream I just kept on running until I got home even though I was supposed to be at Tina’s till six and it wasn’t even five yet.

When I let myself in I thought mum would be making tea but the kitchen was empty and there wasn’t even any plates in the sink, so I thought she’d gone out somewhere. Maybe she was getting fish and chips, I thought, which made me suddenly furious, thinking that she’d gone without me. How dare she! If we’re going to have a treat we should have it together. It’s just selfish otherwise. And anyway I knew we wouldn’t have had fish and chips if I’d been here for tea. We’d have had something boring like potatoes and peas and quorn.

Urgh, quorn. Did you know that quorn’s made out of mould! And, like, not even nice mould, like cheese, or a mushroom – which is a special type of mould called a fungus, and some of them like, make you drunk, or swell up and DIE! – but some sort of manmade mould. It can’t even kill you. It’s too boring for that. It’s just disgusting and she makes me eat it all the time. It’s horrible. It’s so cruel.

When I went upstairs to my room I thought I heard something in mum’s room. The door was open a sliver, and I looked through, and there was Mum lying on her bed, and that big strange cat was asleep on her chest. Mum didn’t even have any clothes on. That cat was sleeping right on her tits.

Mum was sighing like she was asleep or something, and that cat was yawning, and it reached out one of its paws, all lazily, as if it was stretching, and then hooked its claws right into her arm, and dug them in, and pulled them out, and dug them in again, until her whole wrist was full of these teeny tiny holes.

Mum didn’t even flinch. It was like she liked it. She was sort of moaning and laughing at the same time. Then there was all this blood running down her arm and onto the sheets and the cat moved over and started lapping up her blood and it’s tongue licked her skin so roughly I could hear it from here and it was like when we use sandpaper at school it was horrible.

At the end the cat sat up and licked its paw clean and looked at me with its green eyes and carried on licking its paw cause it knew I was there it knew I was watching it wanted me to watch it wanted me to see and mum smiled and laughed and stroked that cat like it was a good cat but its not a good cat at all it’s just a cat.

Ever since then mum’s been knocking on my door and asking me what’s wrong but I’m not going to tell her I’m not coming out not now not ever again.

I hope Carla’s dead. I really do. This is all her fault.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on June 15th, 2020

a list of things

a bathtub full of dust
a cracked and speckled egg
cobwebs on a cats whiskers
an old coat that no longer fits
but which is much nicer than any that still do
a single old streetlight that no ones got round to updating to something newer and brighter and less evocatively orange
old cigarette packet in dried up ditch
a picture of my mother from before i was born
old list found in drawer with nothing ticked off
a box full of obsolete technology
suddenly remembered old shame that feels like new again
pens with no lids
pens with wrong lids
pens
remembering the existence of tipp ex
but not the spelling
itchiness
vague unease
slight twinge in neck
forgotten promise
a strange desire to disown myself
bedraggled cat wrapped in towel
the use of actual money in an actual shop in the actual world in actual life
someone saying something and then you saying something and then someone else saying something and then you saying something and then you saying something else then you both saying something then someone saying something then a long lingering silence then you saying something then
a market stall filled with bags of unmarked meat
looking out of the window only to notice someone else looking in the window
contrails forming noughts and crosses board
dreams of the moon
an overabundance of sweat despite total inactivity
bloodied gums
distant fox screams
the same song on repeat for over half an hour
bed time
death
end of list

__________

Notes:

1. Written on June 12th, 2020

Tale #115: A Short History Of A Minor Kingdom

For many years a King and Queen ruled benevolently together over a small yet beautiful kingdom. One day, the Queen gave birth to a young prince, and the King was so happy he began to cry, knowing that his legacy was secured..

That very day, the kingdom was besieged by an army of such great power and ferocity that the King and his people could do nothing to stop them. While the King waited in his castle to meet his usurper, the Queen and the young prince escaped across the sea. As they sailed away into the black of night, behind them the sky was bright as day as the cities, farms and forests of their homeland burned. Only the King’s occupied castle remained unburnt, standing out like a shadow against the blood red flames.

The Queen knew her King had fallen, and she wept until morning, and then she wept no more. In exile, she brought her son up with stories of their homeland, of the beauty of the forests and the lakes, of the bravery and heroism of his father, of the wonderful kindness and generosity of the people.